“To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen

End Slavery: +814292.09

The Good Place is a television series that revolves around the concept of the afterlife. According to the show, humans are sent to either the Good Place or the Bad Place after they die. During their lifetime, every human is assigned a numerical score that is based on their actions. Only those with the highest scores are deemed worthy of entering the Good Place, where they are rewarded with eternal happiness.

“The Good Place” is not your run-of-the-mill comedy show. It delves into impressive philosophical themes and offers a unique perspective on judgment. The show explores the concept of retributive justice, which suggests that the destiny of all rational beings is determined by their good and bad deeds.

Judgment

noun

1. the ability to make considered decisions or come to a conclusion.
2. A misfortune or calamity. Viewed as punishment.

During a conversation with Ken, a few weeks ago, he shared an interesting perspective. He explained that “as Christians, we commonly assume that judgment only comes at the end. We believe that we receive grace first and are then judged at the end”. However, Ken emphasized that this is not the case. “In reality, judgment comes first, and then we are always being judged; that is how we are able to receive grace.” That is, grace is always “despite” and not “because of” our human condition (Karl Barth).

The parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates the dynamics of judgment, grace, and human relationships. While it is often portrayed as a story about God’s love, its central theme revolves around our interactions with each other.

Perspective Taking: The Prodigal Son

What I’m about to say is subjective and my own opinion, but I think we often live and judge ourselves, others, and events either in the past, present, or future in our headspace as rational creatures.

1. Past – guilt, shame, regret, dwelling on what happened, replaying events or conversations, over analyzing.
2. Present – clarity, acceptance, joy of being, understanding, inner peace, gratitude.
3. Future – fear of the unknown, worrying about what could happen, feeling anxious for what is to come, ‘what if’ scenarios.

I am not saying that being in any particular headspace is either good or bad, but I believe that the following list is useful in understanding what shapes and evaluates our lives in the world today. For instance, if we view the narrative of the Prodigal Son through the lens of past, present, and future, we can gain deeper insight into the characters and their motivations within the story.

¹⁷ “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸ I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ ²⁰ So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
²¹ “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
²² “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴ For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Luke 15:11-32 (NIV)

We see that the younger son is experiencing something close to depression and anxiety when he reunites with his father. Believing and acknowledging the judgment he placed on himself and believing in the possibility of his father’s wrath was justified. However, the father is a glimpse of a character who is mindful of the deep hurt, damaged trust, and wound that his son did to him, but he also sees someone taking ownership, and anything but forgiveness doesn’t make sense.

To emphasize the humanity of the Prodigal Son parable, we can turn to the season 1 finale of Ted Lasso to observe Rebecca and Ted in action.

‘You…What? Why?’

At the beginning of season 1, Rebecca hires Ted Lasso to coach the Richmond team, intending to take them down to get back at her ex-husband for hurting her. As the audience, we walk with Rebecca as she begins to sabotage Ted at every possibility and as her humanity begins to come out.

Ted, also going through a divorce, can understand and share Rebecca’s pain and forgive her. Despite the damage caused by the hurt and loss of trust, he recognizes that she is taking responsibility for her actions. This empathy is the outcome that we observe.

“The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Concerning J.R.R. Tolkien

If you were to open The Lord of the Rings and step into Middle-earth, you would be transported to a realm beyond your wildest imagination. Although beautiful and fantastical, the characters and themes in the text are distinctly human.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works have profoundly impacted the fantasy genre as we know it today. His story spans over a thousand pages and is widely considered one of the greatest of our time. Critics and readers alike have pointed out the numerous Christian allegories embedded in his work. He once wrote to the English Roman Catholic theologian, Father Robert Murray, calling The Lord of the Rings “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” However, Tolkien himself disliked the idea of allegory. He believed his work’s applicability to readers was more important than any intended allegory. He understood that the meaning and interpretation of his work were ultimately up to the reader.

In Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” he explores his views on the role of imagination and deep consideration for escapism in fictional stories. He argues that “escapism” is healthy and necessary as long as readers are not abandoning their responsibilities. In other words, the type often misunderstood as the only type of escapism is when the reader uses the story to ignore his duties in life and disappear into a fantasy world. However, for Tolkien, well-written fantasy and escapism literature can only enhance the readers’ view of their everyday world. Stories are meant to immerse us in a reality that points to an ultimate truth. Walter Wangerin Jr. once wrote, “To comprehend the experience one is living in, he must, by imagination and intellect, be lifted out of it.”

A Good Catastrophe

On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people and tens of thousands more later due to radiation exposure.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, leaving its capital Port-au-Prince devastated. About 220,000 people were reportedly killed.

On December 26, 2004, a 9.1-9.3 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, ruptured, and approximately 230,000 people died in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Catastrophe comes from the Greek word “overturn” or “any sudden disaster.” It names a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter destruction. It is a circumstance that disrupts our lives—an interruption to human life’s existing activity and progress.

Tolkien believed that an event that is a catastrophe can be a surprise and fortune-reversing but with a happy ending. To describe this, he used the Greek word eu-the Greek prefix simply meaning good. Thus, Tolkien coined a word that would help describe and explain the understanding and power of stories derived from the real world – eucatastrophe. Eucatastrophe describes the fortunate turn of events—an unexpected and sudden good during dire situations.

The showdown in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope is an excellent example of eucatastrophe. The Rebel Alliance faces destruction as the Galactic Empire has found its military operations on the moon base of Yavin 4. The Death Star’s superlaser can destroy a planet, and the Rebel Alliance has only one chance to stop it. They send their fighter pilots to shoot proton torpedoes into the Death Star’s reactor core, causing a chain reaction that can destroy the giant battle station. Darth Vader and a couple of tie fighters are shooting down the Rebel Alliance’s pilots, and Luke has a one-in-a-million shot. The unexpected destruction of the Death Star through Luke’s shot is a moment of eucatastrophe that saves the Rebel Alliance from destruction and brings hope to the galaxy.

