The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Irreverence and the Spirit of the World

Practices Christian Living
#21

That’s beautiful stuff, Matt. We all have our struggles. We all have our wounds. And as a rule, it’s always good to remember that people who hurt others have been hurt. When I was growing up, my parents were big time into James Dobson, and his parenting techniques basically involved breaking children’s spirits. I was strong willed, and so his technique called for attempting to crush my spirit. Whenever I disagreed with my mother on anything, she’d lecture me for the longest time (seriously - she’s been known to give hour long lectures), and wouldn’t allow me to say anything during that time - if I tried to say anything, she’d shut me down instantly. This technique didn’t succeed in breaking my spirit - all it succeeded in doing was making me a very high strung, angsty teen. So my biggest struggle is that when I feel like someone isn’t trying to understand me or won’t listen, it drives me completely bonkers - I just want to scream. I’m trying to watch out for that more and more. I told my wife about that at one point when I realized that whenever she interrupted me I would get angry instantaneously - like a complete eruption, even if she was interrupting me to agree with me. I’d instantly assume that she was interrupting me in order to undermine me and I’d start getting heated. So when I told my wife about that, it helped in two ways - first, I know I need to watch my anger when I’m being interrupted, and tell myself that my wife is not against me and may not even be disagreeing with me. And second, my wife understands much better why interrupting me is such a big deal, and she’s gotten much better about letting me finish my train of thought.

Anyways, the moral of the story, I think, is summed up in 1 Pet. 4:8:

#22

Paul cursed in an epistle. That word in Philippians, σκύβαλα “skubala” had the exact same vulgar connotations then as the current word does now. He wanted to let his audience know the huge gap from the best to the worst that was between his new life in Christ and his former life, and he wanted no one to have any doubts as to the gap, or how he truly felt about his old life.

But, we only have a record of Paul cursing this one time, and he was trying to emphasize a point with much more force than our current translations allow for in their sanitization of language.

“Rubbish” has about as much emotional weight in current American English as “poppycock”. “Garbage” or “trash” are barely better, as we Americans are accustomed to throwing perfectly good and usable items into the trash. “Pile of excrement” gets across a clinical understanding, but that clinical language doesn’t carry the necessary emotional weight.

Paul was eliciting feelings of disgust in his readers. And, for those of us familiar with our dear Richard Beck’s work Unclean, disgust is an emotion that forms a boundary of inclusion/exclusion. Jesus demonstrated the destruction of that boundary in His tending to the unclean and outcast, and the Apostles continued that. They wanted us to know that we shouldn’t have these boundaries of disgust separating us from our fellow man.

But here in Philippians, Paul wants us to raise that boundary of disgust, not in our relationships, but between our old and new lives. Characterizing the old life as being on the outside of the disgust boundary serves the internal function of keeping us from returning to that old life.

But, in our efforts to refrain from being coarse and vulgar, we’ve sanitized biblical language that is expressly designed to disgust us, and in the modern culture’s tendency to use, over-use, and abuse these words, they’ve largely lost their power. Think about it, do you honestly feel the same disgust at hearing or reading the word “shit” as you do when you get up in the middle of the night and step bare-footed into a pile that the dog left in the hallway? Probably not. Is. 64 is usually translated as “filthy rags” instead of the accurate “menstrual rags”. Filthy doesn’t really produce much of a feeling of disgust, as it has come these days to mean in need of cleaning instead of disposal. The shop towels I use when I work on the car get completely filthy, but then are perfectly fine after a run in the washing machine. Today, with disposable feminine products, the concept of “used menstrual hygiene product” has an even greater yuck factor than back in the days when they were washed and re-used.

And with other terms, overuse has removed the horrific connotations of violence that were once implicit in them. F— you! is an all to common insult hurled around to express our anger at others. But when we use that term, we’re not saying “I’d like to have intercourse with you” or “go have intercourse with your spouse” we’re really saying “May you get raped.” That’s something that even people who throw around the f word casually would have extreme difficulty saying to someone else. That’s what puts the f word into an entirely different league than shit.

