St Francis, extremists, and 'good soil'

When I started the brainstorming for this blog post it was the 4th of October this year (believe it or not) and this is the feast day of my namesake St Francis of Assisi. He's quite famous, you may know that the current Pope also chose his name with the 12-13th century Italian reformer in mind, or that he wore a brown thing, maybe you know that he liked nature, or that he supposedly tamed a wolf by talking to it and making a favourable arrangement. I will write part of this blog* post around his life and trail off from there though in a series of major digressions. I don't seek to rewrite my own version of events because there's already plenty of information out there. The Wikipedia  page regarding St Francis' life story is an excellent and not overly wordy overview of his life for the curious, and includes many of the stories about his life which form a the bulk of our historical knowledge concerning St Francis. There is a good article: here, which like me tries to infer something of St Francis' character. One may also access many of his own writings which are wonderfully concise, and make for good reading. I will include some extracts here.

When looking at anecdotal evidence such as we have of St Francis one way historians consider it's validity is to check whether any information we can glean from it is consistent, for instance if the most reliable of sources indicate that Julius Ceaser was a brilliant military general (for the most part) we would treat any story that indicates he was a blunderer with suspicion. In general I think the more verifiable stories of St Francis' life along with many of the far-fetched sounding ones have a common thread in St Francis' character at least in his later years following his turn from hedonism. For instance both the story of the Nativity scene and his devotion to the communion (Eucharist) indicate he sought a close sensate connection with Jesus so too does the tale of the appearance of the visible stigmata. His writings indicate he wasn't overly scholarly or verbose, and so does his apparent disdain for book learning according to some sources. What I find most intriguing though is his apparent literal-mindedness - and his absolute, extreme dedication to the principals he founded his life on. His 'Regula non bullata' and 'Regula bullata' allegedly come from a reading of Matthew 10 in the Chapel of St Mary of the Angels outside of Assisi that he immediately took literally by removing everything he owned (including his sandals and staff) bar his 'habit' (the tatty brown cloak he is always depicted in), his dogged pursuit of missions to preach the Gospel to 'the Saracen' including a visit to the Sultan al Kamil a descendant of Saladin, and so on, are all examples of this. Whether you think he was possibly quite mad or the most dedicated radical Christian since the early church (or both) it is fair to say I think, that St Francis was an 'extremist' or a 'fanatic', but also a good one - and conclusive proof this is possible and admirable.

So perhaps in the vein of my attempts to 'reclaim' the word 'faith' or remind people of it's real meaning in context, I think I can do the same for 'extremist'. It simply means someone that takes extreme beliefs or rules seriously and usually acts accordingly. It is often the case that 'extremism' is negative, granted, but I see this as an inevitable result of inconsistency in those beliefs. For instance if your literal reading of Genesis 1 is more important to you than living out your life with love for those around you (c.f. inherit the wind), or if your Bible related homophobia is more important than humility and respect then you are likely to run into inconsistency trouble as the latter values are also scriptural and trump the former.

As an aside the example of St Francis lends itself to a positive retort to this really one-sided web-comic. On the other hand I agree with part of the sentiment of the oatmeal - I have heard some of my friends of a similar mind to the 'atheists extremists' in the comic labelled as 'militant atheists' or people like Richard Dawkins labelled as 'extremists' when I'm not sure they are, sure they aren't maybe agnostic atheists since they may believe 'there is very probably no God' (not the same as 'there is no proof there is a God'), but I find this belief relatively tame in the scheme of things. If we were to find actual recent examples of Atheistic extremism in action it would probably be closer to the persecution of Christians during the Soviet regime of the continued suppression of Falun Gong in China... " 'lets go make our state aim the elimination of Religions and those who uphold them' ; 'ok then' ". This is another obvious contradiction of values in a kind of extremism; in short anti-religious Marxism by seeking to elevate the condition of the working class through removing the opiate that is religion oppresses the religious working class. But in the end there's no reason why there cannot be morally good atheistic extremists also. But I digress - if this interests you or you wish to haggle some point comment below.

