"16 Ways I Blew My Marriage"

 

http://www.danoah.com/2012/10/16-ways-i-blew-my-marriage.html

 

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 by Dan Pearce

You know what blows big time?

The other night I was sitting with my family, most of whom are very successfully married. We were going in a circle giving our best marriage advice to my little sister on the eve of her wedding. It’s somewhat of a family tradition.

But that’s not what blows. What really blows is that I realized I don’t have any good marriage advice to give. After all, I’ve never had a successful marriage out of the two marriages I did have.

And so, when it was my turn, I just made a joke about divorce and how you should always remember why you loved your spouse when you first met her so that when times get tough, you can find someone new that is just like she was.

There were a couple courtesy giggles, but overall my humor wasn’t welcome in such a beautifully building ring of profundity.

They finished round one, and for some reason started into another round. And that’s when I realized. Hey. I don’t have marriage advice to give, but I have plenty of “keep your marriage from ending” advice (two equivocally different things), and that might be almost as good.

It eventually came to me again, and what I said would have been such great advice if I were a tenth as good at saying things as I was at writing them.

And so, that night, I sat down and wrote out my “advice list” for my little sister. You know… things I wish I would have known or done differently so that I didn’t end up divorced (twice). After writing it, I thought maybe I’d share it with all of you, too.

I call it my “Ways I Blew My Marriage” list. Also, for the list’s sake, I am just going to refer to “her” instead of “them” even though they almost all were true in both marriages.

1. DON’T STOP HOLDING HER HAND

When I first dated the woman I ended up marrying, I always held her hand. In the car. While walking. At meals. At movies. It didn’t matter where. Over time, I stopped. I made up excuses like my hand was too hot or it made me sweat or I wasn’t comfortable with it in public. Truth was, I stopped holding hands because I stopped wanting to put in the effort to be close to my wife. No other reason.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d hold her hand in the car. I’d hold her hand on a star. I’d hold her hand in a box. I’d hold her hand with a fox. And I’d hold her hand everywhere else, too, even when we didn’t particularly like each other for the moment.

BONUS! When you hold hands in the winter, they don’t get cold. True story.

2. Don’t stop trying to be attractive.

Obviously when I was working to woo her, I would do myself up as attractively as I possibly could every time I saw her. I kept perfectly groomed. I always smelled good. I held in my farts until she wasn’t around. For some reason, marriage made me feel like I could stop doing all that. I would get all properly groomed, smelling good, and dressed up any time we went out somewhere or I went out by myself, but I rarely, if ever, cared about making myself attractive just for her.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d try and put my best foot forward throughout our entire marriage. I’d wait to fart until I was in the bathroom whenever possible. I’d make myself desirable so that she would desire me.

BONUS! when you trim your man hair, guess what. She returns the favor.

3. Don’t always point out her weaknesses.

For some reason, somewhere along the way, I always ended up feeling like it was my place to tell her where she was weak and where she could do better. I sure as heck didn’t do that while we were dating. No, when I dated her I only built her up, only told her how amazing she was, and easily looked past all of her flaws. After we got married though, she sometimes couldn’t even cook eggs without me telling her how she might be able to improve.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I wouldn’t say a damned thing about anything that I thought could use improvement. I’ve learned since my marriage ended that there is more than one right way to do most things, and that the imperfections of others are too beautiful to try and change.

BONUS! when you tell her what she’s doing right, she’ll tell you what you’re doing right. And she’ll also tell her friends. And her family. And the dentist. And even strangers on the street.

4. Don’t stop cooking for her.

I knew how to woo a girl, for sure. And the ticket was usually a night in, cooking a nice meal and having a romantic evening. So why is it then, that I didn’t do that for her after we got married? Sure, I’d throw some canned soup in the microwave or fry up some chimichangas once in a while, but I rarely if ever went out of my way to sweep her off her feet after we were married by steaming crab legs, or making fancy pasta, or setting up a candlelit table.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d make it a priority to cook for her, and only her, something awesome at least every month. And I’d remember that meat in a can is never awesome.

BONUS! candlelit dinners often lead to candlelit bow chica bow-wow.

5. Don’t yell at your spouse.

I’m not talking about the angry kind of yelling. I’m talking about the lazy kind of yelling. The kind of yelling you do when you don’t want to get up from your television show or you don’t want to go ALL THE WAY UPSTAIRS to ask her if she’s seen your keys. It really doesn’t take that much effort to go find her, and yelling (by nature) sounds demanding and authoritative.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d try to go find her anytime I needed something or wanted to know something, and I’d have both gratitude and manners when I did. I always hated when she would yell to me, so why did I always feel it was okay to yell to her?

BONUS! sometimes you catch her doing something cute that you would have missed otherwise.

6. Don’t call names.

I always felt I was the king of not calling names, but I wasn’t. I may not have called her stupid, or idiot, or any of the other names she’d sometimes call me, but I would tell her she was stubborn, or that she was impossible, or that she was so hard to deal with. Names are names, and calling them will drive bigger wedges in communication than just about anything else.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: Any time it got to the point that I wanted to call names, I’d call a time-out and come back to it later. Or better yet, I’d call her names, but they’d be names like “super sexy” or “hotness.” Even in the heat of the moment.

7. Don’t be stingy with your money.

As the main bread earner, I was always so stingy with the money. I’d whine about the cost of her shampoo or that she didn’t order water at restaurants, or that she’d spend so much money on things like pedicures or hair dye jobs. But seriously. I always had just as many if not more things that I spent my money on, and in the end, the money was spent, we were just fine, and the only thing my bitching and moaning did was bring undo stress to our relationship.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d tell her I trusted her to buy whatever she wanted, whenever she felt like she needed it. And then, I’d actually trust her to do it.

