The Internet Monk Archives

The Learning, Conversing, Serving Community (4)

The Learning, Conversing, Serving Community (4)

In this book, we will view the local church as a sort of learning organization, in which both learning and action lie at the heart of its identity. We will explore the practice of reading — perhaps the most important component of learning in the twenty-first century — and consider how we can read together in ways that drive us deeper into action.

• Chris Smith

We are spending some time during these winter months considering Chris Smith’s fine book, Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish.

The next section of Chris Smith’s book deals with how the church as a learning organization can help our neighbors as well as the faith community itself. Chris quotes Parker Palmer, who says, “In prayer and contemplation we begin to understand that our identity is not to be found in our differences from others — in our superiorities and inferiorities — but in our common humanity.”

In my view, this is a fundamental statement to understanding the genius of Chris Smith’s book and the mission his congregation engages in daily. They have renounced the spirit of separatism that infects so many churches. They have realized that God has planted them in a place, in a community, with neighbors and acquaintances that the congregation is called to befriend and relate to. They have bought into the fact that God is redeeming all things in Christ and that God has called us to participate with him in repairing the torn fabric of the world, one stitch at a time. “Our call as churches to seek ‘the flourishing of life for all’ is the theological conviction that will guide us…” (p. 87)

This means our primary stance vis a vis our neighbors is that of seeking common ground so that we can advance shalom in the world around us.

As an example, Smith cites Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, and its story of how the Irish monks spread literacy and learning across Europe through establishing monasteries, universities, and libraries.

Cahill’s story reminds us that reading is essential for healthy, flourishing cultures. It also helps us see that our churches stand within a long history of Christian communities that have functioned as learning communities in which practices of reading and learning were interwoven with habits of caring for members of the community and neighbors. If we take this history seriously, church communities in the twenty-first century could be well positioned to cultivate habits of literacy that foster life in their particular places. (pp. 84-85)

Books and a commitment to learning give churches an opportunity to serve a library function in the midst of their communities, preserving, passing on, and celebrating the unique history, identity, and characteristics of these places.

It also enables them to contribute through serving an education function. Congregations can help their communities by raising the literacy and learning levels in them. Smith suggests that churches can offer libraries (with broader content than most church libraries I’ve seen) and partner with their local libraries through promoting them, encouraging parishioners to volunteer in them, and advocating for them in the civic life of the community.

Furthermore, churches can find ways of serving the public schools in their neighborhoods, as well as literacy groups and tutoring services, in order to promote education in their communities. The church has long seen this as part of their role. The original “Sunday Schools” were exactly that — schools that churches ran to bring literacy and education to their neighbors. Chris mentions the example of Frank Laubach, a 20th missionary in the Philippines who promoted development, starting with the foundational step of literacy. He saw this as the key ingredient in helping people help themselves and combating the scourge of poverty.

Of course, all this depends upon learning from our neighbors about their needs as they perceive them. This involves conversations — conversations with our neighbors. These can be public conversations that the church hosts, or personal conversations as we engage them as friends in the midst of our daily lives.

In my church’s experience of conversing and working toward the flourishing of our place, we have found that it is easier to get our neighbors involved in this work, and to keep them involved, when the focus is positive and not negative. Instead of always entering public conversations with an oppositional stance — energized by the things we are against — we do well to work for a positive vision for the future of our place, pursuing the collective hopes and dreams of our neighbors. (p. 94)

• • •

Note: We are using some of our friend David Cornwell’s pictures to grace this series. David is a big fan of Chris Smith and the work of Englewood Christian Church. For more of his wonderful photography, go to David’s Flickr page.

The Bible and the Believer (5)

The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously
by Mark Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, Daniel J. Harrington

• • •

One of my tasks this year will be to work on answering the two questions that Pete Enns raises regularly in his writings and podcasts:

What is the Bible?
What is the Bible for?

First, we are taking up this theme by considering a book Pete co-authored with Mark Brettler and Daniel Harrington (a Jewish and Catholic scholar, respectively), called The Bible and the Believer.

Today is part two of our look at Pete Enns’s take on some Protestant perspectives about reading the Bible both critically and religiously.

Pete notes a second problem for Protestants when it comes to accepting biblical criticism. They tend to view the Bible as a unified whole, whereas Jewish engagement with the Bible has looked at the scriptures differently. This extended quote explicates his point:

Throughout history, Christians have read the Bible as an unfolding and unified story of salvation, culminating in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth—in other words, Scripture is read as a coherent whole. Traditionally, Judaism has not shared this same conviction, as noted Jewish biblical scholar Jon Levenson reminds us: “Whereas in the church the sacred text tends to be seen as a word (the singular is telling) demanding majestically to be proclaimed, in Judaism it tends to be seen as a problem with many facets, each of which deserves attention.”

Levenson’s comment points to an important and telling difference between how Jews and Christians view the Bible, and this observation goes a long way to explaining why Protestants have an uneasy relationship with biblical criticism. Throughout its history, Jewish biblical interpretation has been well aware of the tensions and contradictions in the Bible, and although they expended much energy in addressing them, those efforts were free of the dogmatic angst that preoccupies Protestantism. The Jewish Bible is complex, and its many peaks and valleys, gaps and gashes are invitations to engage the text and so to connect with God through conversation, argument, and struggle. Hence, biblical criticism—although historically still challenging for various strands of Judaism—is less of a problem, at least insofar as Judaism, too, points out the peaks and valleys, gaps and gashes of the Bible.

For Protestants—and indeed the Christian tradition as a whole—the Bible is not there to set the church on an exegetical adventure during which one discovers God through interpretive struggle. The problems of Scripture are minimized, because the Bible is ultimately a coherent grand narrative that tells one and only one story with a climax: the crucified and risen Son of God brings Israel’s story to completion. The New Testament authors go to great lengths to explain how Jesus of Nazareth completes Israel’s story and gives it coherence. Taken as a whole, the Christian Bible has a singular message. (pp. 133-134)

So then, what about what biblical criticism has discovered? For example,

The two creation stories in Genesis 1-2,
The alternate history given in Chronicles contrasted with the Deuteronomic history (Samuel-Kings),
The different versions of Jesus’ life and teachings in the Gospels,
The creative ways in which the NT authors use the OT.

