“Christ, in His divine innocence, said to the Woman of Samaria, ‘Ye worship ye know now what’ – being apparently under the impression that it might be desirable, on the whole, to know what one was worhsipping. He thus showed Himself sadly out of touch with the twentieth-century mind, for the cry today is: ‘Away with the tendentious complexity of dogma – let us have the simple spirit of worship; just worship, no matter what!’ The only drawback to this demand for a generalized and undirected worship is the practical difficulty of arousing any sort of enthusiasm for the worship of nothing in particular.” (Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster (Or, Why It Really Does Matter What You Believe) (Machester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1999), p. 19).
Theological perspectives on sexuality
In case you are actually following along, I have finished the next chapter for the book on Sexuality: Theological Perspectives on Being Gendered. The first half of the chapter works through some basic biological and sociological perspectives on gender and sexuality, while the second focuses more specifically on theological interpretations of sexuality. Sorry to disappoint, but I do not deal at all with any of the the questions surrounding gender roles or sexual ethics. The task of the chapter is really to contemplate what sexuality is and how it informs what it means to be human as the necessary foundation for addressing these other issues. You will have to make your own connections and draw your own conclusions.
Ehrman interview
I think I’ve made it clear that I’m not the biggest Bart Ehrman fan on the planet. Nonetheless, if you want to understand how many non-Christian scholars read and understand the Bible, you can’t find a much better starting point. NPR yesterday had a nice 40 min. interview with Ehrman focusing on his most recent book, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know about Them). The title pretty much says it all. Nonetheless, the interview gives you an interesting look at who Ehrman is, how he thinks, and how he (and many others) view the Bible. Unlike most people who criticize the Bible for its many contradictions, though, Ehrman has at least read it, and read it thoroughly. If you have a spare half hour, it is well worth a listen.
Facebook and fellowship
There was a really good discussion at JesusCreed on the nature of community and the extent to which online community is ‘real’ or ‘true’ community. Scot McKnight offered a valid argument that ‘community’ is a broad term that can certainly encompass an entire range of human interaction. He also rightly calls for an informed discussion that transcends the mere expression of personal preference.
Shane Hipps, however, while recognizing the legitimacy of McKnight’s semantic distinction, contends that ‘community’ is an important word and should really be used to protect the importance of the kind of human interaction that can only take place in face-to-face encounters between persons sharing the same physical space. His key argument is:
I play with semantics in an effort to help us see that “virtual community” and “unmediated community” are not interchangeable things. In my opinion, one is actually better than the other. The reason is that “virtual community” occurs primarily on one frequency of the human experience. It is mostly a disembodied, and largely cognitive, connection. This is not a bad thing, it’s just not as valuable as unmediated community, which involves the entire range of the human experience–physical, non-verbal, intuitive sense, subtle energies, visual cues, acoustic tones, etc. These are extremely powerful things that should not be quickly dismissed as “nice but not necessary.”
What do you think? If we were to have a discussion about this topic through a live video chat, would we have created community? Is there something about human ‘presence’ that cannot be technologically mediated? Or, do you think that it is possible for us to share enough of ourselves through technology to have participated in Christian community? Is it maybe even the case that I can share myself more freely and openly when community is mediated? (Of course, that would raise its own questions about why such freedom and openness might not be experienced in person.) Was Paul in ‘community’ with the churches through his correspondence (cf. Col 2:5)? If so, in what ways and what does this mean for the question at hand?
The question here is really a rather ancient one. What role should technology play in the life of the church moving forward? Whenever there has been a significant technological development, the church has had to wrestle with the question of what to do with it (sometimess less than successfully). And in many ways, how the church has answered this question has shaped its course for generations afterward.
Divine instant messaging
If you feel like you’re just not getting a fast enough response from God in your prayer life, try this. Just don’t blame me for the results.
New chapter
Okay, so I’ve been a bit AWOL lately. I’m trying to get the last edits on the book done so that I can start working on other projects. If you are interested, here is the most recent version of chapter four on Mind & Body: The Dualism/Physicalism Debate. Let me know what you think.
