Theology 7372, Fall 2009

Here’s what I learned in India: just about anything you say about Hinduism is true. You say it’s a religion? Someone will agree. You say it’s not and it’s a cultural system? Someone will agree. You say it’s entirely about reincarnation? Someone will agree. You say it’s entirely about caste? Well, you get the picture.

(this is a bit of a long post, so I’m putting in a break here for those who could not care less.)

We read several books and articles before we left, but if I said that I understood Hinduism, I’d be lying. In order for me to feel like I’ve really blogged about India, I clearly need to address this beast which is interwoven with every moment of life there, but I am not super qualified to be explanatory. Because I am a full service blogger, I googled around and found these sources for anyone looking for a deeper explanation.

• Hinduism Today is a magazine available online. The site includes editorials and other such insight, including their “What is Hinduism” PDF which seems well done.
• I feel like About.Com is always a fairly reliable place to start and it appears that their article on Hinduism is no exception.
• From a religious tolerance website out of Canada, this also is a decent explanation.

As far as I can tell from readings, conversations and attending a few worship services, Hinduism is largely about practice, devotion (bhakti) and the way one orders their lives more than it is about having a particular belief system. A person will often worship the god(s) worshipped by their family, perhaps praying to some others for special occasions. The god worshipped may also be attached to the physical location where one lives. So, remember, Key to Hinduism #1: How you behave is more important than who you believe in. Especially because who you believe in is allowed to change. Not kidding.

This is key because of the concept of Dharma. Dharma is above diety and above sin, a completely separate thing. The chief concern is respecting others and giving them the freedom to grow in their own space and time. While sin breaks relationship with god (yes, there is a concept of sin), dharma breaks relationship with the universe. It is FAR MORE IMPORTANT to respect the universe than to be right in a conversation.

To put it another way – most Hindus are completely comfortable with theological dissonance. If I believe in Jesus, they’re thrilled for me, but that doesn’t mean they need to. I can be right and they can be right and those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. This idea begs the question of the contributions of culture to psychological development, but that’s a different conversation. So, Key to Hinduism #2: Being in community is more important than being right.

Once we get past these two points, it gets murky. Even within these two points, it gets murky. Because for as many books as I read that convinced me of the community point, I can’t really understand how caste doesn’t violate that. India is both deeply communal and highly individual and I’m not positive how to articulate that.

However, as one of our tour guides told us, Hinduism is impossible to understand and easy to practice. Most Hindus have never read the basic Scriptures or have any idea of how many gods there are in the pantheon (3.3 million, give or take). They’re unaware of dissonance and frustration. They simply live their lives in the rhythms of the faith passed down to them from their ancestors. If Grandma worshipped Shiva, likelihood is that you do as well. Beyond that point, most people I met don’t analyze their faith. This, of course, is a stark contrast to our own faith system.

There is clearly more to talk about: karma and caste being the two chief. I have myraids of questions about the origins of the pantheon and the general treatment of women under Hinduism. And as I stated above: you’ll meet people who deeply disagree with me about all of the above. I am simply reporting it as I understand it and reserve the right to amend this observations. However, in the midst of the questions, there are points of respect. One cannot help – especially when traveling through Varanassi or attending a worship service anywhere in the country – but be impressed by the level of devotion and the way spiritually has wrapped through their lives. I do not have the same story and have much to learn in that area from persons who follow this system.

Up next? Cramming thousands of years of history into a blog post. Get excited.

In Cross-Cultural class this week, we read an excellent article by Henry Smith regarding ancestor practices in Hong Kong. He raises many questions about how ancestor worship is being handled among the church of H.K and how perhaps those perceptions should change. The crux of the conversation circles the balance between tradition, culture and movement in new directions. Smith talks about the need for an “imaginative faith” that serves the “companionship of mutual services to society”.

There are many points to be made from this article, but the one I’d like to focus on is his point that healthy focus on ancestors can help people fulfill the biblical commandment of honoring parents. In the West, we have often let kinship ties die unnecessarily in favor of other ties and bonds. The idea of honoring parents and ancestors is one that we find antiquated, or just a lesson for unruly children. If we could incorporate this idea – connection to those that have gone before us – perhaps we would have deeper senses of community and connectedness.

We often have this misguided idea that following faith means abandoning your entire existing life. While at times that may be necessary, more often than not, it isn’t. A question that we raise in class is around whether true conversion – to any faith system – can happen without community. If you are converted outside the context of your community, will your faith ever be truly contextualized to your culture? Or will you abandon your culture for the one you’re entering into? What is that balance? If we ask people from deeply familial cultures to convert away from their family – how is that respecting their personhood and helping them become the best versions of themselves?

