Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

On the Asceticism of the Eye: Beyond Repression to Encounter - Lazar Puhalo

ON THE ASCETICISM OF THE EYE

During this period of Great Lent, the question of fasting with the eyes arose during our weekly Pilgrimage Society spiritual evenings. In initiating a discussion on the subject, my mind was drawn to a working paper by philosopher Ivan Illich, "Guarding the Eye in the Age of Show."¹

Illich examines the changes in the concept of the gaze and convincingly argues that even the concept of what we do with the eyes has changed in often dramatic ways over the past few centuries. Consequently, when we use such terms, familiar to  Orthodox Christians, as "guarding the eyes," "fasting with the eyes" and "the asceticism of the eyes," we must realize that the concepts which originally traveled with these expressions have changed. In some cases, whole concepts and understandings of various aspects of vision, seeing,  gazing, looking, have vanished altogether. Indeed, more than 100 words dealing with the quality and meaning of seeing have vanished from our vocabulary over the past four centuries! This makes the task of the asceticism of the eye more difficult to grasp and to practice. The task is even more complicated by the carelessness in rendering translations of Orthodox prayers and terminology, a problem we will discuss later.

Tradition, traditions, traditionalism - Ron Dart

Tradition, traditions, traditionalism

Human Rights: Comedic and Tragic Realities

Problems with Tradition

Brad Jersak's "A More Christlike WORD" - Review by Joe Beach

What kind of book is the Bible? 
How should we read and interpret the Bible?
How should we tell the Bible’s story with our words and our lives?

 

Pre-order now on Amazon

These are the questions at the heart of this marvelous book by Dr. Brad Jersak. (A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way is now available for pre-order: CLICK HERE). 

The fancy word for the art and science of interpreting the Bible is Hermeneutics. For the first twenty years of my adult life, during and after college and seminary, I devoured everything I could get my hands on regarding the interpretation of Scripture, the doctrine of Scripture, the nature and authority of Scripture, you name it. It remains one of my life’s passions. One of the things I discovered early on is that there is indeed an art to it. Some people are good at it and some people aren’t – regardless of how much academic training they had obtained. I’m not saying that learning the basic principles of good Bible interpretation isn’t important. They are invaluable. I immersed myself in studying the importance of genre, context, figures of speech, progressive revelation, redemptive trajectory, translation theory, and the editing, collecting, and canonization of Scripture. I also studied the use of Scripture in the liturgy of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. But beyond all of that, there remains an art to it. I guess you could call it a mixture of intuitive insight, Holy Spirit-led common sense, and the guiding, protecting, guardrail-like presence of the interpretive community, both past, and present. Ultimately, we interpret the Bible together or not at all. Having said that, however, there’s one more essential element to this whole enterprise. There’s something more to reading the Bible well. And that something more is what Brad Jersak’s book discusses and discovers.

In the 1980s, Clark Pinnock wrote a book entitled, The Scripture Principle, which launched me on that lifelong quest I mentioned. In the last twenty years or so, I began to encounter a cascade of writers and thinkers who were helping me understand what I now consider to be the crucial ingredient in Biblical Interpretation: that of reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ. I knew in my gut that this was the right path. I learned that Jesus is the best place to start and the best place to end. I was reminded that Jesus is God’s Word in the fullest and truest sense. I was reminded that the best way to read the prophets and the poets and the apostles was to read them as Jesus taught us to read them: as being about Jesus, as pointing to Jesus, as witnesses to Jesus, as leading up to Jesus. In other words, the best way to read God’s Holy Bible is with Jesus Christ by our side: reading the Bible in Jesus, through Jesus, from Jesus, to Jesus, centered in Jesus, and beginning with Jesus. I began to learn that it is folly to journey into the Old Testament (or the New Testament) without Jesus as my guide. I committed myself to never venture into the Bible ever again unaccompanied by Jesus.

