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Christians should always be agents of chaos. They should be disruptive and constantly challenging the injustices around them.

In determining the exact nature of chaos, it is helpful to consider the sinister, yet persuasive words of Batman’s arch-nemesis, The Joker, in Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, “The Dark Knight.” In this thrilling movie, The Joker (Health Ledger) is posing as a nurse so that he can talk to Harvey Dent, better known as Two Face, about why he is causing the chaos and panic in Gotham City. The Joker defines chaos almost perfectly for our purposes while Dent lies in the bed, burnt face and all, listening:

It’s the schemers who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. I just did what I do best – I took your plan, and I turned it on itself. Look at what I’ve done to this city with a few drums of gas and couple of bullets. Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If I tell the press tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of Chaos. And you know the thing about Chaos, Harvey? It’s fair.

Christianity proposes a mode of living in which all those who show fidelity pose a threat to the old system. This system can be a racist perspective, an injustice law firm, or an overpowering government. At any rate and at whatever level this system operates, the Christian subject, when believing in the paradox of faith, becomes an agent of chaos. When you love others unconditionally, it shatters and turns the world on its head. It creates anarchy. Christians are called to upset the established order of things through love and undying fidelity to the Christian message.

For a clip of this scene from the actual movie, click here.

Many scholars today want to portray the Gospel of John as a gnostic gospel – a gospel that tries to show that Jesus brings cosmic order and knowledge (gnosis) about what is missing in the world. Essentially, Jesus brings the salvation of knowledge and order to humanity who suffers the lack of order. After studying the Gospel of John, I am convinced that the Prologue is not gnostic in any way.

As I have been reading a lot lately on the incarnation and its implications by Peter Rollins, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek, I am further convinced that the Prologue is set against this idea of cosmic order. Let us take John 1:14 for example: “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as the unique one from the father, full of grace and truth.” This is most likely the most popular scripture used to detail the incarnation – God becoming human. If we take this text seriously, does this verse entail fulfillment of the cosmic order, or a total destruction of it?

It seems to me that the incarnation is exactly the opposite of bringing order. Rather, When God becomes human there is a rupture of every structure and cosmic order. The unthinkable event happens and the world is turned on its head. To take it even farther, the incarnation culminated in God being crucified and dying. If God become human does not disrupt the order enough, then God actually dies. However, it does not stop there. There is an even greater disruption in the cosmic order when Jesus is resurrected. These three events – incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection – shatter any attempt to say that Jesus came to bring everything back into balance. No! Jesus came to bring division and to burn down every system of thought. This is what happens when we take John 1:14 seriously. God became human and nothing has ever been the same.

From the time I was eleven until I was eighteen years old, I spent several Saturdays and Sundays a the federal penitentiary in Butner, NC. That was where my dad lived for a while, and although I only saw a glimpse of the system, you could tell it was truly hell on each face during visitation. What is even harder to watch is the what happens when prisoners are released, when the slaves are set free. More often than not, the world consumes these men and women without regard. Trust me. I have seen it.

There is one scene of The Shawshank Redemption that stands out it my mind. After the main character, Andy, get solitary confinement for two weeks for playing a record over the intercom in the warden’s office, he comes to sit down at the lunch table with all his friends. One inmate asked Andy if they let him take record player to “the hole” with him. He said no, and that although they can take the record player, they can never take the music from his heart. Someone makes the comment, “who cares about music? Why should we remembered music at all?” This is the conversation that follows:

Andy: So you don’t forget… forget that there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. It’s yours. 

Red: What are you talking about? 

Andy: Hope. 

Red: Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It’s got no use on the inside. You better get used to that idea.

Andy: Like Brooks did?

We all need to remember that there is more than stone and concrete in the world. We need to remember hope. Or we can take the opinion of Red, and forget about hope and give up. You may be asking yourself, “who is this ‘Brooks’ character?” I let you find out that for yourself.

After reading most of Peter Rollins‘ Insurrection, I have come to rethink my entire view of the Christian message and its relation to ideas such as doubt and faith. Rollins views faith as a constant state of determining and re-determining ones doubts and stances about God and the human situation. Its called pyro-theology because our faith is essentially burning down from the inside. This idea comes from Buenaventura Durruti statement that “the only church that illuminates is a burning one.”

Sooner or later in our faith, we have to burn down our beliefs, deconstruct our ideas and thoughts, and in that deconstruction, we find what has been missing in our faith all along.

I remember when I was a kid, my Daddy would burn all the grass in our front yard so that it would grow better the next year. Burning the grass aerates the soil and the dead grass acts as fertilizer for new growth. Faith is the same way. Our faith, our church, must burn down at some point (or several, reoccurring points) so that it can flourish.

Over the last few days, I have been dwelling on the idea of an event or happening that ruptures our way of thinking. It may be a death (or a resurrection), a birth, or a state of unemployment that triggers this rupture, but either way, it brings us face to face with a newness.

Tangent over, now for the tattoo. The reason I used to tell myself I got a tattoo was to remind myself of who I am each and everyday. Childish. Then I convinced myself that it has a monastic story behind it. But maybe I got flaming cross without even realizing that 3 years later, I would be commenting on a “burning church.”

