"Please sir, may I have some more?"

In an interesting development today, the USDA has chosen to cease use of the word "hunger" in their annual report that details Americans' access to food, choosing instead to replace it with the descriptive phrase "very low food security."

You can read the full story in today's Washington Post.

Though it may be difficult, one might be able to see the reasoning of the USDA concerning the matter. They may have made the change so as to better categorize and inform themselves and the public as to the diversity of poverty levels in our country. It serves a reasonable scientific and academic purpose, in one sense, to cease using a word whose definition has become too vague (according to the USDA's statement), and to thus divide Americans into those with "food security" and "food insecurity," and then those with "food insecurity without hunger" (those that usually end up with some food on the table, though still not at a sustainable level, no matter where it comes from) and "food insecurity with hunger" (those who usually do not end up with food on the table at all). The division, I can fathom, would serve some purposes, at least in that it may give us a better view of where those that are categorically defined as living in poverty and suffering from hunger, but who still get fed on a somewhat-regular basis, are getting their food from (and how they are in fact getting it); and thus show us as well what element is missing for those who are not being fed on a regular basis, or even at all.

On the other hand, it seems possible that the change in vocabulary could easily lead one to innocently and subconsciously disregard the various problems of poverty, specifically the hunger problem that exists throughout America and throughout the world. David Beckmann, of Bread for the World, was quoted in the Washington Post article as saying that even with the change, which may be seen by some as masking the problem, we "cannot hide the reality of hunger among our citizens." Indeed, it should be our hope that the change in vocabulary will not cause the people of the world--especially those who are heavily influenced by such studies, namely our lawmakers in Washington--to become increasingly numbed to the consistent social and economic inequality in our country illuminated by such studies.

Tony Campolo reflects on Homosexuality and the Church

I came upon this interesting comment by Tony Campolo a few days ago, concerning the events over the past few weeks surrounding Ted Haggard, now ex-pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and ex-President of the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals), at the God's Politics blog formed as a joint venture between Sojourners and Beliefnet:

I have heard so many of my colleagues in ministry express deep concerns over what this scandal will do to the image of the evangelical movement, but I have heard little concern among us for how all of this will impact those Christian gays and lesbians that we know. They are in our churches. They teach in our Sunday schools and sing in our choirs. Most of them are closeted brothers and sisters who suffer in ways that are impossible for the rest of us to even imagine. They are good people who do not take drugs or visit prostitutes. Will the ugliness of this sorry mess feed a diabolical stereotype of them, which is too often circulated in our churches by unkind preachers who have little, if any, understanding of homosexuals?

You can read the rest of the post here.

This part of Campolo's post stuck out to me, for a number of reasons. After hitting on a number of tough points in his post--among them, that people of faith must extend grace and compassion not only to Haggard but to his homosexual accuser as well, Greg Jones--Campolo then comes to this quote, focusing the conversation on the massive "elephant in the room" for many Christians today, which is the issue of how one may exactly come to better understand and relate to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, both inside and outside the four walls of the church.

The truest and most needed part of Campolo's commentary is his caution against accepting the typical stereotype of people within the gay and lesbian communities as being drug users and sexually promiscuous; a basis for easy bridge-building that some would say needs to be embraced to a far greater degree by many within the evangelical church today, beginning with those who find themselves in the pulpit on Sunday morning making use of such stereotypes in their prophetic oratory.

The more I reflect upon it, I think the love we must show to our most disinherited neighbors, no matter their race, ethnicity, or sexual identity, begins with the compassion that knows one's story; their triumphs and their falls, and the ways in which, as the theologian Howard Thurman once said, their "backs are continually against the wall." I feel like once we begin to develop such an ability in reference to those whom we so often do not associate with because of their perceived place in society, we begin to see the doors of conversation open wide and the facades we often put up begin to crumble mightily, leading the way to the formation of more authentic Christian community.

Economic Disparity, Anyone?

I thought I would post this, considering some decent, two-sided political conversation is being generated now in the OGB (Old Gold & Black, the Wake Student Newspaper) which, from what I hear, isn't the case very often. The conversation (or, mostly, my response to the op-ed piece linked below) is over a broad range of topics, but mostly what I would label as religion, ethics and economics. The first link is to the original op-ed piece by an undergrad girl that writes for the OGB, and my response which was published in the OGB the following week is posted below.

