An Exploration of Forgiveness

I know it doesn't quite count as writing a blog-post when I copy and paste part or all of a paper.  At least, it feels like cheating.  However, I'd love to share (part of) a paper that was significant for me from a Fall 2008 class I took, "Reading the Bible with the Damned."  There are three parts to the paper, and for this post I am removing the second part.  What each part entails is described in the into.  To put it lightly, the reading for and crafting of this paper was intense

The Cross meets the Machete: An Intersection of The Rwandan Genocide, The Crucifixion, and a Hutu Prisoner

There are three parts to this paper. Part I focuses on the Rwandan genocide in 1994, considering the context of the event, and the larger socio-historical context surrounding the massacre. The story of one Hutu perpetrator, Elie, will also be introduced. The second part is an exegetical engagement of a biblical text that was selected for its connection to Elie’s story. The text is the narrative of the crucifixion from the gospel according to Luke, 23:26-43.

The third and final part of this paper brings the text to the person. It is the intersection of Luke’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion with Elie’s story, the imprisoned Hutu and former participant in the genocide. It must be stated outright that this task is wrought with foolishness. Whereas Americans are prone to individualizing the gospel message, people in Africa are far more communal. In the book Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, Jean Hatzfeld describes the difficulty he encountered when he attempted his project: outright denial with excuses such as, “I had nothing to do with it, the proof is, I have always had Tutsi friends,” or, “I didn’t want to, but they made me do it.” It was only by speaking to a group that he was able to encounter Hutus willing to disclose, “a group of pals from Kibungo who were together from the beginning…who consulted with one another between meetings, and who confronted together their memories as killers.” Then, when he began the interviews, they were denying everything and it seemed that his project would go unrealized until he noticed by chance, “I sometimes pass from the informal, singular ‘you’ (tu) to the plural ‘you’ (vous). Each time, as if by magic, the replies become precise and I finally grasp the link between cause and effect.” The replies to a question on what you did each morning using the singular ‘you’ involved farming, but to the plural ‘you’ it was hunting and killing. Thus, the most effective way to connect with someone like Elie is to connect with him and his pals together. For the sake of this paper I am going to address Elie only as though I had a relationship with him.

Part I: Rwanda, Genocide, and Elie

The number of people, primarily Tutsis but also some moderate Hutus, who were slaughtered during the short and swift genocide from April to June of 2004 is staggering: about 800,000. The number of those killed accumulated at three times the rate of Jews killed during the Holocaust. This is the number of immediate dead, and does not include the numbing statistics concerning rape, which was a policy used as a systematic weapon against Tutsis during the genocide. The architect of this policy was Pauline Nyiramasanuko, a woman, the minister of women and family affairs in the former Hutu-led government. Many of the women raped during the genocide were infected with HIV/AIDS and died in subsequent years.

A short survey of Rwanda through the 20th century will unveil some roots of the conflict. In 1916 Belgian colonists arrived in Rwanda, settling there and implementing various policies. One such policy included issuing cards to the inhabitants specifying their ethnicity. The Belgians favored the Tutsis over the Hutus, and therefore provided better jobs and educational opportunities to them. Hostilities between the two ethnic groups escalated and finally exploded in riots in 1959. This left 20,000 Tutsis dead, including the last Tutsi king. During that tumultuous period hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighboring countries. Finally in 1962 the Belgians granted independence to Rwanda. From that time forward the Hutus consistently used to the Tutsis as scapegoats for any problems or crisis that arose. They perpetuated this discord by passing down stories to their children and grandchildren about times when the Tutsis ruled ruthlessly over the Hutus, though the stories clearly exaggerated the past and instilled great misunderstanding among Hutus. Then in 1978 the Republic of Rwanda saw its first Hutu president come to power, Juvenal Habyarimana.

In the 1990’s the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Tutsis abroad and supported by some moderate Hutus, increased opposition towards president Habyarimana, and won its first military victories in an effort to return to the homeland. The president exacerbated tensions by condemning all Tutsis in Rwanda as RPF supporters, and fighting continued sporadically until a peace accord was reached in 1993. It had little impact. On April 6th, 1994, the plane carrying president Habyarimana was shot down. Elie, a Hutu participant in the genocide, said of the event, “As with farm work, we waited for the right season. The death of our president was the signal for the final chaos. But as with a harvest, the seed was planted before.”
His supporters wasted no time and responded instantaneously with a policy for the full extermination of all Tutsi peoples. Propaganda blasted incessantly from radios, damning Tutsis as cockroaches inhibiting Hutu life and thus deserving death. The massacres began in Kigali, the capital, and spread quickly into neighboring towns and cities, and shortly thereafter it reached the hills.

