18 December, the sad concurrency of Avatar and the Copenhagen accord
December 23, 2009
18 December was the day Avatar was released in South Africa. 18 December was also the day of the Copenhagen accord.
Today I finally came around to reading the reports of Copenhagen. And I finally came around to watching Avatar. A sad concurrency of events.
Yes, Avatar is good. It might be one of those movies which will take me quite some time to work through. It presents a weird and magically wonderful world with effects which few, if anyone, have ever been able do. In combining this with the total over-romanticization of primal cultures, it reminds me of the 1999 Hallmark mini-series of Journey to the Center of the Earth (which I haven’t seen in 8 years or so, but I remember finding really brilliant at the time).
Avatar portrays this beautifully wonderful world of perfect pantheism (although they mess up this theological concept a bit with typical popular western theological ideas, but that will have to be left for another post), where everything is connected, and everything is in balance. It’s an Eden environment, where humanoids feel nature, care for nature, name the animals.
The movie is a blatant critique of colonialism, of the disconnect with nature brought about by our technocratic society, of the destruction of the earth by humans, of the disregard of everything sacred. And dare I say that the general reaction to this critique is positive. For many, the fantastic fantasy world of Pandora point to what we know, on a deep level, to be right, and true. Peace. Harmony. With all of creation. Living a simple lifestyle. Caring for the environment. Yes, all this and more, the beautiful world of Pandora is what we want. But we want to keep it fantasy.
Almost as if we need the fantasy of the possible life in harmony with nature, to keep our technocratic militaristic consumerist world alive. As if we know that as soon as the hope of peace and harmony disappear, we’ll die. So we keep the fantasy alive, so that we can continue our destruction. Because as soon as we walk out of Avatar, we continue our Christmas shopping, buying more than we need, and more than the earth can sustain. We go back to our lives in security villages and kept safe by large armies that keep the possibility of a society where the masses are living in absolute poverty alive. And not only do we shrug at a climate deal which screams against everything that Avatar has been fighting for, we kind of know that we are not willing to change our own lifestyles to be in harmony with our mother earth.
As the days after Copenhagen pass, the reaction of sadness, and sometimes madness, is heard over and over again. Yes, the thoughtful recognize the difficulties that the conversations faces, the thoughtful know that a first step in the right direction has been made. But the reality is that we are making decisions to safe our own asses. We have heard that gaia (to use Lovelock’s language) is going to make it difficult for humans, and we are willing to keep to the limits which was set so that our own comforts aren’t threatened. But harmony with the earth isn’t even on the table. Actually going above and beyond what the economy and human survival require isn’t even considered. A world where the human species is connected with everything around it is kept for the fantasy world of Pandora.
praise & worship & porn
September 21, 2009
I owe this idea to a very good friend who isn’t blogging at this stage. But as soon as she does, I’ll be sure to link to her thoughts on this.
I’ve been getting more and more disgusted with the Praise & Worship industry for years now. The dishonesty just got to me. The fact that I’m forced to sing about faith and God in a way that simply doesn’t match up with my own journey. The honesty of doubt and questions simply don’t exist in Praise & worship. In Praise & worship the faithful is faithful and life is good for the faithful. God is only good. Heaven is near. Real life looks somewhat different.
The first time I started thinking about porn was when one of my pastors made the comment that porn and nudity isn’t the same thing. Basic insight for anyone who’s been looking into this phenomenon, but new thought for me at that stage.
Porn seeks to simulate sex. Sex without the complexity of relationship. Porn seek to stimulate you sexually. Porn portrays an image the sexuality of another, it provides an image of how someone else is doing it. Porn portrays the image of supernatural sex, the image of bodies and sexuality that is unreachable by the mortal person in a healthy relationship. Porn makes the deepest most intimate aspects of human existance a public spectical. Porn lacks the depth that is reached when the complexity of relationship is added, when the whole person becomes part of the sexual experience, mistakes, moods, emotions and everything that comes with it.
Praise & worship seeks to simulate spiritual experience. Spirituality without the complexities inherent to a deep connection and journey with the spiritual being whom we call God. Praise & worship seek to stimulate you spiritually. Praise & worship portrays the image of the spirituality of another, it provides an image of how others are doing it. Praise & worship portrays the image of a supernatural faith, the idea of an undoubting and non-struggling faith unreachable by the mortal person in an honest relationship with a trancendent being. Praise & worship makes the deepest most intimate aspects of spirituality, whether communal or individual, a public spectical. Praise & worship lacks the depth that is reached when the complexity of faith is added, when my mind, my rational thought, my struggling ethics, my emotions, my honest questions, my doubts, fears and everything that comes with it is added.
