“There is no reason to despise democratic elections; the point is only to insist that they are not per se an indication of Truth—on the contrary, as a rule, they tend to reflect the predominant doxa determined by the hegemonic ideology…There can be democratic elections which enact an event of Truth—elections in which, against sceptical-cynical inertia, the majority momentarily “awakens” and votes against the hegemony of ideological opinion. However, the very exceptional nature of such an occurence proves that elections as such are not a medium of Truth”
Žižek from “First As Tragedy, Then As Farce”

While I understand while people would want to use this argument, I don’t think it is valid. Lets reflect on the prophets of the Old Testament. I just finished a recent book by Walter Brueggemann Out of Babylon. I actually received the book last year for Christmas but just finally got around to reading it. It’s not the strongest of his work from the limited amount I’ve read, but there was one thing that I gathered from it, time and again the prophet wasn’t speaking outside of the problem looking in but was rather speaking from an cultural embeddedness.

Isaiah readily admitted his guilt along with the guilt of the people. He didn’t pretend to be outside of the problem, but still recognized that he had something to say to the leaders in power who led and controlled the direction of the people. If you look on Jeremiah, he writes in the tension of in one had telling them to accept the Babylonians and accept that they will live under their rule and culture but then also speaking of a separateness of being the people of God in a foreign land.

Not to mention Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Nehemiah, etc who all held positions within foreign countries and used their place to help the people of Israel—the underclass, the poor & disenfranchised of the empire.

This is the meaning of original sin. We are all guilty. We all have blood on our hands. We all find ourselves living within an unjust system, having already made decisions that go against the ideals that we have set for ourselves. Do that mean that all our work is in vain? If we can’t redeem the tools of empire for restorative acts of transformation then what is our hope, where is our grace then?

As I understand it, the dialogue between religious and secularist/atheist dramatically changed with attacks of September 11th. Previously there was a desire for dialogue and a seemingly genuine desire to understand and come together over at least some points of contact between those pro/contra religion. After the attacks by a group religious extremists the dialogue ended because religion wasn’t simply seen as wrong but as dangerous.

Furthermore the conversation shifted from the science-faith debate to one focusing on the seemingly violent nature inherent to religion—not just Islam but Christianity also, any and all religion.

All of this is still rather murky for me, but listening to theologians speak about it, it is clear that they feel the tides shifting in dramatic fashion. I’m not sure if this will be a long term trend or simply a temporary shift that will change with tides of politics.

What is needed more today than ever is for diverging sides to return to dialogue and leave the rhetoric  by the wayside within religion/secular debates but also within politics as such.

I’m not really sure where to begin, my frustrations over this loom so wide. Let me begin this way. Should not our First Amendment rights to free speech protect us from our employers?

It seems things have gotten to a certain surreal ridiculousness. Point 1, when did we get to the point where we expect perfection of speech from anyone & everyone, especially those in power, leadership, or just simply stardom? No one is allowed the mishap of a Freudian slip, after one too many at the dinner party, without it becoming frontpage news in the morning post. So often these ‘incidents’ become so over blown that they end up causing the said person to lose their job.

Where is the grace. Where is the mercy.

To those who consider this a ‘Christian nation’ I would like to see leading the reins on this one.

Can’t we just allow that people will screw up. Can’t we admit that even today in our ‘progressive’ 21st century world we all still have deep seated prejudices and they will come out on occasion.

Point 2, when did it become impossible for anyone of the above said stature to have wild statements. Why can not the senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs for CNN say something as {wildly benign} as: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Oh no, one of us Americans is considering the humanity of one of….them!!!

Come on Americans, we will never get any closer to ending our long struggles in the Middle East if this is the way we will continue to react. We must slow down in our reaction and stop & consider Fadlallah as a person, the same as you and me.

I always wanted to believe that CNN was different than the other network news station, but this only proves that they are simply a tool like the rest.

Octavia Nasr, I’m sorry; they don’t speak for me and my family, we respect your respect of the other.

It is strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before the dark ages were concerned, not with saving civilization or expellig the barbarians or reforming the abuses of the administration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized infants. Seeing that these were the preoccupations that the Church handed on to the converted barbarians, it is no wonder the succeeding age surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition.

Has the Church changed in the last 1500+ years? Are there not large sects of American Christianity who are concerned with virginity & unbaptized infants? We have modernized haven’t we? We now aren’t so fearful of sex, we even embrace erotic readings of Song of Solomon in certain settings. Though we are still holding to abstinence until marriage. And though we Protestants aren’t so concerned with infant baptism we are still very concerned with their damnation, though we turned the damnation from the hand of God to that of the abortion doctor.

