Matthew 7:3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Unsolicited Advice -- Examining Matthew 7:3
Monday, July 09, 2007
Dealing with Wounded Energy
I know that there are Christians who say that we must immediately invoke the gratitude of Jesus' death on the cross as the antidote to our wound. I find that this advice vexing. It is empty advice even as it contains some aspects of truth. It is in the family of “forgive and forget” advice that does not honor the difficult and thorny process of dealing with hurt. At least I can say that that sort of advice has never cut it for me.
Dealing with gratitude and the cross in the context of ministry to ourselves and others is a big topic. Suffice to say for this post that my idea of Jesus is one who is active and living and who meets us in our hurts. It is this supernatural, pan-global availability of Jesus via the Holy Spirit was a primary reason for the cross (John 16:7 But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you). It is in the ministry of the here and now that the power of the cross time and space into the present moment. It is in the clear and present availability of Jesus in the here and now that my discussion of forgiveness and anger relinquishment begins.
Dennis Prager, a Jewish commentator, makes the observation that Jesus calls us not to be angry at our brother but only calls us to actually forgive those who have directly asked for it from us. There are some passages that speak of forgiveness as something we offer to one who asks us, and there are other passages that speak of forgiveness as something we offer to anywone ("...as we forgive those who trespass against us..."). Is there any difference between the relinquishment of anger/forgiveness that we are called to for anyone's offense against us and the act of offering forgiveness to the one who has specifically asked for forgiveness from us? That is an interesting question for another post. What can be said is that the common denominator in forgiveness and anger relinquishment is that we are called to is a journey of emotion processing that requires giving up our anger that must not depend on whether the offending party has repented.
The common denominator for any serious hurt from another that requires a serious act of forgiveness/anger relinquishment is that there will often be a long intellectual, emotional and spiritual journey to reckon fully and completely with the offence. There will be a long, staggered process to properly understand and put into words what happened to know with precision what exactly is being forgiven, so that the offense is understood in all of its dimensions. The hurt will be contained in our psyche in several pockets at different levels of depth. The exposure of these pain pockets will occur as we are continually ministered to by God’s Spirit and as we are placed under various stresses and pains. It is when these various pockets of hurt see the light of day that they can explode in our consciousness like un-detonated grenade that has been exposed in a mine-clearing operation.
Dealing with this hurt, as it is continually brought to the surface, is a long journey of managing wounded energy. There are bad forms of wounded energy, which include rage and other forms of malicious thought and behavior. There are good forms of wounded energy, which include compassion, passion, understanding and even a righteous form of anger. The nut-meat of deep forgiveness and anger relinquishment is the long process of letting go of the bad forms of wounded energy and the redemptive directing of the positive forms of wounded energy.
Wounded energy and the call to justice
While we are accountable to care about injustice even if we have not been directly hurt by it, being directly hurt by an injustice is an important way that God calls us to attention to care about injustice in the context of "faith, justice and mercy". To illustrate this in the context of urban ministry, John Perkins of the Voice of Calvary Ministry in Jackson Mississippi discussed the “felt need concept” of urban ministry. In John Perkin's ministry people with resources choose to enter a poor, distressed neighborhood, ie. the ‘hood, to become neighbors to those who are stuck there. As those who have chosen to live in the 'hood experience the injustices first hand, they are compelled to pursue justice for the inner city in their own enlightened self interest. The “felt need concept" is also about making the Gospel real and tangible by dealing with the needs that have been brought to the fore of people’s attention.
As humans, we live in the ‘hood of planet earth and the injustices therein. We are called to live on planet earth like those who have chosen to move into the ‘hood, as Jesus himself chose to enter the ‘hood when he became flesh. It is by “picking up our cross daily” that we continually own and re-own this choice. Like the wealthy neighbors who choose to live among the poor, as Christians, we are called to bring the wealth of the resources of knowing God intimately into the situation of our hurt. It is as we are hurt directly by injustice that we are able to feel the “felt needs” of planet earth in regard to the need for justice. This is enlightened self-interest for the benefit of ourselves and those around us to confront injustice that we pray with force for God’s Kingdom to come.
It is when we experience injustice that we are able to know evil on earth first hand and to have a depth of conviction to confront it and the compassion for others being afflicted by it. It is in this context that we can begin to give shape to the long process of managing our wounded energy so that God is able to heal us and guide our wounded energy for a redemptive purpose. It is via the experience of injustice that God heightens our need to fulfill our purpose and fulfill the calling of bearing His image. It is the act of trusting God that we enter into this calling, trusting that God will bless and harness all of the wounded energy that we have acquired for a good and blessed purpose.
It is in the face of being hurt, we have two-fold responsibility, each complimenting the other. The first aspect of responsibility to manage our wounded energy is directly tied to the moment of the hurt. We must immediately enter into a gear of operating in trust in God and giving up our rage and anger to God and to His direction and timing. We are to not return injustice with injustice. The second aspect of responsibility that we have is across the span of time. We are responsible to the bigger picture, and we are to allow God to use our wounded energy to be the engine of our conviction to confront the injustice under God's direction.
These two forms of responsibility operate symbiotically with each other. We are to trust "from the get-go" that vengeance and total judgment belong to the Lord. It is in the successful ministry of God’s grace and direction to our wounded energy that we are able to exercise the lesser forms of judgment that we are called to. As we operate in God's grace and timing in managing our wounded energy, we are able to operate in Godly wisdom and direction in the management of our heart and mind and our affairs with others and (see my post on judging).
Rage is crisis in the exercise of proper judgment in of the all realms in which we are called to exercise right judgment. Rage is a crisis in our sense of being able to protect ourselves from the slings and arrows that would subvert our joy and our fulfillment. In rage, the human self lashes out apart from God’s peace and direction, operating out of fear. It is in the impulse of rage that we have the impulse to exercise the sort of total judgment on another person that God reserves for Himself.
The beginning of being able to deal with rage is to recognize it as a form of fear. If we take it captive properly and early, we can present it to God while it is still in its “fear” form before it has mutated into something larger and darker in our psyche. If the fear has become rage, we must allow God to unravel it so that it is revealed as fear in our hearts, so that we can present it God as our fear and receive the ministry of God’s peace.
The point of God’s peace that passes understanding is not tranquil, blissful equanimity. Rather, the point of God's peace that passes understanding is that the peace is an essential part of our trans-rational ballast as we embark on God’s path to redeem our wounded energy. The peace is a "pre-articulate" part of journey with God, penultimate to the exercise of fierce precision that God would lead us to confront evil. It is in recognizing this that we can submit to God’s peace not as an act of “blowing out” in a Zen Buddhist sense, but as the beginning of a journey with God who wants to use us as instruments to confront injustice in the world.
