CH 2 Beyond Victimhood

In chapter 2 of Richard Rohrs Hope Against Darkness he touches on the concept of victimhood as it relates to us in the postmodern world of today. I feel like he makes some very valid points concerning church and spirituality and what the purpose is of both.

He writes that "spirituality in its best sense is about what you do with your pain." Rohr believes that we do not know what to do with our pain. We have moved away from the image of God as the taker of our pain. He writes "When a people no longer knows that God is, God is good, God can be trusted and God is on your side, we frankly have a very serious problem." Now I like that sentence and I like both what it says right out front but I also like its deeper meaning. When I read it my first thought is that the reason people feel this way isn't Gods fault. It is the churchs fault for all of their failings. What I find most interesting is that as I read further into CH 2 I begin to understand that I am doing just what Rohr is talking about as it relates to Victimhood.

I am taking the percieved slights that I have experienced at church and using that to give me a reason to move away from God. It isn't that God has failed me or really that the church has failed me. But, being an institution that so often has man at its core as opposed to God it really has no choice but to be inconsistant and to fail. Failure is the single thing that man does well. God is consistent, God is there, God does love us. I think the problem begins when we put our faith in the church and not in God. When we put our faith in the rules of each particular denomination as opposed to focusing on what God and by extension Jesus, or the other way around , wants from us.

Back to Rohr and Victimhood before I get to far afield and become entranced by the sound of my own voice. Rohr notes that in todays world people are using being a victim to gain some sort of moral high ground. Often to achieve sypathy from others one only has to claim that so and so's great-grandmother did something to hurt their great-grandmother and then the cycle of recriminations begins. I think he again is making a very valid point here.

He writes "Playing the victim is an effective way of getting moral high ground without doing any moral development whatsoever. You don't have to grow up, you don't have to let go, you don't have to forgive, you don't have to surrender----all the things that great religion deemed necessary. Now you just have accuse somebody else of being worse then are, or of being a member of a race or group that is worse then yours, and that makes you feel like you're good, moral, or superior."

I see this everyday. Not only in my own life as it relates to how I think about church or politics or the world in general but also all around us. Today I read a blog that was condemming Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll and his use of language when he preaches. Now I am not a fan of Mark Driscoll and I have commented on him in the past. But what I find most interesting is that what this blogger is using as the beginning point for his attack on Driscoll is that his wife was listening to the radio and a sermon of Driscolls came on and he used some words that were objectionable to both the blogger and his wife and both were concerned that their young children were subjected to these terms. I think that is a reasonable concern and that is something that most parents are concerned about. But the blogger takes the position of being a victim of Driscolls language and now he must stand up and fight against this great evil.

I think that if Jesus were to play the victim card we would have never been saved. We must forgive and if we continually play the victim card then we will never reach the point of being able to forgive. There is much more in the chapter but to me the inherited victimhood passage really stood out to me. It spoke to me about the need to move beyond my being a victim and to be able to forgive those who have hurt me.

Rohr closes the chapter with this " the cross calls all of us to a mystery of transformation. On the cross none of us is in charge, none of us is in control, none of us can possibly understand, just like Jesus himself. On the cross someone else is in control. Someone else is in charge. Someone else understands. Someone else is obviously a much more patient lover then we are."

That is something to think about.

Reading and Thinking

I am currently reading a book by Richard Rohr called Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an age of Anxiety. My friend Marcy who comments now and then upon my posts recommended it to me because she did not have time to read it herself. She heard Father Rohr speak at a conference that she attended.

I am hoping to work through the book chapter by chapter as I read it and I hope we can have some interesting and meaningful dialogue along the way. The book is broken into three parts and part one is titled The Current Dilemma and chapter one is titled The Postmodern Opportunity.

To start right off I found the title of the chapter intriguing because I feel that most of the evangelical community the mainline evangelical community would rather think of this as "The Postmodern Problem". Now I may be putting words into the mouths of some evangelicals out there but I think that the majority do not grasp the Emergent Church and Postmodernism. But I believe we will address that as we move further into the book.

One of the first things that Rohr does in chapter one is address why we should look at Saint Francis and use him as a guide for further study and growth. Rohr writes

"...Francis stepped into a Church that seems to have been largely out of touch with the masses. But he trusted a deeper voice and a bigger truth. He sought one clear center and moved out from there. The one clear centerpiece was the Incarnate Jesus. He understood everything else from a personalized reference point. ...Francis found his one firm spot on which to stand and from which he could move his world. He did this in at least three clear ways. First, he walked into the prayer-depths of his own traditon, as opposed to mere religious repetitions of old formulas. Second, he sought direction in the mirror of creation itself, as opposed to mental and fabricated ideas or ideals. And, most radically, he looked to the undesirable of his society... for an understanding of how God transforms us."

I found this passage most interesting as Rohr highlights how Saint Francis found his center in Jesus not in the Church that seemed out of touch with society anyway. This is a substantial point for me because I find myself fighting against the Church and spending most of my time complaining that they are to controlled by the orthodoxy and rules that control all that they do. So I opted to step back out of Church and while I continue to meet with friends on a regular basis for fellowship and discussion I have not been part of an organized congregation for a long time now. The writings in this book have made me wonder if perhaps I have made the wrong choice and perhaps I would have been better off staying within the Church and focusing myself on Jesus and letting that fill me as opposed to breaking away. The food for thought in this book is meaty and I am looking forward to chewing off more and trying to digest it. I hope some good conversation can come of it.