BONUS! sometimes she will make bad purchase decisions, which leads to makeup purchase decisions. Like that new gadget you’ve had your eyes on.

8. Don’t argue in front of the kids.

There was never any argument that was so important or pressing that we couldn’t wait to have it until the kids weren’t there. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist or super-shrink to know why fighting in front of the kids is a dangerous and selfish way of doing things.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I would never, ever, not even once fight in front of the kids, no matter how big or how small the issue was. I’d maybe make a code word that meant, “not with the kids here.”

BONUS! when you wait to fight, usually you both realize how stupid or unimportant the fight was and the fight never happens.

9. Don’t encourage each other to skip working out.

I always thought it was love to tell my spouse, “I don’t care if you don’t take care of yourself. I don’t care if you don’t exercise. I don’t care if you let yourself go.” But that was lying, and it was lying when she said it to me because the truth is, we did care and I wish that we would have always told each other how sexy and attractive the other was any time we’d go workout or do something to become healthier.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d ask her to tell me that she cared. I’d ask her to encourage me to go to the gym. I’d ask her to remind me of my goals and tell me I’m strong enough to keep them.

BONUS! exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. And happy people don’t kill other people. (Name that movie!)

10. Don’t poop with the bathroom door open.

I don’t know why, but at some point I started thinking it was okay to poop with the bathroom door open, and so did she. First of all, it’s gross. Second of all, it stinks everything up. Third of all, there is literally no way to make pooping attractive, which means that every time she saw me do it, she, at least in some little way, would have thought I was less attractive.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d shut the damn door and poop in private.

BONUS! when she does think of your naked body, she’s not going to be thinking about it in a grunting/squatting position.

11. Don’t stop kissing her.

It always got to a point when I’d more or less stop kissing her. Usually it was because things were stressful and there was tension in our relationship, and so I’d make it worse by refusing to kiss her. This of course would lead to her feeling rejected. Which would of course lead to arguments about it. Other times I had my own issues with germs and whatnot.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d kiss her in the morning when she looked like people do in the morning. I’d kiss her at night when she’s had a long day. I’d kiss her any time I felt like she secretly wanted a kiss. And, I’d kiss her even when my germ issues kicked in.

BONUS! she feels loved when you kiss her. That’s bonus enough.

12. Don’t stop having fun together.

Age shouldn’t matter. Physical ability shouldn’t matter. Couples should never stop having fun with each other, and I really wish I wouldn’t have gotten into so many ruts in which we didn’t really go out and do anything. And, I’ve been around the block enough times to know that when the fun is missing, and the social part of life is missing, so also goes missing the ability to be fully content with each other.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d make a rule with her that we’d never stay home two weekends in a row.

BONUS! awesome stories and awesome memories come from doing awesome things. And so do cherished embarrassing moments.

13. Don’t pressure each other.

Pressuring each other about anything is always a recipe for resentment. I always felt so pressured to make more money. I always felt so pressured to not slip in my religion. I always felt so pressured to feel certain ways about things when I felt the opposite. And I usually carried a lot of resentment. Looking back, I can think of just as many times that I pressured her, so I know it was a two-way street.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d make it a point to celebrate the different views, opinions, and ways that she had of doing things. I’d find the beauty in differentiation, not the threat.

BONUS! authentic happiness becomes a real possibility. And so do authentic foot rubs.

14. Don’t label each other with negative labels.

Sometimes the easiest phrases to say in my marriage started with one of three things. Either, “you should have,” “you aren’t,” or “you didn’t.” Inevitably after each of those seemed to come something negative. And since when have negative labels ever helped anyone? They certainly never helped her. Or me. Instead, they seemed to make the action that sparked the label worsen in big ways.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I would learn to stop myself before saying any of those phrases, and then I’d switch them out for positive labels. Instead of “you should,” I’d say “you are great at.” Instead of saying “you aren’t,” I’d say “you are.” Instead of saying “you didn’t,” I’d say, “you did.” And then I’d follow it up with something positive.

BONUS! the noblest struggles become far more conquerable. And you don’t think or believe that you’re a schmuck, which is always nice.

15. Don’t skip out on things that are important to her.

It was so easy in marriage to veto so many of the things she enjoyed doing. My reasoning, “we can find things we both enjoy.” That’s lame. There will always be things she enjoys that I will never enjoy, and that’s no reason not to support her in them. Sometimes the only thing she needs is to know that I’m there.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d attend many more of the events that she invited me to. I would actively participate and not tell all the reasons why I’d do it differently or how it could be better or more fun or time better spent.

BONUS! go to something she knows you don’t enjoy and the gratitude gets piled on later that night, like whipped cream on a cheesecake.

16. Don’t emotionally distance yourself after a fight.

I never got to experience the power of make-up sex because any time my wife was mean or we got in a fight, I’d completely distance myself from her, usually for several days. Communication would shut down and I’d avoid contact at all cost. This never let things get worked out, and eventually after it had happened enough times I’d explode unnecessarily.

IF I COULD HAVE A DO-OVER: I’d let myself communicate my emotions and feelings more often, and I’d make sure that she knew I still loved her any time we had an ugly bout. Sure, we’d give each other some distance. But not days of distance.

BONUS! Fantastic make-up sex. Or at least that’s the theory.

I had lots more written out, but the list started getting super long so I’ll stop right there and maybe do a part 2. It’s amazing when you’ve had relationships end, just how much you learn and know you could have done differently, isn’t it?

My sister and her new husband will be amazing. Hopefully she’ll always be giving amazing marriage advice in the future and never have to hand out the “keep your marriage from ending” advice like I get to.

Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
 

Radical Theology & The New Materialism

Book (P)review – Religion, Politics and the Earth

by Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins

http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/book-preview-religion-politics-and-the-earth-the-new-materialism/

 

Posted 28 May 2013 by Guest Post

 

[Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas, and Jeffrey W. Robbins, Lebanon Valley College, on their co-authored book, Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012]

 

When we were first invited to contribute to the Political Theology blog with reference to Religion, Politics and the Earth, the idea was for us to introduce the book.  But because of our extreme tardiness, it seems that opportunity has now come and gone.

 

While the book’s publication is still fairly recent by academic standards, there has already been a considerable amount of critical discussion and feedback about it.  This has happened in three primary settings.

 

The first was a public event held at Union Theological Seminary in New York on February 11, 2013 with Mark Lewis Taylor and Cornel West.  The purpose of this event was to subject our proposed new materialism to the challenge of a liberationist critique.  The entirety of this event – ‘Becoming a Brain: The New Materialism and the Challenge of Liberation’ – is accessible online here (Part One) and here (Part Two).

 

The second was a series of reviews and responses posted on the blog An und für sich.  The full length reviews posted here were by Anthony Paul Smith (in the main post) and Joshua Ramey (in this comment).  While the public event at Union raised the question of the connection between the new materialism and liberation theology, Smith and Ramey, each in their own way, raised questions about the vestigial supercessionist Christian overtones to our work.

 

The third was a coordinated blog tour organized by Tripp Fuller at Homebrewed Christianity.  The scope of the reviews and responses from the blog tour is too broad for us to respond to in full here, but the two lines of thought we found most felicitous as we continue to think through the ramifications of the new materialism are its connections with transformance art and with process theology.

 

So rather than re-introduce the book, we’d like to take this occasion to comment on the excitement we have felt by these various critical engagements.  After all, this collaborative, manifesto-styled book was written to generate new thoughts, inquiries and connections, to open up conversations.  Taking the evidence above, it has already achieved that goal beyond our wildest imaginations:

 

The New Materialism and the Challenge of Liberation

 

This event at Union Theological, planned by Bo Eberle and George Schmidt, was the result of an overzealous footnote and a well-timed question. The footnote – first penned by Robbins and then later cited by Crockett, and reflective of both of our respective political theologies – makes the case for the urgent need for a truly radical political theology, and along the way criticizes too quickly and superficially the traditions of both liberationist and process thought.  The question, posed by Schmidt to Crockett and Robbins at a session at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, was why we found it necessary to distance ourselves from liberation theology when to his mind there was more resonance and overlap than not.  We agreed then that our dismissive attitude was premature and unwarranted, and that the points of connection and convergence needed to be explored further – hence the invitation to Mark Lewis Taylor and Cornel West to interrogate and challenge our work from a liberationist perspective.

 

While Taylor rightly pointed out the need for us to give fuller attention to, and schematize, social antagonisms as an integral part of our radical political theology, West took the occasion to identify our new materialism as a new species of liberation theology, one that emerges from our starting point of the earth as subject.  This new species of liberation theology would be an alternative to those operating within a politics of identity.  Because we intend to continue this collaboration, we are eager to address the concerns raised by Taylor and follow through in explicating the ways in which the new materialism might contribute to a contemporary liberation theology.

 

Supercessionist Christianity

 

Smith identifies our book as a ‘synthetic manifesto,’ and admits to a certain excitement in our attempt to think things such as social media, art, religion and politics together with energy and ontology.  His hesitancy, however, comes from the book’s Hegelian – and thus, death-of-God Christian – overtones.  He points out that our discussion of religion only ever refers to Christianity, and that this privileging is symptomatic of an unspoken Christian triumphalism at work. This vein of inquiry is opened up even more by Ramey when his extended riff on our book includes the evocation of Norman O. Brown’s query on ‘The Challenge of Islam,’ the hermaphroditic Christ of Bruno, the gendered and engendering earth of Catherine Keller and Cleo Kearns, the divine eroticism of Karmen MacKendrick, etc.

 

We wish to affirm without qualification these deeply heterodoxical readings of religion, politics and the earth.  This is precisely the radical theology we are hoping to engender, even as the book itself is necessarily limited.

 

At the same time, we’d also want to push back a bit on the suggestion that merely by situating our work within a primarily (but not exclusively) Christian discourse, our work necessarily is guilty of a religious triumphalism.  Just as we sought to differentiate between two different concepts of the political – the politics of the state-form vs. the politics of the people – so too do we think it is possible to differentiate between kinds of Christianity, and that a meaningful and potent form of resistance might just as likely come from within as an immanent critique than from without. This is also the project and promise of John D. Caputo’s theology, culminating in his forthcoming The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps. And our follow-up collaborative project to this work on the new materialism will be even more explicitly an insurrectionary theology.

 

On Transformance Art and Process Theology

 

For us, the Homebrewed Christianity blog tour on our book was an absolute revelation.  To have our book be the subject of such diverse and creative reflections was both gratifying and challenging.  Bo Eberle (here, here and here) and Tad DeLay (here and here) did incredible work summarizing and interrogating the radical energy proposal developed by Kevin Mequet, which was incorporated as a centerpiece of our re-conception of materialism as an ontology of energy transformation.

 

Nearly all of the bloggers picked up on our central argument with regard to digital culture and social media as a material form of biopolitics by which corporate capitalism becomes further entrenched and more real.  When we realize that the virtual is material we see how the sovereign rule of global capital is nearly infinite in its scope, from its dominion over the earth to the commodification of our most innermost, private selves.

 

From Rick Quinn, we learn how Elton John might be seen as a radical theologian (here and here).

