Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Zoeology: the study of the Christian Life - by Jarrod McKenna

Jarrod McKenna's talk on 'Zoeology' was part 7 of a series at the Meeting House entitled 'We Believe: Christian Theology, learned, loved and lived.' Jarrod McKenna the National Advisor for Youth, Faith and Activism for World Vision Australia. He is a peace award winning founder of EPYC and co-founder of the Peace Tree Intentional Community in Perth. You can follow him on Twitter here.

A Dusting of Snow During a Bloody Summer - Brian Zahnd

 It’s been a bloody summer. In Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Nigeria, and the Ukraine.

Kill the bad guys and there will be peace is the tired refrain.
All sides say it. Ad infinitum.

(I didn’t even mention the bloody streets of America, to which we have grown so numb.)

But I am where I always hope to be this time of year: In the mountains that I love.

When I hike above treeline onto the great expanse of the high tundra my soul finds room for expansion. I’m no longer hemmed in by the din from the reactive ideologues. I find time and space to pray and think.

And as I pray and think, I know this…

Creation is good. Very good. It bears witness to its Creator, who is good too.

In our primitive dread we imagine a god who is petulant and hard to please, vindictive and retributive, capricious and cruel. But these are only petty projections born of our own fear.

The mystics (and maybe the mountaineers) know better.

When I can clear my head, I know better. High on the tundra between Longs Peak and the Never Summer Mountains I know the greatest of all truth: God is Love.

Why did God say, Let there be?
God spoke because he is Love.
Infinite love seeking finite compression.
Eternal love seeking temporal expression.

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The Convergence of the Past, Present and Future in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict — Andrew P. Klager

History is important. And I don't think it's just my bias as a historian that compels me to affirm this. The past -- history -- is, however, little more than a collection of memories, of myths and stories. Everything is in the past. Everything. And yet, oddly enough, all we really have is the present, while our actions today are motivated by our recollection of the many yesterdays behind us. These memories, stories, and myths matter. We need to learn about them.

I'm frequently asked for my opinion on the crisis in Gaza and am asked a lot of questions about the mind-boggling escalation of violence in the past couple weeks. And although I probably shouldn't, I also read the cacophony of infuriating public comments at the bottom of news reports on the ongoing violence, many of which are woefully ignorant of the historical backdrop to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally and the recent Israeli bombing and ground incursion in Gaza by extension. Except they don't know that it's by extension. And that's the problem.

The past, present, and future converge in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict like no other on earth -- the past, because of the history that animates this conflict; the future, because of the predictive apocalyptic impulses especially in conservative Evangelical Christianity that myopically affirms and emboldens Israel's every move; and the present, because the decisions and actions today rest on both trajectories simultaneously.

French anthropological philosopher and originator of the Mimetic Theory, René Girard, wrote the following in his book, Battling to the End (2009):

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Despair and Depression (from 'The Neurobiology of Sin') - Archbishop Lazar Puhalo

“Despair” is often considered to be a sin, though it seldom is. While despair always causes one to “fall short of the mark,” guilt cannot be assigned to it, especially when it is clinical. It must not be regarded simply as resulting from a lack or loss of faith. Depression, too, is often thought of as being somehow sinful, or caused by demons. While these are possibilities, adding such burdens of guilt to a person who has a clinical depression can be devastating. When left untreated, clinical depression can cause the hippocampi to atrophy, and this process is irreversible. Such depression can lead to alcoholism, use of narcotics and suicide. Depression can also be an effect or a symptom of other illnesses. People suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD) can manifest many symptoms of depression, despair, loss of appetite, difficulty in sleeping, gastrointestinal problems, fatigue and agitation. The same can be said for anyone who is suffering from dysthymia. We are aware of how the chemical sources associated with clinical depression go beyond the problem of serotonin uptake or dopamine malfunctions. Priests should, therefore, be careful not to assign guilt to feelings of despair or depression, but rather treat them with the same anointing prayers with which all illnesses are addressed, while recommending medical intervention. Assigning guilt to feelings of dispair and depression can certainly exacerbate the symptoms and could even incline a person toward suicide.

