Jesus the sex God: Post-modernism and sexuality

 

I propose that gender is not a static, platonically absolute ideal. Our humanity, and thus our sexuality, means so much more than simplistic metaphysical maleness and femaleness occupying female and male bodies.

Irony is a bastard: I don’t know whether to call it an obsession or an ambivalent affinity, but ironically the sexual policing by the Church remains married to a naïve and often ambiguous authority over sexuality. Evidently, as history has shown, what the Church doesn’t understand is relegated to an anthropological anomaly or worse yet, a sin. I believe Christian anthropology is at a cross-road, not knowing whether to stay on the track of ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ or to venture down the road less trodden of Christ-centred sexuality.

Just like astronomy, evolution/adaption, slavery abolishment, racial equality and the rights of women; the LGBT community is the Church’s present ‘social devil.’ In fact in the social debate around marriage equality, the Church has done more damage to the ‘meaning of marriage’ than the so-called sexual infidels. Indeed the status quo seems to minimalize marriage to procreation. Really, is that all God intended marriage to be, an institution to procreate? Sounds a bit Darwinian.

As Jesus prioritized people over the institution of the Sabbath, so we could ask whether humans were “made to fit into an absolute, unchanging institution called marriage, or whether marriage was created to help humans…to live wisely and well in this world” (McLaren, 2010, p. 237). It may seem very odd, but I propose that Jesus is THE sex God in which we find what it really means to be embodied souls of humanity. Sexual intercourse is just one aspect of sex, Rob Bell suggests that our sexuality is all the passionate ways we go about connecting with the world, God and others (Bell, 2007, p. 42).

Interestingly in the Edenic narrative of Genesis, the only thing God deems ‘not good’ is the loneliness of Adam. Indeed through the post-modern theology of relationality, we begin to see Jesus as a sexual God, a liberator of oppressive disconnection and the instigator for reconnection. In turn the gospel becomes not about saving souls from hell-bound behaviours (like having a different sexual orientation from the status quo), rather the good news is an invitation for ALL people to participate in reconnecting ALL things through mutual, meaningful and faithful relationships.

Works Cited

Bell, R. (2007). Sex God: Exploring the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

McLaren, B. (2010). A new kind of Christianity. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

 

The animalization of Women by the mega-machine of Masculinity

This is a man’s world, is it not? For although the rights of women have come a long way since the 1800’s, there still exists rhetoric of dehumanization about females; shaping the very ‘thing’ women should aspire towards and the very ‘thing’ that they should be judged upon.

The fight for equality over the last 50 years (whether it was racial, economic or sexual orientation) seems to have created a cloud of social amnesia, in which the rights and respectful treatment of women have been overlooked or relegated as ‘already liberated.’ Society continues to feed and feed off the mega-machine of Masculinity, this over-arching narrative that dictates the social position of women.

Like clogs moving a machine, the kaleidoscope of social rituals continues to pay homage to the animalization of anything and everything feminine – music, media, advertisement, business, politics, economics, religion, and social norms all worship the superiority of male dominance.

For example, take the current social craze of the ‘Blurred lines’ performance by Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus. Why did Cyrus get all the attention when it was Thicke’s song? Why did Cyrus feel she had to do what she did? Why was it OK for Thicke to animalize women but it wasn’t OK for an anti-sexist parody to animalize men? Why is ‘growing up’ connected with saturating oneself in sexual exploitation, is that what it means to ‘grow up’ into an adult women, cause it sure seems like a social norm? If you ask me, the real animals are adherents to the mega-machine of masculinity, in which a majority are men.

Something needs to change, for women are worth more than what they have been dehumanized into. It’s going to take repentant and compassionate men, as well as courageous women to keep speaking out against the sexual tyranny of femininity.

Lyrics from Thicke’s song:

OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you

But you’re an animal, baby, it’s in your nature

Just let me liberate you

Hey, hey, hey

You don’t need no papers

Hey, hey, hey

That man is not your maker…

You the hottest bitch in this place
I feel so lucky
Hey, hey, hey
You wanna hug me
Hey, hey, hey
What rhymes with hug me?
Hey, hey, hey

The hypocrisy of Obama’s thin ‘red-line’

Regardless of what Congress vote, it is evident that the force of George W. Bush is strong within Obama, and he will declare another US-led ‘intervention’ that will lead to more deaths of innocent lives. The ‘red-line’ of moral disgust by Obama and friends is a blatant double-standard, given the history of U.S-led and influenced wars:

• Japan 1945 – Three words: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Vietnam 1961-1971 – The inhumane use of Agent Orange that maimed thousands and led to generations of babies being born with birth defects
• The U.S led invasions of Iraq – The U.S used more than 1000 metric tons of depleted uranium in 1991 and 2003
• Fallujah and Gaza – Both the U.S and Israel have used white phosphorus chemical weapons to shell both the Iraqi (2004) and Palestinian (2008) people