I discussed forgiveness and anger relinquishment once with a non-Christian Japanese friend of mine who was still learning English. I was trying to explain a big concept in very simple terms. I explained that being hurt by someone is like being shocked by the electricity coming from a bare wire that one has stepped on. I explained that the generator for that electricity is coming from somewhere far and beyond that person. The process of forgiveness/anger relinquishment involves correctly identifying the spiritual source and putting the person who is the conduit for that spiritual source into perspective.
Forgiveness/anger relinquishment is the act of putting a conflict with another person into its correct spiritual and philosophical plane, transferring the battle away from its incorrect target and following the direction of God to enter the battle correctly. As we relinquish our rage and surrender our wounded energy to God, we are able to operate in God’s direction and timing confront the injustice as a larger philosophical and spiritual battle and let go it is as a "tit for tat" with another person. While "forgive and forget" is often bad advice, it is valuable in the limited sense that we are called to have the image of the “monster” as it has taken the form of a particular person vanish into irrelevance, as the image is juxtaposed against the truth, joy and wisdom of the Lord.
As we are able to walk with God to channel our wounded energy toward a correct and fruitful confrontation of evil, we are able to we are able to pray effective for the advancement of God’s Kingdom that will end the foolishness that we were subjected to. It is via God’s healing in us that we are able to glimpse how His Kingdom is being brought “on earth as it is in heaven”, and it is by God’s grace that we are able see how the Kingdom is advancing into earth. These moments of holy clarity usher the triumph of joy over rage and are landmarks on the road to the redemption of our wounded energy.
As this vision matures, God allows us to see how His kingdom is advancing into the lives of those who were the conduits of evil that we are experienced. It is then that we are able to “pray for our enemies” as an act of correctly applied spiritual battle, confronting evil in prayer with the force of passion, joy and clarity.
As the battle is a spiritual one, it is also a philosophical one. We are called to confront the intellectual anatomy of the foolishness of the ideas that caused or facilitated the evil that we experienced. As we walk on the intellectual journey of reckoning with the hurt, we are able to articulate the justice that we were not able to articulate at the time. As we do so for the defenseless self that we once were, we are able to do so for others who are in a position of defenselessness.
It is as we are confronting successfully on the spiritual plane and the philosophical plane of reality that we are able to be more effective confronting in the human to human plane. We are able to live out Jesus’ commands to call our brother’s attention (Matthew 18:15-17) to an offence without being in a state of sin that would cause harm.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Pleasure Principle
Daniel Robinson is a philosophy teacher featured on the Teaching Series on the great Ideas in Philosophy” was discussing the goals of philosophy to find the “good life” and offered up a metaphor that was clearly not the “good life”. Robinson described a person who allowed their brain to be removed from their body and placed in a vat with electrodes hooked up to it so that the brain could receive constant streams of stimulated pleasure.
While the "brain in the vat" has been used as a thought experiment for various philosophical ends to examine the question of real and perceived knowledge, I want to examine is the visceral reason why the “brain in the vat” is a ghastly image. For one to choose to place one's brain in a vat is to choose after a series of experiences that not contextualized into a whole. Choosing to place one’s brain in a vat can offer one no joy in how one has affected the stage of history. It can offer no joy in the thread of continuity in life experiences that one can discover via one’s conscious effort to explore one’s nature and develop one’s character.
In the context of a discussion of pleasure, putting one’s “brain in the vat” is a metaphor for those who seek continual pleasure highs in the moment but who reject any effort to contextualize their pleasure and hold it accountable to a larger purpose. Jerry Seinfeld's “Today guy” and “June Guy” dichotomy is a consequence of “brain in the vat” living. For one who wants to divorce "Today Guy" from "June Guy", having one's brain in a vat would actually be a way for one to save oneself the consequences of living in the real world The only alternative to attempting to put one's “brain in the vat”, and therefore living properly in the real world, is to realize that there is a self inside of us that is being continually made better or worse toward an end that is larger than ourselves.
In The Picture of Dorian Grey, Dorian Grey is a man who was given the opportunity to live forever and appear young and beautiful as long as he did not look at the painting of himself in the attic of his house. As Dorian Grey did good deeds, his picture was made beautiful and as he did bad deeds, his picture was made scarred and ugly. In the context of our purpose for being, the self is like a Dorian Grey painting that is either becoming increasingly beautiful or increasingly ugly, and that will presented to us, to God and to the stage of history for all to see.
Our purpose is to elevate the world, to give the world a new experience of moral beauty through the unique contours of our own individual personhoods. It is our conscience that holds us accountable to this end. It is our conscience, as the Dorian Grey painting, that reflects the self that we are developing back to our self-consciousness according to whether the self is being developed according to our purpose. In is in the rejection of our conscience and the rejection of looking at our true selves and in the rejection of seeking our purpose that we place our "brain in the vat" and live as Dorian Grey did, who chose cruel pleasures until he was compelled to look at his ugly, scarred picture.
Our conscience is the membrane between our self-consciousness and our soul’s inner knowing of the larger purpose that each of us are endowed with. Our conscience informs our self-consciousness of whether we are rising to that purpose, and our conscience gives us joy or misery. It is with this understanding that Meaning is that form of knowledge and truth that reveals the contours of ourselves inside and out in the context of our purpose and elaborates on our purpose. It is meaning that takes other forms of truth and makes it beautiful within our lives.
It is in this context of a soul’s journey to achieve its meaning and purpose that one can begin to deal with each experience in life as an opportunity to discover Meaning. It is on a “journey of meaning” that one discovers the landscape of one’s soul and the purpose for which it was created, and is able to better lead others to find their purpose. With this understanding of purpose, life is both a construction and a journey leading somewhere, and the journey is not merely the destination.
It is from the vantage point of our purpose and our conscience that there is a hierarchy of pleasures within a moral order. There are pleasure pursuits that are connected to truth and to our purpose. It is these pleasures that are consistent with our purpose and that are validated by our conscience that constitute Joy, which is the union of truth and pleasure.
And then there are pleasures are not Joy, which replace, or even subvert our purpose. There are pleasures that can be wedded to our purpose in the right context and pleasures that are perverse and are inherently destructive. There are pleasures of beautiful accomplishments, the pleasures of blessing another person, which are joyful pleasures. There is the pleasure of winning the chess game, the pursuit of which can either be a joyful experience or an escape from the pursuit of higher pleasures. And there is the pleasure of crack cocaine, which demands everything of body and mind and gives nothing in return except for ruined health and addiction. There are pleasures that are virtues; the feelings of peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control. And that are pleasures that are vices; the feelings of lust, greed and the satiating of envy and revenge.