However, Tolkien believed that eucatastrophe could only be brought about through grace, not heroic efforts or human achievements. ***SPOILER ALERT***. A great example is the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Burdened by the ring and carrying it from the Shire to Mordor, Frodo has finally succumbed to the ring’s will at the heart of Mt. Doom. Unable to resist, he tries to take the ring for himself. 

Frodo was on the brink of destroying the ring, but its accidental destruction during his fight with Gollum granted an unexpected grace.

Eucatastrophe does not deny the existence of sorrow, wrath, fear, greed, oppression, failure, or death; instead, it offers a glimpse of hope and joy through grace, denying universal final defeat through unexpected means. 

The Incarnation was a momentous event, even though it was prophesied in the Old Testament. It was a sudden and unexpected event that changed the very nature of reality and our understanding of human history. The Incarnation was the first significant change in reality since the world’s creation. It brought together God and creation, marking the beginning of the redemption and reconciliation of the earth to God through Jesus.

While Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a fantastic work of fiction, it can sometimes be challenging to relate to the story’s fantastical elements – we’re not wizards, Balrogs, or Hobbits. This is where shows like Ted Lasso come in. Ted Lasso is a show that understands human relationships and how they can bring about unexpected moments of grace, hope, and joy. 

Richmond Till We Die

Let’s address the larger-than-life elephant in the room – yes, I am a huge fan of Ted Lasso. I have rewatched the show countless times and listened to numerous podcasts where people analyze and discuss each episode. I even have Ted Lasso stickers on my belongings and a Coach Beard costume that I will probably wear every Halloween, and I bought Fifa 23 so that I could play as Ted Lasso and the entire AFC Richmond team.

Ted Lasso is a show about an American football coach hired to coach a struggling English soccer team. Despite the cultural differences and initial hatred towards him, Ted Lasso’s kindness, empathy, and belief in others transformed the team, leading to unexpected growth and success. The show is a testament to the power of human connections and the way they can bring about moments of joy and hope in the face of adversity. Moreover, it shows that eucatastrophe is not just limited to the world of fantasy or the Bible but can also be found in our everyday lives through our relationships with others.

During the Advent season, we’ll reflect on the themes of grace, hope, and joy and how they can reveal themselves unexpectedly in our relationships. Perhaps our friend Ted can offer some valuable insights. 

Before I get into the post, I want to address some critical points in which understanding this post will make sense. 1) These are my thoughts, observations, and reflections on things I have seen throughout the pandemic and in Christ Kaleidoscope. In other words, I am not complaining, nor is this an evaluation of people. It may be uncomfortable to read this post, but this is not coming from a place of condescension or anger, but from a place of discipline in acknowledging my own vulnerability. 2) This particular post requires much more than what I originally anticipated. Originally, I wanted to give a brief overview of my experience of the pandemic and connect it to American society and pop culture. I mean, I can still do that! However, I know myself too well to be satisfied with that plan. Meaning, this post would require some theology. 3) The theological literature on “place” and/or “displacement” is not a discipline that I am too familiar with and not as easily accessible to the general public. Therefore, it requires me to look into more academic and “heady” literature. I confess that I don’t think I fully understand the theology of “place”, but I will try to distill some of the more digestible thoughts. Was this an excuse for me to read academic and theologically heavy works? You tell me. 4) This is not a post on how the pandemic affected my mental health, but it will shed some light on my mental state throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are curious how I am doing now, I am doing great and I am grateful that is the case!

J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord of the Rings

 As a World War I veteran who notably fought in the bloody Battle of Somme and lived through the most destructive war in our history (World War II), J.R.R. Tolkien and his experience with both world wars reflected deeply in his work. Tolkien hated allegories and never meant for anything from Middle Earth to directly represent something in our world. However, his ideas, thoughts, and understanding of war and the human condition clearly leaked into his written work. As a result, in regards to a soldier’s homecoming, he knew and understood the experience that soldiers would feel after being confronted by the fears and sadness of war – a sense of displacement.

LOTR The Return of the King – Homeward Bound

The moment we find our four hobbits back in the Shire and in the pub is a poignant one. The director, Peter Jackson, beautifully captures the feeling of displacement for our heroes. Not because the other hobbits are completely oblivious or don’t care, but because the Shire hobbits lived experiences no longer match with Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin anymore. Therefore, the feeling of “not fitting in” and isolation creeps up on them. They look at each other and think “what do we do now? After all we’ve seen, after all we’ve experienced, how do we go back to our normal lives?” However, all is not lost for our four heroes and we see that they begin to joyfully acclimate back into their old lives (more or less), but somehow we still see Frodo feeling off. The clip ends right before we get to hear Frodo’s monologue:

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.”

This movie quote is quite dramatic (I mean it is a movie); however, Frodo’s speech gets to the heart of what Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were feeling at the pub the night they came back home. 

I have watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy over the years and I understood, intellectually, what was going on during the pub scene. However, after living through COVID-19 for two years now, I can say with absolute certainty, I truly understand what Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were feeling in that moment of silence surrounded by joyful drinking and laughter. 

Two Realities During COVID-19

On September 20 of 2021, The Atlantic published a story, Another Truth About Remote Work, that clarified Americans’ misconceptions about the prevalence of working from home. The Atlantic commissioned a poll from a Canadian-owned market research and analytics company called Leger. The poll asked Americans to estimate how many people had worked from home during the pandemic. The results were not entirely surprising: those working remotely tended to overestimate how many people were doing the same.

“Seventy-three percent of survey respondents who had teleworked because of the pandemic guessed that at least half of American employees had done the same. But the actual number of people who worked remotely because of COVID-19 was, at its highest point, roughly 35 percent, way back in May 2020. Let’s skip ahead to last month: About 90 percent of surveyed respondents who worked from home in August because of the pandemic guessed that at least 40 percent of American workers did too. In reality, only 13.4 percent worked from home in the final month of summer.

