‘The Globalization of Indifference’

From the Vatican, Pope Francis with thoughts on Lent 2015:

Usually, when we are healthy and comfortable, we forget about others (something God the Father never does): we are unconcerned with their problems, their sufferings and the injustices they endure… Our heart grows cold. As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don’t think about those less well off. Today, this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of a globalization of indifference. It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.

I love the byline. Simply signed: Francis.

(Via @StevenHovater)

Day Three - What's Your Story?

This post in a tweet:

To live within the story is to live both with faith and with frustration. But the story gives us a world in which we can keep living.

Previously, on Post Modern:

• A Graduate-Level Class Called “Providence and Suffering”
• Day One: Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought
• Day Two: Providence

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Humans have been doing theodicy for a long time. That is, in the face of evil, humans have been trying to find meaning to help them face despair. On day three Dr. Hicks suggested that identifying the bigger story of which you are a part is one way to find hope in the context of suffering and despair. Here’s my attempt to recount the story.

Claiming the Biblical Narrative

God created a good world. Good, but not perfect—at least not in the sense that there is no evil, death, or chaos. But still very good. There is darkness as well as light. There is chaotic “sea” and there is ordered land. Chaos is restrained, managed, “separated,” but still present. This is the creation God provides. Human vocation is to live and work in the context of this creation in such a way that we do good and bring order out of chaos. The point of being made in the image of God is to be like the Creator and do things like the Creator does. For example, computer programmers, civil engineers, medical doctors, scientists, garbage collectors—all are participating in the mission of God to bring order out of chaos.

Then, God rests.

Rest isn’t about God withdrawing from creation. Rest is about enjoying it, dwelling in it, and deciding to participate with God’s creatures in the ongoing task of creation. In one sense, God resting provides the opportunity for humans to become more fully human. That is, if part of what it means to be human is to have dominion over creation, to work order out of chaos, God must provide the opportunity for that to happen. The opportunity is, of course, a double-edged sword. While it allows for humans to reflect the image of God, it also allows humanity to reject the image of God, doing non-God things, and so diminishing their humanity. It’s clear that God’s creation project is a risky project. So it’s fair to question whether the project is worth it.

To What End, God?

God creates intending a shared creation in which God dwells with humanity. The entire story serves the end of including humanity in the orbit of God’s love. God is, by nature, a loving community in Godself (think, the Trinity) and wants to include humans in that community. A good picture of this is Jesus’s prayer that his followers would be one with God, just as Jesus is (see John 17:20-26). The final chapters of the Bible paint the picture of a renewed creation, in which God dwells with humanity. In the new heaven and new earth there is no longer any suffering, mourning, or death. There is no night. There is no chaos. God makes all things new. The project was worth it.

The Story Continues with a Human Cast

Instead of bringing order out of chaos as God intends, human activity intensifies chaos. Both human chaos and natural chaos swell. Yet even from the beginning of the story, it’s clear that God stays present in the midst of the chaos. God is active in such a way as to give the moment meaning, whether that helps humans to mature, to love, to redeem, or to become more fully human.

Chaos escalates to such an extent that God alters God’s strategy. While God will still work with humans to bring about completion to creation, God chooses one family in particular to be the vehicle for God’s blessing. God blesses Abraham and Sarah (and Keturah and Hagar?) with God’s presence, in order to share that presence with all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3). Israel is to do the same thing as a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). That is, the whole nation should carry God’s presence to the rest of the world. The presence of God comes to dwell in Israel’s tent (Exodus 40) and temple (2 Chronicles 7). When Israel is exiled, God’s presence abandons the temple (Ezekiel 10).

Jesus’s coming about six centuries later is interpreted as God’s presence among the people in human form (i.e. Incarnation). It’s God filling the temple (that is, Earth) in a new way. Jesus is a walking holy of holies. The “full image of God” (Colossians 1:15). He’s a new temple.