It is in the context of a moral hierarchy of pleasure that pleasure has gravitas, that pleasure is the power of gravity to lead us to blessings or to curses. Not all pleasure “rushes” are created equal, and each pleasure must be taken captive to purpose. All pleasures must be taken captive to the journey, and that meaning must be extracted from it, and every experience is taken captive to the whole endeavor of ones development. This is why Christian teaching holds us accountable for being aware of the moral and spiritual value of the things that please us.
In regard to the "brain in the vat" and the cruel pleasures of Dorian Grey, seeking mediocre and ephemeral pleasures is not unrelated to seeking destructive and cruel pleasures. When we seek momentary and banal comfort, we abandon the search for Meaning and leave the deep and heaving needs that we possess in a state of restlessness. It is these needs that will warp us, leading us down destructive paths, if they are not brought in line with our purpose. (As I wrote about in my discussion on vapidity, it is a consequence of being vapid that peoples' need for a sense of purpose is warped into a need to be the "fashion police" who hold themselves and others accountable to being excellent within the realm of banal pleasures)
In the context of pleasure and the moral order of pleasure that runs from vices to virtues, Character is the stoic ability of the self to persevere in the absence of lesser pleasures in order to secure a greater pleasure. It is our responsibility to exercise our Character to harness the power of pleasure so that it leads us to the joy and truth. It is when we experience pleasure that we are transformed, and are bonded to the source of our pleasure and become better or worse, becoming more or less in line with our purpose for being.
In regard to the question of pleasure, it is Christianity that that asserts that there is a moral order and spiritual order to the realm of pleasure, based on whether the pleasure is connected to our purpose for being; that the pleasure of virtues, peace patience kindness goodness and self-control are morally superior to the pleasures of vices. It is our purpose defined by Christianity that we are to enjoy God, to glorify God and to advance His Kingdom. It is this purpose gives us the shape and context for our journeys of meaning, and gives us benchmarks for how we are doing on that journey. It is Christianity that empowers us for the journey, wherein the Holy Spirit interacts with our conscience, empowering us to discover the contours of our created being and succeed in operate according to God’s purpose for us so that we can find joy in the virtues and grow out of the vices. And it is all of the benefits and consequences of God's promises for now and for eternity that call us to have the Character to keep life in perspective as the cord that saves us from being bonded to lesser pleasures.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Social Justice and the Mexican Border
I have pondered the issue of illegal immigration, and I have come around over the years very slowly and reluctantly to the position that I now hold, even as I am always open to hearing other points of view that are well articulated. Unfortunately, I've found many arguments on both sides of the issue wanting. Many of those who favor un-mitigated immigration across our borders discuss the topic in the context of promoting social justice, as understood as confronting the injuries that rich have promulgated against the poor.
Simply put, justice is the calculation of fairness, the exercise of fairness and the prosecution of fairness. From that essential starting point, there are many forms of justice, including jurisprudence, that deal with different jurisdictions of life wherein questions of fairness are tested. In Scripture, the prophet Amos specifically discusses social justice, and Jesus calls us to "faith justice and mercy". Mercy is clearly a value that we are called to practice on an interpersonal level, but how much should mercy be exercised by the government in relation to the application of the justice and jurisprudence? This post is the beginning of an ongoing attempt to begin to explore the complexities of justice when justice and mercy are complicated.
I have written a speech wherein I imagine myself giving a speech as if I were President of the United States. Writing this imaginary speech has been an exercise in trying to begin deal with the complexities of justice and mercy in regard to the current issue of illegal immigration. This "speech" also contains a redaction of many points that have already been made before on the issue.
"My fellow Americans,
"While it is possible to be racist and anti-Latino as a reason to care about border security and immigration, racism and bigotry are in no way inherent in having an interest in protecting our borders and the integrity of our legal system. While it is true that the northern border needs to be made more secure, and that our coasts need to be made more secure, it is our southern border where the vastly greatest number of illegal immigrants comes from. Our energy on border issues needs to be proportional to the scope of our problem, and it is our southern border that needs special attention.
I have known and liked many illegal Latino immigrants who are sweet, quiet hard working people, and the thought of doing something that would disrupt their lives is a painful prospect. Our current situation that allows many sweet, quiet hardworking people to cross our borders also allows many people who are a threat, including gangs, criminals and terrorists. It is an unfortunate reality, one that adults must face in dealing with this issue: we cannot confront the problem of border security in a way that deals with the bad people without also impacting the ability of good people to make it across.
One could argue that we should merely interdict the bad people who enter after they've crossed the border and leave the good ones alone. While we must, of course, interdict bad people who've crossed onto our soil as an unavoidable part of law enforcement, it does not make for a good foundation for our immigration policy to do this at the expense of tightening the border. Interdicting bad people who are here in the US after they have crossed the border means that these bad people will be first crossing the border and inflicting harm on US soil before they are caught. Our immigration policy must be based on a more serious and concerted effort to control who enters our country so that bad people enter as infrequently as possible.
Allowing many sweet, quiet, hardworking people to cross our borders illegally is beneficial to many parties. Illegal immigrants benefit, the families and homelands of many illegal immigrants benefit from remittances, and many US business interests benefit. Nevertheless, despite the ways that illegal immigration is benefiting many parties, it is eroding the integrity of our legal system and the integrity of many other key institutions that are necessary for our society. This erosion is not happening because the majority of individual illegal immigrants are especially evil or flawed people: most of them are decent people acting rationally in their own personal interests to try to better their lives. The erosion of the integrity of our legal system and institutions is happening because our society is only able to assimilate a certain number of people at a time.
While determining that number is an arbitrary and inexact science, it is necessary for us to arrive at a number and respect the number that we have arrived at. This is the very essence of a value for the rule of law. The alternative is that we find no such number, and allow our system to be overwhelmed. The integrity of many other institutions and interests in our society, including – but not limited to— our budgets, hospitals, schools, social security system is at stake. Being able to predict and manage the flow of new people into our country allows us to plan and budget accordingly. It also allows us to better culturally integrate people into the E Pluribus Unum that makes our country strong and great. It is in the advancement of this interest that managing the flow of people into our nation is the right and the responsibility that comes with being a nation.