Three primary challenges arose from biblical criticism in the nineteenth century that set the battle lines which continue today.

Darwin and the emergence of the theory of evolution,
The documentary hypothesis of Julius Wellhausen,
The discovery of Babylonian myths that set Genesis in its Ancient Near East context.

Each of these forces was a handful by itself, but together they had a powerful impact on Protestant identity by challenging the basic historical reliability of Genesis in particular, and by extension the Bible as whole. In fact, there is no greater challenge to Protestant views of the Bible than this challenge to historical reliability. Conservative Protestants invested a lot of energy in battling these three attacks on the Bible, and the memories of those battles are etched in the minds of many Protestants till today. To read the Bible critically—which means engaging these three factors rather than fighting them—is too hard a pill to swallow for many Protestants. Maintaining pure boundaries against these forces was and is often a primary concern. (pp. 135-136)

One sentence by Enns summarizes the real issue that persists: “Initial resistance to these challenges led to the establishment of sociological boundary markers that persist until today.” (p. 138) [emphasis mine]

Sides were formed that remain in place today. To maintain one’s identity as a “Bible believing Christian” (whether fundamentalist or evangelical), one dare not cross the boundaries that had been erected. The mere suggestion that critical scholarship has anything to offer a faithful reading of Scripture is anathema. Any softening of hard drawn lines would be condemned as “compromise” with unbelief and heresy. As Pete Enns says, “Conflict will continue until engagement of critical thinking becomes part of the narrative rather than deemed as a threat to the tribe’s existence. (pp. 138-139)

Are we seeing any movement in this stalemate from the “conservative” side? Enns thinks so, but warns that it can only happen if evangelicals embrace critical self-reflection and see past the project of maintaining boundaries. If evangelicals can begin asking how they might learn from others, such as the Jewish talmudic tradition and the Roman Catholic contemplative and mystical traditions, and not simply hunker down within the trenches of our own “right” interpretations, then there is hope.

Searching self-evaluation is the first step toward a true synthesis between Protestant religious readings of Scripture and critical readings. The Protestant predicament, however, is that looking inward may also be the hardest step to take. (pp. 139-140)

Sermon: Epiphany 6 — Scattering to Serve

Note from CM: Rather than publish my entire sermon this week, I thought it might be good for you to see a sample of the inserts that I have been providing during the current preaching series. I supply these each week so that the people will have something to take home and reflect upon. I try to make these as simple and memorable as possible, with phrases that will “stick” and keep people pondering the points I’m trying to make. I think this week’s insert is one of the better ones, so I thought you might like to see it and respond.

EPIPHANY PREACHING SERIES
Why We Worship as We Do

Message Six: Scattering to Serve

The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom.

• Matthew 13:37-38

In its gathered, visible form in the granary, seed is useless. To serve the purpose for which it exists, it must be scattered. It disappears into the soil and literally dies. When seed is doing the work for which it was intended, it is invisible.

• Richard Halverson

• • •

In the final movement of worship we are sent forth, out of the sanctuary, and back into our daily lives. We do not cease to be the church. The church gathered is now the church scattered. And now the real work of the church begins.

The life of the church in Christ revolves around two poles:

An invitation: “Come to me”
A commission: “Go into all the world”

We gather to worship.
We scatter to serve.

We come together in faith.
We scatter to love.

We are invited to break bread with our family.
We are sent to share the bread of life with our neighbors.

We come here to meet with Jesus on Sundays.
We leave to walk with Jesus in the world between Sundays.

We gather to hear the gospel.
We scatter to live and proclaim the gospel.

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: February 9, 2019

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: February 9, 2019

• • •

WE START WITH A REQUEST FOR PRAYER & SUPPORT…

One of our friends and contributing writers here at Internet Monk has been dealing with a life-transforming change in this new year. This is from J. Michael Jones:

Somewhere, around January 11th, 2019, I became suddenly and serious ill with acute renal failure, caused by the bone marrow cancer Multiple Myleoma. I spent almost three weeks in the hospital fighting for my life. I am still quite ill and weak but starting the long, hard fight back. I am also still writing. I have two projects in the works that I’m excited about. I will update more as progress continues. Please pray for my fight.

Mike is blogging about his experience and reflections at J. Michael Jones. At the main page of the site you can also find out more about his writing. We encourage you to follow with your support and prayers.

This is from his latest post:

I have no desire to go out as a good Christian, for the same reason I don’t watch Hallmark movies. I prefer to live in reality. My pastor once said, during a children’s story, that some people see Heaven as a land of rainbows and unicorns. I almost shouted out, as in impulse, “That sounds more like hell.” Because I love this material universe so very much, I will go out with my claws dug deeply within the dirt, hanging on until the last breath. I will fight this beast of cancer with both tooth and nail.

…So, I must don my skimpy armor and pick up my sword and shied and march into hell to give all I have to kick cancer in the balls and to cut its nasty heart out, not because I have courage but because I have no choice. This is now my determined cause. I pray that I prevail. If chemo and then stem cell transplant works, I can live 10 years. Within 10 years, a new cure may appear. That is my hope. Mike

P.S. You can find links to Mike’s books in the right sidebar. We’re standing with you, friend.

• • •

HERE’S A WEE BIT OF IRONY FOR YOU…

Warren Throckmorton reports that Mark Driscoll’s church will be hosting a “Church Governance Seminar.”

After all he did to give a bad name to Christian church leadership! Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house!

Here is an overview of what attendees will learn:

Session Topics Include:

• How the Church and pastors’ families both suffer under bad governance
• A survey of Church governmental models
• The biblical standard of singular headship and plural leadership
• Theocratic government: a “kingdom-down” not “pew-up” unity focused model
• How to embrace apostolic influence
• How to implement a God-centered theocratic Church government

Please notice how there is not even an effort to hide the hierarchical, top-down, power politics in the name of Jesus that will be presented here — “Singular headship,” “Theocratic government,” “Apostolic influence.”

What Bible are these people reading? Certainly not the one that has this text in it:

But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ (Matthew 20:25-28)

• • •

SPEAKING OF TOXIC BELIEFS…

In a day when measles could easily have been eradicated from the face of the earth, more than 50 cases of measles have been reported in Washington state recently, and nearly all of them in a single county among children or young people who have not been vaccinated.