If we use these coarse and vulgar expressions too frequently, we not only take the necessary weight from them, but we also inadvertently reinforce interpersonal boundaries with them. But should we really be sanitizing the literal meanings of some verses so we can be more comfortable with them? If you get disgusted by “my life before Christ was nothing but shit!” and “our righteousness is nothing but used tampons”, that’s good, because we’re* supposed to be disgusted *by those phrases.

#23

Very interesting post Eric :slight_smile: - and one thing I really agree with you about is the overuse of obscenities. They have a function in language as the buffer zone between speaking and actual violence - so they should be hedged around with taboo and used as a last resort.

hey I’ve got a post pm Christian laughter that may have got lost in other threads. So here it is served up again because I think it’s relevant here -

Ephesians 5:4
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.

In Christian tradition laughter has always been hedged around with taboo because the crowd laughed at the foot of the cross while Jesus was in agony. So this is the laughter that we should avoid – the laughter of cruelty that mocks the weak, the oppressed, and the suffering.
The word that Paul uses in Ephesians 5;4 for joking is ‘eutrapelia’. But what was he condemning in condemning eutrapelia/jesting. Well in Hellenistic culture – and Paul was a Hellenistic Jew – the word has two meanings; a good one and a bad one. It can mean low buffoonish jesting – Plato speaks of it as the sort of laughter common to a thief who steals meat offering from an altar (the sort of coarse and merciless laughter of the crowd at the foot of the cross). Aristotle speaks of it as a virtue – the salt of wit that a civilised person seasons their conversation with. We can hear echoes of this good meaning of eutrapela in Colossians 4:6 where Paul writes –‘Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone’. So it seems to me that although cruel and buffoonish laughter is condemned, wit is not.
However, there has been a non-Laughing Church. Tertullian stated that our days should be spent in tears and repentance. Pseudo-Chrysostom stated that Christ never laughed but shed many tears, and so should we. Bu the misery guts have not silenced the Church of Laughter. Indeed laughter as relaxation has been commended by many Christians. There is a story in the Paradise of the Fathers that the Apostle John was one day seen laughing and sporting with his disciples. When rebuked for this he replied that just as an archery bow when being strung needs to be relaxed, so God gave us laughter for relaxation. And joyous laughter here at the fun of life and in anticipation of future joy has been a keynote of many Christian lives. And the tradition of ‘Fools for Christ’ has been a source of merriment.

Jesus words forbidding us calling anyone ‘Racca/Fool’ have again given Christians cause for reflection on laughter. The best Christian comedy should be laughter making at folly while leaving the butt of laughter somehow still loveable as a schooling in ‘loving the sinner but hating the sin’.
Within the scope of Christina laughter we also have the tradition of diasyrm or ‘laughing to scorn’. Elijah laughed he priests of Baal to scorn, some of the Psalms laugh enemies to scorn. The crowd laughed at the foot of the cross – and will Jesus laugh the crowd to scorn with his elect on Judgement day? Hmmm – well Jesus asked his Father to forgive them. Colossians 2:15 Paul sees the paradox that Christ leads the Powers in triumph at his crucifixion. A Roman Triumph was a place for scoffing laughter and waging heads at the victims of Imperial conquest. But Paul imagines here that it is the powers themselves – the mechanisms of oppression, death and bondage – that are being laughed to scorn although they know it not, because with the death of Christ they have been defeated. So although some Christians like Tertullian looked forward to a time when he would laugh at the torment of his persecutors – my view is that scoffing laughter at suffering is one thing that was dealt a decisive blow by Christ’s death and resurrection.