There are clear neurobiological causes for clinical depression and a sense of despair, and these have nothing to do with weak faith, loss of faith or any specific sins. Let me specify here that I am not speaking about occasional depression or a short-term event-motivated sense of hopelessness. These can be responded to well enough by prayer, confession and dialogue therapy. We are speaking of clinical (long-term and chronic) depression and a sense of hopelessness and despair which are not simply short-term reactions to an event such as the breakup of a marriage or a loss of a job. Another far too often overlooked source of depression is celiac disease. A priest who lies to a person and tells them that depression is not real, that it only a “temptation” may be preventing a person with celiac disease from seeking treatment, and this is a very serious matter indeed. Great physical harm can come to a person with untreated celiac disease. Instead, the sensible and sober priest who hears in confession that a person is in a long-term state of depression or despair will immediately recommend that they consult their doctor about it. One might even suggest that celiac may be at the root of the problem.

Prudence Revisited: Head and Heart in Public Justice - Henry Smidstra

Retired, I have become an armchair criminologist, often lost in reading the papers or in thought about 20 or so years of experience and memories as a Canadian prison chaplain. Not too many require my services now that I am an out-to-pasture prison chaplain critical of the traditional rehabilitative prison idea.  I have lots to think about though, and so much theological-philosophical reflection to do now with the daily grind and stress of my work-days behind bars behind me. With time to read whatever I want, I still seem to choose books on moral philosophy or criminology. Recently I stumbled across a book by Sir Walter Moberly: The ethics of punishment, London: Faber and Faber, 1968. It was written at the culmination of the author’s career, containing a wealth of a lifetime of wrestling with the same issues that I still struggle with: the ethics and efficacy of penal punishment. Written before the full onset of the modern phase of criminology influenced by neoliberal political ideology, the war on drugs, and the truth in sentencing policies, I can identify trends in criminology, which, like old clothes go in and out of fashion it seems, but always therefore kept in the closet.  Shallow thinking about criminal justice issues as well as public malaise regarding justice reform was as persistent in England then as it is in Canada now. Yet the author was hopeful that respectful, virtuous, pluralistic dialogue would lead to more effective and biblically sound interventions in issues of crime; and so am I.

Due to my diminished circle of influence there are fewer people interested in my musings on restorative justice anymore, especially when I spell out specific applications to criminal justice. It seems that many would just like to leave any critical moral theorizing about the “inefficacy” of law and order and the over-reliance on carceral punishment in the dark and not think or talk about it, sweep the issue under the carpet, ignore it; or, paradoxically get on the partisan “campaign wagon” to call for more severe penalties and longer sentences for Canada’s lawbreakers. One can also hear said, “What does criminal justice and politics have to do with the church anyway?” The Church folk tell me that punishing the wrongdoer is the main responsibility of the state; and of course my Wardens told me, other than in my chapel responsibilities, keep religion out of prison politics. To ascribe limits to ecclesiastical abuse of power is wise, but to divorce heart from head in our political economic life is “foolish.” Working in this space between church and state has challenged any static, abstract, armchair creed I ever subscribed to; and, reflecting deeply on specific experience has transformed how I think about justice, love, and reconciliation.

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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Eucharist - Brian Zahnd

Like the other Gospel writers John recounts the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed five thousand. But John adds this unique postscript:

“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” (John 6:15)

The crowd’s response to this “table in the wilderness” was an impulse to make Jesus king…but Jesus declined. Why? Jesus is king, he came to be king, king is what Messiah means. So why does Jesus slip away from the crowd when they want to make him king? The issue is force.

The crowd wanted to “take him by force and make him king.” At the center of the crowd’s concept of kingship was violent force. They wanted to force Jesus to be their forceful king so he could lead their forces in an uprising of violent force against the Romans. This was antithetical to the kind of king Jesus came to be. Caesar is a crucifying king who reigns by force. Christ is the crucified king who reigns without force. Christ’s kingdom is built upon co-suffering love, not violent force.

