How I became a queer theologian part five – Getting down and dirty with god.

June 1, 2012 Christian life, Jesus, LGBTQ, Queer theology, Sex, theology, Uncategorized No comments
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“God is not sexual” my friend stated matter-of-factly. It is odd that he did because he also does not believe in god. How the god he does not believe in can be, or not be, anything is beyond me. It is a common notion though to separate the divine from the worldly. It is even more common to draw a strong demarcation line between the sacred and the sexual. It is therefore imperative that we recognise that eros is an integral part of love and that god is love.

In my last post in this series I hinted at the possibility of having an erotic involvement with god. I said that this is a common image used by Christian mystics and I think an important part in recovering a healthy view on sexuality.

So lets return to the trinity the self sufficient community of god. The basis of grace lies in gods self sufficiency that is, because god had everything god needed within the trinity, god did not need to create the world and therefore all (as in all god creates outside godself) is grace, a free and scandalous gift.

The interrelations of the trinity have been described in theological terms as perichoresis. This term describes an indwelling or interconnectedness that has often been described as a dance.

Here is the Wikipwedia entry on perichoresis

Although clear references to full-blown Trinitarian theology in the New Testament are rare, it can be seen between two persons of the Trinity in passages such as the following from John’s Gospel:“the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father.”[1]

The relationship of the Triune God is intensified by the relationship of perichoresis. This indwelling expresses and realizes fellowship between the Father and the Son. It is intimacy. Jesus compares the oneness of this indwelling to the oneness of the fellowship of his church from this indwelling. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us (John 17:21).”

The theological tradition has viewed the indwelling as fellowship. John of Damascus, who was influential in developing the doctrine of the perichoresis, described it as a “cleaving together.” Such is the fellowship in the Godhead that the Father and the Son not only embrace each other, but they also enter into each other, permeate each other, and dwell in each other. One in being, they are also always one in the intimacy of their friendship.

I think there are a few notes to be made from this image of the trinity in perichoresis. The first is the language of “oneness”, “becoming one” and “cleaving” that mirrors our understanding of a consummated marriage. I write consummated because in biblical times a marriage that was not consummated was not a marriage at all. Even today there are many parts of the world where a marriage can be annulled if not consummated. The whole idea of oneness and cleaving together comes from the sharing of the marriage bed and entering into one another.

This of course is the next image of the trinity, the entering into one another, indwelling, penetrating each other, crossing boundaries and blurring out the edges to the extent that it is hard to separate one from the other. Like dancers blurred on a stage, like lovers in a bed. I think one of the most beautiful images of perichoresis is in the C.S. Lewis space trilogy.

And now, by a transition which he did not notice, it seemed that what had begun as speech was turned into sight, or into something that can be remembered only as if it were seeing. He thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties.

Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled a1l else and brought it into unity–only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern not thereby dispossessed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated. He could see also (but the word “seeing” is now plainly inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected, minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells–peoples, institutions, climates of opinion, civilisations, arts, sciences, and the like–ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it.

Some of the thinner and more delicate cords were beings that we call short-lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things as we also think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours from beyond our spectrum were the lines of the personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some were universal truths or universal qualities. It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams: but afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered.

And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole solid figure of these enamoured and inter-inanimated circlings was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped farther and farther behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of the sky, and a  simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into its own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of stripping off encumbrances and awaking from trance, and coming to himself. (C.S. Lewis – Perelandra)

OK, so god’s agape, fileo and eros is expressed in this dance, what does this have to do with me?

This is where I think it gets exciting. In John 17, Jesus prayer for the believers, for us we are invited into this dance. Jesus is extending an invitation to “be one” with him as he is “one” with the trinity. This means unconditionally accepted in gods agape, respected and loved as a friend in gods fileo and passionately adored and loved in gods eros. Michael Jackson expressed it like this:

Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion, when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only. . . the dance.    

Paul young calls it to be included in the trinity’s “circle of submission”. Where I submit to Jesus as Jesus submits to the spirit and the spirit submits to the creator and the creator submits to Jesus and Jesus submits to me and I submit to god. On and on the dance extends throughout eternity.

I think this is where St. Theresa of Avila paints the picture of intimate communion with god that is ecstatic and pleasure at the same time as it is passion and pain. I think this is also where lovers transcend when they climax in the bedroom if they have the presence to notice, I thing this is where the sexual act becomes worship, whether with a partner or alone with god. I think we are called to experience this “at-one-ment” with god not only as acceptance (agape) and friendship (file) but the bodily, physical, erotic experience of being loved by god.

A recipe for more queer theology (or the shameless hat in hand post)

May 31, 2012 shameless promotion and fundraising No comments

Every now and then I post something like this. It is always with one tablespoon shame and a teaspoon of hope. It’s with a handful of trepidation and some good old fashioned fear thrown in for good measure.

