You should know up front that this will be one of my more philosophical posts.

My goal here is to answer the question “Tim, what exactly do you mean when you keep talking about our understanding of the Bible being dangerously influenced by a modern worldview?”

I am hoping this post will be of use to those with little preconceived notion of postmodern thought, as well as those with a negative preconception about it – and I also hope to speak to theological conservatives and liberals alike (though postmodern does sometimes critique and/or concern these two camps in unique ways).

I should also acknowledge up front that I draw heavily on the thought of N.T. Wright and Brian Mclaren, among others, though the articulation here is my own.

Interested? Read more…

Continue reading »

Music for this is electric guitar driven, with a mix of rock and reggae riffs. Influences include State Radio and Mute Math.

Something’s broken
Something inside you
And the last time I could feel inside
You know I felt it too

Here inside these walls
Where we’ve been told it’s safe to stay
We hold the pieces that still fit the puzzle box top
And we throw the rest away

But I’ve seen traces of our rescue just beyond these city gates
And baby, if we drop the weapons we’ve been selling we just may
Find there’s a deeper power at work here than our broken yesterdays
Do you still believe in life?
Do you still believe in life?

So let the healing begin
Hand your blade to the surgeon
There’s a cancer within us all

And it’s a war we’ll never win
If we just keep cutting ears off
With the swords that we’re given, uh huh

Here inside these walls
Where we’ve been told it’s safe to stay
The greatest story of love’s victory
Made a footnote to the blood of our crusades
The blood of our crusades

But I’ve seen traces of our rescue just beyond these city gates
And baby, if we drop the weapons we’ve been selling we just may
Find there’s a deeper power at work here than our broken yesterdays
Do you still believe in life?
Do you still believe in life?

There are traces of a new world breaking through these city gates
And baby, even if the walls begin to crumble we can stay
‘Cause there’s a deeper power at work here than the battle lines we’ve laid
Do you still believe in life?
Do you still believe in life?

The full title for this song is “Asleep at the Wheel (The Iraq War)”. The music is heavily electric guitar driven — influences include U2, Dead Poetic, and Switchfoot.

It seems, my friend, that you feel weak
It seems the party line has teeth

And so you hold to your guns
Won’t you ever let it die
Before the killing is too hard to hide

And so you call on your bombs
Keep singing your songs
But don’t let the darkness hide what we’ve become tonight

We’re falling asleep at the wheel sometimes
Trading their peace for our peace of mind
As what we call freedom’s winds blow hard across this war torn land.

Your bridegroom calls for you to speak
Awake my child and learn to turn the other cheek

And find the fullness of life
Is not found in might
Of an empire’s walls of protection

It’s what we’ve known all along
Hear the old gospel songs
And understand that we all stand connected tonight

We’re falling asleep at the wheel sometimes
Trading their peace for our peace of mind
As what we call freedom’s winds blow hard across this war torn land.

In the final outcome have we all become monsters
Faith, hope, vengeance, and a grace that has fallen asleep

Is love really that weak?
We’ve got a grace that has fallen asleep
Is love really that weak?

More than three months after my last post, my wait for ’sufficient time to blog thoughtfully’ has no immediate end in sight — such is life with an infant in the family, I suppose. So, while I still hope to finish my “Faith and Politics” series someday soon, I’ve decided to share something else in the mean time: lyrics from songs I’ve been writing recently.

After a number of years without much significant song writing, I’ve been writing a lot more in the last year, and am also (slowly and meticulously) starting to record these songs.

This one is called “Hearts and Stones”. The music is pensive and acoustic — musical influences include Steven Delopoulos, some early Dispatch albums, and perhaps also Bebo Norman.

When will we realize
we’re waiting for a season that’s arrived
For one who is returning
peace to shattered earthly lives
When will we find you here?
When will we find you here?

When will we realize
we’re killing over broken wells
While the lilies all still shine
and the birds all eat their fill
When will we find you here?
When will we find you here?

What if you really meant to lead us further than where we’ve arrived?
What if we’ve fashioned from your story something true yet still a lie?
What if the day of your returning really turns both hearts and stones?
What if you come to live among us here, where you come to bring us home?

When will we realize
we’re all part of the story that you tell
we’re all part of the pain
you know we’re all to blame
When will we find you here?
When will we find you here?

When will we realize
you’ve called us to be healers of this age
to open up our eyes
to hear the orphan’s cries…
the widow’s cries…
to see past death and feel the life that’s coming…

Oh, I still believe the story’s bigger
Oh, I still believe the story’s bigger

The following quote, from this blog post caught my attention today (emphasis mine):

...[Christians and Muslims] have important concepts in common - for example, both believe God is omnipotent, all-merciful, and without any imperfection. Both claim to believe in the same God that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets believed and followed. But Christians believe that God is revealed most fully and gloriously in a crucified person, and Muslims believe God is revealed most fully and gloriously in an inspired book. Actually I've met a few Christians who seem to have a concept closer to Islam's, substituting the Bible for the Quran.