It was in the hills that Hatzfeld went to report for his book, first hearing the stories of the victims, and later those of the perpetrators from the same region. Hatzfeld’s words concerning the unfolding genocide in the hills of Nyamata (central Rwanda), are the point of departure for his book:

"In 1994, between eleven in the morning on Monday April 11 and two in the afternoon on Saturday May 14, about fifty thousand Tutsis, out of a population of around fifty-nine thousand, were massacred by machete, murdered every day of the week, from nine-thirty in the morning until four in the afternoon, by Hutu neighbors and militiamen, on the hills of the commune of Nyamata, in Rwanda. "

It is quite difficult to distinguish between Tutsi and Hutu by appearance, which baffled foreigners curious about how Hutus identified who they were killing in the upheaval and carnage. Hatzfeld explains the simple answer, “The killers did not have to pick out their victims: they knew them personally. Everyone knows everything in a village.” It was through relationship that the Hutus knew whom to kill: “These dead and their killers had been neighbors, schoolmates, colleagues, sometimes friends, even in-laws.” Hatzfeld sees similarities between the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda, noting that both were “the result of plans and preparations formulated essentially by collective decisions.” One of Hatzfeld’s interviewees pointedly states what helped preparations: “War is a dreadful disorder in which the culprits of genocide can plot incognito.”

Where was the international outcry during these months of slaughter? What happened to the United Nations declaration following World War II that genocide was a violation of international law requiring immediate action? Philip Gourevitch describes what unfolded as the international community gathered and…talked, in his book, We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families. Gourevitch captures the impotence and buerocracy that stifled any helpful response:

"By early June, the Secretary General of the UN—and even, in an odd moment, the French Foreign Minister—had taken to describing the slaughter in Rwanda as ‘genocide.’ But the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights still favored the phrase ‘possible genocide,’ while the Clinton administration actually forbade unqualified use of the g-word. The official formulation approved by the White House was: ‘acts of genocide may have occurred.’"

The inveterate resistance to naming the situation in Rwanda ‘genocide’ was based in the unwillingness of the US government to act, something using that terminology necessitated. Thus, Hutus like Leopord could say, “I knew I would not be punished, I was killing without consequences, I adapted without a problem.” Indeed, the interahamwe (those among the population who formed and armed militias and communicated with government leaders) celebrated when they saw the last of the Whites leave. According to Innocent, a Tutsi survivor, “You could see they felt saved. They were rid of the last stumbling block, so to speak.” With little interference, “the priests and nuns who were so influential in this church-going population,” vanished. It was three days after the whites left that massacres took place in the Catholic and Protestant church where Tutsis gathered hoping to find refuge: “in each one, more than five thousand died in a single day.”

Returning to Hatzfeld’s endeavor, he takes readers into the lives of one gang from Kibungo, a group of local Hutu farmers from that area who participated in the genocide. The context in which Hatzfeld met with the gang was the penitentiary at Rilima, in Rwanda. Innocent, a Tutsi teacher from the same town as the gang who knew them since they were children, joined Hatzfeld for the interviews and interpreted. The prison sat atop a small hill, overpopulated but much improved due to international funding. Concerning the conditions Hatzfeld says, “From fifty meter away, one is struck both by the orchestral din of competing rhythms and songs and by a suffocating stench of sweat, backed up by the reek of cooking and garbage.” They were able converse with Hatzfeld on the grounds, but in a courtyard away from the noise and crowd of the prison. According to Hatzfeld, most of the members in this gang began to divulge details of their participation in the genocide as their trials approached, though only following years of silence.

Each member has his own distinct personality that surfaces throughout the conversations. One of the gang, Elie, was a former soldier and later a policeman before joining the mass killings. Though many in the gang grew up together, Elie only connected with them during the genocide. He was eventually accepted as one of the gang during their imprisonment.
Hatzfeld writes that he was of an older generation (unlike many in the gang who were young adults). Of Elie he writes, “The genocide and its aftermath have marked him: he walks hesitantly, with a stoop. Querulous, docile, almost obsequious, he nevertheless makes a real effort to understand his predicament and to show that he was overwhelmed by events and acted badly.” Elie was one of the two in the group who had a several decades of life experience before participating in the mass killing. On how they lasted long days out in the marshes and papyrus fields, Elie tells Hatzfeld, “The looting reinvigorated us more than any harvest could.” Indeed, the men took anything and everything they desired from the slain, even claiming plots of land that they would settle once they completed the machete-mission.

At times with Hatzfeld and Innocent, Elie would “pour out his heart.” One such time was in response to discussions about “God in all this?” Elie’s told them,

“God and Satan seem quite contrasting in the Bible and the priest’s sermons. The first one blazes with white and gold, the second with red and black. But in the marshes, the colors were those of muddy swamps and rotting leaves. It was as if God and Satan had agreed to cloud our eyes. I mean that we did not give a damn for either of them.”

