Latent Possibilities

Monday, June 25, 2007

Blue Man Group

Went to the windy city over the weekend and experienced the Blue Man Group--an interactive multimedia event that incorporates drumming, humor, science, and improv. It was fantastic. As I walked away from the theater, the word "worshipful" came to mind. The experience, for one thing, is very communal. The audience shares in activities together as one body, so that while I was there by myself, I felt like I was a part of something. And for another, the Blue Men are all about playing with creation, enjoying its fruit, learning from it, etc. in a way that I found downright eschatalogical. They are insatiably curious characters. What if eternal life means doing our level best to keep learning from and joyfully experimenting with God's divinely pervaded world? What if we thought of curiosity as a virtue?

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Luke Timothy Johnson on Homosexuality

Doing some good reading.

Of note is Luke Timothy Johnson's interpretation (Reading Romans) of Paul's comments on homosexuality in Romans 1:18ff. He points out in his book that Paul's exegesis is fairly clear: he stands in a long Jewish tradition that has uniformly pronounced homosexuality to be sin. That's fairly clear from the text. But Johnson points out that our struggles today are on a hermeneutical level, not an exegetical level. In other words, the question is not really, what did Paul mean? The question is, how do we apply to our current situation what Paul meant? For example, Paul was decrying homosexuality as the choice of naturally heterosexual people. That, it seems to me, is a different homosexuality that what we see prevalent today. Many studies indicate that for minority of people, homosexuality is not the result of mere choice, but of nature. Paul also assumes in his context that homosexuality is incompatible with a committed covenental relationship. Does this assumption hold for today?

In other words, homosexuality in antiquity was a different entity than it is today, at least in many cases.

Johnson mentioned in class that sex wasn't really about love or marriage in antiquity. Bisexuality was prevalent. It was not at all uncommon for a married man to have sex with his wife and his slaves, both male and female. So he speaks from w/in a very different world. The thing, the behavior, Paul was using as an illustration for blatant sin, is NOT the behavior we witness today. Homosexuality then is not homosexuality now, or at least the similarities are not within the realm of contemporary ecclesial discourse. Sure, there are heterosexuals who choose to have sex with members of the same sex, and, sure, there does exist a homosexual subculture in this country that is promiscuous and flagrant (just as such a culture of heterosexuality exists). I don't hear many in the church--gay or not--arguing that this kind of activity should be allowed in the church because it is creative, restorative, and redemptive to the human person. Nobody in their right mind would argue that.

What some folks argue is that homosexuality is NATURAL for some people. Why should we disapprove of monogamous relationship among these folks? This kind of homosexuality was not in Paul's view. It would have been utterly foreign to him.

So, in light of this, what should the church say? That's the question.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Safely ensconced...

Back again for another round of classes under "The Dome." I'm taking Romans with Luke Timothy Johnson and Liturgical Prayer with John Melloh. Looking fwd to it. So far the reading for the prayer class is far and away more engaging than that of the other. But one text for the Romans class is promising. It's by Katherine Grieb, I think, though I can't remember the title. ANd it's whole point is to excavate the narrative substructure of Romans. Grieb's thesis is that story is everywhere in Romans if we have eyes to see it. Cool. Much cooler than thinking of it as merely a theological treatise. Anyway, we'll see...

Two classes this time. That means hell. I might as well admit now that I'm not going to get all the reading done, especially if I'm going to work in a train trip to Chicago. And frankly, I think the Chicago trip is in the end more important than these classes. I hope I can pull it off.

My goal here is to learn something, not make an A. I feel like I should write that about a thousand times until I really believe it. Why this need to ace my classes? It's really kind of dumb. What drives me nuts is how grades and an education often seem at cross purposes. In other words, I'm likely to learn more and have an all-around better experience if I simply put grades out of my mind. As soon as I start shaping my studying behaviors to make an A, my actual education is in peril--or at least I'm headed in a direction that will likely be less educational than if I pay grades no mind.

We'll see how it goes.