Ramadan for Christians?

September 21st, 2009

 

Egyptians wait for sunset during Ramadan so they can eat. Photo by Otto J. Simon

Egyptians wait for sunset during Ramadan so they can eat. Photo by Otto J. Simon

The Associated Press’ Eric Gorski has a fascinating look at Christians who commemorate Ramadan (Islam’s month-long fasting ritual that ended, officially, yesterday). Among those participating: Brian McLaren, one of the leaders of the Emergent Church movement:

 

In announcing his Ramadan fast plans on his blog last month, McLaren wrote, “We are not doing so in order to become Muslims: we are deeply committed Christians. But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them.” The goal is to join Muslims in the observance as “a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship and neighborliness,” he wrote.

Really interesting stuff. Gorski notes that lots of Christians think McLaren’s misguided at best. “The logic of Islam is obedience and submission,” Gorski quoted Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “It’s by following these practices that a Muslim demonstrates his obedience to the rule of the law through the Quran. For a Christian to do the same automatically implies a submission to the same rule. And beyond that, it’s an explicit affirmation that this is a good and holy thing. From a New Testament perspective, it is not a good and holy thing.”

My take: I don’t feel the need to express my solidarity with those of the Islamic faith, and I would certainly not wish to submit myself to the authority of the Quran. But I do believe that we Christians can learn something from Ramadan.

I’m not a big faster. I’ve never been known for my self-discipline, and to not eat for an entire day is — well, very hard. Moreover, when I have fasted, I’ve had to curb my urge to whine about it every 10 minutes or so. But while I may be a terrible faster, one thing it effectively did for me was remind me, every time my stomach growl, of for what, and for whom, I was fasting for. It kept God at the forefront of my thoughts for the entire day.

During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn ’til dusk for nearly a full month. For weeks, their faith takes a position of authority in their lives they simply, physically, can’t ignore. It’s a real sacrifice, what they do — more than dropping an extra $10 in the offering plate, in my opinion — and I can’t help but respect their commitment.

As I said, I don’t feel the need to engage in a Ramadan-specific fast to show my brotherhood with my Islamic friends and neighbors. But I do think they’re onto something, and perhaps one day I’ll follow their example, and honor my own God in humility and hunger. We’ll see. 

I’d be interested to hear what you think of it all. Do you fast? When? Why? And would you ever participate in a Ramadan-style fast?

Hungry Stomachs, Hungry Souls

September 21st, 2009

 

photo by Mattia Luigi Nappi

photo by Mattia Luigi Nappi

This post from the Baptist Press reminds me, once again, of the great work Christians can do, and the overwhelming need for our help. The article, by Jami Becher, highlights work being done by the Southern Baptist’s North American Mission Board in New Mexico — a state that has a higher “food insecurity” rate than many Central and South American countries.

 

“Our office provides financial support to nine food service ministries in the association,” said Russell, ministry evangelism coordinator for the Central Baptist Association in Albuquerque. “The ministries we assisted last year fed approximately 150,000 people. That may sound like a lot, but it was just a drop in the bucket.”

Pretty staggering: 150,000 people helped, and so much more is needed.

Of Faith and Truth

September 18th, 2009

 

photo by Molinovski

photo by Molinovski

This past  weekend, The Wall Street Journal served up a debate of sorts between celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins and author Karen Armstrong, whose latest book is called “The Case for God.” The premise of the debate was simple: “Where does evolution leave God?”

 

It’s an odd little question, what with the theory of evolution now 150 years old, and with God still being very much among us. The answer seems, in a sense, both self-evident and, frankly, irrelevant.  Nevertheless, both Dawkins and Armstrong felt the question compelling enough to answer.

Now, I personally find Dawkins to be one of the new atheist movement’s shrillest, snarkiest and, in many respects, least persuasive voices. But I didn’t find his essay half as disturbing as Armstrong’s — the voice representing all of us “believers” out here in the hinterlands.

The author, in attempting to keep God relevant in these scientific times, turned Him into an abstraction: A useful symbol to express our wonder and gratitude with the world around us.

I appreciated parts of her essay — when she writes, for instance, that “St. Augustine … insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically.” This, I believe, is true. And I agree that theology is more art than science, and that God can’t be found through physics equations.

But she leads her article with this:

Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. … Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. 

In short, the idea of an all-knowing, all-caring God — the sort of God we Christians tend to believe in — is woefully outdated. She goes on to say the only sort of god we should believe in these days is one built of abstraction and necessity. We must build myths to give our lives meaning, and if that means conjuring our own personal gods, so be it. 

In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. 

Dawkins, who did not read Armstrong’s essay before writing his own, nevertheless anticipated her tack and cuts through it brilliantly:

Well, if that’s what floats your canoe, you’ll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world’s peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They’ll be right.

The problem with this Wall Street Journal piece, in my opinion, is that it was built upon a faulty premise: It assumes that science and faith (as most of us understand it) are somehow locked in a primal death struggle, and it further assumes that faith (as most of us understand it) will lose. The paper, therefore, sought out a theologian who might salvage God (an interesting twist on Christianity’s themes of salvation) from irrelevance. And Armstrong tries to do so by turning God into a benign fairy tale.

The paper allows us only two options: A life without faith, or a faith without life.

