So, given that I am naturally extremely opinionated, I wanted to comment on Perez Hilton's blog about the whole Miss USA debacle, but I didn't want to give him the attention he craved by posting on his website.
So what's the big deal? Perez asked Miss California her opinion on extending gay-rights. A pertinent question for today's time, but definately one that is so taboo that it would almost seem unfair to put the question to all of the contestants. Carrie Prejean began by arguing that there is some right to choose in this country, yet she believes according to her upbringing that marriage is defined between a man and a woman. Perez's outrage against her is that she would not properly represent the diversity of people within the US and that she was therefore a bad candidate for Miss USA. So he gave her a zero for her score. They both agreed that her answer lost her the crown. Not only did her opinion cost her the crown, but she has been continually harassed by Hilton on his website and in media interviews.
I personally would not qualify her opinion as "hate." Her views were not expressed in hostility, though she may not be fully aware of the legal consequences that the LGBT community face by not being able to marry. Regardless, I applaud her for sharing her views even when she knew it would be unpopular and would cost her something that she deeply desired. She also does not seem to be crying foul for her loss and is simply making her views known through media outlets.
Ironically, this news (for me at least) came on the same day that I found out that the Westboro Baptist Church (a hate group listed by a certain important organizations that I can't remember the name of) picketed in front of the Duke Medical Center. I was incredibly happy to hear that Duke Chapel opened its sacred doors to host a breakfast for the LGBT community to show love to them and reaffirm that the views of WBC is not the Gospel.
Prejean's comments paled in comparision to the horrific language and views of the WBC. Simultaneously, Perez's response also paled in comparison to the means of correction that Duke showed. He attacked Prejean for alienating people (yet he suffers from minor myopia that her opinion is not rare and is shared by many--included their home state of California through a voting referendum). Perhaps she could have left out the comment that she saw her country agreeing with her opinion, but she did assert that she was aware that others have the right to choose.
Both Prejean, Perez and myself are equally broken people. I was shocked at Prejean's provocative clothing and photos, her self-identity tied into beauty pageants and her links with Michael Phelps (he's not worth her time given his own maturity issues). But Perez comes off as intolerant to those who do not hold his opinion, his website is overly obsessed with gossip, sex and dehumanization (i mean this in the sense of degrading what was meant to be godly about humans). I know that I too am broken, but I had to vent my frustration and lament. I'm not ashamed that I care about something so trivial because deep within me it reveals the burden that I carry for our collective brokenness as humans.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
History and Christianity
UNC Asheville trained me well in the discipline of history. I can pull apart texts. I can find bias. I can compare methods and ideas. I can see a deep relationship between historical events and how they affect our everyday life and our stereotypes. The discipline is absolutely necessary for understanding society.
So what happens when society, history and Christianity intersect? I feel that I can assure one thing with confidence that always seems to apply to human beings and the Gospel: it gets messy. Our Protestant buddy Martin Luther claimed that the epistle of James was a letter of straw. How does that affect hundreds of years of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to toss James. What happens when you discover that a good chunk of Christian doctrine is mixed into the context of Greek philosophy and philosophies of other eras? How do we bring correction when modern-day people twist Scripture for their own agendas? What happens when so much more of the Scriptures become clearer once you learn to read the Old and New Testament well by studying languages, history, literature etc. because they were written thousands of years ago?
So often the answers to these questions can become clearer when using the tools of the historian. But at what point do those methods go too far? At what point are the tools no longer applicable to studying something as personal as Christianity?
I have some thoughts on this, but I think it is time to live in the tension of this often unrecognized tension.
So what happens when society, history and Christianity intersect? I feel that I can assure one thing with confidence that always seems to apply to human beings and the Gospel: it gets messy. Our Protestant buddy Martin Luther claimed that the epistle of James was a letter of straw. How does that affect hundreds of years of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to toss James. What happens when you discover that a good chunk of Christian doctrine is mixed into the context of Greek philosophy and philosophies of other eras? How do we bring correction when modern-day people twist Scripture for their own agendas? What happens when so much more of the Scriptures become clearer once you learn to read the Old and New Testament well by studying languages, history, literature etc. because they were written thousands of years ago?