God always worked to be present in the world in redemptive ways. God always spent time transforming people into royal priests to communicate God to the world. In the Incarnation, God empathizes with humanity like never before. God comes in the flesh to share the human experience. God knows what it’s like to be hungry, thirsty, tempted, betrayed, mocked, and tortured. God knows what it’s like to weep. God knows what it’s like to die. Not just as an outsider watching someone else, but as an insider, experiencing it in God’s own life.

In the midst of brokenness, corruption, suffering, and death God works something new. Experiencing all of it, God brings about the first signs of New Creation in the resurrected Jesus. Followers of Jesus suffer, but now they do so in community. The suffering in community isn’t meaningless because of a shared hope for justice. And resurrection is the sign that in Jesus God has begun to put things right. Just as it has been from the beginning, so now God invites humanity to participate with the Divine in the process of putting things right. So the suffering community suffers with hope, working justice with God.

So What? Hope.

The narrative gives hope. The suffering community prays to the God of hope to fill it with joy and peace even as they try to trust that this has really happened. Paul gauged how hope affected the Christian community in the empire’s biggest city:

I pray that the God who gives hope will fill you with much joy and peace as you trust in him. Then you will have more and more hope, and it will flow out of you by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13).

The presence of hope is grounded in the fact that God has poured love into human hearts by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The presence of hope is also rooted in the formation of character. The presence of love in our hearts yields endurance, perseverance, character, and hope. It’s the experiential dimension of presence of the Spirit that energizes and propels our endurance, movement, character formation, so that we have authentic hope. Authentic hope gives way to life. (Romans 5:1-5 connects the dots).

We won’t always feel the hope. It’s something that is forged over time, which is why the story is so important to rehearse. Hope sprouts from a cognitive expectation and grows into a heart-felt experience.

It’s the story of God in which we find ourselves. To live within the narrative is to live with faith, and still to live with frustration, anger, and bitterness because enduring life is not easy. But the story gives us a framework in which one can work through suffering. It’s a story that gives us a world in which to keep living: Living with hope in the midst of despair.

I Bet You Disagree with Parts of my Take on the Story

I’d love to read and re-read the biblical narrative with you. I know we’ll disagree on pieces of it. Genesis, especially, was written with this sort of constant rereading in mind. Genesis 1-11 is a theological masterpiece. Depth of insight. Beautiful poetry. Literal commentary on the most profound mysteries. Theological truth.

The point is not just to get the story right. Having the “right theology” is not only an improbable goal, getting it right doesn’t in and of itself comfort a sufferer. What is able to comfort is to claim the story and then to lament in the context of that story. This is why it is of utmost importance that faith communities practice identifying the narrative they’re a part of and create space for lament in the context of the narrative (more on this on Day Four).

An Example: Psalm 104

Psalm 104 is a poetic rendition of the creation story and what it means to be alive in a good creation filled also with chaos. Read Psalm 104, and pay special attention to verses 27-35. I suggest reading it in a version you might not usually read from, like the ERV.

God creates. God provides food and shelter, both for utility and for joy. Life has a natural rhythm. Life depends on the death of something else. Inhale leads to exhale. Life gives way to death. And out of death God breathes renewed life. God, whose name is Yahweh, is responsible for this.

The psalmist recognizes his own mortality at 104:33 with “as long as I live” and “all my life.” Those words are an acknowledgement of death. But in the creation in which he finds himself, he decides to rejoice in Yahweh. Just as he prays that Yahweh will accept his meditation, so also he prays that human chaos will be consumed. In a sense, by praying this prayer the psalmist is acting with God to rein chaos in and live with purpose. That is the function of the narrative.

We recognize we are mortal, thus acknowledging death. But within the narrative, creation is still a good, purpose-filled place to live.

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Up next: Day Four - A Time to Lament

Noah →

The trailer is impressive. With Russell Crowe as Noah, Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah, and even Kevin Durand as a Nephilim, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of story Darren Aronofsky is going to tell.

