Daniel 9

In my last few blogs, I've basically been thinking and working out issues of method in theology. I'm still thinking these things and will post on them in coming weeks - especially a revision of David Tracy's revisionist theology. However, right now I am consumed with thoughts of Israel and Lebanon. It bothers me and honestly, worries me. But, this is not the point I want to make.

I'd like to turn to Daniel 9. This is an interesting piece to me. It is a prayer, written in the midst of what is often associated with Daniel's apocalyptic part. This prayer, though, I think offers a proper way of viewing the Mideast Crisis (when I say this, I mean Israel-Lebanon, along with Iraq, U.S.-Iran, U.S.-Syria, etc.).

This prayer is written after Daniel and the rest of Israel has been taken into exile by the Babylonians. The reason for the exile, as expressed in multiple prophets, is due to the fact that Israel has not followed God. They have been disobedient and have led lives that are not consistent with the lives that God would have them live. It is the fault of multiple generations of people.

By contrast, Daniel is a godly person. The book seems to portray him as an extraordinary testimony to faith. He has God "all over him." He is someone who is in close communion to God.

Yet, Daniel 9 offers us something very different. This close communion with God leads Daniel into a prayer. I would label it as a prayer of mourning, of repentance. Although, it is not a prayer for the repentance of Daniel, but a repentance of the whole nation of Israel - the Jewish people are repenting through the prayer of Daniel. Daniel is becoming the prophet that leads Daniel into this repentance. He does this by being godly and placing himself in the midst of Israel's wrongdoing - of their sin and turning to God. Even though Daniel has been a Godly man, he places himself with the ungodly. He sees himself in the others, the sinful and the ungodly, the ones who placed this nation in exile. Daniel has seen himself in that who is not him, and yet is him.

I think this offers an interesting way of viewing the current state of war in the Middle East. In the rhetoric proclaimed, no one is ever wrong. No one sins. And no one, ever, ever identifies with that who is other than themselves. It is not heard of. We do not do this because it may show weakness or give the enemy an upper hand. And besides, God wants us to be strong.

This is not the way of God though. The prophet seems himself in that who is sinful. Daniel sees that he is in the ungodly, that the capacity for the behavior that got him into exile exists within himself. It becomes time for him to realize and pray like he is the ungodly (I think here, it would be interesting to draw parallels with the prayer of the Publican and the Sinner in Luke).

So, what am I saying here? Well, first off, I am saying that we must identify ourselves with those who we are not, but really are. We have the capacity to make ourselves into anything we wish. I have the capacity to be Osama Bin Laden, or Ghandhi. The issue is to understand that and to embrace myself in the other - realizing that we really are not that different.

Second, I am asking for someone to admit that someone is wrong. Everyone in the Mideast has been wronged in some way. However, they have all committed wrongs as well. There comes a time to admit that one is wrong. I would argue that it is the first thing that one should do. However, I am saying that the time has come for all to admit their sin, to confess, and now is the time to begin the repentance.

Lastly, I am saying that I have been wrong. I have used the rhetoric of "us vs. them". I have implicitly supported Israel in some way and Hezbollah in others. I have been complicit in U.S.'s invasion of Iraq through my use of oil and electing of government leaders who voted to invade. I am there by participating in a system that put us there. My job now becomes to begin to repent by, in some way, changing the system or refusing to participate. I don't think the second is a real option, so the first it is.

My Hood

I live in Chicago. Chicago is made up of 77 different neighborhoods. I live in the northernmost neighborhood in the city, which is also right on lake Michigan (which makes for spectacular mornings and crazy winters). My hood is called Rogers Park.

Today, on my way to work, I saw that the Redeye's (the Redeye is a free newspaper put out by the Chicago Trib - essentially, all the ads and rarely any of the good stuff) feature article was about diversity in Chicago. In looking inside and reading the article, it was essentially a case study of Rogers Park. You see, by almost all estimates, Rogers Park is the most ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood in the city, and some say that it is in the country.

To give some stats - I am in the minority (first time in my life). Less than 30% of Rogers Park is white. 32% is black and 20% is Latino. The other 18% is quite a hodge-podge. But, this is a bit deceiving. Much of the 30% are refugees and people from Eastern Europe - my building of 6 apts. has 3 people from Poland living in it. The Rogers Park community council even suspects that in our neighborhood, there are more than 80 languages spoken. Incredible!

This is my hood. This is where I live. It is my community.

Why do I bring this up? Well, it's because it is out of this community, this place where I live my everyday life, that I do theology. I readily admit that my main sources for doing theology are Scripture and "tradition", but I would be lying if I did not admit that I interpreted these through the course of my everyday life and being. They help to give me a way of life to live into, but this life also comes back to reinterpret them.