Finally I think there is a difference between coarseness or ‘lewdness’ which Paul condemns in Ephesians, and ‘bawdiness’. Now when I did my studies I read medieval and Renaissance literature – like C.S. Lewis. You can’t get away from Christian authors making bawdy jokes if you read this stuff. C.S. Lewis had some interesting stuff to say about this in two of his books (I know one was the Four Loves but he also developed his thinking elsewhere). Basically he argues that jokes about sex and the body that are meant to inflame desire (or, I would add, make a person into an object like many smutty jokes about women do) can tend towards sin. However, there is another species of jokes about sex and the body which some might classify as ‘dirty’ but Lewis classifies as harmless and bawdy. These jokes are all about the absurdity that is always a component in desire – and the sheer funniness of this. Lewis actually claims that these jokes are in a sense ‘incarnational’ and teach us to esteem the body rightly like St Francis taught us as ‘Brother Ass’ – a humble creature, a useful creature, but one that makes a comical sound and has enormous ears. Whether a ‘dirty’ joke is lewd or bawdy is a matter of judgement and probably a matter of context and audience – but I think Lewis makes a good point.

Regarding scatology – laughter about bodily functions rather than about sex per se – well I think this can be part of harmless bawdiness. However, scatological laughter when directed at others can be destructive. And I think some of Luther’s humour tends in this direction. There is a famous Reformation woodcut of a Lutheran soldier dropping his breeches and passing wind in the face of the Pope. Yep – that was destructive and unkind I reckon.

#24

Matt - if you ever have doubts about yourself as a ‘mere janitor’ (an honourable and most serviceable profession anyway) - recall your ability to write the most wonderful and emotionally intelligent posts as you have done above here :slight_smile:

#25

I guess God must be having a quiet chortle enjoying the thread.

But let’s go back the title of this thread and Stefcu’s quote from Stephen K Haught, how would God perceive the way the name of His Son is used as much, possibly more, in the spirit of the world today than words so far discussed in this thread?

Would He perhaps be taking it as irreverant, futile, and Christ Himself, even painful, as for example:

“Jesus Christ!”, I yelled
As I hit my thumb with the hammer.

And Jesus Christ, He cried
As the nails were driven in.

“Jesus Christ!!”, I cried
And Jesus Christ He died.

Michael in Barcelona

#26

I don’t use ‘Jesus Christ’ when I hit my toe Michael - I will say that. But it is funny how people have ever used ‘that which is sacred’ to express profanity. It’s not new - in the past people said ‘Bloody’ (which means ‘by Mary’) Gadzooks (‘by God’s wounds’) Oddsbodykins (‘by God’s body’) etc… Elizabeth the first used to shout ‘By God’s Soul’ to infuriate the Calvinists

Actually in very religious periods profanation is even more common than in secular periods.

I personally think that blasphemy is more a matter of deeds rather than words.

It is blasphemy to laugh at the Foot of the Cross

Dick :slight_smile:

There are always alternatives like - ‘Oh fiddlesticks’ or perhaps if you want all anger to be righteous use the terms that orthodox Jews do when they stub their toes like ‘blast the Amakelites, the Jebusites and the…’ ; oh well let off steam as you must and as you will :slight_smile:

#27

Hi Johnny,

Having strong convictions is not actually wrong; it is all about how we portray our convictions. Denominations are largely a result of us actively disengaging with someone else about a particular doctrine. We disagree so profoundly that we can no longer tolerate that person (or belief). This happens in situations like your Amazon confrontation; the chap is consistently judging you as unsaved because you both have a different view of scripture. When this takes place there is hardly any ground for unity - only surrender. This attitude destroys any chance of mutual understanding or respect.

Christianity is a very complex belief system. It is splintered into a million different possibilities, and IMO, anyone of these possibilities is acceptable to God. It is not a choice about one or the other… God is more so interested why we made the choice we did, and what we did with that choice, rather than developing the “right doctrine”. In that, I believe Origen is saved, and Arius, and Eunomius. Although the “church” had determined that they were no longer part of the church, I do not see them that way. They demonstrated to my satisfaction that they were teaching the fundamentals of christianity just fine.