One could try to make a counter-argument to this by saying that our country has benefited from immigrants. Of course our country has benefited from immigrants. However, this is a non sequitor as a response to the current problem of mass illegal immigration from the southern border. The current southern border illegal immigration issue is not the same issue as the immigrants who crossed the Atlantic at the turn of the 20th century. Those immigrants arrived at our invitation and put an ocean in between the Old Country and their new home in America. In fits and starts, they assimilated into the new, American way and came to recognize George Washington as the father of their country as much as any other American. We are at a time in our history when we do not need the mass influx of people in quite the same way that we did in the last century. The mass influx that we are facing now is overwhelming our institutions, and we need to have it slow down so that those who are coming in to be citizens can be assimilated.
Many of the illegal immigrants of today are more geographically and culturally connected to their homeland than the immigrants of the past, and often consider the US to be an extension of their rightful homeland. Many of them still wave the flags of their homeland and vote in their homeland's elections, and demand that the language of their homeland be institutionalized alongside the English language in every manner of document. While Spanish is a beautiful language, there is a potent symbolism in making it co-equal to English in America in every public space and on every public legal document. Having two languages side by side is as potent a symbol of dual allegiance as having two flags. This phenomenon on the current grand scale has no precedent in any of waves of immigrants who arrived in this country at the turn of the 20th century.
This is not to say that the heritage the Spanish language, of Mexico or of any other south of the border country is bad and must be rejected. It means that a dual allegiance that increases in scope will make it increasingly harder to assimilate people and their children into the American heritage. Our country must have both the Unum and the Pluribus to be strong, and the current illegal immigration problem on its current course is leading us away from E Pluribus Unum.
Immigrants must make a meaningful and symbolic break with their allegiance to their homeland of origin so that they may fully bond to our nation as citizens. While this is true for all current immigrants from any part of the world, this is especially true for those who are geographically close to us. It is our prerogative as a nation to decide how many immigrants we can accept. It is our prerogative as a nation to make the laws that an immigrant must follow to become a citizen.
This is not to diminish the personal sacrifice and hard work that many illegal immigrants have made to get where they are. While this is usually a great sacrifice of personal effort to find personal gain for one's family, it is not the same sacrifice of one's identity and allegiance as one who has followed all of the rules to become a US citizen. The sacrifice that bonds a person to our nation and to all of the ideals of our nation as a fellow citizen must be that unique form of sacrifice that holds the law of our land in highest regard. It is in following those laws -- that we as a nation have decided – and in valuing the wisdom that lies behind those laws that an immigrant makes the meaningful symbolic break with the allegiance to his homeland of origin and crosses the threshold to become a US citizen. An illegal immigrant who wants to change the U.S. laws ex post facto to fit his behavior is not properly bonding himself to our nation.
And likewise, U.S. corporation or politician that wants to change the immigrations laws to accommodate the current situation is not operating in the best interest of our nation in the long run. All too often, they are serving their more immediate interests to please their constituents or to maintain their current business situation than they are interested in the long term interests of our nation. While wanting to "help the economy" is a valid goal, there is an interest of our collective citizenship of the E Pluribus Unum that is even higher than the economy. We are citizens of a nation first and foremost before we are members of an economy. When the interests of the economy are the first source of our allegiance over and above the well-being of our nation, we are doomed to be corrupted and subverted.
Some have proposed making changes to our immigration laws to allow for temporary workers. The problem with this is that we will not be able to enforce new immigration laws if we cannot enforce the ones we already have. We will no more be able to control the flow of those individuals across the border to get their temporary jobs under this proposal than we are now able to control the flow under our current immigration regime. Under this proposal, we will no more be able to enforce the "temporariness" of those workers under new laws than we are able to enforce the status quo under the current laws. Without the will to enforce the laws that we now have, any proposal to change our laws to confront the problem of illegal immigration is an empty proposal and will not fix our broken system.
Simply allowing an illegal immigrant who is already established here to pay a fine to begin the process of becoming a legal citizen will not solve the problem we now face. This is because this proposal would allow illegal immigrants to work their way out of the act of having broken the immigration laws that made them illegal in the first place. As others have stated, it would unwittingly establish the act of breaking our laws as the basis for one to begin the path to citizenship. And for every other illegal immigrant who did not want to pay the fine, the system would continue to operate in the broken way that it has been operating.
While disrupting the lives of many nice and hardworking people is a painful thing to do, it will be an unavoidable aspect of restoring integrity to our legal system. In the face of the flesh and blood people who will be uprooted, the idea of preserving the integrity of our legal system might seem as cold, remote and abstract interest. However, it is in our best interest in the long run to preserve the integrity of our legal system. Doing so means that we maintain the value for the rule of law, which means that we preserve a value for all of the long term interests that laws are created to protect even when they are sometimes inconvenient in the short term.
It is true that the Bible speaks of justice as it relates to helping the poor and correcting the historical injuries that have been done to the poor. There are historical injuries that the U.S committed against poor Mexicans – as have the Aztecs, and then Spanish and then Mexican oligarchy and the Central American drug lords and sundry leftist rebels. This does not excuse the U.S. of its responsibility to face its past. In a separate discussion, we can debate whether reparations should be made to Mexico for the Mexican American war or for "Greaser laws" of the turn of the 20th century. We can balance out the things that the US took and the ways that the US has benefited Mexico over the years see where the balance lies. What we cannot do is use the broken state of the current immigration laws as the de facto and undeclared "reparations" to Mexicans for any and all sins of the US against Mexico and/or poor Mexican citizens. In the context of the current immigration debate, any appeal to "justice" to help the poor illegal immigrant that frames the issue as exclusively the U.S. vs. the poor Mexicans is simplistic and injurious to the truth. An idea of justice that comes at the expense of facing the more abstract and long term considerations of what is in the best long term interests of the US and US institutions is a narrow and incomplete idea of justice. It is an attempt to correct a series of injuries with yet another injury.
Some will argue that we cannot take such drastic measures on account of the pragmatic concerns for our national security. They say that while our current immigration situation presents some degree of threat to our security, having an unstable situation south of our border would also be a threat to our national security in a different way. This is a valid concern. In our current situation, the US absorption of illegal immigrants has functioned to mitigate against that potential economic and political instability south of our border. As we in the US move toward seriously enforcing the laws that we currently have, we also need to be open to ways that we can help avert the disruption that would occur south of the border as a result of enforcing those laws.
I don't have the complete answer to this problem, though micro-lending NGO's in Central America may play a role. The governments of countries in Central America also need to find ways to better support entrepeneurship, confront corruption and become places where people don't feel the need to emigrate from. Confronting this potential problem will be complex, and it is an uncertain future that we must face. What we cannot do is work backward from the corruption and dis-function of other countries as a reason to diminish the integrity of our own laws.