"Democrats doomed to fail?"(B. Smith, OGB)


"Both Parties Out of Touch with America"

There is a sobering reality present in our world today, which many politically-minded Americans – specifically those holding public office in Washington, D.C., and the people who blindly support them and wish to become them someday—have yet to fully comprehend:

There should be more to politics than focusing on how to win elections.
There should be more to politics than spin.
There should be more to politics than statistically misrepresenting the picture of the American economy to reinforce the eighteenth-century philosophies of Adam Smith.
There should be more to politics than what both the Republicans and the Democrats, or anyone else who seems to have political power today, are offering us.

Judging by her opinion piece in the Old Gold & Black on Sept. 28, however, entitled “Democrats doomed to fail,” senior Barbara Smith has once again proved to many that our country still has a long way to go before we can once again achieve any sense of political civility.

Seemingly, any sense of fiscal responsibility by our government must be a laughing matter to Smith, for she not only feels the need to gawk at such desires put forth by the historically spend-happy Democrats, but also fails to acknowledge our current budgetary debt caused by our newly spend-happy Republican Congress and White House.

There is a need for fiscal restraint in our government, and whether it comes as a result of the work of Democrats or Republicans could not matter less.

And, factually and morally speaking, our economy does not in fact deserve any more credit than the media often gives it. Smith is right that the economy is growing. But for whom in America is it growing? The 26-year-old high school dropout working the checkout counter at Wal-Mart, who earns a shamefully miniscule minimum wage and receives hardly any, if at all, benefits? The single mother of two who must work the graveyard shift at the local Waffle House, only to also work two other part-time jobs during the day to barely feed and clothe her kids? Our economy is not growing for these people, who really do make up the majority of our American workforce, but who never seem to be well represented by the newest rosy economic statistic from the Department of Labor.

A cold statistic citing the number of new jobs is not a valid representation of economic growth, in America or anywhere else. Any economist who uses both their brain and their heart would agree.

We cannot, as Smith seems to think, leave the economy “to its own devices.”

Capitalist economic philosophy has been left to its own devices for over half a millennium, and it has come to wield upon us a double-edged sword of increased economic prosperity for the perennially wealthy, and persistent economic inequality for those who have the luck of being born into existing poverty.

Smith is right that our economy rests “at the feet of the entrepreneurs, investors and businessmen that turn the engine of economic growth,” which is exactly the reason why unrestrained capitalism is inherently immoral and corrupt. The problem lies in the fact that an unrestrained capitalist economy, buttressed by the work of said investors and businessmen, is an impersonal machine driven by the demands of the dollar, which has shown itself throughout history to be notoriously apathetic toward the idea of human equality on any level — whether social, economic or otherwise.

Let whomever wants to let the facts speak for themselves, whether Republican or Democrat, do so. And let us all note as well the economic disparity which nonetheless continues to permeate every fiber of our society, from the dilapidated family farms of South Dakota to the slums of Chicago. The distress of a human life speaks louder than any statistic ever will.

The Democratic Party is out of touch with America, and so is the Republican Party.

The sad truth is that many voters this November will be convinced that one or the other are not, because the only thing that matters for many Americans is an election strategy that tells us we will be able to keep our comfortably sustainable middle-class, salary-based lives, with our Honda in the driveway and our vacations for two weeks every summer.

There should be so much more to politics than this.

Sexuality and the Prophetic Message of Jesus

There is this message board that I used to frequent. Often, the people in this online community are Christians, who discuss various things, from the theology of sin to the newest M. Night Shyamalan movie. Most people there would probably fall into the category of twenty and thirty-something people, who like to think they are culturally savvy individuals. I became frustrated after awhile there, though. In a nutshell, it seems like many people there tend to be just that--very savvy of, and comfortable with, culturally contemporary innovations and norms. Many of those people, however, also tend retain the same, often conservative, theological framework within which they usually operate. This, to be sure, is not a bad thing in itself. Argued intelligently, someone could quite well serve to defend their conservative theological beliefs. The same might be said when one does the same, but only from the more liberal theological perspective.

