"The Promise of Despair"

Jake Bouma responds to "The Promise of Despair," by Root:

...One weekday afternoon I was sitting across from Kathy, an incredibly helpful volunteer and parent of one of the students in my ministry. Our lunch meeting agenda was to discuss some details of an upcoming fundraiser, but I had recently received some rather despairing news about Kathy’s family situation. Kathy’s husband, I was told, had been sober for years but had just recently returned to the drink that nearly tore their family apart years ago. Now that her son was old enough to realize something is off with his father, Kathy wanted to provide him with an emotional outlet should he need it. After finishing both our meal and the agenda, I asked her how her and her son were holding up. Throughout the next forty-five minutes, I learned how Kathy’s marital life was on the brink of collapse – it wasn’t a matter of if, but when, she told me. She talked about how she’s very good at projecting a carefree, everything’s-under-control façade, but that underneath it she’s a mess. She was broken, weak.

As I listened to Kathy, I found myself with a peculiar urge to talk about Martin Luther’s theologia crucis, or “theology of the cross,” which is one of the foundations upon which Root builds the arguments in his book. My usual instinct is to reach down into my deep pocket of pseudo-comforting platitudes and hand them out, one after another. “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” I would say, or, “God makes all things work together for good.” Or better yet, “I’ll be praying for you.” But there was no way I could say any of that after reading The Promise of Despair. To both my and Kathy’s surprise, I started talking about how in Christ, God is found in the broken places, the places of despair. He is made known next to nothingness and death. I talked about how during this extremely traumatic life experience, although she wonders why God has abandoned her, this is precisely the moment he is closest to her. “This really, really sucks,” I said. “But our God is right there with you, suckiness and all.”

Had I not read and internalized the theological insights in Root’s book, I suspect our conversation would have been very different. It would have been less real, less beautiful. A few weeks later she thanked me via email for the conversation: “I go back to our conversation in my head quite a bit,” she said.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Root wants to know what it would look like if the whole church were built upon this promise of despair. How would the church come to embody despair? And would we really want it to? Before these questions can be answered, Root nimbly walks us through four symbolic “deaths” which are manifesting themselves in late modernity: The deaths of meaning, authority, belonging, and identity. This first half of the book is engaging and illuminating to be sure, but its merely a primer to get one ready for the main thrust of the book: building the life of the church from communities of death and despair.

There has been no shortage of books in the last half decade about how to “do church” differently – either more or less postmodern, liturgical, relevant, ancient-future, whatever. Major structural changes are called for. Conferences are organized. Clergy are encouraged to be bold for the sake of the church. In fact, in a bold move, Root claims outright that this book sides with the opponents of the emerging church, claiming the movement hasn’t pushed far enough. But what of those of us who are not in positions of sufficient authority to make significant structural or programmatic changes in our local contexts? What about those of us who are simply content with changing lives, willing to leave the business of changing the church to others? Root wants to answer what the entire church would look like if it took the shape of the cross, but I fear that in doing so he unwittingly forces a major demographic to connect the dots between the book and their ministries.

To be fair, The Promise of Despair is at its core a work of theology and ecclesiology. It never claims to have a five-step process for ministry transformation, and to Andy’s credit, he has set up The Despair Project to demonstrate what a cross-shaped church might look like....
-link

a Trinity teaser

I present this teaser below from an important paper by Len on Trinitarian leadership. The whole paper should be read as it wrestles well with Snyder, Moltmann, Seamands, Pinnock et al, and asks the right questions (hierarchy, social/economic etc) in the right way (a rare gift). Searching the word "trinity" on Len's blog will be one the most fruitful adventures of your day.

This brings us full circle to the nature of Trinitarian leadership – it is mutual, vulnerable, joyful, and loving, a dance at once mysterious and filled with purpose. Many questions remain: 1. is “leadership” a useful paradigm to overlay biblical revelation on the nature of God and of spiritual community? 2. if we conclude that Trinitarian community is the goal, do we exclude a developmental model that may have elements of hierarchy? I believe the extended family offers the best analogy and developmental model for human community, but families pass through stages from early to late and roles and functions shift. Our church communities tend to set roles and functions in stone.
-Len Hjalmaerson, link

U2 fits the four planks of Hasidic Judaism

Bono once wrote that he hopes he's half Jewish..
it must be a Hasidic half.

Whether or not this report from an Israeli newspaper is true or not,
he's more than halfway there!


To hear him yell "Shalom" and "Todah" during "Where the Streets" at an Israel gig is chilling...though not as chilling as his hasidic nigun at the castle..
Oy!

