On Weariness

Themes: Genesis, Philosophy, Selections, Sin

One of the unusual, and I think powerful, features of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy was that he took moods seriously. For him, a mood can be an insight into the real, bare-bones conditions of our human existence:

A mood makes manifest ‘how one is’ and ‘how one is faring’. In this ‘how one is’, having a mood brings Being to its There. (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 173)

However, the conditions under which we all operate – our individual ways of getting through the day – tend to require that we ignore moods as best we can. They are the kind of thing that we paper over or drown out as we busy ourselves in being the kind of person that others need us to be. Heidegger was particularly interested in what lies behind such human experiences as Anxiety, and Boredom. What do these experiences mean? What do they tell us about being human, and as such, what do they tell us about Being?

I think Weariness can be an experience, a ‘Mood’, that lets us lift the veil and glimpse something real.

There is a kind of weariness that fixes us in our being. It is the ‘pushing-back’ of the world against my exertions, the ‘Something’ that properly resists me, and thereby fixes me as a being with will, and desire, and goal. How good this is! It enables us to be creatures and to create – there is no music without friction. It lets me be an individual. It lets me love – to find myself in finitude, with limited powers, and to trust, embrace, and depend upon the love of others. It is the kind of weariness that I imagine pouring through the arms of the First Man, after a day working the Garden, that led him to take pleasure in kicking his boots off and lying out full stretch in front of the fire.

But there is a kind of weariness that threatens to overwhelm. The bone-tired, aching weariness that flows from wrestling with a ‘Something’ that does not merely push back, rather it holds us in a death grip, dragging us down to Nothing, to be consumed and disintegrated.

For a while we might believe that this Weariness will not win out in the end: that it is not the truth of the world. We fool ourselves into thinking that if we only keep trying we can roll our boulder to the top of the hill, and not have it roll back down the other side. A myth.

There is no Rest here. There is no point in this world at which motion may cease. This is fundamental physics: if you do not move you will shiver, starve, be caught up, be dragged down, be eaten alive. Thou Shalt not Rest!

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.
(Genesis 3:19 NIV)

‘Fatigue’ is how Engineers describe a weakness that develops in materials through repeated variations of stress. Weariness can sometimes be like this, a similar weakness induced through conflicting forces. To be weary can be to experience in ourselves the particular ‘There’, of Being in This World. A world riven by a multitude of opposing wills, conflicting desires. moving toward multiple goals, operating under both a Curse and a Blessing.

And in which, if there was no reconciliation, no proper administration, would eventually shake itself apart.

photo (which is brilliant) by
Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

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Moore Confession

Themes: Moore College, Sin

We are always and endlessly fascinated with knowing the truth about ourselves.
I’ve been attending the Moore College Annual Lectures over the past couple of day, there are 2 to go next week. This year’s speaker is Mike Ovey, the principal of Oak Hill Theological College in London. His topic is ‘Repentance’.
His particular angle is the extent and role of repentance in our preaching of the gospel. Have we proclaimed the gospel when we set forth the truth that ‘Jesus is Lord’, all the rest is implication and consequence, or is the call to repent an intrinsic element of the proclamation, so that, unless you have called on your hearers to ‘repent’ you have not proclaimed the gospel.
It’s a great question.
Today’s lecture included the claim that repentance, and particularly confession, is a form of self-understanding, specifically the revelation of yourself in and through the word of God addressed to you. Perhaps I’ve tarted it up a little, but that was the gist.
Ovey suggested that confession, understood in this way, is alien and hostile to the mind of a (post)modern committed to personal autonomy.
But is it?
There certainly appear to be aspects of our culture that revolve around ‘confessing’. Seemingly trivial examples might include the appeal of TV shows like Oprah, Denton’s ‘Enough Rope, Jerry Springer, or Dr Phil.
But what about, the Doctor’s Surgery, the leather couch in a psychologists office, or more pointedly, the ‘coming out’ of someone gay.
I asked Dr Ovey to comment on these situations, and he made the excellent point that many of these examples are situations in which a confession is given in order to engage the hearers in some form of complicity, i.e. I’ll tell you who I am, and you’ll tell me, that’s all right. There is almost an implied contract that creates the space for the confession.
But that really doesn’t cover the whole field, there are distinct and given situations in which people engage in ‘secular’ confession in order to be told who they are, even if who they are is ‘bad’. Dr Phil or Jerry Springer are examples, sometimes so is the Psychologist, although ‘bad’ is ‘sick’ in line with our tendency to pathologise evil (I’m aware that it is more complicated that this bland statement). The ‘coming out’ of someone gay, is not conceived of as the search for validation of an identity so much as the confession of an identity you have and which has been pronounced over you.
The danger seems to me, that there is a deep temptation to this style of confession because it allows us to abdicate responsibility. Confession relieves us of guilt, but it can do so in different ways. Secular confession relieves us of guilt by relieving us of responsibility and freedom.
But what kind of confession are we calling for when we preach the gospel? And what kind do we get when hundreds of kids go streaming down the front to commit themselves to Christ?