“Behold, mother, I make all things new” —Kenneth Tanner

 

Image by Denys Tymchyshyn UBP

Seventeen years ago a film premiered during Lent. The film is about these holy days we are entering, this sacred week that remakes the world.

There’s a scene in the film of Jesus falling flat on his face into a dusty road: surrounded by crowds, a crown of thorns on his head, the heavy timber he is carrying comes down hard on his back.

He falls at the intersection of an alleyway, where we see his mother collapsed against a wall in anguish as she waits in horror to glimpse her son, Jesus, passing by.

When Jesus hits the ground just yards from her, Mary flashes back to a moment when as a child Jesus stumbled and hurt himself. In the memory, Jesus runs to her in pain and she takes him into her arms of comfort.

BONHOEFFER'S ABILITY TO COPE WITH OTHER VIEWS by Josh Valley

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-074-16 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

“HE HAD A CRITICAL ABILITY TO COPE WITH OTHER VIEWS”
- REINHOLD SEEBERG

In this age of American hyper-identity politics and the resulting disintegration of political and religious discourse, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands as a model for developing integrated approaches to theology and public discourse through his independent critical engagement with both the liberal Protestant and dialectical/neo-orthodox schools of his day.

The most accurate portrayal of Bonhoeffer’s theological development should start with his best friend and authoritative biographer, Eberhard Bethge:

“At the root of his choice [to become a theologian] was a basic drive toward independence…the driving force in his life was the need for unchallenged self-realization” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Eberhard Bethge, 37).

Reinhold Seeberg, Bonhoeffer’s professor and dissertation advisor at the University of Berlin, also saw in the young Bonhoeffer a strong appetite for critical independent thought. In his evaluation of Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation, Sanctorium Communio, Sebeerg acknowledged Bonhoeffer as a gifted and ingenious theologian who “seeks to discover his own way” (The Cross of Reality, Gaylon H. Barker, 35). However, we should not assume Bonhoeffer’s drive for independence meant a total resistance to the leading theological movements of his day. In fact, it was the total opposite. “He was always prepared for intelligent discussion of other opinions,” writes Seeberg, “and had a critical ability to cope with other views” (Barker, 35).

Bonhoeffer’s independence and fearless drive to critically engage with a wide range of thought was also observed by his fellow students. For instance, Helmut Goes, a student who witnessed Bonhoeffer’s fierce and critical independence first hand, reflects on a debate that ensued between the student Bonhoeffer and his most senior professor (and family friend), Adolf von Harnack:

“I already noticed Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the very first sessions. Not just because he surpassed almost all of us in theological knowledge and ability; that was for me the most impressive thing. But what really drew me to Bonhoeffer was that here was someone who did not merely study and absorb the words and writings of some master, but who thought for himself…I actually had the experience (and to me it was rather alarming and a tremendous novelty) of seeing the young blond student contradict the revered polyhistorian His Excellency von Harnack politely, but contradicted him again and again. I no longer know the topic of discussion—Karl Barth was mentioned—but I still recall the secret enthusiasm I felt for this free, critical and independent theological thought” (Barker, 36).

In general, the liberal tradition of Bonhoeffer’s professors at the University of Berlin oriented their theology towards the world and human experience. Whereas the dialectical movement, lead by Karl Barth, revolted against this, seeking to re-orient theology towards God and revelation.

From the liberal tradition, Bonhoeffer learned “loyalty to the world and respect for what exists,” writes Jonathan Sorum (Barker, 38). Like his liberal professors, Bonhoeffer refused to make claims about God and his relationship with human beings that devalued their experience in the natural world or their humanity in general. “And while he leveled severe criticism against liberal theology, he could never escape what he believed to be its open and honest dealings with the world” (Barker, 47). However, seeing the weakness of liberal theology and its tendency to deny the realm of God, Bonhoeffer sided with Barth in his conviction that all theology must begin with God. But herein is where each school’s deficiencies lie according to Bonhoeffer:

