Disqus - Latest Comments for BDRhodes

Re: A More Gracious Radicalism

BDRhodes — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:56:51 -0000

"the details of living radically" -- I'm with you on that one. I'd love to see practitioners who have some experience in all this begin talking more about lessons learned.

Re: Gospel Fun with Wordle!

BDRhodes — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:37:55 -0000

That was awesome. Wish I'd seen this earlier! :)

Re: A More Gracious Radicalism

BDRhodes — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:04:32 -0000

I think that's spot on -- that we too easily give faaaar too much credit to the empire. It's so easy for us to find our identity in what we're not (consumer, imperial, just-war, suburban, whatever), that we just wind up perpetuating the mythic might of the principalities n powers.

It's great to be against things, but how much better to be against them because we were FIRST FOR something. That helps me remain unimpressed with the lies and myths which propagate the defeated powers. 'Tis better to create than to crassly condemn.

Re: Who are the ‘Least of These’?

BDRhodes — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:01:16 -0000

Ahhh, wonderful.

Perriman, though I have carefully read two of his books ('Coming of...' and 'Re:Mission'), read his blog a lot, and prodded his theology face-to-face, continues to be a delightfully challenging conversation partner in understanding Jesus. Often, it feels like Andrew has a very small (though he would say robustly Jewish and biblical) Jesus -- something which would naturally rub many of us "way of Jesus" Anabaptist-minded folk quite sourly.

Bluntly: to me, it often feels like Andrew marginalizes Jesus and hyper-localizes Jesus' historical teachings. How have you, Daniel, made the jump from Perriman to the quasi-Anabaptist Jesus-centeredness of this web 'zine? I still ask this about myself. :)

Perhaps for me, the answer is reverting to the Jesus-centeredness of Bishop Tom, whom you also cite; and whom furthermore is able to read both TOWARD neo-preterist conclusions within the horizons of Jesus' historical locale, ... and yet also FOR enduring applications of Jesus' teachings beyond those horizons.

Re: Who are the ‘Least of These’?

BDRhodes — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:18:02 -0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been waiting, whether I knew it or not, for such a thoughtful explanation of this passage. You snap it into the bigger short-term eschatological crisis faced by the early Palestinian church brilliantly and beautifully.

I wonder, though, if it is hermeneutically possible to use this passage as a way to also understand God's intentions for life within the church, or for understanding God's wider concern and impossibly obscure preference for hanging out with (nay, solidly identifying with!) the 'least of these.' I wonder if, as the Orthodox teach us about ikons, we can look through this passage into that wider reality. I don't mean to let that be a gateway to exegetical sloppiness, but I do think we can see a big part of the heart of God in this than our neo-preterism might otherwise foster.

Merry Christmas to you, too. :)

Re: Bush and the Case of the Flying Footwear

BDRhodes — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:37:29 -0000

Or try persistently to get an American soldier, mercenary, or politician to speak at the funeral of their dead child, if they're Iraqi. Or invite them over for dinner.

Lordy, I dunno if I could manage it. I guess that's where the whole "Holy Spirit" and "new creation" thing come in. :)

Re: Bush and the Case of the Flying Footwear

BDRhodes — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:51:01 -0000

Yes, but as Desmond Tutu says,

"There, but for the grace of God, goes I."

Re: Early Christian Voices on War and Peace

BDRhodes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:51:02 -0000

Wow, thanks for that! I've been itchin' to have such a resource. :)

Re: Is Christian Scholarship accountable to the Poor?

BDRhodes — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:47:56 -0000

Dan, that was an incredible article. As a seminary grad, I too have felt the conviction of writing papers on cruciformity, only to find myself so infrequently embodying it. As Scot McKnight says, whatever theology we have, it must be one which 'works,' which doesn't just click the pieces of the puzzle together well enough, but indeed click them together in a way that brings animation and movement to the whole.