Part of the reason for the discrepancy comes down to basic psychology. Human beings tend to believe that other people are like us, that our thoughts and opinions are more common than they actually are, the sociologists I interviewed for this story told me. But when I answered that question so wrongly back in March, I felt a pang of embarrassment; I was out of touch. “People don’t have a great sense anymore of what the lives of others across the economic divide look like,” Jonathan J. B. Mijs, a sociology professor at Boston University, told me.”

The media coverage, in regards to working from home during the early parts of the pandemic, talked about Zoom fatigue, how to be more productive at home, and the 11 most comfortable pants to wear when working from home. Christ Kaleidoscope is hardly the exact picture of what all Americans were doing and dealing with throughout the pandemic – majority of people in the community were working from home and staying put. Understandably, it was tough for all of us to stay away from family and loved ones during a global pandemic. While I am glad I heard stories of people playing video games together, getting into a sourdough bread-making phase, staying in shape, or starting new hobbies, I could not help but recognize that I was living a different kind of reality than 98% of the people in CK.

During the winter surge of late 2020 and early 2021, every day I counted how many sirens I would hear from outside as a sort of game to myself. I eventually stopped counting after a while, but I think on average I was hearing a total of 20 sirens going off a day. I would come out day in and day out seeing multiple fire trucks and ambulances parked outside the Emergency Room with lines of patients on gurneys (attached to oxygen) waiting to be admitted into an already full-packed department. Like an In-N-Out employee, when the drive-thru line gets too long and busy, someone would always come out to begin admitting each patient and do a complete medical workup. 

This is one of the stories I usually tell people whenever they ask me about what it was like during the first surge of COVID-19. This is one of the milder stories I tell. However, I found myself not telling many stories about what I saw throughout the pandemic. Not because I didn’t have any stories to tell or I was too sad about what was happening, but because there was a sinking feeling in my gut that told me that no one really wanted to hear them. Moreover, I felt that no one could really understand or relate with me unless they were in healthcare themselves. I wasn’t the only one who had this thought. This language of us vs. them, healthcare vs. non-healthcare, or frontline workers vs. people working from home was ubiquitous on the healthcare threads of Reddit. Doctors, nurses, and emergency service workers complained how family, friends, and the public didn’t really fully understand what was going on. Not just what the pandemic has done to our healthcare system, but also how dangerous COVID-19 truly is. “They don’t see what we’ve been seeing! They don’t understand!” they would exclaim.

Living through COVID-19 and coming back into a community like Christ Kaleidoscope has been a jarring experience for two reasons. 1) People seem to easily get back into the rhythm of talking as if no time has passed for them. It was obviously easier for people who worked from home to relate to one another. In contrast, from the perspective of someone living in what seems to be a liminal space, it was-and still is-hard to be present. It was easier for me to relate with my coworkers and other healthcare workers. 2) Risk factors are understandably, but frustratingly different. Although I hold a pretty safe and conservative view towards COVID-19 safety, it is tough to hold strong safety views in a community full of non-healthcare workers. 

This has led to many thoughts and feelings of displacement for me in Christ Kaleidoscope. If I am to be completely honest, that sense of displacement when I am with people hasn’t fully gone away for me. Yes, I have since worked through it, but it will always linger in the back of my mind. As a result, this caused a sense of loss in my identity and belonging in a church community. In other words, I gave up on my identity as a member of a church community that was taken from me by COVID-19 and quarantine because, throughout this entire pandemic, I was always reminded that I had been living a very different life than most people in CK.  

Theology of Place and Displacement

We live in an era of displacement. Our country has undocumented people who are deported, sent back to a “home country” that many do not consider home. Others live in fear of deportation, trapped in the precarious space of the in-between. We can also use the Russia-Ukraine war as a prime example of displacement found in our world. Displacement raises existential questions (human personhood, meaning, suffering, and belonging) to which the church is called to think theologically and respond to displacement.

The concept of “place” invokes the language of “making room” or “making space”. Within the Christian context, “place” is often defined as socio-spatial communities of creaturely life and is a means of grace by which God reveals himself to us.

What we find in the Christian tradition is a great deal of understanding of “place”. That is, the Christian faith answers the question of how Christianity can be good news in a world of displacement and loss of “place”. Theologically, we answer this question by saying the means of inhabiting creation is God in Christ investing himself in creation and reveals God as thoroughly committed to its good, to make it a place again for the fullness of creaturely life in God’s presence. In other words, the incarnation, death, and resurrection are God’s acts of self-revelation and are demonstrating God’s devotion to be fully present by inhabiting a place of creation. As a result, the risen Christ makes the church his body and calls it to inhabit creation as himself: a bodily manifestation (or eikon) that makes space in creation for creaturely life to flourish.

There And Back Again?

I don’t know if there’s an answer to how we can reconcile the two realities. I think in giving a suggestion or an answer, it would come off as dismissive to how someone might think and feel. I have learned that I’m not a fan of receiving unsolicited advice, so I’m going to avoid giving one out. For that reason, I’m gonna end this post with a Lord of the Rings quote. I think this quote is the necessary language of encouragement and gentle wisdom for people who feel displaced and for people who can make space for others should hear:

Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.“

Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Loss vs Sacrifice

Video games, at their best, are artistically and narratively compelling blockbusters. Often allowing players to be transported into new kinds of realities, perspectives, and mythos that can speak to our human condition. Not many video games masterfully do this well, but there are gems and dialogues that can capture someone’s attention and imagination.

In the last decade or so, YouTube started seeing an increase of videos where people would upload all a video game’s cutscenes and a few gameplays to seamlessly create a movie-like experience. This is great for people like me who want to experience a compelling story without actually playing the game (and at 2 times the speed at that!).

