Fight over baby's life support divides ethicists

Read the story here.

This story illustrates two challenges. One is the fact that administering medicine is not always a matter of more being better. The second is that with the growing privatization of medicine in a for-profit environment, questions are raised about what the actual bottom line is, (profit or health and how are each measured) if not in practice at least in appearance.

I don't know what is actually best for the child in this situation, but one thing is true about this quote.

"Emilio's mother, Catarina Gonzales, on the other hand, is fighting to keep her son on the ventilator, allowing him to die 'naturally, the way God intended.'"

There is nothing natural about a ventilator on one hand, and on the other, I don't always want what is natural.

Churches sponsor home for homeless

Very cool story you should read here. It details four rural churches creating a home for homeless people in Richland Center, a rural town of 5000 here in Wisconsin, right down the road from La Crosse.

Churches working together, the homeless, rural, all very interesting ideas.

Virginia Tech Shooting

I learned of the shooting from a coworker of mine, and am now watching updates on CNN. A few weeks ago a friend of mine suggested I do a series on suffering, which seems all the more appropriate now.

Questions Answers and 'Jesus Camp'

Joe's article referenced yesterday, which I thought would run on Sunday, ran today. You can read it here.

An evangelical, a reporter, and a nun sat down to watch a film.

Sounds like a good joke, but actually it was just the start of a good time, especially if you a religious geek like me.

One of my friends, Joe, and one of his friends, a Catholic nun, watched a film called Jesus Camp las night. Joe, a reporter at the La Crosse Tribune, is doing an op-ed piece on it, and wanted my input, in part because I’m a kind-of evangelical, and the film purports to illustrate evangelical children. (It does show a narrow subset of evangelicals broadly defined, namely, Pentecostal fundamentalists. Some prefer to label these traditions as separate, and understandably so.) (What is an evangelical? Click here.)

On the one hand I didn’t like the film, (typical of an evangelical isn’t it?) . But on the other hand, it was what it was, it might not exactly be what some people are going to think it is, but none-the-less, the people on there were who they were. It was their own words.

One of the main questions Joe had was, is this main stream evangelicalism, or is this a fringe group? All I could say was “kind-of” (in a lot more words) . For starters, asking what are evangelicals like or what do they think, is like asking, what do black people think, or what do people from the Midwest think. On the one hand you can find some trends if you take a scientific sampling, on the other hand, nothing beats looking another person in the face and asking “what do you think?”

Last night was a good example of this. In a small apartment in La Crosse sat a white male, kind of Evangelical, from La Crosse, that spent the last two years studying theology in Los Angles (me). A young (whatever that implies) African, Roman Catholic nun, who has been in the States for two years, and who is currently studying theology at Viterbo. And a white male religion reporter who spent several years living and studying in New York City, yet appreciates the best parts of a small city, and who half of La Crosse thinks is going to hell (Love ya Joe). We all sat around talking about some controversial film and enjoying each other's company. Now if only Joe hadn’t been observing lent by abstaining from alcohol, we could have had a spectacular time! : )

Joe's article will run Sunday in the La Crosse Tribune.

The Scandal of the Cross - Conclusions and Implications

A death on a cross is a scandalous, horrific, and shameful thing, something detailed all too well by Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ. That Jesus died on a cross, and for the Christian, that it was necessary is not a matter of debate, in question is why? (See recent previous posts for more on this.)

Not too long ago it was popular to where bracelets with the letters WWJD. (What Would Jesus Do) The faddish nature of this gradually became appalling, but the initial idea was a fine one, if not a terribly distressing one. (What might the actual implications be?)

The answer to the question, What Would Jesus Do, is given to us in four different gospel narratives, making the answer at times all too apparent. In the end, Jesus died! God died! And before this? He was a poor man, with no place to lay his head. A lowly servant who taught his disciples that the first will be last and the last first, that they must pick up their cross and follow him, that we must love our neighbors as ourselves, and our enemies, yah, we have to love them to.

The common narrative (penal substitution) on the death of Jesus describes Christ’s death as balancing a cosmic account book. One in which all the sins of all of humanity are blotted out by the death of Christ. We then have only to receive this free gift to obtain eternal salvation. There is nothing in this narrative that I think needs to change, rather it is what is not in this narrative that is so terribly disconcerting. The last few posts have detailed a matrix of metaphors by which the cross has been and is being communicated. For most Christians in most places, these metaphors have been refined and simplified down to one controlling view point. “Jesus died to… (fill in the blank)”

In contrast, I believe that Christians would do well to first reengage the cross of Christ devotionally, spiritually, and meditatively. And second, reengage it theologically, examining the variety of historical and contemporary ways the cross has and is being understood. The past few posts have given us a starting point for doing that but are hardly sufficient. None of this theological re-examination needs to undermine orthodoxy or even Evangelical orthodoxy. (Though feel free to question even these assumptions if your so inclined. I believe your faith will be stronger for it.) Rather, a fuller understanding, will, I believe, drive us to radically alter the way we behave.

Previous Posts in this Series

The Scandal of the Cross (1)

The Scandal of the Cross (2)

The Scandal of the Cross (3)

On Metaphor

The Scandal of the Cross (4)

The Scandal of the Cross (5)

The Scandal of the Cross (5)

In the previous posts we have looked at both the major Biblical metaphors that are used to describe the cross of Christ and the major Theological metaphors. We have also looked at the nature and concept of metaphor.

Biblical Metaphors
Redemption
Reconciliation
Sacrifice
Revelation

Theological Metaphors
Christus Victor Model
Satisfaction Model
Moral Influence Model
Penal Substitution Model

(To be sure there are probably more than just these eight.)

The point of all of this is to illustrate the multiple ways that both the biblical authors and the Church have grappled with the death of Christ. And to press us to likewise grapple with what it means for our God to die on a cross.

I don’t want to get into the myriad ways these metaphors work together and implore us to become more like Christ. That is for you to explore. For now, all I want to say is that I think that these metaphors are best understood as complimentary and incomplete. In many respects, what God did on the cross, and in the cosmos at the same time, is beyond understanding… but not completely, and not to the point of being unintelligible. We have metaphors that make sense. We need to be aware of them and then use them, all of them. (Maybe some more than others, but all none-the-less.) And they need to influence how we behave, as all good theology does.