The intersection of horror and beauty

Wow. I just stumbled upon some really interesting photos by a guy named Joshua Hoffine. They’re extremely evocative nightmarish images, all of which are actually quite beautiful.

I find that I’m strangely drawn to each image. There is a familiarity to each nightmare. For me he is articulating the moment just before you wake up. The vulnerable suddenly being utterly exposed to the merciless. I find the stylised settings make each one dream-like.

I guess it’s challenged my supposition that horrific things must be ugly. I wonder if that could be construed as some kind of redemption.

Here’s the link…. make sure your kids aren’t looking over your shoulder when you click… Seriously, they’re all quite disturbing. It’s called ‘horror photography’ for a reason.

http://www.joshuahoffine.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=5&p=0&a=0&at=0

#3. If I were a militant atheist, I’d … [oh stuff it. let me tell you what I'm trying to do].

Well, I might have to admit a defeat of sorts. No one who I’ve spoken to about these posts liked them much. I’ll explain myself fully. I’d appreciate feedback on what I could have done better.

I’m mounting an argument against the notion of destroying religion/religious observance/God. Some people want to do it. I personally think it is impossible, but for the sake of argument am entertaining the notion in order to defeat the concept.

If religion is such a ‘mind virus’, one that ‘poisons everything’, where’s the vaccine program? If religion is such a curse upon humanity, shouldn’t concerned militant atheists be putting together intelligent policies that move beyond the category of ‘nuisance’ into serious attempts at dismantling? From an insiders perspective, Christianity is EXTREMELY robust: it contains many mechanisms that ensure that its self-propagation and development. Testifying to this is its longevity: it has weathered thousands of years of attacks, questions, persecutions, doubts, critiques, failures, and countless idiots, and it continues to grow and spread. A a virus, it’s a pandemic. The only strategy that militant atheists seem to use is open attack and critique, which as a cure is like giving panadol to an AIDS victim – missing the heart of the problem, thus hopelessly inadequate.

My argument is that a better solution than adversarial relationships is required, and the best such solution is ridiculous. Adversarial relationships are highly ineffective, rarely produce positive results and tend to polarise people. Both sides accuse one another of not truly understanding generally both are right. I believe that the way to destroy Christianity requires one to transcend it, and by transcend I do not mean any kind of  rejection. Instead it must be embraced so entirely that it can be undermined absolutely.

This is where the joke kicks in… or in my case, tries to kick in. Firstly, transcending Christianity is so hard, and requires such deep immersion that the ‘destroyer’ will become for all intents and purposes the object that they seek to destroy. Secondly, the ‘destroyer’ requires extreme self-awareness and control in order to avoid personally converting, ‘like having an AA meeting in a pub’ to quote another friend. Thirdly, such effort is likely to be far beyond any militant atheist who I think are more content to take pot shots at religion from afar than seriously trying to undo it.

#2. If I were a militant atheist, I’d pray.

Continuing with the thought experiment.

Presuming the following:

1. The militant atheist wants to dismantle the church.
2. Adversarial interaction with the church is ineffective.
3. The militant atheist believes that the dismantling of the church is possible.
4. The militant atheist has enough perspective and is prepared to work at the dismantling at a level that won’t necessarily bear obvious fruit in his lifetime.

#2. If I were a militant atheist, I’d pray.

If I was truly committed to dismantling religion, I’d pray and pray deeply. There is something about the action of prayer that epitomises the religious interaction between believers and their God. Prayer characterises religious observance more keenly than any other practice, because it involves direct communication, direct engagement, one-to-one, creature to creator. Clearly it is more powerful than speaking to another person, because believers value it more. And they find it especially valuable after praying for the longest most troubling times. Surely it is more than a crutch, because there are believers who are proud and headstrong and independent by disposition – some of these pray more than all of them. There are some deep lessons to be learnt in the action of prayer. And once these lessons are learnt, the formulation of a powerful alternative can begin to take shape. An alternative must be sought, because even if it turns out that prayer is simply an elaborate crutch, another crutch must be offered in its place in order to achieve the greater goal of dismantling the concept of God.

So militant atheist followers of this humble blog, I urge you: pray! Pray on your own. Pray with friends at church (see previous post). Pray according to the scriptures (post coming). But most importantly, pray to God in order to destroy him.

[Wow, as a Christian that last sentence felt weird!]

Image from www.alamohop.com/ prayer1.jpg

#1. If I were a militant atheist, I’d join a church.

