Questions for Open and Relational Theologians - Where is God for the Dying Giraffe?

We, in the open and relational process world, say that God is a loving presence in the universe, beckoning creatures on our planet, through a process of evolution, to a variety of forms of life, two of which are giraffes and crocodiles. Are-predator-prey relations a result of God's beckoning? Is it God's will that creatures eat one another? Why so much suffering? Is it truly reasonable to speak of a God of tender love, when there's so much violence? I struggle with this. Read the page and help me out.

Questions for Open and Relational Theologians

Divine love is pluriform: God loves in numerous ways to promote the well-being of people, other creatures, and all creation. - Thomas Oord

Where is God for the Dying Giraffe?

"It was a beautiful, peaceful day as I sat in a blind overlooking a small lake at the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Since this reserve is home to the Big Five, I was on high alert to see as many beautiful animals as possible. 

Nature did not disappoint, at least not at first. I had seen and shared space with a huge number of beautiful creatures as I sat munching on a sandwich and marveling at what I was experiencing. Soon, a gorgeous giraffe came up to quench its thirst. Since giraffes are so tall, they have to splay their front legs out quite far to lower their heads for a drink which makes them vulnerable. The spreading of their legs is a very gradual, slow, and deliberate process. And, once they are down, they cannot move quickly back to a standing and running position.

As this graceful giraffe began its drinking vigil, it became a victim of crocodiles. They were in hiding and surged up from the water bringing down this innocent animal who was simply trying to get a drink.

Needless to say, I was not only startled but bereft. The giraffe struggled and cried out. I wanted to help it but, of course, I could not. Nature was in process and I was only a witness. I had seen other kills like lions taking down a springbok or zebra, but there was something about this kill that overwhelmed me. The giraffe was so very vulnerable. It was not a fair fight or in any way merciful. It almost seemed like the crocodiles were taking delight in the suffering of their prey as it struggled to free itself from their grasp. Instead of just chomping the juggler, the crocs took turns maiming and drowning the giraffe as it cried out. I wanted to shout out to the mean crocs to let go!!!! My empathy for the giraffe and my dismay at the crocs' seeming cruelty did not save the giraffe. I felt as helpless as the dying giraffe."

- Nita Gilger, There can be Sadness in Holding On

* * * * * * *

Does God Love Animals?

Dear Dr. Jay McDaniel,

Thank you for recommending that I learn about open and relational (process) theologies with their idea of a relational, loving God. I like much of what they say when it comes to human beings. But it's the other ninety-nine percent of life, including the animals, that makes me doubt the God even of open and relational theology.

As you know, I gave up on God many years ago because “he” seemed so callous when it comes to animals and their suffering.

I gave up on Christianity, too. Some of my Christian friends say that animals don't really matter to God, that they are "put here" just for us to enjoy. They seem not to care about animals at all, except maybe their pets. But even the more ecologically-minded among them talk more about "global warming" and "environmental destruction" than about individual animals. They are concerned with about the web of life but not nodes in the web, about endangered species but not vulnerable animals.

Here I'm not talking about vulnerable animals under human subjugation: the animals we eat for food, or use in scientific experiments, or ride in rodeos, or abandon on the streets. They matter to me a lot, but they're not the ones I'm concerned with here. Take a look at the photo above of the giraffe being eaten by crocodiles and read the account. Let the giraffe be the "vulnerable animal."

You explained that, for some open and relational (process) theologians, animals do matter. For them, you said, God shares in the suffering of individual animals and seeks their well-being, even as God also seeks the well-being of human beings and the planet as a whole. I asked what I might read and you mentioned your own book of many years ago: Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life. You also pointed me to a more recent book by Bethany Sollereder called God, Evolution and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall and one by Thomas Oord called Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being.

You recommended Dr. Oord's book as the one I read first, because it introduces open and relational theology in a general way. I just finished the book and am left with five questions. All are subsets of a single question: Where is God for the Dying Giraffe? I hope you might share the five questions with him or with other open and relational thinkers. Here they are:

• How does the giraffe feel God's presence, even if in an unconscious way? Is God's presence what process theologians call an initial aim: that is, a lure to live with satisfaction relative to the situation at hand?

• Do crocodiles also feel God's luring presence? Do they, too, feel God's immanence as a lure to live with satisfaction? Is their hunger a response to God's lure?

• If God lures the giraffe and the crocodiles toward these competing aims, is God conflicted? Or does God take sides?

• Nita Gilger writes:

"The giraffe was so very vulnerable. It was not a fair fight or in any way merciful. It almost seemed like the crocodiles were taking delight in the suffering of their prey as it struggled to free itself from their grasp. Instead of just chomping the juggler, the crocs took turns maiming and drowning the giraffe as it cried out."

Would the giraffe's suffering be an example of what you call genuine evil? I'm not blaming the crocodiles here. But I am talking about the giraffe's pain.

• Why, from an open and relational perspective, are there predator-prey relations in the first place? I know that, according to Thomas Oord, God did not set up the initial conditions of life on earth single-handedly. But did God play a role in bringing about predator-prey? If so, is God still loving and empathetic? Would it not be more plausible to say that God doesn't really care about individuals? And if that's the case, would God really be all-loving?

I hope you'll share these questions with Thomas Oord or some other open and relational thinkers? For my part, I'm still doubtful of God. It seems to me that, if there is a God, "he" doesn't really care about individual animal lives, and that we who do care are, in our way, more loving than God. I hate to say this, but I can't think of a way out.