The word “salvation” has unfortunate conditions. I think that the word ‘salvation’ is a metaphor; it represents something else. Taken literally, the word is applied to a select few people, and universalism has no unity wih salvation of a few. I think salvation applies to the “few chosen” because the term is specifically related to the agenda of selecting the Bride of Christ. Universal reconciliation is hence a better term than universal salvation. God had deliberately used metaphors, parables and hyperbole to splinter doctrine into a million beams of light. We fight over the ownership of such words as “salvation”. Only our view is right, and your view is wrong. Our team wins - your team loses. This paradox, I believe, is the reason why God has deliberately splintered truth. God has created for us a spiritual battleground (a matrix) in which to test our beliefs and faith. If we have understood that we must condemn and judge others, then we will. We then become part of a class of carnivores and cannibals, ready to eat our brother and feed on his limbs and feet. God has created this kind of matrix for us so that we become the type of person whom we want to become. God has not forced our hand to believe in hell-fire - we want to believe in it. God has not forced our hand to be judgmental - we want to be. In this way God is able to test our heart in a fully working simulator that separates us for God’s Judgment. Those who are “saved” are to rule with Christ; those who are not “saved” are to be reconciled to God through those who are saved. This test is merely to separate us into one of these two classes, and then after, to separate us into different levels of sin-classes that will still need to be reconciled.

Irreverence, in this model, is simply a choice of behavior that will be one day modified and reconciled to God. We will either reconcile now - or we will do so later. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth because those who do not reconcile now will feel the full extent of their rebellion against God. They will feel like the person who betrays their spouse in adultery, and the guilt and pain becomes unbearable. When we know we have betrayed God, we will feel that guilt and pain, and we will know clearly that we betrayed God when we had opportunity to “make our path straight”. God is warning us to mend our ways so that we avoid this pain. It is dressed up like a threatening, because the threatening helps make the simulator real. It is the way we can enact full obedience or partial obedience.

My view, of course, will not be agreed upon by all. That is the beauty of the simulator, we get to workout with our views in a spiritual battlefield where others will oppose you. Our responses are in many ways more important than our views. We all fail at this, but our goal is to get back on the horse, and when we see that others have failed, we don’t rush over with the sword to strike them when they are fallen…, we help them up again. Love is the arrow that will get through the thickest of armors. We become paralyzed by love. While we strike each other, there is little chance of love. We all need to be aware of this for everyone’s benefit. This is still a weakness of my spiritual armory. I hope to improve this day by day.

Peace
S.

#28

Thank you Dick,

I am reluctant to speak about myself in this way because it can also be misconstrued as an excuse for my errant behavior; but I think at times it actually is (an excuse), and it may help some to be more tolerant of me when I become too focused (or not very focused). My comments about irreverence in the OP are not so much about the small excusable slips of the tongue, but the tongue-in-cheek opportunism to blaspheme God or good behavior with everyday frequency. Probably the worst person in the world at this is my wife, but she mainly does this only in front of me. She is a real army-trooper. She is dainty and sweet, but boy can she let loose when she needs to. I do not judge my wife (in the negative), I praise her for how far she has come. I am one of the few people who knows the road she has traveled, and I know the struggle she has in making spiritual progress.

God will eventually reconcile us all into His mercy and love, but God has first given us opportunity to do this on our own. We don’t always see what efforts have been taken already to ‘make our paths straight’, and we can be quick to pull someone down without any knowledge of their amazing paths. I did not mean to imply that a small thing like ‘That’s a load of sheep’ is an offence to me. It depends on the motive and the cause of expletives which make them either offensive or blasphemous. I am glad this subject has opened up some honest reflection. I am honored to see this spirituality at work by all!!!

Peace
S.

#29

LOL. Well don’t hold back Matt. Really, thank you for your kindness and your generosity. You are a very thoughtful soul. I really liked what you wrote, but I am all jellified now to respond.

Blessings
S.

#30

Stef -

Your wife sounds like a right character :slight_smile: It sounds like she’s’ lovely in her own way :slight_smile: . As for ‘errant behaviour’ - don’t be hard on yourself. I’d be a soul lost in sin to accuse a brother of errant behaviour when I so often wobble in that direction myself :laughing:

But I agree the crassness with which people insult Christianity is not good is not tolerant. And I think the idea that is common amongst amn stand up comedians these days that it is clever and ‘cutting edge’ to be cruel and to be insulting as often as possible is lamentable. If that’s what comedy is narrowed down to it can only go in one direction - to be more and more cruel and more and more insulting and it will reflect a coarsening in our humanity.