Day Two - Providence

Should we even try to defend God? In one sense, no, because we can’t; we’re too limited. But as people of faith we are called to think deeply about God and speak into situations of evil and suffering. And so we try to understand.

Providence is a lens through which we think about how God is at work in the world. Instead of thinking of providence as God “providing,” it‘s more helpful to think in terms of the Italian cognate “prevedere” or Spanish “prever.” Literally, God sees before. So we’re not thinking about God providing a ram for the sacrifice (Genesis 22) but, more generally, how God interacts with the world as one who sees ahead.

One way to look at what you might believe about providence is to think about prayer. If you pray, what do you pray for, and why? Do you pray for a miraculous healing or for God to work through the development of modern medicine? This might say something about your own theology of providence.

Theology of Providence

There are three traditional modes for God’s work in the world:

• God sustains the world. God is always active in giving it being. Without God’s work to sustain the world, the world would collapse into nothingness.
• God concurs, in that God is a co-Actor alongside actions in the world.
• God governs toward an ultimate end. God has a goal or purpose to which God is moving the world.

Of these categories, the second is the most controversial. How is God acting alongside our actions? Is God forcing us to do things or do humans have free will? Is God a co-Actor even in bad things that happen? When you get into the specifics of how God is involved in the world—and how that relates to evil—you start moving toward issues of theodicy.

I’ll use a sports metaphor to explain some of the contemporary positions on divine providence. It’s too simplistic, but it gives the basic idea of the levels of God’s involvement in the world, from a God who is uninvolved altogether to a God who (pre)determines everything.

For deism, God is a spectator sitting up in the owner's box watching us play. In process theology, God is an encouraging coach who loves the game but stays on the sidelines; God isn’t able to enter the game. Open theism also believes God is a coach on the sidelines, but God sometimes enters the game as an emergency substitute.

Classic Arminianism affirms that God is always on the field, active in every play, and directing the game toward a perfect end, but without determining every action. The Reformed (Calvinist) God is the owner who dictates how each play will unfold, what the score will be, and who will score; the players play but their role is secondary because the owner has determined everything.

Which One?

So, which one is it? Good question. Like I said, there are, in 2013, good people who affirm each of these views. Without discussing every possible angle (which would, in fact, be impossible to do), I’ll go into a little more detail with two of the options. Ultimately, what we believe about how God is at work in the world will have a huge impact on our faith narrative, the story of God that we see ourselves in. Remember, we’re trying to work toward a story that might give us hope or meaning in the face of despair.

Looking at it from the standpoint of evil in the world, Open theism is one of the most attractive views. God is off the hook for evil in the world because God doesn’t have a hand in it. God created the world as part of a divine project where God gave humans free will with the hope that humans would freely love God. God knows everything about the past and present but does not know the future, because God can’t know the future actions of free beings. Most of evil happens as a result of humans misusing their free will. When evil happens it’s not God’s will, but God couldn’t do anything about it because God has chosen not to intervene directly. But God has been the “emergency substitute” on occasion, so the question remains “Why did God not intervene in this case?”

The Arminian position also affirms human free will. God knows the past, present, and future because God is God. Somehow God is able to let us have free will and know what we’ll do in the future. When something evil happens, there may be some significance to it that we aren’t aware of. Evil isn’t God’s will, but God is somehow able to work alongside it toward that ultimate purpose. This is where faith comes in. Bad stuff happens. There’s a hiddenness to God that makes it impossible for us to say that there is no significance in any given event. And so, with the lament psalms, we ask “why” and “how long?”

Diving In

From here we dive into the story of God. Many people won’t be ready to make that move, perhaps out of anger toward God or toward seeming meaninglessness. What helps me make the move is that God invites me to ask hard questions, to lament, to be angry. God isn’t scared of our questions—God expects them.

