Body Sculpting

I have started to till the land for my garden and I am a little sore. It is almost as if my body is protesting the work and telling me to just get in the car and drive to the grocery store. There are vegetables there ready for the picking.

We are victims of and servants to our bodies. This is in part the argument that Hervé Juvin makes in his book The Coming of the Body. In the introduction Juvin states, “…that body has established itself over and above our individual and collective choices. It has taken power,” (ix). Our longevity of life, our emphasis on appearance, our values focused on health and the way we treat our body are all relativity new innovations, or so Juvin states. We are free to chose our own skin color, our hair color, our sexuality, and the way we look – the body has demand our focus and attention.

I think Juvin has a point and it is a good one. I do think we focus on our bodies. Our bodies are an economical commodity and a marketplace all of its own. Yet on another level I wonder if we focus on our bodies enough.

We control and shape our bodies so much that they are no longer real. Our bodies are fabricated. What if we went for a day or two without deodorant and just dealt with the smell? What if we spent time writing letters with a pen and paper (gasp!) and allowed our arm to get sore? What if we sat through a worship service and listened to the music (good or bad) and the sermon (good or bad) and let our cheeks grow numb? What if we accepted our impending baldness and the growing softness of our belly? Then the body will still be a part of our lives, but not in the same way.

Juvin does make this point that we have controlled our bodies to a point where suffering and pain are seen as completely negative and void of any redeeming values. He calls us to suffer with our bodies, if only for a little bit. I agree. So, you can stop suffering through this blog post and get off your butt and walk to your next thing. Go outside and get dirty and then don’t shower. Write me a letter about how much you hate writing letters. But please, keep your deodorant!

So Tell Me, How Does It Feel?

How do you talk about spirituality or sacramentality with Baptists? It is not an easy thing to do because so many Baptists were brought up understanding a spiritual moment as the climax in the sermon leading into the altar call, or that one private moment of conversion, or listing to the Gathers sing. It is a very narrow view of spirituality and spiritual moments. I would argue that we have a deeper spirituality that can be seen in many aspects worship, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, ordination, and other aspects of Christian life. Although we don’t like to use the word, “sacramentality” because it sounds to Catholic and we certainly don’t want to be seen as popish, it does look to a deeper, more developed view of an awareness of God’s presence in the world. Finally, thanks to Schleiermacher and his caustic liberal agenda, the topic itself tends to be so individualistic that it can be difficult to speak of spirituality on a communal level.

Rather than addressing spirituality directly it may be better to address it from different angles. Perhaps if one were to talk about spirituality as it is perceived in the sermon, the Lord’s Supper, ordination, etc., one would have various avenues to follow towards this central question. This is what I am going to try to do, to look at one part of Baptist life at a time and then to look at the spirituality of each part of life.

Not an easy task, not a short project, but one that should have solid depth.

So next I will look at William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience to get ideas on how one might articulate the spiritual experience in a Protestant/Baptist experience. Stay tuned, and keep singing, “Just as I Am” until you are ready to come forward and accept Jesus into your hear.

Be Careful What You Say

I just read a very articulate and interesting article by Miroslav Volf in The Christian Century (March 8, 2011) titled “Allah and the Trinity.” In this article Volf carefully responds to a number of objections Muslims traditionally have concerning the Christian Trinity pointing out that a large part of the problem is a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine. As he states, “The Qur’an’s objections do not address normative Christian beliefs about God.” I’m not going to get into the specifics of Volf’s article but instead urge people to read it. What I do want to point out is how important it is for people to be careful with their words when describing what they believe or ascribe to.

For example, Volf makes the point that there is a difference between stating “God was Christ” vs. “Christ was God.” The first suggests that God is a creature and the second suggests a sense of incarnation in the fully divine and human nature of Christ. It is a subtle but very important difference.

Our speech is so often very, very sloppy (myself included). We often spout out ideas without thinking over syntax and grammar and make statements that at best misrepresent ourselves and at worse lead to another round of crusades. This is why not only it is important to study our theology, but (and it pains me to say this as a Baptist) we should study the language of the early theologians, current theologians, and of the creeds. They contain statements that were carefully thought out and that hold great depth of meaning.

Maybe we like to put things in our own words, and that is fine. Just be sure that what you are saying is as accurate as what tradition offers if not better.

Afterthought: We need to take the grammar of Christianity seriously (hooray for Lindbeck, McClenden, and Wittgenstein), and we need to learn our history. I am not advocating for a liturgical use of creeds in Baptist life.

Keep it Short

A couple of things going on. The good Rev. Charley Eastman and I are going to be hosting a podcast starting in April. This is a part of my continuing effort to be as narcissistic as possible through the internet. Podcast name is 12enough, website is 12enough.com (it is not up and running so prepare for a let down), and the e-mail is 12ecast@gmail.com. We will also have a Facebook page. I will post something when the first episode is released – topic is Stryper and the Contemporary Christian Music world.

I’m slogging through Hervé Juvin’s The Coming of the Body. It is a good book that makes some alarming observations on today’s Western society and draws some even more alarming conclusions about the observations.

Working on a sermon series concerning spirituality and the arts. Last week we did music and this week it is the Fine Arts.

Finally, during the podcast Charley noted that my posts were a bit on the long side. Of course I will not change my blogging habits to please the masses, but maybe I will try to keep things a little more succinct.

So… this is probably long enough for now, but in case you wanted something meaty to chew on, here is a quote from Juvin’s book:

“The deprived and suffering body has become our performing one, a body for pleasure and an endless initiation into all the joys of living. And this body, its rhythm and its lifespan, are going to overturn our relations with money, our patrimony and provision for the future, as they have already overturned our relations with work, as they have already transformed our identity, our difference … and as they continue to do.”