 Now, I share Armstrong’s love of myth, and I believe that stories often get closer to truth than science can. But for me to place faith in faith, it must be more than a set of imaginings that get me through my day. My beliefs can deal with paradox and uncertainty, but it’s pinned on a few central truths — and if those truths are not literally true, then I should be, as St. Paul says, pitied above all men. Given only two choices — Armstrong’s mythic theology and Dawkins’ atheism, I’d boldly, sadly, choose the latter.

Thankfully, we have more than two choices:

While Armstrong insists that the theory of evolution has “shaken to the core” the beliefs of many Christians, consider this: Darwin’s theory is 150 years old. In the 18th century, 100 years before Darwin, many thoughtful atheists assumed faith was on its last legs and we were nearing what they considered to be a glorious age of reason.

And yet centuries later, here we are, with most of the country, and most of the world, still stubbornly celebrating faith with awe and wonder. Many are scientists. Many are atheists newly returned to the fold. More people honor a Creator — and do good, charitable works in that Creator’s name — than at any time in our planet’s history.

Shaken to the core? Hardly. Faith, it seems, is not just surviving: It is thriving.

Religion endures not because we need it: It endures because, at its core, it speaks the truth: A truth both literal and literary, a truth that leaves telltale signs in math and music, science and poetry, nature and the supernatural. It is as tangible as the Rock of Gibraltar, as gossamer as a song. We do not need to settle for Armstrong’s pseudo-faith, for in our hands and hearts we hold the real thing.

Something Funny’s Going On …

September 17th, 2009

A Christian television station in the Netherlands has decided to cancel a religious comedy show after some of its supporters complained, according to Christianity Today.

“That’s always the tension we feel,” says Jan-Willem Bosman, business director for the station, Evangelische Omroep. “We are funded by members who are Christians, but we do not make programs for them. We want to use media for people who do not know Christ.”

And In This Corner … Church

September 17th, 2009

581px-Mixed_Martial_Arts_Project_SymbolThe New York Times gives us a peak at how the evangelical movement is manifesting itself in Brazil, one of the world’s most Catholic countries. And it includes an awful lot of fighting. Here’s the lead:

The atmosphere was electric at Reborn in Christ Church on “Extreme Fight” night. Churchgoers dressed in jeans and sneakers, many with ball caps turned backward, lined a makeshift boxing ring to cheer on bare-chested jujitsu fighters. …

With the crowd still buzzing, Pastor Mazola Maffei, dressed in army pants and a T-shirt, grabbed a microphone. Pastor Maffei, who is also Pastor Meira’s fight trainer, then held the crowd rapt with a sermon about the connection between sports and spirituality.

“You need to practice the sport of spirituality more,” he urged. “You need to fight for your life, for your dreams and ideals.”

The Times tells us that about 15 percent of Brazilians describe themselves as evangelicals these days — quintuple the number who said so 50 years ago. They’re attracted to the movement because, in part, of the freedom of worship: Evangelical churches are obviously unfettered by many of the rituals found in the Catholic Church and, apparently, attract folks through their doors with mixed martial arts fights, raggae and makeshift tattoo parlors.

I’ve been to a lot of churches stateside, but I’ve yet to go to one that’s hosted a cage match or allowed me to get some new ink. When we hear about the burgeoning worldwide Christian church, I think I sometimes make the mistake of assuming they all worship much like I do: Some nice, tuneful worship music, a 40-minute sermon, coffee and donuts afterward.

That’s obviously not the case. But the question is, is that a bad thing? Does mixing MMA fighting with Christianity bother you? Or does it excite you? Let me know. I’d love to hear.

I’m A Fan. U2?

September 16th, 2009

 

U2's Bono

U2's Bono

Christianity  is full of paradox. I think paradox is part of the faith’s very DNA: The King born in a manger; victory found in shameful death; the promise that, in order to save one’s life, one must give it away.

 

So it only makes sense that Christianity — the force that almost singlehandedly preserved the cultural achievements of ancient Greece and Rome, the foundation of so much of the Western World’s art, literature and philosophy, the entity that’s so woven into our cultural sensibilities that no atheist movement on earth can drive them apart — is, at its core, the most countercultural movement on earth.

That’s a long prelude to introduce the actual theme of this post: An outstanding essay on U2’s Bono by one of my favorite bloggers, Steve Beard. Beard, founder of the faith-and-culture roundup known as Thunderstruck, suggests that Bono — that hard-rocking Irishman — has become one of Christianity’s most effective evangelists. And, as such, Bono is wrapped in paradox.

Beard offers this example:

Bono has the reputation as rock ‘n’ roll’s most effective and enigmatic spiritual provocateur — rattling the souls of fans all over the globe. “I sometimes think I have a kind of Tourette’s syndrome where if you’re not supposed to say something, it becomes very attractive to do so,” he once confessed. “You’re in a rock band — what can’t you talk about? God? OK, here we go. You’re supposed to write songs about sex and drugs. Well, no I won’t.”

And then there’s this:

There is very little garden-variety Evangelicalism (in the North American sense of the word) found in the members of the band. They drink, smoke, swear, and wear leather pants. But there is a hefty and poetic theological substance that I think would startle St. Paul and would bring a smile to the Psalmist. This rock ‘n’ roll band is committed to social justice and eternal truth. In this day and age, that is no small luxury.

Bono disappointed several Christians I know when he made a cameo in Sasha Baren Cohen’s crudely provocative “Bruno” this summer. Many felt it beneath this rock star who, as time goes on, seems to poetically preach more and more with each passing album. For me, it felt like just one more pebble of paradox: The sort of enigmatic and sometimes incomprehensible paradox we all — and Christianity itself — is made of.