Reflections on TCOJ – Pt 2 – Common experience, afraid of the truth, and unity.

Are Christians afraid of the truth?

If you haven’t read the first part, please take a peek at that.

I didn’t fully finish talking about some of the main points that Wright makes in the first chapter in TCOJ entitled “The Challenge of Studying Jesus.” First off, when Wright says that there is still much to be said about Jesus which is not what most Christians think is the case. Anything ‘new’ about Jesus is often lumped into the ‘liberal’ or ‘heretic’ pile and ejected. Wright makes stakes out his ground in this matter. He writes that many Christians “wonder…if the attempt to say something fresh is not a denial either of the church’s traditional teaching or of the sufficiency of Scripture” (13; look, I haven’t even left page 13 yet!). In response to this, he states that he “regard[s] it, not just as permissible but as vitally necessary that we grapple afresh with the question of who Jesus was and therefore who he is. In doing so I in no way want to deny or undermine the knowledge of Jesus” that has been witnessed to in “the common experience of the church” (13-14). It is on page 14 that we get a hint of what Wright will be talking about in the last chapter: the marriage of knowledge and love. Wright continues: “If even in a human relationship of knowledge and love there can be misunderstandings, false impressions, wrong assumptions, which need to be teased out and dealt with, how much more when the one to whom we are relating is Jesus himself” (14).

“The common experience of the church” (which I would interpret as the whole of the Christian Tradition, including the Bible) seems to be the rock on which Wright anchors his historical and theological ventures. As I read this again, I’m reminded of last November when I sat in my prof’s office.

“Ok C.A., so here’s the deal, I’m not baptized, and after reading the early Church Fathers on baptism, I kinda think ‘Oh, crap’ and realize that baptism is far more serious than I had taken it, as a Baptist, ironically.” I said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty important.” C.A. replied. He had a slight grin to his face as he raised his eyebrows. Perhaps he suddenly remembered the first time he read the Church Fathers and was shocked by the critical importance of something he had once thought of as optional or non-essential.

“And here’s the deal, I feel like I need a spiritual tourniquet.” I wasn’t sure if he would get where I was going with this, so I explained a little further. “I think baptism can act as that spiritual tourniquet which can cut off the loss of faith from my bloodstream.”

“Something like a leash, you mean.” C.A. replied.

“Yeah.” I replied, though I liked the term ‘spiritual tourniquet’ better. It sounded more crucial, necessary, and I-need-it-now-or-else.

“I think that’s important.” C.A. continued. “Not something to tie you down in a restricting way, but to keep you from straying too far, to always bring you back to the core, to remind you where you come from.”

I later told K.C. that C.A. had said I needed a leash.

“That’s so like C.A. to say you need a leash.” K.C. poked fun back at his friend and colleague.

A few days later, I was back in C.A.’s office this time voicing that I was walking a thin line between complete rejection of Jesus and the Christian faith and sticking around for another round. As I walked out of his office, C.A. said quite emphatically: “Stay with the Church.” I have taken C.A.’s forceful statement as an affirmation of the Church as the “pillar and ground of Truth.” But the Church is not merely some institutional body that has a hierarchy or has leaders; it is, simply, the body of Christ. To be in the Church is to be in the Body of Christ and therefore able to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of Christ. (I should note that neither C.A. nor I are Catholic or Orthodox.) Also, “Stay with the Church” constantly reminds me of the sacrifice, wisdom, knowledge, commitment, tenacity, and faithfulness of the centuries of Christians who have gone before me. For me to say that I know more than Athanasius or Abba Antony is wrong. For me to say this and then on top of that reject them, call them useless pieces of antiquity, or to simply ignore them on the basis that they look, sound, and feel different is downright arrogant. Imagine if I did that to my blood relatives, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents. Why should I allow the same to my ancestors of faith? Jaroslav Pelikan aptly states:

For those who believe that you don’t need tradition because you have the Bible, The Christian Tradition [referring to his five-volume work] has sought to say, ‘You are not entitled to the beliefs you cherish about such things as the Holy Trinity without a sense of what you owe to those who worked this out for you.’ To circumvent Saint Athanasius on the assumption that if you put me alone in a room with the New Testament, I will come up with the doctrine of the Trinity, is naïve. (My italics.)