Your sacramentalizing of the poor is an interesting suggestion. However, I don't know that the biblical story merits equating the poor categorically with Christ, or with his body the church. The Matthew 25 passage does point to the sacramental reality of caring for the Least of These, but it does so within the body of Christ. There may be some sort of sacramental reality, too, in caring for the non-confessing poor. But I suggest that it's a different kind of sacramental presence, perhaps one of those "thin places" wherein we sense the presence of New Creation, of heaven-and-earth coming near. And, just as we'd expect, things like your "poor-as-light-and-truth" connection do indeed happen there. But I find that kind of "thin places" sacramentalism in places of natural beauty or momentous history, and in study and fellowship and prayer. We can add Justice and caring for the "least of these" to this list without insisting all at once that therefore they are Jesus' body, too.

Again, Jesus is talking about the poor WITHIN the church; just as King David's sin-righteousness struggle is reflected in national life (a sort of "Israel in Microcosm" within Israel), so also King Jesus is equated (the 'microcosm' schtick fits here, too) with us the church. So caring for one another, seeking unity and equality and justice within the life of the body -- that is a more properly "Jesus-embodied" sense of the sacramentalism we find in the Poor.

Thanks again for this article. :)

Re: 2012

BDRhodes — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:08:40 -0000

Your "get serious about community" hits the bullseye. People who have made it through hard times, through collapses of societies like Russia, all say that belonging to a firm local network of relationships is foundational survival in exceedingly gloomy times. To say nothing of somehow even emotionally and spiritually THRIVING in said times.

Many of us have, not least myself, have probably been occasionally accused of being kinda Chicken Little about this stuff (www.oiltruth.com) in the past, and indeed now it's been sobering to see it all coming so fast and so soon and so hard. Thank you for starting this conversation here.

What of the heaving population dislocations that this is all going to cause? Of the millions of unemployed moving out of Michigan, of the debt-addled folks in Cali heading to greener pastures elsewhere, of a water-hungry Arizona seeing its population relocate to stabler states. What this will do to the church's ability to accomodate major immigrations to their towns and neighborhoods should prove interesting. For all the voices calling for the discipline of Hospitality, this may soon be your moment. :)

I was away ranching and farming in New Zealand for September and October, when so much of this was happening; when I got back to the 'States, a coworker with whom I have talked about this Peak-Oil-OMG catastrof*ck eco-apocalypticism stuff with said, "Brandon, why did you come back?"

I didn't have to pause to find my answer. "There are people here that I love." That, in the face of all this hardship, is what drives me to stay the storm, to weather the long emergency that it feels like this fast-dissolving empire is dive-bombing into.

Re: The Taming of God (Obama’s Religion, pt 2)

BDRhodes — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:50:13 -0000

Come on now, be fair. The next thing Mr. Obama says in that speech is: "We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason."

While I have many of my own frustrations with Mr. Obama's rhetoric, I don't think we get to et this be one of them. His point is, we've got to be patient with one another in a pluralistic society, and that is true whether it's democratic or not. Pluralism -- any degree of any difference in a given setting, really -- compels patience and an imagination to understand where another person is coming from. We don't have to agree with that, we don't even have to respect it. But we've got to at least look at Abraham and, not hearing the voice wonder, "I wonder what experiences are leading him to that." And often (usually?) we'll still wind up intervening in the situation. That's what happens in society; if we see some dangerous thing happening, we do something about it.

Now, Mr. Obama's suggestion that DH&S should resolve it is fair game for debate. But this example seems, to first blush for me anyway, a splendid way of demonstrating this need for patience and listening in public discourse in ANY pluralistic society, democratic or not.

Indeed, in many ways pluralism seems like a good thing, a way for us to learn how to engage the genuinely-Other sincerely and in love. If God is a diversity-in-unity, or a plurality-in-unity, or something like that which these phrases are just clumsy signposts toward, then that means "How-We-Deal-With-Otherness" is going to be a huge part of our task as his Image-bearers. We, too, are to be "Those-Who-Deal-with-Otherness" because the Trinity is like that too. Sure the analogy presses against some apparent barriers in that in a pluralistic society we're dealing with entire ideological and worldview-level differences, whereas the Trinity is, well,... trace it out, you see what I mean. (nothing challenges language like the Trinity).

