I think you’re right, that the act of attempting to build a tower to the heavens is an act of attempted divinity, not unlike the Egyptians et al. Everything about the story plays into that attempt to set up an alternative to God, the very thing empire does.

Take the book slow, it’s worth every minute.

Matt

You can add to it that they were building a walled city (or a watched and guarded city) with a tower. I reckon this is in response to the Noah narrative and in direct opposition (rebellion) to the promises of God not to destroy the earth. The implication is that God can not be trusted to keep his word and that have to ‘make a name for themselves’ – claim their own self-sufficiency, almost divinity – in defiance of YHWH.

This is the final story in the journey to the east from Eden. It is in response this stand of opposition by in humanity (the empire) that God calls Abram. Such an act of grace!

We need to be the ‘children of Abraham’ not the slaves of empire.

Maybe George Lucas was more right that we give him credit for!?

Cheers mate,
Brian
(Slowly working my way though that book)

“What if faith itself is a challenge to the arrogance of our modern world?”
I would not disagree that there is definitely widespread arrogance within the modern world. But is faith the answer? Employing faith to counter arrogance seems like a major misstep! But lets see…

“We live in a world that esteems certainty, of knowledge beyond doubt.”
I’m not quite sure exactly what you are poking at with this statement? The human psyche? The scientific method? It’s quite ambiguous.

“But the arrogance of Enlightenment reason has been shown to be, in so many ways, naive.”
Whoa! I would argue that if any movement deserves an air of arrogance it’s the enlightenment! But what are these examples of naivety brought about by enlightenment reason?

“None of this makes knowledge bad; quite the opposite, knowledge is beautiful. But like beauty, knowledge is not easy to pin down.”
Well, in the sense that everything is open to further inquiry I suppose you could say knowledge is “not easy to pin down”. But we have reliable methods to gain knowledge and thus can be relatively certain the theory of gravity isn’t going to be brought to its knees come the morning.

“Faith is, in part, an acknowledgement of our inability to really know many things with certainty.”
You don’t need to have faith to realize we can’t know many things with certainty. It’s one of the most important (and humble) principles of science, psychology and philosophy. We know our own experience can’t be trusted thus we put ourselves through relentless experiment and research to come to what we call knowledge. Thus faith as an acknowledgement of not being certain about things is redundant, because knowledge doesn’t make the opposite claim to start with. But again as I outlined in the previous paragraph, this doesn’t lead us to suppose that knowledge well rooted in observation and testing are necessarily going to fall over. It is simply an honest position that lends itself open to further inquiry.

“Now when I say faith I don’t mean mere belief, much less blind belief. After all, belief is only part of faith, like flour in a pancake. Faith is more than belief. It is faithfulness – loyalty, obedience, action. It is a hope borne of a redirected allegiance, of a new way of living.”
Again, none of this requires faith. Loyalty, obedience, action are all qualities any human being can possess. However, basing your loyalty, obedience and action in areas of dubious authenticity immediately sets off alarm bells in my head. It’s like going back into the mindset of pre-enlightenment Europe!

True faith acknowledges that I don’t know everything.
Faith may acknowledge you don’t know everything (so does science by the way), but in a religious context it demands you believe things you cannot possibly know. To me this is a distorted way of looking at the world.

“She has an inbuilt humility. She does not ignore knowledge, in fact the two are friends, and faith always lends its ear to knowledge to learn something new about herself. But faith also realises that knowledge is imperfect, and that he should not be one’s only friend.”
I would argue that faith has had its metaphorical eardrum severely ruptured by an onslaught of enlightenment driven knowledge. But an important point to remember that Sam Harris brings up in the aptly titled End of Faith is “The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside”. For example, faith does not evolve itself to a point where it abandons half its scripture to steady its own conscience. It was beaten out by enlightenment reason and the pursuit of knowledge.

“Faith is a startling critique of human arrogance, of our naive sense of independence. We are never independent, but always interdependent. Faith asserts the need for community, both with the divine and each other. She makes a way for a reconnected world where we are no longer lonely ships in the night.”
To me as an outsider, this seems like empty theological hand waving and a clear case of historical amnesia! “Faith is a startling critique of human arrogance” – What could be more conducive to human arrogance than starting with a premise that the earth was put here with us in mind? You see examples of it every day from climate skeptics to evolution deniers and is it really a coincidence these people are often (if not an overwhelming majority) people of faith? I suspect you would argue these people are not correctly applying their ‘faith’ but in your case for ‘faith’ it does seem like you are putting the ideas forward as if they were universally accepted guidelines. There are plenty of faithful people who do not lend their ear to knowledge, but stick their fingers in and sing “la la la la la”. To go back to an earlier point you made; “Now when I say faith I don’t mean mere belief, much less blind belief. “ This may ring true for you and I imagine many liberal and moderate questions. But can you simply remove it from the equation and ignore those in which faith does entail blind belief?