After reading this quote for the very first time, I remember thinking: “Yes. Who am I? Who do I think I am?” I need the ancestors of the Faith to guide and direct me through questions, criticisms, and doubts. But what is more is that these men were not merely intellectuals, they were pastors (see R. Wilken’s The Spirit of Early Christian Thought for a really good discussion on this) so they are also the ones who will guide me to Christ through the suffering of the human condition. I am reminded of a quote from Alfred the Great that one of my prof’s mentioned:

Our forefathers who before us held these places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wisdom, and left it to us. Here may we still see their footprints, but we cannot follow them up and therefore have we lost both wealth and wisdom, since we would not incline our hearts to their example. (Alfred the Great, Letter to Bishop Waerferth, 890 CE)

A few more points: First, as I mentioned in the last post, if we had said everything that we could say about God and Jesus, then there is probably something wrong in our theology and we might want to take a second gander at what we’re trying to do and how we’re doing it. Furthermore, considering that we find ourselves in a very different context than that of first century Judaism or the early Christian Church, we’re going to need to understand what Jesus meant by what he said in his own context while still probing for his meaning to our own world. Certainly, there is continuity through all contexts (and I would say continuity is needed between all contexts).

Second, I know I might be stepping on some toes when I say this, but it seems to me precisely because Jesus is not physically here on this earth (notice the qualifier, on this earth) standing in front of you or me in such a way that we are 100% certain it is him, our interaction with Jesus is open to a greater possibility of misunderstandings, false assumptions, and flat out wrong ideas. He cannot stand there and say “No, you’re misunderstanding me” in the same way I can say to you “No you’re misunderstanding what I meant.” I don’t know if that made any sense. Let me put it another way. I find it incredibly difficult to have a meaningful one-on-one relationship with a person that I can see face-to-face and sit down with and talk. I find it incredibly difficult to get my own family right, or my friends, I found it difficult to understand my former girlfriend. All of these people I can see, touch, and hear; I am pretty darn certain that what I’m sensing is reality. But Jesus, he’s in a whole other boat (not asleep though). I can’t experience Jesus in the same way that I experience other people. So I find it somewhat more plausible that I have deeply misunderstood Jesus based upon the fact that I can’t sit down for coffee with him (or perhaps he likes a good lager). Of course, there’s the whole Holy Spirit thing and that might throw a wrench (a good one) into what I just wrote. Even so, I don’t think that entirely does away with the necessity and responsibility of wrestling with Jesus, with God, and with the truth that is said to be personified in the man from Nazareth. The Holy Spirit has been used and abused by many and a discerning response can help to alleviate misunderstandings and false assumptions caused by subjective religious experience.

Robert Louis Wilken, might also have something to say about the whole question of “what does it mean to see God/Jesus?” but that’s for another day.

Another point that Wright puts forward is that “When Christianity is truest to itself…it denies precisely this dichotomy [between history and faith]­” (16). I wrote a bit about this dichotomy in the last post, but I have a few more thoughts about it that I’d like to put forward as well. Wright says that when Christianity is the most true to itself, it does not accept the dichotomy of the Enlightenment that the academy and the church have bought whole-heartedly into. I said in the last post that I often wonder why Christians are so afraid of scholarship or the difficult questions that are out there floating around in the minds of non-Christians and Christians alike. Often, the response to the difficult questions that challenge the core points of the Christian faith are quickly silenced, swept under the carpet, left in the back janitor’s closet. No one wants to deal with, or more likely, no one can deal with them because they have not dealt with previously critical questions. Thus, most Christians shoot themselves in the foot: because scholars are suspect, Christians can do little more than lob Bible verses or cute phrases at the difficult questions leaving everyone unsatisfied. But what is more is the fact that without this dichotomy between faith and history, Christianity can be released from the bonds of the Enlightenment dichotomization and unfurl itself into a broader and more all-encompassing reason and meaning for our world. Most times that faith and something else are pitted against each other, it results in a stunted faith, a faith afraid of the ‘enemy’, a faith that is defencive not reconciliatory, a faith that is not intent on becoming fully human in all aspects of life, a faith not driven to contribute as an independent prophetic voice to all venues of life. It is a faith afraid of pursuing and discovering Truth/truth.

This is the third reason Wright gives to the reader as to why the quest for Jesus is necessary: “the Christian imperative to truth.” He writes that

Christians must not be afraid of truth…My agenda is to go deeper into the meaning than we have before and to come back to a restatement of the gospel that grounds the things we have believed about Jesus, about the cross, about the resurrection, about the incarnation, more deeply within their original setting (17).

