Jesus, the Samaritan Woman at the Well, and Pope Francis

In college, one of my favorite type of results are impossibility results.  In Economics, there is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem that states that there is no rank order voting system that can aggregate people's preferences into a "sensible" community-wide consensus.  In Computer Science, there is the NP-Complete complexity class of decision problems that says there are problems that are really, really hard to compute.  I guess it is no wonder that when it comes to looking at the world in general, I also tend to look at the limitations of things and ideas.  I have learned that I like limitations because limitations are freeing.  Acknowledging limitations free me from doing the impossible!

On and off, I like to contemplate the stories of Jesus.  I love to place myself at the scene, and to be able to look at Jesus, and to look at the person that Jesus is talking to, and try to imagine what is in Jesus' heart, and what is in the heart of the other person.  I've been contemplating about the woman at the well.  The gist of the story is that Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for water, and the woman is shocked that someone who is a Jew would ask her.  Then there is some back and forth discussion about water that culminates in a discussion about having living water that will lead to eternal life.  The story could have stopped there, but it goes on.  Jesus and the Samaritan woman go on to a conversation where Jesus points out her moral fault.

The main surprise of the story is the Samaritan woman seems to be okay with Jesus pointing her fault out.  She was surprised that he knew, but she was not angry.  If I were her, I would have been pissed that someone would point out my fault.  I would have wondered:  Who are you to tell me who I am?  So I wonder, was there something in how Jesus approached the woman way that made her feel not judged?  In fact, she went around town and say "hey, someone pointed out my faults to me, he may be the Messiah!"

A lot of exciting and heated discussion has come from Pope Francis' interview in the Jesuit magazine America.  One of the controversy is around the idea that Catholics may do better to focus first on evangelization, in sharing the good news of Jesus, than to start by focusing on a particular set of moral issues.  Could he be following the example of Jesus in how he interacted with the Samaritan woman?

Helpful but incomplete: What we miss in counting music and in theology

In the dance class today, the instructor said something about music and dancing that got me thinking about the role of theology in the christian life.

As part of every class, she would lead the small group of us through a small set of new choreography.  The choreography is usually pretty short, lasting about 32 counts, but boy is it challenging to the brain and the body!  Today, after going through the choreography a few times, she stopped the music, and said:

 "I am trying to count less when we go through the routine.  Counting is helpful, but when we count, we tend to get at most half of the music.  Like just the downbeats.  So instead of focusing on the count, I want you guys to listen to the whole phrasing of the music and dance to that."

I love that!  And immediately I thought about the helpfulness but limitations of theology.  Counting music is helpful in marking the movements to music, just like theology can provide a framework, especially for new christians, to understand and live out the faith.  However, if we only focus on theology (whichever flavor it may be), we can miss out on half of the music.  We can do all the right things but still miss the fullness of both the music and the movements.

Fixing the Flat Tires of Our Lives

Now that I feel more settled in my life and my career, I am itching to get back to doing some of the things that I used to do as a kid.  One of those things is to ride a bike more.  The ultimate fantasy is to ride the bike to work, assuming I can overcome my fear of riding alongside Los Angeles drivers such as myself.

Another obstacle for me in riding the bike for any considerable distance has been worrying about what I would do if the bike broke down on the road.  It used to be this nebulous, vague cloud of uncertainty and worry.  The first step in addressing this is to gain more clarity and focus.  And I realized the main, real fear that is addressable is what I would do if have a flat tire on the road.  (I have lots of other fears, some are unreal and some are unfixable on the road even if they are real.)  An opportunity came up this weekend for me to learn how to address this, and I hopped to it.

It was a two hour class, and the instructor has the patience of a kindergarden teacher.  It turns out that once you get the inner tube out of the tire, identifying and patching the flat is pretty easy.  I had forgotten that the part that is intimidating for me and and hard to articulate explicitly was not knowing how to remove the wheels from the frame, especially the rear wheel that is attached to the chain assembly.  And perhaps a bigger concern is that I would put the wheels and brakes back on in the wrong way and that the wheels would go flying off at the most inopportune time.  Perhaps when I am going down a gnarly hill.