My Northwest reports that, although students are required to have certain vaccinations to go to school, including MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), Washington is one of 18 states that allows personal exemptions for vaccines, in addition to medical and religious exemptions. However, the recent outbreak has led some to say “Enough!”

Democratic State Rep. Monica Stonier…is co-sponsoring a bill to put an end to the personal and philosophical exemption for the MMR vaccine.

“Measles is an incredibly fast-spreading disease and the vaccine is incredibly effective,” Stonier said. “For those who have legitimate medical reasons for not being able to be vaccinated or even legitimate religious reasons to not be vaccinated should still be able to enjoy living in a healthy community and currently that’s not happening.”

Her bill would require kids attending public school to get the MMR vaccine unless they have those legitimate medical or religious reasons. She says there also may be an amendment to tighten up the religious exemption, and also extending the vaccination requirement to people working in child care centers.

…Stonier says she understands parents have safety concerns, but says research has largely debunked misinformation about the risks of vaccines.

“I understand the concerns that many are raising about wanting to make those decisions and having the freedom to make those decisions for their own children. The challenge here is that those people who are enjoying those freedoms currently are imposing on the rights of other children to live in a healthy community,” Stonier said.

Exactly.

Ignorance, conspiratorial thinking, and selfish insularity make it pretty damn hard to love your neighbors.

• • •

MUSLIM EXECUTED AFTER BEING DENIED HIS OWN CHAPLAIN…

Domineque “Hakim” Ray was executed in Alabama on Thursday, after the US Supreme Court voted five-to-four to allow the execution, denying his request for an imam’s presence in the execution chamber. He was offered a Christian chaplain instead. Ray’s imam, Yusef Maisonet, ended up watching the execution from an adjoining witness room

The majority SCOTUS opinion, by those considered the conservative members of the Court, gave few reasons for their decision apart from the “last minute” nature of the appeal.

Those who dissented argued that Ray was denied equal treatment under the Law. They recognized the possible security concerns of allowing someone other than a state-employed chaplain in the room, which was the state’s reason for disallowing the imam, but suggested other avenues could have been pursued in order that the prisoner could have had his spiritual needs attended to at time of death.

Are there no official Muslim chaplains that could have been procured?

None of this would have changed the final result, but perhaps the man could have had some peace.

• • •

LEGAL OR NOT?

Here’s one for the baseball fans out there, just as we’re about to head back to Spring Training. MLB put up a Twitter video of Trevin Michael, a 21-year old pitcher at a junior college in Oklahoma.

Michael has one of the craziest pitching motions ever witnessed, and he put it up on the internet to have baseball people weigh in on whether or not the motion is legal.

You be the judge. You can go to the MLB article and read the section from the rulebook that applies.

Legal? @FlatgroundApp pic.twitter.com/wdh3vjjRKv

— Huff (@CoachHuffEra) February 7, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

• • •

MY FEBRUARY PLAYLIST(S)…

It’s all about love, my friends. Love is all you need, all you need is love for a February playlist. I have two of them for you here today — a list of older pop and jazz standards, and a collection of some favorite folk and rock songs that describe many facets of romantic love.

My Classic Playlist for Lovers (Feb. 2019)

Let’s Begin, Ella Fitzgerald
As Long As I’m Dreaming, The Four Freshmen
When I Fall in Love, Nat King Cole
Like Someone in Love, Frank Sinatra
A Kiss to Build a Dream On, Louis Armstrong
Let’s Fall in Love, Ella Fitzgerald
Only Trust Your Heart, The Four Freshmen
The Way You Look Tonight, Peggy Lee
The Very Thought of You, Nat King Cole
They Can’t Take That Away from Me, Frank Sinatra
Stella by Starlight, Miles Davis
I Can’t Believe that You’re in Love with Me, Billie Holiday
Now It Can Be Told, Ella Fitzgerald
Unforgettable, Nat King Cole
My One and Only Love, Louis Armstrong

•

My February 2019 Playlist

Intro: You Are Karen M’Sabu (from Out of Africa), John Barry
Talk about Love, John Gorka
Silly Love Songs, Wings
Valentine’s Day, James Taylor
Cupid, Sam Cooke
Power of Two, Indigo Girls
Rose of Sharon, Mumford and Sons
Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War, Paul Simon
Flower, Amos Lee
Heart of Stone, Bill Staines
Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straits
You and I, Wilco
Only One, James Taylor
The One I Love, David Gray
Interlude: I’m Better at Hello (from Out of Africa), John Barry
Poison and Wine, The Civil Wars
Like You Used To, Mandolin Orange
Love Love Love, Of Monsters and Men
Darling Lorraine, Paul Simon
Soul Companion, Mary Chapin Carpenter (with James Taylor)
Golden Heart, Mark Knopfler
You and Me, Dave Matthews Band
Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves
Dream of Me, Alison Krauss
Fare Thee Well Love, The Rankins
Reprise: Beach at Night (from Out of Africa), John Barry

•

What on earth is a “Biblical Worldview”?

About a week ago my cousin Ted drew my attention to an article written by a Professor of Mathematics (Emeritus) at the University of Oxford. In the article, the author, John Lennox, tells of an experience where “a brilliant scientist [was] trying to bully me into giving up Christianity.”

Finding himself at a dinner with an unnamed Nobel Prize winner he had some questions for the man.

“I tried to ask him some questions. For instance, how did his science shape his worldview—his big picture of the status and meaning of the universe? In particular, I was interested in whether his wide-ranging studies had led him to reflect on the existence of God.”

In response the author was invited into a study where he was asked if he wanted a career in science. When responding in the affirmative, he was told:

“Then,” [the Nobel Prize winner] said, “in front of witnesses, tonight, you must give up this childish faith in God…”

“I told the group standing around me that I found the biblical worldview vastly more enriching and the evidence for its truth compelling, and so, with all due respect, I would take the risk and stick with it.”

There were a number of items that stood out to me when reading the original post. Why was the unknown Nobel Prize winner unnamed? How is the percentage of Nobel winners who are Christian relevant to his story (only half of the Nobel Prizes are science related)?

But the item that jumped out at me most of all was his use of the term “biblical worldview”. Whatever does that mean?