It is true that certain parts of our country have deep historical and cultural ties to Mexico. These parts of the country have an American culture that has absorbed many aspects of Mexican culture. I personally enjoy this as I walk down the street where I live in Southern California. While it is valuable for these parts of the country to recognize and celebrate their heritage and the blend of cultures that has occurred, these parts of the US need to be recognized as belonging to the US and operating under the dominion of US laws.
It is tempting for those who value a globally inter-connected world to conclude that maintaining the integrity of our borders or the integrity of our national identity is an enemy to this interconnectedness. It is easy to believe that borders only promote a sense of bigoted and narrow identity among those who identify with one side of the border or the other, and that truly enlightened people don't need borders. While the existence of borders may help enforce the bigotry of some people, the belief that borders are useless is a belief that seems enlightened but is actually sloppy, dangerous and inaccurate. In truth, our borders and immigration laws are a necessary membrane between countries that have a relationship culturally, economically, geopolitically and in many other ways. It is in the interest of what is best for that membrane that we need to face the problems of our broken immigration system.
The answer to this issue of illegal immigration must be one that has the ultimate best long term interests of all parties. Our current practice of having under-enforced immigration laws seems on the surface to be helpful to the most parties, but it is actually shortsighted and will not be in our best interest in the long run. What will be in everyone's best long term interest is an immigration system that is consistent, transparent, properly enforced and sustainable long into the future.
The idea of mass deportations seem scary and unpleasant, but it is part of the bitter pill that must be swallowed to get there. The argument that this is impractical is an empty argument, since it only means that it will be difficult, messy and expensive. Any course of action we take will be difficult, messy and expensive including the course of taking no action or of taking "path of least resistance" action. In the long run, it is in doing what is in our best long term interest that will be most practical."
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Brand marketing and the veil of soul developing
Over the past couple of months, I have seen a couple of TV commercials that have caught my eye. An ING Direct commercial mocks a yoga instructor for telling his student that pain is the path to joy. A commercial for a Snickers bar covered in dark chocolate mocks two homely Neanderthal looking boys for asking their mother whether it really matters what’s on the inside, to which mom replies “it doesn’t”. These commercials are in the same family as a Tequila ad a few years ago which read “Lost – Restraint: disappeared late Fri.-early Sat. If found, keep...”
I introduced the “brand marketing worldview” in my Sign of the beast post, where I expressed my concern with emotion based brand marketing whose purpose is anything more than helping people build trust that a brand is a sign of quality and reliability. Emotion and identity based brand marketing is only the marketing component of a modern industrial reality, what I call the Identity Industrial Complex. The Identity Industrial Complex, the IIC for short, includes the whole industrial and commercial enterprise and all of its levels of decision making that seeks to create emotion and identity based bonds with people and their disposable products. To encourage this bond, the IIC promotes its worldview by trying to construct how people perceive the social marketplace in which new products and the pleasure of new products are continually traded for status, attractiveness and popularity. As I explained in my Sign of the Beast post, I think that the IIC is the penultimate sign of the beast.
Jesus calls us to cast our insecurities and fears upon Him, while it is the IIC that would like us to medicate our fears and insecurities by keeping up with new products. It is for this reason that the IIC frowns upon one being still, as the Tequila ad mentioned at the beginning so instructs us and as a Bodies In Motion billboard once said, “You can rest when you’re dead!” In God’s economy, we are called us to be still and know that God is God, so that we can continually realign our lives according to the requirements of that economy. While the IIC would have one primarily fear falling behind the times and being a loser economically and materially, God calls us to fear being separated from God by remaining dead in our sins. While the IIC wants us to be afraid of being nerdy and uncool, God’s economy calls us to be uncool and nerdy to the extent that it is necessary for us to be excellent in God’s economy by paying the opportunity cost of not being cool in the realm of the IIC. It is being nerdy and uncool to succeed in God’s economy that we die to that part of ourselves that wishes to be endlessly pleasing to the world.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
The Hook-up Realm
Then, again you’re not really “exploring” in a moving forward with both eyes open sort of a way. Rather you are acquiescing to what is in you as something that is bound to what is around you. In regard to the id, hook-up apologists deal with the sexual impulse as something that is either always good or at least unproductive to question, so they have a certain acquiescence to the sexual impulse as a juggernaut of nature. Operating with the idea that sexuality is the Schopenhourian “will to life” of nature, hooking up is based on the premise that one's conscious mind is only a passenger in the back seat of this “will to sex”, and one should not try to superimpose any mastery over it that would attempt to harness it or control it in any way.
I have written other essays on primalism as a social contract of people who have collectivized their id, networking together their acquiescence to the id as a personal in its personal form and in its collective form. As I’ve explained, it is a social contract that negotiates the advancement of every more diverse id-expressions into the fold of acceptance and ethical/social equivalence. It is a given that the “times” are always a step for the better, and not to be questioned, and represent an increment of progress is the unfettering of the id, personally and collectively. Here, there are no fixed values or meanings and the “times” is a sort of “Tao” of social and ethical wisdom that is in continual flux, as it is sorted and re-sorted by the collective, in a dynamic continuous revolution.
The acquiescence of the personal mastery of thought and dialogue to the collective id is both vaunted as an ethical system and is recognized as a juggernaut that should not be challenged. Primalists and hook-up apologists, after having vaunted the beautiful potential of hooking up as a rite of passage will, to one degree or another, recognize that people are marinated in an un-ending environment of targeted sexual imagery, what has been described as an “unchangeable channel”. The lone individual is climbing uphill to reject all of that imagery and the values therein. It is also a psychological reality that the “will to life” is also includes a powerful “will to fit in”. Put in simple terms, people do what people do.
In the hook-up realm, there is an interesting counterpoint that operates contra to the acquiescence to non-mastery, operating in cognitive dissonance. The hook-up realm operates on the premise that fixed, metaphysical ideas of meaning don’t exist, there is no inherent meaning that is granted to the act of sex itself or in any related sexual behavior that is once removed from the physical act. Having rendered any sexual experience into a blank slate in terms of meaning, the hook-up realm understands that sex has emotional consequences only according to the manner in which individuals subjectively connect or disconnect meaning from the act. In the midst of all that the individual is exempt from being expected to master in regard to his/her sexual nature, in the hook-up realm, the individual is given the prerogative to decide what the emotional consequences of a sexual act are by deciding how much he/she actually gives of himself/herself in the act.
