Language As Framework.

I’m slowly becoming aware of how powerful language is, how the words that we put on our feelings and actions carry with them the potential for huge things.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about change, dare I say revolution. I think there is not only a lot of unrest with our current options, but I’m beginning to believe (perhaps for the first time) that there are people who are willing to do what it takes to usher in the change. They are willing and prepared for it to cost them something.

Politics. Economics. Spirituality. Sexuality. Change is in the air and it is beginning with words. For the first time in a long while there is a swelling voice that is beginning to articulate this growing unrest with some of the systemic problems that we have locally and globally.

In this way, perhaps “words” are the first signs of revolution. I remember reading Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian for the first time and out of nowhere feeling like I was being hit with a ton of bricks. All of a sudden McLaren was putting words onto the feelings that were laying just below the surface for me. By articulating this change in my life and the life of others, he gave me words to describe what I was feeling, what was changing, and what was happening without making me feeling hopeless. In a way it validated what I knew to be true in the deepest parts of my heart but was unable to say (before) without feeling like an idiot.

The same thing happens when you give victims of domestic violence words to describe their abuse. Or when you give words to those who suffer from injust governments. In real and deep ways, they begin to stand up to their oppressor and are empowered to resist them, effecting change which becomes the catalyst for revolution.

I think this same idea is happening in other areas. People are beginning to not only articulate the problem in fresh ways, but they are simultaneously articulate solutions and cures in fresh ways.

I’m not saying the revolution has happened yet or that it’s even upon us or that it will even be realized. But without these people articulating and putting into words things ahead of time there would be no infrastructure for change to put it’s foundation on.

David Korten as quoted in Everything Must Change, referring to the culture war between empire and earth community, “The outcome will depend in large measure on the prevailing stories that shape our understanding . . . Perhaps the most difficult and yet essential aspect of this work is to change our stories.”

Changing our stories is going to happen in large part by big-names and no-names standing up to the unjust and corrupt stories and exposing them for what they are. This is part of the revolution, this fumbling process of searching for the right words is the beginning of the change.

It is happening now. And my only concern is that too many people are seeing these articulations as nothing but mere banter. And negative complaints. When in fact, I believe they are neither.

Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren – Part G.

Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Part E, Part F

More quotes/reflections from Everything Must Change. This quote immediately follows yesterday’s.

This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by our dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse, are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral. By way of ignorance, they are oblivious to the conventions of Jewish Apocalyptic literature in particular, and literature of the oppressed in general. As a result, they wrongly – one might even say ridiculously – interpret obviously metaphorical language as literal. For example, they misread Revelation 19:5, where Jesus, in a blood-stained robe, “strikes down the nations” using a sword; they fail to notice that the sword comes out of his mouth – a rather unmistakable case of symbolism to a reasonable adult reader, I would think, unless he imagines Jesus actually thrashing his head around, slinging a sword between his teeth like a giant cigar of mass destruction.

In light of the literary conventions of both literature of the oppressed in general and Jewish apocalyptic in particular, and assuming that Jesus’ coming as told in the Gospels is not a fake-me-out coming, but actually was the climatic revelation of God as the New Testament seems to affirm (Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:1-4), Jesus’ “striking down the nations” with a sword “coming out of his mouth” has a very different meaning. Jesus’ word – the unarmed truth of the gospel of the kingdom – is the force that overcomes the “kingdom of this world,” the dominant system, the suicide machine. It conquers not with physical weapons but with a message of justice (Revelation 19:11), and the blood on Jesus’ robe is not the blood of his enemies, but his own blood (12:11, cf. 5:6).

Read in this way, we don’t have a violent “Second Coming” Jesus who finishes what the gentle “First Coming” Jesus failed to do, but we have a poetic description of the way the gentle First Coming Jesus powerfully overcomes through his nonviolent “weakness” (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25), a prince of peace whose sword of reconciliation is truly mightier than Caesar’s sword.

Listening: Ears Will Pop and Eyes Will Blink by Bodies of Water

Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren – Part F.

Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Part E

More quotes/reflections from Everything Must Change.

A friend of mine, referring to how groups form and behave, says, “Architecture always wins,” meaning that people’s behavior is always shaped by the spaces in which they gather. Theologically, I think we could say, “Eschatology always wins.”