The article below (link) on four elements of Hasidism thought dovetails well with our previous comments on U2's "Elevation"...
But not just on that obvious connecting point of "elevation prayer,"
but all four planks.................uh, "enthusiastic worship" anybody?

Defining Hasidic Thought. Some of the most significant attempts to designate a theological concept central to Hasidism have emphasized the following features:

devekut (communion with God); transformation and elevation of evil to goodness; the concept of let atar panui mine (no place is empty of God); and enthusiastic worship versus Torah study.

Devekut. Some scholars have maintained that Hasidism is distinguished by its insistence that the starting point of religious life is complete adhesion to and communion with God. Before Hasidism, it is asserted, devekut was described (by kabbalists and writers of kabbalistic ethical works) as the pinnacle of religious and mystical achievement, a temporary spiritual status attained by the devout for short periods of time. By contrast, Hasidism, it is claimed, considered devekut the initial rung of the spiritual ladder of ascension, which should be maintained constantly during the ordinary Hasid’s daily life and work. Thus the Hasidic concept of devekut is regarded as replacing the messianic endeavor that was central to Lurianic and Sabbatian conceptions of worship.

Most of the evidence supporting this hypothesis was derived from the writings of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh. It is similar to Martin Buber’s description of Hasidism as sanctifying Jewish daily life and endowing with religious significance the “neutral” and “secular” aspects of life (‘avodah be-gashmiut). This is a valid theory, relevant to the understanding of the school of the Magid, but it has minimal significance with respect to other and later Hasidic schools. In most Hasidic sects, for example, communion with God was replaced as a guiding principle by adhesion to the tsadik. Moreover, the very concept of devekut has been defined in various ways by different Hasidic teachers, some of whom have regarded it more generally as refined and lofty religious enthusiasm.

Transformation and Elevation of Evil to Goodness. Hasidim believe that evil thoughts (mahashavot zarot) and inclinations that haunt a
person, especially during worship, contain spiritual energy that originally emanated from the divine realms of goodness and were disfigured in the lower world. The task of the Hasid is neither to ignore this energy nor to overcome it, but rather to elevate it to its source and transform it back into goodness, thus strengthening the powers of good and weakening those of evil. This idea is emphasized in several early Hasidic works, including those of the Magid, and has been designated by some as a Hasidic innovation. The concept is undoubtedly found in Hasidism and is sometimes prominent in Hasidic thought, but its sources actually go back to kabbalistic ethical works of the Safed school (especially Shene luhot ha-berit [Two Tablets of the Covenant] by Yesha‘yahu ben Avraham Horowitz). In the eighteenth century, the concept was interpreted in a more radical way by non-Hasidim than by the Hasidim themselves.

Let Atar Panui Mine. Hasidism asserts that the divine presence is in every aspect of existence; a person is always surrounded by and immersed in it, and the recognition of this is the paramount directive that should guide one’s emotional and intellectual behavior. This concept is central in the teachings of the Ba‘al Shem Tov and is prominent in the theology of early Habad Hasidism. It actually encompasses the previous two ideas: the centrality of devekut and the elevation of evil. However, let atar panui mine (no place is empty of God) permeates earlier kabbalistic and ethical-kabbalistic thought as well, and cannot be considered unique to Hasidism.

Enthusiastic Worship versus Torah Study. Other suggested essential principles, including the importance of joy in worship or the love of the downtrodden and the ignorant, are actually commonly encountered in early and non-Hasidic Judaism and should be regarded as characteristic of what we might call literary neo-Hasidism; they cannot be found as distinguishing elements in the first Hasidic writings. In the early history of Hasidism it was claimed that whereas the misnagdim, the opponents of Hasidism, put the study of the Torah at the center of Jewish religious life, Hasidim emphasized prayer, enthusiasm, and spiritual devotion. These differences were minimized in succeeding generations, when the study of Torah became more important in Hasidic communities, especially in the nineteenth century, while groups among the misnagdim (for example, the Musar movement) emphasized the spiritual and ethical aspects of religious worship.
link, PDF

"What race is that guy, anyway?"

Dan Nainan, from the "Thou Shalt Laugh" DVD #2:

"I'm sorry, I'm a Christian"

Chris Tse won a contest with this poem. There is some debate on the punctuation of the title:

Rosenstock-Huessy on Jesus' time-travelling reversal of speech

I will long be grateful to Eugene Peterson, who wrote of " I Am an Impure Thinker" by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy :

"..A book about language and the various ways we use and misuse it.I have learned as much indirectly (about prayer) from this German who immigated to America, this Jew who converted to Christianity, than from most who write directly on prayer."
(-Take and Read)

That was enough to sell me!