Tomb Raider’s 2013 reboot of a young Lara Croft was one of those games for me. The story begins with Lara, our protagonist, going through an emotional growth arc throughout the game, beginning with a scared young woman washed ashore on a dangerous jungle island to a kick-ass heroine who is prepared to do what is necessary to survive at the end of the story. It is in this kind of media-the circumstance that the protagonist finds herself plays a big role too-that we sometimes get some food for thought on the human condition during an exchange of two characters:

“Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you.”

America and COVID-19

On March 1, 2022, during his State of the Union, President Biden announced the good news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new masking guideline for all Americans- most Americans are now free to not wear masks. He then goes on in his speech to acknowledge what COVID-19 is and has done and what he hopes the future of America would look like.

“We have lost so much to COVID-19. Time with one another. And worst of all, so much loss of life. Let’s use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: A God-awful disease. Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies, and start seeing each other for who we really are: Fellow Americans. We can’t change how divided we’ve been. But we can change how we move forward—on COVID-19 and other issues we must face together. ”

Like Biden, many politicians in the past couple of months have spoken to this idea of moving past COVID-19 and looking forward to the future where we recognize COVID-19 as an “endemic”.

Lent

Lent is a forty-day season of reflection and preparation for the death of Jesus. It is a time of repentance and meditation, of considering Christ’s suffering and rethinking how we are called to take up our own crosses. Some of us give up things like chocolate or television during this season as a sort of fasting. As a result, we are left to rethink how we live and how we want to live. However, Lent is not necessarily a New Year’s resolution for Christians. Yes, we sacrifice and give up certain pleasures and bad habits, not because of self-improvement or righteous piety, but to reorient our lives towards the cross.

Additionally, Lent is not simply about mirroring Jesus’ fasting in the desert for forty-days and the temptations he had by Satan. Lent is a season where we hear, respond, and arrange our lives to Jesus’ call and the cross. It is a season of giving over our lives to Christ in union with his pending death. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best, “when Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die”.

Loss, Sacrifice, COVID-19, and Lent

Dr. Ajita Robinson, a licensed clinical counselor with expertise in grief and trauma defines loss as two categories: “physical loss” and “symbolic loss”. “Physical loss” are things that can be easily named that involve something tangible or something that can be seen. A physical loss can be a death of a loved one or a house due to fire or eviction. “Symbolic loss” on the other hand are things that we can’t see or are intrinsically intangible. A symbolic loss can be losing a sense of control or identity. However, Dr. Robinson states, “we don’t even see them as losses”. She further explains that “the challenging part of the symbolic loss is that we don’t have rituals or built-in support systems for them. So oftentimes they can accumulate when we don’t have the language to name them. This accumulation can trigger the same grief response as a physical loss”.

What does, loss, sacrifice, COVID-19, and Lent have to do with one another? True, the sacrifices that we do as Lenten practices aren’t the same as the kind of physical loss found through the pandemic. However, what this reflection series is getting at (and what I’m hoping that I’m correctly arguing for) is that we gave up on the symbolic losses that were dealt to us by the pandemic.

Whether it was for the sake of politics, mental well-being, technology, routine, etc., like a poker player, we made a calculated choice to sacrifice certain card(s) that the dealer handed to us.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers, nor do I know what we can do from here. It’s simply my reflections and my experience in looking at the past two years. However, maybe looking at COVID-19 as a Lenten experience can allow us to find the necessary language needed during this Lenten season and to live in this new “post-COVID” world.

“Searching for a soulmate takes a long time and requires enormous emotional investment. The problem is that this search for the perfect person can generate a lot of stress. Younger generations face immense pressure to find the “perfect person” that didn’t simply exist in the past when “good enough” was good enough”
– Aziz Ansari

Disclaimer: I forgot to add this to my introductory post: The danger (and my chief worry for this entire project) is that writing these summaries would communicate disdain for these phenomenons I’m describing and I am somehow above it all rather than co-belligerent because I’m writing about it. Rest assured, there is nothing here I am not exploring from the inside. Additionally, I recognize my position here as a man and it is not lost on me.

Romance 101

To fill the empty void by capital-R Religion with regards to our salvation, we have turned to the big story of Romance. Sure enough, the seculosity of romance has now fused our love lives with our quest to be enough – we look to all our spiritual, physical, emotional, and moral needs and focus it into one individual.

Romance in the modern age is much like romance in middle school. In middle school, we believe with our whole hearts that if we are liked by the right people, especially the right girl or boy, we will be enough and have transcended to the next level of “being alive”. Moreover, what we’re looking for in middle school (and in life) is approval – the validation not that we’re loved so much as lovable. As David Zahl writes,

“What sounds like a double bind make a funny kind of sense: if we’re looking to another person to accept us in order to feel good about ourselves, then our attention will be focused on how well or badly we are doing every time we’re around them, and no on the other person themselves. We will be scanning their words and movements for clues about where we stand rather than listening to what they may actually be trying to communicate.”

Self-consciousness is the bane of potential and hopeful relationships and – like middle schoolers – we have forgotten that the person sitting across from us are just as human as we are.

“No Quid Pro Quo”

Often times, if not most, romance can turn into a quid pro quo (you don’t own the word, Mr. Trump). In other words, the language of love and romance is a language of scorekeeping and conditions. “I’ll do this for you because you do that for me.” “I’ll hold up my end of the bargain as long as you hold up yours,” we say. How egalitarian of us! However altruistic our intentions may be, that kind of nonassurance set us up for a life of accounting and is downright manipulative.

In their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), social psychologists Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson describes our fixation on our own self-righteousness:

“The vast majority of couples who drift apart do so slowly, over time, in a snowballing pattern of blame and self-justification. Each partner focuses on what the other one is doing wrong, while justifying his or her preferences, attitudes, and ways of doing things…From our standpoint, therefore, misunderstandings, conflicts, personality differences, and even angry quarrels are not the assassins of love; self-justification is.”

