William A. Walker III

Page 15 of 24

Dissertation Prospectus

GLOBALIZATION, VIOLENCE AND SALVATION: TOWARD A TRANSMODERN POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF NEIGHBORLINESS AND RESISTANCE

“To be against globalization as such is like being against electricity. However, this cannot lead us to resign ourselves to the present order of things because globalization as it is now being carried out exacerbates the unjust inequalities among different sectors of humanity and the social, economic, political and cultural exclusion of a good portion of the world’s population.” – Gustavo Gutierrez

Understood within an analytical framework and mediating theory of economic, political and cultural globalization, the purpose of this dissertation is to critically, socially and theologically reflect upon the violence and injustice that has been enacted and endured by people in Mexico and the United States in recent years (2008 to present) as a result of the so-called drug war. To begin I will attempt to outline the various dimensions of the phenomenon of globalization and the drug war more specifically, the latter of which is presumed to epitomize major negative aspects of the former. This part of the examination will rely on the work of several leading social scientists who have extensively studied the U.S. – Mexico underground political economy and its genealogy. Secondly, an ethical-political critique from a view of Christian salvation will be conducted as it pertains to this particular conflict, principally but not exclusively in its social sense. My method and hermeneutical approach will be guided by what has been called the transmodern thought of Enrique Dussel and Hans Urs von Balthasar, respectively – Dussel with regard to historical and ethical-political concerns, and von Balthasar with attention to his theological aesthetics and the dramatic structure of his doctrine of salvation as symbolized by the theological significance he gives to Holy Saturday.

Dussel’s re-reading of the history of modernity as “coloniality” from a Latin American “border thinking” perspective, as well as his Levinasian and arguably Schellingian-Marxist interpretation of social relations will be the primary lens through which I will try to situate and appreciate the more particular problem of globalization and the drug war itself. Subsequently, in an effort to sensitize Dussel’s approach to a view from “the eyes of faith,” it is von Balthasar’s meditation on the beauty of the Christ-form that will be appropriated in order to convey a less anthropocentric and more trans-temporal, thoroughgoing Christian theo-political imagination. The study will culminate in an attempt to synthesize several key contributions of Dussel and von Balthasar by drawing on additional soteriological and ecclesial insights from Dorothee Soelle, Jon Sobrino and Gustavo Gutierrez. It will be argued finally that only a properly historical-critical (Dussel), aesthetic and christocentric (von Balthasar) liberationist soteriology (Sobrino) of communion (Gutierrez) can confer the adequate theological and ethical vision of neighborliness – one that is necessary for the inspiration of faithful Christian and ecclesial resistance (Soelle) in this crisis and others.

The Radiance of Christ and its Effect on Human Beings: Theological Aesthetics in St. Thomas and von Balthasar

By Bill Walker

On November 18, 2013

In Theology

Below I’ve included an excerpt from Aidan Nichols’ little book on Hans Urs von Balthasar. One of the chapters in my dissertation will take up certain aspects of von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics and dramatics so as to attempt to give a fuller picture of Christian social justice and the Church’s vision for striving after it in circumstances of violence and oppression — a fuller one, at least, than many modern and postmodern depictions tend to offer, in my view. For this reason, I’m borrowing the term “transmodern” to describe it. Of course, to whatever extent this is achieved, it will be due to the thinkers I’m writing about rather than anything original to my own thought.

Descartes was in love with what he called ‘clear and distinct ideas’. Balthasar’s concept of clarity, however, is taken from Thomas, for whom clarity – radiance – is one of the essential traits of the beautiful, along with proportion and integrity. This is a very different sort of ‘brightness’. The brightness of the beautiful is something that overwhelms us, impelling us and enabling us to enter further into the depths of being than the unaided intelligence can venture. And whereas the Cartesian ‘idea’ is, in Scholastic terms, an intuited potential essence – something that may or may not be the case about the world, the Thomistic ‘radiance’ is expressed by a form actually enacting its own existence, its being-in-act. — p. 17

St. Thomas explains that Christ has radiance through being the Art of the Father, where the Word illuminates the mind that contemplates him. He has proportion because he is the fullest likeness of the Father. He has integrity because his form is the Father’s form. And for Aquinas precisely those three qualities – radiance, proportion, integrity – are the hallmarks of the beautiful. St. Thomas was speaking of the pre-existent Son, who is with the Father from all eternity. Balthasar, by contrast, wants to apply pulchrum to the incarnate Son, precisely in his sensuous as well as intelligible form, a form that is well accommodated to our finitude so that we may grasp it.

