Bizarro World…

One of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld was the Bizzaro world episode. The premise of the story is a spin on the Bizzaro world found in Superman comics. In the Bizzaro world everything is opposite. Bizzaro superman was the opposite of superman and lived on a planet where good was bad and bad was good. In the Bizarro Seinfeld episode Elaine was confronted with 3 friends that were exact opposites of their real world counterparts Jerry, George, and Kramer.

The more I understand the teachings of Jesus the more I realize that Jesus was trying to show us a “bizarro” world. He talked about this thing called the kingdom of God but the whole idea of a kingdom with a king and armies fighting evil is a horrible image for us today. Lately I have come to realize that it isn’t what I always thought it was. When I was a kid I was taught that this kingdom was some place called heaven that I would go to when I died. As I grew up and stopped believing in a literal afterlife and a supernatural spirit realm I never really found a good replacement for that theory. Some people tried to tell me that this kingdom might not be a place but be more like a “time” in the future. But that didn’t really add up either because Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within us. That doesn’t fit the model of a place or a time.

In his lectures last weekend, Walter Brueggeman said, “In order to be subversive, one must have a sub version of reality”. All great revolutionary figures seem to see the world different. In Jesus’ version of reality the last is first and the first is last, the meek inherit the earth, people love their enemies, disputes are settled with compassion instead of violence, and peace is preferred to war. Maybe that is the key.

What if the kingdom of God isn’t a place or a time but instead it is an alternate subversive image of reality? What if this version of reality is all in our heads (i.e. “within us”) and we can learn to experience it just by changing the way we view our surroundings? What if becoming a Christian was no longer taught as adopting an ancient belief system and renouncing the existence of dinosaurs, but instead it was taught to be more like putting on a new set of mental lenses to view the world. What if the version of God that was taught to us in Sunday school is a horrible mistake given to us by ancient people that used God as an excuse for natural disasters and as an explanation for their victory or defeat in war? What if Jesus’ purpose was to give us an alternate view of God and an alternate way to live? What if the personal transformation that Jesus talked about is a natural byproduct of living life wearing a new set of lenses? What if God’s solution to save the world is the natural byproduct of more people wearing these new lenses? What if our objective is not to sit back passively and wait for God to bring a magical kingdom in the future, but our objective is to put on these new lenses and start seeing and living a subversive anti-imperialistic life right now?

Emerging Paradigm notes....

I've put my notes from last weekend on another blog for those that are interested. I also ordered CDs of the lectures but it may take 4-6 weeks before they arrive.

http://januaryadventure.blogspot.com/

Weekend Retreat…

I had a great last minute opportunity this weekend. I was able to attend a ground-breaking theological conference held at St. Simons Island called a January Adventure in Emerging Christianity. It is the 2nd annual event hosted by a local retired couple that have a desire to spread some theological enlightenment to the theological desert we all know as the bible-belt. The speakers were two of the most well know theologians in our time, Walter Brueggeman and Marcus Borg. Borg's lecture was entitled “Being a Christian in the age of Empire then and now” and Brueggemann's was called "Practicing an Alternative in a Culture of Seduction". The speakers were controversial and inspiring. It is ironic that the previous weekend Jerry Falwell had spoken in Augusta. That extra bit of information added to the feeling that my weekend would be a dramatic change of scenery.

I didn’t know what to expect, but what I found was exactly what I needed. It feel scary walking in all alone, but I knew this would be a big moment in my life. Most of the people had traveled from across the country to hear these speakers. I had imagined that there might even be a group of fundamentalists protesting the event, but everything went very smooth although I was told there were actually a few people that showed up the first night to criticize the event. What I found was a group of nearly 500 people that all shared, for the most part, the same theological views of scripture that have recently entered my life and energized my faith. There were people from just about every possible Christian denomination. I’m not sure how Buzzy and Carolyn (the organizers) put this together for the 2nd year, but they also managed to arrange for us to meet in the beautiful Methodist camp called Epworth at the Sea. There are probably many Methodists buried on St. Simons Island (some very famous) and I think a few were rolling over this weekend.

I met a group of people from Charlotte, NC that had been reading the same books as me in their Sunday school class. Wow, I can’t imagine that! I encouraged them to start a blog so I could participate from a distance and they seemed eager to try it. I also managed to squeeze in a round of golf with a Presbyterian pastor from Atlanta. After the round we had a couple of beers over some seafood and he talked about how his liberal views had brought him opposition in his former church and how he struggled to reconcile what he believed with what he could comfortably speak from his pulpit.

