Why don’t I just come out and try to convert the lost sheep of the École Normale Supérieure? Do I really mean it about conservative worship (I can’t find anything I even said about conservative worship, but I’ll try to answer the question anyway)? Can one bespeak the Truth without so intending? I don’ have as much time as I’d like, and I’m a very slow thinker and typer, so this’ll be sketchy. I’ll mix in some other stuff I’m thinking about preaching, as I get ready for tomorrow’s (gasp!) class.
Why not “convert the postmoderns”, Tutor? Because converting people isn’t my job. That’s just not theologically sound; conversion is the Spirit at work. My job, and maybe all the work of preaching, maybe even all the work of discipleship, means trying to cooperate with the Spirit — as it were, to make the Spirit’s job easier. To soften people up for the Spirit. To find the open passing lane so the Spirit can sneak in for a lay-up. To do all I can to defuse people’s objections to what I profess, and to exemplify someone whose life permits both a steadfast commitment to the Truth and a functional brain, hearty laughter, and broad sympathies. I don’t do Edwards well (at least, not the apocalyptic Edwards; I have some attraction to the deliberative Edwards). If I were to try to preach “Sinners in the Hands,” I’d sound like somebody imitating a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, probably not a convincing imitation at that. If on the other hand I be permitted persistently to make my own patient case for the joyous, life-giving Way of the gospel, and for the anesthetic (or worse) alternatives to that gift of freedom and peace, I may better prepare someone to hear the Spirit speak of the deep things of God, teaching us in wordless depths. If someone whose sympathies stop at a postmodern creed doesn’t hear Truth when I preach in the idiom within which I work most truly to my capacities and fluencies, then invoking the furnaces of Gehenna won’t change their hearts either. I’ getting the sense that I know someone who may be called to be the theological bad cop to my good cop.
Conservative worship? I’m not sure what that means, but I should admit that I’m a firm adherent to the Anglo-Catholic tradition of worship — not because I think that it is or should be the only way anyone ever praises God in worship, but because I find in some representatives of that tradition a practice of transgressive beauty that I haven't met as reliably elsewhere. Some Anglo-Catholics are prissy control monarchs; who needs that? But I was taught my most precious lessons in catholic worship at an inner-city Hispanic/Caribbean-American congregation in Tampa. Do I thereby anathematize ways that other people worship? By no means (as the Apostle saith)! Any way of daring to draw near God in ways we devise entails a risk (which is one reason many congregations avoid the issue by not even trying to draw near God) — but the number of ways in which God takes delight in our praise can’t be numbered. (I just don’t understand many of them.)
What then (speaking of variety) about an atheist communicating the Truth unawares, perhaps despite herself? It seems plausible to me; I certainly don’t exclude that possibility. But at the same time, I’m obligated to take seriously an atheist’s rejection of the Truth that I profess — otherwise I’m just flat-out not listening. I used to have a French teacher (an Algerian Jew; maybe she grew up with Derrida?) who insisted that there are no atheists: “Non, M. Adam; everrhy man has hees God, whethair he knows eet orrrh not!” Well, in a certain sense, I guess; but I sure wouldn’t want to try to tell Jean-Paul Sartre or Jesse Ventura that really, they did believe in God. Do I hear notes of the Truth in Sartre? Yes, though they be heavily muffled (sorry, not in Ventura, but then I haven’t read much Ventura). I’m utterly convinced that the Spirit can make the Truth heard in unexpected ways — is that what you’re asking, Danya?
The “deliberate” part of the narrower definition, about which Danya may be concerned, should apply only, I suppose, to those of us who might aspire to speaking with the Spirit’s support; but your challenge brings to view so many problems with that stipulation that I may have to withdraw that part of the definition. I’m guarding against the presumption that some preachers bring to their task, where they reckon that simply by wearing outlandish garb and standing up in the congregation, they must be in the Spirit, so anything they utter is good. There’ a more precise way of getting at that, though.
Well, phooey, it’ getting late, I must sleep well tonight since I have a long teaching shift tomorrow, and I haven’t been able to get back to the topic. Permit me to close this phase of the discussion by observing that gut-wrenching experience has convinced me that the Holy Spirit has a different theology of preaching from a lot of preachers, who evidently think that if they trust in the Spirit and talk for a long enough interval, something edifying will have been said.