Though [artworks] function within the analogical network of being whose indefinitely extended character . . . though they belong to immanent being – the realm of being that suitably proportioned to the human mind, they also participate in the transcendentals, and thus they have a relation to the transcendent, divine Being that is all creation’s source. Aesthetic beauty, we can say, strives towards transcendental beauty, and this is a token of its spirituality. Yet aesthetic beauty cannot spiritualize itself. It is ordered to the delight of the embodied human mind of everyman or everywoman – toward the satisfaction of the imagination as earthed in this world. It can, then, only receive a direction toward the transcendent, and do so, accordingly, from beyond itself. The supreme, altogether unified, and yet interior experience the Romantics were looking for is not self-shaped. Rather, it is shaped by a transcendent and supernatural form. The subject of religious experience, the human self, can be, ought to be, and has been, re-formed by its transcendent object. Human experience enters true synthesis through receiving an objective revealed form that brings it to fulfillment. The self becomes re-formed divinely when it lets Christ’s archetypal experience form its own. — p. 26-27

What’s So Great About Vanhoozer? (Engaging KJV Part 1) (derekzrishmawy.com)
von Balthasar chose Goethe (3quarksdaily.com)
Obstacles to Reading Scripture in Modernity: Von Balthasar’s Response (insightscoop.typepad.com)
Salvation for All? A Deeper Look at Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Soteriology (dailytheology.org)
“Von Balthasar reminds us that what is most fitting is not what is most current.” (insightscoop.typepad.com)
Hans Urs Von Balthasar on the Incarnation of Jesus (freedominorthodoxy.wordpress.com)
New: “Priestly Spirituality” by Hans Urs von Balthasar (insightscoop.typepad.com)

Paul Helm on Miracles: Signs of Grace, not Violations of Nature

By Bill Walker

On November 11, 2013

In Theology

Cover of "The Providence of God (Contours...

Cover via Amazon

It’s not often that I find myself reading a Calvinist’s take on Divine Providence, but I’m currently doing so in preparation for my PhD comprehensive exams (which will include questions about the theology of John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas, among others). Paul Helm’s discussion of miracles below is a good one, at least as far as theological determinism and much of classical theism goes (see his blog here):

It is important to note that the Bible does not employ a rigid distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Nor does it operate with a technical and precise definition of a miracle as a violation of, or suspension of a law of nature. Rather, ‘signs and wonders’ (some of which have no scientific explanation) function as powerful expressions of God’s power and grace. Their meaning is bound up with the meaning of the other events and teachings to which they point, and with which they are integrated. They do not have a scientific or magical significance of their own.

Moreover, miracles must not be regarded as divine tinkerings, as the way in which God deals with an emergency situation which has arisen unexpectedly . . . some philosophers and theologians have objected to the occurrence of miracles because they seemed to be dishonoring to God, as if the machinery of the universe were defective and God had to make running repairs. Whatever the shortcomings of this general approach, it quite correctly recognizes the inadequacy of supposing that miracles are needed because God’s providential order is in danger of breaking down.

We may agree with Leibniz that God is perfect and that [God] does not do anything without having a sufficient reason to do it. It does not follow, however, that God cannot have a sufficient reason to perform a miracle; to act, that is, in a way that involves unprecedented changes in physical nature [e.g., the resurrection?].

If miracles are not metaphysical first-aid, what are they? They are signs, signs of God’s grace, and of its urgency and power. They do not occur apart from the history of God’s dealing with [God’s] people, but they are integral to that history. They invariably accompany new phases of God’s redemptive activity, and their significance cannot be understood except in terms of the significance of the history of which they form a part.

As we have seen, the history of Israel and of the church is built upon covenantal promises which God fulfills by, among other things, providentially ordering the affairs of [God’s] people. The purpose of that history is to reveal God’s grace in the redemption of men and women. Miracles are not signs of the power of God in the abstract, or magical tests of strength, or entertaining exhibitions of divine cleverness; but they are signs of grace. They are intended to make those who believe that God orders the affairs of nature for their good gasp — not only at the power of God in the miracle, but at power of a deeper magnitude in the revelation of saving grace which the miracles signal.