Sorum tells us that the liberals “could only affirm the world by, in effect, denying God,” whereas Barth “could only affirm God by denying the world” (Barker, 38). In essence, the former tradition could only pursue ethics, whereas the latter could only pursue God. This of course did not reflect accurately the incarnation, where God in Jesus offers us the One whose love and mercy towards human beings has everything to do with our ethics in the world. So, even though Bonhoeffer’s fierce independence led him to critically engage and disagree with certain aspects of both schools of thought, much of his theology was still influenced by each tradition; he held the two in tension, developing a third way down the middle with Luther’s theology of the cross as his anchor and inspiration.

“Bonhoeffer had both radical and conservative thoughts.”

– Timothy Larson in Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture

“While gratefully borrowing from both the liberal tradition of his Berlin teachers and Karl Barth’s revolt against that tradition,” writes Jonathan Sorum, “Bonhoeffer went his own way, a way that he believed encompassed the main concern of both and at the same time avoided their serious deficiencies. Bonhoeffer conceived of this third way as an attempt to recover Luther” (Barker, 38).

The words “conservative” and “radical” are words that carry major cultural and political baggage, but in no way does Bonhoeffer or his credible scholars/biographers see Bonhoeffer embracing certain aspects of what we might call “conservative or progressive theology” as embracing extremist ideologies on either side, especially if one’s politics and theology leads to anything other than the merciful and loving Christ of the gospels who dignifies human beings with the divine kiss of love by becoming human. So we should be careful not to read into Bonhoeffer’s ability to cope with other views as him somehow being able to embrace and justify violent and dehumanizing extremism or discouraging critique of various unstable and toxic factions in American political and religious history. Context is most important, and Bonhoeffer’s independent critical thought ensures we are not selling our soul to the devil, but following Jesus with a critical theo-political edge rooted in the theology of the cross.

Many scholars have written about Luther’s significance in Bonhoeffer’s theological and ethical development, which for me came organically through studying Luther with Dennis Ngien at Tyndale University.

Quoting Sorum, I learned that in Luther’s theologia crucis, “God is not free from the world, but free for the world” (Barker, 38). He concludes, like many of us who have studied Luther and Bonhoeffer’s alignment, that Luther helped Bonhoeffer develop his one reality Christology (the “Christ-reality”), where ethics and God formed a whole in the Christ event.

“The church’s life in the world is God’s life in the world. So dogmatics and ethics are one … Luther [like Bonhoeffer] could do both dogmatics and ethics at the same time. For him, everything was one piece; dogmatics, ethics, God, human beings, and the world were all one reality, and not only was God really God within this one reality, but precisely God’s being God is what made everything else real. Bonhoeffer seeks to follow Luther” (Barker, 38).

Next up: My next article will start to develop what I am calling Bonhoeffer’s earthbound theology. Stay tuned!

Cornel West, Whiteness & Wall Street - by Wayne Northey

Cornel West - photo by Gage Skidmore

I first became involved with men in prison in 1974, at a time the first prison I visited (Oakalla Prison, Burnaby BC, Canada) still operated under a military regimen with many ex-military hired as guards; with an ex-air force serviceman as chaplain who liked telling stories of his martial arts prowess; and a shadowy group operated a kangaroo court to discipline those not/too-lightly punished by their superiors–“kangaroos” who too told stories of bravado and revenge. . . Like when four guards extracted a prisoner from the “hole” because he’d thrown a bucket of urine at one of them, and proceeded to beat the living sh*t out of him. . .

A fellow seminarian at the time, whom I had helped get his first job at Oakalla as a guard, as a newbie was summoned one night to keep watch in case the “IC”–in charge of the prison that night–might suddenly appear down the hall. . . When I suggested my friend should report the incident to his superiors who might care(?), he wouldn’t/didn’t. . .