Here is just one amazing chapter...sorry for the margins..you can read it in better form, at pp 155-119 here, or at the link at bottom:

---------------------

WHEN THE FOUR GOSPELS WERE WRITTEN,THE PATHS OF SPEECH OF antiquity were fused. They had met at the crossroad of the crucifixion. The ancient world was at an end. The noon of mankind was established. Our era began.

In our era, the four paths of speech never can lose sight of each
other again. of the others. The madness of the magician, the lunacy of the astrologer, the frenzy of the muses, the invisibility of the prophecy had been the limitations of ancient speech. The four paths of speech,ignoring each other deliberately, had become extravagant. In Julius Caesar’s days they were dead ends, by their very perfection. Any Greek or Egyptian, Scythian or Israelite, by the very excellency of their speech, became impenetrable and irreconcilable to the other modes
by which man also is moved forward into the unknown.

The bewailers of the chieftain, the Jeremiads of the impending
doom, had uncovered the origins and the final future, for the living.
Ancient men had succeeded in hewing out vast avenues of time, back
to the hero and forward to the Messiah. Without speech man would have no time, but merely be immersed in time, Animals have no time;
they are time’s toys. Men conquered time when they began to speak.
And they opened the roads towards their own beginnings and towards
their own end, from the first dirge to the Isaian prophecy.

Space, too, is not in the animal’s possession. The animal is
possessed by space. And the man who has not learned to establish
heaven and earth is obsessed by space. He remains a fugitive from
space, panic-stricken, before he puts the bridle of his orientation, his
measurements, on the cosmos. And his orientation required that
he should look up to the stars in the sky and invade the firmament
with his thoughts so that he might look down, from heaven, from his
sky-world, upon the earth. Thus he could settle the earth, downward
out of the sky, prescribing place to space, settling the chaotic universe
with finite temples. The praisers of the peace between day and night
had uncovered the heavens.

And between tribe and tribe, city and city, gods and gods, the
Greek poet, the maker, the comparer, the analogist and philosopher,
built his reality. The muses could contemplate the multiple world of
clans and empires. As Dante’s Divine Comedy presupposed the existence
of the Church, so Homer presupposed the existence of conflicting
bodies politic and opened them to each other. The songs of tragic
heroes and cities dramatized the conflicts of men, and so we have
admired the ancient wealth of speech. But these paths of speech could
not admit of their presupposition. They had no way of returning to the
origin of all speech. We know that times and spaces were mastered
by speech, that the living triumphed over death. Speech fulfilled this
task of creating times and spaces, but the people who spoke did not
know this. They idolized the particular space or the one time relation
which was circumscribed by their language. It is as though the
devotee of a radio station would deny the necessity or the existence
of any other. Enamoured with their specific way of speech, the people of antiquity mishandled the full task of all speech, The plenitude of
speech had to be revealed to the gentiles who had gone astray to the
ends of their particular mannerism, and it had to be exerted by Israel
who kept this secret of the full truth jealously to herself.

What is the plenitude of speech? Speech in its plenitude forms
bodies of time and bodies of space beyond the grave, beyond the moment,
beyond the home and the frontier, beyond heaven and earth.
Speech conquers all the disintegrations and fissions which abound in
nature and of which death is the most drastic form.

The complete unity of all men of all times, from Adam to the last
judgement day, would be the greatest expression of our plenitude of
speech. And the smallest atom of any living speech would be one hour,
shared by two people in one spirit regardless of the lapse of time.

Jesus restored to us this plenitude of speech. This was his mission,
life, calling, office. He saved the straying gentiles and the locked up
Jews. He did this by crossfertilizing the four paths of speech. He created
an eternal unity of spirit from the beginning to the end of history. But
he created it by simply speaking to twelve average men. They did not
understand that the hour which he spent with them was one hour o feternity which made history. What he said to them made no sense in the frame of reference in which the clansman or the Greek or the Egyptian lived. It made sense only in Israel, which lived in expectation of the end. Even in Israel it made only negative sense in anticipating the kingdom of the Messiah. So Jesus spoke nonsense for the time
being. But he undid what people called the time being. For he created
a new yardstick for all times. He spoke backwards from the end towards the act of daily life, outside the temple of Solomon.