 

And to Todd Littleton, we owe a profound debt for how successfully he demonstrates the practicality of our new materialism (specifically for an evangelical audience).  He is correct that the main theological import of what we are claiming as the new materialism is the doubling back and doubling down on the old materialist charge to change the world.  And one way to accomplish this would be for churches and pastors and believers to get beyond or over their soteriological obsessions.  Religion is about so much more than salvation.  One does not have to be a materialist to accept this point, but materialism – old and new alike – makes this its bedrock theological claim. Adam Moore certainly gets this point as well when he shows how our work on Art might contribute to new understandings and practices of liturgy and worship as ‘transformance art’.

 

And finally, from Austin Roberts, just as Cornel West claimed our work as a new species of liberation theology, so too does Roberts demonstrate the important connections between this new materialism and process theology.  The connections to John Cobb are real, and help us to further walk back our earlier dismissals of both liberation theology and process theology.

 

Thanks to these generous and insightful interlocutors, we are now in a position to remake the case for a radical political theology.  The issue is not, as we previously claimed, that there is no radical political theology.  But instead, there are many.  Our book, in spite of its blind spots and limitations, seems to have provided an unlikely – or at least heretofore overlooked – convergence between radical, liberationist, and process theologies.

 

Speaking for ourselves, we are certainly energized by the prospects.

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

Book Description

Release date: October 30, 2012 | Series: Radical Theologies

This book takes its leave with the realization that Western-driven culture is quickly reaching the limits of global capitalism, and that this reality manifests itself not only economically and politically, but that it is at once a cultural, aesthetic, political, religious, ecological, and philosophical problem.  While Western capitalism is based upon the assumption of indefinite growth, we have run up against real, physical constraints to growth, and humanity must face the real, physical ramifications of the short-sighted and ultimately counter-productive choices made on behalf of the capitalist machine.  While there is widespread angst and numerous scenarios of apocalyptic crisis and collapse, there is little or no comprehension of the problem and a coherent picture of reality is left wanting.  

Drawing primarily from the discourses of contemporary continental philosophy, cultural theory, and radical theology, the new materialism is being offered up as a redress to this problem by its effort to make sense of the world as an integrated whole.The book emphasizes three aspects of the current crisis: the ecological crisis, which is often viewed primarily in terms of global warming; the energy crisis, which involves peak oil and the limits of the ability to extract and exploit the cheap energy of fossil fuels; and finally the financial crisis, which involves the de-leveraging and destruction of massive amounts of money and credit. Each of these problems is inter-related, because money is dependent upon energy, and energy is a product of natural physical resources that are finite and diminishing. 

Rather than despair or the cynicism that passes for realpolitik, the authors will suggest that this crisis provides an opening for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way of being in and of the earth. This opening is an opening onto a new materialism that is neither a crude consumerist materialism nor a reductive atomic materialism, but a materialism that takes seriously the material and physical world in which we live. This materialism counters idealism in its practical and philosophical forms, which constructs an ideal world that we wish to inhabit and then mistakes that world for the real one. Furthermore, in contrast to classical materialism which rejects religion as a form of false consciousness, this new materialism recognizes religion as an effective means of political mobilization and as a genuine source of piety, and thus does not oppose religion per se; instead, it opposes fanaticism and fundamentalism, including the fairy-tale expectations that a God or gods will rescue us from our predicament and punish the evil-doers while rewarding the righteous.

 

Introduction - http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Politics-Earth-Materialism-Theologies/dp/1137268921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369911612&sr=8-1&keywords=religion%2C+politics%2C+the+earth%3A+the+new+materialism#reader_1137268921

 

Product Details Hardcover: 206 pages Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (October 30, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 1137268921 ISBN-13: 978-1137268921

 

 

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A Synthetic Manifesto: A Review

 

By Kevin Mequet

December 20, 2012

 

An academic acquaintance wrote this and it represents my view of this book:

 

 

A Synthetic Manifesto: A Review of Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism
Thursday, December 20, 2012 -- Anthony Paul Smith

Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins are no strangers to readers of this blog. Both are well established figures within the fields of theology, philosophy and the liminal space between them that sometimes goes by the name secular theology and sometimes Continental philosophy of religion. Both are graduates of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University and Crockett now teaches as an associate professor of Religion at the University of Central Arkansas while Robbins is a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College. While their friendship has long been know, expressed in the academic realm through their co-editorship of the Insurrections series with ColumbiaUP, Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism is their first co-written book. The book, published in the new Radical Theologies series published by Palgrave Macmillan, is quite consciously written as a kind of manifesto for the practice and future of radical theology. Now, what this means is dependent of course on the figures who develop it, but by radical theology it is clear that people thinking with religious material outside of a confessional duty as well as those who are more explicitly confessional but still attempting to radicalize their confessional thought beyond any capture by that tradition's authorities. That is, radical theology cuts a wide-swath and it may be the only form of theology that is truly "big tent" in terms of its actions and not just as a propaganda move. However much such a movement might benefit from a manifesto, the disparate directions and materials with which various radical theologians engage with makes creating such a manifesto difficult and risks sedimenting their works and cutting off these radical theologians from the true, creative source of their power. At times it feels that Crockett and Robbins risk such sedimentation. However, what ultimately saves them from this temptation is their very synthetic approach. This is a book constructed not in the name of Crockett and Robbins, but through a multiplicity of names that are brought together in varying ways and with various levels of success under the standard "The New Materialism".