During the next few months, I watched my friend turn, until for all intents he stopped being my friend; and started before that telling his own stories of how good it now was to know the guards always had his back. . . Until he told me after getting married that he dreaded having a son, for fear the son would one day find his way to prison. Until the marriage fell apart after the birth of a daughter. . . Until he changed his career, moved to Ontario, to one helping, not harming, others as an ambulance driver. . .  Until. . . I don’t know. I sadly never heard from him again. . .

In the 40 subsequent years of prison visitation (and still gratefully engaged with many “returned citizens”), of hearing thousands of times the clanging doors shut and the multiplied voices and testimonials of their keep; after a career retirement following 16 years as Executive Director of the same prison visitation/Restorative Justice Program that took me first to jail; I could still largely only imagine myself into the experience of being a prisoner. . .

So much less, can I imagine myself into the experience of being Black/minority ethnic in a white supremacist world. . .

All I can do for starters is (try at least to) listen. . . Still. . .

CLICK HERE to continue

The Great Banquet - Jonathan Foster

Luke records a story (14:15-24) where Jesus is tacitly invited to speak about the invitation list for the "banquet in God's Kingdom." For our purposes here, the "banquet in God's kingdom" loosely refers to our eschatological views (e.g., the future, salvation, the "day of the Lord," rewards, punishment, and judgment). 

He responds with a story, and this is my quick summary here, about a gracious person inviting a number of people to a lavish banquet, only to be rudely rebuffed and rejected. The banquet is still happening, so the host sends out a second group of invitations, but with a bit of a change, because it's obvious that the second group's social-economic status isn't as strong as those in the first group. 

First, regarding the people not showing up, it seems reasonably discerning to say that it's not because the host is mad, angry, wrathful, uncaring, or out to punish people as much as it is… well, they're just not showing up! It is a type of judgment, but it's not a punitive judgment administered by an outside, angry deity looking to vent his wrath upon people; instead, it's a consequential judgment. The person is simply self-selecting out of the host's gracious invitation. 

Said another way, we are punished more by our sins than for our sins. 

(The preposition makes all the difference.) All those who refuse the invitation to lay down their scapegoating obsessions, their sacrificial views, their unwillingness to see others as a brother or sister will be cut off from the fellowship of the host. Not because the host isn't gracious (Good grief, he's invited everyone!) No, it's because they opted out. 

Imagine showing up at a party that you had nothing to do with and then having the audacity to complain about who else has been invited to the party? Not only that but then to leave before the party even gets started? 

I have been hearing a certain refrain, a type of catchy chorus that's been repeated by lots of religious people in my life for the last few years. It’s something like, “You need to talk more about sin. Call out sin. Remember, God is holy. He can't be around sin.” And, “When are we going to get back to calling sin, 'sin'“? The refrain repeats over and over in a variety of different iterations. 

The air is so thick with irony that it's hard to gain the oxygen one needs to sing a different melody because, in all the religious person's obsession with naming, defining, calling out sin, they miss their own judgmental, exclusionary, arrogant disposition… which is a sin.

Sinners calling out sin is the most ridiculous thing any of us have ever heard, and yet that's the foundation of our religious system. 

Second, regarding the people who responded positively to the invitation. We must understand that in Jesus’ day, the prevailing thought was that people in the second group, the lame, the crippled, the diseased, the beggars, the disabled… they were in a lower-status-crowd for a reason. What was the reason? In a word: sin. They had done something to deserve their lot in life. (It’s the prevailing thought in our day too!)

But this story, and others that Jesus told, unpack the ideas that…
a) Life cannot be reduced to such a simplistic view. It rains on the just and the unjust. You can't trace one's problems back to any one “good” or “bad” decision a person makes. Life is complex.
b) Even if you could reduce one person's life down to a mistake they made, the person is still being invited to The Great Banquet. What does that say about your particular religious system's criteria for being invited? 
c) We're all undeserving of the invite. When I say undeserving, I'm not suggesting I believe that humans are worthless, broken, hopelessly faulted, and/or corrupted. Rather, simply, that we're all on the receiving end of this thing. None of us have earned our status. Life is a gift.