These colors seem insignificant – who cares what colors are associated with God and Satan? Yet Elie’s understanding of God lies partly within his description. To him God is distant and unconcerned. There is no mention of Jesus, just God, and only about the colors associated with Him in contrast to Satan. Further, Elie sees God as colluding with Satan in some way during the killings, or at least as disconnected enough to allow the killing. Of course, Elie readily admits his own dismissal of God during the genocide. Other important information surrounding Elie’s story, his questions and struggles, will be engaged directly with Elie in part III of this paper.

Part III – Letter to Elie

Elie,
You have shared a precious gift with me; memories that are close to you, painfully close. Thank you. I know you have wrestled with difficult questions, and there are memories that continue to haunt you, thoughts that pry at your soul and voices that don’t go away. I won’t pretend to have some formula or medicine that will solve these issues that both puzzle your mind and plague your spirit. Nor do I pretend to understand exactly what you are feeling or thinking. Still, I do want to respond to some significant questions and points you brought up, and maybe together we will discover hope, light, or life therein.

You said,
"All the important people turned their backs on our killings. The blue helmets, the Belgians, the white directors, the black presidents, the humanitarian people and the international cameramen, the priests and the bishops, and finally even God. Did He watch what was happening in the marshes? Why did He not stab our murderous eyes with His wrath? Or show some small sign of disapproval to save more lucky ones? In those horrible moments, who could hear His silence? We were abandoned by all words of rebuke."

I, too, have wondered where God was during the genocide. What I noticed is what you expected if God were to show up. If God noticeably appeared when you were out killing, it would be in something drastic, bursting on the scene in “His wrath,” and stabbing your murderous eyes. Doesn’t this seem more like who humans become when we are angry? Although many people see God as an angry policeman ready to discipline us for disobedience, this is not the God revealed in the Bible. Vengeance and punishment are not characteristics of God revealed through Jesus, God’s Son and perfect reflection. Therefore we must look to Jesus’ story for an understanding of who God is, especially when we are considering something as heinous and chaotic as genocide.

I want to take you to a story of scripture that is bloody and treacherous, much like many of your killing sprees. It’s the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. You mentioned the colors you associated with God being white and gold, while Satan was red and black. If God could be identified with any color during the crucifixion, it would be the same red that covered your machete.
There were many people present at the crucifixion, including Roman soldiers and authorities, Jewish leaders and priests, men and women from Jerusalem and surrounding towns, and three men being forced towards the hill where they would be executed by crucifixion. Two were criminals and the other was Jesus who, although innocent, was sentenced to death with the lawbreakers. There was mocking, laughing, beating, nailing of limbs, and other similar things happening in the scene. Blood-lust sat deep in the eyes of many. There was uproar in the crowd, and there were women beating their breasts as they wept. It was pandemonium!

Despite being kicked around and incessantly mocked by the soldiers, Jesus was quiet. The Jewish leaders “sneered at him” and the soldiers laughed at him as they said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!” They nailed Jesus to the wooden cross and even as he writhed in pain the soldiers gambled for his garments. Jesus did not call down fire from heaven or an earthquake to take out the Romans or the Jews, nor did God send bolts of lighting to destroy the persecutors of His son.
But Jesus did respond! He said this short prayer as he hung, bloody and forsaken: “Father, forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing.” The innocent Lord was executed alongside the unrighteous, and he prayed for mercy for his aggressors. In rereading this story I couldn’t help but to recall a story you told me. It is still vivid in my memory. You said,

"Once we found a little group of Tutsis in the papyrus. They were awaiting the machete blows with prayers. They did not plead with us, they did not ask us for mercy or even for a painless death. They said nothing to us. They did not even seem to be addressing heaven. They were praying and psalming among themselves. We made fun of them, we laughed at their Amens, we taunted them about the kindness of the Lord, we joked about the paradise awaiting them. That fired us up even more. Now the memory of those prayers just gnaws at my heart."

I remembered your story because of the resemblance it bears to Jesus’ crucifixion.
There was mocking and laughing.
Innocent people being violently murdered.
There was no violent resistance by the victims.
The victims were mocked for any faith they still held onto, since they obviously were headed towards death.
As Jesus awaited his last breath, and as the Tutsis awaited the machete blows, they prayed!
The soldiers took Jesus’ last possessions much like you and the gang took the spoils from the Tutsis you killed.
You have asked where God was in the midst of the genocide. If we are to understand where God is amidst suffering and oppression, then let us go to the cross.

