:: inamirrordimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

It’s easy for a guy to dismiss gender as a real issue we need to discuss today. In America we generally believe that women can do anything and should be treated as equals to men so far as discrimination and rights go. Of course men and women have differences, but no one should be marginalized based on gender. Some could probably pick that apart and add nuances and finer points, but we need to move on and talk about whether or not gender presents a problem to our society and to Christians.

I’ve heard a number of reports about Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and gender factor. Some say it is and some say it isn’t. It’s a hard thing to consider. On the face of it, I know that my vote for Clinton is not necessarily decided on her gender. I don’t trust her or her husband and weary of their style of politics. The spin coming out of her campaign alone boggles the mind. However, I have also listed her sharp, caustic tone as another reason why I’m not a Hillary fan…

So I’ve been wondering out loud lately if perhaps there’s a reason why Clinton has adopted that tone. Perhaps she’s grappling with the prospect of winning a game that has been dominated by men until recent times. And so we have a woman, a woman with decent credentials if not glowing ones in the eyes of her supporters, trying to prove she has the toughness for the job. In fact, some would note she says little else besides sign boxing gloves. It makes me wonder if she played up the gentler, softer side, weeping in diners like she did in New Hampshire, that we would simply respond with, “She doesn’t have the tough skin to be president.”

I can see the commercial now coming from her opponents.

It’s 4:00 PM.

Oprah’s on.

The phone is ringing.

Where’s your female president???

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With all of the flap over Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama in the news lately, we really have a perfect storm of sorts as far as stories go. It’s a mix of politics, race, and religion. I still believe that the media is completely ruining this story in many ways and Obama and Wright are in extremely difficult situations. I’d like to try and cut through some of the hype and misinformation out there.

First of all, it is essential to either read or listen to Rev. Wright himself on Bill Moyers or his speech at the National Press Club. I don’t agree with everything Wright has to say, but I agree with a lot of it. Even if he’s wrong on some points, he presents clear arguments for his views. Like them or not, he’s entitled to them.

Here’s the problem. Obama isn’t really fighting Wright. He’s fighting sound bits and public perception of Wright. Wright isn’t really fighting Obama. He’s fighting a very real hostility toward the black church and the injustices that he sees in the world. He’s fighting the media and the those who twist his words.

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All Things Considered yesterday provided a great deal of analysis of the latest remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Barack Obama who was at the center of a controversy about his remarks in a sermon that included the phrase, “God damn America.” The report shared the following:

He [Wright] said he was quoting an ambassador to Iraq in that sermon, although he did not give the ambassador’s name.

“Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’” Wright added. “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.”

Wright said the comment captured on YouTube — in which he says, “Not God bless America, but God damn America” — was taken out of context.

“God doesn’t bless everything,” he said. “God damns some practices, and there’s no excuse for the things that the government — not the American people — have done. That doesn’t make me not like America or unpatriotic.”

Also key to his defense, Wright spoke of black theology and preaching as different, not hostile or bombastic (See Time Magazine as well)

After this report NPR provided some analysis by two senators, one who supported Obama and one who supported Clinton. Curiously they both initially remarked that this controversy has gone on for too long and lamented the way the media has handled it.

I couldn’t agree more. While our candidates should be scrutinized carefully, I think it goes too far to overanalyze a sound byte from a sermon that Obama didn’t even hear. Also, we can’t drop everything Wright says into Obama’s mouth. We can question him about it and be concerned about his beliefs in relation to his pastor, but everything has been blown out of proportion.

There are plenty of things we can scrutinize about Obama without digging into his pastor’s sermons. Let’s look at what he himself has said. I know I don’t agree with every single thing my own pastor has said, and I know that even if I agree with my pastor, there are times when he may say things differently than I would have said them.

Both campaigns recognize this has been blown out of proportion, when will the media catch on?

Technorati Tags: Obama - Wright - religion - America

If you’ve grown weary of the media and it’s attempt to force candidates to denounce and renounce what other people have said, then you need to read the latest opinion piece by professor Stanley Fish:

This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.