I haven’t really set this out very well, or thought it through thoroughly because I don’t have time, but someone should.

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Pray for Kenya

Themes: Forgiveness, Places, Prayer, Sin, St Philip's

This morning I got up early to join the weekly prayer meeting for our Church, we meet down stairs in the Parish lounge. Our Church has all kinds of struggles and difficulties, but it has some wonderfully welcoming and committed people, and, not unrelated to that, it has a small group who faithfully pray together every week. Usually I can’t make the time because I need to be on the train to college.

tangent Just on a tangent for a moment, if anyone is moving to Sydney and looking for a new Church, give a thought to joining us at St Philip’s. We have more opportunities for the gospel than we can handle with our small team. Don’t settle for dogmatic slumbers in the suburbs – go to a Church on the mission field! Having said, that probably every Church feels the same way, and if you have better reasons to be somewhere else, I guess that’s ok…
still, we really need you. /tangent

I happened to hear a report on Kenya on the BBC world service last thing before I dropped off to sleep last night, and was deeply disturbed by one particular interview. I downloaded it and listened again this morning. It is completely heartwrenching.

I’ve extracted a portion of the audio (about 20secs) here.

You can listen to the whole report here:

A number of people were praying for Kenya this morning, we support some link missionaries over there. As we sat there in prayer, I had the realisation that all around the world at the moment there are Christian men and women petitioning God for the lives and safety of the people of that country. It’s very bad, very ugly over there, but I wonder what it would be without the prayers of the saints.
The little philosopher part of me gets anxious about stating propositions that have no conditions for falsification, but as a Christian I only know how grateful I am that He has left some salt in this world.

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City Soul

Themes: Critique, Places, Sin, Society, Sydney

There was a interesting article in The Economist recently entitled ‘In place of God‘. It is a survey examining the central cultural institutions of the world’s major cities. The title reflects the shift over the last century away from the Church as the central cultural institution. Leaving aside for a moment the problem with regarding the Church as a cultural institution, it raises an important point about the spiritual dimensions of Cities.

Until last century all the urban communities of the Western world were built around Churches. In Britain, before the 16th century a population centre would only be declared a city if it contained a Cathedral – the seat of a Bishop. But for increasingly secular societies Church no longer holds its place as the hub of urban life. The article goes on to examine some of the substitutes our societies have developed: Art Galleries, Museums, Sporting Grounds. But the secular shrine that has truly come to dominate the spiritual lives of modern suburbanites receives only a brief mention: the Shopping Mall.

It’s probably just my over-active imagination, but there are certain times when I walk into a shopping mall and am overcome with the sense that I’m in the heart of a pagan temple. As a Christian there is so much happening in a Mall that is antithetical to the heart of the Christian message and life. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when I really enjoy wondering ’round the Mall. I certainly take advantage of the convenience provided by having shops grouped together. But I think that the times when I’m repulsed are probably my saner moments. Buying and selling, the manipulation of thoughts and desires through advertising, the manipulation even of biology through the food courts and careful control of natural and artificial light – I feel like a battery hen.

All the windows in a shopping mall only look into shops, never into the landscape or city. It is impossible to know what time of day it is once you’re inside. Increasingly, it is becoming unnecessary to ever leave.

And yet, the mall is a profoundly dehumanising place. It takes People and makes them no more than cattle, consuming and producing. It justifies the manipulation of minds, hearts, and bodies in order to make this process more efficient. A shopping mall is a factory in which we are the product.