What matters is not where one inherently falls on the spectrum theologically, but how willing they are to challenge the often ordered, static framework within which they have been originally taught to think. Problems often occur when any type of theological perspective is used to oppress and marginalize. Or, said better, when any person, in any way, says or does any type of thing that serves to diminish the humanity of another--especially by way of the theological (whether intentional or unintentional). Most notably, however, such oppression tends to come at the hands of our need to retain order socially, politically, and most importantly, theologically. This type of marginalization and oppression is seen most often in the experience of groups who once were, or still are, on the outer fringes of society: African-Americans, Latinos, the economically poor and homeless, women, and--most notably in our society today, with help from mass media--people who identify themselves as homosexual in sexual orientation.

I returned to the message board I once frequented the other day, finding an interesting surprise there. A homosexual man, in his twenties, had begun a discussion on the merits of homosexuality as a valid sexual orientation. Seeing responses from both sides slowly become more argumentative, and minds and hearts slowly become more closed rather than opened, I realized why I had left the community there to begin with. I, being the sarcastic and cynical but rather optimistic person I am, nonetheless chose to respond and highlight the words of Jesus while he was in Jerusalem during his final week of life, advising the disciples and anyone who had ears to hear, that the most important ideals we must seek to preserve and manifest as his followers are to love God and love our neighbor (and thus, essentially, love our own selves).

Sure, I could have rather chosen to question the legitimacy of the Pauline scriptures concerning homosexual behavior through the use of insights gained through modern biblical scholarship. I could have advised those who chose to cite the ancient Holiness Code in Leviticus to also throw away any clothing consisting of two types of fabric and begin offering up burnt offerings to God at periodic times throughout the day, week and year. But, I chose not to. When all is said and done, proof-texting without the use of contextual observation will continue to be the technique of choice in biblical interpretation, both for liberal and conservative-minded individuals, because it is the most methodologically simplistic and easily comprehensible in terms of its conclusions. The fight over interpretation, no matter the issue at hand, will only continue unless we find ways of digging beneath the surface in a search for knowledge and truth that commences only when our souls are first bathed in an attitude of selfless humility.

What are we left with? Jesus, one might hope. Even though he seems to be bound-up and thrown in the dusty basement closet by so many of us today, afraid that he might say something to us that would cause us to think, re-think, and think again about what it means to engage the world with the message he entrusted us with. Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. Maybe this means it matters more that we are exhibiting and manifesting the Gospel concepts of hope, reconciliation, redemption, and grace in our relationships, rather than whose genitalia we are coming in contact with in the bedroom. Maybe those concepts should be the gateway towards discovering what defines a healthy relationship, rather than the often discriminatory aspect of sexual orientation, which studies have shown at the least to be the result of a myriad of genetic and societal factors that one may not, in the end, be able to consciously control. Maybe we should approach a lot of issues differently than we do today, even if it means stepping out of the presumed order of our given faith and becoming increasingly prophetic in our words and actions. At least that much is true. Jesus was indeed a prophet, of the most notorious kind.

Still got the FU in me...just WFU, instead.

I know, I know. If you're actually still frequenting this blog looking for updates--which I doubt is the case, since I last posted in, what, February?--this is a welcomed surprise. That is, for the two of you who probably still were reading this back in February, too. I hope to be more time-efficient this year at graduate school, however, so hopefully, I'll write more frequently in the days and weeks to come. Keep your hopes up, and I will as well.

So, my first week as a graduate student at Wake Forest has ended. I am writing this right now from the University Center, which is actually a pretty peaceful place at four o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. I am the only one here besides the Food Court staff, save what are probably two undergraduate students eating a few tables over from me. This scenario seems to accurately describe my life so far as a graduate student--I feel as if I am floating at times, a nomadic academic who visits the campus for classes every day but who is not involved enough in the activities it offers to feel as if he is an actual student. This may be a subtle reminder that I am becoming an adult, which does not scare me, but leaves me feeling somewhat awkward nonetheless. I wonder now where some of the time went while I was an undergraduate at Furman.

