Friday, June 20, 2008

Break in India

For my devoted reader, I will be off for a one month break till July 24th to the land of my ancestors - India, specifically Kerala.

Till then I am excited about increasing oil prices. Why? Andrew Leonard says it far more better than I can. Higher oil prices and increasing transportation costs means heavy physical goods shipped from our friendly manufacturing giant, China become more expensive than the same goods made locally.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Failure and being in need

“In the United States need degrades a person; failure condemns a person, but not in the kingdom of God. To be in need is to be in a position of honor.”

From Arthur C. McGill, Death and Life: An American Theology (1987)

A really important quote (h.t. to Kim ) and something I resonate with but find it hard to articulate in talking with my wife. To her, admitting need (can we call this a kind of begging) is a sign of weakness especially in front of those who have not shown us the kind of respect and appreciation that we expect.

"Christians think we are creatures that beg. Prayer is the activity that most defines who we are. Through prayer we learn the patience to take the time to beg, to beg to the One alone who is the worthy subject of such prayer. Through prayer Christians learn how to beg from each other. Christians, therefore, can never be at peace with a politics or economic arrangements built on the assumption that we are fundamentally not beggars."

(Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith, 241 h.t. to Dan )

I know that the begging for my physical well being is a strong part of why His faithfulness pulls me in a direction that all my intellectual legwork could not do. So there is no need to feel sorry for weakness and need when these are our own essential condition, and when these are the necessary condition for the joy of receiving?”

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Herbert McCabe on Forgiveness « Theology Forum

Herbert McCabe on forgiveness from the Theology Forum :

"Never be deluded into thinking that if you have contrition, if you are sorry for your sins, God will come and forgive you - that he will be touched by your appeal, change his mind about you and forgive you. Not a bit of it. God never changes his mind about you. He is simply in love with you. What he does again and again is change your mind about him. That is why you are sorry. That is what your forgiveness is.
You are not forgiven because you confess your sins. You confess your sin, recognize yourself for what you are, because you are forgiven. When you come to confession, to make a ritual proclamation of your sin, to symbolize that you know what you are, you are not coming in order to have your sins forgiven.
You don’t come to confession in order to have your sins forgiven.
You come to celebrate that your sins are forgiven. [...] Being contrite, self-aware, about your sin is the same as believing in the love of God, smashing the punitive satanic god and having faith in the real God who is sheer unconditional love for you. You could say that it is your faith in God’s undeviating love for you that lets you risk looking at your sins for what they are. Telling your sins to the church in the sacrament of confession is just a form of the creed; you are saying, ‘I am really like this and all the same God loves me’ [...]
(Faith within Reason, pp. 158-9)"
Steve Holmes speaks well when he say here :

"The story is told that, when he taught on Schleiermacher, Barth made it a rule that no-one was allowed to criticise in any way for the first term; until you have learnt just how attractive Schleiermacher’s theology is, you are not yet able to explain why he is wrong. Surely this is true of any theology: unless you feel the attraction, know why another generation of students was captivated, fascinated, by this theology, you have not yet understood it. and until you have understood it, you have no right and no ability to critique it."

Too true not just of Theology but even most other things. The problem however is whether the attraction of something takes you over the edge. Let us say you are trying to find the attraction of fascist philosophy from your roughly liberal standpoint. First of all you would be hard pressed unless you can really seperate your judgemental self from what you are trying to get into. Secondly if you could really seperate yourself for the time and space needed to get into something what is there to stop you from truly advocating the postion say if your circumstances were to change. Do we really adopt a position absolutely. At least my experience is that I don't.

Coming back to truly understanding something (prejudged) 'not good' as a means to going through and beyond it is taking a great risk. A part of the risk of living I guess.

Steve in the post above is talking about leading his students into a deeper engagement with theology of the 18th and 19th century which many theologians today feel is too intellectual and leads to over certainity about things one cannot be certain about in that mode, before leading his students to the attractions of 20th century theologians like Barth. What if someone today felt there was something wrong in theology today and cannot put her finger on exactly what it is?

Friday, June 13, 2008

Miracles and the Realist

Reading an old post here Ben Myers says,

Anyway, let me give the last word to Dostoyevsky. In The Brothers Karamazov, the narrator remarks:

“It is not miracles that make a realist turn to religion. A true realist will, if he is an unbeliever, will always find the strength and the ability not to believe in a miracle, and if faced with a miracle as an undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. And if he does admit it, he will admit it as a natural fact hitherto unknown to him. In a realist, faith does not arise from a miracle, but the miracle from faith.”

Another reason for me to start reading Dostoyevsky.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Metaphysics of Discipleship « Inhabitatio Dei

A short excerpt of a really thought provoking post from Halden at : The Metaphysics of Discipleship « Inhabitatio Dei:

"In Jesus’ view, the call to discipleship that he was preaching was not something hard and burdensome, but rather a call to leave such burdens behind. Jesus seems to think that discipleship is easy, and that by contrast it is restless striving of the Gentiles and the burdensome commands of the priestly elite that is hard (cf. Matt. 6:32; Luke 11:46; 12:30)."

Read the whole article. My thought is Jesus must have had some idea about the kind of people we and his contemporaries are. Always looking at things through dark glasses. Then why did he say what he said if he knew it was bound to be misinterpreted at least by a majority -- or was the early church an exception to this.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Google Reader (461)

A wonder quote from Dewy (h.t. to Aaron Ghiloni)

“Recreation, as the word indicates, is recuperation of energy. No demand of human nature is more urgent or less to be escaped. The idea that the need can be suppressed is absolutely fallacious, and the Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has entailed an enormous crop of evils. If education does not afford opportunity for wholesome recreation and train capacity for seeking and finding it, the suppressed instincts find all sorts of illicit outlets, sometimes overt, sometimes confined to indulgence of the imagination. Education has no more serious responsibility than making adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure; not only for the sake of immediate health, but still more if possible for the sake of its lasting effect upon habits of mind. Art is again the answer to this demand.”

Democracy and Education, Chapter 15

So remember to Re-create yourself and help those around you to get some for themselves. I keep thinking of street cleaners here in Kuwait who work for KD 20 or so a month and work from morning till night without resting. Many turn to what Dewey above aptly calls "illicit outlets" and the newspapers here scream about how society suffers.