Need help,

​

​Delores

Pluriform Love: An Open and

Relational Theology of Well-Being

Excerpts from Thomas Oord:​

"The God of uncontrolling love acts moment by moment and exerts causal influence upon all. God acts first as a cause in every moment of every creature’s life. Creatures feel this influence, even when they are not conscious of it. There is no time when, and no location where, God is not present and influencing."

"God does not create evil, and God did not singlehandedly determine the conditions for it to occur."

"We can solve the primary dimensions of the problem of evil by saying God can’t prevent evil singlehandedly, empathizes with the hurting, works to heal, endeavors to bring good from bad, calls creatures to join in overcoming evil, and does not create evil."

Why Isn't Divine Love Enough?

by R.E. Slater

As you can see here in these postings there is the introduction of the problem of sin and evil without any conclusion and has been left for the reader to try to answer.

Let's first assume the general teachings of the church that creation is good, and holy, and loving. This is how it was originally created as shared in the Genesis story about the Garden of Evil. Typically, the church then goes on to assert that at the Fall of Adam and Eve all of creation then fell with them.

And here lies the paradox. How could a "perfect" creation fall? Was it ultimately a failure of God's? Was God not wise enough, far looking enough, not persuasive enough in His work of creating creation?

Or perhaps God was not strong enough, too weak, too relenting, to permissive with creation?

Just what was creation's raison d'etre if it were not to become the very thing God wanted it to be? How could a good, loving God create such a paradox? Especially one that looks like a disaster on every level?

• A creation which is physically conflicted - human disabilities for instance or those "tweener" stages of evolutionary development responding too slowly or too quickly to the conditions around it?

• Or a creation which is psychologically conflicted - something along the lines of the Apostle Paul who said, "We/It wishes to do good but cannot do good."

Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? (Romans 7.13)

• Or a creation which is spiritually conflicted? 

"...but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves." (John 5.42)

In everyway which we might describe creation we find its fallenness, not its holiness, goodness, or love. And yet, creation's very definition is not by its lack, but by its very character as birthed of God IN God's very image (Imago Dei).

Creation may be described as sinful or fallen but its truer character or nature is that it IS of God, is SUSTAINED by God, and will be COMPLETED by God. During all these phases from birth to life to death God is the One who defines us - as well as our fallenness from God's divine love.

Whatever else you know of church teachings remember WE are OF God birthed to LOVE, to BE, and to BECOME. Death is the completion of this cycle. It is the next step towards God's intended BECOMING. Death is not the end, except as the end of pain, suffering, tragedy, sin and evil. Death is the next step towards discovering LIFE in its intentional design when first presented to a freewill creation.

Moreover, God did not "rule" creational freewill... freewill came from God's Person in the form of love... NOT by divine fiat as the church so blithely proclaims so wrongly. God births God's Self.

When we give birth to children we do not RULE how they shall become. NO. Children our birthed out of the essence of their parents with capacities both wonderful or horrifying. As parents we give children love, loving direction, loving care, and loving openness that they may become a loving version of their Father God Creator... along with our talents and abilities.

None of these character qualities can be RULED into becoming. We take what's there in the modeling clay and to the best of our abilities mold children into images which may give life, freedom, beauty, and kindness into this world.

So has God. Not by fiat but by love.

Small Ukrainian Child

Creation is fallen. We are fallen. No amount of (i) human ability (sic, Mother Teresa), or (ii) religious activity (sic, the Pharisees of Jesus' day such as the Apostle Paul once named Rabbi Saul for his energetic zest of Judaism), or (iii) physical denial (sic, Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox slavish, monkish rituals of chastity, abstinence, or chastisement of any kind) may produce atoning redemption.

No, Jesus alone is the One through whom atoning redemption comes. Jesus, as God in the flesh incarnated, who sacrificed Himself physically, psychologically, and spiritually, that in all areas of human living - or creational becoming - we might be freed from sin and enabled by God's Spirit to lean into - if not wholly lean into - lives of love and loving embrace.

God's Spirit, just like God's Self, does not come by divine rule, dominion, or power. But by loving embrace, entrance, wellbeing, care, kindness, and wholeness, as only God can give any part of creation.

Creation was formed for goodness and wellbeing. Happily death is part of creation that it may one day cease from its groanings and sufferings to come to know a fullness of life not grasped in this life of the in-between.

For between divine birth and a life's end indeterminancy rules. Our passions and evolved abilities drive us towards individual fulfillment, whether man or beast. A crocodile is not a giraffe. A giraffe is not a crocodile. We are not the wind. Nor is the flood like ourselves.

The gift of life isn't a guarantee of avoiding sin and evil. It but begins a life towards fulfillment as well as disappointment, dismay, even ruin. Through it all God's presence is there, living within these creational spaces, living with His creation in the good times and the bad.

We pray for peace for all living things. We pray for peace in this world and ones to come at the hands of our progeny. We pray that societies learn to live with one another in goodness and peace. And we pray we, as human civilizations, learn to live with creation in proper ecological balance and wellbeing.

The cycles of life and death, not unlike the cycles of spiritual life and death, are the only constants in an evolving creation. We do not know its outcome but we do know its Creator. And as Creator, God in His love and wisdom and filling presence goes before us, around us, within us, filling us with His love, and purpose, and desires.

