Clarifications on that crazy idea

Since at least two of the regular readers of this blog are my friends who served the United States military in the ongoing crisis in Iraq, I felt the need to clarify my statements in two previous posts on nonviolence as well as in the Comments section.

Yes, I believe that nonviolence is the Christian ideal to which Jesus Christ called his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. I also believe that the posture of nonviolence is anchored in the New Testament as a whole and, following John Howard Yoder, that it finds its germ already in the Old.

But we live in a broken world that has very little space for ideals. In this broken world, shit happens. Mothers miscarry, parents divorce, bad men rise to power, governments turn racist. And while I still believe that nonviolence lies at the core of the Christian commitment to peace, by no means do I think that every situation comes in a clear black-and-white package. While I still believe that the suffering which comes from our nonviolent strategies is always redemptive, I confess that the consequences of such nonviolent choices are often disruptive and destructive not only for ourselves but, perhaps more importantly, for those affected by our choices.

I say this because I do not wish to dishonor the service of men and women who’ve sacrificed their lives to defend the citizens of their nation or strangers in others. Every war is a disaster whether its cause is reckoned just or not, and I respect the decisions of men and women who make sacrifices to attempt to alleviate it. I admire their bravery and greatness of spirit which I so seldom find in others, much less in myself.

And as for those among them who are Christians, I do not hesitate for a moment to call them my brothers and sisters in the one Lord. I am not yet so confident of my own exegetical conclusions as to criticize their sacrifice or stem my deep admiration for their heroic generosity.

Moriyo rahemelain oovadarain.

“There is an American Orthodox Church. Leave it alone.”

Like it or not, he said it. This is how you light a fire.

Hat tip: Byzantine, TX

Liturgy and TV

In his commentary on the Book of Numbers, Gordon Wenham suggests that the modern reality that most closely approximates the life-shaping power of the liturgy in Ancient Israel is the television. When I first read this some years ago, I found his analogy striking because it gave me a vivid impression of how much the liturgy must have permeated life in Ancient Israel.

As the years have gone by, though, what Wenham probably intended as a passing comment has come back to haunt me more and more. I feel as though I’m gradually waking up to something I’d rather not think about—the fact that TV, like the liturgy, offers us a hermeneutic for reality, a common system of symbols and, if I may say so, a rhythm for daily life itself.

We know about—or least we think we do—the dangerous lives of Alaskan fishermen who face the Bering Sea or the political forces at play in the Middle East. We know the songs, the jingles, the Jeopardy time-keeping tune. We know what time the news comes on and the day and time on which the season finale of our favorite show will air. Can we say the same about the dangerous lives of revolutionaries in first-century Palestine, the psalms, or the feasts instituted by God in Leviticus 23?

Is the television really an alternative liturgy?

Stringfellow on poverty

There is a boy in the neighbourhood…whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out three years ago . . . He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help . . . He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows that at last he has nothing to commend himself to another human being. He has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is exactly in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is different from him in this regard. We are all unlovable. More than that, the action of this boy’s life points beyond itself, it points to the gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us through we have nothing acceptable to offer Him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.

William Stringfellow, My People is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic, 97-98

I’ve never read Stringfellow, but with the gems that Halden keeps flashing before my eyes, that might have to change.

Hat tip: Inhabitatio Dei, of course.

“Boredom is the kingdom of the Devil”

“The curse of labor.” But many people, if not the majority, are wallowing in furious activity because they are afraid of remaining face-to-face with life, with themselves, with death. They are bored, and boredom is the kingdom of the Devil. Bored and afraid, they deafen themselves with action, with ideas and ideologies. The key to our culture is an optimistic activity with traces of fear and boredom. Without God, all is possible, but this “all” is endlessly frightening and boring. It seems to me that the first duty of the Church is to refuse any part in the logic and the keys of this world. One cannot enlighten the world without first wholly rejecting it. What is needed in contemporary Christianity is courage and spiritual freedom….

The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983, Entry for October 19, 1973.