Hedonist Calculator

Considering the Trees

2005-01-06T14:04:00.000-06:00

"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

it recently occured to me that when God told Adam & Eve they could eat from 'any tree in the garden,' he would have been refering to the tree of life. Does that mean Adam and Eve ate from the tree of life in the time before the fall? If they didn't, why not?

I guess to answer that question i would have to know what the tree of life is.

Genesis: "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

Proverbs 3: "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom...Long life is in her right hand...She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed."

Proverbs 15: "The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise."

Revelation 22: "On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse."

so the forbidden tree offers us knowledge. when we eat of that tree, God then blocks our access to the tree of life - which offers us wisdom and healing. God invites us to eat from the tree of life, but as long as we continue to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we are incapable of wisdom or healing.

These two trees sit at the heart of the garden like a choice. it's not about saying yes or no to the forbidden tree, it's about leaving behind the forbidden knowledge in order to fully embrace wisdom and healing. this is the first story in the bible, and it's as if the bible itself is warning me before i begin of the choices i will have to make. is the bible the tree of life, or is it a source of information for reliable definitions of good and evil?

so if i know that i will surely die if i continue to eat of it, how do i live without the knowledge of good and evil?

2 Corinthians 3: "Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!"

Proverbs 11: "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise."

i am free to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (it sits in the garden - forbidden, but readily available). of course the cost of wanting to be like God is never knowing wisdom or healing, never eating from the tree i am invited and encouraged to eat from - the tree of life.

A Criminal Code for Christians

2004-12-18T22:30:00.000-06:00

I have some thoughts and concerns about what it means to live out of scripture. I was always taught that the bible is the word of God, but there are a number of theories about what that means. For some, that means a literal correspondence to our present reality. To others, divinity shines through via a symbolic translation. The language of "100% the Word of God", "inerrancy", "infallibility", "the Truth", "inspired by God", and "God-breathed" are all a part of what it means to consider the bible written by God himself. What has always bothered me is how we come to know that God inspired these texts. As far as I can gather, church councils in the past ascribed the descriptive "divinely inspired" to the bible, and simply decided what texts were and were not inspired in relation to that description. This seems to suggest that it was ordinary humans who came up with this "inspired" business, which makes me wonder if we should be more suspicious of such a description of the bible.

The language that we use to describe the bible has its most profound effect in the ethical dimension of our lives. Such language has been a source of confusion in the past, when the church struggled with slavery, iconography, astronomy, and the theory of evolution. In our current ethical climate the bible remains a source of controversy for christians with issues like justice for women, racism, justice for homosexual persons, and the growing economic divide between nations and classes. Does the bible contain rules that can help us out with all these things? Can inerrancy, infallibility, divine inspiration, and the Truth, help us through these kinds of problems?

We typically call the bible "the Word of God" but is this warranted? Does the bible really claim to be such a thing, or can it even? Given that the final canon emerged long after the books of the bible were written, is it really fair to attribute divine inspiration to letters and stories written by people unaware of what their texts would become, to us? Was it our inspiration to canonize the bible? Or did God inspire us? And if God inspired us to see His inspiration in the scriptures, how exactly did that work?

Paul clearly addresses his letters to specific churches. The audience he is addressing is specifically named by him. Yet, we tend to read these letters like they are addressed to us. If we were going to be 'literal' about it, we would treat each letter as addressed to a specific church and it's specific problems. But we don't read Paul's letters literally. We read them in another way, assuming an "extra-biblical' mechanism that transforms these letters into letters addressed to us! What is this extra-biblical mechanism that makes this possible? Should we not be more critical of this move, given the importance of the bible in the Christian community? Should we not take more responsibility for this kind of extra-biblical move?

Things get even more complicated if we consider the different relationships we have toward the old testament, and the new testament. From what I can gather, the old testament is fulfilled, except in those cases where the laws and stipulations are "doubled" in the new testament. This is supposed to indicate, somehow, that these doubled laws are not fulfilled, and so we must continue to be bound by them. Thus, the new testament is the standard by which we read the old testament. The new testament affirms laws and stipulations in the old testament. That is why we can continue to quote Leviticus in relation to homosexuality, for instance, but we generally do not quote Leviticus when eating at Red Lobster, for instance. It sounds like what you really need is a lawyer to help you figure out how all these laws work!!

Maybe it needs to be explained how the laws described in Leviticus are considered "fulfilled", while the laws described in the New Testament are not. It's odd to me that Christ would come to fulfill the law, and that we interpret that to mean only the laws that preceded him -- not the rules and stipulations described by Paul after him. If the bible is universal in scope, if God's love is universal in scope, if ethical norms are considered universal in scope, would this also not apply to Jesus' ability to fulfill laws? Why is this ability not universal in scope?