Also, the realization that I am inching closer to receiving the coveted doctoral degree, and then roaming the country as an unemployed doctor of religion or history looking for work, which ultimately also means I am inching closer to paying back my student loans and paying much higher taxes, reminds me of the fact that I am getting older as well. That does not scare me, either, it just makes me weep every now and then.

In other news, Wake has some fairly big-name people in the world of Christianity coming to speak this year; such as Fred Craddock (Professor Emeritus of Preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology at Emory University) and probably most notably, author and speaker and one of the leading figures of the Emergent church movement, Brian McLaren. When McLaren is here, there will actually be a two-day conference on Postmodern Christianity and the Emergent church, and he will also speak in the Divinity School chapel service, along with the campus-wide Chapel service. I've read and would recommend his trilogy of books in his A New Kind Of Christian series. Since he is coming, and I figure that it might be good to have something to contribute to the conversation when he comes, I picked up his book A Generous Orthodoxy yesterday to read. As I am reading it in my down-time between my actual class reading, I may comment if something strikes me.

Portrait of the Theologian as a Young Man

After an extensive (and I do mean extensive, try 3 months) absence, I have returned. Yes, 'tis true, my friends. But enough of that for now. Onward, to my real intention for this entry...

I felt, since I've been doing much writing of late for graduate school applications, I'd post some of what I thought was the best of that writing here; partly because I'm lazy, partly due to wanting to simply update my blog every four months, and partly due to many other things. If anything, the essay I am about to post will give you a closer look at my "journey" so far in the faith, or however you may call that. The following is an excerpt....

“Knowing something or somebody isn’t the same as knowing about them.
More than just information is involved. The knower doesn’t simply add to
his mental store and go his way otherwise unchanged. To know is to
participate in, to become imbued with, for better or for worse to be affected
by. When you really know a person or a language or a job, the knowledge
becomes part of who you are. It gets into the bloodstream.”
-- Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

When I read the works of Frederick Buechner, my soul is lifted high out of its earthly dwelling, as if nothing might stop it from an immediate journey home to the heavens. I resonate immensely with how Buechner describes the journey of faith, of following Jesus Christ with all that we have. For myself, that journey is fueled by the action of knowing, as Buechner describes above. Throughout my life, the concept of knowing has been of immense importance to my journey of faith, being the singular greatest way I have related, and will most likely continue to relate to, the Holy.

To the outside observer, I have been in church and have been a follower of Christ my whole life. My own version of the story reflects otherwise, though. I can remember my father, when I was a child, helping me put on those uncomfortable dress clothes, aggravating clip-on necktie and all. I can remember learning about Noah and coloring cutouts of an ark with animals of all kinds. And I can remember learning about a man named Jesus – who sort of looked similar to the homeless man I always saw downtown as we drove along, what with long ragged hair and beard – who, as I was told, saved my life sometime long, long ago, many years before I was ever born. I can only remember that the thought of such a person intrigued me, enough to where I wanted to know a little bit more about him. Besides, my friends all went to church with me, and I liked listening to the Bible stories our Sunday school teacher read us, and the special air of worth that I felt when I went down for the Children’s Sermon during worship.

As it turned out, I liked the experience so much that, as I aged into my late childhood and early teenage years, my idea of church and of knowing Christ evolved into a set of mathematical equations and fluid motions, where following was easy if you knew the right answers, or even the right ways to think. It would only be years later, in college, when I would fully recognize that faith is neither mathematically sound nor smooth or fluid in its understanding and expression. In hindsight, the bright spot remained that I was, at the least, still in church – even with my understanding of God and of faith being incredibly fragile and in a state of spiritual infancy, stunted by my ever-present confusion as to what a life of truly knowing Christ really entailed.