Excursus: Danya and I have already opened the topic of preaching from a manuscript vs. preaching without a predefined text — in deference to her and to the other forty-three (or however many) good extemporaneous preachers in the world, I insist that I’m not declaring that everyone should preach from a manuscript. No, no, no! It’s just that people who don’t preach well extemporaneously, which is “many who try,” should work from a manuscript, which at least gives you a basis from which to amend your folly. Of course, if the preachers in question were conscientious enough to examine their sermon manuscripts to see where they could be improved, they probably wouldn’t be preaching badly, extemporaneously, in the first place. But Danya and the other good extemporaneous preachers, God bless ’em, and stick with what you do best.
Now I’ll wrap up before I go off on a long tangent and lose all sleep tonight. . . .
DRMA: Radio Paradise (I’m away from any CDs or my external hard drive/MP3 trove); then "Making Contact" by Bruce Cockburn; "Absolutely Fabulous" by the Pet Shop Boys; "Andrew Duffy’s Jig" by Jonatha Brooke and the Story; "Lounge Act" by Nirvana.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the Anglo-Catholic missionary tradition.
Posted by: Dorothea Salo at June 22, 2003 07:34 PMI was initially confused about the conservative worship part, but I figured out that it was talking about the part of the last post on this where you talked about Democrat vs. Republican ways of insulating ones self from the Truth.
I like how you talk about choosing which tradition to follow, which comes down to aesthetics. I have long claimed that in domains where objective measures of truth are not available, the subjective standard is beauty and harmony. It gives room for reasonable people to disagree and follow their independent paths to the Truth.
WRT atheists, it isn't really reasonable to say they really do believe in God, because, as you say, it doesn't respect their rejection, but it is clear that this rejection is a type of faith. The error is to think that by rejecting God in any form that you are being in any sense objective, neutral or balanced intellectually. I can see no way to rationally disprove God's existence, any more than you can prove it; that's why it takes faith after all. In this sense, your French teacher was right, they have the god, no-god.
In the end, it is a fools errand to try to decide which faith is more correct or accurate, or to claim that one's own faith gives a special access of perspective WRT truth. That said, it is honorable to openly proclaim your faith, and preach it's truth vigorously, and perhaps most importantly to appose grave errors wherever you find them. I would still claim that all True Faiths, if followed faithfully with an open heart, ultimately lead to the same place, to the same fundamental truths. All spiritual systems are mono-theistic in this sense, and any claims that some "primitive" practices are not, are rhetorical attacks intent on discrediting those practices and marginalizing a people of a different faith.
Thanks for this fascinating discussion.
Posted by: Gerry at June 24, 2003 07:35 AMWell, I'm honored and somewhat amused to see that AKMA's counted me among the legions of extemporaneous preachers. ;-) Not sure if that's true or not--ask me again in a year.
I hear you valuing extemp. preaching over mss. preaching, AKMA (if you can't X, you should Y), and want to make sure it's out there that the Spirit shows up in different ways for different people--and for some of us, even if we might be able to pull off extemp preaching, the Spirit shows up reliably and in full doses more when we're at a keyboard than on one foot, as it were. Me, I do my best writing just after SHabbat's ended and I've had 25 hrs to amp up on the good stuff, study Torah, etc--go figger. So maybe the formulation is: preach extemp if Truth shows up for you on the fly, preach from mss. if it shows up as part of a quieter process, blabbity blah blah.
As for Truth put forth by athiests--I agree with you, at least most of the way. your choice of the word "muffled" is interesting, I'll have to chew on that. But yeah, I also think Sartre was plugging into something Truthy, or Camus for that matter, even. Or, to take some of his influences--what of non-theistic Buddhists? There's some high-octane Truth there, even if it's formulated in a way that uses different language than I do.
Okay, so here's a question: Can one be talking Truth if one plugs into something real about what it means to be a human, what it means to be alive in this world--even if there aren't (apparent) references/overtones/room for inferences, even, to the Divine? I think so, but it's definitely an open question.
For evidence, I offer you, dear readers, the website of my friend, Chicago-based painter Dan Barber, for review. Would be curious to hear what people think.
http://danielbarber.home.att.net/
Make sure to check out especially http://home.att.net/~danielbarber/db9index.html
and open it.
When compared to the Stack, the Heap is a simple thing to understand. All the memory that's left over is "in the Heap" (excepting some special cases and some reserve). There is little structure, but in return for this freedom of movement you must create and destroy any boundaries you need. And it is always possible that the heap might simply not have enough space for you.
Posted by: Harry at January 12, 2004 10:11 PMWhen a variable is finished with it's work, it does not go into retirement, and it is never mentioned again. Variables simply cease to exist, and the thirty-two bits of data that they held is released, so that some other variable may later use them.
Posted by: Margery at January 12, 2004 10:11 PMEach Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.
Posted by: Sampson at January 12, 2004 10:12 PM