Ironically, JC is at a dinner party, being asked his opinion about THE Dinner Party. And yet, he's there… at that dinner party. Get it? He's already there. Ha, in other words, the kingdom of God had already begun. The story was playing out right in front of them. And as it turned out religious leaders at that dinner party were some of the very same people who refused to follow the way of Jesus. And the story was playing out right in front of the "second class" folks, too. The people being healed on the Sabbath (which in Matthew’s account, took place right before Jesus’ Great Banquet story) were some of the people who fell in love with the way of Jesus. (Yes, like Inception, a story within a story.)

Here's my simple interpretation: God is graciously throwing a party. The people showing up are not the people you imagine showing up. The people showing up are the castaways. Actually, wait, we’re all something like "castaways," so we should just respond with gratitude.

Revel in the magnanimous grace. Do the best you can. Rejoice. You’ve been accepted. Eat. Pray. Love. (Ha, yes, maybe so Elizabeth Gilbert.) The story is playing out right in front of you. 

Enjoy the banquet. 

The Great Banquet is reposted with permission from Jonathan Foster. It originally appeared on his blog, www.jonathanfosteronline.com/blog which we encourage readers to visit. 

Lynn Cohick & Amy Brown Hughes, "Christian Women in the Patristic World" - Reflection by Robert Fantauzzi

Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).  

     One theme that stands out in Cohick & Hughes’ Christian Women in the Patristic World is that of women exercising their agency in a patriarchal world via novel, creative, and subversive ways; this short reflection will focus on four female figures: Thecla, Perpetua, Felicitas, and Blandina to illustrate this creative agency[1]. 

     Starting with Thecla, we see a woman who rejects the Roman status quo and ‘place of women’ by her refusal to marry,[2] but also in her insistence on modesty in public and through her self-expression.[3]  Second, after initially being refused baptism by Paul – over fears that she still may yet fall into temptation – Thecla later declares herself to have been baptised after her ordeal in the pool with the seals; a claim Paul accepts.[4]  When Thecla is faced with fighting in the arena naked, as to humiliate her, she maintains her dignity and agency by telling the Roman governor “…that God has clothed her with salvation” and seeming to imply that she is the one truly clothed whilst the arena crowd – lacking God’s clothing – are the truly naked ones.[5]  Further, during the story of Thecla we can see Roman women in the arena exercising their agency when they, in spite of Roman tradition, begin to cry out against the horrors they are witnessing in the arena with Thecla and the miscarriage of justice.[6]

     With Perpetua, we see a woman exercising her agency by assuming the persona of a male when she is forced to face ‘the Egyptian’ in the arena and she is rubbed with oil by the young men, becoming male herself and defying traditional gender expectations.[7]  As well, Perpetua shows her agency via her numerous rejections of her father’s pleas to drop her Christian witness and make sacrifices, thus defying the traditional Roman custom of pietas.[8]  As Perpetua’s situation becomes more desperate, so do her father’s pleas, but she holds fast to her beliefs and agency, and is even unmoved by his final jailcell appeal.[9]  Finally, Perpetua’s agency is demonstrated in her inversion of traditional expectations of what a woman should attend to; traditionally, this would be “…sustaining the family’s wealth, land, and progeny”[10] but Perpetua’s focus is on “…the eternal fate of her family members.”[11]

     With Felicitas, we see a woman exercising her agency by asking for an early delivery of her baby so that she might meet her death on her terms alongside her fellow Christians, and not be executed later alongside criminals and the like.[12]  As well, Felicitas shows agency via her rejection of traditional Roman expectations for women when she delivers a tongue-lashing to her captors and tormentors when they threaten that her suffering will only increase because of her obstinacy,[13] and through the self-image she holds – not of a slave-girl but a Christ-like figure giving birth to a child.[14]  With Blandina, we see her agency by her refusal to break under torture and resistance to death so that she may also die on her terms,[15] her refusal to break while in the arena,[16] and – most importantly – through her subversion of the destruction of status and humanity that is the arena through her mothering.[17]