Evidently, the American president isn’t the only international leader to parrot a former political idiot. The U.K’s PM, David Cameron seems poised to follow the folly of Tony Blair. Nevertheless it is apparent that the British people are not going to be duped a second time with talks of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Ironically, 10 months into Syria’s civil war, Britain permitted multinationals to sell chemicals to Syria “capable of being used to make nerve gas”. (1) Arguably, the real terrorists reside not in Middle Eastern caves, but in lavish billion dollar mansions, funding world leaders to stir the pot of conflict and to gain control of 1. land and resources; 2. the political & military protection of the ‘in crowd’; and 3. the mass-media endorsed title of ‘heroes’. Double-standards continues to silhouette the politics of the U.S and friends, and the world keeps revolving around the idea that the West is ‘civilized’ and ‘righteous’ and that the East is ‘untamed’ and ‘barbaric’ – it’s high tide for us to wake up and realize that nothing should be taken at face value.

So then, can we as a global community resist the outdated rhetoric of justified terrorism from the West or are we still lemmings lead by the geopolitics of mass-media and the economic will of the U.S administration and friends? Hopefully one day, the world’s biggest nations would rather spend the billions allocated to military prowess, on humanitarian aid and democratic justice.

“Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete”. – Martin Luther King Jr.

We must all learn to live together as brothers. Or we will all perish together as fools – MLK

There seems to be a problem with interpreting Jesus as a religious line in the sand, in which one side gets flights and accommodation to paradise, and the other side…well, you get the drift.

Re-reading John 14:6 in the context of the whole account of John, which in turn is situated within the context of the Bible, which in turn is situated within the context of the existential metanarrative of divine love; Jesus’ so-called assertion as ‘the way to the Father’ looks a lot different than the norm of dominant church culture.

Indeed, Jesus is in the middle of a long conversation with his followers, they’re concerned that Jesus (after 3 years of telling his disciples to follow him) is now telling them that he’s going somewhere and they can’t come. Here are 4 exegetical points that end up portraying John 14 as a call to love others not a call for religious exclusion.

‘Where I am going you cannot come’ – Here Jesus is talking about his suffering and death, in which he will destroy ‘the temple’ and raise it up again in 3 days (remembering that the temple has moved from being a structure to being people-in-loving-communion-with-God-and-others through the leading character of Christ). Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, EVERYONE can commune with God (not just a select few worshipping in an exclusive building);

‘My Father’s house has many rooms…I am going there to prepare a place for you’ – Jesus isn’t talking about gaping it to heaven and building mansions for the elect few (remembering back to John 2 when Jesus went berserk in the temple because the religious authorities had turned the building into a shrine of exclusion and exploitation of ‘the other’). Here Jesus is ‘preparing’ himself for his death and resurrection (namely the destroying of the old temple of exclusion and the re-building of the re-newed temple in which it shall be a house of prayer for all nations). Through the passion of Christ, Jesus prepared a community (not just for ‘Christians’) in which everyone is invited to join and build a society of loving ‘the other’.

‘I will come back and take you to be with me…’ – This isn’t a reference to Jesus’ second coming and that he’s going to ‘rapture’ the elect and take them to their heavenly mansions, meanwhile destroying everyone that ‘doesn’t know the way.’ Jesus is talking about his resurrection, in which after three days he will reunite with his disciples before his ascension.

‘You know the way…I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ – this has nothing to do with post-mortem travel arrangements or religious supremacy, rather it is a reflection back to Moses and the Levitical law (in which the Israelites used the Torah as the way to interpret life as a Jewish person living in the post-exodus era). Jesus’ giving of the great commandment to love others is a parallel to Moses giving the Israelites the 10 commandments. Basically Jesus is saying that without love and acceptance of ‘the other’, one ends up with the opposite of God (which could be termed ‘exclusive selfishness’ – I must stress that non-adherence to ‘the way of love’ doesn’t condemn people to hell, rather I believe that God is forever chasing people with his love, patiently waiting for them to embrace the embrace).

Jesus quite pointedly IS the way, the truth and the life because he is the perfect expression and character of the greatest commandment: love others. In the character of Jesus, we find the embodiment of what it means to love God and love people. Over his 3 year ministry, whether it was by his deeds, his words or through his character – over and over again, Jesus reminds us that God (‘the way’) is inclusive love and the will to embrace ‘the other’ in all their diversity. “When you are kind and respectful to followers of other religions, you are not being unfaithful to Jesus; you are being faithful to him” (McLaren, 2010, p. 285).