He goes in for the kill by praising Obama for his speech and gutting the media:

He [Obama] rejected Reverend Wright’s rants against the United States and against the white power-structure, but he refused to reject the man to whom he had looked for spiritual guidance. And he deplored the tendency “to pounce” on every “gaffe,” because, he said, if we continue to do that, we’ll just be “talking about some other distraction, and then another one, and then another one.”

The odd thing is that the press that produces these distractions and the populace that consumes them really believe they are discussing issues and participating in genuine political dialogue. But in fact they have abandoned genuine political dialogue and have committed themselves to a conversation that differs only in subject matter from conversations about Eliot Spitzer’s and David Paterson’s sex lives. It’s not politics; it’s titillation clothed in political garb.

It makes me glad that I generally skipped all of the coverage and analysis save for Obama’s speech itself. It’s like gossip on a national scale surrounding a high stakes “vote” for the class president.

Technorati Tags: Obama - Fish - media

The other day at the book store I was looking at the top 10 hard back bestsellers and sure enough another Depak Chopra book was listed as number one: The Third Jesus. I checked out the dust jacket and it seemed to be as I suspected, another new age-take on Jesus that draws on the love and redemption of Jesus, but sort of skips over the cost of discipleship and the road to the cross.

The language is all spirituality and enlightenment, which can be applied to Jesus in a few ways, but does not capture the complete, orthodox picture the Bible and historic church give us about Jesus.

Noted Biblical scholar Ben Witherington has written up a review of the book at his blog and comes to this conclusion:

Jesus did not, and does not come to take us to a higher spiritual plane, so that we might better get in touch with the little bit of God that is in us all or our own God-consciousness. Indeed, he seeks to lead us to have a relationship with the God he called Abba who is wholly other, and who urges us to recognize the Creator Creature distinction. We are not God, nor is God inherently in us or a part of our being. The end result of navel gazing is that we may well get more in touch with ‘our inner child’, but we do not get more in touch with the ‘outer’ God who created the universe and all that is in it. The former sort of spirituality is a form of narcissism, or at its worse, self- worship. The latter form of spirituality reinforces the Creator/creature distinction and leads to worship of the one true God.

I don’t claim to have Jesus all figured out. I don’t claim that people can’t learn from Jesus even if they won’t become committed followers of Jesus. However, I do not believe Chopra presents an accurate view of Jesus with his Biblical grab-bag approach.  Of course the main difference here is my Christian tradition values the Biblical witness and the traditions passed down throughout Christian history. Chopra is coming from a completely different angle, an angle that I think misses out on the life-changing revelation of God and call to discipleship.

I’m still thinking through the presentation by Chris Hedges last night and I did a little digging into some interviews with him. For instance, he was interviewed a little over a year ago about his book American Fascists on Talk of the Nation. I was thinking that he was perhaps a bit rough on Christians, but in the interview on Talk of the Nation I think he does say the people on the far right he’s worried about are only about 10% of Christians. However he does fear the influence of the fringes on the rest of Christians on the right who may not be so extreme.

I have to say that I think he’s overreacting to Christians on the extreme end of our faith. He has clearly encountered some disturbing streams in fundamentalist Christianity, but I don’t think he’s aware that even some Evangelicals on the right are put off by the more extreme fundamentalists he describes in his interview. This is not to mention Christians more to the center and to the right.

Hedges seems to fear that the far right will gain more and more power and influence, eventually creating an intolerant America where homosexuals are persecuted, if not executed, everyone is forced to accept the Christian ideology, and all laws are run through the far right’s interpretive grid.

Sensationalist? I think so. As a Christian who’s more to the middle, I can’t see the far right taking over the middle. If anything, I see the right imploding upon itself as it corners itself into increasing obscurity and irrelevance. I’m not a reporter, but I am a Christian, so that’s my $.02.

I’m sure that Hedges hopes I’m right…

There’s a great article at Publisher’s Weekly that not only addresses what it actually means for a book to be marketed as Emergent or Emerging. The best part of the article is the part where the author states:

What I fear will be next is a trend of blurring Emergent ideas with self-help. It’s easy to see how publishers would find this marriage irresistible: why not join an appealingly edgy hipster ethos with those stock-in-trade Christian books that promise improved prayer life, more effective parenting, and better abs in 30 days? But Emergent folks deserve more than becoming the book equivalent of a glossy infomercial. I’m not the only one who’s uncomfortable: I can, in an utterly un-postmodern appeal to an Authority Figure, quote Brian McLaren on the subject: “It’s not about the church meeting your needs; it’s about joining the mission of God’s people to meet the world’s needs.”