I do theology in my neighborhood. My theology comes from my neighborhood. My neighbors (the ones Jesus says to love), really are as diverse as the world is. For me, it would be irresponsible and unChristian if my theology did not embrace these people. For me, theology is always a response and reflection upon the Other/other. These "others" encounter each other on a daily basis. For example, my theology must not only encounter the beauty I see in God's creation with the sunrise over the Lake, but it must also reflect upon and respond to the homeless man I see everyday lying on the bench next to the lake on my way to work. My theology must embrace the Jewish children I see driving to the mall, the Muslim man I buy water from, the Hindi lady I work with, and the girl with the FEndi bag and chihuahua that sits at Starbucks in the morning (she is like a brown-haired Paris Hilton). For me, theology covers reflection upon and response to the encounter I have with these people and how, in that encounter, I see them encountering God.

As you can see, my thoughts are jumbled. Essentially, I am looking to say a few things. First, while our main sources for theology are Scripture and the tradition, we interpret and deal with these in light of our experience and our everyday life. Second, I am saying that theology must not only be reflection upon Scripture and tradition, but it must also be reflection upon the God that still loves everybody, raining and shining on all people - and then responding to this reflection. Third, it is a call to embrace the Other in the other - to see God in the face of whoever else is there. I believe that it is here that we can begin to do theology the way Scripture and tradition actually meant for theology to be done.

Ann Coulter and Radical Orthodoxy

So, much to the amazement of some of the people I know, I read the first part of Ann Coulter's new book Godless. It is amusing, to say the least. (For those of you who are now concerned, I did not buy the book.)

The reason that I read this book is that because, this time, she made a very explicit move in her writings. She moved from the realm of political and social commentary to the realm of doing this with reference to God. Anytime someone is making reference to God (and/or religion), then they have begun to enter the terrain of theologians, which is my terrain. So, I read the first part of the book as a theologian.

What struck me about Coulter was the sources that she used and the way she used these sources. Coulter's main source is an ideological tradition that she sees as steeped deeply in the ground of Scripture. She sees this tradition as being almost strictly Jewish and Christian (she makes no qualms of bashing Muslims, even though they share some of the same Scripture stories as Jews/Christians and share many of the same ethical concerns). For her, anyone who does not agree to this tradition is, well, wrong.

This tradition, for Coulter, is a tradition that was put together for the pursuit of happiness for all Americans. The people who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Bible-believing Christians who were worshiping the Triune God every day, would have never believed in evolution, found no problem keeping the poor poor (because, well, if the poor did not want to be poor, then they just have to decide to pursue happiness), etc. etc. What is funny is that this comes from a very specific reading of the tradition and the American tradition. It is also to read the tradition outside of the context of the world around it. I mean, sure, it is easy to see that the founding fathers were very much about the pursuit of happiness, but only if you fell into the "right" group. These people were also not theistic Christians writing Biblical norms into politics, but were at best deists concerned with espousing Enlightenment political philosophy and bringing it together in the founding documents. I mean the heroes of the founding fathers were not Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and Jesus, but were Hobbes, Locke, Smith, and Rousseau. Coulter misses this in the tradition because of her selective reading of the tradition.

This reminded me very much of Radical Orthodoxy's use of the sources. What RO does is a very selective reading of the tradition. In this reading, what they are pursuing is a specifically Christian bent on everything. In this theological setting, Christianity becomes the answer for everything. THere is nothing outside of Christianity and Christian truth.

However, I am not sure that this is a very accurate reading of the tradition. It seems that the tradition has always looked everywhere it can for truth and when it finds it, it makes the truth fall within the range of God. Origen definitely did this with the "truth" that was the Neo-Platonic understanding of the order of the universe (See On First Principles). Augustine did this with the Neo-Platonic understandings of truth around him. Thomas did this again with the more Aristotelian forms of truth in his world.

I find RO's weakness, then, to be the same as Coulter's - they are both closed systems. They both read the tradition in a certain way and do not allow anything in that may rebut or rethink it. It also diminishes the role of controversey and discord that comes in the tradition. The Christian tradition and the American political tradition are not single, unified traditions, but are traditions that take shape through difference, disagreement, and discord. Differences arise and we see what is accepted and what is not. For Christians this takes place very much in the Christological controversies: in America this takes place in the way communism was silenced in the 50's and 60's.

So, really, this is a critique of method. I think that a method of thinking something (whether politics or theology or anything else) must be open. We must bring as much other thinking to bear upon a subject so as to get to the best understanding, but always realizing that this understanding is not truth, but opinion. There are better opinions (usually ones that are more thought out) than others. However, the goal is to continue to push understanding. We cannot do this with singular visions of traditions and Scripture, but must continue to see and hear the other and to listen to what as many people as possible may say. This will never get us away from selective readings of the texts (since we will always, necessarily, make judgments upon the text), but we will begin to read the texts with as many other people as possible, sharpening our understanding.