So often the answers to these questions can become clearer when using the tools of the historian. But at what point do those methods go too far? At what point are the tools no longer applicable to studying something as personal as Christianity?
I have some thoughts on this, but I think it is time to live in the tension of this often unrecognized tension.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
My Spring Semester Academic Learning Curve
So, back by popular demand...is a blogpost. I gotta get back to doing the things I love--and this is one of them. Despite the fact that this semester has been all over the place when it comes to my health and ability to get to class, I've found that I've actually learned a lot! This list is not hierarchical, but simply stream of consciousness:
1) Read the Gospels in Synoptic Parallels. It is pretty fascinating when you read the Gospels through the lens of what the author chose to include in their telling of God's amazing story! If you are super-analytical like me, you will LOVe dissecting all of the facets of what each Gospel includes and what it doesn't.
2) Read the Old Testament. Read the New Testament. Read them through the eyes of a Jew. Read them through the eyes of a Gentile. Read them through the knowledge of Christ as Messiah. If you wanna go deep, don't just rely on yourself to come up with some miraculous interpretation, but use the concordance notes in your Bible. Chances are that if you read the echoes deeply, you'll have an interpretation that is much more orthodox and mindblowing! Think of the example of the significance of the tearing of the curtain when Jesus died. You only get the deep significance of that when you realize what the curtain was there for in traditional Jewish life. There are many more crazy occurances like this if you read deeply and interpret intertexually.
3) It is ok for those of us who follow Jesus as Lord to study the Historical Jesus. We don't have to leave that to Bart Ehrman. In the words of the guy who redeemed the study for Christ followers said post-WWII that if we aren't focusing on who Jesus was and who He said that He was, then we create our own Jesus (and he was refering to folks like Hitler). Let's not make our own Jesus--lets find and be found by the REAL one.
4) The Prophets ROCK!!!! They are bedrock foundations for the New Testament (and for understanding the life of Israel). If the Church truly wants to be the Church, we gotta read these scary passages and IN THEIR CORRECT CONTEXTS!!! Read around Jeremiah 29:11 and you might pee in your pants!
5) This is an overall lesson from reading the OT with Ellen Davis: a blessing from the Bible is usually blessing and curse wrapped together. Be carefuly when opening these lovely presents!!!
6) The Protestant Reformation can make Protestant Christians nasty people. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and all of the other Reformers were pretty amazing (and you should read what they actually wrote instead of interpretting them through the denominations and doctrines that are named after them). However, be mindful that as someone said "the Protestant Reformation was an argument or a reaction." They weren't necessarily trying to turn over the whole he church. The interpretations of the Reformation have dramatically influenced how we treat others, how we think about God, etc. Remember this before you start to think that the Church started with Luther. Read Christians who existed before and outside of the Protestant Reformation. It might help critique our myopia.
7) Women were actually part of the Protestant Reformation and some of them were quite amazing! I think Katherine Von Bora is my favorite!
8) The Wisdom Literature is kind of layered: There is Proverbial Wisdom that upholds the status quo (though I'm told it is still not all bad...I'm still working on that one). Then there is Ecclessiastes/Qohelet who is your typical Ashevillian who tells you what is important (eat, drink be merry and throw in some spirituality b/c all else is vanity). Then there is Job who had crappy friends who tried to tell him proverbial, prosperity wisdom when God was trying to teach him about life with God. It is ok if your life follows this path. According to my super fab teachers: Beware! Job is always around the corner. Once God gets a hold on you, you may not get to go back to the simplicity of proverb world.
9) If you have never hung out with 600 page commentaries, you should!
10) Take Greek and Hebrew. I haven't taken them yet, but you realize how important they are when the scholars who are looking at the text are trying to figure out the significant meaning of prepositions: "Faith IN Christ" and "Faith OF Christ" are two highly differnet things. This would scare the crap out of Rev. Birdsong.
11) According to Ellen Davis, if you read something in the Bible that does not fit the commandments Jesus spoke about (love of God and love of neighbor) then you may need to move from a literal to a metaphorical interpretation.