Wright is right. Christians are quite afraid of truth. It sounds counterintuitive since the everyday Christian would say they know the Truth/truth. But the fact that many Christians are afraid of what is coming out of historical and theological reflection suggests to me that the confidence in the Truth/truth is uncertain. As I have had the opportunity to study at the university, on my own, and in a community of fellow searchers, very uncomfortable points do come up and I am left with knots in my stomach as I reflect on something I have discovered. Then I remind myself that on the journey to heaven, I will be met with challenges and facing these challenges head on is much more beneficial in the long run. When I tackle the difficult challenges to faith the result is me taking one step forward in the journey towards a greater understanding and application of the truth.  (Though I admit more often than not it feels like I take one step forward and two steps back.)

I remember growing up believing that Christianity was utterly true. I lived in community with many people who believed that as well (and still believe it). Then I was faced with the daunting questions that professors at the university put forward and the rather uncomfortable answers they suggested. It was not until very recently that I finally realized that the truth of Christianity is much broader and deeper than the individual and his/her experience. It is rather terrifying to have a confident (supposedly) faith shaken for the first time by difficult questions and criticisms. What’s more is when one is confronted by historical and theological realities, one must either make the choice to outright reject these realities or lend an ear to listen to them.

I once had someone tell me that I shouldn’t go too far down certain paths as I might stray from the truth. Those two paths were studying other religions and their potential influences on early Christianity and the issue of religious pluralism. I responded vigorously: “If truth matters, we ought to go to the greatest length necessary to discover it and apply it.” A pretty straightforward answer, in my opinion, that encapsulates the purpose of our entire lives: “we are made for God: for God’s glory, to worship God and reflect his likeness. That is our heart’s deepest desire, the source of our deepest vocation” (16). Our vocation is to draw ever closer to God and to Christ and I would argue that this is not merely drawing near to him in spiritual knowledge (i.e. religious experience) but in all avenues of life. Wright doesn’t see historical and theological reflection as detached from a life of faith, prayer, service, and sacraments (worship) as some do.

Here’s another point that I am really struggling to find any sense of consistency: some Christians pride themselves on having a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus yet are very afraid of any and all findings that Jesus-research brings up. It seems strange to me, actually it seems rather absurd, that someone would claim to know someone but then believe it unnecessary to take seriously any task of understanding and interpreting the subject of their relationship. What’s more is that many Christians claim they want to know Jesus more though I suppose they do not think scholarship is the way to go. Spiritual knowledge, personal religious experience, and “knowing God” (versus “knowing about God”) are the avenues these people take. Each of these avenues is true and good, but they are often traveled down at the expense of avenues such as the life of the mind (which is equally important and equally necessary). It makes more sense to me to pursue a relationship with someone on all points: intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical rather than some atomized attempt that results in a partial picture of the subject.

In conclusion, I would like to suggest something: I find Christianity to radiate unity from its inner being. Unity of the Holy Trinity. Unity of heaven and earth in the New Creation. Unity of suffering and redemption. Unity of theology and worship (in the lives of the early Church Fathers in particular). Unity of a call to conversion/repentance with a message of forgiveness and new life. Unity of love and justice. Unity of true humanness and true divinity in the person of Jesus. Unity of all peoples in the Gospel (for the Jew and the Gentile). Unity of body and soul. Unity of humanity in the divine life of God (in union with God). Simply put, I find the Christian message to be a message of unity. Thus, to me (and I think Wright would agree), trying to dichotomize everything ends up moving in opposition to a message of reconciliation (again, to me having connotations of unity) that seems to be at the heart of the Christian faith. (Of course, there are a few kinks that need to be worked out of these thoughts because I will admit that some choices necessitate a separation, e.g. ‘You either can go on sinning or you can be reconciled with God, but you can’t have both.’)

Reflections on The Challenge of Jesus – Pt 1 – Initial thoughts, faith v. history.

The Challenge of Jesus - N.T. Wright

The Challenge of Jesus (N.T. Wright, 1999) is one heck of a little theological rocket. Wright packs a punch with his straightforward thinking and writing style making the work very accessible to the everyday reader. But, he doesn’t skimp on the theology or history.  In 2007 when I started to become more and more interested in theology, I was taking a second-year New Testament theology class at the university and I admit that I didn’t get as much out of that class as I now could have. My papers were dull regurgitations, I didn’t pay attention very closely in class, and I didn’t retain a lot of the material. However, what the class did do for me was introduce me sort of indirectly to N.T. Wright. One of my favourite lectures that N.T. Wright was at Seattle Pacific University (the link to the text is in the ‘links’ section on the right hand side of this page) and he sought to deconstruct postmodernity, modernity, and the  misfiring against these two by popular Christianity. Through this lecture I ‘met’ Wright and so when term paper season rolled around, I wanted to read some of his work. The Challenge of Jesus sat on my shelf for a few weeks that November and I skimmed the last chapter on postmodernity and Jesus to mine a few supporting quotes for my paper. I didn’t touch the rest of the book, which I now know to be a mistake and a definite no-no for myself. (I wonder where I might be today if I had read that book then.) Finally, in November, a series of circumstances forced me (if one can say such a thing) to buy TCOJ and his three-volume series (The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection and the Son of God) which apparently is his more technical look into the issues that TCOJ addresses.