This is the basis for the hook-up social contract regard sexuality in public space. The individual is granted the privilege to apportion sexual experiences into different levels of meaning to the act, ranging from deep meaning to non-meaning. Since there is no inherent transcendental meaning or symbolism in the power of sexuality, its power is available to be harnessed for any and all personal and collective social and economic purposes. Sexuality is thus “freed” from the constraints that it would have in a more structured universe, so that it is now available for experiences that range from the banal to the profound. It is this idea of mastery over sexual meaning that allows for a hook-up social contract that negotiates sexuality across the realms of commerce and personal relationships.
Within the spectrum of sexual experiences that are available to Primalists, the sex at the less meaningful end of the spectrum would include the idea that "sex sells". The slightly more meaningful but not too meaningful sex can be understood in the realm of "exploring one's humanity" as Katie Dobie might define it, wherein sexuality is to be embraced as a personal thread of singular experiences. Primalists, believe that former aspects of the sexual id can be enjoyed, while the truly meaningful sex can be reserved for committed relationships.
"It's no big deal" is the hook-up way of saying that sex is not so precious as to be the exclusive realm of one level of meaning or another. For Katie, and those who argue as she does, there is nothing lost/diminished in the domain of the trust/commitment based sexual behavior on account of all the other non-trust/commitment based sex that is going on in tandem with it.
While a primalist might say, “Sex sells”, a primalist would not say that the “intimate part of my being sells”. This is based on a metaphysical claim concerning the nature of sexuality as being inextricably wrapped up with the dignity of our being in a manner that a primalist is not willing to make. Having eschewed this premise, the primalist can entertain a sense of mastery over sexuality wherein he/she has mentally divorced the intimate self from the experience. It is this divorce that is necessary for a primalist to be “outside” his/her sexuality enough to ostensibly master it. From this idea, one can be “outside” one’s sexuality enough to treat the experience of it as one would experience an endless bazaar that one can choose to indulge in.
Of course I am a critic of the hook-up realm because it plainly violates Jesus’ and the apostles teaching. That said, evaluated on its own terms, the hook-up realm crumbles on its own contradictions, because it assumes a individual’s mastery over sex that is inconsistent with the other tandem ideas of non-mastery. Here, the “mastery of the individual” is not predicated on any other effort of discipline for the individual or of any disciplined examination of the nature of sexuality as being connected with the profundities of one’s being.
As an expression of primalism, the hook-up realm is “post-rational”, dispensing with the value for the individual’s effort at disciplined thought as a means to sort out reality. It operates in its cognitive dissonance with a big "whatever" to the aspects of sexual non-mastery that operate in tandem with the ideas of sexual mastery. Having an ethical premium on not questioning the individual id or the collective id, primalists are interested in the appearance of “cool” over any reckoning with cognitive dissonance in the hook-up realm. There is a certain ennui, an ability to traffic in all of this that is given the status of "adulthood" and sophistication. Hook-up sex is also about bravado, and the power that people have when they appear to have mastered danger. This realm of un-examined pleasure, cool-pose and latent pain are all wrapped up in hook-up sexuality as a coin of the social realm.
It is my assertion that the pleasure of sex is, in fact, the pleasure of the intimate self jumping off a cliff into an unknown of fear and awe. The pleasure of sex is the rush of the most intimate part of oneself being either supremely validated or deeply rejected by another. That is it symbolizes the power of a bond of supreme trust. The physical consequences of the act, which are mitigated only by extensive modern technology, are symbolic of the degree of trust that is involved. The pleasure of sex is a profound "thrown-ness" of being as Heidegger would say. As sex is the act that is rife with potency and meaning, so are the acts, the foreplay, that are intended to operate in proximity to the act.
It is the nature of sex and sexuality that gravity and pleasure are woven together. Hooking is an attempt to extract the pleasure of sex without any true intellectual reckoning with its gravity. As such this leaves the hook-up apologists unable to deal with or explain the often destructive power of sex as anything more than an inevitable force of nature. Of course "nature" is a loaded term and can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, which, in the realm of disposable sexuality, usually means that sexual nature is lowered to the lowest common denominator of acquiescence and mental and spiritual non-engagement.
Any sexual encounter presents one with either a profound validation of ones being in all of its dimension, or a profound invalidation. Pseudo-validation is a form of non-validation that can be pleasing to the receiver. Pseudo-validation is the outward act of validating another with what would be done with a bond of trust if one were deeply trusted – except that it is being presented without any actual trust or respect. The pleasure of lustful sexual desire that one experiences with pseudo-validation is the extrusion of the pleasure through latent pain that comes at the expense of one’s dignity. Thus, the pleasure is not woven into a true exploration of one’s nature in the context of any lasting idea of purpose, dignity or meaning, but is something that is sought as an end in itself. As such, the pleasure is sought as constant nip of desire that demands an endless commitment to procure more of the same and justify more of the same.
The emotional carnage of people caught up in continual hook-up relationships is when there is any discrepancy concerning the level of meaning that people are attaching to the act (it was a hook-up for him but a little more than a hook-up for her or vise versa). Or when people embark on a hook-up only to realize that they gave a little more of themselves than they thought they were at the moment, only to realize that they have left a little piece of themselves behind, or to realize that there were some other physical or emotional consequences that they didn't bargain for. These injuries to the self and recognition of non-mastery are recorded amply in music and art when they are not admitted openly.
Hooking up encompasses all that is done in reality and in fantasy, both physically and merely visually. A strip club offers one form or another of the GFE, the “girl-friend experience”, which can be understood as the “pseudo fore-play experience”. The visual tease of a strip club is a sort of pseudo-validation of pseudo-foreplay that says, “I'm allowing/trusting with the exposure of my intimate self, represented with my body, but not really. I'm invalidating your value as one who is truly worthy of my trust, though I am playing with your pleasing feelings of validation that extrude through the tease.” For the recipient, the emotional oscillation of pain and pleasure is intoxicating.
I am such a harsh critic of the fashion and advertising that accessorizes the hook-up realm for the marketplace because it is the “McVoyuerism”, the endless visual landscape of banal pseudo-foreplay of exposed and party exposed intimate body parts. This practice borrows from the sexual energy of porn and strip-clubs and is toned down just enough to be brought into all crevices of time and place. GFE fashion is one wing of the vast hook-up realm, as is porn and all other manner of amateur boffing, fondling and intimate exposure.
I believe that we are summoned to a realization of ourselves that involves our full emotional and mental engagement of our sexuality. Hook-up is an abdication of this summons for this reason: to treat sex as banal and "no big deal" is to treat ones intimate self as banal and "no big deal". It is the very nature of sexuality such that, were it goes, so does the intimate part of ourselves. Reckoning with this is the beginning of any serious understanding of sexuality.