The change from Church to Mall is a massive exercise in Urban Idolatry. The substitution of human productions for the reality of God.
And it’s no wonder that this is dehumanising. Man-made gods always treat us like cattle. Idolatry is dehumanising.
We were created to worship God, the more we draw near to him in worship – the more human we become. Worshipping God is an essentially human activity, it is proper to no other species of creature. We are most human when we are act out our humanity towards God. And conversely, being truly godly is truly human. It’s an image thing. We have the identity and intentions of our creator pressed into our identity.
When we worship something other than God we are bending this out of shape. We stop acting in a properly human way. Even though genetic sequences don’t change, idolatry produces monsters – perversions of human identity. Sharing some of its features but twisted in upon itself.

A city is a collective individual. More than anything else humans produce, it is the concrete representation of our identity. When we substitute something other than God at the heart of the city, it also begins to lose its humanity. It loses its civility, its ‘civicness’. It is no longer a community of citizens bonded together for their mutual good. It becomes truly ‘sub-urban’ a disparate herd of individuals isolated from one other, angry and suspicious, quitely ignoring each other, while seeking to beat each other to whatever bargain is now on offer. A city with no soul.

The gospel of the Lordship of Jesus means that we must speak out against the false worship in a city – calling people to give their loyalty to the Christ.
And it also means calling people back to their humanity.
And calling cities back to their foundations.

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On having enemies

Themes: Reading Scripture, Sin

LORD, lead me in Your righteousness,
because of my adversaries;
make Your way straight before me.
(Psalm 5:8 HCSB)

I really think the Psalms come alive when you read them with a Samuel L. Jackson accent – Particularly Psalm 5.

I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of giving God a list of reasons why he should help us when we pray. It gets fairly well drummed in to us that we are saved by grace, sustained by grace, and we have nothing to offer God that isn’t automatically his by right.

We aren’t in a bargaining position.

David’s prayers don’t really sound like this. David is completely comfortable with giving God long lists of reasons for action.

Psalm 5 is full of great examples but verse 8 has got to be the most audacious.

“Lead me in your righteousness because of my adversaries.”

Are you struggling with prayer? Feeling that your prayers just bounce off the ceiling? that God doesn’t hear?
The tele-evangelists have got it all wrong, you don’t need more faith.
You need more enemies!

It’s an interesting strategy…

But David’s prayer isn’t just based on the fact that he has enemies. In fact, the whole Psalm is essentially a reminder to God of who God is, who David is, and who David’s enemies are.

God is good:

“For You are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil cannot lodge with You.
The boastful cannot stand in Your presence;
You hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who tell lies;
the Lord abhors a man of bloodshed and treachery.”
(Psa 5:4-6 HCSB)

There is a thorough going consistency to God’s actions – he is utterly reliable. And he hates all evildoers.
(incidentally, that doesn’t leave much room for ‘hate the sin and love the sinner’ does it?)

God has never given up on his good plans for creation. He has never had the failure of imagination that leads us to accept less than perfection in our world and our selves. God’s endless creativity and endless love of goodness means that he cannot tolerate evil.
Our willingness to do so continually makes us complicit with it.

But David has the nerve to remind God that he hates all evil-doers, that God isn’t at home with evil.
This is the bloke who coveted his neighbour’s wife, lied, engaged in conspiracy to murder, and committed adultery. That’s four of the ten commandments right there. It certainly sounds like “bloodshed and treachery.”

Yet David can say:

“But I enter Your house by the abundance of Your faithful love;
I bow down toward Your holy temple in reverential awe of You.
Lord, lead me in Your righteousness,
because of my adversaries;
make Your way straight before me.”
(Psa 5:7-8 HCSB)

David, clearly a doer of some substantial evils, has entrance to God’s house.
He is not there on the basis of merit but because of God’s love for him. (This definitely presents a bit of a problem, how can God be just and justify the wicked? Isn’t God now complicit with evil? Stay tuned for the New Testament…)
David is God’s man.
Without disregarding his failure and sin, he remains someone who’s life, identity, future, and loyalty are all wrapped up with God. So much so that there is a total identification between God’s enemies and his.
David’s enemies are God’s enemies.
God’s enemies are David’s enemies.

Look at David’s description of these people:

“For there is nothing reliable in what they say;
destruction is within them;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongues.
Punish them, God;
let them fall by their own schemes.
Drive them out because of their many crimes,
for they rebel against You.”
(Psa 5:9-10 HCSB)

David’s enemies are those who rebel against God.
It’s strong language. It probably makes you feel a little uncomfortable. (I wouldn’t be suprised if there is now a file on you, stored somewhere in an office in Canberra, flagging that you visit extremist websites…)

Would you be willing to say that your enemies are any and all who rebel against God?

