Climate change prayer

Holy God,
earth and air and water are your creation,
and every living thing belongs to you:
have mercy on us
as climate change confronts us.

Give us the will and the courage
    to simplify the way we live,
    to reduce the energy we use,
    to share the resources you provide,
    and to bear the cost of change.

Forgive our past mistakes and send us your Spirit,
    with wisdom in present controversies
    and vision for the future to which you call us
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

©Anglican Church of Australia Trust Corporation. Used by permission This text may be reproduced for use in worship in the Anglican Church of Australia

Bolt vs Curiosity: it's no match

More than a few news sites this morning selected Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, as their lead story. Bolt broke an Olympic record and ran the second fastest 100m ever recorded to win gold in London, recording a top speed of something like 45km/h.

Meanwhile, humans landed a small truck on Mars.

Every little boy (and plenty of little girls, I'm sure) dreams of running fast. And Bolt's 9.63s sprint was probably about two, three or four times as fast as most young children can run. I remember the first time I ran 100m against the clock, I came in at roughly 20s. I won't say how old I was...

Meanwhile, humans landed a small truck, weighing almost a ton, on Mars.

Bolt raced in front of a crowd of 80,000 at the stadium and hundreds of millions around the world. He is an international celebrity whose endorsement is worth millions to any brand and whose face is recognised by countless fans everywhere.

Meanwhile, humans landed a small truck, capable of finding evidence of extra-terrestrial life, on the ruddy surface of another planet.

Bolt's top speed was about 45km/h, the fastest any human has ever run. Curiosity's top speed was about 21,200 km/h. Bolt's speed was roughly double that of my boyhood efforts. Compared to my boyhood efforts at launching myself into space, Curiosity surpassed my - let's be generous and say 50cm - jump by a factor of 1.12 billion, travelling roughly 560 million kilometres from the surface of Earth to that of Mars. Bolt has trained for years in order to get every last detail correct: working on his running style, his start, his finish, his crowd-pleasing theatrics. Humans have been trying to work out whether there is or has been life on Mars for centuries and this mission has been in planning for eight years and en route for eight months, with scores of highly trained rocket scientists planning every last detail of a mission out of the Earth's gravity well, through the irradiated void of space and which culminated in seven minutes of terror, a hugely complex multi-stage precision landing procedure that had to be entirely automated, given the fact that signals from Mars to Earth take fourteen minutes and the entry only took seven. Imagine getting an almost one tonne truck to slow from over 21,000 km/h to zero in seven minutes while falling through a thin atmosphere with relatively strong gravity and landing on a precise spot on the far side of a planet without kicking up any dust or breaking billions of dollars worth of delicate scientific equipment. Wow.

So well done Mr Bolt. But what kind of planet do we live on where many of the major news organisations think that a man doing what humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years (just very marginally better than anyone else) is bigger news than landing a space laboratory capable of reconstructing the deep history of another planet and searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life on the surface of a planet 560 million kilometres away? Well done NASA. You deserve all the gold medals today, for an achievement that leaves every olympian, no matter how awesomely superhuman, in the shade.

Knowledge is superior to strength, skill to speed, carefully planned and executed cooperation to isolated brilliance. Yet better even than knowledge is wisdom. Though don't hold your breath for the day that the pursuit of wisdom makes a news headline ahead of a photogenic man running quickly at a corporate-sponsored event. Nonetheless, if Curiosity finds what it is looking for, we'll need plenty of wisdom to grasp it.

She [Wisdom] is more precious than jewels,
    and nothing you desire can compare with her. [...]
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
    those who hold her fast are called happy.

- Proverbs 3.15, 18 (NRSV).

Will human ingenuity save the day? Technology and technologism

Technologism is the eclipse of wisdom by intelligence.

Like the difference between consumption and consumerism, the difference between technology and technologism is important. It is quite possible to consider both the "isms" to be forms of idolatry while not implying that all consumption or technology use is bad. I don't want to be consumerist, but I acknowledge and celebrate the fact that we all need to eat and wearing clothes is also generally a good idea. I don't want to be a technologist, but I acknowledge and give thanks for the fact that certain pieces of human ingenuity are capable of bringing significant, (albeit limited and often quite compromised) human goods in certain circumstances.