Questions for Theoretical discussion:

1. Is part of the reason that we haven’t heard a great deal about the female martyrs and ‘mothers’ because they are actually far more subversive than men? Do their stories and their witness challenge the position of men in the Christian narrative?
2. In the end, was targeting the Roman familial system and attempting to subvert it the right course for Christians to follow?
3. Is Christianity ashamed of the role of women in its past? Is it a matter of shame over the way Christianity has treated women? Is it straight-up misogyny? Does the existing gender arrangement inside the Church currently offer more equal status or is there still a way to go?

Jersak and Young's "The Pastor: A Crisis" (audiobook) - review by Rob Grayson

I’m indebted to my friend Brad Jersak.

 

There are many reasons why I’m indebted to Brad, but on this specific occasion, it’s because a few months ago he gifted me a free copy of the audiobook version of his latest book The Pastor: A Crisis, co-written with Paul Young, author of The Shack. I promised to listen to it and share some thoughts by way of an informal review. I did listen to it… and promptly forgot to share any thoughts. Mea maxima culpa. So here I am, very late: but better late than never.

 

Before turning to the content of The Pastor, I need to first say something about the audiobook version in particular. The thing is, I don’t generally get on with audiobooks. I think this is principally because the format isn’t well suited to my preferred learning style. The spoken word piped into my ears just doesn’t hold my attention like the printed word on a page, so that I often find my mind wandering, which means I end up frequently having to rewind to catch up on what I missed hearing. With printed matter, I can read as quickly or as slowly as I like, underline passages I find particularly striking, scribble notes in the margins and flick back and forth as needed.

 

All of which meant that, while I was interested to find out what The Pastor was all about, I didn’t relish the prospect of having to slog through it in audiobook format.

But.

 

Listening to this audiobook (produced by Boyd Barrett) was unlike the experience of any other audiobook I’ve ever listened to. Where many audiobooks have a single narrator who might do their best to adapt their voice and/or accent for different characters, The Pastor has a complete and varied multi-person cast. Add to that it's clearly very high production value, and what you have is really more like a radio play than just a plain old book. For me, the listening experience really was quite compelling, so that I found myself really connecting with the characters and being drawn into their story.

 

So, as far as the listening experience goes, The Pastor gets a big thumbs-up from me.

 

Now, what to say about the content? In short, the story is about a fundamentalist pastor who, after apparently suffering some kind of mental and/or emotional breakdown, finds himself in a hospital psychiatric ward where, if he is to find freedom and healing, he must first come to terms with his past, wrestle with his demons and be reconciled to himself and the world. The Pastor narrates and explores this broken man’s journey from striving and control, through failure and despair, and ultimately to renewed hope and redemption. It might aptly be described as a story of death and resurrection, with one proviso: if death happens on Friday and resurrection on Sunday, much of the journey narrated in The Pastor happens on Saturday.

 

Narrating as it does the journey between death and resurrection, The Pastor does not shy away from dark subject matter: shame, unworthiness, self-hatred, and abuse are among the issues it explores. And when I say explores, I mean it rolls up its sleeves and gets stuck right in up to the elbows: it gets real, and it gets messy. There were moments when I winced while listening. If you’re looking for unalloyed sweetness and light, this ain’t it; squeamish readers/listeners need not apply. On the other hand, if you’ve had about as much as you can stomach of happy-clappy, faux-positive, saccharine spirituality and long for something that’s refreshingly real and fearlessly honest, The Pastor might be just what you’re looking for.

