Church is just a Funeral Society

Thanks to Pam for pointing out this excellent article from a Lutheran perspective on funeral societies, missional church, Bonhoeffer, and death. Some excerts below, you really need to read the whole thing though.

For centuries, Christian community, organized as a funeral society of a higher order, has played on the natural fear of mortality, even hyped that fear as a motive for Christian life “so that we can go to heaven when we die.” That was the “attraction.” But with humankind’s coming of age, the jig is up. Religion cannot prey on human weakness this way any longer. . .

If we are to continue in Christianity in this religionless new age, then, we are going to have reconceive our relationship to death and understand it once again as the Pauline power that overwhelms and corrupts the creation, which in turn waits in eager longing for the redemption of our bodies in the revelation of the glorious liberty of the children of God. . .

The handful of strident, fire-and-brimstone religionists who sense this breach from our religious past and loudly still try to terrorize people into heaven above only reinforces the vast majority in their secularism. Easy, indeed, when the alternative to dying naturally is to live life now by flattering a divine Egotist who eternally tortures those who don’t pay the bribe of living “religiously.” . . .

I just wish I had the time to respond to such a stimulating article, I'll be printing it out and chewing on it some more anyway. Let me know what you think.

Pain Confuses Our Ethics

Earlier this year a Massey University survey showed that Kiwis considered assisted suicide more acceptable if the patient is in severe pain.  Which makes no sense unless pain is the ultimate evil in our society, which would presumably make pleasure the ultimate good.  Here's why, unless we have an irrational aversion to pain, this is an example of poor ethical thinking:

• If a person is in pain they will be less rational with regard to considering their death, therefore their opinion should be given less weight not more.
• Most people who suffer extreme pain will do almost anything to make it stop, in such circumstances a decision to die is actually a decision to stop the pain, not a calculated and rational decision to end their life.
• If a painful human life can be legally disposed of but one void of pain should be preserved we are essentially valuing human life based on how much pleasure those lives are capable of?  That would mean those who hedonistically pursue their own gratification at the expense of others are worth more as human beings than those who sacrificially choose to suffer in the service of others.

A second issue arising from the study is the idea that having an incurable disease means you should be helped to die.  Why does the fact that you are possibly going to die a little sooner than the rest of us mere mortals mean we should help you make it even quicker?  Surely your life has been shortened enough?  But I digress.

Unless we are willing to say that human life is devalued by the existence of pain, which I am not, then pain should not be a criteria for whether or not you help someone to kill themselves.  I think this could well be a case of confusing our own aversion to anything that interupts our pursuit of pleasure with compassion for the suffering.  Or am I wrong? 

Lev 24:10-23, Blasphemy, the Lex Talionis and the Imago Dei

So there I am, minding my own business, reading through Leviticus with my lady wife one evening, when suddenly I realise, with great anger, that the person responsible for paragraphing my Bible (in this instance an ESV) has started a new paragraph complete with section heading in the middle of a narrative unit.  What a wally.  But then again, you could understand why someone might think v17 starts a new subject on account of the fact it moves from the topic of blasphemy to lex talionis (the law of retaliation).  The section starts in verse 10 with the introduction of a new character:

 pic from here

That is him in the middle, the offspring of a Danite woman and an Egyptian man.  It seems like he was visiting his mum (maybe he had had a row with dad?) and then, perhaps because someone made an unkind remark about his parentage, and then got into a fight and whilst he was fighting blasphemed (v11).  So the Israelites, who until that point had been enjoying watching a good fight, put him in custody until Moses could tell them what God wanted them to do (v12).  So far so good, the Lord then speaks to Moses explaining the method for dealing with blasphemers and also pointing out that the same rule applied to both aliens and citizens, one rule for all (v13-17).  But then God seems to go off on a tangent,

'If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. If anyone injures his neighbour, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.'  Lev 24:17-22