Amen and Amen,

R.E. Slater

March 10, 2022

* * * * * * *

A Covid19 molecule

An Unsolvable Paradox

Should this help...

This is what I was going to write...

As a process thinker I have come to think about sin and suffering as a result of the divine freedom and love we, as any part of creation has, received. The conflicting result is a supreme paradox to the avowed divine creation of a loving God.

How could such harm and suffering come from such an innocent act as the birthing of the divine IMAGO centered in love and beauty? The purity and self-giving efficaciousness of the act of God stuns me into silence. Surely sin and evil cannot be such a byproduct of so grand a gift??

And yet, the very cycles of life contains within them cycles of pain and death. If I were an Eastern wiseman or wisewoman I would perhaps have a comment as to the necessity for such a Ying-Yang cycle. But I am not. I am Western and Christian in orientation and am not very well acquainted with the religious and moral wisdoms of the East, though I am thoroughly acquainted with the cynicisms of the West.

When I look at the Genesis account of creation I see behind it the struggle of the Hebrew ascetics struggling to answer this same age-old question against their own backgrounds of religious ethics and human morals.

Process theology comes the closest to restoring to me the sense of the love of God in all divine acts of divinity and creation. Of the uncontrolling and necessary gift of divine love inlaid upon the very heart of nature, mankind, and cosmos tells me of the consequential results of indeterminant freewill used to either love or not love.

But there is also the question of death, of pain, of sin and evil. How could a God of life even begin to accede to the realities of love's "other side" of darkness? Where "creational freewill + freewill act" may not be equal to the life and beauty and grand sunsets but more meanly described in harming family dysfunctionalism, personal or societal cruelties, or institutionalized desensitization to the suffering of others?

No, the divine act of love is a mystery. Nor can it be all on creation to act forthrightly when even the act of love is supremely hard to accomplish. And in the divine act of atonement through God's Self as witnessed in God's Incarnational Birth in Jesus, we still see the act of love confounded in a thousand different ways.

Unfortunately sin and death and suffering and injustice seemed the inconsequential acts of not only love gone wrong, but it's opposite ying-yang struggle for personal survival in the face of need using our/creation's baser instincts which overwhelm us in our sense of self to whatever this thing we call life really is.

These are age-old questions which have no simple answers. Not religiously,  Christianly, or morally, though many have attempted it many times. The mystery of creational theodicy (e.g., the problem of sin and evil) is a question not only left to theologians to answer but to the despairing mom or dad whose children are at risk of malnutrition, societal harm, continuing health complications, lack of proper clothing, who ask these same questions every moment of their lives.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

March 10, 2022

 

God Is Love

7 Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God was revealed [a]in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the [b]propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us, because He has given to us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has [c]for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear [d]involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

Center-Set v. Boundary-Set Maintance - "The Ties that Bind that Must be Broken," Parts 1-3

There is No Spoon: Christian Boundary Maintenance

http://johnwhawthorne.com/2013/11/25/there-is-no-spoon-christian-boundary-maintenance/

by John W. Hawthorne

November 25, 2013

I have been fascinated with the idea of social networks since taking a great course in grad school when social network analysis was just beginning. In some ways, the question of who’s in and who’s out is a connecting thread that runs across my career.

My dissertation was on people who regularly attend church but never join (I saw them as boundary poachers, although the findings proved more complicated than that). I used network analysis to study three congregations and their relationship patterns in the early 90's (but I didn’t pay enough attention to bridging capital — more [on that] later).

Perhaps that research is what led me to be so critical of the effort we put into maintaining boundaries. I distinctly remember hearing a Focus on the Family broadcast telling of a group of school children playing at a newly constructed playground. Well-intentioned psychologists, it was argued, believed that they didn't want to limit the children's sense of adventure and so didn’t put fences around the school yard. The children, not knowing where the edges were, huddled anxiously in a clump being afraid to venture out. The chagrined psychologists had fences put up and then the children played happily in their new playground.

Parenthetically, I once put my university library staff along with the psych department to work to locate the original source [of this study]. It appears to be apocryphal though regularly repeated in blogs, sermons, and parenting articles. (A google scholar search just now came up pretty empty.)

Trafalgar Square, London, England

Anyway, when I heard the report I knew what was wrong. They were looking in the wrong direction for meaning. It’s not at the edges but at the center. I suggested to a friend (as I have repeated for years) that the solution isn’t to focus on the fences but the build a monolith in the center of the playground and tell the children they can play where ever they want as long as they can see the statue. The picture of Trafalgar square is as close as I’ve come to capturing what I had in mind.

The same ideas apply to Christian identity. If we spend all our time exploring the edges that separate us from others, we’re investing in creating and maintaining boundaries that function to that end. If this boundary weakens, we have to go and repair it right away like a rancher keeping the cattle in.

Instead, we can rest in the New Testament image of the Shepherd who knows His sheep and walks in their midst. They listen for him and move when he moves.

But we keep trying to build fences. I think this is a normal sociological process. We like to be with people like us. So we spend our energies creating points of separation that keep the outsiders out (and the insiders in). It’s an effective form of social control and identity marking, but it is a far cry from the outreach of the Gospel.

