Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Ron Dart’s Hermeneutic of Generosity: Audio Interview

Ron Dart taught in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the University of Fraser Valley (British Columbia) for 33 years. He has published and edited more than forty books, including Scrutinizing Scruton: Canadian High Toryism and Scrutonia; Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson: A Christian Perspective; Christianity and Pluralism (co-authored with J.I Packer); Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades; and The North American High Tory Tradition. He is also an avid mountaineer.

In this interview, Ron talks about the complex negotiation that needs to take place between truth and unity. This includes the need to question certainty (which requires humility), establishing dialogue (Dart includes a good bit of Martin Buber), and, in general, holding a hermeneutic of generosity. 

To listen to the audio interview from Matthew Steem at Radix Magazine, CLICK HERE. 

 

Analytical Review of Jim Forest's "Loving Our Enemies" & "Ladder of the Beatitudes" - Amy Armistad

Introduction

Jesus Christ reconciled everything to himself on the cross and invites us to partake in the Kingdom of God by participating in his work of reconciliation. The Sermon on the Mount is the Jesus Way to bring the Kingdom of God to earth; asking us to journey on our own Golgotha road, to our crucifixion and resurrection for personal transformation and the transformation of our communities and the world.

Individual Transformation

The Jesus Way reflects a cycle of crucifixion and resurrection, ensuring a pattern of life and growth, where we become new creations. We may not experience physical crucifixion on a cross for others’ sake as Jesus did, but He shows us in the Sermon on the Mount how we are to demonstrate that same love. It is a love that requires self-emptying but will result in our transformation.

The Sermon on the Mount, or the Jesus Way, starts with the Beatitudes, “Each of the eight describes aspects of being in the kingdom of God. They are like rungs on a ladder, which Christ has arranged in exact order.…Each step builds on the foundation of the previous step…” (Ladder, 2). We start with the first beatitude cultivating a poverty of spirit as we surrender our will to His. The Sermon on the Mount will reveal our selfishness, envy, fear, and pride as we move up the rungs on the ladder. However, rooting out these vices will put us on the road to recovery, allowing us to mourn for others, be generous, turn the other cheek, and lead a flourishing life. Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving aid this process and deepen our connection with God and those in need (Ladder,147, 127).

It may seem ironic that poverty of heart causes us to pour out to others, but it is the Beatitude blessings and infilling of Jesus’s love that transforms us.  Forest quotes Mother Maria, who worked on behalf of the Jewish people and gave her life for a Jewish prisoner in the gas chamber,

“There is one moment when you start burning with love, and you have the inner desire to throw yourself at the feet of some other human being. This one moment is enough.  Immediately you know that instead of losing your life, it is being given back to you twofold” (Ladder 72).

Like Jesus, who came as servant to all, we must spend our lives in service; living the Sermon on the Mount so that we can impact the community and the world.

A Transformed Community

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in constant community as the Trinity, and they replicated this model at creation. The Sermon on the Mount is the Jesus Way to reestablish relationships and community. “Christ taught that human beings are God’s children and that to live in peace with each other as God’s children is to live in the kingdom of God” (Ladder, 130). Forest suggests examining the connections we have in our lives - our food comes from farmers, our clothes from factories on the other side of the globe, and so on – to realize the infinite connectedness of our lives, both to the past, present and future (Ladder 44-45).

If we followed Jesus’s program for social renewal, we could protect and restore our relationships. Jesus instructs us to make peace with others before taking the Eucharist rather than hold onto anger; to not commit adultery, even with our thoughts; to love and forgive our enemies; feed the hungry; give to the needy in secret; act generously; judge no one and practice the golden rule. Loving enemies in particular, demonstrates ‘taking up your cross’ as the human inclination to retaliate when attacked or persecuted is strong.  However, like Jesus on the cross, we must react with mercy and love. These actions will transform the world around us and bring the Kingdom of God on earth, as we ask to do in the Lord’s Prayer.