In rejection of this, hook-up lust is like a wolf licking the ice of frozen blood on a knife, who does not realize that it is now licking its own blood as its tongue is being cut by the knife. The injuries to the self that one bears that one cannot face bond one to the illusion that it’s really “ok” and “no big deal”. Such is the power of sex, that the pleasure of sex, when gone awry, is powerful enough to bind one to delusions. It is no coincidence that the idea of a “hook-up” is not dissimilar to the drug language. Hooking up treats sex as a drug, as a sexual “fix”. And it often goes hand in hand with other drugs.
The only path out of hook-up sexual delusions is a journey into the realm of our sexual being that actually faces the spiritual, emotional and metaphysical cliffs we scale and bruise on. More to come on what that means.
Friday, March 23, 2007
“If God created everything who created God?”
I want to take a brief detour to answer the classic metaphysical question by a dorm room smarty pants in response to Christian apologetics, “If God created everything who created God?” The question is a clever play on the word “everything” in response to a Christian apologist who says that “God created everything”. Of course, when the Christian apologist says “God created everything”, he is assuming that God is the root, the uncreated thing. Here, dorm room smarty pants is pretending to ignore this assumption and is extracting the idea “everything is created” to turn it back against the premise of God. In this way, smarty pants is challenging the intellectual and philosophical integrity of the Christian apologist.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Revelation, Geography and the Bible Canon
And it’s not just the follower of LDS. Followers of Bahai and Islam, to name a couple of major groups, also claim to complete the teachings of NT and/or correct severe and drastic failures of the NT to get the message right. LDS, Bahai, Islam and other groups like them all claim that their beliefs operate with some essential connective tissue to the Bible and the NT. For them, Jesus is an important teacher en route to the real goods, which are provided by this person or that who followed after Jesus and who completed Jesus and/or who corrected the serious mistakes of the apostles/bible writers/translators.
It seems clear enough to me from my read of the Bible and the NT and all that Jesus plainly said and didn't say that there is no room for a prophet to follow the NT whose importance is co-equal to Jesus and/or the apostles. If Jesus was who he said he was, then there would be no need for anyone to follow. Jesus affirmed that he was the Messiah, and he said that he fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. Jesus did not say that another prophet of equal authority to him or to his apostles would follow. When there was, in fact, something of salvific importance that was to come in the future that the apostles and/or any and all of Jesus’ future followers would need to know (ie. the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Second Coming) Jesus plainly informed his apostles. This understanding is in conflict with the idea that Jesus and the apostles of the Bible got everything right and that everything has been passed down intact and correct – except that there was more crucial canonical information that needed to be revealed to the world long after Jesus and his apostles.
Due to the conflict that is presented by claiming to add to the words of Jesus while recognizing that his words are intact and correct as presented to us in the New Testament, many canon-adding groups claim that the New Testament is, in fact, not correct or is incomplete due to lost information. Now, if one accepts any idea that Jesus was the messiah and Lord according to words and actions attributed to him, then one must place some degree of trust in those whom Jesus entrusted with his words. If one can't trust Jesus’ apostles to get the New Testament right, one can't trust Jesus to be a Lord who was wise enough to have picked and guided the right disciples. If one accepts the idea that the apostles got it right, but that later translators severely altered the Bible, then one is still left with a Lord who wasn’t wise enough and powerful enough to ensure that his message made it intact to the world. For this one must claim that Jesus’ promises of ongoing guidance by the Holy Spirit were mere fabrications and/or empty promises. If the combined effort of Jesus and the Holy Spirit wasn’t enough to ensure the intact presentation of his message to the world, then Jesus is less than the Lord that he said that he was.
If one were to argue that Jesus of Nazareth was an important teacher/prophet, but that it was merely the Bible writers who got him wrong by conflating him into one co-equal with God, then one is left with the burden of constructing a completely different Jesus that the one in the New Testament, and not merely an altered one.
The bottom line to all of this is that one can't claim to add or correct the Bible with extra canonical revelation without diminishing Jesus' lordship, and one can't diminish Jesus lordship without making him and his apostles to be liars/frauds to one degree or another. Here, Jesus ends up being less than Lord if one is either A) out and out denying Jesus’ Lordship (like the Muslims) or B) claiming to complete Jesus' original mission to communicate new information about the Gospel to the world with extra revelation long after Jesus and the apostles (Like the LDS). It seems clear enough to me that there is no way around it, but it is obviously not clear enough to those who claim to have added/corrected canonical information in regard to the New Testament.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge the cessationist/continuationist debate. In regard to revelation, as a continuationist, I don't believe that experiences encountering God, words of knowledge, miracles, gifts have ceased, though they may not be manifested equally among all Christians at all times. A cessationist might ask, "So what then is the nature of the revelation that has ceased if you, the continuationist, believe that these manifestations of the Spirit continue?" I want to simultaneously deal with the non-Christian (or quasi-Christian) groups who are Bible adder/correctors and the Christian cessationist brothers by dealing with arc redemptive history in regard to the nature and purpose of revelation and God's use of geography. I want to construct an argument that deals with the Bible as an indivisible whole and that sews up an answer to the question, "Where does canonical revelation begin and end and why?” in such a way that contextualizes the ministry of Jesus and the apostles within redemptive history.
Redemptive history in the context of the Israelites/Jews is the process of God unfolding pieces that, put together, comprise the complete body of God’s globally necessary salvific knowledge for the world. The Bible contains this in ways that are stated both directly and via example, both as narrative and as precept. When Paul says in Romans 5:20
"The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more"
in the context of explaining the role of Christ in regard to redemptive history, Paul is explaining a metaphysical reality that is rooted in the real blood, sweat and breath of human history through time. When he discusses the Law in regard to the Jews in Romans 2:23-24
"You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,"
Paul is in the process of explaining a principle that it took the arc of history through the real blood sweat and breath of the Jews operating in history to be able to explain. These examples in Romans are just two examples of the many ways that the New Testament contains both a narrative and the complete metaphysical and creedal understanding of that narrative and all of the narrative that proceeded it. As such, the New Testament canon is a complete package of teaching that can be presented to the whole world along with the rest of Scripture as that which consummates the rest of Scripture and explains it plainly. In this way, Old and New Testaments combined as the Bible contain both the demonstration and the explanation of the demonstration of this: the salvific truth that is necessary for our foundational understanding of the God who has operated in history and our relationship to Him.
