As I’ve been preparing for an upcoming series on sexuality in our High School ministry I’ve been trying to read some fresh stuff that engages sexuality from a theological point of view with special attention towards discipleship. I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by so much of the church’s teaching on sexuality for so long. I’ve used curriculum that I felt went straight for the “what’s over the line” question and felt schizophrenic in it’s mixture of guilt and affirmation of sex. As I teach on sex I wanted to really do an excellent job of engaging sexuality, theology and discipleship this time around. So two books immediately hit the top of my “must read” list. 1. Rob Bell’s Sex God and 2. Lauren F. Winner’s Real Sex. I’ve heard Winner speak on the topic of chastity in a break out session at Youth Specialties this past year and she was great.

I’m really glad I took the time to read Bell’s book before engaging this subject with the youth at our church. Bell’s style of writing is so conversational that it belies the deep theological work he’s doing in this book. Bell’s catch phrase quickly becomes “this is really about that.” And over and over again he makes connections between sexuality and spirituality and about how “this” is really all about “that.” Bell’s definition of sexuality alone was extremely helpful.

“For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that’s only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God (42).”

Hmm, sexuality is all the ways we try to reconnect? That means that even the celibate can practice and express their sexuality. And on the very next page Bell makes this point saying,

“Some of the most sexual people I know are celibate.

They sleep alone.

They have chosen to give themselves to lots of people, to serve and give and connect their lives with beautiful and worthy causes (43).”

Bell takes this understanding of sexuality to deconstruct our culture’s definition of sexuality. Some of the most overt expressions of “sexuality” in our world are the exact opposite of real sexuality. To illustrate this Bell describes the infamous “Red Light District” in Amsterdam where women sit in store front windows advertising themselves for prostitution. The transaction that happens between a man who goes to one of these prostitutes and the woman herself is just that, a transaction. Physical sex happens, but there is no reconnection. Indeed this kind of sex only serves to further divide and isolate the two parties. The man uses the woman for his own physical gratification and the woman falls deeper into the darkness of her situation. This is the exact opposite of two human beings reconnecting, and we still call it sex.

Bell’s treatment of pre-marital sex is good. As far as I remember he never even used the term “pre-marital sex.” Instead Bell contrasts “taking your clothes off” and “getting naked.” Anyone can take their clothes off and have sex, but in the end this is not true reconnection. Real reconnection happens in physical sex when both parties can be naked with one another. Being naked is about way more than taking off clothes, it’s about trust, it’s about security, it’s about accepting the other person with all their faults and still loving them. It’s about being willing to die for the other person and the promise to remain faithful. Getting naked requires the commitment of marriage, the commitment to serve one another as Christ did the church. As always, “this” is really about “that.”

I could go on and on… needless to say, I thought it was a great book.

A few days ago I finished Jesus for President and I’ve already lent it out to the first person on the growing waiting list. What a magnificent book! If you went to seminary and constantly had your nose stuck in a Hauerwas or Yoder book but wished you could lend a more accessible version to someone… this is that book. It isn’t dumbed down, let me be clear about that, it’s just that this book was really written for the church. This isn’t the kind of conversation that takes place in the ethereal upper layers of academia, this is the best Kingdom-of-God theology taken to the streets. And what would we expect? Shane & Co aren’t professors, they’re subversive prophets living in the abandoned places of the empire. Making their own clothes, living with the poor, dumpster diving for food… always pointing to Jesus. They are living at the margins pointing us to Jesus. They are shouting with their lives (and this book) that the America we live in is a pitiful and fallen Kingdom not worth our allegiance.

The Eagle is fake, the Eagle is dead.

Follow the Lamb!

Last week I picked up a book that I’ve been looking forward to reading for several months now. I didn’t even know that it had been released until I was wondering the isles of my local Barnes & Noble and bumped into the display for Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw’s new book Jesus For President. I’m about a third of the way through it now and it’s everything I was hoping it would be. Claiborne & Co have taken theologians and biblical scholars close to my own heart and made them scandalously accessible to an general audience. The book (so far) is tackling our own ideas about empire by taking a look at God and the people of God and their relationship to empire. The book is a creative mish-mash of art and prose and Kingdom Propaganda. This book provokes us towards a Christian imagination of politics and calls us to seriously rethink where our hope and allegiance really lay. Go pick it up now!

I just reviewed a chapter of John D. Caputo’s new book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? over at Church at Postmodern Culture.  If you’re into that kind of stuff go check it out here.

Eric Lee tagged me to put up my list of best books of theology published in the past 25 years.

This is the criteria:

Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most important works of theology of that last 25 years (in no particular order).