Far from being an esoteric and speculative distraction, our beliefs about the end toward which things are moving profoundly and practically shape our present behavior. This is especially true in regard to violence and war, and is one of the reasons many of us have been increasingly critical in recent years of popular American eschatology in general, and conventional views of hell in particular. Simply put, if we believe that God will ultimately enforce his will by forceful domination, and will eventually torture all who resist that domination, then torture and domination become not only permissible but in some way godly. The implications for, say, military policy (not mention church politics) are not hard to imagine.

The phrase “the Second Coming of Christ” never actually appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves rethinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. If we believe that Jesus came in peace the first time, but that wasn’t his “real” and decisive coming – it was just a kind of warm-up for the real thing – then we leave the door open to envisioning a second coming that will be characterized by violence, killing, domination, and eternal torture. This vision reflects a deconversion, a return to trust in the power of Pilate, not the unarmed truth that stood before Pilate, refusing to fight. This eschatological understanding of a violent second coming leads us to believe that in the end, even God finds it impossible to fix the world apart from violence and coercion; no one should be surprised when those shaped by this theology behave accordingly.

If we remain charmed by this kind of eschatology, we will be forced to see the non-violence of the Jesus of the Gospels as a kind of strategic fake-out, like a feigned retreat in war, to be followed up by a crushing blow of so-called redemptive violence in the end. The gentle Jesus of the first coming becomes a kind of trick-Jesus, a fake-me-out Messiah, to be replaced by the true jihadist Jesus of a violent second coming.

Listening: Zootime by Mystery Jets

Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren – Part E.

Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D

We’re done with the 4 comparisons. Now onto really good thoughts that I’m finding helpful.

I think this would be my greatest critique against consumerism, my life, and hyper-capitalism.

“Socially, in this economy we consume time and produce fatigue, consume art and talent and produce entertainment and amusement, consume work and leisure and produce paychecks and heart attacks. And ultimately we consume communities and produce extended families, consume extended families and produce nuclear families, consume nuclear families and produce individuals, consume individuals and produce consumers, and finally consume consumers themselves and produce disembodied fragments called “wants” and “needs” and “markets” and “segments” and “anxieties” and “drives” that the economy consumes and excretes and reconsumes in a kind of cannibalistic ferment or rot. In the process, we commonly produce successful megaconsumers of unimaginable wealth who are more or less bankrupt in compassion for their poor neighbors. And in a stroke of suicidal genius, we simultaneously produce poor people whose greatest dream is to be like those megaconsumers who don’t care at all about them.”

It reminds me of The Cobalt Season’s song I, Obstruction with these lyrics.

Just get rid of all your crap now
Just give it to the poor
So that they can have your crap now
So that they can want some more

It just feels like that what is needed an entirely different starting point or operating system. One that addresses the root issues of consumption, wants, and needs instead of just focusing on moderation, stewardship, and the redistribution of our stuff from one economic class to the next.

Listening: Wincing the Night Away by The Shins

Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren – Part D.

Part A, Part B, Part C

The fourth question builds off of and answers the first and the second and the third.

Fourth question . . .

Purpose of Jesus: Why Is Jesus Important

Conventional View: Jesus came to solve the problem of “original sin”, meaning that he helps qualified individuals not to be sent to hell for their sin or imperfection. In a sense, Jesus saves these people from God, or more specifically, from the righteous wrath of God, which sinful human beings deserve because they have not perfectly fulfilled God’s just expectations, expressed in God’s moral laws. This escape from punishment is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God’s grace and love. Those who receive it enjoy a personal relationship with God and seek to observe and obey God, which produces a happier life on Earth and more rewards in heaven.

Emerging View: Jesus came to become the Savior of the world, meaning he came to save the earth and all it contains from its ongoing destruction because of human evil. Through his life and teaching, through his suffering, death, and resurrection, he inserted into human history a seed of grace, truth, and hope that can never be defeated. This seed will, against all oppositions and odds, prevail over the evil and injustice of humanity and lead to the world’s ongoing transformation into the world God dreams of. All who find in Jesus God’s hope and truth discover the privilege of participating in his ongoing work of personal and global transformation and liberation from evil and injustice. As part of his transforming community, they experience liberation from the fear of death and condemnation. This is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God’s grace and love.

Thoughts? Feedback? Pushback? Too stereotypical? Do the differentiations go far enough for you? Too far?

Listening: Versatile Heart by Linda Thompson