The Providence of God, pp. 106-7

Spirituality, Prayer and Mortification according to Evelyn Underhill

By Bill Walker

On November 4, 2013

In Spirituality

English: Evelyn Underhill. Author given as William Edward Downey (1855–1908) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Any spiritual view which focuses attention on ourselves, and puts the human creature with its small ideas and adventures in the center foreground, is dangerous till we recognize its absurdity. . . .

We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having or doing, is the essence of a spiritual life. . . .

[or] Mortification and Prayer. These are formidable words, and modern humanity tends to recoil from them. Yet they only mean, when translated into our own language, that the development of the spiritual life involves both dealing with ourselves and attending to God. Or, to put it the other way around and in more general terms, first turning to Reality, and then getting our tangled, half-real psychic lives – so tightly coiled about ourselves and our own interests, including our spiritual interests – into harmony with the great movement of Reality. Mortification means killing the very roots of self-love; pride and possessiveness, anger and violence, ambition and greed in all their disguises, however respectable those disguises may be, whatever uniforms they wear. In fact, it really means the entire transformation of our personal, professional and political life into something more consistent with our real situation as small dependent, fugitive creatures; all sharing the same limitation and inheriting the same half-animal past. That may not sound very impressive or unusual; but it is the foundation of all genuine spiritual life, and sets a standard which is not peculiar to orthodox Christianity. Those who are familiar with Blake’s poetry will recognize that it is all to be found there. Indeed, wherever we find people whose spiritual life is robust and creative, we find that in one way or another this transformation has been effected and this price has been paid.

Prayer means turning to Reality, taking our part, however humble, tentative and half-understood, in the continual conversation, the communion of our spirits with the Eternal Spirit; the acknowledgement of our entire dependence, which is yet the partly free dependence of the child. For Prayer is really our whole life toward God: our longing for him, our “incurable God-sickness,” as Barth calls it, our whole drive towards him. It is the humble correspondence of the human spirit with the Sum of all Perfection, the Fountain of Life. No narrower definition than this is truly satisfactory, or covers all the ground.

— From The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill

A Holistic Gospel: Seeing our Sinful Selves in the Despised Other

By Bill Walker

On October 28, 2013

In Spirituality

The Meal at the House of Simon the Pharisee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For some reason I think I have often tended to assume that God’s preferential option for the oppressed on the one hand and the call for our own personal repentance on the other are very different and separate aspects of the Christian faith (individual vs. social salvation, etc.). And indeed, in the history of American Christianity in the last century, conservative and liberal churches have usually swung to one side or the other, respectively. What I find in the quote below, and as those like Gustavo Gutierrez and Jon Sobrino have taught me before, however, is that these two dimensions of faith and spirituality are intimately linked.

A sermon in church yesterday also reminded me of this, as the story from Luke 7 of the sinful woman with the alabaster jar of perfume who anoints Jesus was expounded. Simon the Pharisee is unable to see that he and the woman ultimately stand on the same ground.

Why does the Bible, and why does Jesus, tell us to care for the poor and the outsider? It is because we all need to stand in that position for our own conversion. We each need to stand under the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, and the grace of God—to understand the very nature of reality. When we are too smug and content, then grace and mercy have no meaning—and God has no meaning. Forgiveness is not even desired. When we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, religion is always corrupted because it doesn’t understand the mystery of how divine life is transferred, how people change, and how life flows. It has been said by others that religion is largely filled with people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have gone through hell.

Jesus is always on the side of the crucified ones. He is not loyal to one religion, or this or that group, or the “worthy” ones—Jesus is loyal to suffering itself, wherever it is. He is just as loyal to the suffering of Iraqis or Afghanis as he is to the suffering of Americans. He is just as loyal to an oppressed gay man as he is to an oppressed married woman. We do not like that! He grabs all of our self-created boundaries away from us, and suddenly all we have is a free fall into the arms of God, who is our only and solid security. This seems to be God’s very surprising agenda, if I am to believe the Bible.

— adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, The Active Prayer by Richard Rohr

A Christian Mission (cbrigdenblog.wordpress.com)
Redefining the Gospel, Part I (aspiringtheologian.wordpress.com)

What I might mean by 'Resurrection'

By Bill Walker

On October 24, 2013

In Theology

I appreciate my classmate Shane Akerman’s take on the resurrection in this post, and it was timely for me having just listened to a Homebrewed Christianity “Theology Nerd Throwdown” podcast episode on the same subject. Tripp Fuller and Jonnie Russell talk about two opposing accounts of the resurrection that resurfaced in a blogosphere debate between Tony Jones and Marcus Borg, as well what each of them might be missing. You can listen to the full episode here.

