A Deconstructionist Epistomology of Religion

Ok, so how's that for a fancy schmancy title? I need to develop my ideas a little more (and see what's actually going on with this concept already), but I think it is high time to explore a deconstructionist philosophy within Christianity, and I'm not seeing it happening anywhere I normally look. Now, I'm sure if you know Deconstructionism, you are probably thinking I am crazy, so hold on just a moment.

I find reading Jacque Derrida painful, to say the least, but I find deconstructionism extremely interesting once I pull the concept out of Derrida's text (which is truly deconstructed). The basic premise is simple enough: “meaning is endlessly deferred.” Whenever we seek meaning about something, which is called “the center,” we move away from the center, placing the focus on the means of understanding. It is essentially impossible to zero in on the thing itself, according to deconstructionism.

Deconstructionism differs from the atheistic, twentieth century existentialism in that it does not argue that meaning is arbitrary or non-existent, but rather that it is impossible to get to. I think this is actually a more faithful outgrowth from Kierkegaard's original flavor of existentialism, and it also fits in neatly with my interest in redeveloping a Barthian neo-orthodox theology. Essentially, deconstructionism undermines any system of rational thought, admitting that none of them can get to meaning. This, of course, would include natural theology, to which we must follow Karl Barth in saying, “Nein!”

But, this does not lead to despair when applied within Reformed theology, because our knowledge comes not from our own reason but God's. To me, it seems that what seems true coming out of deconstructionism is essentially an observation about the fall: a fallen creation cannot rationally or otherwise actualize meaning. The meaning is clearly there, but that meaning can only be drawn close to, not found. We can accept a Thomistic framework of natural theology, but we must accept that the center will be missed and must be interpolated via revelation. This is an important point, because it does not rule out reason, but rather puts reason within the bounds of revelation, our only hope of actually escaping a never ending series of collapsing systems.

I think this is not only interesting, but it also serves as an excellent response to modernist over-rationalism. From experience we can say that modernism does not work, precisely because everyone must accept a crisis point of faith and make a leap of faith to enter whichever scheme of knowing they feel is most proper. Deconstructionism does not say anything new, yet it gives its message so boldly and directly, I think it does bring significant value to the table.

Good Quotes from Sir Jack

A a few classic lines from King Henry IV Part 1, courtesy of our man John Falstaff:

Tut, never fear me: I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better:
tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis in Springtime Poetry

I may have talked about this on here before (in fact, it is quite likely, since I know I've mentioned both Eliot and Chaucer together before) but I thought with my recent piece of poetry (and Brad's comment on it), I would explain what I meant about it being the synthesis of spring poetry.

Chaucer's “General Prologue” to the Canterbury Tales is likely the most revered piece of poetry in the English Language. The first fifteen lines form one sentence in the form of an argument. When April comes and beats back the drought of March and Zepherius starts blowing, flowers bloom and birds get so excited about singing they sleep with one eye open! When all of this happens, it is time for pilgrims to go on pilgrimages to Canterbury to where St. Thomas Becket's relics are, for he helped them when they were sick.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The Droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye, -
So priketh hem nature in hir corage:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages -
And palmers for to seken straunge stronde -
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

So, Chaucer's thesis is one of new life, healing and — really — pure, unabashed joy. To borrow from my friends in the Intertextual school of criticism, Literature is really a structure of signs and symbols. The canon of literature, which most definitely includes Chaucer, can be “accessed” by future literature to evoke additional meaning. T.S. Eliot, the twentieth century's finest poet, loves allusion. He alludes to almost anything worth mentioning in the literary canon, religious texts, and all kinds of other stuff. But, when starting out the Wasteland, he appropriately chooses to point signs towards Chaucer. Anyone familiar with Chaucer will immediately see what Eliot is doing, but not only recall “the General Prologue,” but also see that as part of the fragmenting of reality that is Eliot's vision for the Post-WWI Wasteland, this invoking of Chaucer contradicts the thesis. From the first lines of “the Burial of the Dead:”

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

This is just the very beginning of Eliot's long, enigmatic poem, but it sets an important tone. This is a poem of deconstruction: reality deteriorates ever more rapidly in the various sections of the Wasteland. I think things really culminate in “the Fire Sermon” (part three).