Speaking of Extremism a number of 'Christian' websites can be to be found purporting to be exposing the heresy of Authors C.S Lewis and Tolkein, even though they were openly Christian (oh and there's a couple at least for Mother Teresa, and some atheist websites who think she belonged in their camp) and in many families 'The Lord of the Rings' series along with the 'Harry Potter' series are considered at least 'dangerous for children to read', because of its references to wizardry and witchcraft. Perhaps these same people would have a problem with the 'pagan' tone in St Francis' 'Canticle of the Creatures' - his prayer which I will include because it is really cool:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord!
All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing.

To You, alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and You give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
and clouds and storms, and all the weather,
through which You give Your creatures sustenance.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water;
she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom You brighten the night.
He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth,
who feeds us and rules us,
and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of You;
through those who endure sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks,
and serve Him with great humility.

Oddly enough there is another really nice prayer the so called 'Prayer of St Francis' which is not by St Francis even though it is given this heading in many Churches today. In fact he may well be among the most misquoted of people; since he also didn't say 'preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary'. The prayer actually first appeared as 'a beautiful prayer to say during Mass' in 1912 in 'La Clochette' a small French prayer bulletin, but it's also very nice. This prayer does probably represent the actively charitable nature of St Francis' spirit. This is one English translation:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

This reminds me of the parable of the sower Matt 13:1-24 where the sown seed is the word of God, and the rich soil is what is needed to grow a good crop and yield - for the word to be properly understood and applied. Combining these two was perhaps never intended, but the conclusion is interesting. What if perhaps the 'good soil' (conducive to spiritual growth) is in fact 'hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness and sadness'? Analogously manure and things we humans would think of as gross make plants grow, and good soil for plants is usually dark, crumbly and smells a bit. Wouldn't it be counter-intuitive and very much like St Francis to seek to live amongst the reality of poverty and death to properly understand Jesus' word and imitate his actions in Jesus' own way? If that was his goal, wasn't he rather successful?

*My spell checker in Blogger also thinks 'blog' and 'blogger' are spelling mistakes I appreciate the irony, though I am aware it's short for 'weblog' which it says is not in error.

Horses and Fish

Hi, sorry it's been so long with the blog posts, but here's another one; and I promise some more soon.

This time I've written a couple of poems, they are about miracles. It is interesting to me that when the Gospel writers Luke, Mark, and Matthew write about the feeding of the 5000 (Matt 14, Mark 6, Luke 9) they do so very matter of fact way. Only John's Gospel claims a miracle, and so there's a few amusing stories about what might have happened. My favorite one is in the movie script (and subsequent novel) for the film 'Millions' - written there by screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Many claim the implausibility of miracles, based on the untrustworthiness* of people recording them, or the second hand nature of the stories and follow something like what I call 'Hume's sieve' (found here). If you apply a more probabilistic approach that's a totally reasonable thing to do, but they are recorded events, and so I also hold that any alternative explanation from "nothing like that ever happened at all" to "the crowd had all brought their own food anyway" should be subject to the same scrutiny. I don't really claim in my poems to know for sure what really happened, and they are to be taken as a bit of lighthearted intelligent fun, something which there isn't enough of in these sorts of debates. The second poem is a tad obscure (I'd be interested to know if someone gets all the references) and hyperbolic in it's claims, so not really to be taken too seriously.

* spellchecker doesn't think this is a word, but it should be

There's a fish in my Jacket

Certainly evening, or late in the day

when they all left

like a slow waterfall

in bits of dribble

dog's slobber it was

they said

nice showmanship though

raising his arms like that

always looking like a

human sized letter tau

they must have seeded the crowd

his followers, sown amongst us

hiding fish under their tunics

Where else did all the food come from?