Let me clarify. I know that their is exceptions. I know that others might also use the term Praise & worship and do something totally different from what I’m describing. Not all nudity is porn. Not all sex is porn. Not all music should be described with the porn metaphor. Not all Christian music, not even everything that use the label Praise & worship should be described with this metaphor. But when I look through this metaphor at a lot of what’s happening in the gospel and the Praise & worship scenes, then I’m deeply troubled.
Maybe Brian Mclaren says it better than I do in this videoclip:
where may we find God?
September 15, 2009
Different answers could be given to this. And different answers have been given to this. We seem to have been moving God around a lot over the past few hundred years. We had God up in heaven for a long time. But when Galileo checked he didn’t find God there, at least not in a literal throneroom up above the sun and moon. Rather, he found stars and the sun and planetary orbits. For some this was the end of God, but for most, this was a time for reimagining God.
What resulted was a God much bigger than the medievel church could have imagined. And the more we discovered about the vastness of space, the bigger God became… since we moved God to the outside of his creation. It was to be expected I guess, I mean, by this time humans knew something about creating, and the creator had to be apart from the creation. I learned songs about this God. We sang about 
how he held the whole world in his hand, about how he created even he dinosours. We would talk about how he has all of creation, the universe, in his hand.
I don’t know whether it was the fact that we were able to look out far enough, looked out further and further, but somehow I’m getting the feeling that the God that’s on the outside of creation carrying the earth of universe in his hand is not always working that well. So we moved God again. And this time, seems like we are moving him to the inside. Perhaps it’s our fascination with that which is small, quarks, and stuff happening on a subatomical level. Perhaps it’s the fact that we are forced to talk in metaphors again when exploring the sub-atomic world. Perhaps the mystics is teaching us something. I really don’t know, but we seem 
to be moving God into a place so close to creation it cannot be imagined.
Which one was right? Is this the last time that we will be moving God? Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about the location of God at all. The poet of Psalm 139 said that God was everywhere:
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.
Wherever the reality of his world led him, there he found God. Maybe that could guide us. Wherever reality might lead us, may we find God there…
Caster Semenya: a public theological response
September 11, 2009
I cannot say that I’ve followed the Caster Semenya with the neccesary commitment to be able to give an informed opinion. As a Christian theologian, and as a human being, I can say that I experienced some discomfort when I read some of the newspaper articles, and the graphical way they were discussing the sexuality of a young teenage girl.
On an Academic level I focus on Public Theology, which I like to define as the attempt to give a unique contribution from the tradition of Christian theology to matters of public concern. Public theology need to recognize it’s own limits. We always contribute in conversation with many other voices, but as a Public Theologian I believe that theology has a needed contribution to make.
When friend Reggie Nel mentioned on twitter this morning the idea of publicly saying something on the Caster Semenya conversation raging at this stage (it’s one of the top trending topics on twitter today, and obviously it’s a topic of discussion in South Africa generally), I started wondering what a responsible public theological contribution would look like.
I think caution is needed to not speak to fast on things which other partners in the conversation still need to talk about. I would caution against making medical claims until final reports, also I’d caution against speculation on the legal implications until the bodies responsible for this has spoken. I’d recommend the advice CNN published in the last two hours.
Theology has spent much time thinking about humanity and sexuality, about how we treat other people, about dignity, about fairness. On these issues theology has some unique contributions to make, and I think it needs to be made.
As a guiding principle I’d say that a public theological response should talk about public opinion and perceptions, and not address possible outcomes of tests.
- Theology, especially feminist theology, has helped the church to think about the way we talk about sexuality, about how we can do violence to people in the way we talk about their sexuality. Let’s contribute from this resource.
- I think much has been done by theology on questions of power, and that a public theological response should say something on the privacy of Caster, and the power that the public is taking over her by talking prematurely about possible outcomes of the tests, as well as by discussion her sexuality in an unworthy manner.
- Theology has a lot to say about the sacredness of a person (created in the image of God), and about the sacredness of sex and sexuality, and when the sacredness of sexuality is taken away by the disrespect of public opinion, by the media taking the right to talk about that which is sacred in such a way that it is desacrilized, then theology need to speak out.
A public theological response should help the decades old process of adressing questions of sexuality in athletics to happen in such a way that the privacy and humanity of those involved is respected. Although this is a topic for another post, I think we are using Genisis 1 (created in the image of God) in an irresponsible manner in this conversation so far. But as a Christian theologian I’d like to stress that Caster is a spiritual being, meaning that she is linked to the sacred, that which we call God. Using the words of Jesus, I’d say we should remember that the transcendent, the sacred, God, is Caster’s father. Her value as “child of God” need to be upheld by the church.