So, between joy and death is what? A crime of passion, at least according to the book my professor was reading. I think this makes sense, for that would be a perversion of emotion that could have been joy, and that perversion leads to death. That synthesis is what I was at least toying with in my little poem, which is much more humble (in content, in length and in every other way) than that from which it draws.

Does that make more sense?

Fahrvergnügen and Nichole Nordeman

I like Monday nights. I love the Spiritual and Ministry Formation class. Dr. Douglass always offers great insights. And, afterwards, I always enjoy the discussions with the other students in the class. Everyone seems to linger after this class, perhaps thanks to the coffee and St. Louis Bread Co. pastries that are served. It's a nice experience, and I gain some real insights from both the class and after class conversations.

And, then it is nice just thinking everything over on the way home. It was a beautiful night, and a nice night for a drive. As I drove along in my VW Bug and enjoyed the unique feel of a German vehicle connecting with the road on the nice, windy roads around Covenant, I thought, “yes, this fits the idea of fahrvergnügen perfectly.” I flipped on the CD player to find last time I had listened to it (which was a few weeks ago, actually, I often just listen to XM), I had been listening to Nichole Nordeman, so I picked up where I had left off. Nordeman's music fit perfectly on the drive. I had been contemplating the music and words of the traditional Doxology yesterday, so Nordeman's “Doxology”/”My Offering” were especially fitting.

It was a good night.

Upon a Rainy Night in Spring

A former professor of mine was telling me the other day that she was reading an argument about spring being a “crime of passion.” This, she suggested provides a “synthesis” to correspond with Chaucer's “thesis” (“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote”) and Eliot's “antithesis” (“April is the cruelest month”). I felt inspired tonight to write a little poem of synthesis.

Treasonous rain pours upon the dead leaves,
A gentle tyrant killing passions of spring,
Marching, marching, marching blossom killed
And plant drowned by the tears of hopeful clouds.
The rotting leaves of spring reveal the crime
Of Season covertly tantalizing trees,
Poor and senseless of the impending doom
Cruel nature saves to dash the sprouts of dreams.
Treason! Treason! Poisoned swords are ignored,
Usurpers die 'longside their rightful kings.
The lurid rain robs the colors of day,
And brings to earth a monotone of gray,
Awashes off the new birthed signs of life,
But leaves neither spent poison nor used knife.

Static IP's, Two Subnets and Linksys Routers

So, say you sign up for a DSL plan that comes with five static IP addresses. Let's also say you want most of your systems behind a NAT (Network Address Translation) system, nice and safe away from the internet, but you want a few systems to use those static IP addresses so that they can be easily accessed online. That's the scenario my church has at the moment.

In January, when we moved the offices back to the main building, I configured the network using two Linksys WRT54G routers. We only needed one wireless router, but for the small difference in price, it seemed advantageous to me to stick to one model for everything. We'll be deploying more WRT54G's as access points around the building eventually.

At any rate, I installed the first router directly connected to the DSL modem. I set it up to do PPPoE authentication. I tried to match the IP's and subnet on this unit to what the AT&T installer gave to me. The second router I assigned a static IP address to and told it act like a normal SMB router does — it assigned NAT IP addresses (in the 192.168.1.1-254 range). The majority of computers in the office connect to this second router either by wire or wireless. The second router is connected to a 16-port switch that helps fill in our wired needs.

At any rate, this worked fine for the NAT'ed computers, but for the one machine (other than the second router) that was hooked to the first router, things were amiss. This second computer is supposed to be accessible remotely for various reasons, and I assigned it one of our static IP's. It wouldn't connect from outside. Some other problems took over my time, and I only returned to this recently when it became more important. I reworked much of the network trying to figure out what was wrong. I ended up with the second router performing PPPoE and the first router acting merely as a switch. I thought maybe the Linksys router simply wouldn't work with static IP's (in fact, I was told by some that I was trying to do the impossible).