Sure I had heard the term before. I even knew of people who had taken courses in the subject of “Having a Biblical Worldview”. But it had never struck me as much as when reading this article. Quite frankly, I could not really get a very good sense of what Lennox meant by the term.

So I went digging.

Here were some of the consensus ideas that I have derived from multiple sites which seem to define what it means to have a “Biblical Worldview”.

The term is largely synonymous with having a “Christian Worldview”.
The world is viewed through the lens of the Bible.
The Bible is accurate and/or inerrant.
There is absolute truth and it is defined by the Bible.
The world was created by God.
Salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone.
Satan is real.

I must admit I was surprised by the inclusion of number seven on the list. There didn’t seem to be a lot of practical outworking from that. I have a suspicion that its inclusion stems from Frank Peretti days where his two books “This Present Darkness” and “Piercing the Darkness” combined to sell 3.5 million copies in the late 80s. I think the term “Biblical Worldview” came into prominence at that time.

“In Peretti’s works, the “Sovereign Hand of God” is moved in response to prayers of the “saints”-the faithful “remnant.” who refuse to be led astray by a society growing ever more irreligious. Education, government, the media, the ecological movement, and big business are, knowingly or unknowingly,swayed by demonic forces in the novels.” – Jay Howard “Vilifying the Enemy: The Christian Right and the Novels of Frank Peretti“

While I think that Frank Peretti’s influence deserves a whole post on its own, I want to focus more on items 2 through 5, and some issues that arise from these statements. These items are all related. This will be a brief interaction, but I encourage all of us to continue the discussion in the comments.

Let us start with number two.

The world is viewed through the lens of the Bible.

Describing the Bible as a lens is problematic. Paul says in Corinthians that we “see through a glass darkly”. To say that the Bible speaks with a single voice, that it is this lens that instantly brings clarity to all that is viewed, is not how the Bible works. It could be better described as a richly woven tapestry, adorned with different pictures, and opaque.

As Pastor Mike noted on Monday:

“Making the Bible the sole authority for the church has demonstrably not led to ecclesiastical unity formed around the clear teaching of scripture. Two groups may both hold to the authority of the Bible while coming to polar opposite conclusions with regard to how to interpret it. The Bible, as it has come to us, is just not that simple and easily understood. It is open to a plethora of interpretations, and the history of Protestant schism proves this convincingly.”

The Bible is accurate and/or inerrant

Michael Spencer has written at length as to why he doesn’t hold to inerrancy.

“Inerrancy looks, smells and feels remarkably like a philosophical imposition on the Bible, going beyond what the Bible CAN say about itself, and forcing those of us who believe in the authority and truthfulness of the Bible to take a “loyalty oath” that goes beyond what should be said.”

If someone wants to challenge you on this, ask them when Jesus was born, and do they hold to the Matthew time frame or the Luke time frame?

There is absolute truth and it is defined by the Bible

One commentator wrote that there is a danger in “Not believing your worldview is absolute. Not just right, but absolutely right.”

Michael Spencer would have responded this way:

“While the Bible is supposedly inerrant, none of those who interpret it are inerrant interpreters. That’s a problem. If there is a perfect compass, and you give it to a chimp, what have you got? A chimp with a compass.”

Believing that you have the “absolute truth” results in people being dismissive of other views: “ I believe X, I believe the bible, you believe Y, therefore you don’t believe the bible.”

It is this arrogance of holding that you have absolute truth that has led to so much schism as disunity in the church. There is also the danger of conflating “your view” with “God’s view.” In fact, many of my sources used the the “Biblical Worldview” and “God’s Worldview” as synonymous.

The world was created by God

For most definitions, this means the rejection of evolution. Science as a whole is rejected either implicitly or explicitly. (Though it is usually couched in very soft terms.) For many it means embracing young earth six day creationism:

Ken Ham in his post “What is a Biblical Worldview” writes:

“God created the heavens, the earth, and all that is in them in six normal-length days around 6,000 years ago. His completed creation was “very good”, and all the original animals (including dinosaurs) and the first two humans (Adam and Eve) ate only plants”

Again Michael Spencer chimes in:

“Creation “really” happened. That I am told by God about creation in a three thousand year old liturgical, poetic, prescientific story meant to assert Hebrew ideas over pagan ideas during the Babylonian captivity doesn’t take one thing away from the truth of Creation. Not one thing. Telling me I have to become a young earth creationist in order to actually “believe” this account is absurd. Saying that if I don’t become a young earth creationist, I disbelieve this account is simply unacceptable. Stronger words are really needed.”

John Lennox, the author of the post that spawned my post, says that he does not hold to a young earth. My question for both him and Ken Ham is: How can you both say you hold to a Biblical Worldview, when you disagree on what that mean.

Here are my final thoughts:

The biggest problem with the idea of a Biblical Worldview is the way it is used to promote an agenda. Those espousing Biblical Worldviews are those who are anti women in leadership, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-evolution.

“In my past life everyone who used the term worldview basically did proof texting to say that their politics (almost always very conservative) is good, that the state should not help the sick and poor, that women should be subject to men, and gays are evil” – Klassie Kraalogies

A quick google search finds many articles written by leading evangelicals, like this one by Franklin Graham.

If you remember back to my conversation with Geoff as to what stood out to him in his interaction with me he wrote:

“You didn’t agree or disagree with homosexuality but you would not let the text of your religion be dissected and conveniently used to prove a point.”

And maybe that is why I reacted so strongly to the idea of a “Biblical Worldview”.

So those are my initial thoughts. Have at it. As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome. To also quote Klassie Kraalogies: “We get somewhere by talking and discussing and debating in a decent, friendly manner… “

Faith Across the Multiverse, Parables from Modern Science- Part 3, The Language of Biology, Chapter 8: Spleens, Strains, and Autoimmunity By Andy Walsh

Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science

Part 3, The Language of Biology, Chapter 8: Spleens, Strains, and Autoimmunity

By Andy Walsh

We are blogging through the book, “Faith Across the Multiverse, Parables from Modern Science” by Andy Walsh. Today is Chapter 8: Spleens, Strains, and Autoimmunity. Walsh begins this chapter talking about the relationships between the main Justice League members; Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. As a boy, Bruce Wayne had everything; devoted parents, a bright future, and enough wealth to make that dream a reality. In an instant his family and future were taken from him. And so was born Batman, a vigilante determined to prevent criminals from doing that to anyone else. But in that same moment was born a deep suspicion; that almost made it impossible for him to trust anyone else. This doubt will eat away at Batman’s relationships, even with fellow superheroes, driving him to plan ways to take down even his closest allies should the need arise.