Sources:

Obviously I'm relying on John Mark Hicks for this entire series (since I'm documenting his class), but in particular I wanted to acknowledge his helpful sports metaphor for providence. If you want more substance for all of the contemporary options, professor Hicks has written about it here.

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Up next: Day Three - What’s Your Story?

Day One - Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought

Take a deep breath, because we covered a lot of ground on the first day of class. What follows is philosophical because it’s the philosophers who asked the toughest questions. We’ll try to understand what it meant to look at the problem of evil from a modern perspective that valued science and reason and so put faith in a corner (or got rid of it altogether).

What’s fascinating about this section is that our own understanding of how the world works guides how we talk about good and evil. My own worldview mixes Christian, modern, and postmodern perspectives. Let me go ahead and give you the conclusion: postmodernity actually serves a Christian worldview by arguing that everything has a dimension of faith. Modernism is fundamentally flawed because there is no such thing as pure objectivity or pure rationality. But we start with modernism because that is still where a lot of scientists, philosophers, scholars—and just regular people—still are. Their faith is in the human capacity to reason.

Developments in theodicy require us to think about history. For a long time, evil and suffering were thought of from a “pre-critical” faith perspective that generally accepted the goodness of God despite the reality of evil. In the 17th century, the Enlightenment happened, and with it science and reason became the highest values of the Modern Age. In 1755, an earthquake devastated Lisbon and the immensity of the death and destruction brought the discussion to the forefront of academic conversation.

Four Basic Perspectives on Theodicy in Modern Thought

Susan Neiman’s Evil in Modern Thought is our guide for this section. The titles of these views are fairly self-evident, but I offer a simple explanation of how the argument plays out. I also mention some names of philosophers who held these positions, because many of them will be familiar.

1. Optimistic: this understanding argues that the universe is ultimately rational and can be figured out. Optimism, then, takes one of two tracks—explanation or transformation. Leibniz explained that this world is the “best of all possible worlds” that God could create. Marx, on the other hand, said that the problem is economics, but we can be optimistic about humans transforming the world by defeating suffering.
2. Pessimistic: The universe is chaotic and irrational. It exists to drive us crazy (Voltaire). We can't hope for a better world; this is all we have. If there were a designer, couldn't he have designed a world without tornadoes and earthquakes (Hume)?
3. Illusory: There’s no need to figure this out, just live your life. Theodicy is a useless task, an illusion. You want to believe there is meaning to life because you’re afraid of a meaningless world (Freud).
4. Agnostic: There are limits to what we can see, and reality exists beyond physical phenomena. If you want to be completely rational, then you’ll realize humans are necessarily ignorant (Kant). We can’t know, because there’s no way to know everything from what we see.

After Neiman presents these four modern perspectives, she argues that none of them are good enough in light of World War II:

If Lisbon marked the moment of recognition that traditional theodicy was hopeless, Auschwitz signaled that every replacement fared no better.

Neiman concludes that you can’t do theodicy by human reason alone. Every attempt either a) denies the reality of evil, or b) ends up in despair. Somehow, we have to learn to live with the reality of evil without the despair.

The search for meaning in the face of despair is part of what makes us human.

Conclusion

Bottom line: we all bring a certain set of beliefs to the table. Whether we have faith in God or faith in science, there is an element of faith present. Modernism pushed rationality to its limits. Postmodernism moves us beyond pure reason into the realm of uncertainty, where the human search for meaning may find hope.

We spent the afternoon watching the 2008 PBS movie God On Trial (script). Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz put God on trial for allowing the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Some prisoners defend God with different strategies. Others prosecute God with counterarguments. The movie does two things:

1. It reminds us of how evil evil can really be.
2. It introduces the complexity of theodicy, even from a Jewish faith perspective.

So, even though postmodernism allows us to build a theodicy within the a framework of faith, it is still complicated. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how God is at work in the world (i.e. providence). Then we’ll start building a theodicy as part of the Christian faith narrative.