For some time I’ve been looking for better ways to articulate my intuitive critiques of traditional Protestant Christianity (conservative American Evangelical Christianity in particular). This distinction between God being most revealed in a person vs in a book gets at what is perhaps one of the core issues which I find important but difficult to articulate. Many conservatives I grew up with would likely say “what’s the difference?” and it’s precisely that unawareness that is at the root of many of the things that most bother me.

Though I wouldn’t have articulated it this way when I began my Faith & Politics series, the goal of that series is, in essence, explaining why these two approaches lead to very different actions/worldviews/political-attitudes (as will become more clear in the 5th and final post when I finally get there). Many perspectives outside the realm of politics are, of course, also effected — perhaps providing a good set of topics for another series of blog posts someday.

For now, without time to go into more detail, I thought I’d throw this out there and see what people think. Do you find this distinction helpful? interesting? misleading? heretical? not meaningful?

A few months ago, I discussed an often-under-the-radar issue I believe is one of the central social justice issues of our time: food.

Today my wife forwarded me a link to this op-ed piece in the NY Times which I really enjoyed. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that the author isn’t right about at least three things: (1) the fact that health-care spending is higher in America then anywhere else is in very large part due to our diet/obesity based on our food policies, (2) this problem is much bigger than the under-the-radar coverage it usually receives, and (3) neither political party has shown much willingness to engage reform.

If either party were to take a constructive stance on food reform it would have a large impact on my vote. The motivation I blogged about previously (stopping the exploitation by large food companies of students especially minority students in under-privileged schools) only seems to motivate the political left. But as the NY Times piece points out, health-care reform (of either the Democrat or Republican variety) could bring about something we haven’t seen before: a big health insurance industry motivated to lobby for food reform — that perhaps is something that will get the attention of the political right. Perhaps my depressed hopelessness on the matter is not as well founded as I supposed…

(This is part 3 of a 5 part series. See also: Part 1, Part 2).

Jesus was born into a world in which people did not think about politics, religion, and culture as separate things that could be compartmentalized as we moderns do. For first century Jews, the central political/religious/cultural questions of the day were “Why are we subjugated and oppressed on the fringes of the Roman Empire? If we are God’s chosen people, why has He not rescued and freed us, instead allowing a pagan world power to rule us? And what should we do about it?”

At least four views were commonly offered: For the Pharisees, the answer was “we need stricter morality” leading them to redouble their efforts to live in a holy way while pointing the finger at those responsible for the most flagrant moral decay around them such as adulterers and tax collectors. For the Zealots, the answer was “we need to fight more courageously — we’re clearly on the right side in God’s eyes, how could He not bless our military efforts?” The Essenes concluded “the situation is bad and only getting worse — we ought to withdraw to a place of isolation where we can at least setup our own sub-culture in right standing with God.” For others, including the Sadducees, the solution was a sort of realism that admitted “the power of the empire is what it is — we might as well learn to benefit from it” and many of them maintained their relative wealth as a result of aligning themselves with the Roman regime.

Jesus, however, rejects all four approaches! Continue reading »

(This is part 2 of a 5 part series. See also: Part 1).

I’m notoriously bad at staying in touch with good friends long distance. This means that when I do get the chance to catch up over drinks or a meal there’s always lots of ground to cover. I recall this being the case when I met one of my best friends at the Sandpiper restaurant in West Chicago a few years after we’d both gone away to college.

As we enjoyed our burgers I began telling him that I’d been wrestling with politics a lot and was beginning to see a lot of problems with the party line we’d both more or less advocated as high school students. After acknowledging the issues I’d raised, he responded, “Well, I wonder sometimes too, but like [my spiritual mentor] says, in America today you’re either for killing babies or you’re against it.” I think this was meant to reassure me. I don’t remember how I responded, but I remember having a very intense reaction on the inside — and a sudden awareness of just how much my political mindset had shifted from just a few years earlier when I’d been a passionate “single issue voter.” Continue reading »

For people of faith living in a participatory democracy, the question of how to most faithfully participate in that democracy is often an extremely difficult one. Coupled with the associated passions, it’s also often a very divisive one.

During my rare week off, I’ve been enjoying using Facebook to track down a number of long lost friends. This process has reminded me of the incredibly diverse range of political convictions held by people whose faith I respect or have looked up to in the past.

This range of political opinions probably shouldn’t surprise me given the two major challenges inherent in the American political system today. First, we live in an incredibly large country with a complicated history of both great achievement and great injustice (often depending on what people group you’re a part of). As I’ve blogged about before, certain issues play out very differently in the neighborhoods where I grew up than they do in the neighborhoods where my wife grew up, yet policies are often debated in a one-size-fits-all context. Second, our primary mode of input as voters is an essentially binary decision between two party platforms which sometimes feels a bit like deciding between “ordering one of everything on the Denny’s menu” vs. “ordering one of everything on the Starbucks menu”.

Even so, our votes and our political views effect real lives. Deeply. Both our lives, and the lives of people who are very different from us (and who we’re often oblivious to). My personal experiences over the past eight years (including marrying someone who shares deeply my faith but grew in a very different ethnic/social setting) have forced me to wrestle constantly with how my faith effects who I am politically.

I have decided to write a five-part series in which I will delve into the intersection of faith and politics in more detail. Continue reading »

I’ve finally lost the resolve to hold out any longer ;-)

Tim Stonehocker