The "ism" in each case comes from treating the object (consumption or technology) as a transcendent or ultimate source of meaning, as a saviour, as a non-negotiable aspect of one's identity or in some other way, as a god. Consumption becomes treated as a god when we cannot imagine life without our conveniences and luxuries, when we build our major life decisions around the pursuit of higher incomes and more toys (even if this is sometimes dressed up in concerns for "financial security" or "providing every opportunity for my kids"), when we make the highest goal of politics the pursuit of rising GDP, when we identify ourselves through our purchases or find "retail therapy" to be the only way to get through the day, when metaphors and assumptions from marketing and economics saturate all areas of life. And so on. Technology becomes a god when it is seen as the highest pinnacle of human achievement, when it is treated as a non-negotiable of my identity or life goal, when it is treated as the "final solution" to all our problems, when we assume that every issue must have a technical answer, when we come to view ourselves as masters and commanders of all we survey, when it becomes a means of avoiding the messy business of relationships, justice and politics.

I don't have a problem with individuals championing certain ideas and techniques, nor with acknowledging the many and varied benefits that have come from the massive acceleration of technological changes in the last few decades. But it will not do to be a cheerleader for human ingenuity per se without acknowledging the fallen and finite grasp of the world that even our best efforts display. Every technology has brought with it costs as well as benefits, has changed our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. Not all of these changes have been benign, and any new technology, no matter how glossy or initially attractive, is to be treated with measured caution.

If in thinking about responding to ecological crises our frame of reference excludes or minimises changes to lifestyles and cultural assumptions, demanding that there be a technological solution that enables us (in the rich, developed world) to keep on living at high and/or rising levels of consumption, then that's technologism. If we assume that there has to be a single technical response to complex social issues, rather than a broad combination of technological, infrastructural, policy, political, economic, cultural and personal changes, then that's technologism.

And if we face today's threats by holding desperately to the hope that tomorrow's genii will cook something up, placing onto future human ingenuity the expectation of salvation from the horrible mess we've made of things, that's technologism.

When technology is seen as saviour, as primary socio-political lever, as displacement of justice, as enabler of my unchallenged desires, as the primary source of identity, meaning or well-being, that's technologism.

And that's idolatry.

Giving vodka to a drunk

Do not try to prove your strength by wine-drinking,
     for wine has destroyed many.
As the furnace tests the work of the smith,
     so wine tests hearts when the insolent quarrel.
Wine is very life to human beings
     if taken in moderation.
What is life to one who is without wine?
     It has been created to make people happy.
Wine drunk at the proper time and in moderation
     is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul.
Wine drunk to excess leads to bitterness of spirit,
     to quarrels and stumbling.
Drunkenness increases the anger of a fool to his own hurt,
     reducing his strength and adding wounds.

- Ecclesiasticus 31.25-30 (NRSV).

Going to the pub for a drink with mates can be a very enjoyable experience. A pint or a dram, some good conversation, some laughs, maybe another drink and some time soaking up one another's company. Another drink? Why not, we're having a good time. With a proper sense of proportion, alcohol can make the heart glad (Psalm 104.15). But before long, drinking becomes drunkenness, and repeated drunkenness makes one a drunkard (cf. Ephesians 5.18; Galatians 5.21). By the time someone is seeing relationships fall apart and their liver, brain, heart, pancreas, nervous system, kidneys, bones, skin and/or sexual function give way from abuse we are well past the point at which enjoyment has turned into self-destruction. Alcohol use represents a gradual progression from a good blessing into a significant evil, without necessarily a clear line where one becomes the other.* The physical and social ills of alcoholism are vindications of (or at least corroborations of) scriptural warnings against drunkenness, yet spiritual injury can occur even prior to obvious relational or physical damage and the believer does not require sociological or medical research on the effects of alcohol abuse to trust the biblical witness on this matter. The latter are helpful confirmations of what has already been revealed, illustrating the principle that we reap what we sow and that part of God's present judgement upon human wickedness is to allow us to experience some of the consequences of our misdeeds.
*Many jurisdictions create such markers through legal limits on blood alcohol levels, but all such lines must be somewhat arbitrary when extended across a whole population with quite different physiological and mental reactions to alcohol.

But this is not really a post about alcoholism.

