Blade Runner
The acrobatics have stopped...
Finally, the Acrobat has stopped jumping through hoops and doing theological back-flips. From its inception, I have identified my blog with U2's song "Acrobat," but for some time now I have wrestled with the idea of renaming it. It worked for me for a couple of years, but recently I think I have come to realize that it no longer describes me. As a post-everything, I no longer see the necessity of performing such mental and spiritual calisthenics to explain or defend certain things, most notably the Bible. It is what it is. If others want to spend their minutes debating over exactly how Judas both hanged himself and fell down on the ground and spilled his guts, they can. If they want to debate whether James and his theology of works should have been included in the Canon, they can. If they want to idle away the hours finding "biblical justification" for Bush's war and their personal tribal nationalism, they can. (While our soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan the pastor of my wife's home church (SBC, of course) spent two weeks preaching a biblical defense for hunting!)
While the evangelicals strive for ever more twisted words with which to frame their "Christian values" to keep homosexuals constitutionally marginalized (or even discriminated against); while the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer; while "insurgents" in Iraq fight desperately (as conservatives) to defend their way of life from a foreign (liberal) invader who seeks to impose "our" way of life on them (while selling it to the misinformed public that we are "protecting" that way of life by invading them), the Acrobat will no longer pretend that any form of authentic Christianity can pony up to such politics.
While the evangelicals and emergents become irrelevant by trying to become relevant to white, middle-class, suburban, gasoline-and-latte junkies, the Acrobat will retire. They are the acrobats, and I will leave them to their busy lives of spinning and tumbling. While they dance for each other high above the circus rings, the Acrobat will step out of the circus tent, hoping to find the real world outside, and hoping (against hope) to find in that world some real reasons to believe.
As I leave, I take on a new alias, that of William of Occam, 14th century Franciscan theologian who frequently said "plurality should not be posited without necessity." Or to put it as Ellie Arroway put it in the movie Contact: "the simplest answer is usually the correct answer." Although not originated by William of Occam, it has come to be known as Occam's Razor, a philosophical tool for "cutting away the superfluous junk" so to speak. A critical tool for getting to the core. Where I am in my life right now, it is a more fit description, and I have the evangelicals and the religious-right to thank for it. I have been liberated by them and because of them. Life is simpler and clearer now.
Finally, the Acrobat has stopped jumping through hoops and doing theological back-flips. From its inception, I have identified my blog with U2's song "Acrobat," but for some time now I have wrestled with the idea of renaming it. It worked for me for a couple of years, but recently I think I have come to realize that it no longer describes me. As a post-everything, I no longer see the necessity of performing such mental and spiritual calisthenics to explain or defend certain things, most notably the Bible. It is what it is. If others want to spend their minutes debating over exactly how Judas both hanged himself and fell down on the ground and spilled his guts, they can. If they want to debate whether James and his theology of works should have been included in the Canon, they can. If they want to idle away the hours finding "biblical justification" for Bush's war and their personal tribal nationalism, they can. (While our soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan the pastor of my wife's home church (SBC, of course) spent two weeks preaching a biblical defense for hunting!)
While the evangelicals strive for ever more twisted words with which to frame their "Christian values" to keep homosexuals constitutionally marginalized (or even discriminated against); while the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer; while "insurgents" in Iraq fight desperately (as conservatives) to defend their way of life from a foreign (liberal) invader who seeks to impose "our" way of life on them (while selling it to the misinformed public that we are "protecting" that way of life by invading them), the Acrobat will no longer pretend that any form of authentic Christianity can pony up to such politics.
While the evangelicals and emergents become irrelevant by trying to become relevant to white, middle-class, suburban, gasoline-and-latte junkies, the Acrobat will retire. They are the acrobats, and I will leave them to their busy lives of spinning and tumbling. While they dance for each other high above the circus rings, the Acrobat will step out of the circus tent, hoping to find the real world outside, and hoping (against hope) to find in that world some real reasons to believe.
As I leave, I take on a new alias, that of William of Occam, 14th century Franciscan theologian who frequently said "plurality should not be posited without necessity." Or to put it as Ellie Arroway put it in the movie Contact: "the simplest answer is usually the correct answer." Although not originated by William of Occam, it has come to be known as Occam's Razor, a philosophical tool for "cutting away the superfluous junk" so to speak. A critical tool for getting to the core. Where I am in my life right now, it is a more fit description, and I have the evangelicals and the religious-right to thank for it. I have been liberated by them and because of them. Life is simpler and clearer now.
