The Resurrection and the Life in Monastic Art

The Great and Holy Resurrection of Christ, painted by the Greek Orthodox Fathers of Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece.  Vatopedi was founded in the 10th Century CE. See more here: http://www.mountathos.gr

Civil Rights, Gandhi and the Religion of Tolerance

It is a rare household that's ignorant of the name “Gandhi.”  Equally rare, however, are those with knowledge of his life beyond trendy cliché. His life tells a complex story; it is, after all, a human story, riddled with virtue and vice.  One of the virtues Gandhi developed over his life—one which he prized and others still esteem him for—was tolerance.  He was tolerant of ignorance, political differences, and even violence committed against himself.  But the tolerance of M. K. Gandhi was limited, especially regarding many forms of religion and ethics.

Many scholars of South and Southeast Asian Studies have regarded Gandhi’s religion as the source of his tolerance. He encountered many religious traditions early in his traveling life and public career, and the Hindu culture that raised him increased his understanding of religious diversity. Although he was brought up in a Hindu household with a devout mother, Gandhi kept himself unattached to any particular sect, and he claimed that his “inner voice,” something like Socrates' daimon, guided the beliefs to which he did adhere (Gandhi, 2008). This inner voice was his chosen spiritual guru for his lifelong quest toward a religion of tolerance, non-violence and reason.

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Suffering and Celebration in the Kingdom of God

Foot of the Cross, Don Wolf

The following is a sermon I gave this Sunday in a small town in Western Montana.  It was my first sermon.

The tension between suffering and celebration in the days before Easter is something that I’m just becoming familiar with myself.  I’ve suffered and I’ve celebrated, but how do I hold the two together?  What I’ve found in my prayer and reading over the past couple of weeks is that it all comes together in this question: Why do we call Good Friday, the day that Jesus hung on a cross, “good”?

I’m going to be working from Philippians 3:4b-14:

 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:4-14 ESV)

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Morality: Governed by the Media or the Church?

A couple of days ago The UK Guardian, an online news source, posted an article about morality in the media and the Christian Church.  It was written by N.T. Wright.  He was addressing the media's calling out the church for hypocrisy.

"The church claims it can tell people how to behave, so surely it has to live up to those standards itself?" 

The joke here is that it is usually the media that tell people how to behave. Yes, the church sometimes "speaks out". But if it's moralising you want, turn on the radio. Or pick up a newspaper. And the institution the media especially love to attack is of course the church. There is a logic to this. The media want to be the guardians of public morality, but some people still see the church that way. Very well, it must be pulled down from its perch to make way for its secular successor.

Don't be fooled when "religious affairs correspondents" look prim and solemn and shake their heads at the latest clerical scandal. They are enjoying every minute of it. It keeps them in a job (did anyone imagine that the real "religious affairs" of this country, the prayerful and self-sacrificial work that goes on under the radar every day of every year, would ever make headlines?).

I think Wright has a point.

Consider for a moment the movies we watch.

Happy Feet, a movie about Penguins for kids, ends with 20 minutes of moral teaching about ecological ethics.  Brave is all about how to be a modern woman.

Consider our news networks, or comedy shows.
Jon Stewart is a rhetorical master.  He teaches through jokes.

Ever been around somebody who watches too much Fox News?  It dictates what they call right and wrong.

Or what about our music?

But how many people do you run across in your daily life who are learning their values from the church?  As a religious studies major I've had several run-ins with professors who teach an atheistic perspective, because, they say, they're just trying to help these poor college students who've been indoctrinated by the Church.  Really?  Most people I run across on the college campus don't have a clue what the Church actually teaches.  But they know Jon Stewart.  Their orienting stories are not--and have not been for at least a decade--those told in the gospels and in Moses' Exodus, but they've been replaced by Fight Club, Brave, The Life of Pi, and the moral teachings of The Cartoon Network.

But the media still points the finger of hypocrisy at the church.  It may be subtle, but it's there.  And against the charges of hypocrisy, Wright wrote this about Christian virtue:

The Christian has a particular angle on virtue. Some Protestant traditions have frowned on it: doesn't it mean we are trying to earn salvation by "good works"? Answer: no – it is all based on God's grace. But God's grace doesn't work "automatically". Part of the "fruit of the spirit", along with faith, hope and love, is self-control. That doesn't come overnight, either; and while you're practising the moral scales and arpeggios, and playing wrong notes, you are being, technically speaking … a hypocrite. Christians don't (or at least shouldn't) claim to have "made it" yet. We claim to follow Jesus. The church is composed of prodigal children who have discovered, to their astonishment, that their father still loves them. It was the older brother who thought the whole thing was a sham.

 Thoughts?

Works Cited
____________________
Wright, Tom. "The Church May Be Hypocritical about Sex, but Is No One Else Guilty?" The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 03 June 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2013.

Story, Lent and The Life of Pi

This Wednesday's post is up over at InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Blog.  See it here.  I've focused on the intersection of story and Lent.  More specifically, the intersection of Ang Lee's "The Life of Pi" and our need for the transcendent.

"Nobody would be changed by The Life of Pi, if she didn’t first walk into the theater and allow the story to captivate her."