In essence, my tattoo is constantly burning. This is a much-needed reminder. The only problem is whether I should be urgent this put this fire out, or if I should pour gasoline on it and watch it illuminate everything around me.

Related articles

• Insurrection- To Believe is Human- To Doubt, Divine- Review (thebeautifulheresy.com)

I have been throwing so many thoughts around in my head lately, questioning my life, what I believe, while still attempting to stay faithful to what I believe to be true. Its like I am an abstract splatter painting, you know, the ones that are all messy because the artist just flicks paint at them violently until it becomes something completely different. In the end though, I have to make the decision whether or not I am just a canvas getting harassed, or if I am more than that: a work of art.

I find myself in the same situation as the man who emerges from Plato’s cave; I find sanctuary in the Christ who steps out of the tomb; the Paul whose world is shattered on the Damascus road. Good company.

At some point in our lives, we all are on a seesaw; in limbo between belief and unbelief, between sanity and lunacy. Luckly, no one can properly seesaw without another. Thank God that I have others to take the ride with me. Collective insecurity is far better.

Related articles

• Peter Rollins’ “Insurrection” (barnburners.wordpress.com)
• Alain Badiou – Philosophy’s Conditions of Existence (Video) (cengizerdem.wordpress.com)

Now for our purposes, political thought and the assertions found in most high school history books follow right along with this notion of empathy, whereas a close reading of the Bible – a book that is no doubt concerned with social order – says the complete opposite. The Bible (usually) sides with the loser: the one who has been walked upon and crucified. In this light, Paul’s “weakness in suffering” (Romans 9) and his “scum of the earth” (1 Corinth. 4) dialogues are much more focused on the victims rather than the victors.

Why is there this disconnect between biblical historicism and the modern type we find in our public education text books? America was founded on religious principles right? That is, if Social Darwinism comes from the words of Jesus (I think not).

My reading and interpretation of the cause of this separation between how the church and state deal with history hinges upon one idea: suffering. The interesting thing about suffering is that it does not breed empathy, but the much more personal emotion of sympathy. Whereas history tends to empathize with the victors because it provides a way of moving forward for more victory, the biblical sense of history sympathizes with those who suffer because the biblical historians have suffered themselves. Biblical history is not concerned (or at least it should not be) with moving forward to dominate. Instead, it is focused on telling the story as we stand and sympathize with those who suffer.

In this light, the corporate structure, American history, and the way we write our own futures are under a complete reassessment. The question is whether or not we are brave enough to reassess ourselves.

I have been looking for an outlet into the Philosophy scene for a while now, but nothing has grabbed me like Rollins’ thought. Rollins has also inspired me to read a little Slavoj Zizek over Christmas break, as well as a little Badiou (Dr. Hollis Phelps would be proud) and John Caputo. Hopefully, these critics of modern Christianity will give me some insight as I move into the next phase of my theological journey. I am beginning to ask myself, ” Could this next phase of my education be filled with philosophy?” I sure hope so.

Related articles

• Salt. Not Water. (barnburners.wordpress.com)
• Book Symposium: Peter Rollins’s Insurrection (theotherjournal.com)
• Book Symposium – Peter Rollins’s Insurrection (theotherjournal.com)
• Book Symposium – Rollins’s Response to Clark (theotherjournal.com)
• Book Symposium: Insurrection – Rollins’s Response to Moody (theotherjournal.com)
• The Orthodox Heretic by Peter Rollins (collectedmiscellany.com)
• From “aha” to “uh oh” and then what? (billwalker.wordpress.com)
• Hacking The Rapture [video] – Rollins parable set to media (hackingchristianity.net)
• Coming Soon: Church in the Present Tense (churchandpomo.typepad.com)

The disturbing thing about Gadaffi’s murder was what the revolutionaries were chanting as they paraded Gadaffi’s body around on the front of a truck. The Libyan rebels chanted, “God is Great! God is Great!”

Although the rebels were chanting a very true statement, I cannot help but cringe when God’s greatest is in correlation with a dead body laying on a truck. No matter what level of relief and freedom Gadaffi’s death provided for the Libyan people, in my eyes, I cannot help but feel like we have made a grave mistake in attributing murder to God’s greatness.

Take a look for yourself and the graphic video of Gadaffi’s last moments and judge for yourself if this act proves God’s greatness.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/muammar-gaddafi-killed_n_1021462.html

You know I always am interested in what Søren Kierkegaard has to say. In Kierkegaard’s book Repetition, he claims that hope is not in recollection (or nostalgia for our purposes):

Repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backwards, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward. . . Hope is a new garment, stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore one does not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit. Recollection is a discarded garment that does not fit, however beautiful it is, for one has outgrown it. (Søren Kierkegaard. Repetition. Pg. 131-132)

I trust that we have the blessing and responsiblity to hope, and even though we do not know how hope will play  or how it will fit as, Kierkegaard says, at least with hope we have the chance of newness and redemption. With hope, we can will how  life might ultimately fit for us. With nostalgia, we are just reminded that things can never be the same as before. So cling to that hopeful garment.

However, you must not throw away that garment of recollection and nostalgia; leave it hanging in the closet so that you are reminded, when you put on the new garment of hope, that the best days are not behind you.