Why do Christians treat the new testament like the "new old testament"? Is Paul just a second Moses, with a new set of rules written on stone?

This brings to mind an important bible chapter in my life, and one worth meditating upon in this context:

"Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with everincreasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."

This chapter, taken from 2 Corinthians 3, suggests to me a different reading of God's word -- that the word of God is written not on tablets of stone, and not between gold-embossed paper, but rather is written on our very hearts. Perhaps this is what the new covenant is all about. Perhaps this is where the "real" New Testament resides...

I would juxtapose this to an approach to the bible that i will call "the criminal code for Christians". The CCC is a depository of rules and regulations, any infraction of which is to deviate from God's will for our lives. Like a criminal code, the bible is related to as if embodying God's will in the form of Law. Jesus was a man, and then became a book.

I learned, in a Church history class at Redeemer, that the Reformation was preceded by an age of scholasticism. The reformation, with its organic and spirited approach to scripture and the godly life, was a sheer contrast to the legalistic formalisms and categorizations that so stifled the gospel with scholasticism. What I remember learning, and cannot forget, was that those disciples of the Reformers, instead of living in the spirit of their teachers, scholasticized the Reformation instead. They set to work, organizing, formalizing, and "scholastizing" the great teachings of the Reformers. To whom are we heirs? Are we heirs of the Reformation? Or are we heirs of Scholasticism?

I wonder if something similar is done when we take the teachings of Christ, or the teachings of Paul, and attempt to formalize them into a criminal code for Christians. Are we not betraying Christ, and his apostles, when we do this? Is Christianity the embodiment of Christ? Or is Christianity just another legalistic, pharisaic cult -- bent on making all persons slaves to the law...again. Are we heirs of Christ? Or are we heirs of the Pharisees?

Is the word of God written on our human hearts? Or is it chiselled onto a tablet of stone?

The Gospel of Thomas

2004-10-28T13:57:00.000-05:00

Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom."

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, then you will enter the kingdom."

How Relativism CanSave Your Marriage

2004-09-13T13:03:00.000-05:00

We christians prefer to talk about the 'creation', rather than 'nature'. There are some good reasons for this. There is supposed to be a distinction between what is 'natural', and what is 'created'. The first is not our term for it.

An example of this could be the "nature" of homosexuality. When struggling with the mystery of homosexuality, debate flutters between whether homosexual persons are "innately" so, or are simply making a life choice in response to certain environmental factors.

This unfamiliar, and distancing "scientific" presentation of the debate betrays our own allegiance to the creation -- not only an allegiance to our Creator, but to ourselves as creations. Indeed, putting it all on science makes the creation a synonym of nature.

I appeal to two verb tenses we use in reference to the creation. The 'creation' as a noun, suggests an 'already-happened', a finished work. In reference to this noun, the verb 'created' is appropriate. For instance, "God didn't create us to be that way, he created us to be something else."

I would like to juxtapose this particular verb tense with another, less frequently used, in relation to our Creator, that of 'creating'. 'Creating' is to suggest "in the process of", or "still creating". The work of creation, in relation to this verb tense, is yet to be completed. There is still some creating to be done. In relation to this, I appeal to phrases like "create in me a new heart", or even Paul's references to the birth pangs of the creation -- which suggest new creations that will come forth -- a newness that we are bound to welcome and nurture.

Although the bible is filled with more uses of the first verb tense (created) than it is the second (creating, create, or creates), I choose to put my faith in the latter -- as one who looks ahead to that greater day.

And not only this, but as a reformational thinker, I locate the pithiness of my faith in the dictum: always reforming. I especially like the verb tense -- there is no completion here, it is always happening, and needs to always happen, no matter what we feel we may have completed.

I would apply this reformational dictum to the creation, in that I look to the creation as "always creating". This not only suggests to me an active God, who has hardly hung up his safety helmet, but also opens the possibilities for change in our world -- change that defies the staticity we may assume about the creation (via so-called "creational norms", or "laws of the creation").

For instance, these two text fragments from Isaiah:

"Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind."

"But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create..."

Also, this little fragment of a beautiful, yearned-for hope in Jeremiah:

"The LORD will create a new thing on earth..."

A good metaphor -- and a biblical one to boot -- is marriage. Marriages are contracts decided between two people, a commitment to maintain a certain kind of relationship for a period of time. Something that bothers me everytime I attend one of these ceremonies is the change that will undoubtedly happen between these two people. Will the promise they make today hold up in the coming years? How can the contract stay the same when they will change so much as persons, and will have to contend with changes a marriage ceremony is doomed to anticipate. Two single people joining in marriage are woefully incapable of predicting the dynamics of child-rearing. How can they know they will be able to honour their contract?

