On loving ones enemies and hating ones friends

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=97

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple

Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke

Do these words not help us to get to the heart of Christ’s anti-Empire ethic as expressed in the Gospels? In order to understand why this is we need to grasp how the family is the ultimate tribal unit: the insiders, those who are like us, who love us, who look out for us. The family, ideally speaking, can be said to be the ultimate cell of undifferentiated unity, of sameness. In contrast, the enemy is the monstrous other, the one outside our network of trust, the one who threatens it, who calls it into question, who makes unwanted demands on us. If we imagine a circle that wraps around our friends and family, those outside the circle make up strangers and enemies.

In the ethic of Empire one looks out for ones friends (inside the circle) and punishes ones enemies (outside the circle). It is an ethic that looks out for those who look out for us and loves those who love us. It is an ethic of economy (where we mutually give to one another). It would appear however that Christ ruptures this by giving preference to the one outside our systems (the alien, the enemy, the exile) over and above those privileged within our systems. This counter-ethic shows how the Christ trajectory is one that pushes outside the circle to those beyond its borders. Privileging those on the outside over those on the inside and offering a radical, impossible hospitality.

In this way, every time we draw a circle of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ who we love and who we hate the Christ-action involves pushing away from those who are ‘in’ and identifying with and helping the outsiders, the scapegoat, the stranger, the monstrous other. If the Empire ethic is an ethic that seeks to draw people into the circle of exchange the Christ ethic privileges the exception. Always pushing out to those who are excluded, who live beyond the fortified boundary.

Yet there is more, not only did the challenge to love ones enemy strike at the heart of the Roman Empire, the idea behind hating ones family challenged the pagan view of the universe as hierarchical, ordered and balanced. By identifying with the outcast and breaking free from our established place in society (symbolised by the family) we disturb the strict balance and create a possibility for change that disrupts the caste systems we live in and opens us up to a world of liberation.

The word ‘hate’ may seem overly strong, yet to make this break with the inside, with the socio-symbolic universe that envelopes us and defines who we are, we need a moment of rejection. To be a disciple of Christ involves a breaking out of our established place and entering a new place beyond Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. It offers the possibility of disturbing the balance and finding a different identity beyond the identities of nation, race, belief, gender (robbing these of their dividing power). This is a profoundly violent move, hence the strength of the language.

We will all have experienced what this is like in some small way when, for example, in our adolescence we can only really discover something new when we are compelled to push away from the old. Is this idea not hinted at in the popularity of jokes that relate to the true horror of a young person seeking to write music: the horror that their parents were lovely, caring and did everything right (thus suffocating them with the selfishness of giving them no reason to hate)?

The point however is not to give up one identity so as to embrace another, but rather so that we may inhabit a place where we no longer allow our socio-biological identities to define us.

Who says Ireland doesn’t produce good musicians?

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=95

Duke special’s new album has just been released and it’s beautiful. He has already developed a cult following over here, and is set to be the next big act to come out of Ireland. Be ahead of the game and buy the new album - I Never Thought This Day Would Come.

For more information on the Duke click here

Fire, water and sword

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=92

Long ago there was an old religious sage who was deeply respected by the people. But he was also feared, for he was known to have a short temper, wild penetrating eyes and strange, almost supernatural, powers.

While he generally kept away from the city he would sometimes be seen walking through the markets in the middle of the day with a lit torch held high in one hand, a bowl overflowing with water in the other hand and a huge sword strapped to his side.

The citizens knew to keep out of his way and never once asked why he carried these objects everywhere he went. But one day a small group of travelers saw the sage and, not knowing who he was, stopped him and began to mock.

“Old man” said one, “why do stumble around in the middle of the day with a torch, a bowl of water and a sword strapped to your side?”

“Maybe he’s blind” laughed his friend.

“Or maybe he is afraid that thieves will steal his precious water”, shouted another

The sage stopped for a moment and listened to them as they laughed. Then in an instant he threw the torch into their midst and said, “With these flames I consume heaven.”

Then he spilled the water onto the parched earth before them and cried, “With this water I extinguish hell.”

Finally he unsheathed his sword and approached the travelers, who where now silent.

“And with this sword” whispered the sage, “I lay waste to God.”

—————-

My talk this Sunday at ikon will be an extended interpretation of this parable… for everyone else, take a guess…

ikon::speaks

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=91

Sunday 19th October | Black Box Cafe | 20:00

Talk - Beyond Belief: Faith, Fetish and Religion without Religion

No Conviction

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=85

The following parable will be included in my forthcoming book The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales (March 2009). A compilation of 33 parables and commentaries. This parable is called, ‘No conviction’,

In a world where following Christ is decreed to be a subversive and illegal activity you have been accused of being a believer, arrested and dragged before a court.

You have been under clandestine surveillance for some time now and so the prosecution has been able to build up quite a case against you. They begin the trial by offering the judge dozens of photographs which show you attending church meetings, speaking at religious events, and participating in various prayer and worship services. After this they present a selection of items that have been confiscated from your home: religious books that you own, worship CDs and other Christian artefacts. Then they step up the pace by displaying many of the poems, pieces of prose, and journal entries that you had lovingly written concerning your faith. Finally, in closing, the prosecution offers your Bible to the judge. This is a well-worn book with scribbles, notes, drawings, and underlings throughout, evidence, if it were needed, that you had read and re-read this sacred text many times.