The Sexless Innkeeper

Since the show ended back in early 2014, How I Met Your Mother and its portrayal of the male and female dynamics of romance still continues to perfectly illustrate our culture’s understanding of sex even after 5 years later. In one of the shows comical episodes, the protagonist, Ted, is teased by his more competent and sexually active friend, Barney, for allowing a woman to stay the night without having sex with her. As a result, Barney wrote a poem about how Ted is an innkeeper for women who just need a place to crash and never have sex with him.

How I Met Your Mother is one of many examples that no space plays a more prominent role than the bedroom. Ultimately, we have flipped the traditional religious point of view that is preoccupied with the perils of sexual promiscuity to a secular mindset that is similarly concerned with the perils of chastity.

You. Complete. Me.

Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother is not alone when I say that romantic love has captured our devotion for good reason. As Zahl writes,

“It is the closest most of us will get to transcendence in this life and, as such, is the single best approximation of salvation available to the human creature. the exalted language we employ to extol romantic love fits. We call it enchanting, uplifting, sublime, heavenly, everything and more. [..] Nowhere do we see romance cast as salvation more overtly than in the widespread notion that there’s one special someone out there for each of us, the yin to our yang, a single person who holds the key to both our personal happiness and ultimate fulfillment. As Saint Jerry of Maquire famously opines to his estranged wife, “You. Complete. Me.” The doctrine he was drawing upon is what we might semi-affectionately term the Soulmate Myth.”

Technology has helped open up the field of possible partners and propagate the Soulmate Myth further. As a result, today’s generation is pressured to find the “perfect person”. Anything less than that is settling. As the comedian, Aziz Ansari explains,

“[The internet] doesn’t simply help us find the best thing out there; it has helped produce the idea that there is a best thing and, if we search hard enough, we can find it.”

What Is Love?

What then, after illustrating the pitfalls of our culture’s relationship with romance, does the other side of seculosity of romance look like? Zahl makes the case that love is not what our expectations (or disappointments) might be. He states that we should shift our understanding from “I love you as long as you don’t disappoint me” to “I love you in the midst of our mutual disappointments.” As Zahl states,

“Real love is not something we decide on. Nor is it something we earn. Love is more than something we fall into; it is something we fail into. What sounds like a somewhat more tragic view of life is actually a starting point for compassion, forgiveness, and joy. After all, we stand a better chance of loving our spouse (or neighbor) when we aren’t looking to them to do or be what they cannot do or be.”

This is what the Apostle John meant when he spoke of God is love. Scripture does not eschew romance or deny it a transcendent thrill. Instead, it posits a third model for romance and marriage, not one of expediency or mutual gratification, but of self-emptying and sacrifice.

The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person.  This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage.  It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. […] The primary problem is…learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
– Stanley Hauerwas

“The most purely, proudly American genre of writing might be the to-do list”
– Parul Sehgal

The consequences of seculosity is that we have become a society searching for a sense of “being enough” in our everyday achievements. In other words, we begin justifying our lives by what we do and how we perform.

One of the great contributions of my generation – go Millennials! – is the brilliant gift called “memes”. To the uninitiated, a “meme” is a picture that has an image and statement that describes a particular idea, behavior, or style that is easily identifiable within a culture.

Often times a meme like this one is followed by, “#Mood”, “everyday”, “my life”, or “Amen” – a recognition that our fast paced modern life is a shared experience among people anywhere and everywhere.

I am hardly the first person to note how ubiquitous busyness has become part of our day-to-day. With parents working full-time jobs and driving their kids to extracurricular activities or young adults working 60-80 hours a week and making time to spend time with family and friends, no wonder we find solidarity in Cruella Deville’s crazed look! Either we have no time at all or we are trying to “save time”. We measure “the good life” in miles driven, productivity hacks, and checking off boxes on our to-do list. As a result, we have lulled ourselves into believing tha being busy is to be valuable, desired, and justified. It signals importance, and, therefore, enoughness.

As David Zahl writes,

“The demands on our time, and for our attention, only seem to increase with each passing year, growing ever more frenetic and unforgiving. Advertisers have begun to talk of the dawn of “the attention economy” for good reason. Some chalk the escalation up to a changing global economy, some to smart technology, some to post-Christian spiritual restlessness. Whatever the case, “busy” is no longer the sole purview of high-octane professionals and parents of toddlers. Everyone I know is busy, and hardly anyone frames it as a conscious choice. If anything, it feels like the only means of survival. […] The more frantic the activity, the better. The implication, of course, is that if we’re not over-occupied, we are inferior to those who are. Busyness has become a virtue in and of itself.”

Being busy is attractive because 1) it allows us to feel like we’re advancing on the path of life 2) while distracting us from less pleasant realities like uncertainty and death. Additionally, we see our busy life and exhaustion as a benchmark and a status symbol – a public display of a full life.

David Zahl makes it clear that what lies at the root of chronic busyness is performancism.

“Performancism is the assumption, usually unspoken, that there is no distinction between what we do and who we are. Your resume isn’t a part of your identity, it is your identity. What makes you lovable, indeed what makes your life worth living, is your performance at X, Y, or Z. Performancism holds that if you are no doing enough, or doing enough well, you are not enough. At least, you are less than those who are “killing it.”

If this sounds eerily familiar in regards to our favorite passtimes, then it should. Sports like Basketball, Football, Baseball, Soccer, Racing, Swimming, and Rock Climbing are all activities that athletes have to perform and achieve X, Y, or Z – if they are not doing well enough, then they are not good enough. Maybe as a culture we have integrated our criteria of athletes and sports teams to our daily lives.

If the world of professional sports doesn’t hit home for some of you (or at all), then we can look at experiences that are familiar: school and social media.

Grades and Likes are barometers that point to a full and good life. We ascribe a lot of power to a single grade or the amount of likes we get with good reason. Nevertheless, one failure on an exam or less likes may be all it takes to confirm some of our deeper doubts we harbor for ourselves.