The crowd that wanted to force Jesus to be king was operating from the dominant paradigm of scarcity. This is the paradigm that possessed Cain to kill Abel, and it lies at the dark heart of human civilization. We are scripted to believe that reality is zero-based and that we live in a closed system.

This paradigm of scarcity and insufficiency is the philosophy that undergirds our structures of systemic sin. We fear there won’t be enough land, water, food, oil, money, labor to go around, so we build evil structures of sinful force to guarantee “us” “ours.” We call it security. We call it defense. We call it freedom. What we don’t call it is what it is…fear. Driven by our fear of scarcity we create an organized, large-scale, slow-motion version of anarchy. A mob on a looting rampage is called anarchy. One nation looting another is called glorious conquest — but it’s just looting on a grand scale. Kings are tasked with looting our enemies on our behalf.

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American Jesus: Uncle Ben - Beck Underwood

Demons: Real but Impersonal – Gordon Savage

From the days of the church fathers, who identified demons with unruly human passions, to the modern recovery movement, which speaks metaphorically of ‘wrestling with our demons,’ a tradition exists that describes ‘demons’ as real but impersonal. Theologians and practitioners alike admit the possibility of “demons” as artificial entities of human origin. They neither dismiss them as empty superstitions, nor exalt them as autonomous fallen angels.

These constructs range from mere neurosis to complex projections in individuals, but rise in groups to the status of independent evil phenomena generated by collective will and imagination, and persist in real but impersonal existence. In a real sense, they are the offspring of sin. This is where we get the traditional understanding that demons must have a host, the absence of which confines them to hell for eternity (or, shall we say, nonexistence).

This phenomenon might be the bizarre reverse image of the communion of saints; a dis-communion that enslaves and cuts off those who join, which lives off a self-will that has become an enslaving outside force. Their ‘existence’ is similar to someone completely absorbed in drugs, caught on a single short loop, repeating the same script without a moment of freedom; the difference is that a real soul remains under that enslavement, while a demon’s life is only the enslavement. It can be cast in the fire and burned.

This view has the merit of allowing us to retain Rene Girard’s insights about how an ‘accuser’ organizes human culture, making him the Lord of this world because he’s the essence of sin, not because he’s a big, strong supernatural character. I share the Girardian view that we’re made for a relationship with God, and in God’s absence we compulsively follow the desire of a Model. Whatever we elevate as Model may -- probably will -- be given the power to enslave our wills. These are the demons Jesus cast out, and continues to cast out by becoming our Lord.

Al Purdy and Roderick Haig-Brown: Cougar Hunter (1992) - Ron Dart

I want to catch some kind of Haig-Brown essence with the halo slightly askew.   - Al Purdy

 Banff Centre School of Fine Arts: Purdy letter to Haig-Brown: July 30 1974

Al Purdy was one of Canada’s most prolific poets and writers, but when his many published books are listed, Cougar Hunter: A Memoir of Roderick Haig-Brown, is often omitted. Cougar Hunter has a controversial history, and the fact that many of the few missives printed were destroyed means that the book is a rare one, indeed. Robert Cave, in his exceptional book on Haig-Brown, Roderick Haig-Brown: A Descriptive Bibliography (2000), rightly so, suggests there is a “Byzantine-like atmosphere that continues to envelop Cougar Hunter” (p.300).

Indeed, it is this Byzantine-like atmosphere that pervades the publication of Cougar Hunter that makes it a collector’s item of sorts---the thin book published in 1992 sells for about $300:00 for those who are interested in owning a copy—in this gem of a Purdy classic, much is learned about Roderick Haig-Brown and Al Purdy. 

Al Purdy met the legendary West Coast conservationist, Roderick Haig-Brown, in 1974, at the equally mythical Strathcona Lodge on Vancouver Island. Purdy was at the Lodge to do an essay on “Jack Jackovitch, painter, ex-football player, fishing guide and high school teacher”-Weekend Magazine was going to publish the article--Purdy was 56 at the time (and an established Canadian poet) and Haig-Brown was 66 years of age.  