12) This is my own interpretation of sorts but, when dealing with God, you must read with a lens toward justice and mercy, death and resurrection. As my dear friend Abraham Heschel suggests, read books like Amos and Hosea together as duel understandings of who God is. Read Jonah and Nahum together too.
1) Read the Gospels in Synoptic Parallels. It is pretty fascinating when you read the Gospels through the lens of what the author chose to include in their telling of God's amazing story! If you are super-analytical like me, you will LOVe dissecting all of the facets of what each Gospel includes and what it doesn't.
2) Read the Old Testament. Read the New Testament. Read them through the eyes of a Jew. Read them through the eyes of a Gentile. Read them through the knowledge of Christ as Messiah. If you wanna go deep, don't just rely on yourself to come up with some miraculous interpretation, but use the concordance notes in your Bible. Chances are that if you read the echoes deeply, you'll have an interpretation that is much more orthodox and mindblowing! Think of the example of the significance of the tearing of the curtain when Jesus died. You only get the deep significance of that when you realize what the curtain was there for in traditional Jewish life. There are many more crazy occurances like this if you read deeply and interpret intertexually.
3) It is ok for those of us who follow Jesus as Lord to study the Historical Jesus. We don't have to leave that to Bart Ehrman. In the words of the guy who redeemed the study for Christ followers said post-WWII that if we aren't focusing on who Jesus was and who He said that He was, then we create our own Jesus (and he was refering to folks like Hitler). Let's not make our own Jesus--lets find and be found by the REAL one.
4) The Prophets ROCK!!!! They are bedrock foundations for the New Testament (and for understanding the life of Israel). If the Church truly wants to be the Church, we gotta read these scary passages and IN THEIR CORRECT CONTEXTS!!! Read around Jeremiah 29:11 and you might pee in your pants!
5) This is an overall lesson from reading the OT with Ellen Davis: a blessing from the Bible is usually blessing and curse wrapped together. Be carefuly when opening these lovely presents!!!
6) The Protestant Reformation can make Protestant Christians nasty people. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and all of the other Reformers were pretty amazing (and you should read what they actually wrote instead of interpretting them through the denominations and doctrines that are named after them). However, be mindful that as someone said "the Protestant Reformation was an argument or a reaction." They weren't necessarily trying to turn over the whole he church. The interpretations of the Reformation have dramatically influenced how we treat others, how we think about God, etc. Remember this before you start to think that the Church started with Luther. Read Christians who existed before and outside of the Protestant Reformation. It might help critique our myopia.
7) Women were actually part of the Protestant Reformation and some of them were quite amazing! I think Katherine Von Bora is my favorite!
8) The Wisdom Literature is kind of layered: There is Proverbial Wisdom that upholds the status quo (though I'm told it is still not all bad...I'm still working on that one). Then there is Ecclessiastes/Qohelet who is your typical Ashevillian who tells you what is important (eat, drink be merry and throw in some spirituality b/c all else is vanity). Then there is Job who had crappy friends who tried to tell him proverbial, prosperity wisdom when God was trying to teach him about life with God. It is ok if your life follows this path. According to my super fab teachers: Beware! Job is always around the corner. Once God gets a hold on you, you may not get to go back to the simplicity of proverb world.
9) If you have never hung out with 600 page commentaries, you should!
10) Take Greek and Hebrew. I haven't taken them yet, but you realize how important they are when the scholars who are looking at the text are trying to figure out the significant meaning of prepositions: "Faith IN Christ" and "Faith OF Christ" are two highly differnet things. This would scare the crap out of Rev. Birdsong.
11) According to Ellen Davis, if you read something in the Bible that does not fit the commandments Jesus spoke about (love of God and love of neighbor) then you may need to move from a literal to a metaphorical interpretation.
12) This is my own interpretation of sorts but, when dealing with God, you must read with a lens toward justice and mercy, death and resurrection. As my dear friend Abraham Heschel suggests, read books like Amos and Hosea together as duel understandings of who God is. Read Jonah and Nahum together too.
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