Anyway, these are just questions I throw out into the void. If I ever arrive at answers, I’ll let you know.

an entry in my ‘month of hope’ series

disclaimer: I know this is going to seem like brown-nosing, but I’m fairly sure Dr. Stroope has never seen my blog and don’t expect that to change any time soon.

I have many people and places in my life that offer me hope, as I am explaining over the course of this month. One voice, however, which has become increasingly prominent over the past months is that of Dr. Michael Stroope, professor of Global Christianity at Truett.

In the midst of several personal traumas over the past few seasons, Dr. Stroope has been a consistent voice of hope for me and others regarding both the created order and the Bride and Body of Christ. I offer his blog as a voice into this month-long meditation on hope.

Jesus says destroy this temple and I’ll rebuild it
he insists that his execution would not be the end
he’s talking about something new and unexpected
happening after his death
he’s talking about resurrection

resurrection announces that God has not given up on the world
because this world matters
this world that we call home
dirt and blood and sweat and skin and light and water
this world that God is redeeming and restoring and renewing

greed and violence and abuse they are not right
and they cannot last
they belong to death and death does not belong

resurrection says that what we do with our lives matters
in this body
the one that we inhabit right now
every act of compassion matters
every work of art that celebrates the good and the true matters
every fair and honest act of business and trade
every kind word
they all belong and they will all go on in God’s good world
nothing will be forgotten
nothing will be wasted
it all has it’s place

- from Rob Bell’s new video: Resurrection. head on over to rob’s website for the fantastic video of rob presenting these ideas…

As I’m sure many of you have been, I’ve been following the recent developments regarding the situation with Pope Benedict and the cover-up of sexual abuse he oversaw. As someone who grew up with many Catholic friends and know a few people who were directly affected by this in both the United States and Ireland, this is not the first time I’ve had to grieve this reality. I also watched an excellently done documentary a year or so ago about this issue and was deeply affected by it. I’m left with myriads of questions – as many of us are – including how to deal with the relationship between faith and power.

As I read this article this morning in the NYTimes, I was reminded of the dynamic tension present in our faith of the already and not yet. In the liturgical church calendar, today we continue mourning the death. We sit and rest in the realities of Good Friday; that the Son of God was crucified as a common criminal and the victim of a broken and unjust creation. As Christians, we are often to quick to rush to Sunday – to live in victory of resurrection. Clearly, I find that to be appropriate.

But today is Saturday. Today we should still pause to remember that the world is broken and to mourn and grieve and sort out how to live in the midst of ugliness and destruction. For while tomorrow is a reality in so many areas, yesterday is a reality in just as many. As persons of Christian faith, we cling to the hope that the Kingdom has come and is coming. We believe we have roles to play in that and we celebrate victory every week as we gather. However, as we do that, we have a history of ignoring Friday and Saturday. We tend to be uncomfortable with sitting in grievous silences and dealing with pain. We casually tell people that Sunday is coming without remembering that hope can be nothing but a cheap raft to those in the sea of doubt. We must learn to hold pain and faith in tension.

May we grieve with our brothers and sisters, historically and globally, who have been victimized by the power wielded by organized religion. May we be voices of hope that their experiences and pain are not true activities of the true Kingdom, but may we also be humbled by the actions of others. May we remember that Saturday is a terminal reality for many people and that Sunday is not a Hallmark anticdote, but a hope we must cling to for them when they cannot. May we live in faith and grace and hope and love.

start the clip at 8:48

I love the worlds that Aaron Sorkin creates and the one of Sports Night is certainly no exception. There are a lot of beautiful themes of reconciliation and forgiveness that are woven throughout this entire episode that only serve to deeply highlight the meanings of the holiday – but you would have to know the metanarrative to understand them and I don’t want to bore anyone.

While this is one of the few cinematic showings of Passover, this is still my favorite. I love how they, as a community, re-tell the story in their own vernacular: contextualizing it, as it were. I love that they celebrate the holiness as a family and as a people. For truly, the echoes of Passover is the creation of a people and it therefore must be celebrated in community. The seder is a group event and echoes a group event. It is some of that spirit that the CSC family emulates in this clip.

And it must be said : if you haven’t seen Sports Night do so immediately. I’m not kidding.

As a social worker, I am often concerned with the imbalance of power that is present in the world. I pursued a degree in community practice because I see that field as one of the best ways to reorder that imbalance. However, reordering the world is exhausting and frustrating and feels often futile. After reading through Jeremiah this morning, I think he would agree.

Jeremiah serves as an excellent template for ministers and social workers and humans who are trying to navigate the same waters now. His answer? Speak truth to power, but do it well and do it collectively. We must love where we live and constantly engage it – seeking to reorder the best we can. Speak for the ignored, the powerless and the broken. Rejoice when justice is served. Be a collective and communal voice and participate in the ushering in of the Kingdom.

I think it’s because there is much emotional overlap between the context of Jeremiah and our current context that his words become easy to prooftext and take completely out of context (29:11 comes to mind immediately). We need to fight this instinct and consume the wisdom as a whole. For there are overlaps and issues of gross injustice being acted out both then and now. Our job is to take Jeremiah as a starting place and add our own colors to his rainbow.

In the midst of the groaning and wailing and mourning and readjusting reality, I believe my favorite section is 30-33, when Jeremiah envisions the new Jerusalem. Note that he doesn’t look for a do-over of the current world order – he imagines a new world built with entirely new blocks. Jeremiah’s God is a god of doing new things and redeeming the sackcloth for the silk. Jeremiah yearns for that world and signs up to do whatever it takes to bring that world about. That must be our reaction as well.

…to be a Jew is to remember…

By the time we hit Isaiah, the “nation” of Israel is an awkward collection of peoples who have been in exile and who are about to be flung back into it again. The line of David has been destroyed (so they think) and there is no peace or security in their lives. The people are clinging to the idea of a Messiah as the only hope for anything to change. There are some parallels I can draw to many current people groups in the 21st century, but I will refrain.This loss of identity is why the constant refrain at the end of the book is to remember.

I remember once asking one of my Jewish friends to make a statement about what it meant to be a Jew. He looked at me quizzically and gave me a sarcastic answer about Manischevitz and turned up the volume on the radio. A few days later, however, he came back to me and responded that to be a Jew is to remember. To remember the Exodus and the blood on the doorposts and to remember the Temple and to remember the promises made the forefathers. If you loose memory, he explained, you would loose what it means to be Jewish.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I’ve been examining Islam in Religion & Worldviews with Dr. Stroope. The Islamic concept of sin is forgetfulness. If a Muslim were to forget the words of Al’lah or the importance of the ummah or the specific orthopraxies of Islam – they would be living in sin. I think my Jewish friend would find resonance in that.

In Christianity, we cling to a fairly Grecian understanding of sin : “to miss the mark”, to fail, to let God down, to be prideful. I wonder if, in fact, we should frame it instead as a loss of memory. We have forgotten who we are and have therefore forgotten how to behave and to whom we belong. We have lost our collective memory and are therefore content to settle for the lowest common denominator of behavior and morals. Perhaps we should heed the warnings of Isaiah to remember – remember from where we have come and who brought us through those waters.

I’ve been hitting a writing dry spell lately in regards to reflections on Scripture. While I respect and completely understand the need to draw my inspiration for life and means directly from the words of canonical Scripture; I often find it hard or even impossible to do so. My history and baggage with canonical Scripture and how it has been used and abused in my world and history often provides serious roadblocks to my ability to glean truth and guidance directly from it.

After reading through Isaiah this past week, I found had a hard time moving past the previous interpretations that had been spoken over me. I found the pastors of my adolescence and collegiate life still informing what I was reading and am still having a hard time moving past that. While I’m not quite sure how to move past that for Isaiah, I plan on reading some other wise people to offer dissenting opinions so that I can sort through what I possibly believe.

Since college, as I have searched out my own faith expressions, I have had to search out various voices. Much like how I often need four or five voices in the decisions of my own life, I often need multiple voices as I search out my faith. Those voices are often fictional. I make the joke that I learned more about Jesus from reading Narnia than I did from reading the Bible, but the truth is actually not that far off. My eschatology has been formed by The Great Divorce, my missiology has been shaped by The Poisonwood Bible and my understanding of community was aided by the repeated readings of The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. Mock or judge, but it’s truth. I understand the world through story, whether they be the stories of lived lives or the weavings of talented tellers.

For instance, I read Sara Miles’ new book, Jesus Freak, while on the flight home from Spring Break. Her candor and honesty in the midst of her life and her faith jolted me into a fresh new place. I’ll put up a full review in a few days.

In my travels and wanderings, I have often wondered how societies rebulid themselves after communal atrocities. Not only legally, but emotionally. For instance, women in rural Rwanda in the fall of 1994. How did they live life among the new realities of their country?

One of the messy bits of it is the whole idea of forgetting and remembering. How does a people group process life as it currently is in light of what it was. The idea of memory is one of the key conversations happening in N. Ireland. How do we ask people to automatically trust people from an opposite mindset or community?

These questions and the myriad of answers to them have crawled under my skin and fascinated me for years now. Over Spring Break, I read a lawyer’s take on reconciliation and truth commissions and other such things. One of the points she continually makes is that the ‘past continues to torment because it is not the past’. We live in shadows and swirls of the past caught up in the present. We don’t just do this in massive issues like a post-conflict society, we do this in life. The concept of ‘church’ to me is tied up in both the healing streams of The Onion and the destructive streams of The Other Places. We want to compartmentalize and say that we’re overwhelmingly okay with trauma of the past, but our lives are not as linear as we’d often like to imagine.