“Performancism turns life into a competition to be won (#winning) or a problem to be solved, as opposed to, say, a series of moments to be experienced or an adventure to relish. Performancism invests daily task with existential significance and turn even menial activities into measures of enoughness. The language of performancism is the language of scorekeeping, and just like the weight scale or the calendar, it knows no mercy. When supercharged by technology, the results can even be deadly.”

The Church is not cut off from this phenomenon. In fact, we have grafted the seculosity of busyness and performancism from the world into our church culture. Whether we are trying to outdo one another in good-works, either out of charity or acts of devotion, we instinctively see our spiritual resume as the ticket for God’s approval. Additionally, we can’t help but measure ourselves – and others – and give value to those who are “busy” serving the church. This is not to say we should serve less or not encourage others, but we need to recognize that we have baptize the language and theology of busyness with Capital-R Religion

The Apostle Paul is right when he said that no one is valued higher than another – we are all equals at the foot of the cross.

“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Galatians 3:26-29 NIV

“But what if instead of distracting ourselves, we simply stopped? What if we said no more often? What would happen if we slowed down?
We could begin to live ordindary time well.”
– Ashley Hales

Now that I’m finished with my program and taking some time off from school, I have more time to read choicebooks instead of textbooks. Thus, as I am entering this short season of rest, I am able to spend a little more time in writing. Interestingly enough (and not on purpose), the choicebooks that I am currently reading all seem to have a common thread to them and I am now finally wrapping my head around those thoughts and ideas that are increasingly growing by each passing day. The hope is to write one blog post a week in regards to one particular book that Ken has mentioned recently.

Author David Zahl’s remarkable book, Seculosity, makes it clear that the spiritual crisis of our age is that we are not less religious, but in fact more religious than ever before. We have simply migrated our religious-like fervor for salvation to certain things in our daily world to validate our “enoughness”.

There are some terms that need to be parse out in order to move forward with this series. Hopefully this will help anyone who reads these posts.

First, Capital-R Religion and lower-R religion has very two distinctive meanings. Imagery of robes, kneeling, and Buddy Christ are what we might call Capital-R Religion. Lower-R religion is when we direct our longings to a particular activity to tell us we are okay, that our lives matter, and there is a purpose spending our days climbing towards a dream of wholeness.

Secondly, Zahl’s unique term, seculosity, comes from marrying both ‘secular’ and ‘religiosity’. It is our attempt to fill the void left by religion to look to what is ubiquitous – from eating and parenting to dating and voting – for the meaning once provided on Sunday morning.

Lastly, ‘Performancism’ is the idea that who we are is defined by what we do. It is when we tie our identity and value directly to our performance and achievements. It follows that ‘enoughness’ must come from reaching some level of accomplishment. That is, as Zahl’s writes, “we believe instinctively that, were we to reach some benchmark in our minds, then value, vindication, and love would be ours – that if we got enough, we would be enough.”

Scripture and the Apostle Paul use a different word to describe our ‘enoughness’: righteousness. Modern language defines righteousness as “a behavior that is morally justifiable or right”; however, righteousness is sometimes translate in Scripture to mean “the state that is acceptable/approved by God”. In other words, our righteousness (or enoughness) has already been found.

For the next 9-10 weeks, I will be giving summaries of each chapter along with sprinkled reflections of my own. I hope you can join with me on this journey!

***WARNING***: Writing on both 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2 would be way too long of a post. For the sake of my own sanity, I’ve condensed my thoughts. I did not realize how ambitious this series would be.

Preface

The difficulty of writing about women within the context of Christianity is the inevitability of addressing the more controversial, yet baffling passages that Christians continue to fight over. 50% of Christians love these passages and the other 50% resent them. As a result, there’s a few things I need to bring up before I jump into the crux of the post. 1) Paul’s epistles are almost always in response to particular circumstances or controversy (Ephesians being the exception). For example, in 1 Corinthians Paul covered a number of different issues: divisions and quarrels, sexual immorality, lawsuits among believers, marriage and singleness, freedom in Christ, order in worship, the significance of the Lord’s Supper, the right use of spiritual gifts, and the resurrection. 2) What is challenging about reading Paul’s epistles are the many voices that are influencing Paul’s words. That is to say, because Paul is responding to particular congregations’ understanding of Christianity, Paul will often reference those communities’ thoughts and words in his own writing. Parsing out what Paul is saying among the many voices is hard; even among scholars, there isn’t an agreement on a “correct” interpretation. 3) Therefore, as Christians, we should avoid running the risk of “explaining” Paul in terms that might make sense to us while ignoring what he himself is saying. It’s tempting to do that precisely because in our western culture we don’t like the implications of:

“A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man.” (1 Corinthians 11:7-8 NIV)

1 Corinthians 11

1 Corinthians 11:7-8 seems to place man in a position of superiority, to which women must submit to being second-class. More importantly, it gives a sense of structure or arrangement to Creation. God>man>woman. This make sense when reading Genesis 2 story; God made Adam, then God made Eve. Man came first, then woman after. Therefore, man is senior to woman. Okay, that’s the end of my post. That’s it. The End. Just kidding!

The Greek word for “glory” is often translates to “splendor, majesty, honor, or excellence”. And the Greek word for “image” often denotes “representation” or “manifestation”. Therefore, 1 Corinthians 11:7-8 logic seems to state that men are the physical representation or manifestation of God’s grandeur, but women come close to it; only because women come from men. Basically, the verses are stating men are similar to Jesus.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14 NIV)

The question we, as Christians, need to ask ourselves is, “is this good theology?”. The short answer is a resounding “no”. Why? One way to understand Paul’s words in this chapter (and specifically these two verses) is to look at the Creation story against the Genesis 2’s story.

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1: 26-27 NIV)

Genesis 1 states that both men and women are made in God’s image. This is significant because it’s declaring that the individuals of a community, made up of men and women who live out God’s story together, are equally representing of God’s glory. Therefore, it is both men and women who are the physical representation of God; not just the men or the women, but both. In other words, as the german theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

“The Church is the physical manifestation of Christ (and/or God) on Earth.”