Where was God when you and the gang sliced that group of Tutsis in the papyrus, since He obviously wasn’t crushing you with boulders? God was present with those Tutsis! God was numbered with the dead, even as they awaited their final breath. You said their prayers continue to gnaw at your heart to this day. Maybe you don’t know what they were praying, or maybe you just can’t remember (maybe you do?) – either way we don’t need to know what they prayed because we know the God they were praying to. If we learn anything from the crucifixion, we will understand that God was with those Tutsis in the papyrus, not destroying you and the rest of the gang in His wrath. His eyes were their eyes, His words their words. And if Jesus himself was with them, then he also prayed with those Tutsis: “Father, forgive these Hutus, forgive Elie, because they don’t know what they’re doing.”
You asked where God was—listen to the voices of the slain.
Forgive them
Don’t count this sin against them
These Hutus are lost, and they don’t know what they’re doing
You rightly said that trying to forget memories of killing by trying hard not to remember is useless, since “a memory of killing…does not wash out.” Thank God that it doesn’t, lest we never understand the overwhelming power of His grace! It is with all of our filth and foul motives, our sin stained hands, and with our blood soaked machetes that we encounter God!
You said this about forgiveness:
"The killings were out of our hands, and so is forgiveness…I do not know if we can talk adequately about forgiveness now that everything is over and done with. But as for the rest of us, what we are offering is prison repentance, so they will give us a pardon of convenience in exchange. It is a pardon, in spite of everything, but the last one of the shelf. A leftover pardon, so to speak."

This may be the pardon you receive from the authorities, Elie, but this is not the pardon of God. God’s forgiveness is not after everything is “over and done with.” It comes directly in the midst of everything in all its ugliness and disorder.
That’s why we need to go back to the hills, back to the papyrus where you encountered the group of Tutsis as they prayed. Let’s go there, exactly as it was:
We are mocking them, “Where is the kindness of the Lord, you fucking cockroaches? Will His kindness stop our machetes from slicing your limbs off?”
We laugh at them.
They are psalming.
We pick out our first victim and cut him, he dies, and we await their attempt to fight back.
They don’t resist us.
They pray.
We are enraged! We are slicing them up, hating them all the more for their fucking prayers and psalms, driving our machetes deeper into their chests, tasting their warm blood as it splashes across our faces – we are ruthless!

This is where God forgives us, Elie! This is where Jesus prays for us with the Tutsis, “Father, forgive them.” This is where the grace of God breaks-through the darkness of the world, penetrating our hard, callous hearts with His mercy! It’s not as we serve the Lord, but as we crucify His Son and murder innocent Tutsis when Jesus says, “Forgive them.”

Elie, this is my prayer for you. May you enter into the darkness of your past, into the muck and mire, the blood and the hatred, and ask Jesus where he is. Ask God what He is doing. Ask the Holy Spirit what He is saying to you.
May God keep you from settling for a mere pardon from the government so that you are free from the prison in Rilma, and may God bless you with disruption and pain as He takes you into the utter depth of your sin and there shows you what forgiveness is. Then may you be free from the prison your soul is locked in, a prison built on the assumption that God is wrathful and bent on retribution.

Jesus, touch Elie’s eyes so that he may see, his back so he stands upright again, and let him know who you are in relation to him and his story.
Holy Spirit, fill Elie even as you purge the darkness that eats away at his bones, enliven him breath of God.
Father God, your kingdom come and your will be done, here and now in this place, in this man.

Amen

Deterred

(note: the image is an example of what a visual aura is like, and will be addressed below!)  

This blog has been stagnating. I have a picture of a swamp in upstate New York, slowly collecting every color of green growth - minus the growth!

Not only my blog, but my job(s), classes and work, and relationships have all been deeply affected over the past 9 months by a foul evil - Migraine Headaches.

I started getting migraines in 1999, and would have an average of 2 or 3 a year. I actually went 1 1/2 years in Japan without one. All that changed last Spring when I started getting migraines more and more frequently. They occurred at least every 3 weeks, and at its worst I had 2 or 3 a week.

What were they like?

Most of my migraines begin with the visual aura, which is temporary blindness in part of the vision (generally to the left or right of one's direction of sight). If you do a little surfing around the web you will find ample material about visual auras, including videos and artwork that attempts to depict these God-forsaken mysteries. Anyway, following that comes the pain which has the following range (low to high):

From:
I am in severe pain and I can't do anything but lay in bed.
To:
Is someone hitting me in the head with a hammer?
To:
I can't breath because of my uncontrollable dry-heaving

Anyway, you get the point - they are straight out of Hades and they debilitate the victim in a number of ways.

So, getting migraines every other week meant that I would miss class, work, assignments, gatherings of friends, among others. What is more, because I was missing all of these this further exacerbated my overall fear and difficulty with life. Also, I was always going about my day hyper-vigilant of the next migraine that might be just around the corner. I strangely adapted, somehow got used this way of living with chronic migraines. Let me say that this can hardly be called LIFE - I was merely surviving.

I began to think.