Thoughts!!

I read this on another blog that I read in the comments section. It was written by a fellow named Warren.

"once we have figured out that (some kind of) God must exist, and put aside what C. S. Lewis called "boys' philosophies" (materialism, atheism, etc), then we are led to the next stage of enquiry: namely, has this God revealed himself to us? Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all claim divine revelation (I would not include Buddhism on this list) - are any of them right? All of them? Some of them? None of them? And how would we decide that a genuine divine revelation has occurred? What criteria could we possibly use for that?"

I found this really fascinating because it puts into words what it is that I have been thinking and what I find myself wrestling with on a regular basis. Many philosophers and thinkers feel that without Divine inspiration philosophy would have ground to a halt rather then move forward into Theology.

So for me this is the interesting point. While the majority of Christians will argue that only their God exists. The Jews, Muslims, and Hindus will argue the exact same thing. In the quote above the author does not put Buddhism on this list. I am not so sure I would think that the original Buddha may himself have experienced Divine revelation but chose to (freely chose) express that in a different way then the other religions.

So, the first question, if all of these separate religions claim Divine inspiration then which one is right? The traditional Christian will argue that this is a slippery slope to begin with. If I even acknowledge the possible origins of these other religions to have begun with Divine inspiration then I have begun to doubt the very origins of the Christian faith. But, I would argue that if I do not ask these questions I am not being honest with myself and am not using the brain that God gave me.

If I claim that God is not powerful or big enough to survive my questions then why believe in him in the first place. In fact, I would argue that this need to think of God as exclusive to my particular place of origin is a result of us being human. Perhaps, God knows this and chose to show himself in such a way that his message would be the most effective for the differing peoples that he was revealing himself to.

The, other question, how could I decide that a genuine revelation had occurred? That to me is the key, because this is exactly what people are saying and doing when they declare other religions off limits. To me, when one looks back at the origins of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity it is obvious that they are coming out of the same beginnings. The changes begin with the birth of Jesus and when man got involved. But, despite my feelings about the origins of these religions. I am hesitant to declare these three the ones and only. The biggest reason being that since I am not Divine (in any way) how in the world am I qualified to make this claim.

I would further argue that it would go against the teachings of God to automatically declare these other religions worthless. I think I need to worry more about my faith and how I live my personal life when it comes to honoring others and just showing them love. It will not be up to me to decide who is right or wrong. And, if I insist on behaving like I it is up to me then I may be in for a real surprise. But, I don't know and for me that is the most freeing thing. I do not know and I am not supposed to know.

It is freeing for me to separate my faith from my origins, separate it from my politics, and finally separate it from my failings as a human and to believe that God is big enough to handle all of that.

We have Free WIll! We have Free Will?

I read a blog called One Cosmos and I find it very interesting. I do not agree with all that he writes in fact I do not agree with probably half of what he writes. But, he raised an interesting point in his writing today.

"The problem isn't that man is unfree, assuming that he is not living in literal slavery or attending a politically correct university. Rather, the problem is that man's freedom is not absolute but finite; it is constrained, for example, by death. As is the case with truth, our freedom is inexplicable in the absence of an absolute freedom that we can never possess, but which we can know about.

The question is -- and this is a question God must "ask himself" -- how can I overcome man's "no" without denying him the precious gift of freedom that I have granted him? You could say -- so to speak, of course -- that this is the question God must have pondered before coming up with the idea of the Incarnation."

I found the above paragraph very interesting because I am not sure that we have free will. I think we think we have free will and in some cases we may believe that we have free will or feel that we know we have free will. But, I wonder does that really matter one way or the other if we have Free Will or not? We are going to live our lives. We are going to get up each morning, or afternoon, depending upon your lifestyle, and go about our day. Then at the end of our lives we die. It is like Bob mentions above. Our Free Will is finite because we ultimately are all going to die. So I wonder then does the mind set that death is inevitable free us up to just live.

Or does that drive us to move towards some level of belief system so that we can try to fight against the inevitably of death. So, that we can feel that as long as we are a believer we have eternal life. So, then death is not to be feared because we have eternal life to look forward to.

I submit that we will always have eternal life to look forward to. If you are a believer either we die and go to Heaven or if you are not a believer we die and go to Hell but it seems to me that either way we have eternal life. Or, we die and that is it there is nothing left. We are worm food! If we then die and are worm food then truly death does not matter because we have no idea that we are worm food because we are just that worm food. Then there is no existence for us beyond death. So death does not matter one way or the other, death is not to be feared.

DEATH JUST IS! It is not good or bad it is not right or wrong it just exists it sits there waiting for us to arrive. So, chew on that for awhile.

God of the Moon and Stars (Kees Kraayenoord)

I found this video and it blew my mind the artist is named above and I know nothing about him. I urge you to watch and listen to this video because it really affected me and really made me think.



It is rare for me to find things that make me want to pray. But, this did just that. I was left weeping and hopeful at the same time. Please tell me what you thought.