What I love about Wright the most, however, is that when he deconstructs, he doesn’t stop there. Reconstruction, what he often calls “finding a way through and out the other side,” is not simply gathering the bricks that have fallen down in the deconstruction part and cobbling them back together in an even weaker structure of faith. No, Wright wants to develop a new understanding that can answer the questions of the world and that remains faithful to the biblical witness and to the faith of the Christian community. So Wright would probably be the last person to be put into the category of liberal. One of my friends suggested that Wright is so conservative that he sounds unorthodox to most Christian conservatives. (Wright is a living example of the impotence of the political categories ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ to have any meaningful use in the realm of theology.)

Very briefly, TCOJ is dealing with five questions (see TCOJ, 33):

1. Where does Jesus belong within the Jewish world of his day?
2. What, in particular, was his preaching of the kingdom all about? What was he aiming to do?
3. Why did Jesus die? in particular, what was his own intention in going to Jerusalem that last fateful time?
4. Why did the early church begin and why did it take the shape it did? Specifically, of course, what happened at East?
5. How does all this relate to the Christian task and vision today? How, in other words, does this historical and also deeply theological approach put fire into our hearts and power into our hands as we go about shaping our world?

Great, another book about Jesus. So what? The ’so what’ is unfortunately the attitude of many Christians today about scholars attempting to understand Jesus and more broadly it is the attitude towards theology in general. Theology, and Jesus-research, is for the scholars and for those who actually find scholarship interesting to read. Theology is thus seen as little value to the everyday average Christian except for the occasional use of some apologist to bolster one’s faith if it is rocked by a critical question from a non-Christian (or even from Christians themselves). It seems to me that Wright is trying to counter this negativity towards Jesus-research (and I would say by extension theology) and the interesting thing is he does not merely say or write that theology matters to the church, he lives this out. He is both a New Testament scholar and an Anglican bishop and thus, he is both a pastor and a theologian. Now, what happens often is that these two characters live in a dualistic confrontation between faith and reason (or maybe it is better to say faith and the life of the mind). Again, Wright runs in the opposite direction of this. In summary, the first chapter of TCOJ deals with the problematic dichotomy and growing chasm between the church and the academy. Theology is no longer in service of the church, but on its own for the sake of its own. Wright is simply trying to reintroduce the life of the mind back into popular Christianity by authoring TCOJ as a relatively straightforward and non-technical opportunity for the everyday Christian to delve deeper into the mystery of Jesus.

Wright makes a few broad points about Jesus-research and its necessity to the life and faith of the Christian community:

Anything New in The World?

First, is there anything new that we can say about Jesus? Wright would say that it is “vitally necessary that we grapple afresh with the question of who Jesus was and therefore who he is” (13). I remember sitting in a high school graduation ceremony when I was much younger. One of the graduating seniors wrote “writing theology” for one of his hobbies. (I remember quite clearly that he and his brother were the most ardent Lutherans in our little K-12 Christian school.)

“Writing theology? What more can be said about God? Hasn’t everyone said everything there is to say about God?” I thought as I sat in the church pew.

I’m quite aware that new things about God are being said every day. Some of these things are fresh expressions of what people in the past have said.  Other things are new ideas about God that don’t take seriously what people in the past have said. The ironic thing is that we like and we hate new things. We like new things if they help us out or make more sense of the world in which we live. We don’t like new things if they make us uncomfortable or if they poke holes in our boats. From my experience, Christians are fine with new things unless they conflict with tightly held doctrine. New ways of thinking are labeled liberal and thrown out with the bathwater. Or, new things are labeled heretical and anathematized.

All of that being said, I might also suggest that new things aren’t in fact new. For example, a lot of sensationalist books out there try to paint Jesus as a mythical construct that borrowed from a variety of pagan religions. This, the authors say, is proof that Christianity is false and just another human attempt at developing a system of religion. The authors bill their findings as new and shocking insight into the truth behind Christianity. The truth about Christianity is finally released from the powerful and oppressive grip of the inventors (the Church, normally the Roman Catholic Church, a la The Da Vinci Code) and the general public can now know the truth once and for all. We’ve all be duped, for 2,000+ years, and finally someone figured out the whole kit and caboodle. Joy. Unfortunately, the new and shocking insights that these authors claim they have discovered about Jesus and Christianity are not new and in fact they are just recapitulations of old arguments from the past (e.g. Celsus, On True Doctrine).