 

The Pastor is the story of one man, but it’s also the story of every man and every woman. We all have deep places of shame – places we find too painful to expose, even to ourselves; but if we’re to find true wholeness, we must have the courage to surrender our pride and self-will and allow ourselves to be led on a journey through the valley of the shadow of death to the place where we can feast at an overflowing table, even in the presence of our enemies. The Pastor is a clever kind of allegory of that journey.

 

I think one of the reasons the story feels so authentic is that in telling it the two authors, Jersak and Young, each draws from their own deep, personal experience. Each has been through fire and carries scars that will no doubt always be with them; but each has also met the Healer and allowed him to walk with them along the painful but necessary and ultimately liberating road to healing and wholeness. This means that, far from offering platitudes and armchair psychology, The Pastor draws from a deep well of hard-won insight, and it shows.

 

In summary, The Pastor is quite unlike any other book I’ve ever read (or listened to!). If you’ll let it, it will take you on an emotional journey that will invite you to consider and confront your own deepest darkness and fears and, with the help of the Wounded Healer, find the way to renewed hope, redemption, and purpose. I commend it to you.

Houses of Hate - Wayne Northey

"Dangerous, racist and falling apart. By nearly every metric, the nation’s penal system is not just failing, it’s making things worse."

By Justin Ling February 28, 2021

Photo: Medium security range at Stony Mountain Institution in Stony Mountain, Manitoba (Correctional Services Canada/Flickr)

Wayne Northey: The article highlighted above does not sugar-coat the reality: Canadian prisons (and for that matter most around the world) are indeed “Houses of hate.”

Senator Kim Pate as mentioned in the article has been a leading voice for prison reform in Canada. There have been many before her: women such as Agnes MacPhailalmost a century ago; more recently Claire Culhane¹ and Ruth Morris, another intrepid abolitionist. (There is more about the latter two in the paper mentioned below.)

But meaningful “reform” beyond mere window-dressing, like a desert mirage, seems simply never to arrive . . . Anywhere!

What rather is needed is prison abolition, as I delineate in this paper: Restorative Justice: Peacemaking Not Warmaking; Transformative Justice: Penal Abolitionism Not Prison Reform, written for The Kenarchy Journal, an exciting venture launched in 2019, highlighting a “politics of love,” and:

Promoting overall wellbeing by

• Instating women
• Prioritising children
• Advocating for the poor
• Welcoming strangers
• Reintegrating humanity and the environment
• Restoring justice to prisoners
• Healing the sick

The paper above is due for inclusion this year in the spring edition.

On prison abolition I write in part (highlighting theological aspects):

In light of this brief consideration of the unmitigated failure of prison, Lee Griffith, adduced above begins his study, The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition with:

The gospel is profoundly scandalous, and until we hear at least a whisper of its scandal, we risk not hearing any part of it.

Doubtless part of the scandal is Christian believers must be significantly at odds with centuries-long Western Criminal Justice convention.²

…

But I shall move on to his understanding of New Testament prison and justice. In biblical “principalities and powers” language, prison is ever associated with the power of death. He writes:

As such, the problem is not that prisons have failed to forestall violent criminality and violent rampages; the problem is that prisons are identical in spirit to the violence and murder that they pretend to combat . . . Whenever we cage people, we are in reality fuelling and participating in the same spirit we claim to renounce.³

Therefore, when Jesus announced in Luke 4⁴ “freedom to the prisoners,” it broadcasts a renunciation of . . . the power of death, and it therefore points toward the resurrection itself.⁵

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"In Great Measure" - Enemy-Love & the Holy Spirit - Eric H. Janzen

In Great Measure

Eric H Janzen

Sometimes you don’t know what will happen to you when you sit down, coffee in hand, to spend some time reading. You can’t predict how a certain phrase or idea may abruptly take hold of your mind and heart, find a space to live, and never leave.