With this in mind, I dare propose that ‘the kingdom of God’ isn’t exclusive to the Christian saved, rather it is a global house with many rooms, inhabited by differing people, all unified through the mission of transforming the world into a society of ‘loving the other’.

“We must all learn to live together as brothers. Or we will all perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Works Cited

McLaren, B. (2010). A new kind of Christianity. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

 

 

No to U.S airstrikes! Yes to aid and international sanctions!

Obama is more similar to Assad than he is to Martin Luther King Jr. Evidently, just because Obama is the first black president, it doesn’t make him the messiah. As the U.S administration sits on the edge of their seats waiting to strike down Assad’s hold on Syria, it just seems like there is going to be another justified trigger-happy invasion from the west into the Arab world (that will result in more civilian casualties not less).

Like his predecessor, Obama is a war criminal who has tortured and killed just as many civilians as Syria’s defiant president. Yet besides the fact that the U.S government is just as guilty of heinous war crimes as the Assad family’s 42 year reign, something needs to be done about the crisis in Syria. I’m not advocating for a U.S led airstrike nor am I advocating for a fully-fledged military invasion, but I am promoting the dire need for imminent and comprehensive humanitarian aid and the will to embrace democratic conversation for the sake of the Syrian people.

We live in an ultra-connected globalized age of human society, yet it is apparent that when suffering arises in our neighbouring countries, their sufferings don’t bother us until they actually ‘bother’ us. I’d like to think that the international community is one big-little neighbourhood; if that is the case then we need to find a staunch yet democratic way of stopping the crisis in Syria. Humanitarian aid needs to be at the precipice of discussions as well as the need for heavy international sanctioning upon the Assad regime. Hear me out, I’m not advocating for the ‘rebel forces’ (for they have also killed and displaced many civilians) but I am promoting a change in government in which the country’s authorities prize the wellbeing of its citizens above their own pride.

There needs to be a change in the political status quo of mapping the global community into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘us’ versus ‘them’, the ‘righteous’ as opposed to the ‘terrorists’. Then and only then can the international community galvanize past the sectarian categorization that prohibits truth, justice, human rights and the reciprocal accountability of living in a big-little neighbourhood.

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension, but it is the presence of justice and brotherhood.” – Martin Luther King Jr. 1961

Stuff international law, get into Syria and help the people

The late ‘possibility’ of international intervention from Obama and Co. should not be seen as the heroic west coming to rescue the Syrian people from chemical weapons, rather it should be perceived in context as a ‘saving face’ tactic that could be likened to someone offering an amputee a band-aid…two years after the limb was cut! Indeed, the civil war didn’t magically begin a week ago; the Syrian people have been suffering since April 2011.

This was always a human rights and social justice issue, a concern that hasn’t been adequately addressed either by the Arab league, the European union or the United States. Over 100,000 people have died, over 4 million remain displaced within the boarders and over 2 million people (of which 1million are children) are displaced just outside the war torn country.

Due to international law, the UN Security Council (in spite of the mass killings that have occurred since 2011) are continuing to be overly PC about when to act with their pittance of a response. As UN weapons inspectors attempt to establish definitively whether or not chemical weapons have been used and by who; I would imagine the millions of Syrian civilians (in and just outside the boarders) are scratching their heads, thinking something along the lines of: “where have you guys been for the past two years?”

Stuff international law, for if the UN Security Council religiously abided by international law, then a lot of social atrocities would not be tolerated as they are (i.e. Australia’s economic neglect of their Aboriginal people; the Israeli apartheid government and their treatment of the Palestinian people; Canada’s land rape of the First Nation’s for oil; and the plight of Egypt’s civil turmoil). Evidently the people who make the rules don’t really stick to them, and when they do it is usually too late.

The Syrian people have been calling out for help for the past two years, if the international community is indeed one big diverse global family unified by human rights, then it’s about time we act like it. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Now is the time to act…for the people, for the people, for the people.

 

 

Criminalizing the homeless: A man named Harry

Last Wednesday I met a man named Harry (pseudonym), sitting on Queen Street with no money. He didn’t bash me with the Bible, harass me with a petition, or eyeball me to donate towards a cause I don’t believe in. Actually, he never said a word to draw my attention.

Offering my hand towards his own I introduced myself and sat down beside his cup of coins. “How’s your week been bro?” So starts a conversation that neither myself nor he expected to receive on a cold Auckland morning.

45 minutes with a total stranger that I will forever remember as Harry.

The new by-law that essentially criminalizes beggars is a disgrace to democracy let alone what it means to live in society. Time, money, a listening ear, an attentive heart, and the will to see the humanity of another; we have forgotten what it means to encounter someone’s needs other than our own. I’m all for giving to charity, but you can go your whole life giving to charity and never see poverty humanized, incarnated, fleshed out, and needing help in the NOW. The new by-law has fundamentally killed the spirit of the Samaritan, just to justify the ignorance of the priest and the neglect of the Levite.