I am quite relieved that not everything that can be said about God has been said. I am quite relieved that God is still a mystery and everything surrounding him is still a mystery. If everything that could be said about God has been said then the god that we called ‘God’ was probably not God but an idol that we constructed. Perhaps I’m partly motivated in saying this out of job security (as I hope to one day be privileged after much hard work to work with other scholars in plumbing the depths of our world and the Christian faith) or I am motivated out of faith (knowing that God has not been completely explained makes the Faith that much more important and that much more central to my life) or I am motivated out of a thankfulness for curiosity. Whatever the case, thankfully God is infinite and mysterious enough to baffle even great minds like Aquinas, Augustine, Barth, the Church Fathers, and Wright himself.

History v. Faith.

Second, Wright highlights the Enlightenment’s division of faith and history into to apparently irreconcilable categories. This either/or way of thinking is not necessary. Wright believes faith and history, like faith and reason, can and must go hand in hand. Oddly enough, before I started reading TCOJ, I read an article in the university’s student newspaper about one student’s experience in RELS 351: The Life and Teachings of Jesus. Strangely enough the author of this article notes the Enlightenment’s history/faith distinction and goes so far as to say that “the Bible is not a history textbook” (brownie points for her). She also rightly, I think, called attention to the reality that the authors of the Gospels were theologians in a first-century context and were not intent on bowing to Enlightenment’s ideals (since they were not aware of them). Further, she writes that “post-Enlightenment, modernist view of the Gospels, through the lens of scientific empirical method, you will find historical discrepancies.” So in one sense, she affirms the duality that Enlightenment created (faith v. history) and in another sense she admitted that what history shows us about Jesus is not exactly Sunday-School material (although I think it ought to be). However, her conclusion was that any historical reconstruction provided by theologians “is all speculation.” In the end, she ended up eschewing historical quests for Jesus in favour of the Christ of faith which opposes the historical Jesus. She writes: “Ultimately, you’re going to have to live by faith, regardless of modern scholarship.”

She takes note  the dichotomy between faith and history but did not seek to bridge the chasm between the two and resolve the dualism leaving the two to continue to duke it out on the battlefield of no-man’s –land between the church and the academy. I suggested a few points to her in the comments. First, do we really need to pit theology against scholarship, the church against the academy, Jerusalem against Princeton, Oxford, Tubingen, et. al.? Or, are we going to continue to encourage and feed the assaults of the church against the academy and vice versa? What I’m not suggesting is that we turn the Christian faith into a religion of professors. That is far from what I would hope for. Instead, I simply wonder why the dichotomy is necessary, why the two cannot get along. I’ve been told implicitly and explicitly by a number of people that the two can’t get along, that one cannot have a life of the mind and have a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus, or that Christianity is about blind faith anyhow, so it really doesn’t matter scholars find. Rubbish.

Maybe I’m mistaken, but if God is who he is, is there any reason to be afraid of scholarship and the findings it discovers? I would love to find the most challenging question to the Christian faith, ask it, and I have faith that even the slightest shadow of an answer this side of heaven will show itself. I know with certainty that we will not know everything this side of heaven. I am often reminded of that by individuals who are afraid of the life of the mind. Their assumption is that those who are engaged in critical thinking, asking questions, researching answers, and reflecting on these findings are trying to get all the answers down pat. As far as I know, I have yet to meet anyone in the academy that thinks this way. It is an unfair assumption put into the mouths of scholars who don’t actually think that way. I can say with honesty and certainty that I don’t think that way either.

In general, I find it troubling that Christians are afraid of the most challenging questions that are asked of the Faith. I find that we forget that there are very difficult questions out there that are continually wrestled with each and every generation. These questions do exist, they will be asked, and the inquisitor will be expecting an answer (that does not involve throwing Bible verses at them, especially when the question in consideration is regarding the Bible). God, as Creator, created the people who ask these questions, the minds that think these questions, the lips and voices that ask them, the ears that hear them, the eyes that read them, the hands that write them, so I can hardly believe that there is any reason why God would not want these questions to exist and to be asked. Questions demand answers. It is their nature. Answers are rarely comfortable, though, and preparing one’s heart, soul, and mind to experience that first hand is a lifelong process.