But they left me wondering

these skeptics

which is the greater miracle

having bread appear beside us

like the dewfall

multiplication of five and two to fill

five thousands plus twelve

which incidentally is by integer if you look at it right

or having hundreds of plain clothes disciples

who all know sleight of hand

Horse's manure

I applied the works of Hume on miracles

the ones about not believing them,

unless it's more improbable that their storytellers

are just horsing around.

Applied them to the tides of time

and I discovered that everybody's wrong

we can forget Bucephalus, Caligula's senator

all the layers of Troy

and the time the animals visited my kindergarten.

Throw those stories on the dung heap!

It's clearly our collective fertile imaginations

They are interesting, so they didn't happen.

Thanks for reading, have fun in the comments section.

The state of the faith: NZ

So this week as I write (which is a while ago now) we had a news item I just couldn't ignore (for some reason) from the Herald, confirming what we always knew - that people who are richer are likely to be less religious in New Zealand.

here

The interactive map from statistics New Zealand was a lot of fun, and was interesting, but really wasn't too surprising. Apparently the 11 facts on another of the herald reports on the same subject are 'eye-opening', and of course they are true, but 'eye-opening', really? It would have been stretching it even over a year ago when the data came out, not that I can talk, since I've left this article in the editing phase for almost 2 months, exams and travel will do that to you.

As to the reporters' conclusions from interviewing Dr Nick Thompson from the University of Auckland. I think perhaps less flippancy is called for with conclusions especially from an expert in the field.

"The trendy vicar who tried to get down with the kids in the 1960s has now become a figure of fun, most of the radical thinkers in the mainstream churches are now receiving pensions."

I don't even know anything of his vicar archetype ( a quick google search - "Trendy Vicar, Kids" gave an article about a vicar making public that increased child beheading in the middle east is a trend, I think it's more important to be aware of kids being beheaded, than being cool) so clearly it's outdated and doesn't really exist any more even as a figure of fun, maybe it's amusing... who knows. As to 'radical thinkers' in the mainstream churches; firstly it doesn't matter if they are receiving pensions they are still radical, actually what does radical even mean? Most Christians would say that Jesus was radical, or perhaps William Wilberforce or, Kate Shepherd, or James K Baxter, or Bishop Justin Duckworth, or Pope Francis, all of whom are still influential.
As I am writing Pope Francis has most recently posted the following on his twitter account (@pontifex)

It is better to have a Church which is wounded but out in the streets than a church which is sick because it is closed in on itself.

I would posit, and the pontifex agrees, that the most radical thing isn't thinking at all, but doing. I am glad that the Christian faith still continues to be collectively the largest charitable institution on the planet.

As to Pentecostal religions having high turnovers- this is a Statistics NZ survey remember, so those who ticked the box for 'Pentecostal' ticked the box, and those who are turned over aren't measured, so to clarify we are talking about the 'current attendance metric' whereby many Pentecostal/Charismatic churches (often also classified as 'protestant, not affiliated') are growing as stipulated by the census (2013) and by Dr Thompson.

On the other hand I do think it true that it is useless for the church to continue to 'modernize itself' if they mean what I think they mean - sure being engaging is great, the Pope now has twitter (with more followers than the population of NZ), but at the end of the day, honestly, Christians follow a roughly 2000 yr old teaching because we think it's still relevant. Modernising Jesus' teachings and example beyond recognition would mean that churches will no longer actually be Christian.

Speaking of beyond recognition, now to the prosperity gospel and Businessman Ron Clark's ideas. The prosperity gospel is a contradiction in itself, never relevant, and should always be treated with the suspicion it deserves (asking for money in exchange for blessings... this is simply medieval). His comments are out of line with mainstream Christian thinking, and for good reason. Mainstream churches are places where the rich can network too, there's no reason why they shouldn't be, it's simply that they should also make people uncomfortable about wealth that is not given to those in need - Pope Francis has said much on getting to know the poor and has phrased assisting people in poverty as an obligation for Catholics (Evangelii gaudium) . This at least will always be relevant while there is still impoverished people. Moreover Jesus said:

...Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
Matt 19:24 (NIV)

Also relevant, especially while people starve.
Perhaps this is why a successful businessman would leave the Catholic Church for one that makes him feel good about himself. As an aside, those church subgroups reported as having grown (esp. Evangelical, and protestant non-affiliated) by and large don't "target the rich" in this way.