I read a lot, if you know me and hang out with me, then you know that I never have my book far of. I inhale literature, especially theological literature. I would get it as a drip feed straight into my veins where it possible. My kindle reader (and the kindle app on my iDevices are the closest thing). This is a costly habit. I have tried to get a few donations with the donate coffee button (paypal donations) to the right but sadly the steady donation flow of my dreams have turned out to be zero.

One of my blogger friends tells me how he gets in donations all the time, I wonder what he does differently but can’t see any difference except he is more widely read.

ENOUGH WHINING! TO THE POINT!

I have come to realise that i need among other fantastic books The Queer Bible Commentary from Amazon. I can’t really afford it, so I turn to you, my faithful reader. Do you like reading this blog? Would you support my further education? Would you gift the book to me, or give a small donation like a $10 Amazon gift card?

If gifted I promise to blog my way through it and any other books you send my way!  Send any gifts to patrik (AT) olterman DOT se) also if you are one of my followers on social media make sure as many people read this post as my series on Sex (I said it was shameless begging right).

Ps. here’s my Amazon Wish list.

How I became a queer theologian part four – Sex as a sacrament.

May 27, 2012 Christian life, Marriage, Queer theology, Sex, worship No comments

There was this praise song on my favorite worship album, it always bugged me. “Take me, I am yours”, the woman sang with such throaty passion that it sounded almost sexual, indecent.

I mentioned it once to a friend who told me, it’s just your perverted mind that hears it like that. I never broach the subject again. Today I realise that the song was expressing exactly what my perverted mind thought it did. Our longing is exactly that, to become one with god. We may over/spiritualise it and try to make that union into something spiritual, something less dirty, less visceral. The longing is still the same. I want the spirit of god to enter me, surround me saturate me. Why does it offend us so to talk about penetration, ecstatic joy, pleasure in connection with god.

If we return to the mystics we will find that this is exactly the language that comes back over and over again when they talk about the ecstatic union with god. And if we venture into the night and ask those the church normally consider lost, their reply will be the same. Sex is trancendent, the closest we will ever come to god.

This is why G.K. Chesterton wrote, every man who has ever knocked on the door of a brothel was searching for God.

Only if we can separate our sexuality from the stigma of sinfullness will we dare to believe such things, only then will we dare to hope. WE must become virginal in our approach to sexuality, but not virgins in respect to our genitals but in respect to our minds. We have been filled with so much words, words of condemnation, words of contempt, words of fear. This per/version of our sexuality have rendered us unable to actually experience the divine bound into our sexuality, the sacrament of sex.

If a sacrament is, as we state in the Salvation Army, an outward sign of an inward grace. Then sex must truly be a sacrament, we have of course tried to sanitise it and call it marriage. It is the marriage that makes two people into one, that symbolises the complete union of man and woman to a hybrid that is something more. But we all know that it is in the consummation of the marriage that this happens. Sex is the sacrament, sex is the blurring of the boundaries between two people, but sex also blurrs the sacred/secular divide (the one we imagine is there, but realy does not exist) because it let’s us experience if only for a moment something divine.

That is the thing isn’t it. Sex is such a divine thing but at the same time it is so worldly (in the evangelical sense of the word) it is flesh, it is carnal. Wouldn’t a divine act that is carnal be the definition of incarnation. A carnal sign of a divine reality, a sacrament.

And why would god desire any less of us than this total abandonment, this total union, where we become more than friends, lovers.

“Take me now, I am yours!”

 

How I became a queer theologian part three – Meeting an adulterous god

May 25, 2012 Christian life, LGBTQ, Queer theology, Sex, Uncategorized No comments

I don’t know how I never saw it; One of the tenets of classical biblicism is faithfulness, I mean I even have it tattooed on my body, inked onto my skin so as to never forget. It is a label given to me by the voice of god on top of a mountain in wales. I bucked and fought arguing that whatever I am, faithful is not one of them. I am an adulterer, I think I have been unfaithful in every relationship in my life including or maybe especially my relationship with god. And yet this god comes down and covers my transgression (my queerness) with unlimited, unconditional grace. I couldn’t believe it then and I still struggle to live believing god actually loves me: A deviant, a queer closeted theologian of little consequence.

I decided, at this, to become the name, to live worthy of this faithfulness god has shown me (I even tattooed the hebrew for faithful/loyal, aman, into the back of my neck as a lifelong reminder). However, the more I delve into the grace of this god I realise that gods response was more than just grace, more than just acceptance it was encouragement not to limit myself by a rigid regiment of blinkered existence but to love like godself without limits.

It was as if god reached down and said “neither do I condemn you, I am unfaithful too.”

Could it be?

Let’s for a moment take of our religious glasses and all the cookie cutter phrases we ave been indoctrinated with. Let’s for one moment read the biblical narrative with virgin eyes.