Unfortunately, this is precisely the kind of problem that leads many marriages to ruin. This doesn't have to mean divorce but, much worse, the stubborn maintenance of a marriage contract even while two people maintain a listless unhappiness -- the only comfort being the honouring of a contract before friends and family. I hate unhappy marriages, and I wonder to what degree a single contractual agreement is the source of some of these unhappinesses.

A marital contract can function like a crutch. As if to say, two people, when unable to lean on each other, can lean on their marriage as if it is a third thing between them -- a noun. Hence, as bad as things may get, as dishonouring as their marriage may be, the contract somehow keeps things buoyant, in a way they cannot. Some may call this the power of God to keep two people together, but I call it laziness. Two people in marriage need to do a whole lot of hard work to keep a marriage a marriage. They have to earn their marriage. They cannot rely on some promise made when they were merely kids...

I would offer an alternate to the traditional marriage -- at least where contractual agreements are concerned. I would suggest that a healthier arrangement might be the renewing of vows periodically. Renewing a marriage vow, after a fight, or in the face of crushing responsibility, is a way to bring two people together under something new. It doesn't have to be a replicating of the original vow, but could lend itself to amendments and additions, always reforming -- always remarrying.

When a marriage is dying, or has grown stale, it would be healthy to call it as such, in order to leave a space open for the "always remarrying". In this way, a marriage, healthily understood, is relativistic. It is not the mere "tethering" of a relation to an original contract that both parties will "acknowledge" whether it is true or not, but rather an acknowledgement that no contract can stand the test of time, and must always be renegotiated.

And this, to my mind, is what certain philosophers are talking about when they espouse a "relativistic" worldview. Not an "anything goes" universe, but an acknowledgement that static contracts have a way of petering out, and have to be done over, and over, and over again, but never the same way. If the problem in a marriage is child-rearing, than this is what the new marriage contract should focus on. If the problem is a growing emotional distance, than this is what the new marriage contract should focus on. A relativistic approach is an opportunity to invest new life into a marriage, a way to inject marriage back into a so-called "marriage".

I think there is a wealth of comparison that could be made between God and his people in terms of the numerous covenantal arrangements that we read about in the old testament. The contracts were always being broken, largely due to staticity, or just plain forgetting. God did not give up, nor did he hearken to old rules of arrangement. God sought new covenants -- the renewing of covenantal vows -- that gave new life to the relationship.

Perhaps there is room, here, for a reconsideration of certain stale descriptions that can crop up when we deal with those in our midst that suffer for our definitions. One realm ripe for reconsideration, or renewal, or reform, is our attitude towards homosexual persons and same-sex partners. In the face of the prospect of same-sex marriage, there has been a reactionary hearkening to "traditional" marriage descriptions -- to old contracts and stale covenants. This, perhaps, is a time where we are called upon to reinvest what this contract means before God. Another realm long overdue for reconsideration is how women are expected to live out a married life. We men have fallen into a rut, and women are typically given the short end of the stick -- in terms of child-rearing (women baptised as primary child-rearers), as unpaid house-keepers, or even the tension that can arise when women, in a marital context, seek a career. Why is this always harder for women?

These considerations, I feel, fit quite nicely with the image of Christ and the body of the Church. This relationship is described many times as a marital contract. Just as we christians seek to always renew our relationship with Christ -- always looking for opportunities to make that relationship stronger and better, so too should we take that impetus, and apply it to all our relationships -- marital, personal, communal, and even our relationship with the whole of creation and, of course, in relation to our saviour. It's about the hard work of relating, of learning to be relative. Perhaps relativism can save all of our relationships, by softening the hardening that can happen to our hearts, and allowing for new possibilities, new life, and a new creation, as God promised.

God the Relativist

2004-08-18T15:41:00.000-05:00

recently I've become interested in the story of Jesus clearing the money changers from the temple. the topic came up here, in the context of how Christians should or shouldn't behave.

looking around the internet for more info, i found this site, which explores a reason for the anger of jesus that i have not heard before.

this article explains that the primary focus of jesus' rage was not the money changers, but the "cult of animal sacrifice." many prophets before jesus told the israelites to discontinue the practice, but by the time jesus came to jerusalem it was still going on in the temple.

this is the story of the long and determined struggle in the Bible to overcome a firmly entrenched tradition.

there are many verses in the beginning of the old testament that give specific instructions for animal sacrifice (eg. Leviticus 6:8, Numbers 6:14), so i've chosen one to post.

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Leviticus 23:18

Present with this bread seven male lambs, each a year old and without defect, one young bull and two rams. They will be a burnt offering to the LORD , together with their grain offerings and drink offerings-an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

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but then the verses against it begin:

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Psalm 40

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced;
burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.