Throughout the case you have been sitting silently in fear and trembling. You know deep in your heart that with the large body of evidence that has been amassed by the prosecution you face the possibility of a long imprisonment or even execution. At various times throughout the proceedings you have lost all confidence and have been on the verge of standing up and denying Christ. But while this thought has plagued your mind throughout the trial, you resist the temptation and remain focused.

Once the prosecution has finished presenting their case the judge proceeds to ask if you have anything to add, but you remain silent and resolute, terrified that if you open your mouth, even for a moment, you might deny the charges made against you. Like Christ, you remain silent before your accusers. In response you are led outside to wait as the judge ponders your case.

The hours pass slowly as you sit under guard in the foyer waiting to be summoned back. Eventually a young man in uniform appears and leads you into the courtroom so that you may hear the verdict and receive word of your punishment. Once seated in the dock the judge, a harsh and unyielding man, enters the room, stands before you, looks deep into your eyes and begins to speak,

“Of the charges that have been brought forward I find the accused not guilty.”

“Not guilty?” your heart freezes. Then, in a split second, the fear and terror that had moments before threatened to strip your resolve are swallowed up by confusion and rage.

Despite the surroundings, you stand defiantly before the judge and demand that he give an account concerning why you are innocent of the charges in light of the evidence.

“What evidence?” he replies in shock.

“What about the poems and prose that I wrote?” you reply.

“They simply show that you think of yourself as a poet, nothing more.”

“But what about the services I spoke at, the times I wept in church and the long, sleepless nights of prayer?”

“Evidence that you are a good speaker and actor, nothing more.” replied the judge, “It is obvious that you deluded those around you, and perhaps at times you even deluded yourself, but this foolishness is not enough to convict you in a court of law.”

“But this is madness!” you shout. “It would seem that no evidence would convince you!”

“Not so,” replies the judge as if informing you of a great, long forgotten secret.

“The court is indifferent toward your Bible reading and church attendance; it has no concern for worship with words and a pen. Continue to develop your theology, and use it to paint pictures of love. We have no interest in such armchair artists who spend their time creating images of a better world. We exist only for those who would lay down that brush, and their life, in a Christ-like endeavor to create it. So, until you live as Christ and his followers, until you challenge this system and become a thorn in our side, until you die to yourself and offer your body to the flames, until then my friend, you are no enemy of ours.”

‘I am Jesus’

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=83

The ever brilliant Jon Birch continues to create thoughtful, intelligent and funny comic strips over on ASBO Jesus. This was one I saw recently,

On why the Christian God generates particularly good atheists

Taken from: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=82

Another post inspired by Slavjo Žižek. Žižek is fond of telling the anecdote in which there is a plane crash and two people end up being washed ashore on an isolated desert island. The first person to the shore is a part time student and general layabout. The other is none other than Catherine Zeta Jones. After a few days one thing leads to another and they end up sleeping together. Afterwards the man turns to Catherine and says, “that was wonderful, but please would you do me a favour?”

“What do you want?” she replies

“Well I would love you to put on these clothes of mine, draw a moustache on your face and then meet me down at the beach in ten minutes. Please, it would mean a lot to me”

Reluctantly Catherine agreed, and when she was ready she went down to the beach.

“Ah, great to see you mate”, said the student when he saw her approach from the trees, “I am glad I ran into you. You’ll never guess who I just slept with!”

With this anecdote Zizek draws out our natural tendency to seek out a third that would legitimate our actions. It is not enough for us to simply do something, we want to do it before another, we want another to see it, to know about it, to give it meaning. This (Big) other can take many forms but, of course, the main name given to this other is ‘God’.

The above anecdote can help us understand why Voltaire famously declared that if God did not exist we would have to invent God. For he understood at an intuitive level that we find it very hard to, say, contemplate the beauty of a painting or love another without postulating an idea/being that would somehow fill this act with eternal significance.

At first this type of thinking would seem to be destructive to traditions such as Judaism and Christianity. For, at the very least, it would place belief in God in a rather suspicious light. And rightly so, as so much belief seems to exist primarily so that people can give their grounded activity some cosmic meaning (here I include various forms of atheism and humanism as we do not need to look far to find notions such as Destiny, Historical Necessity and Fate beneath the surface).

Yet there is a sense in which the Christian tradition subverts the above logic and acts as a site of resistance to this other-worldly strategy. For here we find that God is often presented as the one who refuses to take this throne that we fashion. God refuses to be named, God refuses to be colonised, God refuses to be implicated in our attempts to legitimate our conflicts (of course, there are other elements of the tradition that are in tension with this).

The result is that Christianity can actually be embraced as deeply worldly (which is, of course, the opposite of how it popularly perceived). Namely it becomes a privileged place for ones full immersion into the world. Christianity is revealed as a materialist faith insomuch as it situates us firmly in material world. Every time we attempt to construct a divine third that would de-world our actions the Christian narrative resists, refuses and repels. Christianity, at its most radical, undermines Voltaire’s God. Asking us to embrace the beauty of art, the wonder of love, the suffering of the world and its moments of joy without supplement. By denying God a place in this way we are thus encouraged to find God reflected in every place. It is by giving water to the thirsty, by closing down torture sites, by speaking against horrors like Guantanamo Bay that one affirms the God of Christianity.

Is this not how we are to approach an understanding of Ernst Bloch’s claim that only a Christian can be a good atheist, or Slovjo Žižek’s argument that Christianity is materialist?

The God who acts as the Big Other does not exist. This is no threat to Christianity in the least, indeed it is itself a Christian insight. God, as presented in Bible, is to be found as we embrace the world in all its suffering and joy.