We have this idea, that god could not be unfaithful, partly because “the bible tells me so”, partly because we have this idea that when we say that god “is the same today, yesterday and all days” we think that it means unchangeable. No matter how much the bible narrative paints the picture of a god that changes gods mind and develops. I am the same all my life, I feel instinctively the same today as when I was sixteen, I am still Patrik Olterman, but I have changed to, and I thank god for that. I am not the same Patrik Olterman I was when I was sixteen. Neither is god the same god, I mean god is still god, has always been and will always be, but god also changes, grows in relation to me and everyone else.

God makes a covenant with Abram renaming him Abraham, father of many. God goes on time and time again promising the Abraham descendants fidelity. Yet here I am a gentile, a pagan made Christian, adopted into gods own family by the grace of god. “You will be my people, and I will be your god” the words echo out through time, then later in history, god is unhappy with the relationship and broadens the definition of the covenant. God makes a new covenant where every nation is invited. God has not only turned polyamourous but omniamourous.

Or, how about this. If we strain our senses and sharpen our vision we discern something impossible in the biblical narrative like a palimpsest overwritten with our sacred text, we think we see what we have come to call the holy trinity. The trinity is described as the community of god, a never ending dance where god is complete, satisfied in godself. Never alone, three in one but three non the less. God is love, we say quoting scripture, and use the trinity as proof of this undying, eternal love. But love is agape, fileo, and eros. We just can’t imagine the erotic love of the trinity, entwined, in an endless embrace penetrating each others essence. This perfect community, once balanced with the three sides of love, is our blue print for marriage, or rather for all human relation. Yet for god this perfect union is not enough. God crosses over the boundaries of the blessed trinity, reaches out and creates a world filled with life and passion. Then god chooses to emancipate the earthlings and, oh the undecency, love them with all the agape, fileo and eros that god can muster. God loves me unconditionally, on my level like a sibling, erotically with all gods passion. And then as if this queer transgression is not enough, god invites me to interact and be part of what Paul Young called this circle of submission. But it is of course not only me but every living being is loved in this way. The trinity gives up independence for interdependence and queerly blurrs out the bounadries between godself and creature, between creature and nature, between me and you.

The omniamourous god doesn’t hold back, doesn’t temper love with prudence but impregnates a teenage peasent girl (who is incidentally bethrothed with a man) to fully cross all boundaries so that we may know this god, this passionate love.

Not that there is anything wrong with loyalty or faithfulness. The question is what are we called to be faithful to? Are we to be faithful to a religious system, a new set of laws and doctrines or are we to be faithful to this radical outpouring of omniamourous love?

It’s not that I want to surgically remove my tattoo and replace it with a symbol of promiscuity, pluralism or omniamory. I realise instead that I want to be loyal to this love priority of radical love because sometimes we are even called or compelled by that radical love to be unfaithful and cross boundaries no-one else dares to cross.

 

How I became a queer theologian part two – The centrality of sexuality

May 23, 2012 Christian life, Church, Homosexuality, Jesus, LGBTQ, Ponderings, Sex, theology 3 comments

Why is this such a big deal? Why does it matter? It should be a non issue! This is what both right wing and left wing, conservatives and liberals are saying all over the place. In churches people are taught that their sexuality, while important, is not essential. Sexuality does not define you, or who you are.

This reasoning is the basis for the “Love the sinner, hate the sin” theology that is so prevalent, it is also the basis for all pushes for chastity and purity vows etc. Your sexuality whatever it is is a non-issue, seek first the kingdom.

Even in non church environments where liberalism reigns the sigh of ‘I have had enough’ together with the statement “why are we even talking about this” in regards to LGBTQ issues (all well meaning of course, taking for granted the equal rights for all people). I agree, equal rights for all people should be a non-issue, it should be something we could take for granted but it is not. As long as LGBTQ people are discriminated against in subtle and not so subtle ways it is an issue of importance. I also disagree, because our sexuality is an issue of centrality it is so entwined with whom we are and whom we are created to be, it is a central part of our creaturliness and therefore can never be a disregarded or relegated to a peripheral discourse.

We are so saturated in hetero-normative, sterelised thinking that we cannot see how a heteronorm reading of the bible narrative marginalises not only LGBTQ persons but also our sexuality.

It all starts in genesis where we have cleaned up the grand creation narrative with a clinical zen like ex-nihilo, purgating all messy chaotic double entendre within the narrative. In true platonistic fashion we pretend that the fall has negated gods declaration of ‘very good’ and fall into a gnostic reading where the spiritual still is good but matter is less than or even downright evil.

We continue our discourse by spiritualising our OT readings so as to forget about sexuality or at least put all the evil sex in the hands of the others (the others often being the LGBTQ community) scapegoating the dirty and disturbing onto those perverted others, safely ignoring the beams lodged in our own orifices.