We generally imbibe the cultural assumption that, ‘everyone ok with me as long as they don’t hurt anyone.’
We’re not real comfortable with the idea of having enemies. And we are very uncomfortable with the idea of having specfic enemies, particularly when that includes everyone who isn’t a Christian. That’s a lot of enemies…

But it really comes down to how firmly your interests are bound up with God’s.
If you have half a million dollars sitting in a superannuation fund, I imagine that you take a reasonable interest in the stock market. If something is preventing your Super Fund from getting you the best return, you get cranky.
How much have I got invested with God?

Is it enough to make God’s enemies your enemies?
Enough to make any opposition to God’s plans direct interference with your interests?

I get angry when I see people dropping cigarette butts. They show reckless disregard for our world, how angry should I be at someone who opposes the good plans of God to create a new heaven and a new earth?

We should have enemies.
If we don’t we haven’t really understood faith in God.

And if we don’t have enemies, these words don’t make any sense:

““You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matt 5:43-45 HCSB)

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The Tragedie of King Lear

Themes: Critique, Poetry, Shakespeare, Sin

“Shakespeare pictures the potential depravity of a godless world. I think it’s no accident that the gods are referred to that number of times.

“The other prediction that’s made in the play is ‘if the gods don’t come down and intervene then it must come, humanity will prey upon itself like monsters of the deep’.

“We are at the moment daily aware of the seemingly limitless possibilities of human cruelty, of human certainty that gods are on their side and therefore any amount of human sacrifice is permissible in the name of the gods.

Trevor Nunn quoted in Sydney Morning Herald.

One of the deeply troubling aspects of Lear is that human cruelty appears to win the day. The continual appeal to the gods is met only with a bronzed silence. Within the world of the play either there is no God, or, there is no just God.

(or, one might conceivably say that the play demonstrates the terrible justice of God – a justice which is demonstrated in the pile of bodies at the end – after all, none of the characters are particularly morally upright…)

‘if the gods don’t come down and intervene then it must come, humanity will prey upon itself like monsters of the deep’.

This is an appeal for divine intervention, for a divine act of revelation and justice tied together – what we call ‘theodicy’. It is an appeal for God to do justice for humanity and thereby to vindicate himself.

In the world of the play, the appeal to the blank face of heaven is haunting, it plays upon a deep fear we all feel, it lends Lear incredible power.

And it is a good appeal – God save us from ourselves!
It is an appeal that relies on the character of God.
What does it mean for an appeal like that to go unanswered?
What would that mean for God?

The truth of Nunn’s observation that we are, ‘daily aware of the seemingly limitless possibilities of human cruelty’ is easily proved from a reading of the rest of the pages of the newspaper.

Nunn appears to agree with Shakespeare on the ‘potential depravity of a godless world’ and indeed, to believe that this is no longer a potential, but the reality of the world we inhabit.
Who could argue?

But Bard never fails to see more clearly than his interpreters – even those as brilliant as Trevor Nunn.

(I think it must be the combination of Shakespeare’s careful ambiguity and the incredible freedom of play within his language which leaves ample room for the reader to be read into the text.)

What would an intervention from God look like? How would God act to do justice for humanity?

Well, if the world is as Nunn describes it – full of the ‘seemingly limitless possibilities of human cruelty’, a possibility that finds some refuge in every human heart, and some expression to a greater or lesser extent – I wonder very much if the kind of intervention for which we appeal might not end up looking something very like the end of King Lear?

…Blindness, Bodies, and Madness…

That’s what we would properly expect.
That’s the natural narrative trajectory and there isn’t anyone with a better ear for narrative than Shakespeare.

Which is why the gospel is a NewsFlash. A piece of information that breaks into the storyline, coming from outside, interrupting, changing completely the natural progression.

The gospel is the twist in the story which makes our world something other than the world of King Lear.
(sadly, it is possible that for Trevor Nunn our world is nothing other than the world of Lear)

The coming of God in Jesus knocks the human narrative off its rails. God acts to do justice for humanity by condemning human depravity in the person of one man – he takes our position at the end of the play.

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