“People walk past…but they don’t see me… If someone just gave me a chance…” – Words that I will never forget.

Bob McKoskrie and hetero-phobia: The fear of people different from yourself

It is incredibly sad that even though today is a historic moment in New Zealand’s social history, there are still trolls trolling about ready to pounce on the fun and dampen the party. ‘Hetero-phobia’ can be described as the fear of something or someone different, and as Bob McKoskrie has shown yet again – trolls be trolling (http://bobmccoskrie.com/?p=9066).

McKoskrie’s creativity seems to be limited to stale boundaries of hyper-fundamentalism, in which apparently he holds the universal truth of the definition of marriage, in which he has and still does vehemently defend. The use of the Bible as an authoritative weapon of mass distraction obviously does more harm than good. Why, why, why do fundamental evangelicals continue to paint a violent, judgemental, racist, condemning and bigot of a Jesus? As the popular maxim goes, ‘what would Jesus do?’ It is obvious that the actions of the fundamental right differ extremely from the ethos of Jesus the liberator of the oppressed and healer of the broken. This reminds me of the passage in scripture when Jesus gave up his last breath and cried out “it is finished!” In which the curtain in the temple was torn in two, and the division that kept people from encountering God freely was done away with.

It seems to me that whether it has been slavery, colonization, segregation, apartheid, and now same-sex marriage – the Church has always been the one justifying the dehumanizing of ‘the other.’ One could say that throughout history, the Church has metaphorically taken the torn curtain and repaired it to once again separate people from fully encountering their humanity.

I beg of the so-called ‘defenders of THE definition of marriage’ – everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when it is discriminating against others then serious analysis needs to be considered. I’m no pastor or theologian but I think it’s pretty straight forward that Jesus’ message hung on two paradigms in which it seems dominant Church culture has neglected: LOVE God, and LOVE people. Difference is wonderful and should be celebrated.

Doubt saved my faith

Last week I was ready to give up on the story of Jesus, a story that is dominated by an individualist, environmentally negligent, hell evasive, and dualistic worldview. I began doubting and questioning my faith and whether the good news was actually ‘good’ let alone relevant to society. So I started reading this book – ‘a new kind of Christianity’ – and it pretty much ‘saved’ me from the contempt I had for the gospel according to mainstream evangelicalism, replacing it with a realization that the good news of Jesus’ kingdom is far more authentic and holistic than the lines that Church norms conform it to reside within. This existential epiphany was then solidified twice today in both a morning and night service at an emergent Church aptly named ‘the edge’. Indeed tonight I feel renewed and hungry to live out my love for the Jesus of the kingdom of God; a kingdom in which social justice, the environment, economic equity,  and a faith of doubting (wondering) is intimately important to the God of all creation.

The reason why the Church doesn’t give two hoots about social responsibility

Mainstream evangelicalism (dominant church culture) is embedded with a dualistic philosophy that denies the relevance of social justice now. This platonic theology relegates the earth to a sinking ship in which the only solution is to rush every individual onto the life raft of Jesus. As the world/matter and heaven/spirit are platonically opposing, ‘saving souls’ takes precedence over social responsibility. In a way one could term conversion as the only ‘social responsibility’ of the Church. Indeed if what really “matters is the soul, then thinking about the way socio-economic, material structures and institutions shape people is hardly important” (Sider, 2012, p. 3).

Socio-political concerns are labelled as irrelevant in a dying world, in which the only thing that matters is escaping “this world and its problems by going to heaven after death” (McLaren, 2007, p. 21). This dualism cements the Church’s main goal; which is the salvation of every soul through personal conversion (being born-again). Sider (2012) indicates how this perspective encourages personal conversion over social transformation – accordingly social problems would apparently disappear “if everyone were converted to personal faith in Christ” (Sider, 2012, p. 2).

Social responsibility should be crucially important to mainstream evangelicalism as it was a key message of Jesus’ ministry. The individualistic philosophy of dualism has silhouetted the socially inept gospel of evangelical culture. The gospel has ceased to create transformation and liberation, and has instead become a spiritual message of societal distraction (p. 29), in which the only things that matter is individual souls going to heaven and the accumulation of personal blessings in the meantime. Mainstream evangelicalism denies the relevance of social responsibility, even though societal concern and transformation is at the heart of the kingdom of God.

Works Cited

McLaren, B. (2007). Everything must change: When the world’s biggest problems and Jesus’ good news collide. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

Sider, R. (2012). Evangelical advocacy: a response to global poverty. Evangelicals and structural injustice, 1-5.