1. Torture and Eucharist by William T. Cavanaugh 1998
2. Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon 1989
3. Between Cross & Resurrection by Alan E. Lewis 2001

And now I’m tagging… Wilson Ryland, Scott Savage and David Tatum

We’ve got a little less than one day left in 2006, so I think it’s safe for me to finally post my second annual “best of” lists for 2006. Man-O-Man I hope a bunch of great films and albums don’t come out in the next 18 hours and make me look like a fool. Feel free to argue the insanity of my picks and link to your own “best of” lists. Remember today and tomorrow are the two days when “thou SHALL judge” the previous year anyway.

Albums
5. Tool - 10,000 Days
4. AFI - DECEMBERUNDERGROUND
3. In Reverent Fear - Stomacher
2. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
*1. Derek Webb - Mockingbird
*This album is FREE (just click the link)

Films
6. Why We Fight
5. Taladagea Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
4. Inconvienient Truth
3. Lady in the Water
2. Blood Diamond
1. Little Miss Sunshine

TV Shows
5. My Name is Earl
4. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
3. The Colbert Report
2. LOST
1. The Office

Books
5. The Secret Message of Jesus:
Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything
by Brian McLaren
4. The Irresistible Revolution:
Living as an Ordinary Radical
by Shane Claiborne
3. The Myth of a Christian Nation:
How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
by Gregory Boyd
2. Presence-centered Youth Ministry:
Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation
by Mike King
1. The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture:
How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church
by Shane Hipps

Posts on chuckp3.com
5. July 4: Civil Religion’s Easter (10)
4. Dead Man’s Chest (11)
3. Kara and I are Engaged (17)
2. Radical [financial] Trust and Obedience (19)
1. Faith in the Military (46)

Gadgets
5. EyeTV Hybrid
4. Google Analytics
3. Library Thing
2. Harmony Remote
1. YouTube

Part III: Spiritual Values and International Relations
When Did Jesus Become Pro-War?
Chapter 11 - Against Impossible Odds
Peace in the Middle East

After treading on thin ice in chapter 10, Wallis is back to his decidedly Christocentric self. The chapter on Middle East peace begins with the words from the Ash Wednesday liturgy. This chapter is the best that I’ve read so far in God’s Politics. Wallis painst such a vivid picture of the situation in Israel/Palestine, and does so, not from a pundit’s or political analyst’s chair on cable news, but as a friend of many people who live in Israel/Palestine. He shares story after story of his friends and their daily lives. He gives voice to the many peacemakers on the ground who he is humbled by. Perhaps I’m just overly optimistic, but I think that this chapter alone could do a lot to change the pro-Israel mantra of so many of our churches.

One of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) that he visted in Hebron told him a story of a group of Muslims who were on their way to Mosque to pray when they were stopped in the street by Israeli soliders. The Muslims went to their knees in prayer, but the soliders drew their guns and appeared ready to open fire when two CPT members a young American woman and Canadaian man ran in front of the soliders pleading for them not to shoot the unarmed people. The soliders didn’t shoot, but the CPT members were thrown in jail for the night. What a witness to those muslims of Christ’s love! The community said it was like “greeting Jesus” when the CPT members were released.

Wallis gives the account of a few Israeli Jews who are fighting for humanitarian rights for the Palestianians. Wallis writes about a conversation he had with one of them, Jeff Halper:

“Israel is strong,” said Halper. Indeed, it’s the fifth largest military power in the world, economically dominant, deep in leadership cadres, healthy in civil society and culture. “But we don’t know we’re strong,” he said. “We still believe we are victims. As long as you believe you’re a victim, you are not accountable.”….Israelis do not feel accountable for what they’re doing to Palestinians because they believe they are still victims. And as “victims” they must defend themselves whatever the cost, whatever the consequences.

But Wallis is hopeful. Walking the streets and seeing trees that were there when Jesus walked the streets reminds him that there is still hope for this land. The hope lies in following the way of Jesus in the land of this birth, death and ressurection.

Part III: Spiritual Values and International Relations
When Did Jesus Become Pro-War?
Chapter 10 - Blessed are the Peacemakers
Winning Without War

The theme of this chapter seems to be that war is an unwise and immoral choice in fighting the war on terrorism. Wallis’ focus is clearly on how to win the war on terrorism, but how to do it better and more Christianly. The problem I have with Wallis here is that he seems to give a lot of ground in his stance of non-violence. At least in this chapter non-violence isn’t necessary because we are followers of Jesus and seek obedience to our Lord, but rather because it works better. I agree with Wallis, non-violence does work better, if your goals are reconciliation, peace and justice and you have the courage to sustain large losses. However, posing the issue in this light leaves it very vulnerable, first because few american Christians would agree that non-violence is more effective and secondly because the goals of the united states in going to war are not reconciliation, peace and justice. Non-violent strategies surely are more effective if you want to live alongside your former enemy and have your children attend the same schools. If, however, your goal is simply to topple their government for a more firm foothold in the region and to secure oil assets non-violence is very ineffective.