Interestingly such proponents of this ideological focus say that it is a result of the lack of morality in these areas that will bring the demise of society. While Bertrand Russell seems to be implying that it was because of this focus while excluding or not wholly focusing on such things as systemic injustice, the poor & the weak, that the demise occurred.

I would say this passage should give us all pause as to where our priorities lie and as to what emphasis we place with each. Cautionarily, we must remember our priorities are rarely ever fully in sync with God’s—even if or despite the fact that God may work through the impure motives & actions.

Guevara had a rather keen eye to the political-economic realities which the Latin American world faced. He seemed to realize the difficulties lying around one’s economic/political ties to the U.S. For instance, pre-revolution Cuba’s economy was predominately agrarian, with sugar being bought by in large by the U.S. at a inflated rate.

Guevara saw how this adversely affected the Cubans, one, it basically puts them in the pocket of Washington without much autonomy. Two it limits their economic abilities. They focus their energies producing crops, rather than creating a balanced self-sustaining economy which doesn’t need to rely on foreign imports or exports.

During his time of political office in Cuba he spoke openly and often about how to create a strong Cuba. He spoke about the need for industry, for Cuba to be self-sustaining instead of agrarian and servile to another nation.

He also spoke of the place of the individual within this system. He realized that for socialism to work it wasn’t simply about nationalizing land or industry but furthermore about transforming the way of the people. He desired to work towards a nation where monetary gain wasn’t seen as the central virtue but rather moral character. He was probably too foolhardy to realize how difficult {if not impossible} it is to transform the lives of men is, in any true & lasting way.

While I will simply say I don’t think violence is the answer, I have to respect his clear vision of the political landscape. Though I think his failure is a result of a certain misconception towards the conditions of change.

I would say one of the most important things which allowed the revolution of Cuba to succeed where he failed in Bolivia or Congo is he didn’t realize the embeddedness of the Cuba revolutionary leader Castro. Castro was Cuban, he was of the people for the people. What Che was able to follow along was work which had taken much time to create.

Whereas with his later revolutionary enterprises he failed because among other reasons he was a foreigner. You can’t expect to get the trust and allegiance of a people without being of the people. (As an aside, many leaders haven’t been, but they faked it/covered up their nationality enough to be considered one of the people—I can think of Hitler & Napoleon as two such examples.)

But it isn’t just about what your birth certificate says; rather it is about living with people, embedding one’s life with another that is important. The authority of critique comes from a certain respect which grows out of lived experience. I can only truly speak for a people when I have been a part of them & they a part of me.

Lastly I think Che has become so iconic in part because he plays the John Wayne character set so well—Lone Ranger, trying to take over the imperialistic world through his own will. If we desire to bring about the change which we love so well in the idealist-revolutionary Che Guevara then we need to be the ‘new man’ which he spoke and wrote of, living the life for the other.

But now I am talking about much more than Che Guevara or the Cuban revolution.

How To Spot a Church Movement – Tall Skinny Kiwi

Andrew Jones passes on some wisdom that he gained from Fuller prof. Dr Paul Pierson.

Key ideas that stuck out to me:

They always begin on the periphery of the institutional church

The result is the desire for a more authentic Christian life that often leads to concern for the church and world.

The movement is countercultural in some ways, often because it reaches out to those who have not been valued by their society.

Consequently there will be opposition by many in the dominant culture and church.

Make Plans, Not Resolutions: Reflections on Proverbs 16 – Jeremy Carr

The night before seeing this blog post I had a significant conversation with my wife about our plans for the future. I’m not sure how to take these words, because I’ve always been uncomfortable with planning. It seems so contradictory to faith and trust in God’s sovereign plan. It seems this post makes things rather simplistic, rather than speaking to the complexity and the aspect of faithful obedience while blind to an understanding of future events. On one hand we are to plan. I see this closely tied to Genesis 2, where we are called to be God’s stewards of the Earth. Conversely though, we often times—seen most strongly in the Bible—we are called to blindly step forward without much of a, or any, plan. The pin which holds it together I would argue is obedience. If you aren’t living in obedience then the call of faith won’t come. That life of obedience requires planning, but that won’t get you all the way when it comes living faithfully. Many times you will be called to do things that aren’t planned for and can’t be explained logically.

So this is the place I am. Trying to understand how to continue moving forward in faith when you don’t have much of a idea of where you are being lead.

The Revolutionary Table (aka living la vida local) – Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark describes himself as a ‘foodie’. He is not the only one; there has been a resurgence of food-conscious persons within the U.S. recently. Mark as many others also have realized the implications of their food choices beyond the organic/fast food dichotomy. Mark’s post speak of the economic implications that purchasing foods shipped around the world, cheaply priced by being subsidized by the backs of the farmers in already poor and marginalized countries.