Spend just a few days reading Facebook or Twitter and you’ll see this in operation. We find things about which to be offended: how dare you say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas? Women can teach Sunday School but not preach (there was a great blog but I lost it). We have church trials surrounding a Methodist minister who officiated at his gay son’s wedding. We separate the Wesleyans from the Calvinists. We separate over science and faith. Don’t get me started on the Christians engaged in political fights on Facebook, calling each other out for not being True Christians.

In my Spirituality, Faith, and Justice class Thursday night, we were discussing the role of narrative in the pursuit of justice and the common good. This combined readings from Michael Sandel’s Justice and Walter Brueggemann’s Journey to the Common Good. Attending to story can bind us together. The real task, paraphrasing Brueggemann, is to reconstruct community in such a way as not not privilege one group over another but validate all stories.

The Strength of Weak Ties, by Mark Grannovetter

I was attempting to illustrate this by drawing on the distinction between "bonding social capital" and "bridging social capital." In that context, I returned to a classic piece of modern sociology — Mark Grannovetter’s The Strength of Weak Ties. Grannovetter argued that tightly bonded groups are good for social support but bad at building connections. For that, we need weak ties — the acquaintanceships that tell us about job prospects or allow information to be tested against reality.

The tightest relationships are not the most powerful when

we need to broaden our reach within the organization.

For a quick explanation, check out this link from Information Week (where I got the graphic). The implication of the graph is that the energy in a strong tie group is expended inward. This provides a clear sense of who is in and who is out. The energy of a weak tie group is always expended outward — one never knows which of the surrounding circles is the source of potential contacts or information.

In the context of the class discussion, I was attempting to connect this to my prior work on millenials. One of the reasons they are concerned about the church is because they’ve maintained connections through social media with a diverse group of folks from different spheres of their lives. In short, they live in a weak-tie world.

This weekend Zach Hoag filled in on Zack Hunt’s blog (Zack has a cute new baby, but I’m a little biased about smart and beautiful babies since my granddaughter was born). Hoag wrote about the false fronts that are involved in our never-ending search for niceness. We stay away from the real messiness of the world because we’re maintaining face. Erving Goffman was a pioneer in exploring the ways in which we manage cues and props to create and maintain impressions. Boundary maintenance is another outcome of the same process.

One can find people who are less concerned about boundaries. Jonathan Fitzgerald wrote a profile of Nadia Bolz-Weber in the Daily Beast that defies membership in a single group (while acknowledging the danger of creating yet another Christian celebrity). In any case, Bolz-Weber fits a weak-ties model of social capital.

When I was talking to my class last week explaining the notion of social networks, I was struck by a new insight.... The notion of inside and outside are fictions. They’re helpful fictions and we find them comfortable. But they are fictions nonetheless.

I felt compelled to start quoting The Matrix (I’d already done a riff on Life of Brian). I found myself thinking of the boy Neo meets when he visits the Prophet. The boy can bend a spoon with his mind. Then Neo is told “There is no spoon“.

That made me think again about the Weak Ties diagram. The notion that we have all these little circles we’re part of isn’t true. It’s one big circle. And we’re all part of it.

God’s circle is bigger than we imagine and is not bounded by time or space much less by simple distinctions on who gets to preach or who gets to marry or who reads which science books.

What would happen if the evangelical church caught a vision of the bigger circle and the ways in which our stories are being co-written with each of us as influencers in every other story. Yes, I really liked the Day of the Doctors! What if all the energy we expend on separateness was spent building linkages to those different than ourselves?

It’s a great narrative — a storyline that starts at creation and runs throughout history to the restoration of that creation on earth as it is in heaven.

* * * * * * * * * *

Bruegel the Elder, the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11

Ripping Down Towers of Babel

http://johnwhawthorne.com/2014/02/17/ripping-down-towers-of-babel/

by John W. Hawthorne

February 17, 2014

The picture [above] is Bruegel the Elder’s take on the Genesis 11 story of the Tower of Babel. In the scripture, we’re told that there was only one language and the people came together to build a city with a great tower that would reach to the heavens. In response, the LORD comes down to check it out and confuses their languages and scatters the people across the nations.

I’m not a biblical scholar — I’m a sociologist. So my first inclination is to treat this story as a cosmological allegory of “why the people down the road don’t talk like us”. It’s the kind of story that fits within an oral tradition explaining to children why things are the way they are.

But I did do some quick internet research and was pleased to find this entry from the Oxford Bible Studies Online. I was pleased for several reasons. First, the author is Brent Strawn from Candler Seminary at Emory and I’ve been friends with his father and brother for several years. Second, because the piece also used the Bruegel painting as illustration. And Third, because Brent’s analysis is directly applicable to the issue of religious group boundaries I’ve been exploring for several months.

Brent suggests that there are two interpretations of why the tower was a problem. One option is that it has something to do with pride. Building a huge edifice would let everyone know that these were cool people who had things together. He goes on to say that this chapter stands in stark contrast to the calling of Abram; there it is God who does great things through people. The second option Brent explores is the role of fear. They needed the city to protect them from being scattered across the earth (as was God’s plan). The “hunkering down” as he calls it, is in resistance to the world as they found it [and are discovering it].

As I said, I’ve been reflecting on the ways in which evangelical groups build artifices to separate those on the inside from those on the outside (for samples, see here and here). And I’ve come to a useful image that helps explain the process.

We tore down the Tower of Babel and then used the self same

bricks to build enclaves of our own desiring.

And we did it for the same two reasons that the Tower was

built in the first place: Pride and Fear.