Which you might think started a new subject, except for the fact it cannot, because the story that started with the introduction of the half-Israelite half-Eygyptian blasphemer is yet to finish, and does in fact finish in the next verse, where his story ends with his violent death (v23).  So what is the connection between blasphemy and the lex talionis, so that the author would place the two together like that?  (if indeed they needed to "placed" together in the first place)

What occurred to me as I pondered this was whether or not this might relate to Gen 9:6, where we have another lex talionis (kind of), that "whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind." (NRSV)  Isn't the justification for this lex talionis that murder equates in someway to blasphemy against the image of God in one's fellow human?  In which case the link between blasphemy and murder has already been made.  In Lev 24:10-23, that link is simply made in another direction, possibly predicated on Gen 9:6.  The punishment for blasphemy is death, and murder is itself a form of blasphemy, so it is simple move to go from talking about blasphemy (of the name) to murder (of the image bearer).  However the law is careful to differentiate between the life of an animal and the life of a human, because the animal does not bear the image (v18, 21; animal rights activists take note!).  On the other hand it is equally careful to remove differentiation between citizen and alien in this matter, all human life is equally sacred, it is not dependent on nationality (v16, 22). 


Ok, so here are some questions:
1) How come all the conservative Christians that want the death penalty for murder don't campaign equally vigorously for the death penalty for blasphemy?
2) Those of you who don't support the death penalty for murder, what does that say about your valuing of the human life that was taken?
3) Matt 5:38-42 anyone?

More on Death and more on Love (being inadequate)

I am always badgering my students to make their reflections rooted in specific events and circumstances instead of the general sweeping statement, Clayboy's reflection on the death of one of his parishoners shows why.

Interestingly Magret Hebron also comes to the conclusion (pace the Beatles and Steve) that love does not equal Christianity, although she is coming at it from a totally different perspective than Hays, her argument ends up being remarkably similar.

Hauerwas on Death

Reflections on Death from CPX on Vimeo.

HT RB

Or if you feel more like meditating on the beginning of life try
Coakley on God, Providence and the Evolutionary Phenomenom of Creation (HT JMG)

Funeral Thoughts

I was at a family funeral yesterday and it was tough going. A very dearly cherished person had perished tragically and before time. I was amazed by how many people turned out for the funeral, I'm guessing 500. I was more surprised though how completely absent of either hope of gratitude the service was. Although held in a church, God didn't really get a look in. There was no prayer or hymns, no way for the congregation to participate, except to listen to those who spoke, all of whom shared loss, disbelief, anger, grief and unhappiness. This is of course now fairly standard in a society that has cast off religious roots, and although claims to still be "spiritual" has no resources for coping with the event of untimely death except sad vague songs sung by professionals and PowerPoint presentations.

I know I could not expect much hope at a non-christian funeral. Although the clergy person on duty was quite frankly a total waste of space, I have never heard anyone before use the theory of emergence to comfort grieving people and I hope never to again. I think I was probably the only person there to know what he was going on about, how many people have studied emergence theory in relation to theology? (maybe lots have, I have led a sheltered life) Certainly his incoherent ramblings, pseudo-scientific speculations, and half hearted biblical allusions didn't leave anyone the wiser.

But everyone seemed angry at the universe or God or whatever for what had happened. Fair enough, those feelings were real and needed to be expressed. But that same universe in which the dearly departed had suffered a tragic death was the only universe in which she could ever have existed. In one sense, for that wonderful person to have existed in the way she did, she also had to die the way she did.

When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.

These words from Ecclesiastes 7:14 make the point. When we are angry about the bad we need to remember that we didn't complain when we received the good. Whether it is God or just some faceless universe everything in life ultimately comes to us from the same hand. Even at times of loss gratitude needs to be expressed. Gratitude for a life well lived and for love given and received. Remembrance will bring pain but it should also bring happiness, because although you feel the loss now, it would have been worse to never have known who you are missing at all.

Another verse from Ecclesiastes 7, verse 2:

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.