 

Crockett and Robbins write the book under the sign of a disaster. The disaster of our contemporary age whose name is in some sense Legion, but whose true name is Capitalism. This fundamental insight, drawn from Philip Goodchild amongst others, is put this way by the authors:

 

The problem is fundamental: Western capitalism is based upon assumptions of indefinite if not infinite growth, but the natural resources of the planet are finite. We are running up against real, physical constraints to growth, and the capitalist machine is desperately searching for more resources to fuel ever-shorter periods of apparent productivity or profitability, like a junkie shooting up more often with higher concentrations to get that same hight that is diminishing with each hit. [...] We will briefly lay out three aspects of our current crisis: the ecological crisis, which is often view primarily in terms of global warming; the energy crisis, which involves peak oil and the limits of our ability to extract and exploit the cheap energy of fossil fuels; and finally the financial crisis, which involves the deleveraging and destruction of massive amounts of money and credit. Each of these problems is interrelated, because money is dependent upon energy, and energy is a product of natural physical resources that are finite and diminishing. Rather than give in to despair, or idealistic wishful thinking, we suggest that this crisis could provide an oepning for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way of being in and of the earth (my emphasis).

 

As this long quote shows, it is the disaster that conditions in some way the thought but, hopefully, does not determine it. The crisis is a call to think and to be in ways that are more creative and more interesting than the failed forms of thought and practice that are determined and reign under the capitalist crisis.

 

The authors then take us on a comprehensive tour through a number of very important loci for contemporary radical theology ranging from digital culture, religion, politics, art, ethics, energy, onto-neurology, logic, and the Event. Each of these loci are privileged as a central node for any contemporary form of thought that would respond to the crisis outlined above. Each is analyzed through Crockett and Robbins's understanding of the Hegelian dialectic where, in their reading, thought returns to itself as, in this case, the earth. What they aim to do with this conception of dialectics is bring together a number of disparate thinkers, to reconcile figures that normally wouldn't be thought to be reconcilable, namely a number of new Hegelian thinkers (Zizek, Malabou, and Badiou) with the work of Spinozist thinkers like (Deleuze and Negri). The synthetic aspect of each chapter is on display as the authors move from one thinker to the next, linking them as if they were simply amino acids to construct a DNA code that organizes a larger body of thought.

 

In many ways the authors are not the authors in the normal sense, setting aside that some of the chapter are co-written with a third (Michael W. Wilson assisted with chapter on art and Kevin Mequet co-wrote the two chapters on energy). Instead of a stable author there is a proliferation of names, different lines of thought taken and extended by some antagonistic name. A line from Zizek completed by connecting it to a line of Deleuze. In many ways the claims of the book will certainly be familiar to its readers. What is new is the synthetic form it takes here and ultimately its readers will need to decide if such a synthesis is possible, or if one of these figures or terms will overdetermine the rest, for the manifesto style of the book precludes the authors doing that themselves.

 

For my part, I found the book exciting for all the reasons stated above, but I remain suspicious of a certain Hegelian, and so Christian, overdetermination of this kind of radical theology proposed. One of the fundamental claims of the book is that the current crisis requires new alliances between the sciences, humanities, political movements, and religion. I, of course, agree with them on this point. However, the challenge is to make this a truly new alliance. For example, while some attention is given to ecology, it is only in the mode of disaster ecology or a discussion of global climate change. Ecology as such is absent from the chapter detailing a proposal for a new kind of paradigm for thinking about energy. I am unable to evaluate the validity of the claims made in this chapter, relating to conceiving of energy without heat, and I suspect that the authors wrote this with a bit of fear and trembling. But what did struck me is that, even if the proposal to look into the electromagnetism of the Earth as a potential for energy production holds up scientifically within physics, there would still require an ecological element that is missing. Ecology teaches us not that everything is connected, that's quite simply obvious when one just thinks about causation, but ecology is the science of those relations, showing where some links are more intense while others are not. All of this translates into material questions about the effects of some new human technology upon the wider human and non-human biosphere. Since much of this discussion of energy is predicated upon a kind of Hegelian vision, I can't help but wonder if the issue of reconciliation, ecological theodicy, is not laying underneath this proposal.

 

There is also the issue of the way religion, and thus materialism, is conceived within the book. The authors only ever reference Christianity and seem to privilege the Hegelian version of the death of God outlined in Zizek over other forms of religion. This is in some ways a result of the genre of the book. As a synthetic manifesto it will only really be able to respond to how things truly are within the fields it builds on and announces. And much of the new materialism, whether it be secular philosophers like Badiou or a philosopher playing a theologian which we sometimes find in Zizek, is predicated upon an unspoken supremacy of Christianity as the only religion that actually ends in the secular, that ends in a kind of productive atheism (against the New Athiest style atheism). For any truly radical rethinking of politics an engagement outside of the Christian form is called for. One where the notion of Event may too be suspect.

 

Yet, these criticisms aside, Crockett and Robbins have done us a great service by bringing together a number of exciting but disparate lines of research in their synthetic manifesto. It may help younger intellectuals develop and go forward in a genuinely new way that may yet just respond, at least within thought, to the contemporary crisis.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/

 

 

Religion, Politics & the Earth

all over the Theo-Blogs!

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/04/23/religion-politics-the-earth-all-over-the-theo-blogs/

 

by Tripp Fuller

April 23, 2013

Comments

 

Have we got a blog tour for you… it’s so digital it’s material! Religion, Politics, & the Earth: the New Materialism is one sweetly nerdy book that opens up an alternative future to our global situation with theology. In honor of its release (and my brain crush on on Crockett & Robbins) we are coordinating a blog tour. Get ready & check the links!! (More shall be added throughout the week)

 

You have heard the good Dr. Robbins explain Radical Theology on the podcast.  Then his co-author philosopher Clayton Crockett chats with scientist Kevin Mequet about their energy thesis on the podcast.  Now you get a collection of the most awesome Homebrewed Christianity Deacons with blogs to chat this book up!

 

Bloggers on the Tour…

 

Bo Eberle has 1 & 2 posts on the energy proposal & a review of the book. He also posted videos of Robbins & Crockett in NYC chatting with Cornel West and Mark L. Taylor.

 

Joel Harrison & Matt Bernico at Flux of Thought have already blogged on digital culture & religion.