Seeking more economic growth* for developed economies is like offering vodka to a man already lying a pool of his own vomit. Justifying it by pointing out secondary benefits misses the point; the extra waitstaff will be out of a job unless enough booze is sold, but why should the security of someone's job justify aiding the dissolution of life? With a proper sense of proportion, some kinds of economic growth can be a good blessing on a society. But the pursuit of growth in all circumstances by all means at whatever cost is ultimately self-destructive. There is no hard and fast line between the one and the other. Attempts to calculate ecological footprints and planetary boundaries may give a ballpark idea of where growth starts being suicidal, but that doesn't mean that it is where the problem starts. The desire for growth without reference to the rest of the body is wrong in principle, not just once the symptoms of overshoot start to appear. The ecological and resource crises that are increasingly manifest may illustrate the ruinous trajectory of the desire, but from inception, the desire for growth without reference to context is already based on some combination of greed, myopia, lust for power and a reckless disregard for creaturely limits.
*There is some debate about just what is meant by economic growth. Most definitions at least strongly imply the increasing extraction and exploitation of physical resources for economic purposes, which is my primary concern in this discussion.

Wisdom in the wild, and other stories

Orion: Wisdom in the wild. What are the effects of removing the aged from a population? Are our hunting and fishing habits not only decimating numbers, but also breaking the cultural continuity of animals?

Guardian: My son, the terror suspect. A father tells the brutal and moving story of his son's conversion to Islam, travels to Pakistan, experiences fighting for the Taliban and eventual capture and suffering at the hands of his own government.

Common Dreams: One more reason why mountaintop removal is really stupid - along with poisoning rivers, destroying forests, levelling mountains and contributing to the destruction of a livable climate, it also doubles cancer rates in the local area.

Bright Green: What's happening in Somalia is no natural disaster.

And the prize for best rant on the Australian carbon price goes to this piece of inspired prose (which comes with a language warning).

Two kinds of democracy

There are at least two broad kinds of democracy. A more direct democracy (as seen for example in Switzerland) assumes that the populace themselves are making the decisions and that the entire voting population will have both the requisite knowledge base and wisdom to make effective political judgements. However, a more representative democracy (as exemplified in the historic Westminster tradition) doesn’t conceive of the elected representatives as merely mirroring the opinions of the general population (as though each piece of legislation is to be decided by opinion poll), but as having been selected by their peers and entrusted to make wise political judgements on our behalf, even where these might be unpopular (at least in the short term).

Each system has dangers and drawbacks. The former (Swiss style) is perhaps overly optimistic about the wisdom of the collective population and their time, ability and interest to focus on highly complex policy matters. The latter (Westminster model) is perhaps overly optimistic about the integrity of elected representatives in making wise decisions for the common good without undue influence from corporate lobbyists. I think that the current dominant model in the English-speaking democracies with which I’m familiar is probably the worst of both worlds: populist in tone and yet largely beholden to corporate lobby interests in outcome.

Which is it to be?

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

- Woody Allen.

Surrendering to God?

"For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

- Galatians 5.1.

Over the last couple of years, I have increasingly been struck by the frequency with which certain kinds of Christian discourse (not least many contemporary worship songs) refer to the idea of our "surrendering" to God. The more I have noticed this, the more it has started to ring false in my ears.

To surrender is to cease resistance and to submit to a hostile power generally after losing all prospect of victory. It is done in order to survive, or to bring to an end a hopeless conflict and so to salvage what remains (especially one's life) from further destruction. But the victory of God is not over us, in order that we might become slaves, giving up our freedom in exchange for survival. If we are going to use metaphors of warfare, conflict and victory, then it is important to note that the New Testament speaks in this way of God's triumph over the powers of evil, sin and death in Christ. God does not beat us into submission, he defeats the powers that hold us captive, liberating us to experience an increase in our agency. We are set free to love. This what Paul means when he speaks of being set free from slavery to sin and becoming a "slave" to righteousness (Romans 6.18). "Slavery" to righteousness is not a straightforward parallel to slavery to sin (as Paul acknowledges in the very next verse: Romans 6.19). The switch of masters is from a dominating tyrant to a loving Father who wants us to grow up into maturity.

What is the problem with getting this metaphor confused? Why is it an issue to speak of our surrendering to God? First, because it implies that becoming a Christian is a process of moving from greater to lesser freedom. Prior to surrendering, I was free, but I gave that up in order to prevent a greater power from destroying me utterly. This is to get things upside down. Being rescued from the power of darkness and being brought into the kingdom of the Son is to be brought out into a wide space, not placed into a cell. It is to regain the power of action, that is, the possibility of acting in faith, hope and love as an expression of true humanity, to be freed from the constrictions of selfishness and fear, guilt and impotence. In other words, ethics is good news.