Christians, living in a spirit of fear, seem to shy away from what scholars (non-Christian and Christian) find in history, science, anthropology, psychology on the belief that Christianity has to be this ‘other-worldly’ entity that is not connected to any of these other entities that are antithetical to it. If science says one thing, and Christianity (or more properly in this particular debate, the Bible) says another, the Bible is always right. If history says something about Jesus, the Bible is always right. If psychology says something, the Bible is always right. What I’m not suggesting is an uncritical acceptance of everything and anything that researchers, scientists, and scholars publish. However, we must be careful that the critical attitude towards researchers, scientists, and scholars does not turn into an uncritical acceptance of the Bible as it stands alone on our shelves as read by ourselves.

I see now that I’m moving quite a ways away from the original intent of this blog post. Oh well. This should be enough for the first little foray into TCOJ.

The Inquisition of Pedagogical Methods and Means – 2.

1. When half of the semester involves student presentations, it means that (a) the professor is attempting to get the students engaged in the class or (b) the prof is lazy or took on too much of a workload (I highly doubt it was the former). Nonetheless, if it is reason (a) typically it was an ill-fated attempt to get the students involved and resulted in nothing more than a mediocre synopsis of the reading material and zero-to-no critical engagement with the text. This also means that after the second or third presentation, either people stop coming to class, start playing Farmville (see #1) or attempt to pay attention though the entire presentation may be like having open heart surgery, without anesthesia.
2. At some point, you just have to stop beating the dead horse. When a topic begins to spill over into days, then weeks, it’s like we all get our clubs, rifles, and bombs up and blast the topic until everyone is blue in the face and ready to keel over out of sheer exasperation. The poor horse of the “problem of evil” has been executed and subsequently chopped up and sent to the four corners of the earth. Give it a rest people. Give it a rest.
3. Sir, when its obvious someone has not prepared for a presentation, call them on it. Seriously, you will do everyone a service to do your work well mindful of the fact that for the 15 or 20 minutes you are in front of the class, you are responsible for communicating what you have learned to the people who want to be there to learn, not to listen to a leaking faucet.
4. The best courses I have experienced look like this: a room, with a conference table, food, books, papers, the prof, ten to fifteen students who want to be there, and the issue of the night. Mixed with humour, a prof who is unafraid to be vulnerable/exposed for who he really is and willing to go the extra mile, a passion for learning, a deep understanding of the meaning of education, a profound grasp of the subject, well, all of that combined makes for one hell of a class. (Actually, that wasn’t just one course, but all the elements of a variety of my favourite courses rolled into one.)
5. The bottom line: don’t give the students what they think they need, give them what they need.
6. University students think they need good marks. What they actually need is a passion for truth, wisdom, beauty, and goodness instilled into them. University students think they need a degree in order to get a job. What they actually need is a fuller humanity brought about by art, literature, theology, politics, philosophy, music, science, and overall personal wellness. University students think they need to pick a topic that they can easily write on the night before the paper is due. What they actually need are the tools, resources, time, and encouragement to develop a piece of work and bring it to fruition. University students think they don’t need to do serious research. What they need is to learn the responsibility of study and research, not a paper filled with links to Wikipedia or other bizarre DIY websites (e.g. Jesus-is-Lord.com or Bible.ca). University students think they don’t need to experience what it is like to get a C+ on a paper that they worked hours on. A’s and B’s are not rights but privileges. (I sometimes wish my professors would hammer my papers for my own sake.) University students think they don’t need to talk to their professors outside of the classroom. What they need is to be shown that their professors actually care about them and that their professors live for their discussions with students (among other things of course). University students think they need to be quiet when the professors says something they may or may not disagree with. What they need is to be told it is okay to challenge their professor’s statements. (My friend suggested that one day I prepare a lecture that makes bold claims that may or may not be entirely true and start the stopwatch to see how long it will take before someone finally looks up from Farmville and Facespace and says “Uh, prof, are you sure about that?” Methinks it will take longer than it should.)
7. Professors are not of the hook either. Professors think that they can get away with mediocre content assessments like pop quizzes and multiple-choice exams (which are okay for some disciplines, but I’m sorry, they don’t work very well in the humanities). What they actually need is the freedom to develop assessments that are a mutual participation between student and teacher. (Do you know what I actually deserve in my Greek class? I think about a C+. Sure, I probably will get an A. But that’s only because I memorized everything I needed to know for the exams. Unfortunately, no one has ever talked to be about the academic dishonesty of cheating yourself by getting a mark you probably don’t actually deserve. What is more unfortunate is the fact I don’t have the guts to walk into my prof’s office and tell him what I actually deserve, nor would I have the courage to walk into my prof’s office after getting a C+ on a paper and telling him/her why I deserve an A.) Professors think that they don’t need to get engage students outside of the classroom. What they need is to understand what makes students tick, what they do/don’t do, what they like/don’t like, and what they need/don’t need (not what they think they need, however).
8. If the class is designed to simply regurgitate information at the end of the semester in an exam, then why the hell are you even teaching? Is it not a waste of time to ram something down people’s throats only to have them throw it all up at the end of the semester. Let’s see, do I remember anything from Geography 101? No.