"Why am I getting all these damn migraines?"
"How can I cut-off the migraine before it fully sets in?"

and finally, "What is it about the way I am living that is provoking my body to react with these migraines?"

That last question arose from my inkling that the migraines were not simply random evils that happened to spin out of control. Rather, I was noticing that they were correlating to my level of stress. particularly with school-related stuff, my migraines would usually occur when I had lots of reading and writing for several classes due.

I decided, therefore, to cut back. I registered for 2 classes (5 credits), instead of 4. Initially I was resistant, thinking, "Oh I can take on more than this!" However, all it took was thinking about my life with migraines plaguing every day and my commitment to a lighter class load was reaffirmed.

And the result so far? No migraine for 1 1/2 months, the longest I've gone since the migraine-binges began! This is good news indeed. It is important for me to see if this pattern continues throughout the semester, but I am expectant that it will.

So, all that said, my blog has gotten no attention during this time period, but I am hoping to return again and do some posting!

My Graduate School - Video #2

Check out the new video for Mars Hill Graduate School - it's posted on my facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=650495412

Enjoy :)

Postmodern Philosophy and Faith

Chewing on Complexity: How Postmodernism Kindles the Friendship between Philosophy and Faith.

Companions share bread, something the roots of the word point to: com, “with;” and panis, “bread.” The philosophical movement of postmodernism has been received as the contemporary nemesis to the Christian faith by some, and as a “renewed companionship” between philosophy and faith for others. Seminary professor Douglas Groothuis attempts to “defend Christianity against the challenges of postmodernism” in his book, Truth Decay. Throughout the book Groothuis sounds the alarm for Christians to arm themselves with the “biblical truth,” which, he asserts, offers a “unified perspective on the matter of truth and falsity that flatly opposes the postmodernist orientation.” With sound reason and bullet-proof logic, Groothuis blows his (modern) horn: “The apologist for Christ must seize on the dizzying meaninglessness of postmodernism and name it for what it is—nihilism, a nihilism that naturally induces…sloth.” For others, postmodern philosophy appears to be stirring up new and, God forbid, exciting things for Christians who gather because it has precisely empowered the church to live into and out of it’s own unique mission in the world. Postmodernism and the Christian faith are breaking bread together, and the result is a renewed centrality of Scripture’s role as the church’s primary narrative, a focus on becoming like Christ rather than on defending doctrines, a humbling recognition of our finiteness and limitations, and a new space opened for God to be.

It is common for those who have merely engaged with popular understandings of postmodernism to assume that this philosophical movement leads only to the loss of a Christian identity in the church. This erroneous conclusion is rooted in falsely equating postmodernism with relativism and, like Groothuis, nihilism. On the contrary, postmodernism actually prompts the church to re-center itself around the narrative of Scripture. The philosophical movement of postmodernism has unveiled the narrative grounding of all worldviews, something modernity resisted so vehemently by appealing to universal reason and science, which purportedly enabled it to objectively see how subjective everything else was. Rather than defending the modern narrative, a hobby Christians have excelled in for centuries, postmodernism exposes the vanity of such a pursuit. Instead of refusing this reality, humiliating though it may be for some, the church can respond by enmeshing itself within its story. That story is tied directly to God’s redemptive action in the world. The biblical texts narrate stories of faith penetrated by the revelatory presence of God. Narrative is powerful because, as author James K.A. Smith points out, “narrative is a more fully orbed means of communication (and hence revelation), activating the imagination and involving the whole person in a concrete world where God’s story unfolds.” Thus, in uncovering the narrative underpinnings of knowledge, postmodern philosophy reroutes Christians away from the highway of defending absolute certainty and towards the communities stopped off the highway and steeped in the Scriptures. The result, Smith holds, will be “a robust appropriation of the church’s language as the paradigm for both thought and practice.” If, after all, “There is nothing outside the text,” as Derrida says, then why should Christians want any other language or culture, such as scientific discourses on certainty, to shape them more than the biblical texts?