Wallis seems to be trying to sell non-violence as a “cleaner, more effective” alternative to war, but if he’s trying to sell that to the policy makers he’s barking up the wrong tree. If he’s trying to sell it to the Christians in america, he’d do a lot better by delving into non-violence as faithfulness to God rather than a more effective solution.

While I’ve disagreed with the beating Wallis has taken for being a “Constantinian of the Left,” and a “modernist liberal,” I think those criticisms hit pretty close to the mark concerning his treatment of non-violence as an effective tool of the state in this chapter. On page 160 he says, “If nonviolence is to have any credibility, it must answer the questions that violence purports to answer, but in a better way. Saying no to violence is good, but having alternatives is better.” Perhaps nonviolence would lose “credibility” to the united states, but not as a Christian response! I agree with Hauerwas, who he cites later in the chapter as believing that “pacifists cannot be expected to have easy policy answers for every difficult political situation, especially when they are often created, at least in part, by not listening to the voices of nonviolence in the first place.” The current quagmire in Iraq seems to be a lose-lose situation, stay and fight a bloody and crippling war, or withdraw and let terrorists gain control of the country? These are not the options that we came to following a path of nonviolence, why would we have easy answers to such situations? When the US helped place Saddam Hussein in power and gave him chemical weapons to fight Iran with, it started the ball rolling to a point where he was seen as a threat to others and pathologically oppressed his own people. So many of the “sticky moral situations” that cause people to turn their noses at pacifists exist exactly because no one listened to the pacifists to begin with.

Wallis turns to the Sermon on the Mount and points out that Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers,” not blessed are the peacelovers whom everyone claims to be. He gives some good examples of active peacemaking, that again, I agree are great strategies for peacemaking, but don’t see why the united states government would buy into the goals of such peacemaking as they are essentially self-sacrificing and Christian, rather than self-serving and profitable.

The two sections of this chapter I found particularly helpful were on Police and the definition of terrorism. Wallis explores how terrorism can be fought using international law, but gives attention to some of the traditional reluctance pacifists have had with police. Drawing on John Howard Yoder’s amazing work The Politics of Jesus, Wallis argues in favor of the use of force coming from police because unlike warfare violence or the threat thereof is applied only to the offending party; the use of force is subject to review by higher authorities; the officer applies power within the limits of a state whose laws even the criminal knows to be applicable to him; there are serious safeguards against violence being applied against the innocent; and the power of the officer is usually great enough to overwhelm the offender so that resistance is pointless. Wallis also draws some examples from Gerald Schlabach, who writes, “Political leaders draw on the rhetoric of national pride, honor and crusading to marshal the political will and sustain the sacrifices necessary to fight wars…. Police officials by contrast appeal to the common good of the community to justify their actions. Police officers are expected to use the minimum force needed to achieve their objective, and are judged harshly if there is ‘collateral damage’ of the kind that routinely occurs in warfare. War can never be subject to the rule of law in the way that policing is.”

Of course these are ideals, but on a larger scale policing, at least structurally is far more compatible with pacifism than war of any kind.

To wrap up the chapter Wallis tackles the very definition of terrorism. At times Wallis almost sounds like Noam Chomsky in his work Manufacturing Consent. Turning to how we define terrorism, he points out that one must walk an impossibly fine line to call the killing of civilians by a non-state organization like Al-Queda terrorism, but refuse to apply the label to nations who commit the very same actions. In warfare killing civilians is called “an accident,” or more disturbingly, “collateral damage.” And yet this is not the case. If someone were to drive down a sidewalk and kill pedestrians we would not call it “an accident.” In modern warfare about 90% of the deaths are civilian casualties, thus those waging war know their actions will kill civilians. This is terrorism. Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was terrorism. Fire bombing Dresden and Tokyo was terrorism. Selling arms to Indonesia so that they can commit genocide in East Timor (as Carter did) is arming and aiding terrorists. Shelling Baghdad and bombing a hospital in Afghanistan are acts of terrorism. It doesn’t stop being terrorism just because the terrorist was elected.

Wallis ends the chapter by saying that “in the end, Christian peacemaking is more a path than a position.” To give an illustration of this point I’ll reference back to a section Wallis quotes from A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict.

Regimes have been overthrown that had no compunction about brutalizing their opponents and denying them the right to speak their minds. How? By first demonstrating that opposition is possible, peeling away the regime’s residual public and outside support, quashing its legitimacy, driving up the costs of maintaining control, and overextending its repressive apparatus. Strategic nonviolent action is not about being nice to your oppressor, much less having to rely on his niceness. It’s about dissolving the foundations of his power and forcing him out.

Current Music: Nirvana - Lithium
Current Mood: Tired
Currently Reading: God’s Politics