Tad DeLay is blogging on the politics of energy.  Here it is… BAM!

Joe Carson has some questions for the assumptions of radical theology & will blog on energy later in the week.

Matt Ritchie, lawyer and theologian, has been blogging on the book.  Is God Dead?, What is the New Materialism?, & the Logic of the New Materialism & the Courts.

Jonathon Snyder will be blogging on digital culture.

Maria Drews shall be sharing her wisdom about the book.

Rick Quinn gave an Elton John inspired taster & drops some more goodness this week.

Scott Cowan will bring the blogger excitement to the political theology blog.

Adam Moore shall be blogging on the Art chapter this thursday.

My favorite Southern Baptist, Todd Littleton, shall bring the #awesomesauce on friday.

David Adams discusses the book in less than 1k words!

Austin Roberts drops some Cobb & gives a great Process inspired reply.

Pastor Darren examines the understanding of religion in the book from one who rocks the pulpit.


 

Comparing the Stages of Cognitive Development (Jean Piaget) to the Stages of Faith (James Fowler)

New Ways of Thinking — Part One

http://johnwhawthorne.com/2013/05/28/new-ways-of-thinking-part-one/

John W. Hawthorne

May 28, 2013

I’m working on a book chapter summarizing literature on social psychology and learning as it relates to students attending Christian universities. Today I worked my way through Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development and James Fowler’s stages of faith.  It helped me think about three things: 1) the transitions described by Piaget and Fowler may be particularly difficult for evangelical young people to navigate, 2) Christian colleges are especially significant as that navigation is taking place, and 3) the transitions of thought process or the lack thereof is at the center of many of our issues in the evangelical church.

Stage theories have their limits, which I’ll speak to shortly. But there’s something significant about exploring shifts in cognitive processes. They suggest that students aren’t simply involved in learning new stuff — they’re developing entirely new ways of thinking.  Those new ways have their own risks and challenges.

Jean Piaget identifies four stages:

1. Sensorimotor Stage: infants respond to environmental stimuli
2. Preoperational Stage: pre-school children acquire language and learn to take the perspective of others.
3. Concrete Operational Stage: roughly equivalent to school years. Children adopt rigid categories and classifications. Imagining situations other than the current is very difficult.
4. Formal Operational Stage: begins in the teen years. Child is able to use formal processes to consider hypotheticals, alternatives, and contrasts between situations.

James Fowler, adopting ideas of Piaget and Kolberg, identifies six stages of faith development:

1. Intuitive Projective Faith: young children have an imagined sense of things, clinging to stories but operating in a free-form sense
2. Mythic-Literal Faith: school children see faith as connected to right and wrong and have a tendency to take metaphors literally
3. Synthetic-Conventional Faith: teens are balancing a high commitment to conform to religious authority with simultaneously working through issues of personal identity
4. Individuative-Reflective Faith: young adults begin to take responsibilities for their own personal views but struggle with difference from their past patterns
5. Conjunctive Faith: associated with mid-life periods, faith is able to handle paradox, conflict, and abiguity. Certainty is not as highly valued.
6. Universalizing Faith: for a limited number of individuals, faith becomes generalized rather than particular with an openness to justice for all people.

When I consider the students I deal with on a daily basis, they’re generally in transition between Piaget’s concrete operational and formal operational stages. In terms of Fowler, they’re moving from Synthetic-Conventional to Individuative-Reflective. A central component of the educational experience is to provide the context in which these new ways of thinking are explored.

There are many problems with stage theories but I’ll mention three. First, people move through the stages at their own pace. Not everybody who enters college is ready for formal operational thinking. (I’ve known some professors who are more comfortable with synthetic-conventional faith!) Second, the movement between stages is really more of a sense of back and forth. Some days are conjunctive and others are individuative-reflective. Some topics are concrete operational while others are formal operational. Third, these transitions are not easy. When students start to individuate their faith, they often feel like what they “have known” (that is, adopted from their parents) is crumbling. They need solid support as they’re exploring transitions.

I’ve written before about the young evangelicals I’ve been reading. As I said in that post, these are characteristically people of deep faith who are trying to think in new ways (individuative-Reflective). In my first post on this blog, I wrote of Rachel Held Evans’ story from Evolving in Monkey Town. Hers is a classic story of moving from concrete operational to formal operational thinking. The more she works out her questions in public forums, the faster she’s moving toward Fowler’s Conjunctive Faith.

There are some more sociological implications of these developmental stages. There are subcultures that inhabit a particular stage and place normative pressures on their members to think accordingly — not just to agree with conclusions but to process information in a particular way. They take pride in holding to a concrete, conventional faith. (I worry that some really desire the mythic-literal faith of elementary aged children.) If folks in the membership start thinking otherwise, they’ll feel great pressure to get back in line or leave. Pete Enns’ post yesterday gives voice to what it’s like to be in that pressure-filled situation.

I have other friends who valiantly attempt to engage concrete/conventional thinkers in dialogue on Facebook (looking at you, James McGrath and Karl Giberson). I’m always impressed by their efforts to confront those who claim evolution is of Satan or that Obama is destroying the world. They want their dialogue partners to engage in a level of thought Piaget would admire but it never seems to happen.

These notions of how people think are related to the general patterns we’re seeing in the evangelical world. The more today’s youth embrace the open postmodernism of cultural diversity, the harder it is for them to manage synthetic-conventional faith. The more they cling to mythic-literal faith, the hard it is to navigate the society. Kinnaman’s work on disaffected youth is consistent with such a pattern. Even if they aren’t lost to Christianity (as one Christianity Today headline worried) they are thinking about that faith differently.