Professor and author Crystal Downing discusses the limits of language in revealing how no one group (or tower, as she describes it) grasps some universal that the others cannot, but instead each group simply has a different discourse to which it submits and orients itself around. Christians cringe at this because they immediately conclude that since we simply have different language for (potentially) saying the same thing, then there is no need to orient oneself to any discourse. Downing challenges this misled conclusion and declares that it matters greatly what discourse a person submits to because, “Even though it’s impossible to get entirely outside of language to attain a God’s-eye view of things…some discourses work better than others at promoting life, liberty and the prevention of cruelty.” In other words, does the narrative that contributes to our formation as people affirm life and oppose violence, or does it perpetuate oppression and resist change? Postmodern philosophy has de-robed (modern) Christianity of its alleged objectivism, and opened the door for Christians to desire an even deeper understanding of their faith so that they can live out the life-promoting power of the gospel of Christ.
One significant characteristic of this embrace of Scripture as the church’s formative narrative, or essential discourse, is that everyone is wanted and needed – everyone participates in the story. Redemption and salvation are continuing to play out in the world through the church as Christ’s body and to affirm a faith in the God of this story is to acknowledge one’s role with the body. The Kingdom of God is already here in part, but has not arrived in its fullness, and as such we continue to “see through a glass, darkly” and “know in part.” Christianity as a system – diagrammed, comprehended, and given intellectual assent – is a lifeless, (un)enlightened place. Christianity as a story invites my own faith story to play alongside the larger story of Judeo-Christian faith, an ancient tale that begins and ends with God creating. Systems of modern rigidity are highly exclusive because they are highly defined, such as fundamentalist Christianity: either you are in or you are out. Stories, however, have plots and twists and unexpected movements, and this story continues to unravel—here and now. Thus, as a Christian I don’t fit into the faith-machine that operates ad-infinitum until Christ returns. As a Christian I am molded by belief in redemption, reconciliation, and forgiveness lived by a person, and I play a unique part in my own life through my relationships with others and the environment. This notion of being in the story sheds light on how disciples like John refer to Christians who continue “walking in the truth,” as opposed to merely talking in the truth. After all, Downing reminds us, “Truth is something we do in loving response to the Truth Incarnate.” The renewed companionship between faith and philosophy is evidenced in the way story is finding its place (again) as central to being Christian.

Another implication of the companionship between postmodern philosophy and Christian faith is a shift in focus from defending doctrine to becoming like Christ. Much time and energy has been devoted to upholding propositional claims of the Christian faith, such as assertions about God, humanity, and the world. When assent to specific doctrines becomes the distinguishing factor of Christian identity, then indeed one would be inclined to fight for these doctrines at all costs and under any circumstance. Postmodern philosophy, while identifying this (modern) way of being in the world, simultaneously gives followers of Jesus a new focus: Jesus. The self-understanding articulated by Jesus in John’s gospel – “I am the way, the truth, and the life” – is given particular attention by those desiring truth and celebrating the postmodern philosophical shift. Plenty of Pharisees in Jesus day could answer questions about the Torah correctly, just like many Christians have the right answer about how what forgiveness requires, but truth as a person is a far more mysterious and complex than a proposition. Attention is given to becoming like Christ in practice, such as caring for the widow, orphan, and stranger. By doing so Christians are beginning to participate in community similar to Christian fellowship in the early church. It’s not that a fundamentalist Christian apologist cannot or does not show hospitality, for example, but rather this person’s aim and end is not the hospitality but the conversion of the other to his or her way of seeing the world. Giving a thirsty stranger a glass of water is not enough. Now that postmodernism revealed the complexity of knowledge and understanding, Christians will need to exhibit more trust, not less, in how Scripture identifies God and man. According to Downing, “We therefore walk by faith in the truth of revelation, rather than in sight of indubitable foundations.” Foundations arrived at objectively via reason render faith unnecessary, and persuasive arguments take center stage. On the other hand, for faith itself to be a foundation would not be to present anything new, but to return to an ancient belief articulated by Augustine: “I believe, in order to understand.”

Postmodernism brings Christians to a place of recognizing their own “situatedness” within the Christian narrative. Thus, instead of the arrogant assumption of possessing all truth, believers can engage the other knowing they are speaking from a particular discourse. Sharing the gospel will look differently when such recognition is in place, and Downing beautifully articulates what this proclamation will involve:

"To share the love of Christ, I needed to model the love of Christ—which meant meeting people on their own ground, relating to them in their positionality. Only then did I have a right to share my own positionality, explaining how Christ relates to me: how he makes a difference in the way I see reality, why he makes life worth living, why I believe the way I do. The faith we are called to relate is a relating faith. "

The “positionality” that Downing refers to is, for the Christian, the biblical texts that shape the way Christians see and engage the world. While postmodern philosophy disrupts the (supposed) anchor of certainty that Christians appealed to, it also invites Christians to reconsider what it means to live faithfully as a follower of Jesus today, and faithfully proclaim the message of God’s love.

