Avdat

Blood v. milk

Although it's Eastertide, I'm kinda stuck on Good Friday. The faculty staged a preview of this year's Sprunt Lectures by convening a panel discussion on Margaret Miles' recent article in The Christian Century.

Miles argues that in the early and medieval Church, the symbol par excellence of God's love was the Virgin Mary nursing the baby Jesus. But in the early modern period the breast became secularized and eroticized, and the cross replaced the lactating Virgin as the paradigmatic icon of God's love. Miles laments this shift, for the result is a modern culture which objectifies women's bodies and glorifies violence.

The historian on the panel, as I saw it, politely demolished the notion that the cross is an inherently problematic symbol and the nursing Virgin an inherently benign symbol. True, early Christians were loathe to incorporate crosses into their art, but that's because the Emperor Constantine viewed the cross as a symbol of pacifistic insubordination to the Empire. Moreover, when an 11th century Byzantine Emperor launched a campaign to pacify the countryside, his army marched under the banners of the Virgin and Christ child. Our historian reminded us of a chapel service last month led by our Korean students in which a symbol of the hope for Korean unification was displayed, two pieces of wood, one from each side of the border, fastened together to form a cross (i.e., crosses aren't always a tool the Man uses to keep down The Other).

What he didn't do was dispute Miles's argument about how and why a lactating Virgin Mary disappeared from Christian iconography. I'd like to hear more about that. 

Our theologian acknowledged the fact that the cross is a multivalent symbol, but noted that what's important is how the cross is preached and depicted and expressed gratitude for Miles's concerns about a brutally eroticized culture.

Deep thought for April 15

The West Virginia mining disaster is yet more proof that we need to cut taxes and regulations.

Chapel: why bother?

Not many people come to chapel at Union-PSCE. There is a good crowd on Wednesday, when the service of Word and Sacrament is followed by a community lunch. But the Monday and Thursday services are sparsely attended. In the 20s.

And not many people care to lead chapel. I know because I'm the chapel coordinator. This means that in addition to running to Montana Gold Bread Company and buying two loaves of challah bread for Wednesday services, I get to recruit people to lead chapel. It ain't easy. If it weren't for the fact that "guest stars" and academic departments cover most Wednesdays, and the Intro to Worship and Preaching Class covers one of the other worship services every week, we'd have been in a world of hurt this year.

So what does it mean that corporate worship isn't a high priority for an academic institution that, by and large, is educating people to be future worship leaders?

I hear, and this is second-hand, that the mentality in some quarters is, "We're an academic institution, and for spiritual nurture, everyone needs to look to their own congregation, not the seminary community." God knows I resent how parachurch and fraternal organizations replace congregations as the focus of people's worship and service, so at one level I can sympathize with this reasoning.

But in the end, I believe that a seminary ought to be about formation, not merely information. It's my sense that our seminary excels at forming people to be thoughtful and compassionate. Classes are rigorous, and the institution actively encourages good works (our annual Service Day, internship opportunities in social service agencies and inner city ministries). But I think the seminary is not so effective in forming prayerful, worshipful future clergy.

This is a shame. I can say with the wisdom of experience that all the exegetical skill, theological knowledge and eager-beaverness to set the world right isn't enough to survive in the ministry. In the end, if you are not plugged into a source of power higher than your own cleverness and sense of righteous indignation, the parish will eat you alive. 

It can't merely be a matter of, "I don't have time," or, "I don't get anything out of chapel." You have time for the things you make time for. And if you don't get anything out of it, well, just you wait until your first call and five to fifteen people leave your church because they don't get anything out of your sermons/youth group meetings/Sunday School classes.

It's really a question of institutional ethos. Are we merely informing students or forming them, and if that latter, into what?

Sarah Palin is off the chain

I heard a snippet of a defiant Sarah Palin rallying the troops today. Words to the effect of, "No matter what, we're gonna keep clinging to our guns, our religion and our Constitution."

As if anybody's trying to pry them out of your cold, dead hands. Guns? Americans' obsession with firearms has never been more secure. Last year Congress (a Democratic Congress, mind you) legalized packin' heat in national parks. Back off, Smoky Bear!

The Constitution? I assume this refers to the unpopular federal mandate to buy health insurance. Look, health care is a form of interstate commerce. Who knows how many states supplied the stethoscopes, syringes, monitors and scrubs that made your last hospital stay such a success? The Constitution grants the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3), and the courts have interpreted that right quite broadly. Which they should, because you can't have a 21st century economy with an 18th century regulatory scheme. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's unconstitutional.

Religion? Please. When will Christians stop being such whiners? Not getting to pray in Jesus' name before a football game doesn't rank up there with getting thrown to the lions. Halden has called our attention to the Archbishop of Canterbury's common sense advice to "remember those many, many places where persecution is real and Christians are being killed regularly and mercilessly or imprisoned and harassed for their resistance to injustice" (italics mine) whenever we hear such "overheated rhetoric."