This is why I argue faith is as a whole dangerous. For every person genuinely trying to follow the teaching of Jesus, there is someone employing faith to teach pseudo-science to children or impair the rights of their fellow citizens. There is also something to note about these two scenarios. Can you read the gospels and live in a “Christ like” manner without faith? Undoubtedly yes. Can you tenably stand in a classroom and tell a five year old they are going to hell unless they accept ancient scripture as divinely inspired without faith. No.

True faith is revolutionary. But she is also humble. She critiques knowledge, but she also listens to him.
Faith can by all means critique away. Knowledge would fall down without our ability to constantly critique it, but what is at the heart of faith-derived truth? What rigorous exercises did we force upon our selves to achieve it? Knowledge has many disciplines employing numerous methods to attain truths that are testable, repeatable and able to make predictions. What does faith have? Theology? We’ve had a while to read and interpret the bible now. It didn’t get us very far pre-enlightenment. Why am I now supposed to accept faith as this humble, revolutionary idea now after centuries of progress that threw it aside?

I simply think that what you posit here as faith is simply playing fast and loose with definitions and resurrecting theology into areas where it has had nothing of relevance to say for centuries.

The end!

You spoke of a friend who accepted violent self-defense by referencing Luke 22:36. I agree with your friend.

You say that this type of interpretation is essentially taking Biblical passages out of context. I understand that, and also don’t like using one sentence or portion of the Bible to defend something that is not the intent of the document… (A broad example would be using the Bible to justify slavery.)

Your next statement is confusing. Your friend (my opinion, I wasn’t there) wasn’t using Luke 22:36 to defend ANY type of violence… But to say (or defend the notion) that it is acceptable to use a weapon for self defense.

Now to the context:
I agree that in Luke, after all the parables (which for the most part, he explained to the disciples or at least the “few”); He foretells His detractors, says that one of His disciples will betray Him, presages His earthly demise, and predicts the weaknesses of the disciples.

He also asks if when He sent them out before if they lacked anything, and they answered that they did not. He did make clear that He was going to be arrested and taken to be killed (through the reference to Isaiah).

It is here where we part agreement…

Jesus (in my estimation) is preparing his disciples for “life in the real world.” He expected them to go out and spread The Gospel throughout the nations. He is God in the flesh… He knows all things… He knows that some of them will martyr themselves FOR THEIR FAITH, but does not expect them to die needlessly at the hand of some highwaymen (In 2 Corinthians 11.26 Paul lists these highwaymen as one of the dangers on his apostolic mission paths.)

Does Jesus prepare his disciples to act violently at his arrest? NO (my opinion).

He KNOWS that Peter will take up the sword (at the arrest), and He KNOWS He will fix the result. And after Peter uses his sword, Jesus heals the man, and tells Peter to put his sword back in its scabbard. Further, Jesus makes the statement that those who draw the sword shall die by the sword. (there are many interpretations of the meaning of the “die by the sword” statement: it could be prophetic of the wars to come between the Jewish and Roman states, it could be the states that were taking up swords against Jesus himself (again, the Jewish and Roman states who “took up the sword” against our Lord)).

Or, it could mean “Put that away, this is supposed to happen!” as confirmed by other scriptures. In the long view it can also mean that those who use the sword ILLEGALLY will die violent deaths. (Peter was using the sword illegally, against those in (earthly) authority to arrest Jesus).

Is Jesus being ironic in his suggestion that they go buy swords? I don’t think so… Jesus KNOWS what is going to happen, He KNOWS when it’s going to happen. He KNOWS there is no time for them to sell cloaks and buy swords BEFORE he is arrested. He KNOWS they already have a couple of swords amongst them to fulfill the prophesy of his being “among transgressors,” and He KNOWS Peter will be the main “transgressor” by using a sword against the authorities.

Does he reprimand them? NO, He simply tells Peter to put it away. He doesn’t tell him to never use it… He just says ‘put that thing in it’s sheath… I have to do the will of the Father.’

As to Jesus’ non violence throughout the gospels… I used John 2:15 to illustrate that He was not necessarily so.

NIV offers: “So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” Even NIV says “he drove them ALL from the temple area.”

Other translations say he drove them all AND the sheep and oxen or WITH the sheep and oxen. Whether Jesus actually used the whip ON anybody or the livestock is unclear and unsaid, He may have just used it as a “prop” to show He meant business (in a human sort of way; I mean, He could have used Divine Means to “clear the area”).

