Let Go of Jesus

December 1, 2010 By George Elerick 4 Comments

Jesus said to her “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Jesus had to leave in order for his friends to realize that ‘Lo, I am with you always till the end of the age’.

Jesus had to dematerialize for his movement to materialize. This is very much like belief, it too must dematerialize to materialize into its naturally maleable form. Mary’s desire to be close to Jesus is quite admirable. Here is someone who share her life with Jesus, who ate and drank with the Rabbi from Nazareth, they were friends in a society where this was a little more than taboo. For Mary to want to embrace the risen Jesus is an act of social change.

There is a symbiotic connection, a history that is present here. It’s tangible. The tension you could cut with a knife. Rather than turn and embrace her or even validate her feelings, Jesus pushes her away. In a sense, he rejects her. Jesus has to reject us so we can find him. Mary has arrived with the idea that Jesus has come to stay. She has arrived with her ideas that Jesus is still the same as he has been. I wonder if we do the same?

Sometimes we might enter into the Jesus narrative expecting Jesus to be the same person we learned about in Sunday School or the Jesus we talked about a week ago. But somehow he seems distant. He seems cold and calculated. He sees something we don’t, our inability or fear of change. He pushed the envelope with us. He walks away. He turns his back on us. He has things to do that are more important than us. This stings and has emotional consequences, yet Jesus stays the course. Why? Because if he stays we won’t go anywhere.

We will just follow. We will just listen.
We won’t act unless he acts.
We will believe what he tells us
and never challenge it.
We will become Jesus zombies.

Jesus doesn’t want zombies, he doesn’t want cognitive slaves, he wants people who are willing to use their freedom to subvert the empire, the social order and love the other. Jesus realizes if he stays that he is going to become a distraction from what he came to do – to show us how to transform the globe.

Sometime I think we want so badly to be just like Mary, wanting so passionately to hold Jesus and thinking that holding Jesus is going to make the world a better place, but Jesus has to leave the world for it to get better. He tells her to let him go.

Maybe one of the best things for Christianity to do is to let go of Jesus.

I am not saying we must reject what Jesus stands for, but maybe we need to overcome the inherent addiction to create theological kingdoms around the person of Jesus. In this light, we must be willing to invite the rejection of Jesus to come and deliver us from the need to make sense of Jesus. We want to keep Jesus right where he is and right where we think he should be. Jesus disagrees with this idea, this is why ultimately theology fails us, because if we commit to that, we will never get to know the Jesus who ‘is not here’, the

Jesus who transcends us.

In this moment, the Jesus who transends us, is the Jesus who becomes post-structural, post-identity. Jesus divorces himself from a moment where someone is trying to frame him into who he was prior to his death encounter. Jesus is more than who he was before his death, he makes that point clear in this liberating act of rejection. Jesus in this moment rejects the idea of identity in the philosophical sense. He ultimately infoms Mary that he is beyond it. The reference about the Father is a phrase of transcendence. Jesus is saying he is beyond this. I also think he was teaching her something (as well as us) about identity. That we can get too comfortable with what we know about someone else close to us. We must constantly look for opportunities to see the Jesus who lies beyond what we know. Once we invite his rejection we can realize that is always with us…

I think another key element in this narrative, is that Mary is the one who is truly rejecting Jesus. She is rejecting Jesus for who he could be, for all of who he is. Mary can’t seem to let go of the Jesus she loved and who loved him. Rejection is a hard thing, especially if the person you see in front of you has changed your life in a dramatic way. It’s like someone stabbing you in the back. We need Jesus to ‘stab us in the back’, I know this sounds harsh, but the longer we commit to fighting for our own versions of Jesus the longer he stays right where he shouldn’t be. Jesus obviously has a place, an idea, and a goal in mind. He subverts her desire for him to stay right where she thinks she needs him to be.

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It is in her rejection that she finds the ability to move. To run. To tell others. In Jesus’ rejection of her, there is freedom. She finds it and it literally moves her. If we spend so much time in hollowed (not hallowed) discourse on the person of Jesus and try to keep him where we think he should be, then his rejection of us is inevitable and we should welcome and invite it. Because it is in his rejection that we find salvation from all the Jesus’ we’ve met.

In the cartoon Open Season 2 there is a German Daschund name ‘Weanie’. He gets lost along the way and finds himself in the wild, towards the end of the movie he discovers he is better settled at home. In his traditional environment. Mary thought Jesus belonged in his traditional environment, but, it seems Jesus thinks he belongs in the wild, where they roam. Where they uknown lives and breathes. It seems Jesus finds comfort in ‘not being here’, but rather in being everywhere.

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The Erotic Disposition of Homer’s Bowling Ball.

November 17, 2010 By George Elerick 9 Comments

Homer Simpson

Believing there is a code to be cracked is of course much the same as believing in the existence of some Big Other: in every case what is wanted is an agent who will give structure to our chaotic social lives. – Zizek

Our attraction to figuring things out stems from the erotic drives within us all. Freud speaks of the id which part of the fundamental core within our erotic drive. What is the Id?