Sarah Palin is a textbook demagogue, and the slutty stewardess packaging makes her boilerplate that much more appealing. Mainly what's she really good at is getting people who are whiter, maler, more highly educated, more highly paid, and less likely to be unemployed than the average American feel sorry for themselves, and feel like she, Sarah Palin, understands.

Yeah, yeah, everybody's a victim these days.

Someone to hug

I've avoided blogging about Tiger Woods because I don't want to sound even more priggish than I normally do. I'll just say that the strongest rebuke of Tiger's behavior I've seen or heard was Phil Mickelson hugging his cancer-stricken wife Amy after he won the Masters yesterday. There are more important things in life than success or failure, namely, having someone to share those successes and failures with.

Who would have been there to hug Tiger if karma had failed and he'd won yesterday? His caddy?

Robert Wright, by the way, penned this column for the New York Times which manages to censure Woods without sounding priggish. It's worth reading, especially if you saw the movie The Natural but never read the book. HT.

Time to get out of Afghanistan, or at least time not get in anymore than we're already in

While the boys were with the in-laws this week, Mrs. Avdat and I actually sat down and watched the evening news together, and I saw something that astounded me: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is threatening to join the Taliban. Moreover, former U.N. envoy to Afghanistan Peter Galbreath suggested that Karzai's recent erratic behavior was due to drug abuse.

I've seen and heard nothing about this from my usual news sources: the local paper, NPR and selected center-left blogs. I find that... odd.

Isn't this big news?

So... what in the hell are we fighting for, anyway?

This Afghan surge is intended to do more than destroy Al Qaida. It's intended to help the Afghan government consolidate its hold on the country. Nation building, in other words. But if the Afghan government is in power due to election fraud, and if their President is a coke head, and if they insist on biting the hand that feeds them in the media, well then, is this the sort of nation we want to ask Americans to kill and die for?

Galbreath's solution, to limit Karzai's power until he proves himself stable enough to deserve presidential power, is textbook colonialism. A more obvious solution is to let Karzai roll the dice with the Taliban on his own dime, not ours.

I don't sense that there's any political will, popular support or spiritual courage to adopt an approach to Al Qaida that eschews military force. But maybe it's time to lower our expectations and our presence there. With the benefit of hindsight, Vice-President Biden's alternative strategy to limit ourselves to raining fire and brimstone on Al Qaida whenever they crawl out of their caves is starting to look more sensible.

Can porn save your marriage? Probably not

I was in the doctor's office waiting room the other days reading one of those magazines you're likely to find there, and one article caught my eye. It was about the wife who discovered that her husband was coming to bed way after her because he was viewing porn on the internet. Naturally the wife was distressed, but the husband, and as I recall, some outside expert, a therapist or somebody, assured her that it was all innocent. In fact, the discovery prompted the husband and wife to have a frank conversation about the husband's lack of fulfillment in the bedroom. This prompted the wife to spice things up a bit, and now everybody's happy.

Call me skeptical. I'm skeptical that:

1. Furtive "one-handed surfing" can be a good conversation starter, and
2. The problem is a frigid wife and not a husband who's going outside the marriage looking for sexual gratification (we call that adultery).

Number two is a big problem. What happens when the husband's palate is sated with the increased dose of bedroom spice? Will he return to his laptop for the gratification which always seems to be eluding his grasp in real life?

If your definition of sex is little more than arousal and orgasm, the wife, of course, will never be able to compete with the online pornographic image. The image is always 19-23 years old. Surgically enhanced and airbrushed, she is immune to the ravages of time--saddle bags, gray hair, wrinkles. The image never gets tired, is never irritable, never wakes up with bad breath. The image is utterly at his disposal, 24/7. 

But there's more to sex than arousal and orgasm. Sex reinforces and is in turn reinforced by the emotional and intellectual unions between the marriage partners. Sex is a good way to make up after a fight. It is the real "sacrament of reconciliation" for a lot of people. Sex also creates new human beings, and makes parents out of sexual partners. Porn can't really contribute anything to these important dimensions of sexuality, and in fact erodes them.

And we haven't even talked about how the porn industry is rife with drug use, pays people poorly, and subjects them to psychological and at times physical abuse. What could be innocent about that?

Still, even if porn actors and actresses weren't exploited, porn would not be a good or healthy thing. And the reticence to say so in a medical magazine is baffling.

I am aware that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. There's probably not a guy alive in this society who hasn't seen pornography at one time or another, yours truly included. I'm not judging anybody. It's more a matter of pity. I pity guys who treat sex like toothpaste--a product to be bought to satisfy a basic bodily need. And I pity people who make porn--people for whom sex is just a job.

In short, consuming porn is a way to treat people like things, which would seem to be utterly incompatible with the mutuality of a marriage covenant.

Believing by proxy

A short passage in Volume Three of Tillich's Systematic Theology sparked a lively discussion Tuesday. Tillich maintains that what it means to be a Christian at the most basic level is not believing that Jesus is the Christ, but wishing to affiliate with a community that does believe he's the Christ. Tillich wants to assure people who are struggling with the whole symbol-system that is Christianity that their doubts do not disqualify them from Church fellowship.