The Song of Songs is read as a safe poetic allegory but we do not delve to deep lest we disturb the unsettling notion of gods passionate eros for us as gods beloved.

We continue sterilising the gospels by making sure Mary is a virgin and stays a virgin (making her a mythical creature and not a flesh and blood human). We keep our blinkers on so we can ignore the disturbing images of the god-spirit sexually (forcefully?) impregnating a teenage peasant girl.

Jesus is in our reading portrayed male but chaste to keep this serene gnosticism intact to the end. The passion of the resurrection is left unspoken as Jesus rises as an eternal resurrection body (without sex) and ascending to the sexless marriage-less heaven where we deftly ignore all sexual marriage symbolism used to describe the coming kingdom.

So here’s the problem, we have neutered the biblical narrative making it a-sexual, like a eunuch (which ironically is also sexually deviant). Since this is how we read scripture this is how we see god an a-sexual deity and therefore it must be how we treat our sexuality. Either as something embarrassing that should not be or something that will at least perish when we are made holy.

We need to recover a queer god. A gay god is not good enough, as a gay god simply reaffirms the false homo-hetero dichotomy. A Jesus who marries Mary Magdalene reinforces the heteronormative narrative while a gay Jesus reinforces it by reinforcing the “negative” pole. A queer god is a god who is neither male nor female but trans-gendered (not as in transitioning from one to another but as one who transcends both without ever becoming less of either or fully other). We need to recover a queer god that creates with erotic pleasure and then sets us free to do the same. We need to recover a queer Christ, who is not secretly longing to tap Mary Magdalene or Lazarus but passionately, erotically loves them both (that is, he is sexually attracted to them). Whatever Jesus does with his sexuality (as in: does he act it out?) is here irrelevant, the fact that it is there and central to his actions, fuelling his passionate love for all humanity, omni-amourous.

We are sexual beings, our eros is part of whom we are, not all that we are, but a significant part. When we ignore it or sterilise it, or try to tame it, make it clean acceptable we suppress who we are and therefore who god created us to be. It is time as Marcella Althaus-reid writes in her ‘Indecent theology’:

“Isn’t it time the Christian heterosexuals came out of their closets too?”

Let’s stop pretending that we are all the same, that our sexuality can be summarised with missionary vanilla sex. If we can allow the interpretative gap that Jesus leaves on these issues, the invitation to midrash, be a starting point for our continued discourse. Let’s stop pretending that this is not an important issue. Lets stop pretending that we can stop talking, wondering, experimenting, longing, masturbating, copulating and loving it!

 

How I became a queer theologian – part one – a desert journey

May 21, 2012 Battle report, Christian life, LGBTQ, Malmö, Ponderings No comments

Last week my friend Samuel decided to reblog one of my posts on LGBTQ and the church. Promptly someone questioned if I really had written the piece as I had taught a very different gospel at said persons confirmation camp. I had to reply that I have been (am still) on a long theological pilgrimage.

Looking back I realise that it has been a long journey, not in a straight line but rather a rambling exodus in the christian desert of sexual mis/information.

When I was younger I had no opinions about sexuality. Sex was the mystical promised land of unending climactic pleasure. There was some testing the waters outside the boundaries of heteronorm conduct though I never wavered in my appreciation and attraction to the mythical female forms. I encountered gay men and lesbian women early as I lived at times in LGBTQ collectives with pink triangles painted on the walls and worn by the kind gentlemen who shared rooms in the oversized apartment. As I was not sexually active I did not understand what that meant or that it could be wrong.

It was not until I became a Christian in my late teens that I was told that certain sexualities where accepted by god (a man and a woman joined in holy matrimony) and all other sexualities (mine included) where tickets straight to a fiery lake with eternal torment on the side. I was taught to read the bible literally and would never have considered Christianity a real option had I not experienced pure authentic joy (in the small baptist church in Malmö) and the unconditional love of an older man (the token black man in the otherwise all white congregation i attended in the Ozarkian backwaters of the US bible belt) showcasing what a fathers love should really be like.

I was crushed to my knees by the awesome presence of the divine and repented my old ways. That is when I had to start reconciling my postmodern upbringing with the modern vestments of American churchianity. First I had to shed my love and fascination for science and replace it with a growing passion for the metaphysical secondly I had to reconcile the unconditional love I felt from god with the judgement of everyone not part of the church (the church being a very narrow description of people who believed exactly what I had been taught that the bible teaches).

This was hard work, it is not easy reconciling a loving god with eternal conscious torment. It lead to a lot of ‘closeting’ that is I had to hide the parts of me that where not compatible with this black and white world of conditional love and unconditional justice. I burnt and renounced my tarot cards, my roleplaying games and my Metallica albums. I listened only to approved Christian music and broke of with my girlfriend who was trying to lead me into sexual temptation by her very existence.