Another characteristic of the church’s companionship with postmodernism is the humility that can potentially be birthed. Realizing our limitations and finiteness, in thinking and in being, empowers the Christian with a capacity to say: “I don’t know.” To capture what this might mean for the postmodern theologian, Smith writes, “’We can’t know that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The best we can do is believe.’” Indeed, this is not a bad starting place for Christians embarking on the journey of doing and being church, and the acknowledgment is possible because of those postmodern friends who have helped uncover the complexities of language, text, and knowledge. Nevertheless, mystery and ambiguity are new not to the Christian faith, even if it sounds and feels awkwardly so. Combined with this confession of uncertainty is our faith, and the Christian can admit a lack of knowledge while simultaneously asserting his or her trust in a God who transcends our finite reality and gifts us with an immanent presence that exceeds language. Downing puts it this way:

"We therefore proclaim our faith out of love for both the universal Other and the other that is the imago Dei, testifying that forgiveness, peace and hope can be found in Christ. At the same time, we humbly acknowledge that our perception is situated and our language is limited. This very acknowledgment opens us to the other among us, reflecting out trust that the transcendent Other intercedes for us with truth too deep for words. "

One consequence of acknowledging the limitations of language is the acute awareness of the need for community. The desire to be an autonomous Christian who thinks for him or herself and stands alone becomes repugnant. Instead, there is a pursuit of community, since the significance of many souls gathered together to worship and fellowship becomes obvious. It is not important for the individual Christian to have all the answers and live Christianly without others. Interestingly, this kind of “survival of the fittest Christian” behavior becomes exposed for what it is: social Darwinist competition guised in Christian lingo – even creationist lingo! If anything, the philosophical movement of postmodernism gives a wake-up call to the church for thinking believers could do it alone. Paul’s metaphor of the church, “there are many parts, but one body,” makes much more sense when our situatedness is not denied or resisted. The more that community happens, the greater chance that each person will be functioning as part of the body, and none will need to play more roles than is necessary. Postmodern philosophy will be threatening if a Christian already acts as the entire body and has Christianity figured out, first and foremost because it uncovers the impossibility of such a claim. On the other hand, if a Christian has questions or doubts, as well as understanding and ideas about following Jesus, postmodern philosophy does not threaten anything, but only invites the believer to more questions, doubts, and places to explore where the potential for faith the bloom becomes greater still.

Finally, philosophy and faith can share the bread offered by the movement of postmodernism inasmuch as God is given free reign to be. Language itself is quite limited in grasping thought, and speaking it, let alone in depicting who God is. In The Thinker as Poet, Heidegger beautifully says what saying cannot say:

When in the winter nights snowstorms
tear at the cabin and one morning the
landscape is hushed in its blanket of snow….

Thinking’s saying would be stilled in
its being only by becoming unable
to say that which must remain
unspoken.

Such inability would bring thinking
face to face with its matter.

What is spoken is never, and in no
language, what is said.

That a thinking is, ever and suddenly—
whose amazement could fathom it?

Thinking itself, so awesome and profound: who could capture it, and with what words and in what language? Heidegger helps us appreciate both words which communicate and things, or “things in themselves,” that are. He writes, “Thus the interpretation of ‘thing’ by means of matter and form…has become current and self-evident. But for that reason, no less than the other interpretations mentioned of the thingness of the thing, it is an encroachment upon the thing-being of the thing.” Such encroachments happen in theological endeavors all day long as people attempt to interpret the world and everything in it. Instead of carrying on with our interpretations ad infinitum, Heidegger urges us to let things be:
The world is not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are just there. But neither is it a merely imagined framework added by our representation to the sum of such given things. The world worlds, and is more fully in being than the tangible and perceptible realm in which we believe ourselves at home.

Taking this to matters of faith means leaving space for God. Let God… And maybe God being is far greater than the monopoly of articulations of God.

In letting God be, it becomes possible for the biblical portrayal of the character of God to emerge: namely, one beyond names! According to Downing, “language is too amorphous for God.” The vagaries and complexities of language cannot ever adequately capture God, as in a name. Nevertheless, Christians keep at it, going for that one systematic theology that gets the whole system packed in – no holes. Downing sees a similarity in this and an ancient story: “Unfortunately, some Christians make language—the language inscribed on their particular tower—as definite as God, turning it into a Tower of Babel.” These well-crafted language games assume superiority from the get-go. Contrast this with the mystery surrounding the person of God. Who is sending Moses to the Israelites? “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” The Hebrew verb to be (hyh), in this verse appearing in the first person common singular form and imperfect tense, could also translate: “I will be what I will be.” The inability to know which translation to apply is itself significant. Both are ambiguous and leave room for God to be anything.

Derrida most persistently urges us to let it remain that way:

"—Save his name [Sauf son nom; ‘Safe, his name’]…

—Save the name that names nothing that might hold, not even a divinity (Gottheit), nothing whose withdrawal [derobement] does not carry away every phrase that tries to measure itself against him. ‘God’ ‘is’ the name of this bottomless collapse, of this endless desertification of language. "

The “desertification” might include un-naming, as well as leaving the open spaces alone.
If God is “I will be what I will be,” then the “negative space” that Derrida suggests exists in the holes where names have not gone is something to be welcomed. God might be not only what we do not know, but also what we would never expect. The postmodern shift has potential to renew the friendship between faith and philosophy only if Christians are open to listening to others and being surprised by God. It is in the voices of those who Christians might least associate with God where the voice of God may breakthrough, and in the places where God cannot be because our doctrine teaches so that God might show up. As long as the name-calling continues, God certainly will not be what God will be, but only what our theologies allow for. But if, like children searching for treasure in the woods, Christians proceed with mind, body, and soul, reading the obscure texts all around, then God will have a chance to be (present). This is an opportunity to become more like Christ by becoming less exclusive of the other.