Forest provides several examples of Christians being salt and light by caring for the needy, extending mercy to enemies, forgiving others, and reacting with nonviolence in the face of death. Dorothy Day founded the CatholicWorker hospitality houses for the ‘down and out’ where “each person [was] received as Christ” (Loving, 83). Day lived the Sermon on the Mount in such an integrated way that “nothing one did was at odds with nurturing and saving lives” (Loving, 84).  Day died in 1980 and may be named a saint in the Catholic Church. Forest says,“Whether or not canonization ever occurs, countless people revere her memory and live more adventurous lives of faith because of the example she gave of overcoming enmity in a life of active love and hospitality” (Loving, 86).

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is known for his hunger and thirst for righteousness, manifest in his nonviolent and merciful approach toward his enemies.  After leading a year-long bus boycott resulting in integration, he said,

We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in good conscience obey your unjust laws… and in winning our freedom, we will win you in the process” (Loving, 114).

Dr. King’s legacy extends to this day and his approach is often emulated.

Father Elias Chacour revitalized a divisive community with forgiveness, starting with his own congregation. One Sunday, he locked the church doors imploring the congregation to forgive each other for long-held hurts, in part he said, “If you will not forgive, then we stay locked in here.  If you want, you can kill each other.  In that case I’ll provide your funerals gratis” (Loving, 80). Eventually, a policeman asked for his brothers’ forgiveness, and a tidal wave of forgiveness began, pouring into the streets and into the community such that people knocked on doors to reconcile with each other. The community is thriving to this day.

André and Magda Trocmé assisted Jews in fleeing the Nazis during World War II, acting in nonviolence, risking persecution and death. At one point, the police detained André and tried to force him to agree to obey the law, which he refused to do, saying, “These people came here for help and shelter. I am their shepherd. A shepherd does not forsake his flock.  I do not know what a Jew is. I know only human beings” (Loving, 68). The Trocmés saved countless lives and continued peace work until their passing.

Forest ends his book with a story of a violent escaped convict, Riley Arzeneaux, who entered an older couple’s house, Nathan and Louise Degrafinried, threatening them with a gun (Loving, 170-1). Louise told Riley to lay down his gun because she did not believe in violence, and the couple proceeded to feed and clothe him and share the love of Christ. When the police arrived, Louise also told them to lay down their guns, and they complied. After Riley’s return to prison, he and Louise kept in touch. Riley became a Christian in prison, and at Louise’s funeral, he shared, “Mrs. Degrafinried was real Christianity,” and he acted as a pallbearer carrying her coffin to her final resting place.

Each of these stories exemplifies people who lived the Sermon on the Mount for the benefit of others, bringing the Kingdom of God to earth and allowing the people they helped to experience the love of Christ.

Conclusion

So what happens if we do not follow the Jesus Way? If we live our lives only concerned with our salvation because the Sermon on the Mount is a difficult and unrealistic journey? After all, not all of us are priests like Father Elias, or have war at our doorstep like the Trocmés, or lead social change like Dr. King.

What happens is that we exclude ourselves from the transforming work of Christ and from bringing his kingdom on earth. Our lives will not produce the fruit that enables us to make a difference in others’ lives. Jesus ends the Sermon on Mount with,

All who listen to my instructions and follow them are wise, like a man who builds his house on solid rock. Though the rains come in torrents, and the floods rise, and storm winds beat against his house, it won’t collapse, for it is built on rock. But those who hear my instructions and ignore them are foolish, like a man who builds his house on sand. For when the rains and floods come, and storm winds beat against his house, it will fall with a mighty crash (Matthew 24-27).

As challenging as following the Jesus Way may be, it will set our lives on a firm foundation. It will transform us and enable us to live Christ-like lives in service to others for the transformation of our communities and the world.

Torbjorn Ekelund's "The Boy and the Mountain" - Review by Ron Dart

Torbjorn Ekelund, The Boy and the Mountain: A Father, His Son, and a Journey of Discovery (Greystone Books, 2023).

The Boy and the Mountain was originally published in Norwegian in 2017 and translated into English in 2023. Ekelund has, thus far, published two fine books that weave, thoughtfully and delicately together, the layered relationship between humans and nature: In Praise of Paths and A Year in the Woods. There is a meditative approach that shapes and defines Ekelund’s writing style, and such a tendency is front and center in The Boy and the Mountain.