In the end, my thoughts are this: Would I die for my Savior? Without a doubt. If someone wants my earthly life just because of my belief in Christ, so be it. I would give it gladly.

But…

Does my Savior want me to discard my life at the whim of some other (ahem) “transgressor?” I don’t think so. The life He gave me is a precious gift, I will protect it until HE deems that it is time for me to join Him… and that will be determined by Him whether or not I attempt to defend myself as I believe He expects.

Thanks for the reply, Matt.

Charlie

Thanks for the comment, I appreciate you taking the time to offer a counterargument.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what I wrote point-for-point, since your argument offers brand new points. Not that this is bad, it’s just that we now have different frameworks for answering the question coming up head-to-head but not really connecting.

It may be helpful for me to respond to you point-for-point.

In regards to ‘God in the flesh’ offering protection for the disciples, the Gospel stories never actually say this, this is merely an assumption you are making. I did imply that Jesus knew the disciples had swords and that his “‘new “instruction’ has exposed what they have already planned to do,” that is, he has exposed their violent intentions.

I’m not quite sure what you are trying to say by referencing Matthew 5:39. I completely agree with you, to strike someone on the right cheek (implying a back-handed slap) was an insult. This was a way to punish an inferior, that is, it is a slap that a social superior gives to a social inferior (like a slave, a wife or a child in the first century) in order to correct them. The normal response to such a strike was submission. Jesus teaches something different. A strike to the left cheek (implying a punch with a close-fisted right hand) was a strike between equals, not designed to shame a person but to harm them. The whole point is that Jesus is telling people to creatively assert their equality with those who slap them, as if to say “Go on, hit me again, your first slap did not do what you intended it to do. You cannot demean me.” It is precisely a nonviolent form of resistance, putting oneself in harm’s way to defy an unjust system.

Regarding Jesus creating a whip – this story appears not in Luke but in John. In any case I have written on it elsewhere (http://liferemixed.net/2011/06/22/who-would-jesus-whip/) and so I won’t go over it here. In short, my view is that Jesus uses the whip to drive out some of the animals, not the people (this is clear in the NIV translation, as well as others). If he used it to drive the people out of the temple, why are they still standing there at the end of the episode?

In regards to your last point, you are making another assumption. Indeed, the text never says what you assert. Actually I would argue it says the opposite in a way. In the book of Acts (the sequel to Luke), we find that the disciples never use violence for self-defence, but rather are willing to be martyred (some are). One explanation is that they disobeyed Jesus’ supposed command to use swords. The other is that following Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit they finally “got” what Jesus was on about. With this understanding they realised that Jesus was never telling them to use violence, but in fact the very opposite! From then on they walked in the way of nonviolence taught by Jesus, even unto martyrdom (traditionally the church has upheld that most of the early apostles died as martyrs). Out of these two choices it is obvious which I prefer.

Hope this is helpful. Peace,

Matt

Throughout His ministry, the disciples had the protection of God in the flesh. And, as such, He knew that some of the disciples carried swords throughout their travels with (and without) Him.

When He taught to “turn the other cheek”… it was the right cheek and offer the left, this indicates a backhand slap, considered a grave insult at the time.

Jesus himself prepared a scourge ( a whip similar to one that was later used on Him) from ropes. And he used that scourge on the moneychangers in the temple yard.

It is my belief that Christ was preparing his disciples for a world in which they would not have His direct (physical) protection. He knew that they were coming to arrest him… He knew that his followers had swords with them… He knew there was no time for them to go and sell their cloaks to purchase swords, as His arrest was imminent. But He also knew there was a time coming soon for them when they would be in the world, a cruel and violent world.

After a while, I decided it was a bit too much like saying a magic spell, and enquired why it was every day, rather than once a week or every ten minutes. The answer was that ‘every 24hrs seemed about right’ and that it was probably risky to leave it any longer. Hmmm – maybe God didn’t mean for us to develop such a complicated daily ritual that was surrounded by the fear that one might accidentally leave out an essential charm, sorry, prayer, and that we might not have sufficient grace to cover us; also, what about all those people who didn’t know the exact words/actions of the prayers/spells?

So although I encourage prayerful meditation on righteousness, peace, etc I now view the sort of prayer described above as quasi-new-age feel-good charms that give the user a positive rush and are a lot easier to say than breaking down some of the dark areas in your own life which attack from within. Not that your enquirer or many other honest Christians striving to do God’s will are intentionally taking that on – we’re only trying to ‘get it right’.