Wow, it has been a busy spring and summer quarters and there is lots to discuss. I have basically not posted here for two reasons: Ashleigh and my other blog Walking Towards Jerusalem found here http://walkingtowardsjerusalem.wordpress.com/ . Check it out! I’m saving this blog for personal and devotional posts and using the other for more biblical studies type stuff. Read and enjoy. Personal update on here sometime this week.
Psalms of DisorientationAccording to Brueggemann, the problem with Psalms of Orientation is that they don’t acknowledge the realities of human existence. If we focus solely on orientation as most churches do, we do not effectively speak to the disoriented. If our focus on orientation arose out of a surety of the goodness of God meant to comfort, then it might be good, but it is probably more a reflection of the church wanting to turn a blind eye to difficulty. We lose something important as a church if we do this. “The use of these ‘psalms of darkness’ may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith.” (emphasis original) These psalms demand the world be experienced as it really is and a faith that does this is transformational. It is a faith that can speak into real situations, and it is precisely in these moments of despair that God chooses to breathe new life into you, transforming you. These psalms evoke reality and make us face the ugliness of our situation. They tend to follow a similar pattern. They begin with a plea, a complaint that God should correct a skewed situation. The plea often contains an address to God, a complaint, a petition which is often in the form of an imperative, a motivation for God to act, and sometimes an imprecation that reflects a raw demand for justice. They end with a praise which is marked in the ext by a shift in tone. The praise element often contains an assurance of being heard, a declaration of kept vows, doxology, and some mystery cause of change. These are the most varied and widespread of all the psalm categories.
The first subcategory of psalms is personal laments. This type of psalm constitutes a considerable portion of the lament psalms. They are a standard form of expression for the Israelites. The form is quite straightforward and can shed light on other psalms of disorientation. As Brueggemann succinctly puts it, “The issue in all these psalms is that something is amiss in the relationship, and it must be righted.” The psalm given as an example is psalm 13. There is something terribly wrong in the life of the speaker and their life with God. Verses 1 and 2 contain a series of rhetorical questions which essentially accuse God of failing to help and that also serve as an address. Verses 3 and 4 provide the petition and motivation. The petition is made with a triad of imperatives: consider, answer, and lighten. The motivation given by the speaker is their inability to shoulder the burden, therefore, God must act. Finally, change occurs, though it occurs over an undisclosed period of time.
The second subcategory is psalms of Communal Lament. Brueggemann argues that personal laments most easily resonate with us partly because they are most common and partly because they correspond with the way we experience reality. Furthermore, we have lost the idea of a public awareness or shared public imagination and so do not have a parallel for communal laments. The whole idea that public issues may require public prayer is not much practiced in the present-day church. Consequently, he proposes that to understand the communal laments we need to understand these public events privately. Brueggemann uses the example of imagining the destruction of the temple as the destruction of the whole world. By so doing, you could understand the threat by incorporating yourself in it. He is probably on to something when he says that we no longer think in these categories. Americans in particular seem to be in love with their own autonomy. Naturally, this is a barrier to understanding a society not built on democracy and western ideas of equality. However, the usefulness of the exercise proposed by Brueggemann to solve the issue is questionable. The psalm given as an example for this category is Psalm 74. The temple has been lost and with it the greatest symbol of life. With the center gone, all other things degrade. The psalm begins with an urging to Yahweh, who comes first, even before the situation has been described. Then the speaker attempts to convince Yahweh to act. The speaker gives a description of the suffering, and boldly declares God’s glory to be at stake. The Psalm concludes with a series of imperatives given to Yahweh, based on his own past actions. It is hard to imagine such boldness! The Psalm speaks of the disorientation of losing the temple and answers that the loss of the temple is not the loss of Yahweh.
Brueggemann also addresses a couple of Psalms that do not fit into the pattern. These do not appear to offer any sort of hope or reconciliation. They will not be discussed in detail except to point out that Brueggemann deals with the imprecatory nature of Psalm 109 by positing that it is a relinquishment to Yahweh of the speaker’s anger. This might seem like it is too neat of an answer, but it is probably the best answer that is consistent with the Christian worldview.