Class Warfare on Earth and in Heaven - Walter Brueggemann

The phrase “class warfare” may be taken as a descriptive term to identify the power dynamics of politics and economics. “Class” refers most often to the gap between the “haves” who enjoy political leverage and economic advantage over the “have-nots” who are vulnerable and relatively powerless. “Warfare” refers to the inescapable tension been “haves” and “have-nots” that most often is covert but occasionally erupts as active hostility in the form of harsh rhetoric or political action. Thus the phrase calls attention to the undeniable realities of social relationships.

But the term is seldom used descriptively. More often it is employed polemically, most often on the lips of “haves.” It is then used with reference to any active resistance on the part of “have-nots” that calls attention to inequity. When used in this way, it intends to deny the tension or the gap of power and resources, wanting to suggest social solidarity between “haves” and “have-nots.” It is then used to cover over or deny tensions that are inherent in inequitable social relationships. Less often the term is used by “have-nots” to refer to the quiet but effective ways in which “haves” work to keep “have-nots” powerless and resourceless. All of these uses are, in one way or another, part of the tension and problematic of social differentiation on the ground that refuses the cover of noble or polite slogans to the contrary.

I.

The phrase, in relation to the Bible, immediately draws the Bible into socio-political, economic reality, so that the Bible can no longer be read “innocently.” In order to read the Bible knowingly, it is crucial to understand, as best we can, the socio-economic dynamics that recur in the Bible.

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The Vulnerability that Makes Peace Possible: An Interview with Stanley Hauerwas — Andrew P. Klager

I was privileged enough to chat with Stanley Hauerwas on how our theology impacts our perception of the Other, our political allegiances, and our desired response to our enemies. Nearly every article on Hauerwas mentions that TIME magazine designated him "America's Best Theologian" in 2001, so I guess I'll do the same here. He was also interviewed by Oprah. As the author of a veritable library and known as one of the world's foremost postliberal theologians, he was educated at Yale in a time when George Lindbeck and H. Richard Niebuhr graced its halls. Now the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, Hauerwas is proud of his heritage as a bricklayer's son and frequently makes correlations between his upbringing in the trades and the theological craft. He hates pretention and dislikes when Christians act nice as a way of flaunting their ostensible superiority. But Hauerwas is probably best known for his outspoken pacifism and censure of American Evangelical Christianity's individualism, emphasis on rationalism or "right belief" -- by both fundamentalist and liberal theologians -- and uncritical subsumption of neoliberal impulses and militaristic state priorities.

Hauerwas had a major influence on my theological development. Along with the writings of John Howard Yoder -- Hauerwas' colleague and close friend from their days together at Notre Dame -- I devoured anything he wrote especially during my later undergraduate years, Resident Aliens begin the most formative for me. His works gave me something in the theological realm to be excited about for the first time. I owe a lot to Hauerwas for this major shift and my trajectory since.

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Are the Gospels Mythical - Rene Girard (1996)

From the earliest days of Christianity, the Gospels’ resemblance to certain myths has been used as an argument against Christian faith. When pagan apologists for the official pantheism of the Roman empire denied that the death-and-resurrection myth of Jesus differed in any significant way from the myths of Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Attis, etc., they failed to stem the rising Christian tide. In the last two hundred years, however, as anthropologists have discovered all over the world foundational myths that similarly resemble Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection, the notion of Christianity as a myth seems at last to have taken hold—even among Christian believers.

Beginning with some violent cosmic or social crisis, and culminating in the suffering of a mysterious victim (often at the hands of a furious mob), all these myths conclude with the triumphal return of the sufferer, thereby revealed as a divinity. The kind of anthropological research undertaken before World War II—in which theorists struggled to account for resemblances among myths—is regarded as a hopeless “metaphysical” failure by most anthropologists nowadays. Its failure seems, however, not to have weakened anthropology’s skeptical scientific spirit, but only to have weakened further, in some mysterious way, the plausibility of the dogmatic claims of religion that the earlier theorists had hoped to supersede: if science itself cannot formulate universal truths of human nature, then religion—as manifestly inferior to science—must be even more devalued than we had supposed.