Having had a lengthy exchange with a good bloke named Gee Suss down at www.jesusallaboutlife.com, I’ve been thinking about his cause and the responsibility of the churches to love and serve all God’s people. I’ve also been thinking about the nature of adversarial relationships and the progress that they can bring.

Gee Suss is a true atheist, his describes his own beliefs as someone who ‘does not have a belief in God’. This does not mean that he is making the arrogant epistemic claim that there is no God, it is simply that he cannot see the evidence that one exists. The fundamental claim of Christians (and he would argue all religious people) is paradoxical. How can God be both transcendent and immanent? Paradoxes are impossible logically, thus the concept of God is impossible. Fair enough.

Gee Suss believes that religion is flawed, and he has clearly devoted serious time to pulling at the corners of Christian faith. By corners I mean from big questions that form the foundation to Christianity - like textual reliability – the very human manner in which the text of the Bible was collated suggests non-divine inspiriation. To the implications of the Christian God – should we really trust a God that essentially offers a carrot and a stick (heaven and hell), rather manipulative really. Christian practice – the oppressiveness of evangelism; the legitimacy of religion in schools; whether Christians actually love or not.

His conclusions are bleak for Christianity and all religions. To all of the above ‘big questions’ he finds Christianity deeply lacking. Deeply inadequate and in no uncertain terms deeply evil. He states that the belief in God is a ‘mind virus’. He’s very passionate, very driven and has the intelligence and written expression to make himself heard. He desires to dismantle religion, religious beliefs, he hopes to cure the world of the mind virus that is ‘God’. It’s compelling stuff.

I’ve also been thinking about the nature and value of adversarial relationships. The reason the jesusallaboutlife.com (not .com.au) campaign will ultimately fail is because it is too confronting. It will generally polarise readers into friends and enemies. A few will take the time to walk in the shoes of the other and try to see things from their perspective, but on the whole people natuarally just look around and make a gut decision on whether this is my bag or not. A more powerful, penetrative approach is necessary.

So I’ve decided to do a though putting myself in the shoes of a militant atheist, and thinking about the best way forwards for them. Of course religion has been around for thousands of years so a militant atheist approach would require dedication and commitment that stems many times longer than the lifetimes of individual atheists. I’ve decided to post a series titled: “If I were a militant atheist, I’d…” It’s kinda based on Andrew Katay’s excellent series If I ran the diocese… .

Beware! The audience I have in mind is the hard-core militant atheists. The recommendations I will make are tough. It is not for the faint-hearted. I think it will be too hard for the majority of atheists. That’s ok, not everyone is a superman, an Uber-mann, I’m not requiring you to be. But I want to acknowledge straight up that I have the highest regard for those who for their commitment to their beliefs act contrary to them in order to most closely follow them. To any militant atheists out there who read these recommendations and put them into practice, I commend you. You have greater self-control, greater perspective, greater patience and greater wisdom than all.

With that out of the way

#1 - If I were a militant atheist, I’d join a church.

The church is unlikely to offer itself to be sacrificed so in order to dismantle it, it must be penetrated. It must be understood in order to be mastered. The plan would be to start attending perhaps openly as an atheist seeking to peacefully destroy the church (this might raise eyebrows/become uncomfortable), perhaps covertly as a sincere genuine member or at least one seeking to understand the church. Once joined the task would be to look for opportunities to ask critical questions and gather information about the church’s inadequacies and weaknesses. This cannot be done disruptively. Churches are groups of people who have the legal right to meet as they do, even if their doing so is a deep social evil. It’s wrong to mistreat people. But what better way to research the organisation that you seek to dismantle than to join it? Meet the people. Find out what they really think. Learn about them from their perspective. This information is critical for militant atheism to work properly.

Don’t worry about adversaries that are met in the church. Answer them in kind. Don’t give them a reason to kick atheists out. Some are well considered and while they might challenge the thinking of the militant atheist, they provide the door to the most important and devastating critiques of the church. Learn from them, understand them integrate their thoughts into your overall battle plan.

Don’t hack down the little people in the church. The poorly considered, the vulnerable. While church may be a severe crutch for them, it often provides them with meaning and purpose to live. Sometimes destroying their faith can be very devastating indeed.

Join with sincerity. Join with grace. But most of all join to destroy it eventually.

My failed moment of nationalistic pride

[The opening illustration from my sermon last Sunday night]

I found myself witnessing the emergence of a champion, a sporting messiah, at the Sydney Olympics. And everything about it was unexpected. The man, the sport, and even my participation in the event.