As an infant, Superman had nothing except the rocket ship that carried him to Earth from his doomed planet Krypton. On Earth he would be taken in by the Kent’s and raised as their son, Clark. The sacrifices of both his Kryptonian birth parents and adoptive Earth parents taught Clark to view others selflessly and optimistically. He strives for justice, not to spare anyone his fate, but to give as many people as possible the same opportunities he had.

The dynamic between Batman and Superman is already rich with story potential. Adding Wonder Woman as a bridge between the two adds even deeper levels. Like Bruce Wayne, Princess Diana was a child of privilege, wanting for nothing in her youth. Yet she set it all aside to become an immigrant like Clark Kent, living in a world not her own because it needs her. Having grown up in a female-only paradise, she might have exceeded Batman in distrust of men. Instead, she chooses love and truth over fear and hate and so brings out the best in her teammates.

So in further developing the body analogy of 1 Corinthians 12, guardians of humanity like the Justice League have natural parallels to the immune system. Our immune system is supposed to protect us from threats. Pathogens like viruses and bacteria are threats from without that the immune system is programmed to respond to and neutralize. The pathogens are analogous to destructive ideas and attitudes that invade the body of Christ and destroys the bonds of unity and love that are supposed to be the main indicator of how the world is to know the church are Jesus’ followers. The Justice League/immune system are the faithful followers, whether leaders or elders or simply anyone, who “…with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; (who are) endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace…” (Ephesians 4:2-3).

But what happens when the immune system itself is out of order? When Batman and Superman are fighting each other. Immune system disorders cause abnormal activity in the immune system. In cases of immune system overactivity, the body attacks and damages its own tissues. These conditions are called autoimmune diseases. Examples of autoimmune diseases include:

Rheumatoid arthritis. The immune system produces antibodies that attach to the linings of joints. Immune system cells then attack the joints, causing inflammation, swelling, and pain. If untreated, rheumatoid arthritis causes gradually causes permanent joint damage
Systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus). People with lupus develop autoimmune antibodies that can attach to tissues throughout the body. The joints, lungs, blood cells, nerves, and kidneys are commonly affected in lupus.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The immune system attacks the lining of the intestines, causing episodes of diarrhea, rectal bleeding, urgent bowel movements, abdominal pain, fever, and weight loss. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are the two major forms of IBD. Oral and injected immune-suppressing medicines can treat IBD.
Multiple sclerosis (MS). The immune system attacks nerve cells, causing symptoms that can include pain, blindness, weakness, poor coordination, and muscle spasms. Various medicines that suppress the immune system can be used to treat multiple sclerosis.
Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Immune system antibodies attack and destroy insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. By young adulthood, people with type 1 diabetes require insulin injections to survive.
Guillain-Barre syndrome. The immune system attacks the nerves controlling muscles in the legs and sometimes the arms and upper body. Weakness results, which can sometimes be severe.

Walsh says:

What are the implications for the church from how the immune system works? For one, it suggests there is a role for the church to keep tabs on itself. We do need to make sure that what we are teaching and how we are acting is consistent with the Bible, and if not, then we need to take the appropriate corrective measures. And no one is exempt from the need for that sort of review. Relatedly, it is also a picture of accountability and transparency. Each cell takes responsibility for making sure that other cells can see what it is doing. I suspect we can all think of actual situations where more oversight, transparency and accountability could have prevented the church from pursuing unhealthy goals.

I would clarify Walsh’s statement that we need to make sure that what we are teaching and how we are acting is consistent with the Bible, by stating it as consistent with how the Bible depicts Jesus acting. Dysfunctional churches and church leaders seem to always have their string of “proof texts” that justify, or excuse, their dysfunctional attitudes and actions. I think the analogy of an immune system turning on itself is an apt one. Paul’s warning to the Galatians is appropriate here:

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5:13-15)

If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other, yep, that is a pretty good description of an immune system gone bad.

Wednesday with Michael Spencer: Thoughts on Weekly Communion

Wednesday with Michael Spencer
Thoughts on Weekly Communion (2008)

In June of last year, I began taking the Lord’s Supper weekly. I’d like to write about what this has meant to me, and to the community of worshiping Christians that I lead.

My Southern Baptist tradition has been de-emphasizing the Lord’s Supper for a good deal of its recent history. This has not been so much intentional as it is the result of a weak ecclesiology (manifested in a loss of emphasis on church membership and church discipline), an over-emphasis on evangelism and church growth, and lack of theological foundations for the place of the Lord’s Supper in the life of the church and the Christian.

The result of this de-emphasis is sad: the supper is rarely served, it is rarely preached about, and most Baptists have no positive role in their own spirituality for the Lord’s Supper.

Part of the picture is the tendency of Baptists to define themselves by as many negatives as positives. This is especially true with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, where many pastors are far more comfortable with saying what they don’t believe than what they do believe.

This situation has been unacceptable to me for many years. In the last twenty years of my ministry experiences, I have given many opportunities to take the Lord’s Supper more frequently, and I have emphasized the place of the Lord’s Supper in worship and the Christian “walk.”

One of my motivations has been simple: the Lord’s Supper is a vivid and vital connection with Jesus. To come to the Lord’s table is to return to that night when Jesus gave the supper to his disciples. It is to be re-invited to believe, to be re-invited into the community of Jesus’ followers. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are literal moments from the ministry of Jesus, re-lived and re-joined with all the power of that moment.

Most Christians in my tradition are starved for these connection points. Contemporary evangelical spirituality offers emotional experience — “quiet time,” music, church programs and information in sermons as the individual’s “connecting points” with Jesus. The roles of the church, baptism, the Lord’s Supper and service to others are not completely neglected, but there are few churches where the life of the New Testament church resembles to language and emphases of the New Testament.

When soli deo [i.e. the house church Michael led for a time] began, I offered a summation of our values and vision. Several of those values revolve around frequent communion, and the shaping of worship around scripture, liturgy, creeds and the Lord’s Supper rather than around music and the sermon only.