The final subcategory of disorientation psalms are psalms that look at these situations from a different perspective: Yahweh’s. In these psalms Yahweh views disorientation as a trouble in the relationship brought on by disobedience or lack of trust. These psalms place the blame squarely on Israel. The example given is Psalm 50 which opens with a theophany of God coming in his majesty. God then testifies against Israel, emphasizing his own independence and separation from them. The psalm concludes with a harsh polemic against the wicked and a warning, and this is followed by an alternative in the last verse: follow Yahweh.
Imagine that you are sitting in church one Sunday and you hear someone praying in a small quiet voice. You strain your ears to hear the fervent and rapid words riding on a raspy exhalation. The words you hear shock you.
“God, you are a cold being. You don’t give a crap about me or my family. You have no concern for my suffering. You delight in the salt on my face. You are petty and you are without mercy. You have made it so that when people hear my name it fills them with scorn. You are a brute. You are cruel. And yet your love endures forever.”
You are shocked at what you hear. You wonder if the man is insane or merely an apostate. Surely such speech is blasphemy! How can someone declare the cruelty and love of God at the same time?!?!? Welcome to the world of the Psalms and Lamentations. Every idea in this imaginary prayer is contained in the Psalms and Lamentations and often with harsher language. How is it then that the Bible came to contain such language? Isn’t God offended by such “prayer”?
This semester I am in John Goldingay’s class on the Writings of the Hebrew Scriptures, which is incidentally my favorite class. Lately we have been discussing the Lament Psalms and Lamentations. We were encouraged for an assignment to write a Psalm of Lament. I didn’t take the assignment seriously, and just submitted the poem found elsewhere on the blog titled “A Poem/Prayer of Repentance.”
However, last night I attended a student-led worship service and in the midst of thought and reflection on the Psalms I tried on my lamenters tongue. At first I was timid, life is generally awesome out here. I started with frustrations about myself and the development of my life. It was not long before I discovered in myself an old wound I thought had long since healed. It seems instead that I just pretended it didn’t exist for so long that I almost forgot about. Yet, it has been there for some time. It lurks beneath the surface. It is an annoying scab which coos at the cool words of atheist intellectuals who mockingly decry God as a mean kid on an anthill and whispers in my ear ‘hypocrite’ when I speak of the goodness and love of God. Greater than my shock at discovering just how much that nearly decade-old wound hurt, was how incredible an experience it was to admit that wound to God.
Like a child feebly beating upon the chest of his father in rage, I let fly. I gave God both barrels and threw the gun at him too. I drained my heart of all venom and when it was over there was nothing left but the love for God which I had all along. I do not pretend that I am done with this wound, but now I have a weapon against. When your God can take a punch, then Doubt cannot have any hold over you. Furthermore, it isn’t as if God doesn’t know that in the deepest parts of myself I am angry at him over this wound. If anything Lament is nothing more than being honest to God. Should we fear that a steadfast God will become unreliable in light of that honesty. No, Doubt cannot bear to look in the face of such honesty, and so, last night I found myself drawn closer to God by calling him every name in the book.
1. Someone use the phrase “Plugged in.”
2. Sermons that pretend to be expository but are really topical.
3. The Worship leader mini-sermon. Praise songs may be so poorly written they need an interpreter, but I don’t want to hear your three minute mini-sermon. It’s especially bad when all the vocalists each do one.
4. The collections mini-sermon. This is incredibly common out here in California and it may just be that its weird because I’m not used to it, but I have been to several services at different churches out here that had a 5-10 minute mini-sermon before the main sermon just on giving.
5. Pastors using multiple translations in the course of one sermon.
6. The three point fill in the blank handouts.
7. The invasion of pop-psychology into Sermons.
8. 40 Days of anything. I’d donate a 100 bucks to any church that does 41+ days of purpose/love/whatever.
9. Politics
10. Dispensationalism
I know I haven’t posted in forever. I’ve got lots of posts in various states of completion. I’ve decided to abandon the week by week format, because I’m guessing it is probably boring to read. I’ll probably be posting life updates once or twice a month.
More important than that though is a prayer request I’d like you guys to spread around and include in the Sunday evening prayers at Windsor. A good friend out here got the unfortunate news that her mother has been diagnosed with heart failure. Not many details are known at this time, but I covet your prayers in this matter for the sake of my friend. As someone who has spent many hours thinking about his mother’s illnesses and having had to seriously ponder a life without her, I think I can relate to what she is going through. I love you all and miss you.