The truth is that until this weekend I’d never had a conversation with a real live person about my theological views. For the last 3 years my conversations have been confined to the Internet or I’ve been limited to reading seminary textbooks alone. I’ve had no one to talk to about it for fear of being told I was going to hell for using my brain and searching for answers outside the traditional views of my own conservative evangelical church. The idea of having “faith like a child” or “blind faith” had left me as a grown man with an immature faith that kept running into walls. After two years of study and about 20 or 30 books later I was feeling really great about my view of God and the bible but very disconnected from community. This weekend I met some great people that helped solidify what I already felt to be true and it gave me hope that I too could find a community of people excited about a realistic believable view of the Bible that focused not on believing bizarre theological doctrines, but instead focused on it’s radical anti-empire narrative.

I will post some more specific insights from the conference later this week. Hopefully a few of my new friends will comment here also.

The cat is out of the bag…

Everyone that I run into seems to know that we are beginning the process of adopting a child. The funny thing is that so many people seem to think it is a sad alternative to having a child the more conventional way. They always seem surprised when we tell them that we are adopting by choice not necessity. Somebody at church actually wanted to pray for Veronica because they assumed she couldn’t conceive. As far as I know we are plenty capable. My “boys” can swim just fine, but I guess we will never know for sure.

We have to go through a home study that includes a psychological evaluation, background check, and evaluation of our home and marriage. I had to write a brief biography including reasons why we are adopting. It is strange that so many people seemed to look down on me for not having children until now but nobody has ever once asked why. In fact some people have been downright hurtful. They always assumed I didn’t like kids or something even worse. I guess I should finally share why we waited and why we have chosen to adopt. I hope I don't flunk my evaluation, but here are my answers…

1. When we first got married we wanted kids soon. But if we had kids at that time, we would have done it for the wrong reasons. Several times in the last 16 years I have actually sat down and listed reasons why I should have a child and when I looked over the answers all the reasons were selfish and satisfied some kind of internal pride or maybe a need to create something that would love me without question. I wanted to wait until my decision to have a child would be a decision of sacrifice rather than a decision to fill some hole in my on life. I didn’t think I should do it until I felt like I was doing it without motives of self-gratification.

2. I have seen so many people have children without planning or they have them purely for selfish emotional reasons then end up with a big mess in their lives because they never really saw parenting as an act of service. I’m sure we could have done it the normal way with success and I know most of those people that stumbled on it by mistake also do a wonderful job, but this seems so much better for us.

3. I didn’t want to have children while I was still looking for my own way in life. It seemed to me that this would be the most important thing I will ever do and I owed it my kid(s) to do it when it made sense for them rather just looking for instant gratification. I also wanted Veronica to develop an identity outside of her family. So often women in our culture only develop identity through their spouse and their children because that is all they have ever known.

4. Adopting seems like a natural outcome of this idea of parenting as a service rather than looking for gratification. It seems more in line with the message of Jesus to deny my own desires and serve someone else’s needs. I feel like we are picking up where someone else couldn’t continue. We are not only serving a child but we are serving the parents that ran out of gas and couldn’t finish the journey.

5. Once we acknowledged that adoption was something we would consider, there was no way we could make a case for having natural children. It just seemed selfish to go back to the natural method. I couldn’t shake it. I felt that if God made us with the ability to make this sacrifice then we had no other choice. I think the human race will be fine if I don’t perpetuate my genes (maybe even better off!).

6. Adopting gives us an opportunity to make a small dent in the barriers that exist around race relations in our world. Our goal is to adopt a child from a different race.

7. I guess for me it is just another way to buck the system and refuse to live the way the world tells me I am suppose live. It is consistent with my life of challenging the conventional way of thinking. I’m an “out of the box” kind of person.

8. It is our small step of activism in a world where most people would prefer to tolerate the status quo. I’ll never be president or start a revolution, so this is about as monumental a step as I can take to make a difference. It may not seem that big to the rest of the world, but it is all I can do.

9. I feel like I have a completely different outlook on parenting because I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing it as an outcome of my strong spiritual desire to change the world into the place described in the vision of Jesus.

10. Studying about how children around the world are mistreated gave my wife and I a strong desire to reach outside our cushy life style and bring a little bit of comfort to someone that seemed to be destined for a very hard life.

It probably seems crazy to most people that I would think about this decision in a very detached and logical way. I’m sure in the end emotions will take over, but I feel better knowing that underneath the emotion there is a logical framework for our decision. I don’t think this decision is right for everyone, but feel that it is definitely right for us.