“THE ID (‘It’): functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At birth a baby’s mind is all Id – want want want. The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. It is the source for libido (psychic energy). And it has only one rule –; the pleasure principle: ‘I want it and I want it all now’. In transactional analysis, Id equates to “Child”.

If we see life as system, then we think we are inherently drawn to the space of tinkering with something we think is broken and something we have come to believe is merely mechanistic. Existentialism at its basic level is driven by the core of the Id. Expending ourselves over a part-object struggle is something we think we need to be committed to.

What struggle do I speak of? I am speaking into the angst of our beings, the questions that haunt us: Why am I here? Who am I? What is my purpose here? I refer to them as part-objects because they are truly things that seem to leave when we think we’ve cracked the code, but much like the Cheshire cat in Alice and wonderland they return when we least expect them to or maybe even want them to.

Maybe I can posit something here. Maybe we’ve moved beyond the ‘Why I am here?’ Phase of global identification. It does seem the world is more in tune now more than over with its purpose, but maybe now we seem to be more ontologically wired in our enquiry. What does this mean?

Ontology is the study of being.

In its simplest terms: “ontology deals with questions concerning whether entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.” Ontology is enquiry into being. But I would also say isn’t much different than existentialism. ontology is less caffeinated.

Let’s get back to cracking the code.

If life is a code we’re meant to crack, then the irony is how do we know when we’ve cracked it? And when you find the code, does that mean that code should work for me to? Because if your code is meant to work for me, and one-size fits all than most likely we’re a cosmic hoax with go-go gadget insides. Let’s dig a bit deeper. The consumer promise hidden behind the one-size fits all is the reality or non-reality showcasing the differences between all of us.

safe

In its terminology, it represses the truth, which is, that we are all different and one-size truly doesn’t fit all. In fact, i’m sure this has happened to most of us at one or another where we’ve entered into the marketplace wanting to make such a purchase and then we find the one-size doesn’t fit all. The perverse intention is to make it seem we all have the same size hands, heads, and other appendages. That in our excess, what lies outside of our torso ( the limbs represent the excess) is exactly same as the person standing next to us.

But we know this isn’t true.

Yet, we purchase in the hope that the idealistic notion can be true. That one day we can all be the same. This is the obscene gesture within a lot of multiculturalism today, it tries to assume that everyone should be treated the same, but in reality by higlighting the cause of the ‘downtrodden’ we exalt their plight above everyone else’s. Although this may not be the intention, we must look at other possible alternatives rather than destroying the very objective we seek to uphold.

There is a portion of scripture in the Bible that hilights an important point about society today.

Jesus’ friends are a bit apprehensive about their encounter with some other people who seem to be talking about jesus but aren’t hanging out with him or others. Some versions call them ‘the other disciples’. The disciples are almost in childish fashion ‘tattle-tell’ on these rogue followers of Jesus.

And basically Jesus tells these trepidacious disciples to leave them alone. If there for him then that is a good thing. It seems to be in our nature to want to force a ‘one-size fits all’ on those we meet. In fact this is the ghost of the Id, this is the childish aspect of our being.

Where our fear of being alone takes over.

In this moment, it is not merely a weak selfish moment categorized by a possible fear of social abandonment, but rather it is driven by eros. the Greek word for erotic love. A tempetous self-driven kind of love that, in the end, only benefits the giver rather than the receiver.

This is much like Homer Simpson who purchases for Marge a bowling ball with his name on it. The paradox,as I am sure you can see is that Homer is not driven by a selfless love, but a love that only benefits himself, and in so doing solidifies this erotic type love by insisting that Marge receive a gift that has been clearly purchased solely for his benefit.

When we assert that our code should fit everyone else’s this is the gift under the guise of a gift.

Although on the surface our intentions might be white as snow, at the core the pleasure principle is driving at the wheel, we are merely the shotgun passengers. The way to move forward is to take the shotgun we hold and kill that aspect of ourselves that drives us to purchase ‘bowling balls’ for others. When the bowling ball may not clearly be the best thing for them.

Short term mission trips or short terms overseas development tend to pride themselves in helping others. But in the end, do more damage than good. The missionaries of old were white, had money and were somehow linked up with God.

This belief was so pervasive, that those who participated in such things were almost treated like gods.

Overseas development shout from the mountaintops of sustainability and transformational momentum, yet the after-effects tend to be short-term and not what the indigenous population need. These types of trips are driven by the id. they are erotic gestures. They are a ‘bowling ball’. They do damage under the guise of help.

I think maybe we can learn from the professional bowlers, who, when their balls get old and worn out, throw that one away and get a new one. The examples are endless here. But the ideology of one-size fits all hurts people under the guise of helping them. What we can do is to foster a safe space for their discovery, a space where we don’t guide their journey, but simply enjoy it with them.

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Living in a Post-Theological World: Beyond Theories of God

November 12, 2010 By George Elerick 7 Comments

Underneath Paris

In philosophy, theory (from ancient Greek theoria, θεωρία, meaning “a looking at, viewing, beholding”) refers to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action.[1] Theory is especially often contrasted to “practice” (Greek praxis, πρᾶξις) a concept that in its original Aristotelian context referred to actions done for their own sake, but can also refer to “technical” actions instrumental to some other aim, such as the making of tools or houses. “Theoria” is also a word still used in theological contexts.