I’m thinking this will be a shorter entry than the previous examples of my ramblings. Not a whole whole lot happened, so I’m going to try not to rehash too much. Thursday morning I woke up and drove to Altadena Baptist Church to talk with the Pastors. One of them is a grandfatherly fellow at that stage of life that is just past middle aged but not yet geriatric. He bears a striking resemblance to my Great Uncle Bill, and he laughs like my grandfather. Next to him sat a fresh faced middle-aged woman with close cropped hair and a look of intensity. They spent some time learning about me, which means they learned about Windsor and my upbringing. The three of us chat politely for quite some time. I am told anecdotes about the Baptist convention to which they belong. It began as a Swedish Baptist denomination but later expanded to include non-Swedish churches. The Swedes are lovers and not fighters, he tells me, and uses this to segue to the questions I emailed him. They are ok with Calvinism, and their denomination has never addressed it. I find this very agreeable and much more desirable than that whole SBC mess. The conversation turns to my second question: What role does Connie play? I was unclear as to whether she was co-pastor, assistant pastor, or whatever else when I emailed, but when he told me that they were co-pastors I had to know how that came about. It turns out she went into ministry full time in a lesser capacity and over time sort of got promoted to co-pastor status. The truly shocking thing was that it happened 20 years ago! They don’t consider themselves progressives, and their doctrine is conservative, but on this issue they went against the grain. It turns out that even to this day some of the members aren’t comfortable with it, but continue to attend anyway. We continue to talk and it becomes clear to all of us that Altadena is not the place for me. I do not mean to imply that it was in any way unpleasant! It was quite the opposite, and they even offered to help me find a church more in line with my beliefs and comfort! I left there feeling like I had found a piece of the Body that was good, but even so was not for me. After some closing anecdotes about some of the more bizarre happenings in the local churches (including a story about a liberal church’s pastor becoming a Buddhist then refusing to give up the pulpit), we said our goodbyes and I folded into my Prius and drove away in search of lunch. I honestly can’t remember what I did the rest of the day except that I eventually did my Greek homework which was mind-numbingly easy and did a bunch of reading for Systematic Theology Class. Then I listened to the Dodger game. Friday morning I woke up at 7 am and followed my Greek days routine: I make coffee then have my morning constitutional and get ready for school. I grab my 32oz mug of coffee and head to class with my neighbor Zach. It’s over the Dative and Genitive and I occupy myself by drawing the cartoon you see in the youtube video below. I spend the evening wasting time and watching Saw IV which was also a waste of time. Saturday was a great day. I slept in until about 9:30 (my God what is happening to me!) and woke up feeling really rested and good. I grab some breakfast and watch some TV, then head to the greatest bookstore on the planet. It is called Archives Bookshop and is devoted exclusively to Theological Books. To see it in all its glory, visit the website for pictures: http://www.archivesbookshop.com/archivesphotos.html I spend about an hour and a half in there and leave 80 dollars poorer, which is why I need to limit how often I go there. Yeah, it is that awesome. I drive down to Whittier to hang out with Trey. I plan on doing an assignment, but I don’t. Instead I play this amazingly addictive game called Gang of Four that I described last week. I win decisively. Life is good. After a while we head to Ambrose pizza to watch the Dodger game. Trey and some of his friends watched with me as the Dodgers swept the Cubs. It was a great time over some pizza and pitchers of beer. In truth we actually left in the 6th before the game was over. We went to Trey’s girlfriend’s place to watch some MMA fights on CBS. It was a good time especially since I got to see that bum Kimbo knocked out by a poof 30 lbs. lighter than him. Trey’s best friend Kyle invites me to his church the next morning. I drive home tired but content and looking forward to visiting the church. I woke up the next morning at about 6 am because of the amount of liquid I drank the day before. I groggily decide it is way too early to be awake for an 11am service, so I plop back in bed and go to sleep. I wake up 3 and a half hours later and after getting ready for church head out the door for the 10 minute drive…except that when I put the address into my GPS the place is actually less than 5 minutes away. Yes! This church looks great already! I enjoyed the worship service despite the absence of hymns. The Sermon, however, was exceedingly weird. The Pastor argued that Paul incorrectly preached the Gospel at Mars Hill, and this is why the Philosophers didn’t convert. He further argued that this was the catalyst for Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians to preach the cross instead of with words of wisdom. Uh…..Yeah….Uh…..I don’t even know what to do with that. I’m going to give him another shot in case it was an off day…and because you can’t beat a 5 minute drive! That evening my neighbor invited me over for soup. You can’t pass up free soup and the chance to make friends inside the complex, so I skipped Epic Life and went. I’m really glad I did. I became much more acquainted with two guys in the complex that I had really only spoken to in passing. The only awkward part is that EVERYONE else was with their spouse. I was the lone bachelor and I was also the guy that increased the group total to 7 which made it hard to find a board game to play. We settled on playing DVD trivial pursuit men versus women. The Men won of course, but considering two of us had beards it was practically cheating. One of the Women, whose name I forgot and am kicking myself for forgetting, made a delicious apple pie. Over pie, the three remaining men (one left to do homework) discovered we are all nerds and like the same sort of movies and video games. So consequently we are supposed to all hang out together to play Xbox, which will be cool. I’m glad that my neighbors are slowly becoming my friends. Tuesday night I went to week two of Systematics class and I am really enjoying it! The professor is such a happy little guy, and I wish I could just download all the information he knows into my brain. Today, I had lunch again with a friend of Trey’s. I have a feeling we’ll probably end up hanging out pretty regularly. So, my friends, all is well! I miss and love you all. If any of you want my mailing address, just send me an email!
I have been a huge fan of legal pads since my debate days.
This week has not been nearly as eventful as my arrival was. Thursday was spent in the task of acquiring bookshelves. I made the 20 minute drive to the Burbank Ikea. Once I arrived I discovered that the only place to load what you buy is a temporary 15-minute parking area. The problem was, I was alone and could not leave my bookshelves to move my car out of the parking garage across the street into the loading area. So, after grumbling I drove another 40 minutes to the Ikea in West Covina. For those not familiar with the Geography of the area I have made this handy map:
Yeah, I was not very happy about that, but it was my fault for deciding to try a new Ikea. Once I finally arrived, I walked through the show room to write down the locations of the items I wanted. I also looked up desk measurements while there and discovered that I can squeeze a desk in and I have a feeling I’ll need it. Then I went to the proper areas and loaded the 4 book shelves onto a cart thing they have there. Altogether it weighed around 500 hundred pounds. I purchased the bookshelves thanks to a generous donation from my mother and then began the task of loading all 500 pounds of bookshelf into my Toyota Prius. You’d be amazed how much you can fit in one of those things, but even so it was a tight fit. I drove home with my arm resting on one of the boxes. When I got home the space next to me was mercifully empty, and I got ready to unload. The spot is owned by this boisterous young woman who owns both a Ford Explorer and a motorcycle. She fits them both in her spot by pulling her Explorer so far forward that I can’t get past her hood to my car, forcing me to walk around. Luckily she was gone and I began the arduous process of unloading. It wasn’t super difficult but I was exhausted by the time I got everything inside. The bookcases weren’t all that heavy, but 3 of them were seven feet long and quite unwieldy. After I got everything inside and took a little break, I decided to get started. I was just about finished when I realized I had put it together incorrectly and had to start over. I finally got it together and this is the final product:
Pretty good storage capacity for the amount of space it takes up. I put the other three together that evening and the next day. I found my drill so that saved lots of time. The storage capacity for these shelves is immense. They are wider than normal and almost seven feet tall. Here is a picture of the three side by side along the back wall of my living room:
I spent a lot of time on Friday unpacking my books from the many boxes and tubs they were in. I have begin the long process of organizing them, but getting everything else unpacked is kind of a higher priority. The only other thing of note that occured that weekend that I can remember is that I managed to get some Dodger playoff tickets. Of course, they have to beat the Cubs before the ticket is any good, but I’m pretty sure they will. Oh, I did watch the debate, but it just made me want to punch kittens so I had to take a break in the middle of it. Saturday I called Trey Allen to see if he wanted to watch a fight. He called around to some friends and set something up, only I had the day wrong and the fight isn’t til this weekend. My mistake, but I ended having a great time with Trey, as usual. We went to this great pizza shop called Ambrose. I ordered a pint with my pizza for which I received a blank stare. If the worker