This is the contemporary intellectual situation Christian thinkers face as they read the Scriptures. The Cross is incomparable insofar as its victim is the Son of God, but in every other respect it is a human event. An analysis of that event—exploring the anthropological aspects of the Passion that we cannot neglect if we take the dogma of the Incarnation seriously—not only reveals the falsity of contemporary anthropology’s skepticism about human nature. It also utterly discredits the notion that Christianity is in any sense mythological. The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.

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Frank Schaeffer and Brian McLaren in Honest Conversation

Winnowed Wisdom 3 - Ron Dart

Tightrope Walker: Notional and Real Faith

Many years ago there was tightrope walker who set up a line between two rock walls and walked the precarious rope, balanced well, between the deep valley below and the rock faces. Many attended his daring performances from different parts of the world. The tightrope walker, upon reaching each side, asked the spectators if they thought he could carry a spectator on his back across the rope to the other side of the rock cliff. Many said Yes, many said No. The tightrope walker turned to some of those who said Yes, and asked if they’d be willing to get on his back--most, at that point, said No. 

Summit Seeing: Broken Lights

The mountains are often thick with walkers, hikers, scramblers and climbers at different seasons of the year. The longer treks begin below the alpine, ascend through the alpine then conclude on rock ridges and scenic summits. The lower a hiker is on the ascent the less the broader view can be seen- the higher the ascent, the fuller and more spacious the views. Those who only remain at the subalpine and alpine often have fine but limited views of the rock ridges in all directions. The danger of lowland dwelling is that the small plot of land tents are pitched on prevents the campers from seeing what could be seen from the summits. Those who bivouac on peaks are often more exposed but see much more. 

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of Thee,

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

Alfred Lord Tennyson   

In Memoriam

What If Hitler Invaded Your House? Brian Zahnd

Meah Shearim by Eric Lubiyov

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of interviews on my new book A Farewell To Mars. It’s a semi-autobiographical confession of how I moved from being an enthusiastic supporter of war American style to proclaiming the peaceable kingdom of Christ. Since I’ve marched among the ranks of sincere war-endorsers for most of my life, I’m sympathetic with well-meaning Christians who believe in the way of Mars. I try to tell the story of my conversion honestly and gracefully. I level criticism, not at soldiers, but at myself. My aim is to take the reader on a journey where Jesus and war are examined in the light of an unencumbered reading of Scripture.

But in a twelve minute radio interview there is little time for narrative and nuance. Instead, the interviewer usually leaps to what they consider “the heart of the matter.” In every interview I’ve been asked this question: “What would you do if Hitler invaded your house?” Well, it’s not exactly that question, but in every interview these two questions have come up: What about Hitler? What would you do if someone invaded your home? Hitler and home invasion. These are the two arguments that allegedly make the Jesus way of peace impossible. So let me address them. I’ll begin with Hitler.

When I claim that waging war is incompatible with following Jesus, the knee-jerk objection is always this: “What about Hitler?” The problem with the “Hitler objection” is that we have stepped into the middle of the story. It’s 1940 and we’re asking, “what are we going to do about Hitler?” As legitimate as that question is, we need to back up and ask this question first: How is it that Christians could wage war at Hitler’s behest? How did the land of Luther and the Reformation become the land of Nazis and the Holocaust? Hitler is as much a problem for Christian Just War theorists as for Christians who oppose war altogether. After all, Hitler waged his blitzkriegs with baptized soldiers sportingGott mit uns on their belt buckles. How did this happen? How was Hitler able to convince Christian soldiers to kill other Christians in Poland, France, and Russia? Hasn’t something gone tragically wrong with the church when Christians can be persuaded to kill other Christians in the name of ideology and nationalism? The enduring catastrophe of Constantine subverting the kingdom of God was that the politics of Jesus were set aside for the interests of empire. This eventually led to the shame of the crusades where Christians killed under the banner of the cross, and then to the horror of the two world wars where European Christians slaughtered one another by the millions.