One day I was sitting at our local hangout when a punk girl my age came up to me and asked me if I thought she was going to hell if she died today. I asked her dutifully if she ‘believed in her heart’ and if she could ‘confess with her mouth’ that Jesus was lord. She said that she didn’t know what she believed and that she would confess no such thing. That settled it in my mind and I told her as much, she was going to hell unless she reconsidered. I remember walking out of there with confidence and feeling quite proud of myself the ‘little servant of the lord’ and an evangelist to boot. Hadn’t I in no uncertain terms explained that god was handing out a free bag of candy if she would just bow to his might, never mind the punch in the face that was the price of refusal. The next day I learned that she had killed herself that night. I think this was the first day of my real journey.

Surely Jesus would ave seen the need to be loved in this girls eyes and restored her self worth… Surely Jesus would have known what to say, how to love her. How to enter into her world, to penetrate her bubble and show how passionately relentlessly god loved her.

I still had many years of soul searching and theological wrestling with the doctrinal dragons of organised religion ahead of me before I could answer these questions in a way that would be actual good news. In the meantime I compartmentalised the problem with the ever so handy phrase “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. I represented a unholy, unholistic hermeneutic of separation between person and action as if we can be separated from what we do so easily.

I did peer training with “a world of difference institute” and CEJI two wonderful organisations working against antisemitism, bigotry and racism. I did so still asserting that god loves gay people, he just hate what they do. I honestly did not realise that what my friend Paul heard from me, the loving Christian, was god loves you but hates what you are. From my other fiends on the peer training course who where not Christians he got only love because he was just a lovely loving guy. To this day I wish I could find Paul and tell him how sorry I am.

Stumbling through life trying to find a way to be an honest Christian who will preach a message that rings true and can be considered good news to the poor and the not so poor, the normal and the weird, the straight and the queer.

So I came to college a raving fundamentalist who really wanted to believe the pre-formated cookie cutter christian platitudes I was spewing out.

Don’t get me wrong; I was an excellent speacher, I could motivate and capture young peoples hearts with a cunning accuracy. I could convert and convict, I got inspire and release. My prophetic gift kicked in just enough to scare the youth I spoke to enough to hang onto every word I spoke. If only I could have believed them as fully as they did. If only the beast in the closet could die and not cry out for release.

At college was where my ‘queering’ begun. As my understanding for bible history, hermeneutics and biblical exegesis grew I quickly lost grip of my fundamentalist ‘reality’. I honestly thought at times as I was loosing my faith.

“What do you mean Moses did not cross the red sea?”

It was well into the last quarter of the first year before I gave up pressing my old formulaic beliefs into academic language and capitulated to what my soul cried out for ‘a faith seeking understanding’ but doing so in the only way I known how to do anything ‘no holds barred’.

My first queer teacher (I am unsure how he would feel about the title but it is just as true) made this groundbreaking statement: Just because it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it’s not true. That statement alone was worth the price of admission. It ‘queered’ my faith forever, in the same way that Jesus’ “You have heard it said …. But I say unto you ….” must have done for his followers. This together with the guidance of Brian McLaren (A new kind of Christian, the secret message of Jesus) and John Eldredge (Epic, Desire, Sacred Romance, Wild at heart) who taught me a narrative reading of scripture. A narrative framework to replace my rigid fundamentalism.

Still the question of sexuality was still in the closet. I tried to open the can at college but was not really encouraged to go there. So I did when I hit the ground at my first appointment. The first week on the appointment I was asked, hypothetically, if I would officiate a gay marriage. I had no answer, but at least this time I was mature, courageous enough to admit that I did not.

Many books, sermons and meetings with representatives of the LGBTQ community later, I am standing on a square literally around the corner from the restaurant where I met the punk girl all those years ago. I am watching a heated argument between a young american missionary standing with a six foot cross over his shoulder and a young punk rocker girl with pink hair and a nose ring. She is spewing sarcastic question at him like a spitfire and he is squirming under the pressure. He tries to be graceful. He says to her that god loves her and that she will get to heaven IF she will repent her actions. I feel a strange yet familiar tug in my heart and I intervene, literally, I step in between the two combatant and I try to intercede. God loves you I say to her. She blinks twice and says, sarcasm thick in her voice, “but …” But nothing, I say, “god loves you, no matter who you are, what you do and whom you love”. At first she gets angry accusing me of trying to steal the other guys convert, then she mellows and asks quietly, “do you really mean it?” Then hesitantly, “Would god love me even if I was born a man, I mean even if I am a man down here and woman up here” she gestures at her body parts. I re-emphasise, “god loves you just as you are right now, he loves every part of you both down there and up here” I say. She goes quiet for a while and I realise she is crying. “Thank you”, she says, “I did not know there where Christians like you. I don’t believe in god but maybe I could love a god like the one you know”.