Pride

Pride comes in when we attract hordes of followers to show that we are right. Zack Hoag has consistently exposed the ways in which the evangelical church (both conservative and progressive) have been seduced by the culture of celebrity. I am not immune. I want page views, retweets, Facebook likes, and recognition. I want people to tell each other about my writing. I want to have access to publishing empires that turns a lecture series into a book and a set of DVDs.

We build our enclaves because it allows us to sit inside our secure walls and lob critiques at those walled enclaves down the block. We hope that doing so will prove how smart we are, how right we are, how close to God we are. Especially if we can demonstrate that by comparison to those wrong-headed folks next door.

Rachel Held Evans posted a great piece today discussing what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the critiques lobbed over the wall. It’s a story of hurt and misunderstanding, of false accusation and presumption. But it also contains some deep introspection to make sure that parallel assumptions don’t result about other groups.

I’ve been reading Christena Cleveland’s Disunity in Christ. It’s a wonderful book (not surprisingly, it’s chock full of good social psychology!). I’m only partway through, but already the implications are powerful. We find comfort and identity through our groups within our walls. But that very comfort and identification contributes to our misreading and misunderstanding the other groups. Our pride causes us to overstate our own position and not really listen to others.


Fear

If pride makes us overstate our correctness, fear calls us to demonize all opposition even if we can’t name them. We build our walls so high that we don’t know what’s out there. We just know it can’t be good because it’s not what we have in here.

This post was prompted by one shared by Peter Enns over the weekend. It was about a conference announcement about a regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. The brochure is titled “The Liberal Seepage into the Evangelical Culture” and shows a scary wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ll let the word “seepage” go for now (sounds like a medical problem). But the very identification of “evangelical culture” as a thing is the very essence of wall-building. See, THEY are infiltrating into the space WE have created for ourselves. Even if our concerns about them are based on irrationality and exaggeration.

In the words of Elmer Fudd, "Be afwaid. Be vewy afwaid."

Fear take us to funny places. It makes it easy to do things or say things about brothers and sisters we would not otherwise do or say. Because somebody has to. Otherwise, how would we protect the walls from intruders? Don’t you know what the stakes are?

Neither Pride Nor Fear

Christians aren’t motivated by pride. Christians aren’t directed by fear.

We are following in the way of the Christ who sacrificed his status and position to inaugurate a new way of living through death on the cross and launching of a Kingdom at hand. We have an assurance running throughout scripture that we are not alone but have the very God of the universe with us.

What happens if we tear down our walls? I’m still working on this but I think we find that we are able to engage those around us. [We may find] reasonable people who ask interesting questions, who have fascinating life stories, who have real struggles. In short, we find them to be people created in the image of God. People who, if we take Matthew 25 seriously, are both representatives of Christ and perhaps unaware Kingdom-builders (“When did we do that?”).

In short, trusting Christ and his Kingdom journey means that we don’t need walls and boundaries. Because God is already at work building the Kingdom. We’re just along for the ride to offer water when asked.

I’m also reading Prodigal Christianity by David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw. Their writing both resonates with my thinking and makes me feel like they’ve already said it better. The central thesis of their book is the God went into the Far Country (where we live) and we are called to do likewise.

Going into the Far Country requires trust in God and deep courage. In that way it becomes a matter of testimony to the Greater Story of which we are all apart.

As Mr. Reagan said to Mr. Gorbachev [re the Iron Curtain of Berlin, East Germany], "Tear Down Those Walls!"

* * * * * * * * * *

How Social Networks Can Harness

the Power of Weak Ties

http://www.dashe.com/blog/social-learning/power-weak-ties/

by Jon Matejcek

May 11, 2013

While everyone seems to be expounding with great awe about the speed of change on the internet – especially the uptake of social media technologies like Facebook – it is interesting to note that there are really two factors being discussed:

1)      The social networking technology

2)      The human dynamics related to social networking

The technology hype is natural.  The power of tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yammer, are pretty astounding.  These tools give us a way to connect with people faster and more easily than ever before.

A lot of the Social Media Mavens, however, are really ranting, not about the technology, but about the human dynamics related to social networking.  These dynamics have been around for thousands of years, and have been written about extensively for decades – like in this 1973 article by Mark Granvotter in the American Journal of Sociology, The Strength of Weak Ties.

If we separate the human aspect of social networking from the technology, we can learn a lot more about the power of networks – not just from today’s pundits, but from many years of sociological research on the topic.

For example, Harvard professor Andrew McAfee sums up the Strength of Weak Ties theory nicely, describing how acquaintances with whom we are less familiar are more likely to tell us things we don’t already know:

… People we don’t know all that well are hugely valuable in our work. They’re sources of novelty and innovation (because they know quite different things than we do) and bridges to other social networks (because they know quite different people than we do). 

This implies that digital social tools aimed at facilitating our professional lives might not want to focus too much on helping us stay in touch and work with our closest colleagues. Instead, they might want to help us build, maintain, and exploit a large network of weak ties.

After reading this, I started thinking about this new LinkedIn utility I recently installed.  Initially it seemed like a fairly useless novelty, but I realized that there may be some value in it after all.  If we apply the ‘weak ties’ theory, we might be able to spot people in our network who are both:

a)      Loosely tied to us (i.e., people with whom we don’t share too many connections)

b)      Themselves near the edge of a cluster, with links to one or more other clusters.