Blessings

Dick

Dick

#31

Much food for thought from your posts Stefcui. Thank you.

#32

Hi, Stefcui,

I was just browsing the forums this uneventful afternoon, and I wanted to stop and mention how much I respect your genuine and courageous spirit in sharing your struggles. You will most certainly have a place in my prayers. Also, I’ve really enjoyed reading your insight on other threads here, as well, and I think you are a wonderful addition to the forum. To use the words of my godfather Sobornost, you’re a “good egg.” :smiley:

Blessings,

Kate

#33

Hi Kate,

How dear you are. You have nothing but nice things to say about people, so what an absolute treasure it is to be in your company. You are akin to Cindy in this matter, she is also very wise and loving toward all. The depth of genuine love and courtesy here, by you, Cindy, Sobornost, Pilgrim, Paidion, Jason, Sturmy, Alex, Matt (…and many others I have yet to meet properly), is a real treat. I am blessed to have found such a rich gathering of brothers and sisters.

Peace
S.

#34

Thank you for the kind words, Stefcui. I have my not-so-nice moments, to be sure, but I’ve grown rather fond of the people here, for the reasons you mentioned. And it’s not too difficult to be good company amongst good company.:slight_smile:

In Christ our Hen,

Kate

#35

the world is a strange place.

in years gone by, we would praise a form of civility in company that would revolve around “correct” verbage and deplore vulgarity…meanwhile, we would wink at slavery, racism, sexism, cruelty of many forms and at the plight of the poor.

these days, we have by God’s help put (legal) slavery behind us in most of the world, sexism is dying a slow death, racism is …getting there, and people are increasingly coming to the aid of scapegoats. we now wink at fictionalised violence, but most of us deplore REAL violence. crime levels have fallen in many major cities (compare London of 100 years ago to the London of today, and i am sure many American cities are similar). trafficking of women still occurs, but it is being fought…legal prostitution (while morally we may object to the commodification of a woman’s body) is starting to have rules and safeguards built into it as well. this doesn’t change the moral situation, but in an age when commodification occurs everywhere, not just in the world of sex, it’s hardly any worse than it was. in fact, we have ALWAYS had such commodification: it’s a sad fact of the world. but change occurs now in that women are being afforded more legal protection and more access to health and safety. personally, i feel that that is the best we can hope for til Jesus comes back.

so my view is actually no…emphatically no. we are not getting more irreverent. we are not being conformed more to the world. we might swear more, but more speech builds people up then ever before. we might like violent games and movies, but we hurt real people less and less.

i am sorry, but in no way do i share any pessimism about the way the world is going. bad things happen…but slowly and surely some bad things are being defeated. REAL bad things. some things that are not really that bad we are starting globally to relax about. rather than being prim or proper and getting upset when someone curses, we get upset when someone casts judgement on a race, or a vulnerable person. we get upset when drones fly over the Middle East, destroying weddings and market places in the hunt for a “possibly guilty” person. we get upset when Syrian refugees starve.

change is coming, and it is precisely the slow, inexorably change that God brings as His kingdom is born.

#36

the spirit of the world is languishing…flailing in death throes. the Spirit of God implacably advances, undoing evil gently, causing us to care more and more about the things God cares about. it saddens me to hear people give that dying, empty, satanic thing credence when God’s irresistable but patient influence is so visible if you choose to be hopeful rather than fearful. and fear has no place in the face of God’s love.

#37

Well said Corpsey.

#38

As a hopeful pessimist - yeah James, you given me plenty to think about there :slight_smile:

#39

well, don’t mistake me. the tentacles of the dying spirit of the world are immense, and still do much damage as they flail…but they are growing weaker and weaker. one day that non-life many call satan will be a distant memory.

#40

James, I hope it turns out that you are right.