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and other fine works, has a phrase that is interjected into some of his books and lectures: The Gospel of Jesus: More like marriage. Less like formula.

How about that? But how about that in the context of education? Education: More like marriage. Less like formula.

Do you think I’m an idealist? A over-the-top-out-of-his-mind-unjustified critic? Perhaps I’m both. Then again, I did hear a story of a man who sold blinds for a living, got a bachelor’s degree and then started his own college. I may be 21, but nothing is stopping me (only myself).

Now that I’m done writing this, I realize that a ‘spiritual gifts’ inventory from my grade 12 year has turned out to be more prophetic than I thought. My strongest gift was ‘teaching.’ (A number of career and personality tests have all confirmed that being involved in education is compatible with who I am.) My weakest gift? Mercy. Sounds about right.

My students are going to love me.

The Inquisition of Pedagogical Methods and Means – 1.

My friend/room-mate/collaborator/critic/conspirator/accomplice and I often like to lament the education systems of the world and how inadequate they are. I will preface this by saying that I have almost no background in the area of education other than the fact I’ve spent the last sixteen some years in various forms of schooling. So I may not be as qualified to discuss education as I ought to be, but I like to think that having been on the student end of things for the past decade or so that I have a pretty good idea of what I will do when I get into the classroom one day.

A few things I have learned from my classes that have nothing to do with the actual course content:

1. Unless someone has a doctor’s note (and I mean this literally) stating that they have a learning disability that requires them to use a computer to take class notes, its seems that notebook computers are the bubonic-plauge-infested rats of education. I don’t give a rats rump that you like to dink around on your Mybook or Facespace or Twitter. I don’t care if your sheep and ducks on Farmville need feeding. I don’t care if your cows’ digital udders are going to burst. Can’t you just reboot ‘Bessie’? She’s animation for goodness sake. I don’t care if your water troughs need filling or the feed needs spreading. Get a life. If you want to go into farming, do the real thing. Its a hell of a lot more rewarding. (The last few sentences are my rant about people playing digital farm games on their computers in front of me in my classes.) I don’t care if yours hands are going to get calluses because your using a pen and paper. Have you ever heard of carpal tunnel syndrome? I don’t care if you haven’t talked to your high school friend on MSN for a whole two days. If you really cared about him/her, you wouldn’t be distracting him/her from their professor. I don’t care if you find my class boring. If you do, leave. If you need this for your degree, well, then I guess you’d better stick around and enjoy it.
2. I don’t know where other professors get the idea that exams are supposed to always be multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-or-false, or an essay question or two. Where on earth has creativity gone? Do you really think that for a humanities course, multiple-choice is a good idea? How on earth did you think that was a good idea? Quit giving me excuses about what Administration wants you to do as if Administration is some monolithic entity that acts like The Inquisition of Pedagogical Methods and Means. Quit worrying; you’re not going to be tortured with the ‘comfy cushions.’
3. Sir, your Powerpoint was pointless, was not at all to the point, and if I may point something out, your Powerpoint looks like it was designed by a third-grader and written by someone who has no understanding of the concept of summary (then again, I admit I don’t have that strong of a grasp on that concept either). Hey, I’m not pointing fingers––sorta––just pointing out a few facts about your Powerpoint. (By the way, C.A. is probably only prof to have created a decent Powerpoint presentation for his classes. Kudos.)
4. TAs are assistants, not substitute teachers (unless they are PhD students, then it is possible for them to do a decent job rather than making generalizations and lobbing strawmen). I may one day be a TA and if a prof asks me to teach, I will likely jump at the chance. So yeah, I’m inconsistent here (Hell, I’m always inconsistent. Actually, what I just said is the most consistent statement I’ve made, ever.)

The Wisdom of Others – Pascal and Ramm

If the ancient Church was in error, the Church [of today] is fallen.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

An evangelical with an ahistorical faith is a superficial one.

Bernard Ramm, The Evangelical Heritage

Christmas Break To-Do List.