There are a variety of suggestive layers at work in The Boy and the Mountain and the interweaving of such layers makes this missive inviting and evocative. There is the story of a young child (six years of age) who wandered from his mother in a backcountry and mountainous in southern Norway (near Kongsberg) in the Skrim area, lost his way, and was found dead---such was the fate of Hans Torske when he disappeared July 8 1894 and was found July 29 1895. It is this mysterious death of Hans that is constantly, like a stream, running through the mind of Ekeland as he takes to the same area with his son (August) for a father and son trek to, in principle, the summit of Styggemann mountain. But, what is the significance of mother and son taking to the backcountry, father in the city, Hans innocently leaving mother, then disappearing, lost in the woods, disoriented, many in the area searching for him, when found a year later dead? This is certainly a tale of poorly prepared trips and treks into nature, a child acting in a spontaneous and creative manner, nature quite indifferent to such a choice, no sense of how to orient or find his way back to his mother, then being lost and nature taking its inevitable toll—certainly no nature romanticism, those unprepared and unaware often victims of nature’s ways and means. So, the tale of Hans is the warning and backdrop to the hike of father and son.

How the End Must Come — Kenneth Tanner

 

There is a turn in human existence when for more than three hundred years the first Christians follow Jesus in the way of peace-without insurgencies, without rebellions, without riots. It is the first such sustained movement of non-violence before or after, and still stands as a witness to the authenticity of the gospel.

 

The way of self-preservation (as families or communities or cities or nations) has not always been the way of Christians, and as citizens of a world power Americans may not trust Christ enough to make the first Christian path our own.

 

Millions have perished down the centuries trusting in their crucified God. To suggest that they should have taken a more realistic or utilitarian stance, that they should have taken up arms, is a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. These followers of Jesus were looking for a transfigured world, had a different country in their hearts.

They trusted that God was on the side of humanity, on the side of his creation, never a God with or for one people or one culture or one land but a God with and for everyone, everywhere.

 

Is there a final moment in history when instead of fighting, instead of taking up arms against the penultimate Hitler or the final ISIS, or whatever form death's last great tyranny takes, the church again visibly rejects the means and powers of this world, this privilege of self-defence, our idolatry of weapons, and wills instead to beat our swords and spears into farming tools, chooses to trust the humility and weakness of God in Jesus Christ to vindicate us-not our armaments, our anger, our right to stand up for ourselves-in order to manifest an already-accomplished defeat of darkness on Golgotha?

 

What if the end comes only after an unprecedented and great slaughter of Christians, after a worldwide crucifixion of the body of Christ, in which after great sacrifice in imitation of her Lord she dies and rises from the ashes of her demise by the Spirit, and God is finally all in all because the cruciform pattern of love that governs the universe and holds all things together and gives all living things breath, is confirmed in a peculiar crucified and resurrected people who look like the human God.

The Allure of Moral Clarity in a Time of War: A Response to Russell Moore - by Bruce Fisk

The Allure of Moral Clarity in a Time of War: A Response to Russell Moore’s “American Christians Should Stand with Israel under Attack” (Christianity Today, October 7, 2023)

Bruce N. Fisk, October 12, 2023

Between the headline and the byline of Russell Moore’s recent piece in Christianity Today we read:

“While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.”

It was this call for “moral clarity”—in a time of horror, rage, and confusion—that caught my attention. It reminded me of William Bennett’s 2002 hymn to patriotism, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism.

In the wake of 9/11, Bennett reminisced about how “the doubts and questions . . . seemed to fade into insignificance. Good was distinguished from evil, truth from falsehood. We were firm, dedicated, unified. It was, in short, a moment of moral clarity.”

It was this moral clarity about America’s righteousness that accompanied US troops into Iraq on a misguided quest for regime change. Cheered on by with-us-or-with-the-enemy rhetoric, our war on terror left many thousands dead, wounded, and displaced, and sowed seeds of resentment and despotism across the region.

Many are calling Hamas’ October attack Israel’s 9/11. Indeed, per capita, the number of slain Israelis is already more than ten times the number of Americans killed on that dark day in September 2001. Hamas has perpetrated unspeakable evil and horrific war crimes.

