Bandits No More

September 27, 2008

Unity & Harmony

Filed under: Spirituality — rheyduck @ 4:02 pm

On page 30 of Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard says,

When successful, spiritual formation (or, really, reformation) unites the divided heart and life of the individual. That person can then bring remarkable harmony into the groups where he or she participates.

The first thing that comes to mind when I read this is Psalm 86:11, “Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; Give me an undivided heart, that I might fear your name.” God seeks to make our heart one – to bring us unity and harmony on the inside. I know too well that I don’t always have that oneness of heart. My heart tugs me in different directions at the same time. Sometimes the forces seem to strong and so opposite each other that I imagine horses tied to my extremities, pulling with all their might. I year for the day God unifies my heart.

But as I think further, I see that it is a good thing our human hearts are not often united. A single heart, a heart focused truly on one thing, can be a powerful force. But a force for what? A force working toward what end?

At the Tower of Babel, God saw unity and harmony – world peace, some would call it. And God didn’t think it was a good thing because it was unity around the wrong thing, harmony in pursuit of an evil end. Seeing that unity, that harmony, God stepped in and brought confusion. We can read the confusion as a sign of judgment. I choose to see it as a sign of God’s mercy. Rather than let the people plunge headlong into destruction, God mercifully defocused them.

I believe God exercises similar mercy with us today. We’ve seen enough evil in our world to have some idea how much greater that evil would have been if the perpetrators had been truly single minded in their competency and focus. While we sometimes decry the problems caused by the good being distracted by the bad, evil or unimportant, we might forget that some problems are mitigated – or even eliminated – because the evil is distracted by the good or indifferent.

Though unity of heart and harmony of group are amoral in themselves, God seeks more. We see in Psalm 86 that what God is seeking is not mere unity of heart, but a unity of heart submitted to him, a unity of heart formed and fed in the context of worship and dependance on God.

September 26, 2008

Urgent!

Filed under: Uncategorized — rheyduck @ 1:23 am

I’m noticing a lot of urgent things in my life lately.

It’s urgent that I have all the meetings and prepare all the reports for Charge Conference.

It’s urgent that we promise billions and billions to bail out the mistakes people have made in our economy.

It’s urgent that we send money, supplies and people to do Ike recovery.

Our major regional employer is in urgent times.

It’s urgent that we pay attention to the presidential election.

I’m sure there are other urgent items out there, but beyond more local issues, I just can’t remember them.

There are some who would say responding to all these urgent demands is Kingdom work. While responding to all these needs is good and can be an act of love, I am unwilling to reduce Kingdom work to hopping around like mad meeting needs.

So tell me – am I hard hearted – or maybe just tired?

September 12, 2008

How God Knows

Filed under: Epistemology,God,Greg Boyd — rheyduck @ 8:47 pm

I’m sympathetic with some of the Open Theism literature I’ve read, so I find Greg Boyd’s comments on a confused theory of knowledge inherited from the ancients interesting. His conclusion seems reasonable.

Once we abandon the ancient view of seeing and knowing as active processes, it becomes clear that God’s knowledge is perfect if, and only if , it perfectly conforms to the nature of what is known. So if possibilities are real, then God’s knowledge is perfect if, and only if, God knows them as possibilities. Contrary to what Roy and Erickson claim, open theists affirm that God always knows everything perfectly. It’s just that we have reason to believe a partly open future is part of what God perfectly knows.

But I don’t think I want to jump so quickly to the conclusion that I (we humans) can understand God’s ways of knowing and relating to the events of time so easily.

The ancient mistake, stemming from Plato, was that seeing, and knowing, based as it is on seeing, is an active process. Boyd explain,

Plato argued that we see not by light entering our eyes (as we now know is the case) but by light proceeding out of our eyes (Timaeus 45b). For Plato, seeing is an active, not a passive, process. Since knowledge was considered to be a kind of seeing, Plato also construed knowing as acting on something rather than being acted upon (Sophist 248-49). I’ve discovered that this mistaken view of seeing and knowing is picked up and defended by a host of Hellenistic philosophers. (As an aside, Jesus seems to have capitalized on this mistaken view of eyesight to illustrate a point [Mt 6:22; Lk 11:34]).

So let’s imagine Plato is wrong. Seeing – and knowing – is not a purely active process.  Is it then passive? Boyd doesn’t say it is, but in spite of a qualification – when the wrong way is described as “wholly active,” one retains the possibility of being “partially” active.

Difficulty comes in the fact that seeing, perceiving and knowing is not ever simply seeing, perceiving, and knowing – at least not when it matters to us. We see as, we perceive as, and we know as. Our knowledge – and perhaps God’s knowledge – becomes functional for us when we can make it intelligible, i.e., fit it into a context where that which we see/perceive/know can make sense. This ability to see or know as strikes me as an active process of engaging with the larger contexts of our experience. I have no trouble saying that God’s knowledge and perception of these contexts is just like God’s knowledge and perception of anything else: perfect.

Is God’s knowledge therefore causative, as some of Plato’s heirs thought? No, I think Boyd is right here. God knows the possible actions of free agents.  Of course, being a free agent, God is able to determine events by means of action.

September 1, 2008

Another, older, NCLB

Filed under: Charles Taylor,Education,Public Schools,Spirituality,Theology — rheyduck @ 5:32 pm

Charles Taylor (in A Secular Age) considers the depth of Reform in the middle ages to be much greater than the line from Wycliffe, to Huss, to Luther and beyond, connecting it to the rise of the modern preoccupation with “ordinary life” (a major feature of his last bog book, Sources of the Self):

The thrust of Reform was to make  Church in which everyone should show the same degree of personal commitment and devotion which had hitherto been the stance of a dedicated elite. This would be a Church in which all genuine members (excluding the damned) should strive integrally to fulfill the Gospel. To carry through on this Reform required that one define a way of life open to everyone which would amount to such an integral fulfillment; and this couldn’t help but bring about a definition of the demands of Christian faith closer into line with what is attainable in this world, with what can be realized in history. The distance between the ultimate City of God and the properly Christian-conforming earthly one has to be reduced.

In both Christianity and modern American education, we have high goals. We find ourselves in conflict: Our theory says that these goals are for everyone, yet reality keeps telling us that many – if not most – are not reaching the level our theory says they ought to reach. What are we to do?

The solution of the movement Taylor calls “Reform,” just as in current NCLB legislation is to push higher levels of discipline and accountability. Try harder, rationalize the process more.

But then we discover that even with higher levels of discipline, with greater rationality applied to our systems, people still aren’t measuring up to our theories. Since we’re held accountable for making reality come into line with our theories, we have to do something. So we take the logical next step: We lower the ideal. “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” “Let’s focus on minimum standards all the time for everyone (i.e., teach the TAKS), so that all students will be successful.”

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