Second, to think of Christian discipleship as unthinking submission ("surrender") to an externally imposed (or even willingly received) divine will is to misconstrue the nature of Christian maturity. We are to be adults in our thinking. Following Christ doesn't mean losing the messy complexity of the world for black and white simplicity, it doesn't mean that every choice becomes obvious and straightforward, that every situation becomes morally perspicuous. This is one of the dangerous attractions in the language of "surrender": that all my quandaries will be resolved through someone telling me what to do again. I can once more be a child whose decisions are made for me. I can regress to irresponsibility.

Third, if our lives are surrendering to God, then what place is there for wisdom? God does not simply give us a list of do's and don't's that we either accept (surrender to) or reject. He guides us in a true and living way, a path of peace, in which we are to walk. This wisdom requires that we pay close attention to the world around us, to ourselves and to the opportunities available at this time.

Do not get me wrong. Following Christ requires the denial of self (Mark 8.34), indeed, dying to oneself, an end to the rebellious self that seeks to live without God. Perhaps in this sense we can speak of a surrender, an end to the impossible quest for self-sufficiency. But this "death" is the prelude, perhaps even the necessary condition, to a "resurrection" in which our whole being is renewed and transformed. This process includes our minds, which are not switched off or put onto autopilot.

Obedience to the will of God is not a matter of a struggle between a human and a divine will and the former being conquered by the latter through sheer force. Instead, obedience in the scriptures is sharing the same mind (Philippians 2.5), being wooed by love to seek a unity of purpose. Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14.15). This isn't a threat or emotional manipulation. It is a description of the nature of love, particularly when one realises that in the context of the farewell discourse where Jesus makes this statement, his commandment is to love one another (John 13.34-35). Love obeys, that is, continues to participate in love, because that is the nature of true love.

In sum, Jesus isn't recruiting impressionable minds who simply swallow and regurgitate his teaching. He wants friends who understand him, who know what he was doing and seek to participate thoughtfully and creatively in that mission.

"I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father."

- John 15.15.

Are we living in a revolutionary age?

"A good test that anyone can make when his time comes: if a man in the fullness of his days, at the end of his life, can pass on the wisdom of his accumulated experience to those who grow up after him; if what he has learned in his youth, added to but not discarded in his maturity, still serves him in his old age, and is still worth teaching the then-young, then his was not an age of revolution… The world into which his children enter is still his age not because it is entirely unchanged, but because the changes that did occur were gradual and limited enough to allow him to absorb them into his initial stock and keep abreast of them. If, however, a man in his advancing years has turned to his children, or grandchildren, to have them tell him what the present is about; if his own acquired knowledge and understanding no longer avail him; if at the end of his days he finds himself to be obsolete rather than wise, then we may term the rate and scope of change that overtook him “revolutionary”."

- Hans Jonas.

Sometimes, revolutions can happen without much attention being paid to them.
H/T Andrew Errington.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Fear not

When you leave the house today: fear not. When you travel to the polling station: be not afraid. When you stand in line: don't give in to anxiety. When you're faced with the string of empty boxes: don't get scared. Make your judgements in wisdom and love of neighbour without giving way to terror.

Today, vote for someone else.

The search for justice is a journey into joy

And very often Christians have somehow failed to get across any idea that ethics, whether individual ethics or social ethics, is about joy. Those two words which you may not habitually associate – ethics and joy; but that is a theological failure, because the search for justice is very profoundly a journey into joy. If it’s true that this is what the world is, if it’s true that the nature of our participation in the life of God is a participation in God’s self-forgetting bliss, then, our work for a society in which people have the freedom and the dignity to give themselves to each other in love, is as creative as any other act we undertake.

- Rowan Williams, Creation, Creativity and Creatureliness:
the Wisdom of Finite Existence.

This speech by Williams is worth reading in full (though the opening may be hard going if you're a little rusty on your Russian theologians) for its insights into the relationships between creation, creativity and creatureliness.