This emphasis on weekly communion is an emphasis on a particular vision of the Christian life, one that enters into the Biblical story and especially into the particular story of Jesus, as the primary shaping force of the Christian life. This is in stark contrast to the starvation diet most evangelicals and most of my Baptist family endures in a constant dependence on music, consumerism and massive doses of preaching to form their identity. The results are paltry, shallow and frequently non-existent.

So, since June of ’06, I have been receiving communion weekly. In contrast to the 2-4 times a year communions that are normal in Southern Baptist life, I’ve been at the Lord’s table every Tuesday night. I’ve shared that community with a worshiping fellowship from many different denominations and backgrounds, some learning about this more ancient way of worship for the first time, while others are much further down the road of post-evangelicalism than I am.

In addition to the vital and vivid connection with Jesus, I’ve recovered a joy in communion that theological debates had taken away. For some time, my awareness of and participation in debates about the nature of the Lord’s Supper turned the Lord’s Supper into a source of division and anxiety. It reminded me of those theologians who, in their insistence on a particular version of the “real presence,” defend the supper with philosophical categories and language that are far from the actual, unifying, language of scripture. Such language may be apologetically useful, but it is devotionally vacuous.

One of our values in soli deo is to say little about communion, and to stay as close to the actual words of institution as possible. I will usually do a 2-3 minute communion meditation, then, using the actual words of I Corinthians 11, slightly expanded (usually with connections to the passover meal), we share the Lord’s Supper in bread and cup, received in silence.

I do this for the very practical reason of leading an inter-denominational fellowship that has chosen not to work through all the aspects of theology before worshiping together. As fellow missionaries and members of a missional community, we share some aspects of “church” fellowship, but do not share others. Minimizing the words associated with the Lord’s Supper to the words of institution keeps us at the point where our shared fellowship is not divided, but united, at the Lord’s table.

The aspect of weekly communion that has been the most significant for me is the constant reminder that inclusion in the community of Jesus comes with the reception of forgiveness. The community of Jesus is not formed by miracles or testimonies, but by Christ’s forgiveness of sinners. Rather than focusing on “walking the aisle,” weekly communion focuses on constant forgiveness from Christ himself. In communion, Christ is active, faith is receptive and I am passive.

In my Baptist upbringing, we were frequently told that weekly communion turned the supper into a meaningless, rote ritual. Roman Catholics and those in the Disciples of Christ churches were examples. Of course, this same standard didn’t seem to apply to preaching, the offering, choir specials, hymns and, of course, the offering. It is was always obvious to me that the kinds of demeaning language used in describing frequent communion was not rooted in the Bible, but is simple prejudice: we don’t want to be like the Catholics.

The difference has become clear. When communion is properly elevated in worship, the meaning of communion is elevated. I am not particularly fond of the idea of dividing the service into “two” liturgies. I prefer to keep communion in the area where Baptists typically think about the invitation, but instead of walking the aisle, we are offered Christ in the Lord’s Supper.

Some will no doubt be surprised to hear that a shortening of the sermon has happened as we re-emphasized the Lord’s Supper. This is not a necessity, but our worship contains a Psalm and three lessons. We have consciously tried to place the teaching of the Word in a servant posture to the reading of the lessons. In much Baptist tradition, the reading of the scripture is servant to the sermon, and I feel this is inappropriate.

In the Lord’s Supper, the Word is proclaimed, the Gospel is offered and Christ is present in power to save. The “memorial” view can be presented in a stripped down, barely significant view of taking a pledge, or it can be presented as remembering one who has promised to be with us, in power, and in fellowship with those who share, believingly, in the Lord’s Supper as living members of Christ’s body. I am convinced the “stripped down” view of the Lord’s Supper has needlessly removed the power of the Supper from the experience of many Christians, and made the reformed, Lutheran and Catholic views more attractive to many Baptist Christians.

I never feel I am participating in “just a symbol.” A “symbol” has the power to include me in the reality of the thing signified if I enter, with faith, into the story in which the symbol occurs. The language of “just a symbol” is, in fact, offensive, for it demeans all kinds of Biblical language and many aspects of the Biblical story. (Should we say that Passover is a “symbol with power” or “just a symbol?”) It is a measurement of our confusion regarding communion that we see nothing strange about taking all the power and influence that God has associated with the Supper and describing such as “just” a symbol.

I’ve become convinced that occasional communion tends to drain the event of its significance and emphasize the wrong aspects. If we believe that communion is a “pledge” on our part as well as an offering of the Gospel itself, then we want to keep both aspects together and not overemphasize either one at the expense of the other. It is extremely hard for me to see that communion 2 or 3 times a year can possibly emphasize the new covenant gospel that Jesus explicitly says is present in the Lord’s Supper. I believe Spurgeon understood this when he did what no megachurch pastor would dare do today: have the Lord’s Supper at every Sunday service.

Weekly communion is a constant reminder that we journey with Jesus; that we are vitally connected to him and to the movement he began; that Christ, in the new covenant, offers his people all that their salvation means through simple, empty-handed faith. It would be difficult for me to go back to worship without weekly communion. The place of Christ’s New Covenant meal in worship can’t be replaced with music or preaching. It is Christ’s meal of fellowship, Christ’s table of invitation, Christ’s body and blood proclaimed for us in bread and wine.

Virtually eliminating what Christ gave to us to be at the very center or worship is trading away our great inheritance for trinkets and decoration. Restoring the Lord’s Supper to a central place in worship is a crucial part of the renewal and reformation post-evangelicals should work toward.

The Learning, Conversing, Serving Community (3)

Sunset in February. Photo by David Cornwell

The Learning, Conversing, Serving Community (3)

• Chris Smith

We are spending some time during these winter months considering Chris Smith’s fine book, Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish.

Further honing in on the transforming benefits of reading, Chris Smith moves from talking more generally about how it refines our social imagination to discuss how we more fully understand our identities and vocations as we practice reading, reflection, and conversation together.

A Christian community’s sense of identity is shaped primarily when we read scripture and learn to take our place in the biblical story. However, studying the Bible is not just as simple as reading the English Bible together. Having people in our congregation who are familiar with biblical languages and the history of interpretation can help us go deeper in what it means to read this ancient book faithfully. Being able to place our congregation in the flow of church history and in the traditions of theology and church practice that we follow can further help us understand our ancestry and what we have inherited.