And this got me thinking about enjoying life in general.  How often do we hold back from enjoying the good things of life that have some element of real but fixable problems because we don't know how to deal with them when they arise?  And how the real obstacles is often not the problem itself, such as patching the flat tire, but to have the knowledge, confidence, and guidance in to properly take things apart and then put them back together.

The Original Sin, The Original Wound

In my journey from Pentecostal Protestantism to Catholicism (which is a whole other story), I made a detour in the world of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.  The story of how the early church splits into the Eastern and the Western churches is fascinating, but today I want to focus on the difference in how the two traditions approach Adam and Eve's misadventure in the Garden.

Western Christians (Catholics and Protestants) tend to describe the consequence of the Fall as our natural inclination to sin and rebel against God.  Eastern Christians, on the other hand, tend to talk about the woundedness of human nature as a consequence of the Fall.  Both concepts are important and are not mutually exclusive.  The two concepts are like having two speakers so that we can hear stereo sound.  The problem is that one of the speakers has been turned off in the Western world.  And that is unfortunate with sometimes tragic consequences.

One difference is that being a sinner is active, while being wounded is passive.  We do actively rebel against God, but that is not the whole story.  We are also wounded in our capacity to do right and we are truly powerless to change that.  In my previous post, I pointed out the obsession of hard core reformed christians to constantly qualify that grace is unmerited.  That association is inevitable if we can only see ourselves as actively rebelling against God.  I can't quite explain why that follows at this moment except to point out that to think of ourselves as being active sinners feels like being trapped in a prison cell of sin, opposed to being in a hospital bed having our wound treated by a loving physician.

A respected (protestant!) theologian once pointed out to me that while protestants critique catholics for believing they can earn their way to heaven, in actuality, it is the protestants who are obsessed about being saved.  This seems like another consequence of seeing ourselves as active sinners.  Despite the conscious proclamation that we are dead in our sins and we are powerless to change but for the (unmerited) grace of God, believing that we are active sinners unconsciously drive christians to want to get rid of our sins.  And since this is an impossible task, what christians end up doing is hiding our own sins from ourselves and projecting our sins onto other people.

I think the goodness from seeing our wounded nature is it allows us to be more compassionate toward ourselves and others and allows for a compassionate God who is okay with our sickness.  This also leads to a more realistic and grounded view of holiness.  Yes, I can grow in holiness, but I can also hold my own sickness at the same time.  Believing in God does not magically change me.  I want to do good and I can do good.  But I also want to do bad and I can hold that reality as well.  And by not repressing and projecting my own badness to others, I actually have a better chance of letting the medicine do its work.

Yes, I am a sinner. Can we move past that?

It is fall in Los Angeles, which means it is really summer else where.  Nonetheless, the mornings and evenings are getting cooler .  I have grown this summer and is ready to shed my older, and slightly smaller shell.

Speaking of growth, one way that I feel I have grown is to have a more grounded and realistic view of holiness.  I was hanging out with my reformed peeps this past Sunday, and know that one thing that bothers me to no end with reformed theology is the constant reference to human sinfulness.  Yes, I am a sinner.  Can we move past that?  And if God's grace is so amazing and powerful, why harp on the fact that grace is unmerited?  Sure, in principle, I can agree that I don't merit grace, but what I am ready for is to experience the goodness of that grace.  To keep circling around the topic of merit is to miss the point of grace.  Doesn't the fact that grace is unmerited a good reason to dump that very qualifier?  To quote Arsenio Hall, this is one of those things that make you go hmmm.

But I think a sign of growth is that I can disagree with the underlying rhythm of the sermon but also feel the goodness of being with people who have a genuine love for God and to worship God together.  To that I can give a heartfelt Amen.  Let's raise the roof for J.C.

More thoughts on holiness to come ...