In other words, If you can't believe, rest assured that the Church can believe for you.

There's something right and true and proper about this. It agrees with the observation that my friend David once made in a sermon on Doubting Thomas. Despite his lack of faith, Thomas did not forsake the community of believers, nor did they cast them out. Because they kept faith with each other, an opportunity arose for Thomas to profess faith in the Risen Christ. I have shamelessly and without attribution incorporated this point into many a sermon on the Sunday after Easter (Doubting Thomas is always the gospel lesson for Easter two), and now I offer it to any desperate preachers out there reading this blog come Saturday night.

A logical but unstated corollary of Tillich's argument is that the Church as a whole, and its clergy in particular, are not free to doubt in a way that individual parishioners are.

Can't touch this

You Tarhole fans need to understand one thing: you will never, ever lay a glove on me. Why? Because you care more than I do. I know it. You know it. We both know it. Everybody knows it. And that gives me all the power in this relationship.

Why don't I care more than you do? If I said that it's because I'm older, wiser and thus smart enough not to hitch my emotional well-being to a bunch of twenty-year-old boys playing games, I'd be right. But only partially. Some of you are old and wise as well.

If I said it's because I am a full-time student, working two part-time jobs, a father of two (one being autistic), a husband and something of a political junkie and thus have too full a life to give myself unreservedly to N.C. State sports, I'd be telling the truth. But not the whole truth. Some of you lead pretty full lives as well.

Let's be honest. N.C. State hasn't won much in the last 20 years, and I've adjusted my expectations accordingly. When State beats Carolina I'm pleasantly surprised. When State doesn't, well, it doesn't hurt because I knew better than to get my hopes up in the first place.

Put differently, I have a strictly pagan, not Christian, relationship with the sports gods. When it comes to sports, I haven't any use for self-denial, cross-bearing and maybe next year. If the sports gods don't bless me, I won't bless them. 

You Tarhole fans are different. The sports gods have been good to you. Well, the basketball deity, anyway. It's hard for you to let go, to think about sports philosophically. And since you're fully committed, when the gods go off and in a fit of fickleness reward your arch rival, you take it personally. It's an existential crisis.

Both of us expected Carolina to sweep State this year, and our expectations were met. Neither of us expected the Tarholes to fall from the heights of a National Championship to the depths of second-best among the also-rans. I'm pleasantly surprised. And you? To add insult to injury, the Blue Devils up and succeeded you at the top. Nobody expected that.

So say all you want about sweeping us. We both know it's cold comfort to you. Right now, looking ahead to a long, hot summer of Dook National Champion t-shirts and hats covering the bodies of a multitude of homers at the beach, the mall, and the pool, we both know you'd gladly trade those two victories over State for Butler's desperation half-court heave falling in. In a heartbeat.

I will pick on, taunt and abuse you all summer, and whatever creative barbs you come up with will fall on me like a feather on the hull of a Cylon base star. And the bad thing about it is, football season probably won't bring you any relief.

I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.

A lawyer, not a scientist

When Virginia's newly minted attorney general challenged the EPA's finding that global warming poses a threat to human well-being, he quipped that he was looking out the window at "30+ inches of global snowing." Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Well then, does tomorrow's forecast prove the EPA is right after all?

Daily Details for Richmond, VA (23227) [ English | Metric ]

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Today Tue, Apr 6 Wed, Apr 7 Thu, Apr 8 Fri, Apr 9 Sat, Apr 10 Sun, Apr 11 Mon, Apr 12 Tue, Apr 13 Wed, Apr 14 Hourly Forecast    more details 6 am 63°F Feels Like 63°F 9 am 71°F Feels Like 71°F 12 pm 85°F Feels Like 85°F 3 pm 88°F Feels Like 87°F 6 pm 87°F Feels Like 86°F 9 pm 79°F Feels Like 80°F Day Night Sunny High 90°F Precip 0% Wind: From SW at 12 mph Max. Humidity: 47% UV Index: 7 High Sunrise: 6:48 AM ET Avg. High: 67°F Record High: 86°F (2005) Mostly Clear Overnight Low 64°F Precip 0% Wind: From SSW at 8 mph Max. Humidity: 55%       Sunset: 7:37 PM ET Avg. Low: 40°F Record Low: 25°F (1975)

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Can we agree that sticking your head out the window probably isn't the best way to make decisions about long term climate trends? Can we agree that the chief end of being attorney general isn't trying out to be some sweater girl for a tea party calendar?

Probably not.

Sigh.

P.S. January, 2010 was the warmest January on record. November to January was the hottest ever recorded. The previous decade was the hottest since records have been kept. NOVA is next door to a media hub and the capital of the free world, but despite Ken Cuccinelli's myopia, it is not a microcosm of global climate. It is a small piece of a warming globe. And Ken Cuccinelli is a lawyer, not a scientist.