“Hollie Baylor: I was still waiting for everything to start, and now it’s over” (Elizabethtown, Movie)

In terms of developing theories, why do we do it? Most likely because we want to know. In a very simple form, this is a type of gnosis. We look to information to inform us of something that lies outside of ideology. I think it also comes down to how we view God. Sometimes it does seem we use theology to prove to God who she should be. In this light, theology as a theory then becomes a tool of coercion and/or measurement. And not only towards the divine, but towards one another.

In this moment, our theories on the Divine are to prohibit people from believing or living certain ways. Yet, the hope of any religion is to make humanity better, right? Some might agree that to be better at being human is to be better at being free. So if religion has come to a place where it denies the very element it inherently claims it holds, then it has become something other than religion.

We’ve entered into an interesting era in history where people are beginning to ask if history is all we get. Not just in Christianity, but within the framework of the world. We are beginning to see things differently, and I think this is a great time for transformation. I think a good place to start is to realize that now doesn’t have the last word for what is to come.

There is more to God, more to Jesus, more to Christianity than what has previously been offered. But, I have to be honest, I don’t think this exciting new change includes theology. Let me explain. When I used the word theology I am speaking of the theory of theology. Theology as Ideology. Theology as a static entity that exists before the liminal threshold of ideological transformation.

The nation of Israel in Ezekiel 37 are represented as a metaphorical pile of bones. These bones are awaiting resurrection. Awaiting new life. These bones are lying in a deep valley. Darkness surrounds this nation of people. It is a dark time. They have systematically lived their lives to the letter of the law, and God enters the scene and promises to give them a new heart. This is the thing that sustains life, the heart. Israel has lost her heart.

To the point of no longer being human.

She is the object that still persists beyond existence. Although there is no flesh in sight, God responds to Israel as if she is embodied. In this moment, there is a realization that occurs, that God’s Gaze* is actually Israel’s Gaze*. The only way God can respond to Israel as if she is embodied in this metaphor is because God is full embodiment of the disembodied divine. God’s ability to interact creates the illusion of embodiment. The reality in the parable is that Israel is de-fleshed.

Theology has become the pile of bones. It has become embodied by history, assumptions, subjective truths and alienated concepts that have been kept in tow by those before us.

If we simply believe something that has either been socially or historically accepted as truth without ever questioning the intentions of the writer or the point that is being made, than we are not believing, we are simply believing under the guise of belief. In this sense the system itself is mediating our belief. Theology has become the mediator of our belief.

It believes for us.

In a post-theological world God exists not because theology says so, but because God is pure in the Hegelian sense. He exists as Being, but also exists as non-being. This much like the character of the Cheshire Cat who’s mouth exists without his body. It is the disembodied reality that is also the embodiment of reality. Rather than one being different from the other, they are one in the same. Or like how the Matrix is something that is always spoken of but never fully realized. In a post-theological world, there is no system in place to describe God because every system does not have ability to account for a God is consistently becoming.

This is why Heresy as the New Theology must be taken seriously and not simply because it is inflammatory. When I speak of heresy, I do not just mean what is deemed as theoretically unsound by the mass majority, but as a positive deconstruction that grows through the systems we create round the Divine. It is positive in that it opens up endles possibilities for discovery. It leaves holy space for unholy moments. It invites us to see that this Being beyond being lies outside of our system of thought. This is why the mystics are so important to the general religious landscape, they remind us the inherent inadequacy of our words. We must exchange awe for literal expression.

It’s that moment where we experience the Divine to the point where we just can’t seem to fit God in our rhetoric. This is a post-theological moment. This is a moment of heresy. Heresy leads those with theories to action. God illicits darkness because that is where she belongs. God had to create light, because she exists there. This isn’t the darkness that is easily compared to evil acts, but rather the darkness that brings distinction, paradox, inconsistency.

We need this stark inconsistency to understand that we don’t understand God and that is a good thing. So what do we do with God being near, and the God who is far? They are one in the same. His immanence is her transcendance. In a Post-Theological world God resides in inconsistency because that’s where the Divine makes sense.

So, what does this world look like without ‘Theology’? What it means is that competition and apologetics are near non-existent in their current forms. That we don’t have to be right. That beyond our theories lies humanity at its best. This may sound like one idea replacing another, but it is more than that, it is the ability to see that multi-culturalism doesn’t just lie in the culture itself but is understood as something comprised of many things. So, a heretical multiculturalism seeks to open space where there was no space to be open prior to the post-theological world.

This heretical multi-culturalism asserts that truth much like Hegel’s pur God is just as becoming as the Divine itself. What does this mean then for all of us? It means we have to lace up our boots, pull out our camping gear, bring some rations because we have no idea where this might end, but we know we are moving forward…

* Lacan’s Gaze is simply defined as : “The ‘Gaze’ is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe a condition where the mature autonomous subject observes “the observation of himself” in a mirror.

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