Another very interesting pattern is occurring later in the age cycle. The Barna group found that church involvement for those over 40 has dropped significantly over the last decade. Michelle Van Loon has been conducting some informal online surveys (reported here) to unpack that result and we’ve been exploring ideas about what factors contribute to the change. It may be a family-focus that doesn’t speak to empty nesters. It may be burnout or care for aging parents. It may have something to do with our focus on seeker-sensitive services. I wondered today if it might not be that some of the 40+ crowd are moving into Fowler’s Conjunctive Faith while their congregations are barely making out of Synthetic-Conventional.

In short, how we organize our thinking appears to matter a lot. It speaks to how information is (or isn’t) processed and the kinds of conclusions that are open for consideration.

My next post will look at some of the same issues from the perspective of mental schemas, heuristics, and other patterns of meaning-making.

New Ways of Thinking — Part Two

http://johnwhawthorne.com/2013/05/28/new-ways-of-thinking-part-two/

John W. Hawthorne

May xx, 2013

x

Be Amazed by God's Weakness... Not by His Divine Power!



Cirque of Unclimbables, Nahanni National Park, Northwest Territories, Canda



I am not familiar with today's author, David Henson. Not his beliefs. Not his theology. However, in today's article I felt he has touched upon a subject that we have looked at before. A subject that asks how we are to imagine God's power in relationship to God's creation. A creation which appears all-powerful, and oft times, out-of-control, or unsubmitted, to God's rulership.

 

I say "all-powerful" because many of the astronomers, cosmologists, and physicists of the world become geeked-out over the depth, the wonder, the strangeness of our infinite universe (or universes!). In the eyes of a godless science it only sees unending power stretching across the vast voids of time and space. But for the Christian scientist, s/he sees the God of the bible who stands behind the universe's emptiness and amazing wonders. Who Himself had cast its beginning from the span of his hands and very heart. Who has shared Himself through a universe and creation which we sometimes tremble before in its displays of deadly power and terrible acts of random destruction.

 

Certainly we know God's creation to be out-of-control.... Are we ourselves not the essence of this statement by our heads, hearts, souls, and spirits, as we strive against one another instead of with one another? Are we not unsubmitted to the Creator God of the universe who fills our hearts with timeless wonder before the ant or sun, the rainstorm or rolling expanse of mountain, desert, and saged prairie? Before endless meadows, the violent turbulent seas, and endless icy plains of snow and tundra?

 

And yet, in the sublimity of God's holy creation He would empty Himself of His omnipotence and share this power to His handiwork... to we ourselves as even to the created realm we find ourselves... to use, work, and live within, by His allowance, will and divine submission of power. To wield His creative majesty as would please ourselves and not Himself (not that I would ascribe existential willfulness to mortal-less matter... ). For this is the essence of creative indeterminacy and human free will. To exert power at the behest of the created thing or man. To allow the wind to become a deadly storm. The water a fatal force. Or man a wicked thing.

 

More simply said, when God did create, He created at the same time the freedom that we find in ourselves and observe within our ecosystems, sun, moon, and stars. This "creaturely freedom" the bible calls "sin." For in the granting of indeterminacy to nature, and of freedom to man, God did allow for its immediate affects and causations. But, God did also immediately begin exercising His divine sovereignty (how could He not by being who He is!?!?) by implementing His plan of redemption back to all. This we have observed in the progressive evolution of the universe, and of nature, and of man. However, within this redemption is the purposefulness that is held in what can be known as the "weakness" of God.

 

And it is to this biblical expression of God that I have found today's article quite helpful. So rather than asking the wrong question of "Why isn't God all-powerful?" Or by making the incorrect statement that foolishly asserts "God isn't all-powerful!" Let us behave our theological tempers and learn to appreciate the "weakness of God" emanating pervasively throughout His creation. And to likewise discover what this means to us, most implacably. That God has granted to man the use of His power. That it is we ourselves who must bear God's divine responsibility of using our freedom aright. That it is we who bear His divine accountability. Who must seek to behave our human willfulness. To learn God's heart of grace and merciful forgiveness so that we might more ablely share some small portion of God "Power" back with one another. And to the ecosystem that we live within.

 

To me, this is the better question to ask. Questions that we should ask of ourselves. Of our responsibilities within the larger redemptive scheme of things. And to pay attention to the smaller nuances of the biblical record as pertaining to Jesus who not only was God's representative to us on this earth. But was very God Himself come to show to us God's "weakness' in the wisdom of His purposeful creation. To show to us what it meant to "empty" Himself of His divine power in submission to the flesh through Incarnation; to the powers of this world; to the cross of redemption; and to the sinful freedom of man's willfulness.

 

This then is the ultimate example bourne by God's "servitude" to the redemption of both man and cosmos. That in the re-ordering of all things according to His will, mind and heart, it is God's purposeful "weakness" that we most find God. Not by demonstrations of His creative power (not that we haven't observe this in the biblical record). Nor by His amazing feats of coercive miracle (again, something we have also observed within biblical passages). But by His willing submission of His power to redeem all. Be amazed at that... and not by God's subjective use power demonstrations for we-of-little-faith. Rest then in the sleep of Jesus, wearied upon a boat at sea, thrashed by violent waters, and know even then that our God reigns!

 

R.E. Slater

May 29, 2013

 

 

 

Sleeping Through Storms: Rethinking Theodicy, Natural Disasters and God’s Omnipotence

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2013/05/god-doesnt-control-the-weather-theodicy/

 

David R. Henson

May 28, 2013

Comments

 

God is not all-powerful.

 

At least, not in the ways we tend to define power.

 

For us, power means that we get our way, that we can impose our will upon the world around us, that we can conform others into our images in order to achieve unity and security. In our minds, we equate power with control, sovereignty.