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Up next: Day Two - Providence

A Graduate-Level Class Called “Providence and Suffering”

I’m sitting in on a class this week called “Providence and Suffering.” The class exists to consider the problem of evil. That is, how can we believe in a “good God” in the face of evil and suffering in the world?

Since I’m not doing any of the required coursework, I’m assigning myself the task of summarizing what we talk about each day. Some say that the best writing comes when you’re writing with a specific audience in mind. So this week I’m writing for an audience of two. I’m writing this for my wife, Katie, who is working all week so that I can be in this class, and my brother, Seth, with whom I have the opportunity to have deep conversations on a regular basis.

I know they’ll read it. You're welcome to as well.

Claiming Humanity

First of all, this is way over my head. This sort of question heads straight off into philosophical directions that my friend Drew, Masters of Philosophy candidate at Boston College, would be way better equipped to answer. But if I don’t even try to explain it, what’s the point of taking the class?

Second, I want to be careful about what I say about suffering. As someone who has suffered very little in my lifetime, I can do a lot of damage with generalizations and simplistic answers. In fact, in most cases it would probably be better for me just to keep my mouth shut and simply be present with someone who is experiencing suffering.

We spent the first hour of class getting to know each other—especially in the context of what suffering we have experienced. The conversation has to start there, with relationship, because that’s what it means to be human.

What is Theodicy?

There comes a time when questions will be asked in the face of evil. Why would God allow this natural disaster to happen? How can humans do such horrible things to other humans?

Any attempt to answer such questions is called “theodicy.” Susan Neiman, in Evil in Modern Thought defines theodicy this way:

Theodicy in the broad sense is any way of giving meaning to evil that helps us face despair.

The search for meaning in the face of evil, then, doesn’t mean that you are a Christian or believe in God. Since the 18th century, there have been a number of different answers given for the problem of evil from both theists and atheists. Neiman presents four of the main arguments, all of which come from a modern worldview. In my next post, I’ll try to summarize these perspectives and show how postmodernity has actually reframed the question—for the better.

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Up next: Day One - Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought

The Traveler’s Double Standard

Daniela Papi, writing for the BBC:

At first, our tours looked a lot like that first bike ride, with foreigners coming in to "serve" people in places they knew very little about. I slowly stopped believing in our "voluntourism" offerings and began to see that young people didn't need more fabricated opportunities to "serve" but rather opportunities to learn how to better contribute their time and money in the future.

As our world becomes smaller and smaller with globalization, questioning our practices abroad becomes ever more important. This is the correct approach for anyone trying to get their feet wet, whether at a new job or doing any sort of service work:

We need to focus on learning first - not just encouraging jumping in. Like the legal intern delivering coffee and learning what it takes to be a good lawyer, their most significant impact in the role is not achieved in a short time, but rather in avoiding being too much of a distraction in the short-term and learning how to have a real impact in the long run.

Dillon's Spatial Skepticism

Dillon Daggett, age 6:

There's no way all those animals could fit on the a boat. I just don't believe it.

Fair point.

This was just Dillon's intro. Here's the whole dialogue, along with our dad's response.

Renaissance Forensics

From the Smithsonian:

Gino Fornaciari is no ordinary medical examiner; his bodies represent cold cases that are centuries, sometimes millennia, old. As head of a team of archaeologists, physical anthropologists, historians of medicine and additional specialists at the University of Pisa, he is a pioneer in the burgeoning field of paleopathology, the use of state-of-the-art medical technology and forensic techniques to investigate the lives and deaths of illustrious figures of the past.

Reads like an episode of Bones.

Psalm 19

John Fortner on the prayer that concludes Psalm 19:

The psalmist’s prayer, (vss.12-14), is that his life, thought, speech, and actions “make known the glory of God.” Ironically, the sky-canopy and the cosmos cannot help doing so. Only humans have the capacity to generate both the great obedience and the “great rebellion.” Consequently, only humans must seek the face of the one who made them in order to fullfil that for which they have been created. Only when the human heart is ordered according to the word of Yahveh, can there truly exist a κοσμος.

The ontological, epistemological, and ethical foundation for such a κοσμος is constituted in the truth that the heavens, the Torah, and the human heart are woven by the same pair of hands from a single thread. Each is created in the image and likeness of God.

When I took Dr. Fortner for a class several years ago, he presented Psalm 19 as the expression of the ancient Hebrew worldview. Three divisions in the psalm: world (cosmos), Torah (teaching), and the human heart. Each is created in God's image. Each has the ability to honor the Creator. When all three reflect God, the creation is complete.

‘Portraits’

Frank Chimero, on our contemporary notions of privacy:

The institutions that call for radical transparency very rarely exhibit it. Facebook will always know more about you than you will know about it. Google will be the only one to know how all your emails coalesce into a more meaningful picture. No one knew PRISM existed until a few weeks ago. We might know that we’re having portraits painted of us, but we will never have the canvas turned in our direction. And, if these painters did turn their easels around, I’m not sure which would be more terrifying to see: a distorted, monstrous version of myself, and say “that’s not me,” or myself mirrored back, reconstituted—the exhaust fumes of my day-to-day life somehow made solid.

By far the most beautiful piece I've read that has come about as a product of the NSA leak.

A Reparable Mount Everest

Riveting story by Mark Jenkins for National Geographic. Here’s an excerpt:

Our team was on Everest to mark the anniversary of [the first American] expedition. Yet as we witnessed, the mountain has become an icon for everything that is wrong with climbing. Unlike in 1963, when only six people reached the top, in the spring of 2012 more than 500 mobbed the summit. When I arrived at the apex on May 25, it was so crowded I couldn’t find a place to stand. Meanwhile, down below at the Hillary Step the lines were so long that some people going up waited more than two hours, shivering, growing weak—this even though the weather was excellent. If these throngs of climbers had been caught in a storm, as others were in 1996, the death toll could have been staggering.

This sort of traffic changes the stakes and has taken quite a toll on the mountain:

Everest has always been a trophy, but now that almost 4,000 people have reached its summit, some more than once, the feat means less than it did a half century ago. Today roughly 90 percent of the climbers on Everest are guided clients, many without basic climbing skills. Having paid $30,000 to $120,000 to be on the mountain, too many callowly expect to reach the summit. A significant number do, but under appalling conditions. The two standard routes, the Northeast Ridge and the Southeast Ridge, are not only dangerously crowded but also disgustingly polluted, with garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement befouling the high camps. And then there are the deaths. Besides the four climbers who perished on the Southeast Ridge, six others lost their lives in 2012, including three Sherpas.

Jenkins goes on to suggest a number of ways to “repair Everest.” Among these is the Leave No Trace philosophy, which seems obvious but in practice requires intentionality.

When my wife, father-in-law, and I climbed Mt. Rainier last summer with Rainier Mountaineering Inc., they were all about Leave No Trace and even gave us a special orientation regarding best outdoor practices. It was easy enough to practice on a two-day climb. It’s hard to imagine, though, how difficult that becomes on such a magnified scale (i.e. Everest). That's why it's so important to use a guiding service that is actually built for the long-term.

In the last half-century humanity has had a visible impact on some of Earth’s most remote territories. Here's hoping Jenkins, RMI, and others can help us keep the next half-century's impact invisible.

‘The Barbarians Win’

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

In one respect the new atheists are right. The threat to western freedom in the 21st century is not from fascism or communism but from a religious fundamentalism combining hatred of the other, the pursuit of power and contempt for human rights. But the idea that this can be defeated by individualism and relativism is naive almost beyond belief. Humanity has been here before. The precursors of today’s scientific atheists were Epicurus in third-century BCE Greece and Lucretius in first-century Rome. These were two great civilisations on the brink of decline. Having lost their faith, they were no match for what Bertrand Russell calls ‘nations less civilised than themselves but not so destitute of social cohesion’. The barbarians win. They always do.