Somewhere around my fifteenth birthday, however, something within me changed. At the time, that change was rooted in the outpourings of what I would say was my first genuine spiritual reflection, brought about by my experience at a Christian camp the summer after ninth grade. I’m not usually a person who has significant religious experiences in life that I recall with ease; so, the fact that I can very clearly recall my feelings about God that summer validate the transitional quality of the events that took place. I remember that I strongly felt the burden of, essentially, not knowing who I really was or what I was really committed to in life. I felt, if only somewhat, the same tremendous emptiness that the writer of Ecclesiastes, Qohelet, experiences as a result of his search, by way of earthly things, for meaning and purpose in life. In the end, I had seen in Jesus that summer a glimmer of something more, a hope for finding the answers to those questions Qohelet and I had, enough to bring me to the point of the decision to follow Him with a seriousness that I had not previously carried. Simply, I wanted my knowledge of Jesus to involve more than just information. I had become thirsty as well for the ‘knowledge’ of faith’s active participation, which Christ is continually beckoning us toward.

I consider that summer one of the turning points of my life. The feeling of still not knowing and understanding everything about life remained, which was aggravating for a person with such a critical and analytical mind as myself; but I nevertheless felt that in my experience of Jesus I had found a unique hope, solid and strong, to center myself around and to follow with excitement and anticipation on the journey of life. I immersed myself in Christianity, which I realized had its good and bad aspects, the most notable being that often my life of Christianity was disconnected from my experience of Christ. I had a passion to seek out Jesus, but I began to feel – however ironic it may seem coupled with my earlier want for very concrete answers to the spiritual questions I had – that my experience as an older youth in church was too much concerned with having those answers, and not enough concerned with the actual, physical, tangible experience of God in life. The bigger questions of faith were beginning to seem unanswerable to me, at the least requiring much more thought and intellectuality than my leaders were giving them.

As I left for college, I was wrangling with all of these feelings inside of me. I had begun to grasp the initial knowledge of a ‘meaning’ to life through striving to follow Christ, but new questions had entered into my mind and heart; abstract and practical questions of theology, and of calling and vocation. I knew, more than anything else, that I had an insatiable desire for knowledge, to know and experience and “become imbued with” the risen Christ. There was too much as stake for me to let the questions go. I decided to become a Religion major in the spring of my sophomore year, and take my spiritual journey into the realm of academia, to possibly see if Christ could indeed be experienced, and if I could thus find the answers to my new questions, in a classroom examination of religion and faith. My life has never been the same since.

What I finally found in the academic study of religion was a home, wide and expansive, for my restless soul filled with hope, but also laced with doubt and uncertainty. I learned that doubt was as much a part of the journey of faith as undaunted belief. I learned that the answers to some questions – no matter how much they are researched and written about – linger on in uncertainty, only for us to fully know and understand once our life here on earth is through. But, most of all, I learned that to fail to ask those questions, seek their answers, and wrestle with the ambiguities that sometimes result, limits our spiritual experience more than if we had not garnered the courage to ask them to begin with. Interestingly enough, I feel closest to God, and to Christ, when I am wrestling with my spirituality within the realm of academia, as if I am finally living with all of my being, in the truest and most complete form I can fathom for my own life.

My journey, however, is nowhere near finished, and many questions remain with answers still left to be pondered over and experienced. The journey of faith is too much a part of my life now. It will not relinquish its hold over me. I feel thus as though my calling has finally been set before me, to continue to seek out a knowledge, as Buechner defines it, of God and Jesus in my life. I do not know of a better, or more personally fitting, place to do this than in the realm of academia. I feel this will eventually lead to a vocation within academia as well, as my thirst for spiritual knowledge and intellectuality fits well with a previous desire that I have always harbored, to teach. My eventual form of ministry, then, may be unique and somewhat unconventional in form, but will nonetheless involve my expression of the ministry of love, hope, and reconciliation found in Christ, only through a more analytical, critical approach to the journey of faith....

In the end, my principal goal is to know God, know myself, and know others, more. A life of following after God, for me, is not built simply around the knowledge of concrete spiritual answers but also around the experiential knowledge of faith that, as Buechner says, "becomes part of who you are"” and "gets into the bloodstream."” I am at a point along my journey where I feel ready to engage that faith at the next level, in a highly academically rigorous, and spiritually vigorous, community of believers that I see at [insert divinity school/seminary here].



FYI: The four schools I have applied to so far are Yale Divinity School, Duke Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary and Candler School of Theology (Emory). I should hear something back by mid-March at latest.