 

So, when the world spins out of control as it did in Oklahoma this week, and at the Boston marathon a month ago, and at Sandy Hook Elementary six months ago, we begin to wonder what happened to this all-powerful God to whom the skies and seas and nations are supposed to bow.

 

Are the heavens really declaring the majesty of God when an E-5 tornado destroys an entire town?

 

Only the most deranged and pathological of leaders suggested in the tornado’s wake that God was in control of the situation or was somehow, ultimately, responsible for the deadly twister. That includes, apparently, folk like John Piper and our own president, who seemed to imply that the tornado was a part of God’s plan. I’m sorry, but tornadoes are not part of God’s plan. Most of us can admit that without losing our faith, just like we can admit that God isn’t really calling the shots when it comes to jet streams, weather patterns and 200-mile-per-hour winds.

 

Instead of attributing the destruction to God, we tend to reassure ourselves that, in spite of it all, God is with us in the destruction, with us in the suffering, weeping with us. What we imply in this, but don’t often say, is that, deep down, we know God is not in control. And secretly, we give thanks for that. Naturally, we then ask where exactly is God in the midst of tragedy and suffering. This existential question doubles as an unconscious and fragile prayer of thanksgiving and relief. While we may feel desolation and alienation from God in the midst of great natural disasters, we also feel grateful — hopeful, even — that God isn’t orchestrating all the pain and destruction in the world. It is a relief not to be worshipping a God who sends tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, disease, and pestilence. It is a relief not to pray to a God who indiscriminately kills children with the same heavens which declare God’s glory.

 

God is not in control of the weather. Thanks be to God, God is not in the business of controlling anything.

 

But if God isn’t in control in the midst of such destruction, then who is? Something more sinister? Maybe something more dangerous than a sinister being. Perhaps no one — and nothing — is in control. It is a scary and disorienting thought to begin to consider God isn’t our bodyguard protecting us like the divine Secret Service from the suffering and tragedy in our world.

 

We find this idea jarring because I think we misunderstand what divine power is. God doesn’t control the weather, because that isn’t the nature of God’s power. God’s power is something stranger, more paradoxical.

 

God’s power is in the giving up of power, in the act of disarming divine omnipotence in favor of covenant and relationship with creation.

 

God’s power is in the act of becoming empty (kenosis), in becoming one of us.

 

God’s power is in incarnation and immanence, not omnipotence and distant transcendence.

 

In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us that when we see him, we see God. There’s a popular aphorism based on that notion, suggesting the radical nature of the Christian faith is not that Jesus is like God, but that God is like Jesus. And Jesus is in the business of emptying himself of power to the point of utter alienation and forsakenness by God. So what if God is indeed like that, like Jesus?

 

But, you might argue, there is a story in the gospels about Jesus and his power to control the weather. And it’s true. In the gospel of Mark, a terrible storm rises on the sea, threatening to swamp the disciples and the boat they are in. They are terrified, undone at the prospect of capsizing and drowning. They are baling water from the boat, struggling with wind-whipped sails, hanging on for their lives.

 

Jesus, meanwhile, is sleeping.

 

“Don’t you care that we are perishing?” they finally shout at him to wake him.

 

Jesus rebukes the wind and commands it to quiet down. “Peace! Be still,” he says, and it is a rebuke directed as much at the disciples as it is at the wind.

 

The disciples marvel at his power, asking, “Who is this, then, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

 

We are like the disciples. We want God to calm the wind and seas. We want to shout at God, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you see we are perishing? Don’t you see so many of us — children, even! — have already perished? Wake up, God! Stop sleeping when we need you most!”

 

Like the disciples, we believe the power — the divine — is in the ability to control things. We assume, like the disciples, that the miracle is in Jesus rebuking and calming the storm.

 

But if you notice, Jesus only reluctantly uses his power. He doesn’t seem to want to do anything. He wants to keep sleeping! He goes so far as to rebuke his disciples for even asking for his help. He calls them faithless. This storm-calming power isn’t the kind of power Jesus came to demonstrate. Rather, it is the exact kind of power Jesus came in order to give up, to empty himself of. It is the same power he rejects when he refuses to throw himself from the pinnacle when he is tempted in the desert, the same power he turns down when he refuses to kneel before the Adversary, that same superficial power that controls earthly things.

 

As much as we might like, this isn’t a story, I don’t think, about Jesus’ ability to control the weather. He is bothered to do it and is bothered that his disciples even asked. This is a story, rather, about how little we believe God to be with us in the midst of an overwhelming storm. It’s about how, deep down, maybe we don’t really believe that a God-with-us is actually enough. It’s about how what we really want is a God who is in control. And it is an indictment of the disciples and of us.

 

I don’t really think the miracle in this story is about Jesus calming the storm and taking control. The miracle in this story is that Jesus with the disciples in the water-logged and weatherbeaten boat, experiencing the same terrible storm, the same terrible waves, the same terrible danger.

 

And that alone should have been enough.

 

God’s power isn’t in the control of creation or of people, but in being in covenant and relationship with them. It isn’t in imposing the divine will or insisting on its own way but in sojourning with us as we fumble around and make our way in the world. God’s power is not in miraculous interventions, pre-emptive strikes in the cosmic war against suffering and evil, but in inviting us to build a kingdom out of love, peace and justice with God. God’s power is not in the obliterating of what is bad in the world, but in empowering us to build something good in this world — even if that is something as small and life-changing as constructing storm shelters at every public school on the tornado-strewn plains.

 

And isn’t this true power? Instead of enforcing control and solutions onto the world, God’s power is revealed in coming alongside us, journeying with us, suffering with us, and even staying with us in the boat when the storms come.

 

The omnipotence of God isn’t about having all the power. That’s would turn God into an insecure narcissist. Rather, the omnipotence of God is in the sharing of power.