‘A Theology Of Revolt’

Richard Beck supplies the answer for the future of progressive Christianity: a theology of revolt.

My summary: get mad.

Exempt From Error

Ed Cyzewski on why “inerrancy” doesn't solve anything:

Instead of pointing the doubters to Christ, the fundamentalists pointed them to the Bible.

Thought-provoking article on a complicated word.

From The Outside Looking In

What will future archaeologists and anthropologists say about us? Jordan Shapiro, on beach-going and other North American rituals:

Our lives are full of habits and rituals that seem ordinary to us. However, often what seems objectively reasonable in the present looks like foolishness when seen through the lenses of a distant culture.

The lesson is not that we’re just as crazy as the ancient peoples we sometimes dismiss as primitive (although that may be true). Instead, it teaches us that we’d be wise to let mythologists and anthropologists help us analyze the unconscious motivations that drive our secular present.

Christianity Needs More Heretics

Tripp Fuller, making a plea for more prophet-like “heretics”:

A Christian can’t relegate faith making it a particular means to cultivate a kinder, gentler, and slightly improved version of the world we are handed. If we are honest about our global situation we know we can’t. In letting a therapeutic faith die it is my hope that the church stop pleading the 5th or silently affirming our world as it is and find its prophetic voice again. We must insist that humanity can dream and create a more just and equitable way of relating as peoples and to our planet. We can do better.

He calls the first group “therapeutic Christians”, the second group “Christian heretics”. If Christianity is to survive another 100 years, it needs more heretics.

Just Be Less Stupid

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing for The Atlantic:

If you are not around people who will look at you like you are crazy when you make stupid claims about other people's experiences, then you tend to keep saying stupid things about other people's experiences. It is not enough to pay a political price, or even to be shamed into silence. You have to come to believe -- in your heart -- that sincerity itself is not the same as accurate information. It is not enough for you to not be "the party of stupid" or to "stop saying stupid things" you must show some active commitment toward being less stupid.

In other words, being with people who are different than you forces you to ask questions about the way things are. That questioning process causes you to learn. And as you learn you become less stupid.

Ira Glass: Christians Get The Short End Of The Media Stick

Ira Glass, in an interview with author Jim Henderson for Open Culture:

There came a point early on in the show where I just noticed that the way Christians are portrayed in movies and on television is almost always as crazy people, […] whereas the Christians in my life were all incredibly wonderful, and thoughtful, and had very ambiguous complicated feelings in their beliefs, and seemed to be totally generous hearted and open to a lot of different kinds of people in their lives.

Two points:

1. It shouldn't be that surprising that Christians as a whole are misrepresented in the media. More often than not it seems that the most radical in any religious or political group are the most vocal. And the vocal minority gets the most media attention.

2. The interview itself is a great example of how to have an open conversation with someone who doesn't have the same beliefs as you do.

The interview is split into twelve different videos.

Ask N.T. Wright

Rachel Held Evans has been hosting a great interview series on her blog. Today she posted N.T. Wright's response to six crowd-sourced questions. That he even agreed to do this is remarkable and speaks volumes about Rachel's site and audience.

Wright gives a fair treatment to a question about the relationship between the world today and the biblical “New Heaven and New Earth,” as well as gender equality in the church. He sidesteps the questions about open theism and sexuality.

His attitude toward political and theological division in churches is refreshing and constructive:

Beware of ‘camps’.

In the U.S. especially these are usually and worryingly tied in to the various political either/or positions which the rest of the world does not recognise. Anyone with their wits about them who reads scripture and prays and is genuinely humble will see that many of the issues which push people into ‘camps’ - especially but not only in the U.S. - are distortions in both directions caused by trying to get a quick fix on a doctrinal or ethical issue, squashing it into the small categories of one particular culture. Read Philippians 2.1-11 again and again. And Ephesians 4.1-16 as well.