Here’s how a typical LinkedIn network might look:

Your weak ties are smaller circles, not at the center of a cluster

I heard more support for the Weak Ties theory while attending a Knowledge Management conference in 2005. At the conference, a representative from Raytheon Corporation spoke about a study they had conducted among their vast employee population.  By taking inventory of employees’ “connections” (this was still a novel concept in 2005), they found that people had grouped into natural clusters.

The clustering of employee groups was not the surprising thing.  The real discovery came when they posed problems for various employees to solve.  They found that the employees near the edge of a cluster were more effective at problem-solving than those in the middle of a cluster.

Why?  Because the people on the edge were more likely to be connected to other network clusters, and therefore had access to information that was not available to people who were “buried” at the middle of a cluster.

Learning and development professionals should remember the Weak Ties theory when designing social learning systems.  It’s not enough for people within functional areas (clusters) to connect.  The real challenge, and value, is to find tools and processes that help people connect  and think “outside the cluster.”

[ois skin="Social Learning White Paper"]

Continue to -

Index to past articles on "An Open Faith and Open Theology"

From Old Creation to New Creation - The Story of Redemption and Mankind

The long, difficult story of new creation
http://www.postost.net/2013/10/long-difficult-story-new-creation

 

by Andrew Perriman

October 30, 2013

 

I had a long conversation over the weekend with an Asian friend who is engaged in conflict-resolution projects in her war-torn country. She was particularly interested in the importance of inter-faith conversations and practices, and we got round to talking about the difference between Christian and Buddhist worldviews or cosmologies.

As she put it, she is driven in her work by a desire to serve life, perhaps rather loosely sustained by the awareness that everything participates in the divine—I think she might describe herself as a secularized Buddhist, but I’m not sure.

I suggested that although the modern church has often appeared more inclined to bicker over beliefs and boundaries than to make the world a better place, in principle the same desire to affirm and serve life is there. But it is mediated necessarily through the story of the strained relationship between a distinct people and the Creator God, which is all the way through a story of new creation.

I have tried to tell that story on a number of occasions, not least in Re:Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church. My view is that there is little point in replacing a simplistic gospel of personal salvation with a simplistic gospel of life affirmation. No doubt it would be an improvement in some respects, but it still fails to do justice to the biblical narrative and is therefore likely to miss its central dynamic, which is the struggle of concrete communities fully to embody the presence of the good Creator God, in the midst of the nations and cultures of the world, through real—not mythical—history.

Anyway, here we go again. Feel free to take issue with it. And keep in mind that telling the story is not an excuse for doing nothing….

~

The foundational premise of the Judaeo-Christian narrative is the belief that the cosmos is the work of the one true Creator God.

The actual narrative then arises out of the contradiction between the goodness of the Creator and the self-evident corruption of the good creation.

The “original” sin—at the level first of the individual and then of human society—is the ambition to “be like God” or to usurp the place of God in the scheme of things (Gen. 3:5; 11:4). Inequality, injustice, wickedness and violence are the consequence of this act of rebellion.

~

The response of the Creator God at this point is to “choose” Abraham, in the shadow of self-aggrandizing empire, to be the father of a new creation in microcosm, grounded in a seminal act of trust and obedience (Gen. 15:6; 22:15-18). The promises made to him by the Creator undergird the whole ensuing narrative.

The descendants of Abraham are eventually given the good land of Canaan in fulfilment of the promises. The terms of their loyalty to the Creator God are set out in the Law of Moses. This is how they will be a new creation. They have received the original “blessing” of created life—albeit in a constrained, localized form—and are expected to mediate that original blessing to a world that has repudiated the Creator.

The success of the “new creation” project, however, hangs on the continuing trust and obedience of the people of Israel. The Law carries the dire warning that failure to walk in the ways of the Creator—the failure to be a good, new creation—will sooner or later result in invasion, destruction, exile and oppression by foreign powers.

~

From the Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom (722 BC) onwards, the story becomes one of continual conflict between Israel and the surrounding pagan empires—invasion by the Babylonians, exile, Hellenistic tyranny, Roman occupation.

During this period the hope is conceived by the prophets not only that the people of the one true Creator God will be delivered from this cycle of conflict and restored, but also that the hostile nations, with their fabricated gods, will eventually come to acknowledge the rightness and sovereignty of Israel’s God.

The Judaeo-Christian narrative divides in the first century AD over the question of how the God of national Israel intended finally to resolve the political-religious crisis faced by his people—how the prophetic hope for salvation and kingdom will be fulfilled.

~

Jesus proclaims the coming of the kingdom of God as a decisive moment both of judgment and of salvation for Israel.

He presents his people with a stark choice between a broad road leading to destruction and a narrow road leading to life. He calls his disciples to follow him down the narrow road of rejection and opposition for the sake of the future existence of God’s new creation people.

They will be messengers of the coming kingdom event, first to Israel, then among the nations. But they will also be the nucleus of a renewed people of God.

Jesus is condemned as a false “saviour” by the Jewish authorities and executed by the Romans.

Appearances of Jesus to the disciples after his death convince them that the God of Israel has vindicated his “Son” by raising him to life. More than this, they come to believe that God has exalted him to a position of authority at his right hand to act as judge and ruler of the nations.

In this way, through his trust and obedience Jesus has become God’s decisive answer to the political-religious crisis faced by the descendants of Abraham.