I jumped in with my own thoughts:

“If I can offer some sweeping generalizations… Fundamentalists tried to preserve the faith. Evangelicals tried to take that faith to individuals. Emerging Christians are trying to take that faith to beyond individuals into the very fabric of our society.”

I’ve been wondering what exactly is going on behind the scene with the Spitzers, which really is none of my business, but you can’t help wondering what the heck his wife Silda is thinking right now. The New York Times has an interesting article revealing some of the contours of the Spitzer marriage, particularly that Eliot never forgot to be grateful for the sacrifices she has made for his career.

I think this provides a more humanizing element to this situation that will help us pray for them as a family, even as the former governor must clean up the mess he has made.

Every now and then I read a book that not only makes me see God in a new light, but also helps me fall in love with Jesus just a little more and further resolve to stick with this Christianity thing. Christianity is filled with a lot of fluff that just dissipates into nothing when tragedies hit or life becomes difficult, and so it is refreshing to read a book that shovels the fluff aside in favor of solid teaching and the experience of Jesus.

And so I present Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis. It’s been out for a few years now, but I recently picked it up at a book sale.

It’s easy to read a book with a critical eye, and my first impressions of this book were primarily critical. People jumped all over Bell because he supposedly called the virgin birth into question and screwed up his rabbinic interpretations. Having just read his book I would like to confront these two criticisms and than I’ll move on to the reasons why this may be one of the best books you’ll read this year if you haven’t read it already.

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Remember that book Rudy Giuliani published called Leadership after 9-11? It was a hot seller. I noticed that quite a few people were reading it from my own circles.

I can’t help saying that I was suspicious. Did Giuliani really write that book? If he did, then he forgot it all really, really fast.

On NPR’s All Things Considered, Robert Smith provided a bitterly ironic commentary on Giuliani’s campaign by using Leadership to contrast Rudy the book with Rudy the candidate. It’s well worth listening.

Have you ever wished you didn’t have to keep an eye on your checking account before paying rent or your mortgage, fixing your car, or even buying food? Have you ever envied the people who are wealthy enough to spend lavishly, give freely, and never worry about finances?

This is a typical situation in America today if you ask me. Our entire economy of late is riding on consumer spending, which means we are expected to be dissatisfied, accumulating possessions and trying to live like the wealthy. Can you imagine an economist or politician at this particular juncture suggesting that everyone settle for what they have, remain content, and carefully save what they have, unless they want to share it with a charity?

Political suicide.

Economic suicide.

The story is: You don’t have enough. You want to become like the wealthy, and the wealthy spend their money. In fact, the stock shares of the wealthy depend on YOU spending your money because you aren’t satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you have.

Scripture presents an alternative picture. Envying those who have it all in this world is viewed as slipping away from a focus on God. What does God value? A pure heart. That doesn’t really help the market.

With these thoughts in mind, have a look at Psalm 73.

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Can you even imagine what we could do with $420 million? We could renovate schools, fund welfare programs, pay off all kinds of debts, pull people out of poverty, finance small businesses, feed the homeless, build homes for the homeless, repair bridges close to collapsing, provide aid to foreign nations gripped in poverty, war, famine, and who knows what else, and the list goes on.

I’ll admit that we can’t save the world by throwing money at our problems. You need people on the ground making it all happen. But still, we could really make some headway in our world with $420 million, even if we’re still a planet of sniveling weasels who would no doubt figure out a way to siphon off a significant chunk of that sum into the bulging pockets of a few corrupt leaders.

Why am I tossing around $420 million? Because the candidates in the 2008 election have, as of this point, raised that much money to fund their campaigns.  And do you want to know the insane part? They’re hitting up people for more, lots more, straining for every donation they can drag out of their donors.

I ask you, have we lost our minds?

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With so many shootings–both in Omaha and Colorado–in so little time, we have much to mourn and much to think about.