So, while it's immensely doubtful that Obama had this "otherness" trinitarian thing behind his quip, I do think the general point holds: we Christians have GOT to learn how to engage one another in public discourse better and more thoughtfully. Just before your quotes he was talking about people who are anti-abortion but vote pro-abortion-rights, and immediately afterwards gives the example of those who oppose gay marriage, but also oppose amending the Constitution to that end. The humorous glance off of the Abe-Isaac story was just one way of explaining what's going on in these situations.

Re: Pontifex Maximus (Obama’s Religion, pt 1)

BDRhodes — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:31:16 -0000

D'oh! :) Teach me to blog surf during my lunch break.

Well, I 'spose my ambling questions applies to you, too.

Re: Pontifex Maximus (Obama’s Religion, pt 1)

BDRhodes — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:58:02 -0000

Mark, I agree that democracy has become a religion in and of itself, an American Idol with few competitors. And at that level, I increasingly respect your "no-vote" practice. If democracy weren't so darn idolized in America, or if you were in a less democracy-worshipping country, would you then vote?

This definitely worthy of an entire post, but could you unpack what a "no-vote" theology of church engagement of the state might look like. I mean, is petition-signing okay? School-boards? Would you vote in school board meeting? Transportation planning meetings? City hall meetings? Meeting with legislators, mayors, city councilors, and bureaucrats to advocate on issues of justice? There are far more ways to be political than these sorts of things, for the church of God, and indeed these are the acts that would be on the periphery rather than the center of church political life, but still it's my own conviction that many of these activities are good and cool ways to seek the shalom of our cities (Jer 29) and speak out for those who can't speak for themselves (Pr 31:8).

I acknowledge that this is, like all ethics, far more nuanced than just a quick list of good and bad actions, so what's the steering vision behind whatever degree of engagement you endorse/practice?

Re: Pontifex Maximus (Obama’s Religion, pt 1)

BDRhodes — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:45:25 -0000

Well said, Thom. I wonder if that's why I sense such restlessness in my own church community about Bible Studies... "not another one, sheesh". I need to learn how to talk about theology in a way that becomes embodied, that incarnates. And maybe we should all start adding new pages to our theology books, sections like "agri-ology" between anthropology and ecclesiology, and "petrol-ology" after (or within) hamartiology.

You've got the wheels a'spinning in my head now. :)

Re: The Body, The Blood, The Border

BDRhodes — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:42:01 -0000

Your line -- "It is interesting how people will go to Mexico for a "missions trip" but don't see the opportunity to "reach" the Mexican community here in the u.s." -- pierces into a very scary, very dark, very discomforting part of the American evangelical heart. What is our true motivation for house-building trips to Mexico? A way to cleanse our conscience? Are we just baptizing a group vacation in the name of the Lord? I've wanted to not believe my own cynicism about this. But the simple fact that churches can send their teenagers for a week to Mexico, but not even SEE the plight of the Latinos suffering from bigotry, gov't persecution, illegally low wages, abusive labor demands, and the temptations of gang culture?

May God open the eyes of the American church to see these things, and may he change our hearts as we see such pains, and may he cause us to act in humble love to "speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves." (Proverbs 31:8)

Re: Politics, religion and sex

BDRhodes — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:30:41 -0000

Wow, I'm gonna use that comparison. Great way to reframe it!

Re: Politics, religion and sex

BDRhodes — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:50:25 -0000

Talk about a messy tangle of issues. Thank you for helping me start making better sense of it.

I've not been married, I come from an intact marriage, and I've never been too proximate to a divorce, so my thoughts here are limited to what I've seen about all this from a distance. Yet I've know of many marriages that have failed because they weren't equipped by the church to make it through interpersonal conflicts well, who seem to have failed because they were deceived by that old lie that healthy church and family life should be marked by the absence of conflict rather than the ability to emerge through it well together.