~

Empowered and inspired by the Spirit of Jesus the disciples continue to proclaim the “good news” to Israel. Jews, both in Roman-occupied Judea and in the diaspora, mostly refuse to believe, but many Gentiles, remarkably, find this story of judgment and renewal, crisis and kingdom, God and history, compelling. Their response is to worship the God of Israel in the same Spirit and they become de facto members of the same movement.

As a result communities of radical hope and faithfulness emerge across the Greek-Roman world, formed of people—both Jews and Gentiles—who believe not simply that Jesus died for the sins of Israel and was raised from the dead, but that his resurrection points to a day when the old idolatrous system will be overthrown and the nations of the empire will confess Jesus as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So through this long period of historical transition the God of Israel achieved two things through the faithfulness of Jesus. First, he saved his people from the problem of their innate disloyalty and sinfulness—the flesh—so that they could exist as new creation according to the Spirit rather than according to the Law of Moses. Secondly, he gained recognition from the nations of the empire that he alone is God, and there is no other (cf. Is. 45:21).

~

Historically speaking, European Christendom represented this extraordinary new political-religious arrangement for perhaps fifteen hundred years, until the God of Israel was in turn overthrown, in a momentous modern coup-d’état, by secular-rationalism. The western church is having a hard time coming to terms with this latest “catastrophe”, but we deal with the problem, nevertheless, as a sign of new creation, as mediators of the original blessing for the sake of life.

 

 

 

How Paul Saw the Future: The "Day of the Lord" For Saints and Sinners

How Paul saw the future

http://www.postost.net/2013/10/how-paul-saw-future

 

by Andrew Perriman

October 15, 2013

 

Paul had a sharp and vivid understanding of what the future held. It took the form of a prophetic narrative that would affect his own people Israel, the nations and the churches. It was not a matter of peripheral interest, an appendix to his theology. The narrative is pervasive in his letters and determinative for faith. People were converted to a new belief about the future. They believed, for example, that a day of wrath was coming from which they would be delivered by Jesus:

 

"...you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come." (1 Thess. 1:9–10; cf. 1 Cor. 1:7–8)

 

They believed that they would sooner or later inherit, as a community, as a nascent culture or civilization, a radically new political-religious order when the God of Israel would be acknowledged as sovereign over the nations.

 

he expectation, moreover, was that the coming Day of the Lord (1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 2:2), when this vision of the future would be fulfilled, was not far off. The apocalyptic narrative overlay and reinterpreted the immediate historical experience of the synagogues and churches in the ancient pagan world. Its climax would come within a foreseeable and relevant future.

 

The point to stress here is that biblical “theology”, even at its most exotic and speculative, always addresses or has reference to the concrete, historically determined condition of the people of God amidst the nations.

 

For convenience the landscape of Paul’s eschatology can be mapped in two parts—what it meant for the “saints” to whom Paul addressed his letters and what it meant for everyone else. Please note that the biblical references are not proof-texts. They are pointers to whole arguments and narratives.

 

What the Day of the Lord would mean for everyone else

 

 

1. The overarching intention of the God of Israel was to judge the pagan system that had for so long opposed him and to install his own “Son” as king on his behalf above all rulers and powers (Rom. 1:18-32; cf. Acts 17:31).

 

2. He would punish those who had persecuted the churches (2 Thess. 1:4-10). Paul has no concept of “hell”.

 

3. The “man of lawlessness”, who appears to be a blasphemous pagan king in the mould of Antiochus Epiphanes, would be brought to nothing by the Lord Jesus at his coming (2 Thess. 2:3-8).

 

4. Righteous Gentiles would be “justified” when YHWH judged the Greek-Roman world and would even condemn unrighteous Israel (Rom. 2:6, 14-16).

 

5. For God to judge the pagan world with integrity, however, he had first to judge his own people, who had brought the name of God into disrepute among the nations (Rom. 2:24; 3:6). They would not be justified by their works of the Jewish Law on the day of God’s wrath. Rather, the Law would hold them to account (Rom. 3:19-20). Nothing short of a new creation would remedy the situation.

 

6. Paul does not expect his people to escape the catastrophe of divine judgment, but he retains the hope that after judgment the nation of Israel would repent of its disbelief and so be saved (Rom. 11:26).

 

What the Day of the Lord would mean for the saints

 

 

1. The inclusion of Gentiles in the family of Abraham pointed to the fact that YHWH would demonstrate himself to be God not of the Jews only but also of the nations (Rom. 3:29-30).

 

2. The churches were communities of eschatological formation—that is, they were designed for an eschatological purpose. Practically speaking, they were the means by which the new future would be brought about.

 

3. If they were to fulfil that purpose, they would have to be righteous communities—the unrighteous would not inherit the kingdom of God (eg. 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Eph. 5:5; 1 Tim. 6:14).

 

4. The churches could expect to face considerable opposition and persecution in the period leading up to the Day of the Lord. To the extent, however, that the saints were conformed to the image of the first martyr and re-enacted the story of his suffering and vindication, they had the assurance that they would overcome even the last enemy, death (Rom. 8:16-39). They are communities of the Son of Man, against whom the pagan empire made war, but who remained faithful and were ultimately vindicated and awarded the kingdom (cf. Dan. 7:21-22).