In no particular order…

1. Spend four days removed from the world at a quiet cabin in interior BC away from cellphones, computers, and internet. Why? To devour the following books: The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vols 1-5 (Jaroslav Pelikan).
2. Get a root canal.
3. Read the following books over the entire Christmas break (22 Dec – 8 Jan): The Challenge of Jesus (Wright), The Way to Nicaea (Behr), Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (Hall), The New Testament and the People of God (Wright), The Orthodox Way (Ware, attempt #4), and we’ll see where I get to.
4. Learn to bake bread that is so good it could pass for the bread sold at the little market on the corner of Paris.
5. Re-learn to play the piano (after a 10 year hiatus) from Mom.
6. Find out which Handel’s Messiah recording is the best and buy it.
7. Learn some financial how-to and tips from Dad.
8. Plan my pilgrimage to Israel and beyond (at least get a departure date from Tel Aviv down so I can tell Lucy at the TWU Extension when to book my ticket back).
9. Finish my sister’s birthday present (a room divider I built with my dad for her) with some sanding and staining (a few months late, but then again, I’ve set a precedent for “IOU a gift sometime in the next few months”)
10. Pending time and motivation, go to the little Orthodox monastery on Vashon Island for a Sunday liturgy.
11. Maybe get MacTavish the Mac fixed up so he can last a few more years.
12. Find a midnight Mass or something else for Christmas Eve (I still plan to hit up the Family Christmas Eve service back at SBC with the folks; I just need my dose of liturgy).
13. Dream about next semester’s directed study with Dr Allert and the Church Fathers.
14. Write a post-a-day for this blog (seeing as exams and papers have kept me from it the past couple of weeks).

Most importantly

1. Spend time with family and close friends.

Heard on the Radio.

Little boy. “If Jesus wasn’t born, we wouldn’t know anything about the Bible.”*

False. Who is this boy’s Sunday School teacher? Has he never heard about the Jews and something called the Old Testament?

True. Yes, you wouldn’t know anything about the New Testament.

False. As if the Bible is the ultimate revelation of God, or the exact word-for-word words of God, or God himself (Come on God’s Word is not God’s word, stop confusing Jesus and the Bible, please!) Or as if Christ came so that we might have the Bible. Nevermind victory over death, or grace, or other silly doctrines. We got the Bible!

True. How about this?: “If Jesus wasn’t born, we wouldn’t know a lot of things about God.”

False. If Jesus is really who he said he was, then I would tend to think he is just a smidge more important the Bible, maybe? perhaps? I think so. The primacy of the Christ event is witnessed to by the Scriptures and the community of faith (the Church).

True. “If Jesus wasn’t born, we’d be…screwed.”

Can you tell I’m in the Christmas spirit?

*If you’re from the Lower Mainland or the Bellingham area, you might just be able to guess where this was heard.

Thoughts on Christianity and Paganism.

I’ve spent the better part of the last three or four weeks spot-reading and collecting information for a history of Christianity paper on the potential links between Paganism and Christianity. There are certainly a wide variety of resources out there that attempt to either defend or critique the notion that Christianity is indebted to Pagan influences of the Greco-Roman world. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to find scholarly sources and many that I have stumbled upon have been sensationalist literature that tries to make Jesus seem like a complete and utter fabrication (e.g. the myth of Jesus). These sources have practically no citations to primary sources. Dammit people! Cite primary sources! I don’t care about what you think about a religion of 2,000 years ago, I want to know what the people of 2,000 years ago thought about their religion.

Anyhow, I have finally founded some interesting insights into this whole connection. And I’m also being led to the realization that if Christianity is indebted to Paganism for some stuff, its not that bad and I honestly don’t think it is much to worry about. Instead, it can actually bolster the Christian confession.

From the Pagans.

Whereas the Providence which has guided our whole existence and which has shown such care and liberality, has brought our life to the peak of perfection in giving to us Augustus Caesar, whom it (Providence) filled with virtue for the welfare of mankind, and who, being sent to us and to our descendants as a Savior (soter), has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and whereas, having become visible, Caesar has fulfilled the hopes of all earlier times . . . not only in surpassing all the benefactors who preceded him but also in leaving to his successors no hope of surpassing him; and whereas, finally, that the birthday of the God (i.e. Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (euangelion) concerning him, therefore, let all reckon a new era beginning from the date of his birth, and let his birthday mark the beginning of the new year.

Letter of the Proconsul to the Cities of Asia (9 B.C.E.)

Sound a lot like Jesus, don’t it?

From the Christians.

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth i.e., first-born. of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.

Justin Martyr, First Apology, 21.

So now my fellow Christians, go be good Pagans and celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December (Sol Invictus).

The Penultimate Supper.

Another video to get me through the last push of the semester.

The Incredible Jesus.

I needed a little laugh today from my favourite Rowan Atkinson sketch.