Here I am at the athletics on my own. I have a great seat about 6 rows back from the very front of the field. The night is pretty much uneventful until suddenly, to my left the crowd erupts. I’m not much of a sporting person, I just don’t really care that much. I have only been to a few sporting events. But thousands of voices started shouting in delight, the atmosphere became electric.Apparently there was an Aussie winning the long jump. Jai Taurima.

Jai Taurima  was an unexpected champion. He was unknown (to me at least), he came from the central coast – a place not really known for it’s champions, he was way too old – in his 30s, and he smoked. The other thing was that Australians are not at all known for long jump.

So for the first time in my life, my heart beat for an Australian sportsman. I jumped to my feet and I shouted and I clapped and I got caught up in the moment… the Cuban guy ended up beating him by 6cm, but Jay Taurima was the new Australian champion of long jump.

And after all the jumps are done, Jai does a victory lap. This is where it starts going weird for me. As Jay passes, for some reason I decide that you ought to shower a champion with praise. I don’t really know what I should shout, so I pick the first thing that came to mind, which was ‘Go Australia’. That’s what I shouted at Jay Tourima. Anyways, he hears me…. And he stops. “What?” he mouthed. I shout “Go Australia” with a little less gusto, “huh?”. I was a little horrified. This is shouldn’t happen. I just wanted to show my support. Maybe he thinks I’m insulting him! I’m not insulting him. I’m just trying to be a good crowd member! And so I give him the thumbs up to let him know that I’m not talking about his mother… and on he goes… [phew].

That was weird. I didn’t expect that to happen.

Everything was unexpected. The event was unexpected, Australians don’t win at long jump. He was unexpected himself. Athletes should be young and healthy, and he was old and had unhealthy habits. And my interaction was unexpected. I thought I’d interact with the champion as a voice from from the sidelines, but instead he engaged me personally. I didn’t really expect the champion to interact with me, but he did.

He looks funny here. But when you are 19 and on your own, and you think he thinks you are saying something about his mother...

Image from http://www.foxsports.com.au/thesideline/hotshots/0,28116,5058464-3,00.html

The counterintuitive ministry of being kinda crap

I’m a very big fan of Jesus All About Life. But surprisingly I find that I don’t actually like any of it. Which bizarrely makes me like it even more!

The brilliant thing about the campaign is that it doesn’t really set out to do much. It runs counter to almost all conventional wisdom regarding advertising. It uses crap photos, fonts, etc. The message is disarmingly simplistic, even childish, maybe even stupid. It’s infinitely open to ridicule… and ridicule it has received in bucketloads. It has even attracted a concerted smear campaign at www.jesusallaboutlife.com, a website run by atheists dedicated to undermining everything the campaign stands for. Incidentally, I think the atheists have the better website domain name, and the fact that the campaign team didn’t spend $50 or so to secure the surrounding domain names represents an enormous and embarrassing oversight.

And yet, and yet, and yet, for all its poverty of quality, the campaign is disarmingly effective. Sure it looks bad…. very bad even, but it reaches everyone. I may not share its sentiments in thanking Jesus for really big chairs or monkeys, but the undercurrent is that we ought to be thanking Jesus for everything – a sentiment I share entirely. The maxim that slick quality is unnecessary for ministry has a powerful theological resonance with entire books of the Bible (think 1-2 Corinthians). People are talking, and they are talking openly. For every person that sticks the boot in (let’s call them an ‘antagonist’), several things happen: fair criticisms about superficial notions of the campaign give the antagonist a false sense of mastery over the Christian enterprise (for better or for worse); the antagonist raises the church’s profile; Christians have an opportunity to respond to the antagonist and talk about their faith without creating unnecessary or uncomfortable social strain.

Let me push this a little deeper, I think that lack of quality can be an effective defence against accusations of manipulation. “These guys aren’t manipulative, they’re just sh*thouse.” This campaign for example has so many lame bits and inconsistently slick bits that it is generally unthreatening.. at least in my opinion. Accusations laid at the feet of the church (such as mass manipulation) are easily countered by the claim that the campaign was unpersuasive. Which it was/is. So what if a bunch of religious dudes like monkeys… who cares? And when manipulation is cast aside as a motivation, all that is left is a message about the sovereignty of Jesus.

The unintentional way Jesus All About Life goes about this ministry, makes me like them even more.