This, I believe, a public theological response can say at this stage.
two rock circles and a conversation
August 11, 2009
Sometime last year a couple of us started with this experiment of camping without a program. I told some of the story of last years camp here. Maybe the camp was best summarized by one of the people there when she talked about the two circles of rocks that created this camp.
On arriving a number of the guys collected some wood and a few rocks to create a fireplace. The fireplace was nothing more than 8 rocks in a circle, and chairs that got carried to this circle of rocks. At night this was a place of warmth, since we had a fire going. But at day it remained a place of comfort, a place of connection, even though there was no fire. The circle of rocks created a safe space for conversations.
The second was the labyrinth at the camp site. While at a similar camp last year a number of us built this labyrinth. The story of how a dumping site was made a holy place is told here. Although labyrinths has no meaning for some of us, for others this is a place of finding God and self. And the experiences shared made for lasting memories.
So, we camped without a program, but with two circles of rocks and a few other open spaces. It’s amazing what a circle of rocks can create…
WWJD and extreme divinization
July 31, 2009
Albert Nolan wrote brilliantly on how Jesus is not merely the object of our spirtuality, but was also a subject that stood in relation to God, and from whom we can learn about spirituality. The basic thesis of Jesus Today was the historical Jesus research has enough to offer that we can reconstruct the spirituallity of Jesus. Andries van Aarde built his book, Fatherless in Galilee, around the assumption that Jesus found a Father in God, since he didn’t have an earthly father, which also say something about Jesus’ spirituality.
But while this quest for finding Jesus, that prophet, the human guy, who walked around Galilee and Jerusalem roundabout 30 AD, goes on both in the academic world, and also with a growing group of Christians in pews, coffeeshops and slums, another group of Christians is opting for an extreme divinization of Jesus. As someone told me earlier today, in response to my saying that we can learn from Jesus how to live in relationship with God: “Jesus had an unfair advantage, he was divine”.
This is not a new idea, and probably we’ll find this underlying an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) which says that the Sermon on the Mount was never meant to be followed, but to show us that we are unable to live as we should, only Jesus could follow that – it should remind us how sinfull we are so that we’ll turn to God, to Jesus. Out of fear that we’ll turn Jesus into just another moral teacher, we divinized Jesus up to the point where both the life Jesus had with God, and the way he lived, is something totally undervalued, ignored, and rather exchanged for a Jesus which is purely the object of faith.
I remember Tony Jones saying back in 2006 that our generation is the WWJD generation. Thinking back on my primary school days I could see where he was coming from. Although on the other side of the world, and definitely less extreme, Adam at Pomomusings probably did an accurate description of the WWJD culture of the time (I never wore more than one, but basically everyone in our school had one). Critique can be delivered against the idea, but in our 12-year old minds we were opposing the idea that Jesus was merely divine, that the way of Jesus couldn’t be lived, and that he’s teaching was impossible to follow.
How we’ve come to this point I don’t know. How we got the church so polarized I don’t know either, maybe it’s always been like this. But somehow I can’t seem to think that the early church ever thought other than that we were supposed to follow the example of Jesus. They talked about the son of God, and about us being children of God. They said that our minds should work in the same way as that of Jesus Christ, we should hold the same view (Phil 2:5). Trying to live life in the way of Jesus is not denying the divinity of Christ (oh how I hate having to qualify things like this, but I’ll do it since I know that some tend imply this), it is simply trying to reconnect with the thinking of the early church. I guess this is part of my attempt at a “Christology from the side“…
so I’m naive
July 21, 2009
There is this old blessing, which supposedly goes back to saint Francis (but then again, so does a lot of sayings), which I often use when preaching. It’s my favourite. I only have the text in Afrikaans, but the last part goes something like this:
and may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a differance in this world, so that you will be able to do the things that others believe to be impossible
I remember reading this post at The Jesus Manifesto a few months ago that was a reminder that contrary to modern liberal thoughts, the way of Jesus is not the utmost thoughts in ethical and social thinking, as if common reason would bring us to the same place that the teachings of Jesus brought us. Reality is that sometimes I simply feel like I’m naive to actually think that the way of Jesus will change the world, sometimes the grand scemes of poitically correct capitalist welfare programs look much more effective. Seems like large companies investing millions into Africa has a better plan than me trying to get myself to a place where I’ll actually house the stranger, sell my stuff, and give to the poor.
But that’s the journey that the teaching of that prophet from Nazareth is getting me onto. I’m getting more and more aware that it’s probably naive. But then again, I must be naive to still believe that God’s kingdom is actually coming, and that I can be part of bringing that into existance…
my contemplations 