It is hard to imagine that any self-proclaimed Christians would exhibit such vitriol against a movement that is actually helping and contributing to the growth of faith of other Christians. Yet the danger is to simply introduce another agenda – align the church with postmodernity and condemn those (un)enlightened masters of interpretive methods. This is precisely where the postmodern shift has the potential to become simply another movement that Christians appeal to at the cost of excluding others. Smith refers to postmodernism being a “catalyst for the church to recover its own authentic mission,” rather than abandoning the unique calling of the church in order to “correlate” theology to a philosophical movement. Thus, I believe that the friendship between philosophy and faith has been kindled by postmodernity, and now the church has an opportunity for movement towards Jesus. This movement will involve a re-centering around Scripture as the formative narrative within the church, renewed zeal to resemble Christ through a life of relating faith, awareness of our limitations, and a commitment to be surprised by who God is. In many ways this movement will be backwards, implementing practices that have been apart of Christian community and discipleship for millennia. The postmodern church will be less focused on making cases for Christ and more concerned with an incarnational presence that embodies a love of God and neighbor.

Yes, I'm on fumes

Fumes and Migraines have characterized my last few weeks. Never felt the need for a break like a do now. Almost done with the summer - 2 more big papers to turn in.

Anyway, Here is my Philosophy paper (above).

Check me out!

http://www.qcafe.org/2008/06/17/a-day-at-the-q/#more-47

Every rose has its thorn

Although most people still think Mac's are impenetrable super-machines that will one day evolve their own intelligence and dominate the universe, the failure of my hard-drive 2 weeks ago proved that in the end even my powerful Macbook is just a machine that breaks.

So i lost a multitude of information, largely in the form of pictures and music. Just about 1 year ago I uploaded all my current data to my dad's external hard-drive, so I still have my photos from Japan and some other important things. But the last year of my life, which of course includes some very significant pieces of writing I've composed for classes, photos of Seattle and the trip out here, and even some poetry of mine has been lost in the abyss of cyberspace, which I shall rename cybervoid since my information is obviously kaput.

And now I will continue my study of Hebrew:
שלמ

Scott McClellan

Almost a month in-between posts...I've been working, doing school (Biblical Hebrew and some reading for Philosophy), and the free time has included mountain biking and cycling. The weather is finally breaking through the clouds which have a monopoly on the skies in Seattle, so I gotta take advantage of it!

Anyway, I just watched the NBC interview with Scott McClellan which focused on the book he just published, "What Happened," and the uproar it has stirred. I'm not going to deconstruct the interview or respond to everything, but I did find something in particular that stood out to me and has given me a way to understand much of the chaos that is Washington DC politics.

(*note* if you have not seen the video, it's here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24870079#24870079 )

When Meredith Vieira pushed Scott on his reference to "Innuendo" and similar tactics used by Bush and his crew to say that they straight up 'lied,' McClellan responded and worded it something like this: The Bush administration were manipulating the narrative to work for them. He went on to say that this is precisely what both sides in Washington do in order to sieze and maintain power at all costs. Manipulating the narrative makes SO much more sense than lying, which itself is a word that belongs to a totally different way of thinking (which says something about the interviewer, more than about McClellan who didn't just label EVERYTHING as a lie). Indeed, there is no conversation, no room for dialogue, and God forbid, no one on either side is going to listen to what to the other side and allow that to shape their decisions in any way. I am aware that the vehemence in Washington is such that anyone in a powerful position would likely be suicidal on a daily basis if they spent their time reading the blogs of their critics. But the problem is that there is absolutely no compromise, no negotiation: there is only the pursuit of power which, as McClellan wisely put it, means having the dominant narrative in DC and beyond.

There is failure on all sides here, I believe, because neither side seems to desire any real conversation with the other, one that might pique their mind and cause them to wonder, "yea, maybe we should consider that...thanks for looking out for us!" The whole system present there almost doesn't allow for that.

We can vote for a new president, have a new party and team in the white house, and hear me: I do have hope that the system can change for the better, and that the partisan nonsense (absolute childishness), can be fought and slowly eradicated. However, I think this will be a process that will take years, because the American people, particularly those vultures that hover around DC, are so steeped in have power and control. The results are many and they are frightening, and we have witnessed some of them with the current administration, where the most powerful person in the world can at times look and sound like a toddler fighting over a toy -- and the whole world is worse off because of it.