To this day our era lives by renaissances, rebirths, rediscoveries of ancient civilizations, of buried instincts, origins and prehistoric processes. Jesus began this process. He spoke in the opposite direction from Shaman, Pharaoh, Homer and Moses. The flow of speech in separate riverbeds had led
nowhere. Jesus became the Word, the total Word beyond the separation and, therefore, he was able to penetrate backwards to the creative starting point before the separation. Anybody who wishes to master time and space, who wishes to escape his obsessions, must look to the Noon of our history, the beginning of our era, the appearance of the end, the incarnation of the plenitude of speech, to the total Word.

Our contemporaries have neither time nor space. Then are the prey of panic. Nomads, rushed, restless, uprooted, they throw their last dollar in the lap of the modern medicine men, astrologers, Greeks and Israelites.

The modern medicine man is the psychologist. He traces everything
to origins. The modern astrologer is the investment banker. He
believes in the business cycle. The modern Greeks are all the artists
from Beethoven to Picasso. The modern Israelites are the fundamentalists
of all descriptions. whether Roman Catholics or Jehovah’s
Witnesses, they are convinced that the world deserves to perish.

The man who does not believe that we should throw away our souls
for psychology, the business cycle, arts, or orthodoxy, is a Christian.

For he dares to throw himself behind his own words. He dares to
feel called, to listen and to respond. His ear is tuned to the end, and
he receives his orders from Him who shall be and speaks backward
from the end into this present time, so that the present might be
redirected from the end. We all are reborn whenever we let a new
word change our mind. The total Word is He who showed all men for
the first time and forever how to change their minds. Once the four
gospels were written, Jesus’ four reversals of the four paths of speech
were laid open to inspection for all future generations of men.

In Matthew tribal speech is reversed. The word reaches back to the
simplest group’s ritual and reverses the sacrificial meal. While a tribe
was instituted by slaughtering speechless victims in honor of the dead
chieftain’s name, in Matthew we hear the victim speak himself into the
center of the ritual as giving the name to the whole partaking group.

In Mark astrological or templar speech is reversed. The same Man
who challenges us to build one all-inclusive temple out of all of us, as
moving stars, is shown to be the first stone of this same temple. If we
shall not bury all hopes for all times that men become united in one
spirit, we must crystallize around the foundation stone, as the living
material, and bring the true heaven to earth, that heaven in which
every heart is one star of its firmament.

In Luke prophetical speech is reversed. The Messianic temple
is moved from Jerusalem to Rome in the name of him who made
his body the temple, who allows the Messianic hope to become real
where two or three are gathered in his name. The two or three form
the smallest body of time, the minute cell of interlocution, in which
there is no fixed father-son, teacher-student, boss-servant relation,
but perpetual freedom of each of the members to be now teacher
now student, now listener now speaker, now object now subject of
the conversation. Where two or three are assembled in the name of
the Lord, everybody is willing to be judged with all his shortcomings
objectively, everyone is invited to listen to the greetings of affection.
Luke establishes the group in which all members may fill the roles of
first, second and third person, of speaking mind, listening soul, topical
object—all three, thereby become sovereign and superior to any one
of these functions. Nobody after Luke can fail to know that kingship
and slavery, manhood and womanhood, and mind and body, are now
alternatives for any living soul.

And in John artistic or philosophical speech is reversed. The total
Word interprets the verbosity of Greek rhetorics. Drunk with words,
the Greek mind, whether Homer or Plato, Pindar or Aristotle, was
prone to make man the measure. But when God speaks, he creates.
And when out of the depth of his silence, Man, the final or real Man,
that is the unique one, was called and born, Jesus, all the clever verbosity
of the creature mind, of man’s mind, paled. One Word of God
is more powerful than a million words of the Times. He speaks and a
man is created. In the beginning was the Word, and now the libraries
to be written of this one word of God, Jesus, far exceed a billion words
of Greek minds. That abstract logic which is allegedly the same for
all men, is repudiated: a soul which is fully alive must have her own
logic because she is unique. Logic deals with the animal in us, not
with the brothers of the logos, the “Word,” who are irrepeatable, who
live once and never again. We owe Jesus our uniqueness.

When the four gospels were written, the crossroads were mapped
out in which the four paths of speech had been made to intersect and
communicate. And we now need not be carried on these paths of
speech any longer as obsessed psychological cases; the spells of pagan
speech have vanished. We walk the old paths in the freedom of men
who measure them from the goal backward.

Ever since that Noon of the Day of Mankind the paths of speech
are used not as one-way streets but with the liberty of those who are
free to choose their direction.


link

Jesus: "a bloke who helped people"

David Dark on Izzard's Jesus, Low Christology, Kingdom, & Christian culture:


Growing up Dark: