Lauryn Hill

"School Hard"

2. "Some Assembly Required"



3.  "School Hard"



Here are the episodes I'll be posting videos for next Monday evening:

4.  "Inca Mummy Girl" I would skip this episode, but you may want to watch it if you're enjoying the series.
5.  "Reptile Boy" I would skip this episode.
6.  "Halloween" Watch it.

"School Hard"

2. "Some Assembly Required"



3.  "School Hard"

"School Hard"

2. "Some Assembly Required"



3.  "School Hard"



Here are the episodes I'll be posting videos for next Monday evening:

4.  "Inca Mummy Girl" I would skip this episode, but you may want to watch it if you're enjoying the series.
5.  "Reptile Boy" I would skip this episode.
6.  "Halloween" Watch it.

White Privilege

Rev. Traci Blackmon

White Privilege

#95

thisiswhiteprivilege:

White privilege is being the #1 consumers of welfare, food stamps, general government aid, and illegal drugs, but STILL blaming POC for all of those things as well as incarcerating them at an exponentially higher rate.

Let Your Life Speak

From “Let Your Life Speak:Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker Palmer.

Implicit Bias

Expansion of Presidential Powers

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

"Then when G-d asks [Cain], ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ he arrogantly responds, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’
In essence, the entire Bible is written as an affirmative response to this question."

— Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy  (via dadofthedead)

White Fragility

Questions White People Have for White People

"When She Was Bad"

I really enjoy this season premiere and I hope you do, too.



Here are the episodes for which I'll post videos for next week at this time:

2.  "Some Assembly Required" Skip it.
3.  "

Useful Terms: Emic and Etic

Contrast the meaning of “emic” and “etic” perspectives. 

“Emic” is looking at the religious group from the perspective of someone within the group. They practice the religion, believe in its theology, participate in its rituals, and are a member of its community. They tend not to look at their religion scientifically and experience the religion uniquely and personally.

The “etic” perspective is the perspective of an outside observer. Their approach is generally more scientific and objective. This can lead in many ways to a better understanding of the religion, but it also limits them in many ways. Their experience is very different from that of the “emic” because they are not a part of the religious community. One needs both “emic” and “etic” perspectives to best understand a religious tradition.

White Fragility

If Black People Said the Things White People Say

Vote

Vote.

Voting is an Act of Love

Christian voting

The Process of Sin

The understandings of the human condition offered by the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant voice of Christianity for most of its history, have been heavily informed by the writings of Augustine.  Much has changed since the fourth and fifth centuries, when Augustine wrote about sin and humanity.  The hard sciences inform much of what we know about humanity and its place in the world and beyond.  Theologians like Catherine Keller have sought to bring our religious understandings of humanity and sin into the 21st century.

In this paper I will demonstrate why Augustine’s concepts of humanity and sin are problematic and should be rethought in ways that are more in line with contemporary scientific understandings of humanity and orient people toward a way of living that is concerned with justice and relationships.  I submit that Catherine Keller’s imaginings of humanity and sin are more appropriate in the face of scientific knowledge and more helpful in supporting movements for justice and human flourishing.  We will begin by considering Augustine and Keller’s definitions of sin and proceed to consider how these understandings influence each theologian’s concept of humanity and human nature.    

Augustine says that “abandon[ing] the Creator in pursuit of some created good” is to live in a way that is displeasing to God and thus to sin.(1)  Sin is pridefully obeying one’s own will without relying on the grace of God.(2)  It is poor use of free will.  He says that free will “is a good thing divinely bestowed, and that those are to be condemned who make a bad use of it…”(3) This understanding of sin is directly related to God.  Sinful things are things that displease God and are against God’s will.  Sinning, in this understanding, is about a relationship to God, not necessarily about our relationships to each other or creation.  According to Augustine, sin begins with pride, which is when “the soul cuts itself off from the very source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself” (taking pleasure in itself, away from God).(4)  I believe this focus on the individual relationship with God can lead to a focus on oneself that has potential to neglect relationship to others.  

Keller suggests considering sin to be a “rebellion against God…abstracts our relation to God from our relationships to the community and to the creation… [and] distorts biblical attempts to protect us from each other.”(5)  Thus, to imagine sin as an act against the fellow inhabitants of the world (creation) as opposed to an act against the will of God, we emphasize our responsibility for justice.  Focusing on how our acts affect other people can both motivate one to work for justice and keep one from acting in inconsiderate ways.  This idea of sin asks us to consider how our actions affect other people, animals, and the environment, since each is a part of creation.  This thinking can be very helpful in a world facing Global Climate Change, systematic injustice, and limited resources.  Sin does not begin with pride, in Keller’s understanding, but a “hardness of the heart” that begins with “too much privilege, too much violence, or just too much habit.  It dissociates from the complex multiplicity of its interdependence.”(6)  Keller would suggest, and I would agree, that defining sin as an act against creation that begins with a disassociation with relatedness, (as opposed to against God and beginning with pride), “restores the prophetic emphasis on justice for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor.”(7)  Now that we understand how each theologian approaches sin, we can consider the human and its relationship to sin.

The origins of humanity, according to Augustine, begin with Adam and Eve.  He argues that Adam and Eve are the first parents of humanity and first sinners, and are thus the reason that humans die.  Furthermore, he believes that the mortality of all human bodies was a “just punishment” for the disobedience of Adam and Eve.(8)  The modern, scientifically-minded person sees how this is at odds with the Theory of Evolution.  Since we now know that humanity is descended from apes, a suggestion that there was a “first couple” created from dust seems archaic and ignorant of what we now know to be true.  Augustine’s conclusion that humans die because of Adam and Eve is as at odds with science as it is with our individual identities.  Additionally, while Augustine sees mortality as a just punishment, I do not believe a just God would not punish an entire species for the disobedience of an individual, although I can see in this suggestion the inkling of an idea that as a species, we are “in this together.”  This idea will be supported by Catherine Keller later.

Before we proceed to how Catherine Keller might re-imagine the human experience, it is important to understand how Augustine sees the human species and its nature.  He explains that children are “identical” to their parents in nature, since parents make their children (as opposed to the first humans, who were made from dust).(9)  Because Adam and Eve sinned, it is now human nature to sin.  Augustine believes God wanted all humanity to be derived from one couple so that the nature of humanity would be unified and peaceful (arguing that “blood kinship” would lead humans to live harmoniously).(10)  While this understanding of human nature as inherently connected is beautiful and in line with our scientific understanding of genetic relatedness, the idea of relatedness does not inform Augustine’s idea of sin as much as Keller relates sin to relatedness.  Furthermore, Augustine’s understanding of human nature as prone to sin by virtue of the actions of Adam and Eve is at odds with our understandings of science (Adam and Eve were not progenitors of our species).

While Augustine understands humanity to be prone to sin, he suggests that “…by the law comes the knowledge of sin; by faith comes the obtaining of grace against sin…and grace heals the will whereby righteousness may freely be loved.”(11)  Again, Augustine focuses sin (and our tendency toward it) as tied to God.  Our only escape from sinfulness is through relationship to the divine.  This is an individualistic sense of humanity in which one’s prime focus is on oneself and one’s relationship to God.  While Augustine sees humanity as connected through Adam and Eve, this idea of connection does not approach the focus on the interrelatedness of humanity that Keller offers.

In contrast to Augustine’s concept of sin as descended from Adam and Eve, Keller would suggest that while we are “not to blame for the sins that precede [us] Academically, … [we are] responsible to recognize the collective structures of injustice, to recycle [our] legacy for the better, to resist what wastes life and to take part in what saves.”(12)  For Keller, sin is about responsibility to the world.  We are not sinful because of our ancestors, but we have responsibility for the ripple effects of all sin.  Again, this understanding is understood in terms of relatedness and justice.  Sin is action against creation.  We are responsible not only for our individual sins, but to act against systemic sin (Keller’s “collective structures of injustice”) and protect its victims (“take part in what saves”).   While Keller does not address human nature in terms as direct as Augustine, she suggests (through the ideas of Hadewijch) that “only in Love… do we actualize our potentiality as humans…”(13)  God lures us into Love like a “poet of the world, with tender patience leading it.”(14)  In contrast to Augustine’s idea of the necessity for God’s grace in resisting sin, Keller suggests that God brings forth love in people in a way that is not resistant, but unfolds in concert with the continuously creating creation.(15) Additionally, this view continues Keller’s understanding of relatedness as primary to our understandings of humanity and creation.  Augustine’s conception of sin as inherent to our species does not allow the the kind of positive orientation toward justice we find in Keller’s understanding of humanity as a species unfolding in love and relatedness to all creation, in concert with God.  

In conclusion, it is time for religious understandings of sin and human nature to take into account information from the sciences.  The views put forth by Augustine early in church history are no longer adequate for modern minds and are too individualistic for a world facing Climate Change, limited resources, and systematic injustice.  To conceptualize human nature through the story of Adam and Eve (as presented by Augustine) is problematic in the eyes of modern science.  Catherine Keller offers an alternative understanding of humans and our relationship to sin that focuses less on the individual.  She does this by emphasizing the interconnectedness of creation.  To sin, for Keller, is to act against creation.  This understanding leads to an emphasis on justice that can have practical application in our world.  To see ourselves in relationship and to consider how our actions positively affect other beings can help us to imagine a world where we are more considerate to all.  

1. Augustine in Hodgson, King, p. 150
2. Hodgson/King, p. 176
3. Augustin in Hodgson/King, p. 177
4. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 151
5. Keller, p. 80
6. Keller, p. 97.
7. Keller, p. 80.
8. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 150
9. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 147-148
10. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 150
11. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 179-180
12. Keller, p. 82
13. Keller, p. 93.
14. Keller, p. 100.
15. Keller, p. 100.

Keller, Catherine. On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008.

King, Robert H., and Peter C. Hodgson, eds. Readings in Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985.

Raise Your Voice

Raise your voice.  

Let's Talk About White Privilege

My denomination doesn’t have a pope or anything, but this is our President currently.

Words to Live By

"Prophecy Girl"

If you have fast tracked to "Prophecy Girl", watch these videos to recap the episodes that lead up to "Prophecy Girl."  Also watch them if you watched the episodes.  Here they are in order:

8. "I Robot-- You Jane"

9.  "The Puppet Show"

10.  "Nightmares"

11.  "Out of Mind, Out of Sight"

12.  "Prophecy Girl"

Cornel West: An Examined Life

Practical Diversity

Part 4

Part 3

Part 3

Part 2

Cultural Humility

The Power of Names

Most people who have studied ancient history understand the power of naming. Even today, many Jews avoid spelling out the “name” of God. The Bible uses coded names for God, unpronounceable and powerful to those who understand Hebrew. Even in today’s society, first names and pet names are limited to those in circles with the “rights” to use them. It’s our own form of esotery. In Genesis, God gives Adam the power to name the animals, re-enforcing Adam’s status at the top of the food chain. Oftentimes, the possessed will use Jesus’ title as a power play. In using that title, they disrespect it.

The House We Live In

"Angel"

If you have fast tracked to "Angel", watch these videos to recap the episodes that lead up to "Angel."  Also watch them if you watched the episodes.  Here they are in order:

3.  "Anne"



4.  "Teacher's Pet"



5.  "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date"



6.  "The Pack"



7.  "Angel"




The next episode that I recommend you watch is "Prophecy Girl," the season finale.  I'll post videos to watch after watching that episode next Sunday evening.  Here are the episodes that lead up to the finale.  I will post videos for all of these episodes next Sunday:

8.  "I Robot, You Jane" Skip this episode.
9.  "The Puppet Show" Skip this episode.  We meet the new principal, but skip it.
10.  "Nightmares" I recommend you watch this episode, if you're enjoying the series.  It is bad, but gives you some insight into our characters.
11.  "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" I like this episode and recommend it if you are enjoying the series.  Clea Duvall guest stars.
12.  "Prophecy Girl" The season finale.  Watch it.

#myccsm

Morning sun shining into the sanctuary before the lights go on. #church #myccsm

Samantha Bee

Cracking the Codes

My Life Thesis

Religion is never about facts. Our ancestors knew this, despite their lack of knowledge about so much else. This is apparent in the ways they kept histories. True beauty is seldom derived from fact.

As much as Humanity has learned throughout history, one broad failure is the way we have treated religion. We, as a species, love to learn. (It’s a good thing.) Problems, however, come when we try to defend old “knowledge” in the face of new.

Take any creation myth. While centuries ago, believing a culture’s creation myth to be literally true my not have been so absurd and illogical, it certainly is today. Really, now– even the Pope believes in evolution. The problem arises when we try to make an old system fit into our new paradigm. Creationists trying to use science to defend their theories (which science clearly does not) or positing that God is trying to fool us in a test of faith (really?) are silly attempts at defending an illogical belief.

Perhaps what we should be asking ourselves is not how to defend our myths, but how to better understand them. After all, there is little reason to believe the point of any scripture is to establish facts. There is little reason to believe our ancestors took such care in preserving our tradition so that we can know how long it took to form our world. In all reality, me knowing the specifics of creation is about as useful as me knowing the name of whoever built my desk– not very.

Why should we get our panties in a bunch about something that wasn’t the point of the story and in the grand scheme of things is rather peripheral? The point of scripture is its meaningful aspects; those aspects cannot be affected by science or history and needn’t be at odds with them. Perhaps we can derive from Genesis a story about how beautiful our natural world is. Perhaps we can see how the increasing diversity in our world is a great pleasure to God. Perhaps we can see that it is impossible to deceive God. Perhaps we can learn that the pursuit of knowledge can be horribly damaging if it’s in defiance of morality. Perhaps we can find that our actions are only ever our own and that placing blame on God or others cannot justify acts of betrayal. Not one of these lessons is derived from the “facts.” They’re from the story. The details of the story are not why it’s been repeated for thousands of years; it’s the lessons that we are supposed to remember. My belief in evolution doesn’t contradict any of these lessons.

What the evolving human mind needs to do is not to suspend logic for fear of displeasing a puppet master god, but to embrace logic and use it to unpack scripture which has provided spiritual sustenance to our species for generations upon generations.

We should approach scripture with the hearts of children and the minds of scholars. We deserve no less.

Affirmative Action

"Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, ‘No, where are you really from?’, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country. Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’"

—

SELECTIONS FROM JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR’S ARGUMENT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

(via newwavefeminism)

The Unequal Opportunity Race

Lao-Tzu

"

This is the profound, simple truth:

You are the master of your life and death.

What you do is what you are.

"

— Lao Tzu (via churchtake-out)

Refugees

Rewording

Our God who breathes through all things
We embrace your many names and forms
Let us follow your lure, that we may shed light on your purpose
Let us see that this world is your world.
Provide us our sustenance and forgive our imperfections
Help us to be forgiving of others and see your light within all.
Help us to lead lives of service and compassion and refrain from falling into traps of convenience and selfishness.
Your force is creativity, kinship, and Love, and will endure forever.
Amen.

"The Harvest"

Next Sunday, I will post videos to watch after watching "Angel."  There are a bunch of episodes skippable between "The Harvest" and "Angel."  I'll post the videos for those episodes next week as well.  Here are the titles of those episodes:

3. "Anne" If you are enjoying the series, you may want to watch this episode.
4.  "Teacher's Pet" This episode is not very good, though it will be referenced later.  I would recommend skipping it.
5.  "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" I sort of recommend you watch this.  It ties into the ongoing plot more than other episodes, but it is skippable.
6.  "The Pack" This episode will be referenced and something of consequence happens, but I will recap and you can skip it.
7.  "Angel" This episode is important to the series and I recommend you watch it.

Truth

"The well-fed never believe the hungry."

— Unknown.
(via mysharona1987)

(via 2ndhalfoflife)