While the Bible represents the completion of globally necessary salvific knowledge, it does not mean those who lived before its completion were incapable of being saved. Rather, it means that there were key pieces of the salvific knowledge of God that were needed to be completed through the story of the Jewish people before the revelation could be complete as a Gospel to the whole world. Before the completion of this globally necessary salvific knowledge, salvation still required an orientation to the Jewish people and, during the era of the temple, to the temple via the outer court. Before the completion of the globally necessary salvific knowledge, the temple is still at the center of the terra firma of the word of God in Zion as both spirit and geography.
It is with the ministry of Jesus and then the apostles that this ends, and something important happens: the revelation is taken out of the bounds of Jewish people and the geography of Jerusalem. The globally necessary salvific revelation is now portable to the ends of the earth: it is now a Gospel. This altered relationship with geography is confirmed by three particular events that happen to the temple after the cross and the resurrection. The ripping of the temple curtain, Pentecost and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD were sequential earthquakes that signaled this altered relationship with geography and the Word of God. It is the dissemination of globally necessary salvific knowledge via direct revelation to a particular man or group of men that has ended, which is why the relationship between the word of God and earthly geography has been altered and the dissemination of God’s word is now no longer within the boundaries of the Jewish people and land.
To use big fancy words, the portability of the Gospel beyond the terra firma of the temple mount has particular pheumotological, cristological and ecclesiastical ramifications. Having a different relationship with land, the church now also has a different relationship with human mediators. It is now Jesus, the king and high priest who communicates directly with all believers, as lesser priests, via his Spirit to all ends of the earth to accomplish the goal of establishing his Kingdom in the transformation of believers. It is in the administration of this that Christ betows gifts and fruits to advance it. The church, as an ecclesiastical institution, is merely a container and shell of loosely held, locally operating and very conditionally held institutional authority that is placed by God to guide the establishment of God's Kingdom. As Jesus has commissioned the Gospel to be spread to the whole world, it is the province of the church, as the collective, organic body of individual Christians each operating as individual agents whose job it is to disseminate the body of completed salvific revelation presented in the Bible as it is understood in the context of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So, to answer the cessationists, the revelation that has ceased is any new revelation of globally necessary salvific knowledge of God which must be disseminated via one man to the whole earth. If a cessationist insisted that I was I partial "cessationist" and therefore not a pure continuationist, I would concede that I was a "cessationist" for that particular nature and purpose of revelation. As a continuationist (in the meaning of the term in the cessationist/continuationist debate), God's low-level revelation aka illumination (a word that is used to keep "revelation" distinct) is ad hoc, supplemental or is individually necessary or locally necessary or temporarily necessary or useful to advance God's kingdom across the globe.
As I have attempted to explain in my posts on "house building" and "will teach you all things" part 1, part 2 and part 3, Jesus and the apostles claimed their role as completing the dissemination of the “truth” of revelation/ aka. the Foundation, but also explained that there was to be an ongoing dissemination of ad hoc wisdom from the Holy Spirit to believers. It is in the space of this ongoing illumination that Jesus interacts directly with believers, affecting their transformation with the intervention of the Holy Spirit, and thereby guiding them to complete the work of the Gospel.
Jesus did not say that this process of illumination via the Holy Spirit would end, and I don’t believe that it will end for the reason that I stated in paragraph 3 of this post – I believe that which Jesus plainly opened is open, that which Jesus plainly closed is closed, and that which Jesus plainly says will come in the future will come in the future. Believing that the illumination of the Spirit has ended would require having extra-biblical knowledge that the promise of ongoing illumination has closed when Scripture has not plainly said so and has said many things plainly to the contrary.
Another way to think metaphorically of the divide that separates the revelation of the Bible canon from the low-level ad-hoc revelation/illumination that follows is to think of a tree. One can understand that canonic revelation is contained within a "trunk building" dispensation of God's revelation and what is now the branch building dispensation of God's illumination. (I don't normally like to use the word dispensation because "dispensationalists" too often emphasize divisions in history and not continuity of God's truth and word). The NT written by the apostles represents the authoritative writing connected to the final "trunk" revelation of God. The NT ministry of the apostles is just where the trunk is becoming branches. It is Bahai, Islam and LDS who all claim some sort of "trunk" quality revelation, some new canon for some new globally necessary salvific knowledge coming though one prophet requiring a new commissioning of missionaries to spread it to the ends of the earth.
In regard to the cessationist who might say that any modern believer’s claim to a special, conscious experience of having special communion with God puts him at risk of being seen as co-equal with the Prophets and Apostles. It is my assertion that we believers can experience the existential faith of God’s leading as an experience of God’s illumination with the same intensity and claim to God's direction and call on our lives that Abraham experienced as God’s revelation, and that we modern believers can use Abraham as an example for our journey in God’s illumination without being accused of making ourselves co-equal as prophets to Abraham. This is because Abrahams place in history makes him part of the "trunk" narrative, as Abraham's faith was necessary to advance the nation of Israel. This, so that Paul and the author of Hebrews could later look back on Abraham’s example as a way to communicate the reality of faith for the benefit of the all in the context of God's revelation in history. Only if I were to claim new, foundational, globally necessary salvific knowledge as a result of my journey with God in 2007, then I would be in problematic territory in regard to the prophets and the apostles and I would be in danger of adding to the canon as the cessationists so often fear.
I will say that I have an affinity with Catholics as brothers in Christ in a way that I do not feel with LDS or with Bahia or Islam (though some Catholics would consider me a heretic). However, the problem I have with these aforementioned groups is a similar problem that I have with the idea of "apostolic succession" of the Catholic church (and to some extent in the Anglican church). While the Catholic church leadership does not claim any new salvific knowledge after the Bible canon, they do claim a centralized illuminatory authority that emanates from God to one man and/or group of men in one corner of the world. It is the tendency of LDS, Islam and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church to try to re-orient the Word of God as something that is oriented toward a particular man at on a particular piece of terra firma. While God can certainly use the institution of the Catholic church for good and to spread the Gospel, it is its centralizing tendency in regard to geography that makes it regressive in their relationship to revelation and the geography of the Gospel. This tendency toward valuing a particular piece of terra firma is also found to one degree or another in all of the Bible canon-adding sects and religions.
In sum, it is my assertion that God's altered use of geography away from needing to by tied to the land ended any formal centralized revelatory/illuminatory ecclesiology. That the church, now free to go to the ends of the earth with the Gospel, is no longer ecclesiastically bound to the globally necessary teachings of one man or group of men. Instead, Christians operate as the "priesthood of all believers" relating directly with Christ and operating within their local church as they complete the mission of His kingdom to the ends of the earth.
