Religion

Freedom of What Exactly?

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The [current] debate over religious freedom has generally assumed that the primary contest is over defining freedom, not religion. We assume that we more or less know what we are talking about when we say ‘religion’ . . . [I want to] question the assumption that Christianity is a religion to begin with, and examine both the advantages and the problems with claiming religious freedom for the church.

On the face of it, the question I’m raising seems ridiculous. Of course Christianity is a religion. A deeper look at the recent government arguments about the free exercise of religion, however, makes clear that what does and what does not count as religion is at the heart of the matter.

William Cavanaugh, quoted on the site for Mars Hill Audio Journal, from his book Field Hospital: The Church’s Engagement with a Wounded World.

Non-fiction, Religion

Abuse in Complementary Marriages

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Are egalitarian marriages the biblical form for marriage, and are complementarians at risk for abuse? Professor Ruth Tucker has written a book arguing in favor of egalitarianism, saying, “There is little evidence that proponents of male headship are seriously grappling with [wives’ stories of abuse] and speaking out publicly, and most women in such marriages are not being correctly counseled on matters of domestic violence.”

“Egalitarianism,” Tucker states, “asserts that there should be no gender-based role distinctions or limitations placed on women in the home, church, or society. According to this view, women can serve as pastors in light of passages like Galatians 3:28.”

Tim Challies praises the personal story side of the book (“I believe it will help me grow in compassion and understanding”) but firmly disagrees with her interpretation of the Bible.

Her understanding of complementarianism is inextricably bound up with her own experience, yet I found her marriage unrecognizable as a truly complementarian union. Her ex-husband was an abuser, manipulator, and pervert, a man who interpreted the Bible in black and white ways so he could justify abusing his wife. She gives no reason for us to believe that he was even a true Christian.

Tucker responds with a post on Scot McKnight’s blog:

You take strong issue with one particular “emotional” statement I make in the book: “Imagine saying that African Americans are fully equal to whites before God, but they are not permitted to hold church office and must be subject to Caucasians. The claim would be ludicrous. And so it is regarding gender.” You go on to say: “But unless race and gender are the same category, this is an invalid means to advance her argument. It succeeds emotionally but fails biblically.” Well, gee, thanks, Tim, for saying it succeeds emotionally. And if you would say that women are fully equal, it would also succeed emotionally.

Publisher Zondervan links to all of this on their blog and draws several comments from their readers. “Let’s not make this about doctrine,” one reader says, “but rather about what it is. It is abuse of scripture – what I have seen, experienced and refer to as ‘twisted scripture.'”

Uncategorized

Hip, hip, hooray

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I woke up lying on my left side this morning, which made it a good day.

Let me explain. I had my left hip replaced, as I’ve mentioned, about a month ago. One of the things they tell you when you get your upgrade is that it’s good to lie in bed with the wound side down. Helps the healing somehow. This, of course, is easier said than done. Even while you’re on the prescription pain killers (which I quit weeks ago), you’re not so numb that lying on top of your stitches is something you’d ever choose to do for fun.

But this morning I found that I’d rolled over on that side in my sleep. Which means I’m healing up. I knew that already, of course. On Saturday it occurred to me that I was in less pain than I’d been the day before the operation. So it’s all upswing from here on.

And I’m almost done with my graduate school work. My capstone project paper is essentially written; just a little buffing and padding to do. Monday’s the deadline, and I’m likely to turn it in before then.

All this makes right now a pretty good time in my life.

It’s been a strange 2¼ years. I began school way back in late 2013, and then came the first hip replacement in January, and now I’m recovering from the matching procedure just before finishing the academic work for good. A long stretch of time, bracketed by prosthetics.

This is not what I expected my life to be like when I got to middle age. But it has been interesting.

They say prisoners feel a reluctance to leave the penitentiary after an extended stay. It doesn’t matter how grim and abusive the prison is – it has become familiar and comfortable, in some way. Outside the walls anything can happen – do I remember the rules? Have the rules changed?

I feel something vaguely similar about facing life after grad school. Not that I have to wonder what I’ll do with my time. I’ve got novels to write and a regular blogging schedule to pick up again. I’ll be able to have dinner with friends in the evenings, without rearranging my study schedule. But it’s a change, and in my heart I don’t much like change.

So will I go for my doctorate now?

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Uncategorized

Knight of Zootopia

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Knight of Cups: “Man must be willing to commit to love and open himself to new life. More specifically, he must cleave to a woman and be ready to have a child. . . . [Terrence Malick’s] Knight of Cups not only states this truth, it dramatizes our resistance to it. ”

Zootopia: “The beautiful bit is that despite the heavy themes, Zootopia never comes off as preachy or pandering. This is one of the strongest bits of Mouse House storytelling since the first Toy Story. Every scene works, the tension is effective and the payoff is more than satisfying. In the process, kids might not even notice the “good-for-you” messages throughout. But they are likely to experience the emotions that surround issues of racism, sexism and community.”

 

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Lewis Man,’ by Peter May

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Beyond the curve of the hill, Fin could see the dark roof of Crobost Church dominating both the skyline and the people over whose lives its shadow fell. Someone had hung out washing at the manse, and white sheets flapped furiously in the wind like demented semaphore flags urging praise and fear of God in equal measures.

Fin loathed the church and all it stood for. But there was comfort in its familiarity. This, after all, was home. And he felt his spirits lifted.

I gave the first volume of Peter May’s Lewis trilogy, The Blackhouse, a mixed review the other day (see below). I thought the writing superior, but the main character inadequate. Fin Macleod, the hero, seemed to me a little passive and emo (too much like me, frankly) to be a mystery detective. But the setting in the Outer Hebrides was fascinating and seductive, and I bought the second book, The Lewis Man. I’m glad I did. I consider this one considerably better, and the first wasn’t all that bad.