So here's my working theory about divorce within the church is this. While many failed marriages do arise out of hasty nuptials between those whose favorite verse is "it's better to marry than to burn," I also think it's a crisis of failed discipleship in the Way of Reconciliation and Patient Other-mindedness. Now, that's a lot to ask of or otherwise expect of randy 18-year-olds (let alone anyone at any age!). I don't know how the blazes I'd teach those basic "how to love well" skills to my kids, whenever that day comes. Clues to a solution may lie in raising them in multi-generational houses/communities, youth groups that teach reconciliation and "how to love well" skills (the fruit of the Spirit) as at least as foundational as the cheap clarions to youngsters reading their Bible and praying every day to grow grow grow, and going from churches having discipleship classes to having discipleship communities. In the intentional community I lived in during college, my pastor often said "these years will make all of us better husbands and wives when that day comes. Your future spouses will be thankful for this time." She couldn't have been more right.

I wonder if in addition to more frank conversations about sexuality, it should be fastened to a broader conversation about churches raising youth that won't just be good churchgoers, but Christlike spouses. That can be a defining mark of the health of any discipling community/program.

Re: Electing for Change

BDRhodes — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:47:26 -0000

That's more or less where I have come out on the voting controversy. Local and state is just fine, but I oughta do plenty in the meantime to ensure that that isn't stifling my or another's political imagination.

Re: Electing for Change

BDRhodes — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:43:26 -0000

Interestingly, in the US constitution, the person who gets the most Electoral College votes is prez -- but the EC runner-up is VP, as I recall... an old way of chastening the big parties and depoliticizing the executive branch.

Amusingly, I have been wrestling with the no-vote issue for a while, but due to extended domestic and international travel for the past nine weeks, I won't be able to vote this time anyway as I didn't register at my current address in time! I guess God decided that one for me...

Re: Radical Subordination: Wives Submit to Your Husbands!

BDRhodes — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:26:42 -0000

Sarah, this is a stellar article. I've been waiting for someone to so directly tackle this topic, and in doing so you brought into focus many things that I have been struggling to find words for for years. Thank you for that.

The comment about language is piercing to me, quite directly. The impulse to NEED to talk has been one that Jesus has been explicitly working on in me for the past thirty months at least. In a church membership class at Imago Dei, my impulse was to answer all the questions, even if someone already asked them. Sometimes the motive was to prove my knowledge, other times to stand up for a better interpretation. The line between those motives was usually blurry.

So, to be perfectly charismatic about it, the Holy Spirit shut me up. I felt the mental impulses to chat, but somehow I felt gently restrained from raising my hand or my voice to answer. It was fascinating to see male friends in the class whom I know well continue to chirp in EVERY TIME.

The experience of the Spirit chastening my tongue for that multi-week class ended with the class, but the lesson and the habit has increased since then.

And here's what I've found it boils down to: CONTROL. For me, I think it was some self-important need to control, steer, or otherwise guide a conversation on my terms. And in church circles, the impulse was usually out of a zeal for standing up for peace, justice, what-have-you. Not a bad reason to chime in. But why should I need to defend Jesus so zealously, every time? It's as if I had a Francis Schaeffer-like impulse to be contentious.

So, I'm learning to listen to others better, instead of thinking up my own contribution or response. And it's almost morbidly fun to watch that (masculine) impulse to chirp-chirp-chirp be squashed by this new discipline of "non-grasping" of situations. I'm learning to be increasingly other-minded in conversations, to stop thinking of my own best opinion and just listen and respond well. It's another bit of learning to love well.

(Yes I'm aware of the irony of writing that much about my own learning to shut up, heheh)

Lastly, I love your line in one of your responses --"My point is that we aren't abolishing the system, we are making the system inoperable." I'm going to be processing that for quite a while, as I think it explains the cross, and the cross-bearing community, in a way that no Che or Guitterez ever could.

Re: On Heaven and Scarcity

BDRhodes — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:45:28 -0000

Hey, good thoughts dude.

You said: "without scarcity, there is no reason to show love".

What about God, who is love? Is there scarcity there? Specifically, what about the Triune God, who is a perfect community of three persons swirling about in mutual love, service, and delight? Surely there is love in God in this state, without scarcity.