Williams on celebrating creatureliness

"Arguably what is going on in the work of redemption is, as St Irenaeus first put it, the reversal of Adam’s mistake. Adam’s resentment at not being God is transfigured by Christ into the free acceptance of not being God. That’s what Philippians chapter 2 is all about. The one who is in the form of God delights to be no longer in the form of God but in the form of a slave, and in that slave form of humanity, joining in our unfreedom, our suffering, our tensions and our struggles, the finite created form of humanity is glorified from within. Adam resents not being God and so Satan has leverage upon him: ‘You shall be as gods,’ says Satan to Adam, knowing that the essence of our fallenness is resentment at being creatures (just as the essence of the fall of Satan himself, in church tradition, is the refusal to worship). So Jesus, in not clinging to the form of God but accepting the humility of the incarnation and the death of the cross, restores the glory of creatureliness. The incarnation affirms that creation is good, not that it is nice or beautiful, but that it is good because it is in this relationship of loving dependence on the self-giving of God. And the mystery that we seek to understand when we think about redemption is that restoring of the glory of creatureliness can only be done by one who isn’t simply a bit of creation – the Word in whom creation hangs together, in whom alone is that full freedom which can accept the otherness, the suffering, the death of the created order and fill it with life. ‘He who ascended, is it not he who also descended?’ (Eph 4:9)

"So we in Christ rejoice at not being God. We ought to give thanks daily to God that we are not God and that God is God; we give thanks to God for God’s great glory. And the secret is that only in that rejoicing that we are not God do we come to share the divine life in the way we are made to do – the paradox that only by our completely not wanting to be God can the divine life take root in us.

"Discipleship in the body of Christ is in one sense simply a matter of constantly battling to be a creature, battling against all those instincts in us which make us want to be God or make us want to be what we think God is. There, of course, is the catch. And that’s why discipleship challenges at every level those unrealities which distort humanity, which distort creatureliness. That’s why discipleship challenges those enterprises in our world and our culture which feed the illusion that actually we could be God if we tried hard enough.

"What are those things about? Well you many find them in the deep unease so many in our culture feel about ageing and dying. You find it in our denials of death. You find it in our passion for absolute security, our desire never to be at risk. You may find it in a defence programme, you may find it in the technological exploitation of the environment. At level after level, our temptation is to deny that we are finite. And when I read, as sadly I sometimes do in discussions of our environmental crisis, that we can be confident technology will find a way, my blood runs cold, because I hear in that the refusal of real creatureliness. ‘These limits are temporary, our skills will find a way, we shall at some point be able to get to the stage where we are safe’. And the gospel tells us you never on earth get to a place where you are safe; but you will get to a place where you are blissful and united with your Father in heaven. In the immortal words of C S Lewis, ‘he’s not a tame lion, you know’.

"The outworking then of created wisdom, created Sophia, is this joyful embrace of being created, of not being God, the acceptance that we shall die, that we are fragile, that we are fallible. And it is ‘here on this lowly ground’, in John Donne’s phrase, that we come into contact with the transfiguring, transformative life of the eternal God. ... [O]ur holiness is not the denial but the acceptance of being creatures."

- Rowan Williams, Creation, Creativity and Creatureliness:
the Wisdom of Finite Existence.

Aeschylus on the getting of wisdom

He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

- Aeschylus, Agamemnon, line 179ff.
(as misquoted/paraphrased by Robert F. Kennedy upon the assassination of Martin Luther King Jnr., and then also inscribed on RFK's grave)

I watched the second half of the SBS documentary on Robert F. Kennedy tonight with a friend from church and discovered how little I had known about him. For instance, I didn't realise how close he'd come to becoming America's youngest president, nor how much he'd already achieved in bringing people together. A vision of a possible future can be such a powerfully cohesive force.

O'Donovan on wakefulness IIIb: Resolving

Resolving (cont)
Ideals are goods imagined negatively, as possibilities. Goods are known historically and so can be anticipated, or imagined, where they do not yet exist. This turn from love to hope is dangerous. By focussing on possibility we may lose sight of the good already actually given to us. Yet this danger is inescapable; we must deal in possibilities. The key is to frame our hope in response to God's promise, which ensures that it will be in the service of created good, rather than an invention or construction of my wishes.

It is necessary to focus on the negative to anticipate the possibility of future good. O'Donovan discussed the example of Psalm 139 in which the final prayer of verses 23-24 "requires" the sudden shock of verses 19-22; the psalmist's gaze needed to shift from the perfection of God's work (verses 1-18) to the lack of perfection in the world.