1 Timothy 2

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this passage is the foundation for those who want to deny women a place in the ordained ministry of the church, with full responsibilities for preaching, presiding at the Eucharist, and exercising leadership within congregations. When people say that the Bible embodies patriarchal ideas and attitudes, this passage (particularly verse 12) is often held up as the prime example.

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:11-12 NIV)

As you read 1 Timothy 2 in its entirety, you pick up a very standard view of how everyone imagines men and women ought to behave. Men are macho, loud-mouthed, arrogant thugs, always fighting and wanting their own way. Women are empty-headed creatures, with nothing to think about except clothes and jewelry. There are “Christian” versions of this too: the men must make the decisions, run the show, always be in the lead, telling everyone what to do; women must stay at home and bring up the children.

I fully acknowledge that the very different reading I’m going to suggest may sound as though I’m simply trying to make things easier for myself; trying to fit Paul into our culture. There is good, solid biblical work behind what I’m going to say and I genuinely believe that it may be the right interpretation.

It is important to recognize that the passage is commanding that women, too, should be allowed to study and learn, and should not be restrained from doing so in verse 11. They are to be “in full submission”; this is often taken to mean ‘to the men”, or “to their husbands“, but it is more likely that it refers to their attitude, as learners, of submitting to God or to the gospel – which of course would be true for men as well. Then verse 12 should not be read as “I do not allow a woman to teach or hold authority over a man”. It means (and in context this makes much more sense to me) “I don’t mean to imply that I’m now setting up women as the new authority over men in the same way that men previously held authority over women”. In other words, what Paul is saying, like Jesus in Luke 10, that women must have the space and leisure to study and learn in their own way, so that men and women alike can develop and share whatever gifts of learning, teaching and leadership among each other.

A great example of this is the story of Phoebe. For those of you who don’t know her story, Phoebe was a first-century Christian woman that Paul has designated as a deacon. The word “deacon” in Paul’s writings sometimes refers to a Christian designated to serve with the overseers of the church or “servants” in a general sense. However, Paul’s use of the term “deacon”, in regards to Phoebe specifically, suggest that Phoebe’s ministry may have extended beyond charitable works to include preaching and evangelization. In other words, she would’ve read Paul’s letters and answer all questions in Paul’s place among a congregation of men and women. Teaching and leading God’s people.

Preface

A few introductory remarks before I dive into the topic at hand. First, this subject matter is not an area of primary research for me and many of you will probably know the literature much better than I do, but there are one or two things I may be able to add to the subject. Even then, it will be a fraction of what has been said on this subject. Secondly, I don’t know if we need another Christian man to tell us how we ought to think about women within the Christian context, however, this has been something I have thought about for years and always wanted to do a post/talk on this topic. desire to write a post vs. uncertainty in navigating gender role/climate? Lastly, I get a little nervous about the word “egalitarianism”. I recognize and understand what is being said of course. I think part of my anxiousness is that our culture is so polarized; that a decision on one point commits us into a specific group. The other part of it is that egalitarianism is a hope without the knowledge of, as NT Wright calls, “our freedom in Christ”. What NT Wright means by “our freedom in Christ” is, the hope that is found on the cross points to a completely separate “philosophy” that is outside of (or not constrained by) egalitarianism. Egalitarianism states that all humans should either get the same or be treated as the same in respects to political, economical, social, and civil rights status. As Christian, maybe we start our understanding of equality, not by “should be the same”, but by “already the same”. “Already the same” as in there is no gender (or race). There is only, individuals, human beings, creatures, God’s people, community, etc. In other words, as the Apostle Paul writes:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 NIV)

Galatians 3:28

Th book of Galatians is about The Law vs grace. Who is considered inheritors and part of God’s family and who is not. The point Paul is making in the book of Galatians is that God has one family and this family consists of all those who believe in Jesus; this is the family God promised to Abraham and The Law can’t stand in the way of this unity which is now revealed through Jesus. However, the book of Galatians (and more importantly this particular verse) is not at all about how we could relate to one another within this family; it is about the fact that the ground is even at the foot of the cross.

Interestingly, as to the English Standard Version, Paul is a lot clearer in what he is conveying:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 ESV)

The ESV is considered essentially a “literal” translation that tries to capture the precise wording of the original text. As such, it emphasizes on “word-for-word” correspondence. It’s interesting that Paul is stating ‘no male and female’ rather than using another neither/nor statement. “Neither…nor” is a sentence structure that is used to connect the same kind of word or phrase in the sentence and it make it a negative statement about two things. For example:

“Neither the Houston Rockets nor the Portland Trail Blazers will be able to beat the Golden State Warriors”.

To put it in another way, both teams, unfortunately, will not win against the Golden State Warriors. Not this team and not the other. The verse from the NIV is essentially stating the same thing as the ESV verse, but what’s fascinating, at least for me, is Paul in the ESV is emphatically saying “no” instead of using the same “neither…nor” pattern.

Gospels

We can’t ignore the fact that Jesus chose twelve male apostles. There were all kinds of reasons for this within the practical and cultural world in which they worked and lived in. But every time this point is made, we need to remember that the disciples all forsake Jesus and ran away; and it was the women who came first to the tomb, who were the first to see the risen Jesus.

The Greek word for “apostle” is “one who is sent off”. It refers to an emissary or anyone sent on a mission. As a result, an apostle becomes an ambassador of the one who sent him/her. A representative or promoter of a particular news. We frequently think of the twelve disciples and Paul when we think of the word “apostle”. Then we remember that there are other people that hold the title ‘Apostle’. Andronicus, Junia (a woman), James, Barnabas, Apollos, Timothy, Silvanus, and Epaphroditus. But what makes these particular people, the non-original twelve, “apostles”? More importantly, what qualifies someone, like Mary Magdalene, to be an apostle?