Isaiah 1

"The multitude of your sacrifices-what are they to me?" says the LORD.
"I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?

Jeremiah 7

"'This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.

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does this not seem like an instance of God's laws changing when the world changes? there was a time when God demanded animal sacrifice, and a time when he demanded that it cease. in the verse from jeremiah God nullifies his commandments about animal sacrifice by saying there is a command that is more important - to obey him.

to 'walk forward.'

Tradition

2004-08-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

quote: "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, but tradition is the living faith of the dead."

I am passionate about the continued degradation of women that takes place in Christian communities all over North America -- especially regarding the so-called "women in office" debate. Much evil is done, and maintained even, in the name of tradition. I was recently treated to the above quotation as a defence for keeping women outside of consistory. Below are some of my thoughts on what this quotation has to say about women, and the offices to which they are denied access:

This first strikes me as a cutesy way for conservatives to describe how following a tradition should be distinguished from certain destructive attitudes from the past. Separating bad traditions from good ones.

It's not a very helpful little phrase, because it doesn't tell us what constitutes a traditionalism, and what constitutes a tradition. I would need to know what tradition is being talked about, in order to determine whether it is a living faith-walk, or a dead faith-walk. The quotation is not very specific about anything, so it just sounds vague and luke-warm.

For instance, we can look at the question of 'women in office'. Is it a tradition (a living faith)? Or is it a traditionalism (a dead faith)? Well, we can look at how the tradition has played itself out, and i don't think we will find too many good things about this tradition. I cannot think of one discernable benefit from excluding women from governmental roles in the church, and the continued practise of this tradition fails to produce any obvious advantage or benefit. We cannot answer the question: "Why would God want this?"

Not only this, but the tradition of excluding women from important positions is illegal in every other aspect of our society. We cannot exclude women from important political segments of our society, from police departments, from educational institutions, from legal establishments, etc. we used to be able to, but fortunately that tradition has died. in our day and age, the tradition of not allowing women full participation in the church only shows the church to be a reluctant, and irrelevant, part of our culture and world -- the church continues to practise a tradition that the rest of our culture has deemed inhumane.

On the flip side of things, we can look at how much the church has lost by continuing this tradition. So many women have suffered because their own needs are either not understood, or ignored. Because familial responsibilities are often placed on the female parent as primary care-giver, the needs and concerns of and for children are threatened as well. This tradition also places a great divide between men and women who attend churches together.
When they enter the sanctuary, they are not equal before Christ -- they enter the building on different levels, some not as close to Christ as others. The maintenance of this unfair power distribution clearly runs against Christ's own teachings that tear down the barriers between peoples.

And I am only getting started. If I had to place the issue of 'women in office' into one of these two categories, I would have to call it a "traditionalism" -- the maintenance of a tradition that is clearly dead, that offers a community no discernable benefit, and seems to find its basis solely on the fact that it is written about in the bible, the rationale being that we better continue to follow it, because it is written there, and therefore must be the will of God, whether we understand it or not.

We can ask: "Does the tradition of excluding women bring life to a church, or does it bring death? Is it live-bringing to deny women full participation, or is to include women fully a way to bring new life to a church? I don't think it takes a genius to see the difference. One brings hurt, exclusion, ignorance, and injustice, the other takes all of these things away. A "traditionalism" is the attempt to trap a way of life in amber, so it will not change any longer. But once something is trapped, it will die. There is something to admire in the strong desire to keep something alive -- but so often the very attempt to do so is precisely what kills.

It brings to mind a bible verse i love very much, and i will write it down.

"Now if the ministry of death, chiselled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses' face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!"

This is from II Corinthians 3:7-11. The whole third chapter is one of my all-time favourites in the bible. I believe that "traditionalism" would be "the ministry of death", and "ministry of condemnation". I would also call the tradition of denigrating women in the church community to be evidence of a ministry of death and condemnation to be at work. I would call the efforts of those churches that offer full participation to women to be ministries of the Spirit, and ministries of justification. like in the bible verse, I would say that what "once had glory" (the old tradition of lowering the status of women) has "lost its glory because of the greater glory" (which is full acceptance, and justification of women). We should let that old ministry of death be set aside, so that we can continue the good work as ministers of justification, ministers who are both men and women! Amen!!

The tradition of excluding women from full participation finds its only basis, in christian circles, from the letter of the law. And as we know, the letter kills, and it is the Spirit that gives life. We have to ask ourselves, how long are we going to let this "traditionalism" kill. Kill us, kill our community, and kill the ability of our community to reach out to others with the life-giving Spirit we have been entrusted to give.

The Pleasure ofthe First Post

2004-08-07T01:45:00.000-05:00

ok, the blog is ready.

i feel like calculating. does anyone have any hedonism?