[Phew!]… [as in diamond-ring-level-phew!]

After turning our entire house upside down, Lisa and I are absolutely delighted that our 3yo put Lisa’s engagement ring in the toaster, not the toilet. Woo hoo!

Possibly disappointed by jesusallaboutlife.com

I don’t know if anyone else tried visiting the “Jesus All About Life” campaign website and left off the ‘.au’ from the domain name. I did last night and was redirected to an atheist site dedicated to critiquing the campaign. Which is all good and well, they raised some important questions and I decided to post a response to this post.

This morning when I checked the site, they redirected the entire blog to a clergy abuse hotline. I don’t know what happened there, but I was hoping for an engagement of sorts. I hope they decide to engage, otherwise I’ll be disappointed.

My comment was about 1000 words, because it was a good question and made me think. I’ll post the comment in the comment section below and you can see what you think.

Update: It’s back up and the comment hasn’t been approved.

Gee Suss and Black, if you are out there reading this, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on such an important topic.

JB

An open letter to the person who wrote in blue ink all over our library’s only copy of “The Just War Revisited” by Oliver O’Donovan

Hi,

I’ve just been trying to read Oliver O’Donovan’s “The Just War Revisited” and I noticed you took a few notes in there in a blue ballpoint pen. I thought I’d just get back to you on a couple of issues you should probably know about. So here goes…

1. Other people exist. These people can read your notes. You know how when you walk around and see those things that look like you (except different)… they seem to pop up over the place. You might be married to one? Those things are actually real! They do things like you do, and they are members of libraries like you and they borrow books from libraries like you. Coincidentally, I’m one of those people and I happened to borrow the very book that you borrowed! I can read the notes you took, and all the people who read the book after you will be able to see them too.
2. Pen stays on more than pencil. Your notes are in pen and not pencil, so they stay on forever. I’m not sure if you’ve experimented much in this area, but I’ve noticed that when people use pens, things that they write tend to stay there. It kind of sticks to the paper really well. You know how you used pen to make notes on this book? Those notes are permanent now.
3. We’re not with you. We don’t know what your notes mean. I guess this point connects with point 1: I mentioned above that other people exist. The other thing to add to that is that we aren’t with you so that we can ask you what you meant by your notes. So for example, I don’t get why you keep circling words that are already italicised. And I don’t get what your little horizontal ticks in the borders mean. As I try to read, I keep wondering about what you were thinking when you underlined information that is tangential to the main argument. It seems to me that while your notes helped you, they don’t seem to be helping me very much at all. I actually wish they weren’t there.

I would suggest that next time you take notes in pen like these ones, you should tell the library staff about it. They love knowing who writes notes in pen in the books. Or at least write your name and number in the book too so people can call you up. That way all of us ‘other people’ can give you feedback directly on what we think of your notes.

Yours,

John

The forgotten ministry of enjoyment

So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 8:15

I think the notion of enjoyment is the much neglected third corner of a good understanding of ‘being a Christian at work’…. at least in the circles I operate in. Whenever I hear discussions about Christian practice in the workplace, people tend to reach straight for evangelism and being above reproach in dealings – ie don’t steal, lie, be lazy, etc. Let’s not deny the importance of these, but at the same time we must acknowledge that enjoying work doesn’t rate highly in comparison. Certainly many people enjoy their jobs, but this tends to be a bonus rather than a spiritual goal in itself. Even more however do not enjoy their jobs, seeing it as a means to an end.

I would argue that God is glorified when you enjoy your work. Both the act of work and the outcome bring glory to God. Firstly because God created creation for man’s pleasure. We are meant to enjoy the things within creation, and most parts of our work have enjoyable aspects to them: some more so than others!  Work  acting within it for constructive purposes is fulfilling the function. Secondly, building and making and doing things is acting out our created-ness in the image of God. We ought to delight in the gift of work that God has given us.

I know such a notion is easily distorted to ‘pretending’ to enjoy things, or enjoying them at a shallow level. I would encourage people to enjoy their work as profoundly as they can. I would encourage them not to pursue such enjoyment to be seen by others as some kind of subversive evangelistic witness to their unbelieving workmates. Rather, pursuing enjoyment as an end in itself, as an act of service to God, rejoicing in the good things/tasks/projects that he has blessed them to partake in, glimpsing something of their place in God’s overall plan for the world.  Believers should hunt down contentment, and when they find it chain themselves to it, especially at work.