Yet in the whole world of unrealised possible good, I have one life before death to achieve something. It is possible to fall in love with the as yet unrealised good and ignore the actual thing I can do. I may end up merely hoping for things I cannot realise and to which I cannot even contribute. Deep changes can and will occur; the lion will lie down with the lamb. I can't make this happen, but I may be able to help two quarrelling friends patch it up. We don't bring in the kingdom. Even though God's kingdom is our ultimate hope, I am instead to ask after the concrete thing given to me to do in the present in light of that hope and in witness to it. Paul Ramsey said, "Not everything that can be done should by us be done." The bad idealist can be dangerous - the negativity of the ideal will become the hallmark of all I do. I ought not to linger amongst the yawning caverns of non-existence; I ought to press on for what God has given me to do.

Compromise is thus what makes ideals realisable. We acknowledge our limits and seek what good we can do. We know this from the realm of law. An idealistic law is vicious, requiring too much, and so causes despair amngst those who would do good within their limits. On the other hand, we can have a demoralised law that demands too little. There are bad compromises as well as bad ideals, where we conform to the pattern of this world. We need to stand our ground where we have ground to stand upon. Judgement regarding what is possible is difficult, requiring courage as well as wisdom. Yet we are confident to risk failure if we know that even in our failure our actions will witness to the kingdom of God.

A good ideal is a possible ideal. A good compromise focuses the mind on where and how it is possible.

Not every possibility ought to be done. Asking "can we clone a sheep?" is the wrong question (and is answered by actually cloning a sheep, or by failing for long enough and in enough ways that we give up). The better question is "can we do good by cloning a sleep?" (and this is not answered by actually cloning (or failing to clone) a sleep), or "can it be a coherent pursuit of a God-given good?". This is where our description is crucial. Our ideals will be as good as our description of the good.

Moral rules are formulations of generic obligation. The basis of following them is that they are grounded in reality, not just that they are directive. Such rules are not given in nature, ready to be discovered by a careful observer, yet neither are they invented. They are 'constructed' in the same way as diagrams, arguments or formulae are constructed, i.e. it is not their content that we construct but their form. Like arguments, they are open to dispute, clarification and correction. And the claim that we ought to follow rules is itself a rule, grounded in the reality of regularity.

And in conclusion, some reflections upon acting together with others. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13.13) Why is love the greatest? We began with love, in a faithful admiration of the goods of the world, and have proceeded via hope to faith. But the whole movement becomes a cycle when faith is itself directed to love. Or to put it another (more Johannine) way, how is the command to love both an old and a new command? (John 13.34; 1 John 2.7-11; 2 John 5-6) Our actions contribute to a human history of action. If others can't build on my bold action, then I'm narcissistic (the classic example of a bold action that others are unable to build upon is suicide). Perfection of moral action is that we awaken together to shared service of God. Rowan Williams has devoted his whole office to this point (he is less understood on this side of the world at this great distance). With one purpose and acting as one (Philippians 2.2) - yet what is it that we are to imitate in the incarnation (Philippians 2.5)? Not simply being kind or humble, but Christ's acceptance of service and his demonstrated obedience to God. The Son is wholly equal with the Father, yet he was wholly absorbed in the Father's will. He gave priority to the Father, not because they were not equal, but because asserting equality was no part of his project. May we have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. May we act as one.

-----

Given the present situation in the Anglican communion and O'Donovan's concluding comments, I asked the question that I thought many would be thinking: can disagreement serve unity? His answer: yes, of course, in a dialectic pursuit of true unity rather than uniformity. I wish he'd had the chance to say more. For those interested, he has addressed this question (and the specific situation of the Anglican communion) at some length in seven sermons posted on the Fulcrum website.

Further questions proceed thus:
Q: Are laws just for the unvirtuous, as Aristotle claimed? Don't the virtuous simply do what is right?
A: No, Aristotelians overvalue spontenaity. "I believe that St Paul would, as St Paul always does, agree with me."

Q: 'Compromise' has a bad name around most Christians. Are we really meant to compromise?
A: Let's distiguish again between good and bad compromise. The latter is to conform to the pattern of the age. The former is simply trying to do what can be done, to bear witness to what God is doing. The key question to hold together ideals and compromise: "what is the best course of action that is actually available?"

Q: How can I know God's will for my life? How can I distinguish it from my imagination and desires?
A: I can't give you a series of rules beyond orienting you correctly: are you listening to God's word? Are you living the good things he's made (esp your neighbour)? Are you attending to his laws? I can lead you round and round the issue, but I can't resolve it for you because I'm not the Holy Spirit. The resolution is left to you and the Spirit.