But Chris recommends that we access other kinds of books as well.

Books of philosophy that ask probing questions about human experience.
Books of history, sociology, and cultural studies that “help us understand better how our cultures have taken the form they have and can help us name the types of brokenness in and around us.” (p. 66)
Works of psychology that can help us understand what it means to be human and to live whole and healthy human lives.
Works of literature and fiction that explore these and other themes but grab our attention and stimulate our imaginations in ways that nonfiction books might not.
Poetry that gives us new language and metaphors to help us understand ourselves and our world.
Furthermore…

Questions of who we are and why we are are not the only ones that we need to consider. We also must wrestle with the questions of when and where we are. “Where are we?” is a question that is fundamental to our identity….The challenge of understanding when we are involves discerning what it means to live in this particular age and how the present day is interrelated with previous ages. Reading history, of course, will be essential to understanding the times in which we live, but news and commentary will be equally important. Reading politics and economics also will help us understand our times.

Once again, contemporary poetry and fiction can shed needed light on the times in which we live, often helping us to see connections in ways that narrow, siloed genres of nonfiction — politics, economics and the like — cannot. (p. 67)

Identity leads to vocation or calling. Coming to terms with “Who am I?” we are led naturally to ask, “What am I here to do?

Chris Smith encourages to think more broadly than we often do about this. It is common for Christians to narrow our understanding of vocation to two things: (1) God’s call to follow Jesus, and (2) our individual call to recognize our gifts, interests, and the opportunities God grants us. But, as he argues, “If it is in the local church that we are to embody Christ together…then it is within that context that we should discern how our individual skills can be made available for the shared work of bearing witness to the love and reconciliation of Christ.” (p. 73)

An illustration from Chris Smith’s own church may be instructive.

As a small urban congregation with a massive building to maintain, my own local church was thrust early into the sort of economic uncertainty that many churches are facing today. We have been wrestling with these challenges for almost twenty years. Through practices of reading and conversation, we have been fortunate enough to have cultivated a little imagination regarding the shared economy of our church. We have started several businesses that use the gifts of our members to benefit our neighborhood and other churches. These include a daycare and preschool, a community development corporation engaged in affordable housing and economic development, and the Englewood Review of Books, which recommends resources for our church and other churches around the world. These businesses provide common work for us, employing people in full- and part-time positions and involving many others as volunteers. This common work allows a growing number of our members to be together on a daily basis, working with each other and thinking and talking often about how our faith gets lived out amidst all the wonderful assets and deep challenges of our neighborhood. (p. 75)

Englewood Christian Church could have taken what I would consider an easier way. They could have moved out to the suburbs where many of their members were living. Instead, in the 1980s they decided to stay in their struggling urban neighborhood with their older, expensive building and to explore who they were (and could be) in that setting, and what God might be calling them to do for one another and their neighbors. Their journey of reading, conversing, and serving entered a new era.

• • •

The Bible and the Believer (4)

The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously
by Mark Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, Daniel J. Harrington

• • •

One of my tasks this year will be to work on answering the two questions that Pete Enns raises regularly in his writings and podcasts:

What is the Bible?
What is the Bible for?

First, we are taking up this theme by considering a book Pete co-authored with Mark Brettler and Daniel Harrington (a Jewish and Catholic scholar, respectively), called The Bible and the Believer.

It remains to Pete Enns to talk about Protestantism and its perspectives on historical criticism and its relation to a religious reading of the Bible. By no means is this an easy task, for the term “Protestant” covers a lot of ground, and the nature of Protestantism does not lend itself to a straightforward analysis. As Enns notes:

Today, Protestantism includes American young earth creationists, liberal German Lutherans, mainline Methodists, Chinese Pentecostals, Korean hyper-Calvinists, Moral Majority Baptists, emergent church hipsters, and many others.

There is certainly no single Protestant perspective on how to read the Bible. In fact, the history of Protestantism is marked by conflict over what it means to read the Bible “correctly,” and the plethora of theological traditions and denominations are a testimony to that conflict. (pp. 126-127)

Because of the vast ground we have to cover with regard to Protestants and this subject, we will devote more than one post to Enns’s contribution.

In terms of Protestantism’s relationship to the discipline of biblical criticism, Pete Enns observes that there is a spectrum of responses. On one end is fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism, which “has a long history of spirited, nonnegotiable opposition to biblical criticism as an enemy of the Christian faith.” Arising in the 19th and 20th centuries specifically as a response to what they saw as the dire threat of the critical method, fundamentalism drew dogmatic lines in the sand and essentially claimed that those across those lines was something other than genuine Christian faith.

The other end of the spectrum is populated by those commonly called “liberal” or “modernist.” These are primarily identified with mainline Protestant denominations. For them, the results of the critical method are assured. They have moved past feeling angst about combining faith with critical scholarship.

In between is a broad swath of views.

Even when limiting Protestantism to this multidenominational middle group, we are still left with a spectrum of attitudes about what it means to read the Bible faithfully vis-à-vis biblical criticism. Some appreciate the need for the conversation but may also tend toward a default position of suspicion regarding critical readings of the Bible, and thus their appropriation of critical scholarship may be more piecemeal—addressing the issue only when forced to do so. Others are more deliberate in synthesizing faith and critical scholarship but with various degrees of dis-ease. For example, some may experience discomfort over specific issues (Did the exodus happen? Is Adam a myth?). Still others may experience a general cognitive dissonance—a constant background noise or discomfort that may eventually come to the foreground. (p. 128)

The issue, of primary concern for those on the conservative side of the spectrum, is a particular view of the Bible’s authority, one which a careful study of the Bible may not in the end support. Because of Protestantism’s roots in a doctrine of sola scriptura, and the lack of either a magisterium (like the Catholics) or a talmudic tradition (like the Jews), many (not all) Protestants have placed what may be an unfair burden on the Bible as their sole and supreme authority.

Here are some of the problems biblical criticism causes for those who hold such a view.