The Great American Water Crisis, Privatization, and how Faith Communities are Fighting Back

By Bill Walker

On October 18, 2013

In Ethics

Like many others, I’ve been convinced for a while that the sustainable management of energy and water consumption must become top political priorities for society, and Christian churches should be instigating the conversation. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

Just yesterday I overheard a commentator on K-Love (a national Christian music radio station) announce the “great news” that the U.S. has recently become the world’s number-one producer of oil, and has increased this production three hundred percent in recent years due to advances in technology such as that afforded by hydraulic fracking, which enables us to extract hard-to-access deposits of fossil fuels. For him — and I guess for Christian radio? — this is good I suppose because energy prices can remain low, people will keep relying on gas-transportation, and the U.S. economy will continue to grow.

Despite the short-term benefits of this boom which mostly go directly into the pockets of the biggest shareholders, the reality of the water crisis, peak oil, climate change and other environmental issues seem to severely call into question how this could finally be interpreted as good news. While there are indeed significant advantages to increasing domestic energy production, especially that of natural gas, the concern is equally that we seem to be doubling-down on an addiction that is bound to cause more harm than anything else in the long-run. And it would be one thing if our country was simultaneously taking the necessary preparatory and infrastructural steps to transition into a post-petroleum age… but we simply are not. Instead, we seem utterly preoccupied with secondary, partisan pettiness.

On the one hand, it’s hard for me not to be cynical about this; but on other hand, who can blame the radio guy? Have most church leaders and Christian thinkers even tried to understand and communicate the connection between the gospel message and real world problems like this one — a problem that requires out-of-the-box imagination and learning from what experts are telling us about peak oil, globalization and geopolitical constraints? Sadly, they have not. Too many cannot even fathom such a connection, as they remain captive to a soterio-centric version of Christianity.

Here’s how the latest issue of Sojourners Magazine characterizes the water problem:

Corporate raider T. Boone Pickens made billions as a Texas oil baron, but he’s betting that the real money will come from mining “blue gold”—water. Pickens owns more water than anyone in the U.S.—he’s already bought up the rights to drain 65 billion gallons a year from the Ogallala Aquifer, which holds the groundwater for much of the Great Plains. Almost all the Ogallala water—95 percent—is used for agriculture, but Pickens plans to pipe it down to Dallas, cashing in on the hotter-and-drier weather from climate change. (The result, according to an Agriculture Department spokesperson: “The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm.”)

Pickens isn’t alone in his new role as a water baron. Multinationals such as Nestlé are buying up water rights, siphoning lakes, and selling our most precious resource to the highest bidder. Slick advertising has seduced many Americans into the mistaken belief that (expensive) bottled water is “purer” or “healthier” than tap water—and led to the annual consumption of 9.67 billion gallons of bottled water, with underserved Latinos and African Americans having the highest rates of bottled water use. And the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warns that by 2030 nearly half of the world’s population will inhabit areas with severe water stress.

As this article goes on to explain though, “the [actual] good news is that faith-based, consumer, labor, and other community organizations have teamed up to fend off many attempted takeovers to keep their water under local public control, for the health of the poorest and the strength of the whole community.” To see examples of this, read the full story here: http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/11/great-american-water-crisis.

It also sounds like strides are being made in a manner consistent with peacemaking rather than social justice ideology as discussed in the previous post, so that deserves praise as well. Let’s hope we can learn from these groups who are putting their faith into practice in creative and forceful, loving ways.

Nestle: Global Water Predator (thepeoplesvoice.org)
How long before the Great Plains runs out of water? (washingtonpost.com)
Protect the Ogallala Aquifer to boost Kansas’ economy (kansascity.com)
Precious Waters of the Ogallala Aquifer (frenchwellness.wordpress.com)
Why Kansas is running out of water (treehugger.com)
Is the Ogallala Aquifer going to run out? (environmentalgeography.wordpress.com)
Study: Ogallala Aquifer being drained by U.S. farmers (seeddaily.com)
Steve Lendman – Nestlé : Global Water Predator – 16 October 2013 (lucas2012infos.wordpress.com)
KOR to Unleash its “Bottled Water Killer” (prweb.com)
The Ogallala Aquifer, an important water resource, is in trouble (jrcorr.wordpress.com)

Social Justice Ideology vs. Peacemaking

By Bill Walker

On October 14, 2013

In Ethics

This distinction between social justice ideology and peacemaking is an interesting one that’s been brought to my attention recently through returning to some of Walter Brueggemann‘s work. Obviously, social justice is a good thing. As ideology, however — that is, as an ossified concept or immaterial absolute — its truth and goodness is cheapened. Usually this happens when we pursue social justice solely by mechanical and rhetorical means. In doing so, we neglect aesthetics and appeal narrowly to a quantifiable distribution of goods, rights, laws, or to universal abstract ideals like freedom an equality — without embodied community, neighborliness or celebration of beauty and creativity.