It struck me then that this is why I am. My whole existence can be described with a purpose to this moment, to tell this girl that god loves her, her mess, her penis and breasts and all. and that is good news.

 

Pirate box!

March 30, 2012 Geek, pirate box No comments

So last week I started my little geek project and after much ado it is now finished and our kafé has a pirate box with the potential to viraly spread ideas thoughts, documents freely.

The package arrived from iSupply.se within days with the tiny wireless router TL-mr3020. I was astonished that such a small thing could actually function as router, AP and file sharing point.

It was fairly simple to replace the firmware with the open source version (OpenWRT) that would allow me to run the pirate box software (A tiny python web server) on it.

It was equally simple to install the pirate box software package (OpenWRT runs a small debian like package manager called opkg). So within virtually no time I had a running Pirate Box.

I then realised that this version did not include the shout box (wich is a tiny chat on the front webpage) so I decided to go ahead and add that. This of course resulted in a long wrestling with upgrading firmware and package manager frustration. Thankfully the Pirate box community is fresh and full of enthusiasm. Within a few days a new package had been created (Thanks Matthias) and the Pirate Box at our café now serves a slew of theological papers and e-literature as well as an anonymous chat interface.

What did I end up sharing on the box? Well come down to our café and find out, it will be well worth the visit (at least if you are in the general neighborhoud anyway).

What would you put on your Pirate Box?

March 13, 2012 Geek, Uncategorized No comments

Geek as I am, I have stumbled upon “Pirate Box” and realised i must build one (and I shall, and I will, and it will show up at a cafe near you, if you are anywhere near Malmö, Sweden.) However as I am home still something sick and I can’t start this exciting project right this second, I play with the idea in my mind.

 

So, if you had a personal internet where you anonymously could share anything to anyone within reach of the wireless. What would you share. What documents, film clips, books, graphics. I am guessing it would say a lot about you the files you share….

Here’s my short list…

  • Piratteologi (the latest draft of the book I am currently writing)
  • S-tech – Soulfilter (my weird fiction book finished but unpolished)
  • Flyers about #piratkyrkan, the pirate church event I am hosting together with Mackan Andersson and friends
  • Maybe a copy of what book I am currently reading or what audiobook I am currently listening to.
  • An ebook made from my LGBTQ series …
  • I need suggestions what else should I add?

 

A mythical childlike faith

March 4, 2012 Bible, Jesus, story, theology No comments
We have for some time, on my swedish blog, and in our corps, been excavating the Salvation Army’s doctrines. When you talk about the doctrines it easily becomes an abstract discussion far away from any reality we might live in.

-Why should it be so complicated? -Why do we find out and know everything?

The questions are justified, on the one hand, one can easily say: We can not know anything about God, if one claims to know something about god then you have created an idol. On the other hand, one could argue that we are both encouraged and invited by scripture to seek understanding and wisdom (sophia).

Some of those who advocate a blind acceptance of biblicism and any doctrines think we need to have a childlike faith (and with this they mean a non-questioning and innocent faith).

Rachel Held Evans writes in his book “Evolving in Monkey Town”:

Those who say that having childlike faith means not asking questions haven’t met too many children. Anyone who has kids or loves kids or has spent more than five minutes with kids knows that kids ask a lot of questions. Rarely are they satisfied with short answers, and rarely do they spend much time absorbing your response before moving on to the next “why?” or “how come?- Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town

Children are a bit like Ronja Rumpnissar, “Voffö, Voffö fool?”

 

what they (children) really mean is, ‘That’s interesting to me. Let’s talk about that together. Tell me more, please.’ ” Questions are a child’s way of expressing love and trust. They are a child’s way of starting dialogue. They are a child’s way of saying, “I want to have a conversation with you.”

- Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town

But the “asking questions” game quickly becomes tedious if one is to respond to the questions with quick and easy answers, this will make sure that the questions never end. We believe that the child wants answers, but what the child really wants is to have a conversation, intimacy, quality time. Therefore, the answer is not that important but the conversation is, or the road to the answer ….

Psychologists say that the best way to handle children in this stage of development is not to answer their questions directly but instead to tell them stories
- Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town

Soon the little girl will become so lost in her father’s beautiful stories that she will forget she ever had a question to begin with — Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey town
- Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town

Perhaps this is the via mediabetween the biblicist /fundamentalist and the naturalistic/scientific way. To read and understand the biblical text as a mythical story.

 

We like children ask questions, and our God responds with mythical tale.