had been a naturalized citizen I might have understood, but she was pure home-grown American retarded. She rang up a small which is 12oz, and I clearly was not dealing with someone who could easily modify the order so I let it stand. We ate our pizza and drank our beer then headed back to Trey’s place. After arriving and hanging out for a little bit, we played this amazing card game called Gang of Four. It’s like a cross between Uno, Hearts, and Poker. Yeah. Amazing. Trey’s house reminds me of the Bluff house which is a nice sort of feeling. Various people seem to float in and out, including a girl who arrived, ate some dinner, then went into another room to talk on her cellphone for a while, then left. Hahaha. I bid Trey goodbye relatively early that night so I’d be ready for church in the morning. I attended a small Baptist church in a nearby city called Altadena Baptist Church. I felt really comfortable there, but that might have been because it was so much like Windsor it was spooky. 60′s style building? Check. Mixed hymns and praise music? Check. Time to share prayer requests in the middle of the service? Check. Prolonged greeting period in the middle of service? Check. Pastor that prefers a narrative structure? Check. At least for that morning that is true, as it turns out there are two pastors there. One of them is a woman, and no they aren’t married either. It is a little bizarre, and I have been invited to chat with the Pastor I heard preach about the structure of the church tomorrow. It was a disappointing development because the church in so many ways mirrors Windsor, and the superficial similarities served to underscore the differences. Theologically, I am not convinced very solidly either way on the egalitarian/complementarian debate but I do lean complementarian. Moreover, my entire normative pastoral experience is rooted in the paternal, and I can see no reason to reject what makes me comfortable when I am not particularly convinced there is any fallacy in it. Some may read that and be offended, if that’s you, get over it. I don’t snidely going around telling Feminists they shouldn’t be ministers, but I can recall even at the School of Christian Studies a guest speaker being condescending and snide about the complementarian view. I don’t think it is one of the big issues anyway, and it wouldn’t hinder me in any way acknowledging that a person with the opposing viewpoint is my brother or sister in Christ. I am personally just not comfortable with having a woman pastor, and I doubt this meeting will change that. Monday morning, I groggily woke up and brewed 32 life-giving ounces of coffee. I made my way to my 8am Greek class with my neighbor who is in the same class. In walks the professor, and I am slightly taken aback. He is a short balding man. He wears the strangest glasses I have ever seen, and his heavy lids mostly conceal darting eyes. His tongue darts in and out of his mouth in barely perceptible movements. He places his laptop on the table, and when he starts to hook up the cables he thrusts his face close to the connectors. Then it clicks. He is nearly blind. The strange movements which seemed simply ungainly were in fact the results of a struggle to discern shapes. He explains that he has two seperate eye conditions that cause him to have poor vision. I quickly learn that He is probably a genius and that like so many who live with afflictions he has a great sense of humor. The idiosyncracies and slight social awkwardness has already become endearing in it’s own way. Most important of all, he is passionate about Greek, and how often do you find someone like that? He is only an adjunct, but hopefully he will become more as he wishes. I have forgotten plenty of what I learned about Greek, but I have not forgotten the alphabet so the class was a little boring. I went to that class again this morning and have discovered that there are five of us from the same housing unit in the same class. I have been recruited to tutor as necessary, which is cool because I rather enjoy helping people understand concepts. Tuesday night I went to my Systematics class. I can tell I’m really going to enjoy this class. It’s taught by a Finnish Pentecostal who began his studies under Lutherans, and did doctoral work under Benedictines. He is an enthusiastic man who clearly enjoys his subject. We talked about Revelation and Natural Theology, and I’ve decided that I’ll probably write my paper for the class on the subject and defend Barth’s stance on Natural Theology. Hopefully I can make it some of my best work, as I’ll probably have him as a professor for my other two Systematics classes. That is everything that I can remember at the moment, but I am undoubtedly leaving stuff out. Anyway, it’s off to bed with me!
Forgive my ugly feet oh Lord
and the blood upon my tongue
forgive my belt of lies oh Lord
and the bow I’ve left unstrung
Forgive the hedge I’ve trampled
and the white flag I have flown
forgive the dimness of my lamp
and the beating of the stone
Quicken the coal that burns my lips
Quicken the fire that chars my bones
Quicken the oil that wets my hair
Quicken the wound that takes my life
May your wind blow my soul.