As to the article in general - here is what I would write (from the so called Godless capital of NZ), if I got the chance to have my own little subheading along with all the other opinionated people: Jesus spoke to the poor, and I suspect His message will always be more relevant to those on the margins than to those in power. Love for the poor is what Jesus intended, so it's not an 'eye-opener' at all that, in general, there are more Christians in poorer suburbs. I hope that Christianity continues to be most relevant to those who physically need it the most.

What's in the name?

the image source in the blog title is www.shutterstock.com

Hi, I don't like to beat around the bush with introductions and whatnot if you want to know who I am, well that isn't the subject of the blog, but you should get some idea eventually after a few posts.
The relevant details are;
I'm Christian, non-denominational, I study maths and physics and have interests in... a whole lot of things.
That's all.

The blog  has got some explanations, some thoughts and some interpretations. It's not the gospel, and not all of it is going to be true all the time. Nor is it going to please all of the people. Those things are difficult and impossible respectively, but it is written for everyone.
Quotes will be in italics, bold is emphasis.

Now the name of the blog itself;
A few scriptural references are included for the Christians among my readership for whom the notion of my approach to faith, in general, may be new in some sense, or just not the way it's talked about most of the time.
The context of the name is the oft quoted bible verse; 2 Corinthians 5:7 (NRSV)

For we walk by faith, not by sight

Which has always rather disturbed me. For one it implies that faith is predominantly the absence of sight, and in many instances the doubt that observing the world brings is set up in opposition to faith; in the walking on water story; the feeling Peter gets when he looks at the rough seas after stepping out of the boat is admonished by Jesus, Thomas gets told that those who don't see and yet believe are to be blessed, and Paul in his letters says;

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen

Hebrews 11:1 (NRSV)

But while these verses are true in their context I think it leaves us still open to a different interpretation for what faith is about. To the verses in question then. The first is about leaving behind our bodily desires and instead living 'in our heavenly dwelling' and so in this verse 'sight' is the things we see that take us away from our conviction and longing 'to be clothed more fully' (see verses 4-7). This is not necessarily all that we observe, but clearly some of the things we see can/will/should disturb out convictions.

Anybody who is convinced something is going to happen in the future - such as one who believes the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow, or one who believes the world will end next time some of the planets align, has conviction of things not yet seen. The evidence thereof is variable, and so having faith about something doesn't presuppose having no evidence. In the story of Peter, I see him as a great empiricist - he sees Jesus walking on water, he wants to know if his data is reproducible for non deities so he gives it a go. It is when he doubts the evidence in front of him that he begins to sink. We would suppose that if Thomas retained his state of little faith, then the rest of his life would be unremarkable compared to the rest of the apostles, but on the contrary he declares 'my Lord and my God', and acts accordingly in future years - many of the stories about his deeds as an apostle to the Parthians and Indians are recorded in multiple traditions.

So this blog is not really so much about faith as about sight, having a faith of sorts that doesn't exist for lack of evidence. I don't accept that faith is blind - indeed to have a mature faith I think it should be the exact opposite - hence 'sighted faith'. I accept the definition of faith in it's broader sense where having faith is holding fast to previously established convictions hence 'faithfulness' refers to ongoing commitment, on the other hand, in a personal sense of faith there is room to grow it and to create new convictions - we do this any time we learn something new.

I hope that the things I see or 'look at', and write about will be enough to at least audit my worldview and perhaps some other's views as well.