A myth is how things always are, but never where.
- Marcus Borg, Putting Away Childish things

“All stories are true. But some of them never happened.”
- James A. Owen, The Search for the Red Dragon

Our stories, our myths, our fairy tales affect us deeply. Scientists believe it is in our treasury of folk tales (which is an important part of our heritage, or rather what actually defines our culture) that we maintain who we are and the meaning of our lives. Somewhere instinctively we know that there is truth in story, truths hidden deep in our consciousness.

“Story is a primary language of experience. Telling and listening to a story has the same structure as our experience … The episodes of our lives take place one after another just like a story. One of the ways we know each other is by telling our stories. We live in stories”
- Steven A. Evans Quoting Boomershine in ‘Story telling Affecting worldview change’

Narrative is so important to us. We can only love other people by getting to know them, we can only know them by hearing and understanding their story. We can only invite other people to love us by inviting them into our story for to be known is to be loved, and to be loved is to be known.

Note how the woman at the well live in a depressingly small story (a corrosive story, Morrisy) and sneaks of to the well believing herself to be unlovable.

-Give me water, he says

- Are you really talking to me, she says, disbelief thick in her voice.

-Tell me your story, he implies

-I don’t have one, she lies

Caution spilling out of her very being. He then tells her, her story and her life is transformed, she is known, she is loved. She runs of to tell her new story!

-Listen, listen all and listen well, I met a man who told me my story, now come hear for yourselves.

And she becomes part of gods story, gods epic narrative encompassing time and space itself.

We all live in a story. We hear stories. We watch stories on TV and in the movies we attend. Stories are everywhere.
— Winn Griffin, God’s EPIC Adventure

The question is not: Do we really live in a story? The question is: Which story are we intentionally living in?
— Winn Griffin, God’s EPIC Adventure

September let go a long-held breath. She stared into the roiling black-violet soup, thinking furiously. The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvelous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.
— Catherynne Valente, The Girl who Circumnavigated fairyland in a vehicle of her own making

“I wonder what kind of tale we’ve fallen into, Mr. Frodo?”- JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers

What kind of story are you living in? What kind of stories do you read in the Bible?

What kind of story would you like to live in? What kind of story does the bible invite you to live in?

And perhaps most importantly, how would your life change if you lived in such a story?

“A genuine story will not leave us alone. It insists, sometimes in the most impolite terms, on changing us
– Ann Morisy quoting Taylor, Journying out

“Only another story can come alongside a prejudicial story and begin to melt a hardened convinced heart”
— Anne Morrisy, Journeying out

It is precisely here that the power of the biblical narrative resides (god’s power unto salvation?!). Regardless of what may be historically accurate or not, whether god created the world in seven days or if Jesus was really born from a virgin. Regardless of who wrote the text and for what purpose. When the Holy Spirit is allowed to use the biblical narrative to give our lives a new context, a new meta-narrative, then we re-think, re-pent, then we are rescued from our own tiny personal reality show and we are invited into God’s own story …

“The stories of God’s word serve as a catalyst for a new script, laying a foundation for a new worldview, resulting in life transformation”
— A. Steven Evans, ‘Story telling affecting worldview change’

Just by listening to God’s story we get to know God, and getting to know someone is to learn to love that someone.

Therefore, we, as young children must ask all our questions and see what stories God will tell us in response.

Sometimes through a bible passage, sometimes through our own lives, sometimes at the cinema, sometimes through a nice book and sometimes through someone else’s life.

Remember to press god for answers. Aske the why? the How? and the When?

This is our childlike way of saying, God I want to talk more about this tell me a story ….

and God responds, with stories, everywhere, all the time.

 

On deep theological waters

February 29, 2012 theology No comments

This week I have been thinking  a lot about being liberal or conservative (it seems that these two are only viable options in the Swedish discourse right now).

When I wrote my articles about LGBTQ , one of the comments I received was that I had a “liberal theology”.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that the way the word is used today in the Swedish Christian community is: Liberal equals not conservative, or at worst non biblicist.

If this is the proper definition then I am guilty as charged, that is. I am not and never will be a biblicist (again). If liberal theology is the only alternative to biblicism, then I am a liberal through and through.

Fortunately, it’s not so black and white. Indeed, there are many other ways to relate to the Bible.

I agree (with liberal theologians) that we must learn biblical criticism and exegesis, we must understand the historical context and where / how the text has come to be, if we are to extract the gold from the biblical text, and if we are to have a theological conversation that allows for depth, while still respecting the text.

But that’s not enough, a liberal hermeneutic not enough to build a Christian community in a secular post-modern society. Liberal theology (in the most extreme cases) robs the Bible of its deep mystery and the revelation of the holy spirit. Liberal Theology, many times result in a secular biblical stance that is not congruent with a living Christian faith.

Post Liberalism, narrative theology, progressive christianity

So what do you do when you are no longer a biblicist but find that liberal theology falls flat?