Fin Macleod is back in his childhood home at the northern tip of the island of Lewis. His career as an Edinburgh detective is over, as is his marriage. He’s at loose ends, still mourning the death of his young son, but now he has living connections on Lewis, including Marsaili, the woman he was in love with as a boy.

Though he lacks an official police position, Fin is asked by his friend George Gunn, local cop, to come and assist when a body is found buried in a peat bog. At first they think it’s one of those famous prehistoric bog burials, sacrificial victims perfectly preserved in the acidic peat, that show up in northern Europe from time to time. But this victim has an Elvis Presley tattoo on one arm, which makes the death a modern murder.

The investigation uncovers a tangle of old secrets involving the treatment of orphans and organized crime. And it soon becomes clear that Marsaili’s father, now sinking into dementia, is not the person he claims to be. DNA evidence shows him to be a close relative of the murder victim. Is the gentle old man a killer?

I liked Fin Macleod much better this time around – he acted more like a detective, even off the payroll. And the writing was once again exceptional – especially the descriptions of Hebrides scenery and weather. The ending was perhaps a tad contrived, but it was also satisfying and emotionally touching.

Recommended. Cautions, mostly, for language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Blackhouse,’ by Peter May

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The northern part of Lewis was flat and unbroken by hills or mountains, and the weather swept across it from the Atlantic to the Minch, always in a hurry. And so it was always changing. Light and dark in ever-shifting patterns, one set against the other – rain, sunshine, black sky, blue-sky. And rainbows. My childhood seemed filled by them. Usually doublers.

I was encouraged to check out Peter May’s “Lewis Trilogy” of Scottish police novels. I have now read The Blackhouse, the first of them. My reaction is positive, but mixed. The writing (witness the passage above) is superior. My main problem with the book was with the main character and sometime narrator (he narrates the out-of-sequence flashbacks which constitute about half of the book), Fin McLeod, Edinburgh police detective. One likes to like the hero of a book, but sometimes Fin is hard to like. However, there’s a reason for that, entirely in line with the purposes of the story.

Fin is a native of the island of Lewis, in the Hebrides, a bleak place where life is tough to sustain and economic times are hard. He got away and became a policeman in Edinburgh, and has been back only once since. But when a man is murdered in his old home town, in a way almost identical to a murder he’s investigating in Edinburgh, he’s assigned to go and see if there’s a connection.

Back at home, he encounters many old friends and enemies, most of them greatly changed physically but much the same at heart. The course of his investigation rouses memories, which constitute the many long flashbacks in the narrative. Gradually he finds that the similarities between the two murders are no accident, and that he will have to confront the deepest and blackest secrets of his past.

As I mentioned, I found it hard to root for Fin sometimes. He often seems cold and unsympathetic to others. But it’s not surprising that he keeps people at a distance, considering the amount of loss he suffered growing up, as we learn. He seems to have been touched by more than his share of tragedy, even in a place where life is a marginal proposition for most.

For the Christian reader, there are interesting implications. Fin describes himself as not a believer, but not an atheist either – he’s just mad at God. Christians – and there are many on Lewis – seem to be uniformly pinched and joyless. On the other hand, one of the most important positive characters in the book reads the Bible constantly and draws wisdom from it. So I think there’s more going on here than mere flippant modern secularism.

The Blackhouse is a beautiful book, but challenging. I’m not sure whether I recommend it or not, but I’ve bought the sequel. Cautions for sex and language and graphic descriptions of murdered bodies.

Fiction

“Nothing drives people to the church faster”

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The second season of Netflix’s “Daredevil” was released today. Aaron Earls of “The Wardrobe Door” talks about the themes of the series.

“Nothing drives people to the church faster than the thought of the Devil snapping at their heels. Maybe that was God’s plan all along,” Father Lantom, Matt Murdock’s priest, says, “why he created him, allowed him to fall from grace to become a symbol to be feared, warning us all to tread the path of the righteous.”

Netflix’s “Daredevil” confronts the problem of evil in the world and challenges viewers to consider how they can be part of the solution. And it does it through the life of a blind Catholic superhero. . . .

When wrestling with the problem of evil, “Daredevil” gives an answer that may not address all of the philosophical wonderings, but addresses a much more practical issue. We see evil in the world and we wonder what God is doing about it. As those created in His image, we have to once again look in the mirror. “Daredevil” reminds us that God is there in the midst of the suffering, able to serve, because we are there.

I’m looking forward to this season. One image from the first season that sticks with me is that while the hero takes up the metaphor of the devil, the villain sees himself as a savior, at least until the very end when he spins another metaphor for himself. Unlike Jessica Jones, Daredevil wants to team up with God in this fight.

Religion

When Guinness Heard Wesley

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Guinness lived at a time when no one understood micro-organisms and how disease is spread. They routinely drank from the same waters in which they dumped their garbage and their sewage. Unknowingly, they polluted the rivers and lakes around their cities. People died as a result, and this made nearly everyone in Guinness’ day avoid water entirely. Instead, they drank alcoholic beverages.

Their drinking led to public drunkenness and crime, so some businessmen began brewing beer, which had less alcohol and was far healthier than homemade whiskey.

So as Arthur Guinness sat in church on the day we are imagining, he was a successful brewer in Dublin, selling a drink throughout the city that made people healthier and helped them avoid the excesses of the hard liquor that had done so much damage for so many decades.

Stephen Mansfield goes on to describe what happened when Arthur Guinness heard the great John Wesley in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture