Conference Preview: Do You Have A Zombie Plan? Part III

It doesn't take long in this life to see particular groups of people peeling off the major interstate of human relationships into their own provincial enclaves.  This can be geographical (as in the small towns that recycle their populations) or metaphorical (as in the cliques that arise in schools and morph into adult subcultures).  Everyone within reach of this digital word finds themselves in the midst of some subculture or homogeneous people group.  It could be the good ol' boys in Rayne, Louisiana or the hipster Christians of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  It could be the Old Row fraternity scene at the University of Alabama or the Crips in South Central Los Angeles.

It all goes back to the idea of good ol' bootstraps, self-generated identity. And identity is always the reservoir of self-assertion and, thus, suffering, violence, judgment, and fear. As one of the Bloods on a Gangland documentary said, "If you ain't Blood, you're my enemy." Similar but less ominous attitudes appear in other subcultures. Imagine walking into a University of Georgia sorority party with an 80's bouffant hairdo and acid-washed jeans. Even (especially?) the Christian subculture (whatever form that may take in your town) is much more about cultural ethics, politics, language, and subtleties than God's Law.

But, what about the coming zombie apocalypse?  What position do all of these individual members of their respective subcultures find themselves in as they realize they are being stalked by the living dead?  Is there something universal here that we will be forced to recognize?  Come to the breakout session "The Zombie Apocalypse in Christian Thought" at the Mockingbird Conference to think about and gird yourself for the coming zombie horde.

Willing to Sympathize

Thesis 14 of Martin Luther's Heidelberg Disputation: Free will, after the fall, has power to do good only in a passive capacity, but it can do evil in an active capacity.

One of the greatest rock 'n roll songs of all time is also one of the most controversial.  Especially in the day and time it was written and recorded, "Sympathy for the Devil" by The Rolling Stones rendered the Christian subculture aghast and continues to do so up to this very day.  Mockers gleefully play it as a middle-finger tribute to Christianity while believers sheepishly admit they love the song with eyes lowered and feet kicking the dirt.  Seeing past the instinct to be reactionary (the threat to identity) always seems to bear fruit and, in this case, it bears much.

Luther (in the thesis above) discusses the active and passive capacities of the will with a strong pessimism about the former.  The Bible is rife with descriptions of the human race trying to be "as gods" (Gen. 3:5), bumping and crashing into each other at high speeds with maximum density.  It is as if the serpent's temptation is continually re-playing itself throughout history.  "The snake inside every man" as Robert Mitchum says in the great movie The Enemy Below.  The story of human interaction in the race toward self-deification.

It is here where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards firmly place Lucifer in the song:
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The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church

From Dad Rod and our friends over at New Reformation Press:


Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on "The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church" from Faith Lutheran Church on Vimeo.

Roscoe P. Coltrane

A little humor...

Perfect Power Casts Out All Love

Two excerpts from the biography Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicling the early religious education of Joseph Stalin:

The Empire's seminaries were "notorious for the savagery of their customs, medieval pedagoguery, and law of the fist," comments [Leon] Trotsky. "All the vices banned by the Holy Scriptures flourished in this hotbed of piety."

The seminary was to pull off the singular achievement of supplying the Russian Revolution with some of its most ruthless radicals. "No secular school," wrote another seminarist, Stalin's comrade Philip Makharadze, "produced as many atheists as the Tiflis Seminary." The Stone Sack (nickname for the seminary - DB) literally became a boarding-school for revolutionaries.

One of the great arguments of the theology of the cross is that God clearly reveals Himself in creation (Rom. 1) but, contrary to the teaching of a lot of natural theology, the human condition (or our skewed reason) is such that all of that becomes academic. He is as imperceptible to us as He could possibly be. For that reason, we go into Romans 2 and 3.

The interesting thing is that, even though God reveals Himself in suffering in the cross, clear revelation doesn't register at all. We are still so impressed with power and assertion that we turn the Christian insight, which is clearly the opposite of our idea of power, into power. If we could only convert Congress to Christianity, then everything would be OK. We would have the power brokers on our side. If we could only get people to behave a certain way, everything would be OK. So, we'll really earnestly engage in behavior modification.

The problem is that when Christianity is the vehicle of what impresses us (or if it becomes the manifestation of we believe to be right... Romans 2 and 3 again), then it ceases to speak to us and begins to scold us. Take the seminary that Joseph Stalin (!) attended. It was stifling. They forbade Hugo, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and a variety of other profound authors and engaged in coercion to try and produce the sort of behavior they wanted. Almost utterly devoid of the sort of love and encouragement that the Christian faith embodies. The place where last-ness meets last-ness. And we got Joseph Stalin and a bunch of revolutionary Bolsheviks.

It's the same result with the Crusades (we are dealing with the repercussions of that today!), power-wielding prelates, and hard-ass Bible colleges and seminaries that try to mold people into their own image (how many atheist and wounded refugees from that world have I spoken with? It's heartbreaking.).

Anytime straight-line (Capon) power and Christianity are mixed, disaster happens. What impresses us is just not right. What we stumble on and decry as foolishness is, in fact, what is right and profound. And every Christmas, we see it. Right there in the manger. Pure vulnerability, weakness, love, and compassion. Last-ness reaching out to last-ness. Why do refugees from the Church come back on Christmas? Well, it's just not too hard to figure.

Alcohol and Pills

Fred Eaglesmith's Alcohol and Pills

Fame doesn't take away the pain
it just pays the bills
And you wind up
on alcohol and pills

Do You Have a Zombie Plan? Part 2

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:5-10)

I hope you (like me) are really getting into the new AMC series The Walking Dead. Great story, great acting, and great cinematography. You see the zombies walking around people's middle-class homes or around a downtown area and it just looks believable (and terrifying). In the midst of this, there is the drama of realistic human interaction with this post-apocalyptic (zomb-pocalyptic) scape and it just rings true. Much like the fight over racial tensions that we looked at in the previous post.

There is something other-worldly, though, that happens in both Episode 1 and 2. And it is as surprising as it is touching. Rick Grimes is the sheriff's deputy who awakes from a coma only to find this terrible new world and reality have replaced that which was familiar. He cannot find his family and there are precious few survivors. In addition, he keeps running into zombies who want to eat him alive.

The first zombie he sees in Episode 1 is a really pathetic one. She is quite disfigured (picture included in the poster) and everything below her torso is unusable. Still, she wants to kill Rick just as much as any of the others do. After Rick later gets his bearings, regains his strength, and arms himself, he returns to the place where he first sees this particular zombie. She has crawled away so, at great risk to himself, he tracks her down. He then does something very un-Woody Harrellson-like. He looks at her with great compassion and says, "I am so sorry that this happened to you." He then painlessly puts her out of her misery.

In Episode 2, a group of survivors kill an exceptionally motivated and virulent zombie. After finding out that they are trapped and zombies identify potential victims primarily by smell, they decide to use the dead one as a source of "zombie grime" that will help them slip past unnoticed (gross, I know). Before they "harvest" the grime (which is not a scene for the kiddies, by the way... as if any of this is), Rick takes out the zombie's wallet and finds his name. There is some money and a photograph or two of his family. In a way, he eulogizes what was once a very real and motivated threat to life and limb. A sense of compassion enters the scene.

This reminds me very much of a section of Paul Zahl's book Grace in Practice called "The Relation of the Un-Free Will to Compassion". Here is a portion of that section:

[CONTINUE READING]

Do You Have a Zombie Plan? Part 1

Do you have a zombie plan? This is a hot question right now, right up with “What do you do for a living?” Of course, my answer is always an emphatic “Yes!” How could you not? In the event of a zomb-pocalypse, my family and I will lock all doors, retreat to the attic (via the pull-down attic entrance), cut the cord that enables someone (or someTHING) to pull down the steps, and eat and drink stored provisions. Then, during a lull in zombie activity, we will make a break for the truck, drive out to rural parts and become southern Ted Kaczynski-s. Of course. Wouldn’t you? Like Y2K.

The impetus of all this planning is shared by the novel World War Z (which is going to become a movie) and the new AMC Original Series The Walking Dead. The latter is a series I have been both eagerly anticipating and powerfully dreading at the same time. You see, I saw Halloween a little too early in life and it severely diminished my ability to watch horror movies. I have to do so with a steady diet of fast forward, mute, and walking out of the room. And having the wife laugh at all your coping mechanisms makes you really feel manly, let me tell you. The great fascination of human interaction with abject terror remains, however, so the compulsion to watch the new zombie show has been too great to resist.

The zomb-pocalypse. The post-apocalyptic world. The Heavy Metal-ish/Book of Eli-type of fantasy in which dire and mortal circumstances necessitate a clear purpose in life. A purpose stripped of the trivialities, bored cruelty, and mundane-ness of present living. It is accented heavily by the happy possibility of humankind united in that one purpose. Bully together with victim, black with white, liberal with conservative, American with Iranian, ‘N Sync with New Kids on the Block. In the zombie genre, Shaun of the Dead has a lot of these ideas. It stars a borderline washout who becomes the person he always desired to be in the face of the adversity brought by a local infestation of zombies.

The Walking Dead, however, is very much like its sister AMC series Mad Men and Breaking Bad. They all have in common the decidedly un-optimistic depiction of the tragedy of human identity creation and maintenance. Reformation-style anthropological pessimism. The bondage of the will, if you wish to use theological lingo. They depict the idea that human beings are inherently and inextricably enslaved to their need to self-deify while provoking a dramatic re-think of optimism with regard to the human condition.

In Episode 2 of The Walking Dead, there is actually a fist fight on top of a roof between a racist redneck-type (what would a show based in the South be without one?) and an African-American. The racist guy says he would never take orders from a [censored racial epithet] and the black guy attacks him. After a really rough fight scene, the racist just turns out to be meaner and nastier, so he wins. Imagine that. The dead are walking around on the street below, indiscriminately hostile to all human life, and these two guys are re-hashing (now outdated) old beefs. Crazy, right? But the issue is the impermeability of the human need for an identity that he can lever himself upon. No charity or outside intervention needed here.

So, with these great AMC series, we have seen that neither positive incentive nor extreme negative pressure can fundamentally change the bondage of the human condition. Keep them coming, AMC.
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Zombies and Existential Angst

I was recently wandering around on iTunes U (looking to expand my provincial horizons) and found this series of podcasts devoted to zombies in film. Can you guess what university this came from? You guessed it... The University of Alabama. Roll Tide! We might not be Ivy League but we know our zombies, by God.

Anyway, this podcast actually tackles some interesting facets of human experience which are brought to the surface by zombie movies. Things like racism, religion, consumerism, and the specific fears of successive generations (like nuclear war, holocaust, biological disaster, and some others). Things that we discuss here on Mockingbird! Now, the hosts aren't Hubert Dreyfus and Gerhard Forde (so don't expect face-melting brilliance), but they do talk about some interesting topics and dance around some important ideas.

Enjoy!

NOV 19&20! God's Grace When We Need It Most: The Gospel For Hard Times

This November 19th and 20th, please join us at Christ Church in Pensacola, Florida, together with our special guest, The Rev. Dr. Paul F. M. Zahl, as we take an in-depth look at how God’s Grace can find us and transform us even in the midst of difficult and trying times.

This mini-conference takes the same approach as this blog (hopefully!): accessible to both believer and nonbeliever alike, culturally-engaged, theologically passionate, and, despite the heavy subject matter, fun! We also anticipate that it will be a time of extraordinary warmth, humor and fellowship - a great opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet some new ones. If you can't wait until our annual NYC conference in the Spring, this is your chance!

Dr. