Saturday, February 28, 2015

Good Stuff - February 2015

Here are the best things I've read on the Internet in the month of February:

Leonard Nimoy, the Man Who Gave Star Trek Its Heart by Graeme McMillan on MSN, speaks to me in my sadness that this man who enriched my world so much has passed on:
And even when he, along with the rest of the original crew of the Starship Enterprise, retired with 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, it turned out that Nimoy’s Spock lived on, and prospered, making appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation and J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek as the character. It was unsurprising, in many ways; a Star Trek without Nimoy felt incomplete, somehow. There was both a gravity and levity in his performance, a humor behind the stone-faced, eyebrow-raised stare of disbelief he so often employed. Star Trek, as a series, is a mixture of tones and genres, as much comedy as drama, and Nimoy managed to embody that in a way unlike any other.

"Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed" a Year Later: Why Calvinism (Still) Isn't Beautiful by Austine Fisher on Roger Olson's blog, gives voice to something I have long felt, that the poet Keats' words "beauty is truth, truth beauty" tell us something real, and that Calvinist doctrine (particularly the doctrine of limited atonement, that Christ didn't die for all humans, but only for some) just doesn't fit into that:
Because God is infinitely good and beautiful, theology must be good and beautiful or else it’s not true. When properly understood, the truth invites not only the mind’s assent but the heart’s affection. The truth should make your heart sing. This notion of the truth’s beauty is not an invention of secular humanism or some other boogey-man, but belongs to the deepest intuition of biblical Christian sensibilities. . .

The New Calvinists attempt to paint a ravishing picture of the manifold excellencies of the self-glorifying, all-determining God of Calvinism, expressed primarily through the doctrines of grace. I say that picture is a false veneer that only works when you ignore the reprobate. I say that picture cannot contain, as its central image, a crucified God who would rather die for sinners than give them what they deserve.

Why I Love Being a Black Girl by Austin Channing, is a horizon-enlarging viewpoint from a perspective I need to listen to:
Though there are many great soul food restaurants, none compare to the smell of my grandmothers dinner rolls wafting through the air, the sweet smell of history filling the small kitchen. We sat on the edge of our seats the night Michael moonwalked across the stage, then we hopped up and did it with him. We couldn't afford to see Whitney in concert, but you better believe we knew every note to every song... even if we couldn't reach it ourselves. The NBA possesses some great players, many of whom were good guys from around the way- taking girls to prom, participating in the school talent show, being cheered on by the brown faces around them. Yes, we do shape culture, but first we live it ourselves.

The Myth of the Absent Black Father at ThinkProgress, shows that things aren't always the way they have been made to look:
Considering the fact that “black fatherhood” is a phrase that is almost always accompanied by the word “crisis” in U.S. society, it’s understandable that the CDC’s results seem innovative. But in reality, the new data builds upon years of research that’s concluded that hands-on parenting is similar among dads of all races. There’s plenty of scientific evidence to bust this racially-biased myth. 
The Pew Research Center, which has tracked this data for years, consistently finds no big differences between white and black fathers.

Holiness Among Depraved Christians: Paul's New Form of Moral Flourishing by Richard Beck at Experimental Theology, shows a way to read and understand some of the main themes in Paul's epistles that really explains a lot:
Paul was setting up these Jesus-communities whose members consisted of, in the eyes of skeptical Jewish onlookers, morally depraved and wicked people. To Jewish onlookers it looked like Paul was handing the keys to the liquor cabinet to a bunch of alcoholics. Morally speaking, this was a recipe for disaster. Paul was hopping around, going from city to city, setting up these communities. And then leaving them! Without the Torah, and the habits of spiritual formation embedded in the culture of faith communities who had been shaped by Torah obedience generation after generation, how were these new Gentile Christians going to lead holy lives? 
This was the great moral experiment of Paul's gospel. Could a new form of moral flourishing emerge among the Gentiles separate from the Torah?'' . . .

In a nutshell this was the heart of Paul's vision for morally forming Gentiles: The Holy Spirit, the Golden Rule, and the Imitation of Christ. This, Paul felt, would be enough to transform depraved pagans into a "holy people." . . .

Specifically, Paul's Gentile churches were moral demonstrations to Jewish skeptics. And I think this explains a lot of why when Paul gets outside the core of his moral vision--the Golden Rule, the example of Jesus--he falls back upon Jewish (and Greco-Roman) visions of moral flourishing. I think this is why, for example, Paul's household codes are patriarchal. That's what Jewish moral flourishing at that time looked like. And given the skepticism Paul faced he was keen to make Gentile households look like Jewish households, seasoned albeit by the love ethic of Jesus (e.g., mutual submission).

The framework of fundamentalist propaganda distorts how we view every religion by Fred Clark at Slactivist, addresses the flaws in the reasoning that insists terrorists like ISIS embody what Islam is really all about, and counters the dangerous idea that all Muslims are evil, and that any Muslim who isn't evil isn't a "real" Muslim:

This framework is pervasive, shaping our perception of every religion, not just Islam. We’ve been tricked into seeing inquisitors and crusaders as a more genuine expression of any religion than that religion’s saints or mystics. We’ve swallowed the idea that the inquisitors must be correct in their interpretation of religious texts, while any who disagree with those interpretations must be willfully ignorant, or sweetly deluded by some irreligious “political correctness.”


And in this related post at Slacktivist, Clark makes this profound observation:
This kind of separatist/exclusivist, prideful fundamentalism will always be schismatic. That’s its nature. That’s true whether we’re talking about Real True Christians or Real True Muslims. Their entire self-concept is driven by the need to confirm their own authenticity by condemning the inauthenticity of others — or, rather, by accusing others of inauthenticity and seeking or inventing new ways to support that accusation. And they can never stop doing that. . .

Real True Christians do not base their identity on their devotion to the Bible or to the Creeds, but on finding ways to elevate themselves above other Christians they can denounce as false, apostate, liberal and inauthentic. Real True Muslims do not base their identity on their devotion to the Koran or to the pillars of their faith, but on finding ways to elevate themselves above other Muslims they can denounce as kuffar.

What this means for the rest of us is that we cannot hope to learn anything about the substance, character or meaning of any religion, belief system, or fandom, by looking to those who proclaim themselves the Real True believers. They may be the ones talking the loudest about “authentic” Christianity/Islam/fandom, but they are bound to be the least reliable examples of what such “authentic” belief might entail.
 
The idea that those whose religious practices are gentler, more loving, kinder and more accepting are somehow less sincere, less authentic in their faith than those who are harsher, more judgmental and intolerant, is something this blog continually strives to counter-- and not least by sharing these various links today.  As I've said many times, to follow Jesus's teaching and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" includes listening to others with an open heart and mind.  And when we do that, it can't help but make us gentler, kinder and more accepting.

And I think that's what following Christ will lead us to in the end.

2 comments:

perfectnumber628 said...

I love the article about Nimoy. The one about "the myth of the absent black father" is really informative too. :)

Kristen said...

Thanks, PerfectNumber! I will miss Leonard Nimoy. As Shakespeare put it, "We shall not see his like again."