Q: Are rights and duties good ideals or not?
A: Rights are more complex than duties. The focussing of moral discourse on rights is like the focus on equality. Both return to ontological presuppositions and make them do the work of phronesis. In each case, this is an abuse of a term, which in its correct place is quite useful, but which won't do the whole job for us. Duties are simply what the rules teach us. Of course, they need to be placed in a broader understanding of the world and admiration of the good that shows how duties relate (and do not ultimately conflict). We ought to avoid an atomistic understanding of either rights or duties. Morality doesn't start from a single point, but aims to get to one.

Trevor Cairney, Master of New College, thanked O'Donovan and offered an excellent summary of all three talks, which he has now published as a single post.
Twelve points for correcltly naming the Sydney suburb in which the photo was taken.
Series: I; IIa; IIb; IIIa; IIIb.

Hart (again) on suffering and providence

"[Many Christians] clearly seem to wish to believe there is a divine plan in all the seeming randomness of nature's violence that accounts for every instance of suffering, privation, and loss in a sort of total sum. This is an understandable impulse. That there is a transcendent providence that will bring God's good ends out of the darkness of history - in spite of every evil - no Christian can fail to affirm. But providence (as even Voltaire seems to have understood) is not simply a 'total sum' or 'infinite equation' that leaves nothing behind."
...
"Yes, certainly, there is nothing, not even suffering or death, that cannot be providentially turned toward God's good ends. But the New Testament also teaches us that, in another and ultimate sense, suffering and death - considered in themselves - have no true meaning or purpose at all; and this is in a very real sense the most liberating and joyous wisdom that the gospel imparts."

- David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
(Eerdmans: 2005), 29, 35.

My sweet Lord

So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

- John 6.53 (NRSV)

A sculpture which was to be exhibited in Manhatten over Easter has been cancelled due to protests from Christians (BBC story here). The artwork depicts a life-sized naked Jesus with arms extended as though crucified (though without a cross) made entirely from chocolate. Appropriately, it is entitled 'My sweet Lord'.*
*I would include an image, but I suspect that would infringe copyright. Just go to the BBC site.

A comment quoted from the lead protester called the piece "an assault on Christians" and went on to say, "They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the Prophet Mohammed naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan."

Even if this were an assault on Christians, censorship is not the answer. We don't glorify God by forcefully silencing blasphemy. I have often received emails asking me to contribute to some protest (usually by adding my name to a worthless email petition) against some allegedly scandalous piece of art. I have always declined.

In fact, I think this attitude and approach demonstrates a shallow grasp of art, government and theology. Not only is a chocolate Jesus at Easter at least a mildly interesting comment on contemporary practices of Easter celebration, and not only are Christians not simply one more minority interest group amongst others (who need to stand up for our rights because no one else will), but the quote misses a crucial difference between Christianity and Islam.

Christians worship a Lord whose glory consists in his humble obedience. It was precisely because Jesus was obedient even to the point of a horrendous and shameful death that he received the name above every name, the divine name (Philippians 2.9-11). The pain and humiliation of the cross are therefore not to be hidden away, but consistute the crowning glory of Jesus' faithfulness. To display a naked and vulnerable Jesus, a frail, meltable, edible Jesus is to speak of Christ crucified - foolishness, yet God's wisdom.

He spoke of trees

A guest post by Andrew Errington
When the author of the book of Kings described Solomon’s wisdom, he wrote this:

“God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and largeness of mind like the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt [...]. He [...] uttered three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; he spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish.”

- 1 Kings 4:29-34.

It was neither his capacity to make difficult political decisions nor his legendary ability to justly judge the disputes that were brought before him that the author mentions to explain his wisdom. Rather, it was the way Solomon spoke of the natural world, especially, it seems, trees.

I find this delightful. I like trees and have done so since I climbed the liquid amber in our front yard, wandered through aging poplars with my Grandfather, and discovered stands of bluegums in a quiet valley.

But more than that, this brief mention is a reminder of something that has been central to Nothing New Under the Sun: the created world is not incidental or unimportant in God’s purposes. We are not being saved from this world of coolabahs and cedar and kangaroos and kingfishers, but for it [ed: and with it!]. So it makes sense that at the heart of Solomon’s wisdom was reflection on God’s good world. He spoke of trees.
Ten points for the country in the pic. No posting this weekend as I will be away. Thanks to Andrew Errington for this post. He is also known as "andrewe" in comments.
UPDATE: Andrew has now started his own blog here.