Social justice ideology is depersonalized and lacks self-awareness. It also tends to lack hope. It merely identifies injustice and gets angry. Basically, it’s pure judgment, which means it’s lazy. Social justice ideology, much like conservative ideology, says we are right, you are wrong, and never relinquishes that condescending posture. Richard Niebuhr called this henotheism.

Peacemaking on the other hand goes something like this:

Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. it is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free. Peacemaking is about being able to recognize in the face of the oppressed our own faces, and in the hands of the oppressors our own hands.

Peacemaking, like most beautiful things, begins small. Matthew 18 gives us a clear process for making peace with someone who has hurt or offended us; first we are to talk directly with them, not at them or around them . . . Straight talk is counter-cultural in a world that prefers politeness to honesty. In his Rule, Benedict of Nursia speaks passionately about the deadly poison of “murmuring,” the negativity and dissension that can infect community and rot the fabric of love.

Peacemaking begins with what we can change — ourselves. But it doesn’t end there. We are to be peacemakers in a world riddled with violence. That means interrupting violence with imagination, on our streets and in our world. Peacemaking “that is not like any way the empire brings peace” is rooted in the nonviolence of the cross, where we see a Savior who loves his enemies so much that he died for them.

— From A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

In sum, peacemaking is neither Fight nor Flight, but something altogether different.

According to Walter Wink, Flight consists of submission, passivity, withdrawal or surrender. Conversely, Fight looks like armed revolt, violent rebellion, direct retaliation or revenge. The neither/nor alternative is as follows:

JESUS’ THIRD WAY
• Seize the moral initiative
• Find a creative alternative to violence
• Assert your own humanity and dignity
as a person
• Meet force with ridicule or humor
• Break the cycle of humiliation
• Refuse to submit or to accept the
inferior position
• Expose the injustice of the system
• Take control of the power dynamic
• Shame the oppressor into repentance
• Stand your ground
• Make the Powers make decisions for which
they are not prepared
• Recognize your own power
• Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate
• Force the oppressor to see you in a new light
• Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a
show of force is effective
• Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking
unjust laws
• Die to fear of the old order and its rules

A similar lesson seems to have recently been learned by protagonist and lead female actor Emily VanCamp‘s character Emily Thorne in an episode last week of the hit ABC television drama series Revenge.

I’m interested to see how this season plays out and hope to reflect on it some when it’s over. In short though, she’s dedicated practically her whole life to an elaborate scheme aimed at avenging her father’s unjust death and public shame, which was carried out through a complex cover-up and legal scandal that left a number of pernicious perpetrators off the hook. It’s too early to tell for sure, but it looks like Emily could be making the difficult but transformative journey from eye-for-an-eye ideology to real peacemaking.

A Just Peacemaking Response to the Crisis in Syria (traceylind.wordpress.com)
On Social Justice (noellecampbelldotcom.wordpress.com)
Social Justice Sunday (elizabethgardens.wordpress.com)
Palestinian peacemaker to speak (toledoblade.com)
We become what we fight against (erasingapathy.wordpress.com)
Peacemaking Day 2013 (slangcath.wordpress.com)
Peace in the Midst of Inter-religious War? (interfaithreflections.com)
Reading: Land in the Struggle for Social Justice (moving4socialchange.wordpress.com)
Peacemakers (bracketthesethoughts.wordpress.com)
The Call to Be Peacemakers (heraldmagazine.wordpress.com)

Stories about 'The End': Whose Team are We on?

By Bill Walker

On October 10, 2013

In Theology

Second Coming Jesus 05 (Photo credit: Waiting For The Word)

Two posts ago, I made a comment implying that there is a difference between threats and predictions in the Bible. I have learned about this difference from Terrence Tilley’s book Story Theology, a passage from which is shown below:

Many Christians have believed that the Bible reveals certainly some events which will occur at the end of time. Usually they have extracted specific sentences from the biblical stories and construed them as Divine Statements infallibly Revealing the Course of Future Events. By doing this, however, they have extracted an assertion or metaphor from the narrative in which it was embedded and which determined what it could mean. When this connection is lost, losing the original force of the utterance is risked because this extraction makes the meaning of the removed assertions or metaphor independent of the story. Such loose assertions can then come to meant almost anything, and free metaphors can come to carry incredible implications.