What is most helpful, is that he finishes his post by giving a list of different web resources for living a sustainable lifestyle through locally-seasonally grown & preserved products.

Augmented Reality used to Fix Cars – Slashdot

Here’s a story via slashdot. I have never been good at fixing any car I’ve owned. Maybe this is what I need.

Pack a Gun to Protect Valuables from Airline Theft or Loss [Air Travel Tip] – Life Hacker

Never time you travel, just pack a gun in your check-on luggage. TSA will make sure that it doesn’t get lost.

the difference between “cultivating communities” and “building churches” – Kathy Escobar

A thoughtful post about the personal struggles of a community being a community instead of building a church. The interesting point that she makes is that she found that they needed to separate the two. Having them mixed caused a lack of commitment within the group. Having strong doses of music, teaching, & programs caused people to disengage from the messier {though essential} parts of community building.

If I reflect I can see a lot of her experiences within my own experiences. My community, while making up some families of our church, isn’t really tied to the church much at all. We could drop one or the other without much noticeable impact on the other.

It seemed that in previous centuries the church building was a cultural center for the community; today though, it has a periphery place. It may be a place of teaching or worship but not community. What are the implications for that? Is that good? Is it something I/we should be trying to counter-act?

She also recommends Jean Vanier’s Community and Growth a great read on communal living. He is the founder of the l’arche community in canada where henri nouwen lived and was deeply inspired.

Haiti | To Hell With Altruistic Capitalism – Kester Brewin

Here is my last link for the day. With all the blog post about Haiti or Pat Robertson’s comments on Haiti, here is Marxian analysis. I can deeply sympathize with his outlook. It is amazing that we can ignore the horrible conditions of a nation for decades, and it isn’t until a natural disaster that we come to help. Kester Brewin rightly points to many of the problems originating from economic relations, where we have dealt extremely unjustly with them. I pray that this incident will shed enough light upon the people of this nation for long enough for some substantial change.

But this is all to get ahead of the story.

Why would there even be a threat against Israel, against Jerusalem the city of God?
Because of their sin.

So what were those sins exactly? Well when you look at the leaders & what was expected of them, you see they failed larger than any other. They are the ones expected to hold to justice & righteousness. They are supposed to be the ones that are looking out for the poor, the widows, the ones most expected to have injustices done to them by the rich & powerful. Instead of holding to a system that keeps powers against the powerless held in check they have let themselves be seduced into being like everyone else seduced by greed.

Instead of marching into Washington to the drum of conservative agendas with a taste of morality, we need to fighting for the powerless. Instead of fearing the weak forces of terrorists, we need to fear the true ruler, YHWH. As believers in the one God above all, we have to get beyond the use of fear as a force to reckon with; unless that is the fear & trembling before a Holy & Righteous God.

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For a people so bent on claiming America as a Bible centered & originating from, we are very far from a nation constructed from biblical principles of a God-fearing nation. God decreed for the Israelites to forgive debts regularly, giving back land; so people could continue to be equals, so wealth wouldn’t accumulate into the hands of a few. Why aren’t issues like this brought up, in conversations of our Christian nation?
Probably because we don’t take the OT seriously, “it’s the law & we don’t have to worry ’bout that cuz of Christ saving me & all”. We like to play our John 3:16 ticket to a good-guy morality of suburbia.

There is a new ‘themed’ Bible to hit the shelves, this one based on linking the story of the Bible to the history of the U.S. (you know how our country is founded on Christian principles and have been living by those principles ever since—happily excluding all the screw ups of the U.S.)

I am ashamed and awe-struck at this abomination of the holy word of God. If Jesus was still in the grave he would definitely be rolling over right now.

Check out Tad’s post, he has some quotes from it, the aside boxes that are supposed enclose sound commentary for the reader are filled with right wing evangelical fundamentalist propoganda, to the point of defamation & heresy. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a comment that links some scripture to God’s approval of exploitative oil drilling in Alaska.

TheResurgence – Churches & Pig Flu

Tall Skinny Kiwi – Swine flu and a calm, reasonable, rational Church

I haven’t been keeping up with this whole ‘thing’; I kind of quit consuming any kind of news a month or so ago, but I am taking this ‘epidemic’ as serious as last year’s looming pandemic or even the one before that. You remember when mosquitoes were going to take down most of the southern United States? Call me cynical but I’m not too scared or impressed with the fervor of the media which drags us into hysterical fits of insanity.