For Scripture to function authoritatively as Protestants required, it had to be seen as revelation from God to humanity and therefore qualitatively different from any other sort of communication. Biblical criticism, however, pointed out that Scripture was not unique among other religious texts and ideas of the ancient world.
Protestants expected this God-given Bible to be generally clear and consistent in order to guide the church, but biblical criticism introduced ambiguity and diversity to biblical interpretation.
Protestants assumed that Scripture must be truthful and trustworthy, because it is God’s voice speaking, but biblical criticism pointed out errors and contradictions.
For Protestants, some conformity in interpretation with the grand tradition of the church was vital, but biblical criticism privileged no ecclesiastical tradition and instead critiqued tradition in light of intellectual and scientific discoveries.
Protestants valued the role of reason, though chastened by Scripture and the guidance of God’s spirit, but biblical criticism valued human reason unaided by supernatural or ecclesiastical interference.
The Bible could not function as the church’s final authority, as Protestantism required, if biblical criticism was correct. (pp. 131-132)

One of the main problems of the sola scriptura position, however, is the fact of what Christian Smith calls “pervasive interpretive pluralism.” Making the Bible the sole authority for the church has demonstrably not led to ecclesiastical unity formed around the clear teaching of scripture. Two groups may both hold to the authority of the Bible while coming to polar opposite conclusions with regard to how to interpret it. The Bible, as it has come to us, is just not that simple and easily understood. It is open to a plethora of interpretations, and the history of Protestant schism proves this convincingly.

Another irony of the sola scriptura view is that the Protestant instinct behind it is what inevitably led to higher criticism in the first place.

Surely it is no accident that the same soil from which the Reformation sprung, Germany, is also where biblical criticism was nurtured and fed one hundred years or so later. The same iconoclastic spirit that drove Martin Luther and others to reject Catholic authority was applied in later European scholarship (under the influence of Enlightenment philosophy) to all ecclesiastical authorities. And Luther’s translation of the Bible into German, thus putting the Bible directly into the people’s hands, was surely a two-edged sword. Once everyone has access to Scripture, its interpretation becomes a matter of personal inquiry, not monitored by the church, and interpretive chaos ensues. Hence, the Protestant Reformation had a hand in opening the door to the secularization of biblical studies. (pp. 132-133)

Daring to Pray the Our Father (2)

Daring to Pray the Our Father (2)

However, even if we have mastered the words of a prayer, it often remains someone else’s prayer. We may never quite get into it. It may never express the thoughts of our minds or the feelings of our hearts. We say it more out of conditioning than genuine insight. We may say “Bless us, O Lord, and these your gifts, which we are about to receive from your bounty, through Christ our Lord.” But we say it without gratitude and feel free to grumble about the poor quality of the food. The same rote recitation can happen with the Our Father.

• John Shea

• • •

In the Roman and Eastern liturgies, those who pray the Lord’s Prayer often preface it by acknowledging, “We dare to say…” (or, “We are bold to say…”). This is an expression of humility, recognizing that, apart from God’s grace to us in Christ, giving us new life and making us God’s children, we would not be able to pray like this. We are looking at themes from John Shea’s book, To Dare the Our Father: A Transformative Spiritual Practice, and learning how the Lord’s Prayer might become a transformative spiritual practice in our lives.

In the chapter, “Praying Someone Else’s Prayer,” Shea reminds us that we have all memorized prayers or inherited specific ways of praying. One of the dangers of such inherited praying is that praying can become saying our prayers, without the necessary attention and focus that a genuine conversation with God entails. “Prayer is not mere mouth material but the inner being of the human person in communion with God,” he says.

However, John Shea also explores the dangers that come with a commitment to extemporaneous prayers. Mystical and pietistic traditions that emphasize personal authenticity in prayer have recommended this way of praying as a antidote to thoughtless rote repetition. But this kind of “free-floating” prayer is subject to the ever-changing whims of our own inner state.

It is interesting to me that Shea links this with the verse in Matthew preceding the Lord’s Prayer that says, “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:7-8).

For most of my evangelical life, I have heard that verse used to criticize “vain repetitions” — meaning the mindless repeating of words, or what people often call “dead liturgy.” But Shea, observing the biblical context, identifies this kind of praying with a kind of inner panic that is afraid God won’t hear us if we don’t multiply the intensity, volume, and quantity of our prayers. This text is set in the context of being anxious and worrying about having the things I need, things, Jesus says, the pagans are preoccupied with. But we pray in confident trust, not needing to bombard heaven with passionate petitions.

Furthermore, in this same context, Jesus instructs us to “Seek first the kingdom.” How can we do that if we pray only out of our own inner thoughts and feelings? One advantage of praying liturgical prayers like the Lord’s Prayer and the psalms is that they force us to reorient our minds and hearts around the priorities scripture reveals. We conform ourselves to the patterns we see therein. We “think God’s thoughts after God.” We “pray in God’s own words” and thus are conformed more and more in our inner beings to God’s priorities.

So, John Shea encourages us to pray the Lord’s Prayer meditatively, to see it as a form to follow, but not as a straitjacket that is always simply to be repeated. This is the same way Martin Luther encouraged his friends to pray, going line by line through the Lord’s Prayer and contemplating the meaning and application of each petition.

So inherited prayers can become mindless recitations and personal prayers can reflect ever-shifting states of egocentric anxiety or bliss. The first misses the richness of the Our Father and the second bypasses the Lord’s Prayer for whatever is currently capturing attention. Is there a prayer practice between these two actual but basically lower-level prayer possibilities?

One way is to engage the Our Father as a meditation text. This assumes the prayer has a “higher” mind than the ones praying; and the practice of praying it is to transfer this more evolved mind into the minds of the ones praying. This demands deliberative-ness, a disciplined attention that offsets the tendencies to mindless recitals. The prayer is memorized, but the negative effects of memorization are countered by a steady, inner attention. This mindfulness allows us to pray the words in a way that is in tune with their level of awareness, to pray them on their own terms, so to speak.

As a meditation text, the Our Father also provides a harness that is by no means a straitjacket. It charts channels for thoughts and feelings, and it encourages exploration. But it does not allow the mind to jump from thought to thought and feeling to feeling, turning each into prayer material. In this way the prayer quiets our incessant needs and opens for us to the reality that the gospels think is truly first, a first so inclusive that within it all our needs are strangely and surprisingly met.