Well, you could enter the world of post-liberalism (it means exactly what it sounds like, after liberalism and is a reaction to liberal theology). Post-liberalism is based on narrative theology, ie. ”the Church’s use of the Bible should focus on a narrative presentation of the faith as regulative for the development of a coherent systematic theology.” (Wikipedia)

The post-liberal or narrative theology stands in stark contrast to the liberal and modernist individualism and interpret the biblical text not only in historical context but in a broader perspective that takes into account the culture, spoken tradition and contemporary culture. Instead of staring themselves blind at the historical context as they read Bible stories as an imaginative act where the story is reborn and reinterpreted (from its historical context, with great respect for the contemporary culture and tradition) into our own context and in in our own contemporary Christian community and tradition. Theologian Walter Brueggemann calls this “imaginative remembering” who says that:

“The traditioning process of retelling does not intend to linger over old happening, but intends to Recreate a rooted, lively world of meaning That is marked by bothering coherence and surprise in Which the listening generation, time after time, can situate ITS own life” (Brueggemann – An Introduction to the Old Testament, 2003 pts 8)

This post-liberal theology is the basis for much of the thinking of the emergent church. But there it has been discovered that it is not enough to employ a new hermeneutic (a new way to read and understand the Bible), but you need a new practical theology (how we live out our theology and how we shape our modern tradition and liturgy of this post-liberal hermeneutic. When you begin to ask these questions it may be that you take the next step in progressive theology .

Progressive theology is what happens when the Christian church listen to the voices of liberation theology, feminist theology and the secular critique of the traditional church. Another way to see it is to say, progressive theology, or progressive church is what you get when you let Jesus love-priority be central in the Christian community. With Jesus’ love priority, I mean:

“” Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? “He answered,” Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. ‘”(Matthew 22:36-40 SWED2K)

This coupled with the realization that we must be shepherds not devourers of the Earth. Creating a love-centered, eco-conscious Christianity can (all be it very simplified) be called progressive Christianity.

Wikipedia defines the following items as the characteristics of progressive Christianity.

  • A spiritual vitality and expressiveness, including participatory, arts-infused, and lively worship as well as a variety of spiritual rituals and practices such as meditation
  • Intellectual integrity including a willingness to question
  • An affirmation of human diversity
  • An affirmation of the Christian faith with a simultaneous sincere respect for other faiths
  • Strong ecological concerns and commitments

The lure of theopoetics

In all these theological waters, there are many currents, uncharted depths and an incredible openness to diversity.

One flow of theology that I feel a strong attraction to isteopoetics.

Wikipedia has the following definition of teopoetics:

Theopoetics is an interdisciplinary field of study That combines elements of poetic analysis, process theology, narrative theology, and postmodern philosophy.Theopoetics … Suggests That deprecated of trying to developement a “scientific” theory of God, as Systematic Theology Attempts, theologians Should deprecated try to find God through poetic articulations of Their lived (“embodied”) experiences. It Asks theologians to accept reality as a Legitimate source of divine revelation and Suggests That bothering the divine and the real are mysterious – that is, irreducible to literalist dogmas or scientific proofs.

This teopoetic lure is calling from the forgotten depths and reminds us of the mystery. The mystery, the secret that can only be experienced, that ever dances an alluring wild dance at the limits of our consciousness. A mystery that contains both the Cataphatic and Apophatic tradition, a mystery that is both 100% man and 100% percent God, a mystery in which we are co-creators with the divine and where we lose ourselves in Christ and become one with God without us becoming god.

Polarization and pirate theology

The problem remains, as soon as you begin to question the biblicist fundamentals, you become a Pariah thrown out of the Swedish Theological mainstream, branded a liberal.

There is no theological argument that can win these biblicists over and I do not think it’s something we should aim for. Who am I to argue that my interpretation is better than yours? No, we need to create small pirate islands. where we live out a different reality, a different world view, a different hermeneutic, a different kind of Christianity in the middle of the biblicist mainstream.

We become pirate theologians (with all the positive, or romanticized aspect of that image, and perhaps unfortunately, sometimes some of the negative). But our purpose is not confrontation, or to somehow take over the establishment. No, our purpose is to gather in these wild, lawless islands and live out a rag-tag but true, lawless but loving, tradition-breaking, but not without tradition, or simply a radically different Christianity that does not actively threaten the normal Christian daily life in any other way than that it exist.

All are welcome

What’s great with the lawlessness of the pirate island is that it is diverse, colorful and totally unmanageable. Everyone fit in, everyone is welcome. Conservative biblicists and liberal secularists, theopoets and systematic theologians, stay at home dads and graduate students, hobby theologians and professional theophiles, philosophers and scientists, hetero and homo, atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, however queer you are, you are welcome … As long as we all respect the lawlessness of the pirate island and the diversity and intrinsic value of each other, then we call can let the theological conversation flow in this noisy environment with wide doors, high ceilings and low thresholds.

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