In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus teaches something so challenging that you hope you maybe heard him wrong. Yet, you didn’t…you heard him right: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…. A more challenging statement is difficult to imagine. Why would we do this? Why would we choose such a counterintuitive way of living in relation to our enemies? He goes on to tell us why: …so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven.... In verse 48, Jesus even takes this command to love our enemies to yet one more impossible level. He says if we love our enemies, we shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. This teaching of Jesus isn’t new to me but it has spent the last few years becoming the command I ponder the most. It causes me plenty of angst. At times, it even makes me angry. However, most of the time it fills me with wonder and questions.

How did I end up in this pondering state? I had read this passage many times in my life but was never particularly perturbed by it…mostly because I couldn’t understand or connect with the profound truth and reality in the words. As I mentioned in the opening lines above, it would take reading to cause the eyes of my heart to open and see just how deep (and troublesome) these words truly were.

There was a man named Saint Silouan the Athonite who had an incredible understanding of Jesus’ words. He believed something about this command that shook me and took hold of my heart. In his book, Remember Thy First Love, Archimandrite Zacharias, speaking of St. Silouan, puts it this way:

“St. Silouan said that love for our enemies is the surest criterion of the presence of Holy Spirit in us: whosoever loves his enemies possesses the Holy Spirit in great measure.”[1]

It is one of those statements that cause you to take a deep breath…pause…and put the book down. St. Silouan believed that the deepest sign, the surest mark, of the Holy Spirit living in us is this ability to choose love for our enemies instead of what we want to choose, which seems more natural to most of us. When faced with those we consider enemies, we do not think to show them love, but rather we think to avoid them, repel them, punish them, prove them wrong, resort to violence…I’m sure you can think of other responses you would have in the face of an enemy. The worst of it is hatred. We all know the feeling of it.

Yet, I cannot escape these words. Love your enemies…if you love your enemies, it is a mark of the living Presence of Holy Spirit indwelling my heart. This is my own deepest desire. To be the home of God, a resting place for Him…to know Him. How am I to meet this challenge? How can I become like Jesus and stretch out my hands in love and not violence when faced with an enemy? This isn’t Sunday School spirituality anymore. This isn’t the forgettable Sunday sermon. These are the words of God spoken in Jesus: Be perfect like your Abba in heaven: love your enemies and pray for them. This is where the heart must gather courage and be honest: I’m not sure I can do this but I want to be filled by the Holy Spirit in ‘great measure’. I love Him. I can’t imagine not doing all I can to be that heart where He finds the kind of home He wants to live in.

And so, I ponder these inescapable words of Jesus, underscored by the words of St. Silouan. It has taken hold of my heart and my mind. I find myself taking small steps, deliberately choosing to pray for those I consider my opposites in thinking and theology. I have begun praying for those who act in ways that I would never choose to.

I can’t sit here and write that I have this all figured out. I don’t. Yet, there is something I have realized, which is helping me to follow Jesus in His Way of enemy-loving…love. We can’t learn to love our enemies in our own strength. This isn’t our natural way as human beings. We need help to do this. This is why loving our enemies becomes such a powerful sign of the Spirit’s Presence: it is His transformation of our hearts that creates in us a new way of being that allows us to become like Jesus and truly love our enemies. We begin this deep journey the same way we began our journey with Jesus in the first place: with a ‘Yes, I am willing,” prayer.

There is a beautiful mystery along this difficult road of learning to love our enemies, a wild hope that stands up and looks the spirits of fear and hatred in the eye with incredible strength. This hope says, “One day, I will be incapable of enmity and I will not see an enemy in anyone.” Until that day, I will continue to pray and invite Holy Spirit to change my heart so that I have the courage to love those who may see in me their enemy and to love those in whom I see mine. I want to become someone in whom the Holy Spirit lives “in great measure”. That sounds perfect to me.

 

[1] Zacharias, Archimandrite. Remember Thy First Love (Revelation 2:4-5) The Three Stages of the Spiritual Life in the Theology of Elder Sophrony. Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2016. p.318