Well, I talked to AT&T support and found out at the install time I had been given the wrong subnet mask. I went in and tried the new subnet mask, but it didn't seem to work either. As it turned out, the problem once I had the right subnet was that I no longer had the routers setup like I originally had them. Once I returned the routers to my original configuration and entered the new subnet, everything sprang to life. It was frustrating that many, many hours were wasted because I was given the wrong subnet mask, but at least things finally work!

This is a far cry from the original network that was in place when I first started administering our systems in 1997. The network was not connected to the internet (everyone fought over getting a turn on using the fourth phone line to dial-up to Juno), was merely four computers hooked up to a switch, and the “wiring” was a multi-line phone cord that had been made to work as an ethernet line. We now have almost twenty systems running through the two routers and connecting via either 802.11g or high quality CAT-6 lines (in preparation for a future Gig-E upgrade); these systems run three different operating systems (Windows XP, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux). And, hopefully in the next few months, I'll be able to bring online some kind of GNU/Linux network authentication server that will allow granular access to the access points that will cover the building in connectivity.

Exciting times!

The Narrow Mission of the Religious Right

Roland Martin posted an excellent op-ed on CNN.com.

An African-American pastor I know in the Midwest was asked by a group of mostly white clergy to march in an anti-abortion rally. He was fine with that, but then asked the clergy if they would work with him to fight crack houses in predominantly black neighborhoods.

“That's really your problem,” he was told.

They saw abortion as a moral imperative, but not a community ravaged by crack.

If abortion and gay marriage are part of the Christian agenda, I have no issue with that. Those are moral issues that should be of importance to people of the faith, but the agenda should be much, much broader.

Most people would consider me a member of the religious right. I am pro-life, fairly politically conservative (and vote Republican more often than not, although I am not tied to the party), opposed the demythologization of the Bible, and so on. Generally speaking, that descriptor fits me better than any other that comes to mind politically. I'm Christian and I'm on the right of the political spectrum. OK. Another term people might use is “Evangelical,” which in today's culture is essentially synonymous with the first term.

With that in mind, I think this gentleman is right on the money. While I think abortion is one of the central moral issues of this present time period, that does not mean Christians are allowed to avoid all of the other issues. It does not excuse us from needing to exert a positive force in our communities. I think this is even truer when the issue is Homosexuality. While abortion is concerned with saving lives, when we seek to fight against “homosexual rights” we are merely fighting against one sin among many. While I agree that it is a sin, does a homosexual ever change his or her ways or, more importantly, come to Christ because we attempt to oppose the homosexual political action committees?

Our primary — and, really, only — allegiance is to Christ. If our politicking prevents one person from accepting the Gospel, we ought to suspend it. It would be much better for us to live in a country where our “rights” as Christians were stepped on and the government did what it wanted (it will anyway) than for Christians to be associated with moralism instead of the Gospel.

At Covenant Seminary there is a big focus on putting the indicatives (the Gospel of Grace) before the imperatives (how we should reform our morals and other things God requires of us). I think when we focus on a sin, such as homosexuality, to the exclusion of evangelism, helping the poor, and so on, we are putting the imperatives before the indicatives. We are yelling, “Evil world, reform! By our political savvy we will make you reform! Oh, and once you do, you'd be welcome to come to church and learn about Jesus.” Instead, we should say, “Come and know Jesus!” Once people know Christ, He and He alone will be able to reform the individual into His plan for him or her.

This mixup of indicatives and imperatives is precisely why Evangelical means little more than “religious right” these days. We are so focused on the imperatives as they translate into political action, our central message is lost in the noise of our vain attempts at national righteousness.

On Easter, and everyday, may we resolve to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified!

He Is Risen!

A joyous Easter to all of my friends in the blogosphere!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Were You There?

Courtesy of the CyberHymnal, a traditional African-American spiritual that is always hauntingly appropriate for Good Friday:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?

Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?

Good Friday Meditation: Jesus's Perfected Sign of Jonah

Following my annual tradition (2005, 2006), I have posted a Good Friday meditation online today. You will find this year's meditation over at Open for Business.