First of all, there is the unexpected tragedies that have torn families apart in a season when families usually come together. My heart aches for these victims.

Secondly, there is another tragic element in which two people decided that the only option left in life was a violent end that brought about death, chaos, and fear. How does this happen? As we pray for the victims, we should also pray for the tormented souls out there who are imprisoned by this kind of thinking.

After the tears dry and the wounds begin to heal, we also have some big issues to think about. Having just finished reading an article about nonviolence by Shane Claiborn–in which he is attacked by a gang, refuses to fight back, and comes out of it relatively unharmed–I have been thinking a lot about the use of force and issues of self-defense.

In the case of New Life Church, I was surprised to hear they had an armed guard on campus. It was clearly the right call, especially after the first shooting incident at YWAM, but it is saddening to hear that churches need to think about security now. The matter of using violent force will be a tough one Christians to consider. Now is not the time to figure this out, but we cannot avoid this discussion in the near future.

Another big issue that we will have to consider soon is gun control. When is enough, enough? Will several high-profile suburban shootings finally catch our attention, or will gun control advocates hold their ground as they did after Virginia Tech? Can we learn something from the gun laws of nations such as Germany in which gun ownership is linked with a club in which the members of the club bear part of the responsibility for each member?

Church security and gun laws will have to wait, but in the wake of these tragedies and the terror they have caused, they will need to be part of our discussions in the near future.

While working on one of the study guides for my theology book, I have rediscovered a fantastic book that has been on the shelf in our bedroom: The Wisdom of Daughters. This book is a collection of short essays by Christian feminists that addresses just about every issue and doctrine out there.

The articles were originally published in a magazine called The Daughters of Sarah, but dropped out of circulation in 1996. The Wisdom of Daughters is a great step toward preserving these voices.

I have been particularly impressed by an article weighing the challenges of theology in a postcolonial world. I’m about to go to bed, so I’ll do my best to paraphrase the gist of this.

First of all, in the 1800’s and early 1900’s, the West had a colonial approach to missions where the natives were perceived as knuckleheads who needed to worship God like Westerners. Native culture was attacked and tossed aside by Western Christians.

Today, Christians are repenting of their ways and trying to embody the Gospel message within a context, while still using the cultural language and customs in a positive way. Here is where things get sticky.

Every culture has its fair share of “knuckleheadedness,” and so Christians have the dual roles of working with the positive aspects, but challenging the negative aspects of culture. Patriarchy in South Korea and India came up as big problems for Christian theologians to confront when it comes to supporting women’s rights as part of the Gospel message.

I apologize for my horrible approximation. If you found it remotely interesting, I guarantee you will enjoy this book!

If you want to see why many people are turned off by Christianity, why Christians are leaving the church, and why Christians are increasingly irrelevant, see the documentary Jesus Camp. This film tells the story of a children’s pastor named Becky and several children who attend her summer camp for Christian families and children.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the film is the extreme guilt and pressure applied to these children. Julie and I were wondering if this children’s pastor actually likes children at all because all she did was talk about how serious they had to take God and how much the fate of our nation rested on them. It seemed that just about every five minutes she had the kids weeping and raising their hands.

Instead of preaching the love of God and the new life that comes through the Gospel, the pastor described the children as culture warriors who had to win America back to God. There is no room for phonies or compromise, there is no room for failure because our nation is depending on these children, most of whom aren’t older than 12 or 13.

Does that strike anyone else as completely messed up?

I’m all for intercession in prayer for more of God in America, and I’m all for teaching children to follow Jesus, but the heavy-handed, guilt-ridden gospel that pits these children against the secular tide is too much. There were absolutely painful moments as one poor little girl, bearing the guilt and demands of those around her, swallowed her fears and walked right up to strangers to share little Gospel tracts. Keep in mind that I have no problem with kids sharing what God has done for them, but her reasons were no doubt tainted by the pressure of adults.

I could go on. There’s the home school curriculum for Christian children that not only attempts to disprove evolution, but also teaches that global warming is a myth of the political left!!! I don’t know when disputing climate change ended up being a religious issue, but it is. I kept thinking, Christians are just eating out of the hands of Republicans.

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