To let that question stray further: in asking this, I might be trying to build up some sort of Greek notion of love, one that assumes a "perfect" ideal in some sort of ethereal and contextless void, where God does this love-expressing in a kind of "holy vaccuum". I guess a second question, that might for a reply to my "scarcity in the Trinity" question is, to what extent can we even talk of love or scarcity in God? More basically: how, if at all, can we talk about God's interior life apart from how it's been revealed through God's engaging history?

Re: Review: ‘Jesus Wants to Save Christians’

BDRhodes — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:59:05 -0000

Bizarre but fascinating. Can't wait to hear stories of their theological pranksterism as it all progresses. :)

Re: Review: ‘Jesus Wants to Save Christians’

BDRhodes — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:57:35 -0000

Hi Paul, I'm aching to know, who wrote the book intros in TBoTB... they're great! Reading James in the 'wisdom' genre, combined with the formatting to support that assertion, has been such a surprisingly obvious option for understanding an otherwise scattered epistle. And the intro to Revelation is just spiffin'. This edit of the TNIV is quite different from the old NIV Study Bible's mellow dispensationalism. Hallelujah.

"You've come a long way, baby." as they say. :)

Re: Imagination and the Way of Christ

BDRhodes — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:39:29 -0000

Greetings from NZ, Mark, and thanks for this encouraging + provocative article.

Too often in my own heart, my conversion to radical Christianity came through the process of winning arguments against Status-Quo Christianity. I came to it by way of "how to see the Bible and God aright" instead of also then following that trajectory to "how to see God's world as God and the Bible do". If I'm reading you correctly, that's the urgent need for the American/Global-North/Global-West church.

Telling stories, yes, help us see it well. It's no surprise, is it, that Christianity-hued stories like Narnia and The Lord of the Rings are making such a comeback lately. They help us to see our own stories, and the stories of the wider world, as more visibly invested with their full theological meaning.

And interestingly, Jewish apocalyptic was the genre not just of imperial critique and perhaps future-telling, but also of investing the readers' world with its theological meaning. Perhaps we need our own apocalyptic tales and parables. (though this may be readily filed under "obscure poetry" in your apt words)

I'll be thinking this through as I dig some garden beds today. Thanks again. :)

Re: The Style of Subversion Part 3: Embodying God’s Love in the Empire

BDRhodes — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:21:51 -0000

Broadly speaking, I agree with Mark -- letter-writing, phone calls, and whatnot seem to be great ways for Christians to engage the powers, as long as we are unashamed of who we believe is truly Sovereign and Lord. It does feel silly, no doubt. But we've -- I'VE -- got to start getting my footing more secure in using "Jesus-is-King" language in public discourse.

And maybe that's where Anabaptist and Jesus-Radical Christians cut against the grain of most other progressive-ward Christian groups (Sojourners, etc.). Usually those groups prooftext about "Blessed are the poor", taking care of "the least of these", and so on. Doing that is, to some extent, is just dandy. But to claim Jesus as KING, as MORE than a spiritual teacher who also happened to have suggestions for how the Empire can suck less -- why, that's mighty dangerous! And damn awkward. Quoting the Beatitudes as "suggestions to the Empire" (hat-tip to Claiborne) makes the Bible into a tips-sheet and Jesus into the "Ask Jeeves" of such political proverbs and tips. Keeping that language within a bigger story in our advocacy-language of Jesus as being the sovereign we pledge our allegiance to makes those prooftexts far, far sharper. And, to the Powers, scarier.

Jesus' words do impinge on the empires, and do say "this is how I do things... take a hint.". But putting them within language of the Kingdom of God, and Jesus as the World's True Lord/King/Prime-Minister/President/what-have-you -- ahh, there's the rub! Anabaptists, N.T. Wright, Ellul, and others seem to get that claiming Jesus as Lord does radically inform our political engagement. It compels us to, as Mark says, remind the powers that they're beat and that Jesus, not them, is in charge.