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A Farewell to Mars: Brian Zahnd's Timely Send-Off to the God of War in an Age of Religious Violence — Andrew P. Klager

Zahnd, Brian. A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace. New York: David C. Cook, 2014. ISBN: 978-0781411189

Rarely do books on such timely topics combine the right mix of incisiveness, accessibility, and brilliant analysis in a single literary package, but Brian Zahnd has achieved this elusive synthesis in his most recent offering, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace. On the heels of the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings on D-Day, Zahnd has given us a remarkable overview of Jesus' peaceable kingdom as an alternative to the nationalism, patriotism, and militarism that define the political ethos of his own American homeland, even if it exists to a lesser degree in other countries around the world as well. "What Jesus called evil," Zahnd observes, "are the very things our cultures and societies have honored in countless myths, memorials, and anthems."

Poetic and perceptive, insightful and courageous, it's as though nearly every sentence is a tweet-worthy aphorism with the power to generate life-changing (or at least life-reexamining) cognitive dissonance among his many readers: "We sequester Jesus to a stained-glass quarantine and appropriate a trillion dollars for the war machine," Zahnd laments. Pervading the pages of this thin yet rigorous volume is a careful deconstruction of one of the most ingrained impulses in societies built on the soul-destroying munitions that rouse endless warfare: gratitude toward "our side" -- which is mistakenly equated with "God's side" -- for killing other human beings in order to preserve our so-called "freedom" (read "comfortable, affluent lifestyle"). As Zahnd remarks, "Freedom becomes a euphemism for vanquishing (instead of loving) enemies; truth finds its ultimate form in the will to power (expressed in the willingness to kill). This is a long way from the ideas of peace, love, and forgiveness set forth by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount." Indeed, "If we carefully examine how we use the word freedom," Zahnd challenges us, "it becomes apparent that we use it to sanction our perceived right to pursue happiness in a self-interested fashion."

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The definitive dismissal of the logic of violence - Cardinal Angelo Scola

An excerpt from the opening speech at Oasis conference for Christian-Muslim Dialogue

Breaking with Violence

The event of Christ appears as a super-abundant response to this hope that the religious history of man expresses. It constitutes an objective overcoming of the logic of violence and as such measures the past and the future of human history (‘I came into this world to judge’ (Jn 9:39). And thus it is that the commonest objection that from that moment onwards would be made did not concern so much the goodness of the new principle introduced by Christ as its practicability, which was said to be denied, first of all, by the numerous examples of unfaithfulness of Christians themselves. Without underestimating the importance of this appeal to a consistent personal and community life, Christian tradition saw the non-practicability of this idea at a purely human level as supreme witness (‘martyrdom’) to the divine at work in the world. It thus remained convinced that, with the grace of God, it is truly possible to ‘follow in the footsteps’ (1Pt 2:21) of the Crucified Christ who rose again. We are here truly at the heart of faith.

The definitive dismissal of the logic of violence that the paschal event brought with it is also the principal contribution which we as Christian believe that we can offer today to inter-religious dialogue.This was the great insight of Assisi and the message that Pope Francis has just repeated in the Holy Land, launching from the esplanades of mosques ‘make a heartfelt plea to all people and to all communities who look to Abraham: may we respect and love one another as brothers and sisters! May we learn to understand the sufferings of others! May no one abuse the name of God through violence! May we work together for justice and peace!’.(1) 

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(1) Pope Francis, Visit to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, 26 April 2014.

Winnowed Wisdom 2 - Ron Dart

The Seeker

Once upon a time there was a seeker who longed and thirsted to live the deepest and fullest life possible. The young person realized that the material world could never fulfill the deepest longings for meaning. So, a journey took place in which all sorts of retreats, silent meditations, postures, poses, breathing techniques, contemplative leaders and books were read and internalized. The young person travelled the world, lived and studied with the best and spent many a year in different communities and ashrams. The differences between the true and false self (in all sorts of subtle and crude ways) were probed and examined from a variety of angles and perspectives. The time came, eventually, when the young person returned to visit parents. A large dinner was put on to celebrate the homecoming and many arrived to greet the seeker. The festive time came to an end, one and all departed, and night welcomed each and all to sleep and slumber. The next day arrived and much cleaning had to be done about the home. The seeker slept in as the parents began the work of cleaning the dishes, floors and much else. When the young seeker rose from slumber and sleep, the parents asked for assistance in the cleaning from the celebrations of the previous night---a variety of reasons were brought forth for delaying assistance. The parents kindly suggested, with a wink and twinkle in their bemused eyes that, if truly awakened and enlightened, the washing of dishes and floors could be seen as a washing of dirt from the soul--the seeker was none too amused.

St. Anthony: Bows and Arrows

The desert in the early church was seen as a site of spiritual renewal--no distractions and diversions from the demands of city life. The silence and stillness meant the inner journey could go to greater contemplative depths. St. Anthony was known as a father of contemplative renewal and many gathered round him at his desert dwelling to absorb his time tried wisdom and insights. A visitor from the city took to the desert in search of Anthony. The deeper he went into the desert, the more he neared Anthony’s community—he followed the lead of many who pointed the way. The city visitor, being rather serious and ascetic by nature, was surprised, as he crossed a small sand dune, to hear much laughter. He decided to trek over to the place of all the merriment and ask the group where Anthony’s dwelling might be. The man was met by and older man and he asked him the way to Anthony’s community. The older man said, “I will tell you the way, but you must first do something for me“. The younger man willingly complied. The older man asked the young man to take his bow and put an arrow in it—the young man did so. Then, the old man asked the young man to pull the bow taut with the arrow in it---the young man did so. “Pull it yet tighter”, the old man said-- “And, again tighter”. The young man finally said, “The bow will break if I pull it much tighter”. “You are tight”, the old man replied--“so it is with the spiritual life---if we pull the bow of our soul too tight, we will break”. The old man then said to the city seeker, “I am Anthony, come and join us in our friendships and merriment”.

Ron Dart              

Spiritual Warfare and the Paganizing of Christianity - by Brad Jersak

 

Copyright Dominic Jersak - 2014

In these days where theological pendulums swing wildly, I’ve been giving special attention to errors – sometimes grave – that occur through over-corrections. As people of faith, I’m well aware of how Christian doctrine and practice has frequently steered wildly out of one ditch, only to veer across the road and plunge into another gulley on the opposite side. Sometimes we oppose something toxic, only to poison ourselves with a corresponding error from the opposite extreme. Or in retrieving something we had previously lost, we swallow the bathwater with the long lost baby. 

With that in mind, I want to reconsider how my very necessary rediscovery of spiritual reality may have also opened the door to ill-advised ancient mythologies—errors that Judaism had already expunged thousands of years ago. Herein, I will lay out my concern in stages for the reader to weigh, test and fact-check.  I’m claiming nothing definitive here … I am not teaching so much as raising the question for further examination.

In his classic work, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, the Hebrew scholar Yechezkel Kaufmann lays out the superiority and genius of Judaism vis-à-vis the pagan worldviews of the day. He treats the Jewish conception of the universe as a radical departure and contesting revelation—rather than a mere evolution from—ancient polytheistic conceptions.[1] Points 1-3 below are Kaufmann’s claims, which may be overstated, but should certainly be attended to by Christian scholars.

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[1] I was introduced to Kaufmann’s work through Dr. Christine Hayes’ course, “Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible),” lecture 2, which is entitled “The Hebrew Bible in Its Ancient Near Eastern Setting: Biblical Religion in Context.” Cf. http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145/lecture-2.