For example, the force of many of the central utterances in eschatological stories in the Bible is that of threat. “If you keep on doing what you’re doing,” the story-teller warns, “you’ll be in trouble with God!” These stories are often fables or fantastic image of the future either in or out of this world. Yet when sentences used as threats are extracted from the stories, they can become predictions. Then they are read back into the stories as predictions, and the stories are read as coded glimpses of the future, shown to the authors who had to write in code at God’s dictation.

In order to understand the forces of stories of the future properly, an interpreter also needs to take seriously the fantastic aspects integral to them. They are not stories about the world in which we live, but are quite “out of this world.” In fact, they are stories of another world. This means that we cannot presume that the principles for interpreting them are the same as the principles for interpreting stories set in the world in which we ordinarily live.

The desire for certainty and control can be very powerful. Christian or not, human beings long to know and to be secure. Sometimes this longing manifests itself in personal relationships; other times, in politics and business. It can also be seen in religion.

End times triumphalism is a major obstacle to healthy Christian theology, I’m afraid. Not long ago I heard a sermon preached a church here in Austin that basically concluded like this: Jesus’s way of dealing with sin in the world is through mercy… for now. As such, we are to be imitators of that mercy. But one day Jesus is going to come back and violently claim his rightful throne, and we want to be on his side when that happens.

This makes me think of some of our not-so-great hymn language in the Protestant tradition:

Oh, when the moon drips red with blood,

Oh, when the moon drips red with blood,

Lord, I want to be in that number,

When the moon drips red with blood.

— a verse from “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In“

Now, I do not blame this pastor for what in my view is a misinterpretation of the biblical narrative. Sadly, the problem is much more imbedded in our institutions and culture more generally — especially in certain seminaries — of which he is a product. Getting free of that influence is very difficult.

Plus, it always feels good to think that we’re on “the right team” — God’s team — and that our team is going to win. But here’s the trouble: if we’re supposed to imitate God, and God is our example, and if God in Christ is violent and/or vengeful at any time, then why would we ultimately ever be truly disturbed by violence? Sure, God is holy, and we are not, so therefore we should obey God… But is it the case that God’s holiness makes God justified to carry out violence, or does God’s holiness make God the only truly non-violent One? That we can even ask this question should give us pause anytime we’re tempted to take for granted confidence in a version of the story that predicts the end with us and our worldview on top.

Of course, non-violence has a bad reputation and is widely misunderstood. In a future post, I plan to highlight what I’ve learned from Walter Wink about the non-violence of Jesus — basically, how it is anything but passive. More importantly though and to the point for my purposes here, I simply wish to contrast two possible outlooks from a Christian perspective:

First, there is the one just described above in which we rejoice with the God who conquers the enemy — i.e., the non-Christian? the devil and his demons? — because justice has been served… and we have been spared.
Secondly though, I would also want to consider the possibility not that the “God” or “Christian” team wins, but that a victory comes through the discovery that we’re all supposed to be on the same team. And the only way to be excluded from this team is to not wish to be part of it.

By saying we should all be “on the same team,” I’m not advocating for tolerant, superficial peace (like Pax Romana or modern-day liberalism). That kind of teammate-ship is based on an underlying deceit — namely, that peace can come without repentance. Instead, I mean the true peace of deep justice and what Jewish liberation theologian Marc H. Ellis has called revolutionary forgiveness — a process of reconciliation that happens as a result of a mutual recognition between two or more groups of their guilt and complicity, and therefore also their need for mercy and renewed covenant together.

As with Tilley, it’s pretty clear to me that we’ve been warned not to “keep doing what we’re doing” unless we want to “be in trouble with God.” The question that matters then, however, is not who gets judged, how and when, but what we are doing that offends God. The Christian tradition has called this what “sin.” So maybe sin is simply starting our own team.

I don’t know whether and how many people will sign up for God’s team — which is the only team — but I think the way to do so might be to realize that winning is not the goal of the game. And I suspect only God can bring about that realization.

Shane Hipps on Belief, “religious Christianity” and the Bible today (wawalker.com)