So, we’re told, one side is clearly right. The other is utterly wrong. This is not the time for moral confusion. We must stand with Israel. Full stop.

To claim moral clarity in such a moment, however, is far from helpful.

It means we take refuge in binary thinking, silence contrary voices, and erase the complexities—legal, historical, political, theological—that have beset the land and demographic wars in Israel/Palestine for over a century.

My first visits to the Holy Land, two decades ago, were marked by moral clarity. Today, I know too much. I’ve seen too much. Hamas is committing war crimes, without question. But they are not committing them in a vacuum.

Uncritical pro-Israel clarity over recent decades has provided international cover, financial backing, and biblical justification for legalized discrimination, settlement expansion, extra-judicial killings, and systematic Palestinian subjugation. Christian Zionists’ unflinching opposition to partitioning the Promised Land has excused land expropriation, demolitions of homes and schools, and other forms of legal discrimination. This kind of clarity we do not need.

In the weeks ahead, history will repeat itself. Thousands of innocents have already become homeless. Palestinian families, trapped between Hamas butchery and Israeli bombs, will suffer and die. What we need to hear at such times are calls for indiscriminate compassion, challenges to work for justice, and invitations to humbly acknowledge our complicity. What we don’t need to hear are tales of light and darkness.

Allow me to contend for messy perplexity rather than binary certitude, by challenging seven assertions embedded in Moore’s piece.

A Theology of Lived Experience - MariJean Wegert

If Christian leaders factored “lived experience”
into their theology, everything would change.

If Christian leaders understood and were able to empathize with the lived experiences of marginalized humans, they would preach very differently.

They wouldn’t preach depravity to LBGTQ humans who are already living in a body clenched tight with chronic shame.

They wouldn’t preach “emotions can’t be trusted” to women who are already told by doctors, partners, and the media that their physical pain, autoimmunity, anxiety, and depression were “all in their head.”

They wouldn’t preach suffering as godly to black bodies who carry the trauma of four hundred years of suffering in their DNA.

They wouldn’t preach “empathy is a sin” to men who were taught that suppressing their feelings (except for violent aggression — and posturing aggression while their football teams damage their bodies for entertainment) was a sign of true masculinity.

They wouldn’t preach logic and reason as a way to understand truth to a civilization founded on disintegration of the heart, body, and spirit from the mind, and subsequent homogenization and commodification of all things good and beautiful.

They wouldn’t preach a god of absolute, unquestioned authority to humans who have grown up without a felt sense of agency or resources to access their value as a co-creator with God.

They wouldn’t preach punishment as justice if they knew that punishment never truly rehabilitates, and that pathologies we call sin start to resolve only in the Presence of an empathetic witness.

They wouldn’t preach “the church has a masculine feel” to a politicized world where a rapist, misogynist, lying abuser is exulted as the hope for the nation — a nation that
desperately needs the voices and fearsome energy of femininity to come back into sanity and balance.

They wouldn’t preach that lived experience isn’t valid if they realized that discernment is holistic: it includes a person’s whole being, body, mind, and emotions — and interrelational — truth doesn’t emerge in a vacuum, and it can’t fit in a box — and must necessarily include dynamic, and relational modes to come anywhere near accuracy. Humans who lose their ability to feel emotions also lose their ability to make rational decisions.

They wouldn’t preach that lived experience isn’t valid if they knew the physical, emotional devastation that chronic invalidation has wreaked on their wives, their congregations, their friends in the closet, their marginalized community members they claim to love with the love of Christ.

Men wouldn’t tout that lived experience isn’t VITAL and necessary for discernment, and consequently (because obedience is physical, not cognitive) for truth if they realized that their own experiences in a male body have necessarily to hold up this destructive lie, internalized a self-betrayal so encompassing that they aren’t even aware of the dis-integration within.

Christian men wouldn’t need to defend this lie with their theology, and their mental conception of their creator, if they had courage enough to put down their white-knuckle need for certainty in exchange for the terrifying leap of faith called in their own pulpits “surrender.”

As C.S. Lewis put it, “No one is told any story but their own.”

Reposted by permission from https://marijeanelizabeth.medium.com
MariJean is a marvelous blogger whose subscription we endorse.