 

5. The Day of the Lord would be a day of battle—of intense persecution. The churches needed to prepare themselves for this in advance by putting on the armour of God (Rom. 13:11-12; Eph. 6;10-20; 5:6-8).

 

6. Paul was very conscious of the fact that it was the responsibility of the apostles to ensure that the churches were fit for eschatological purpose (1 Cor. 3:10-15). They would be his crown and ground for boasting on the Day of the Lord (Phil. 2:16; 1 Thess. 2:19).

 

7. Because the authority to judge had been given to Jesus, the Day of the Lord would be the day when Jesus, not YHWH, came to judge and save.

 

8. For the saints this would at last mean deliverance from their persecutors (2 Thess. 1:5-10) and resurrection for the dead “in Christ” so that they would have a share in the age to come (1 Cor. 15:23; 1 Thess. 4:16); the saints would be judged and vindicated and rewarded if they were found to have been faithful (Rom. 14:10; 1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:10).

 

9. These communities of the saints would then inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50; Eph. 1:14; 5:5; Col. 1:12; 3:24), when Jesus would be confessed as Lord by the nations (Phil. 2:11), and the martyrs would reign with him throughout the coming ages.

 

10. The reign of Jesus at the right hand of God is to continue until the last enemy, death, has been destroyed, at which point the authority to rule will be given back to God, the Father, Jesus himself will be subjected to God, and God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:24-28).

 

11. Finally, creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:21).

 

This is roughly the story that Paul tells about the future, as I see it. It is not an unprejudiced reconstruction of that story. It is as I see it. It is shaped by a number of assumptions that I make regarding i) how Paul has used his source material, the Old Testament in particular; and ii) how he understood the relation of such material to history. It is the sort of narrative that emerges when we read Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic as an attempt to redescribe future historical events as the outworking of the intentions of Israel’s God. Or to turn it around, Paul has constructed a narrative of judgment and kingdom that demands an eventual historical outcome having to do with the real-world, political-religious relation between Israel and the nations.

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

Either Paul got the timing wrong or we’ve got the end wrong

http://www.postost.net/2013/10/how-paul-saw-future#sthash.lKYchqD9.dpuf

 

by Andrew Perriman

Sat, 05/10/2013

 

Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, which some would argue was his second (Wanamaker), or his first and second combined (Murphy-O’Connor), was written to encourage a novice community of mostly Gentile believers to stand firm in the face of persecution until the parousia of the Lord, when the wrath of God would come against the world and they would be delivered from their suffering and united with their Lord. This is the narrative—or eschatological—frame of the letter, and it controls Paul’s argument at every point.

 

The same can be said of his first letter to the Corinthians. They “wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:7–8). The rulers of the present age are doomed to pass away (2:6). The quality of the apostles’ work will be revealed when a day of fire comes (3:13). The Lord is coming to “bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and… disclose the purposes of the heart”, when everyone will receive his or her commendation from God (4:5). A “day of the Lord” is coming, when “the saints will judge the world”, and the righteous will inherit the kingdom of God (5:5; 6:2, 9). A time of distress is approaching; the “present form of this world is passing away” (7:26, 31). In the Lord’s supper they proclaim his death “until he comes” (11:26). The world will be condemned (11:32). The dead in Christ will be raised at his coming and will inherit the kingdom (15:23, 50-56). Paul prays that the Lord will come (16:22).

 

In fact, with the exception of Philemon, the same can be said of every one of Paul’s letters—even Romans. They are all written explicitly and intentionally in the light of an impending day of the Lord, a day of God’s wrath, which will entail severe affliction for the churches but also deliverance and vindication. Paul’s churches faced a more or less imminent “end”.

 

There are two basic interpretive strategies open to us:

we can reinterpret “imminent” or we can reinterpret “end”.

 

How are we supposed to deal with this, given that the world did not end imminently? We have the same problem, of course, with Jesus. There are two basic interpretive strategies open to us: we can reinterpret “imminent” or we can reinterpret “end”.

 

 

We could say that the traditional understanding of the “end” is correct but that Paul got the timing wrong. He expected the world to come to an abrupt end in the foreseeable future—perhaps even before he himself died—but he was wrong about that because in fact one day is as a thousand years with the Lord, even the Son was kept in the dark about the timing, etc. That would allow us to keep our traditional “end” intact—the whole package of second coming, rapture, resurrection, final judgment, inheritance of the kingdom, new heaven and new earth, lake of fire. But it can be postponed indefinitely.

 

 

Or we could say that Paul was more or less right about the timing but that we have misunderstood his “end”. We could argue that he shared a Jewish-apocalyptic narrative in which YHWH, as creator of the whole earth, asserts his right to judge and rule over the idolatrous pagan nations, which have for so long refused to acknowledge him and oppressed his people. We would then suppose—once we have understood how apocalyptic discourse works—that his eschatology mostly addresses the historical crisis that would mark the transition from an old age of pagan hegemony to a new age in which Jesus is confessed as Lord by the Gentiles. I have developed this argument in The Coming of the Son of Man: New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church.

 

This approach would mean that Paul has much less to say about our eschatological circumstances. The coming storm fills his horizon and he cannot see what lies beyond—except that he is certain that the creator God will have the final victory over the evil that has corrupted his creation (1 Cor. 15:24-28; Rom. 8:20-22). But it would mean that he has much more to say about the historical experience of the communities under his care. That makes him a much more responsible prophet and apostle. And I’m sure we can learn something from that.