Essentially, it boils down to three criterias:

• To have seen Jesus after the resurrection

• Received the the good news (i.e. Jesus has risen), not through any other means, but through Christ himself

• Is tasked to go and tell others the good news that Jesus is risen

This is incredibly significant because this makes Mary Magdalene, not only ‘The First Apostle’, but it also makes her the ‘Apostle to the Apostles’. If an apostle is a witness to the resurrected Christ and is commissioned to tell that Jesus has risen, then there were women, like Mary, who deserved the title of apostle before the men did.

The promotion of women is not a totally new thing with the resurrection. We see this during Jesus’ public ministry, the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. Most of us commonly think of this story in terms of Martha is the active one and Mary is the passive or contemplative one when it comes to having guests in our home; and that Jesus is simply affirming the priority of devotion to him. That devotion is part of the importance of the story, but the far more obvious fact for any first-century reader would be that Mary should be in the back room like every other women. Instead she was sitting where men at the time typically sit. This, I am pretty sure, is what really bothered Martha. Of course Martha was upset about being left to do all the work, but the real problem behind it was that Mary had cut clean across one of the most basic social norms. (One example of this is, if you were to invite me to stay in your house and, when it came to bedtime, I set up my bed in your bedroom. We have our own clear, but unspoken rules about our spaces and so did they). Mary ‘sitting at his feet’ is a phrase that is commonly understood today as the adoring student gazing up in admiration and love at the wonderful teacher. However, to sit at the teacher’s feet is a way of saying you are being a student, picking up the teacher’s wisdom and learning. You wouldn’t do this just for the sake of informing your own mind, but in order to be a teacher yourself.

One of Game of Thrones main female character, Arya Stark, is a great example of how a character subverts cultural norms. For those of you who haven’t read the book or watched the show, the weight of oppression on women in the world of Game of Thrones is demonstrated most clearly in Arya as she repeatedly criticizes the restrictions placed upon her by her gender. She lacks any interest in needlework, but is punished for her refusal to engage in the skill or any other activities for her gender. What makes Arya Stark a compelling character is that she echoes much of Mary Magdalene in the Gospels. That is to say, Arya refused to acknowledge gender roles of her society and actively took interests in male-only activities. Much like Mary did.

I’ll have Part 2 out next week

I wanted to do a short series where we reflect on the stories and lyrics behind certain hymns. In order to get the most out of this series, it is recommended that you 1) read the lyrics while listening to the song, 2) read the Story, Thoughts, and Reflection parts of the post, and then 3) read and listen the song once more.

O Love that will not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee;

I give thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

O Light that followest all my way,

I yield my flickering torch to thee;

My heart restores its borrowed ray,

That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day

May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust life’s glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be.

Story

George Matheson (1842-1906) suffered poor eyesight from birth. At age 15, Matheson learned that he was going blind. He had an incurable condition that would eventually result in total blindness and there was nothing that could be done to help him. However, Matheson was not one to be easily discouraged, he enrolled in the University of Glasgow and graduated at age 19. Whilst at University, he had met and fallen in love with a girl who was a fellow student and they were planning to get married.

He broke the news of his impending blindness to her. To his astonishment and deep sadness her blunt answer came to him like a dagger to his heart, “I do not want to be the wife of a blind man” she said – and with that they parted.

Years later the memory of that repudiation came flooding back on the evening of Matheson’s sister’s marriage. His whole family had went to the wedding and had left him alone. And he writes during his immense anguish. In the darkness of that moment George Matheson wrote this hymn. He remarked afterward that it took him five minutes and that it was the only hymn he ever wrote that required no editing.

Each of the four stanzas begins with a key word—Love, Light, Joy and Cross—that are not only attributes to our relationship with Christ, but also names we give to Christ.

The Cross is the theme of the concluding stanza. Through Christ’s suffering on the cross “blossoms red”. Love, Light, and Joy that comes out of sacrifice—the sacrificial life which blossoms by shedding itself.

Thoughts

In modern English, the word “hope” means “to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence” or “that events will turn out for the best”. In other words, optimism. Does that mean hope and optimism are the same thing? Is hope as simple as having a specific kind of mindset? In our world of Teslas, retirement plans, and Trump, modern people (and Christians) no longer remember how to speak of ‘hope’. More precisely, we have lost the language of articulating what ‘hope’ is.

Hope has become simply a wish for a positive outcome in some future event in our modern language. But if hope is wishful thinking, it might easily be misconstrued as some kind of optimistic defense mechanism in response to the human condition. That is, hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls of life because hope has no delusions of the present reality. While the ideas of hope and optimism share similar characteristics, only hope can bear the weight of the despair and desperation.

There was period in my life where despair and death were two friends I welcomed expectantly. In such a short amount of time, people I loved were passing away due to cancer, lifestyle choices, and unexpectant circumstances. I had no time to finish processing each person’s passing because death knocked again and again. Thus, I ended up struggling to process the death of my grandmother, uncle, cousin, and a close friend at the same time. It would be easy to write that I had some sort of hope in the midst of all this, but in truth I was in a great deal of despair. At the time, hope was hard for me to grasp onto. It was only by going back to the story of the resurrection I found hope once again.

The resurrection (or more specifically New Creation) paints a picture of our ultimate aim or goal as Christians (telos). As the Apostle John writes,

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4)

This is a beautiful picture, however, there is a danger of seeing New Creation as an overly optimistic worldview. That is to say, it can be a slippery slope (at least for me it can be!) to see the resurrection AND New Creation as an attempt to turn our eyes away from the despair and suffering we see in world (and in our lives) and say “it will be made right”.

Therefore, the Christian life is not about ignoring despair through wishful thinking or seeing our lives as an one act story. It is about being present in despair and point to an expectation in the midst of that despair. This is essentially our faith: holding both hope and despair together.

Reflection

Take 30 seconds to 1 minute to reflect on what you read and your thoughts. After you finish reflecting, go back to Step 1 and listen to the song once more.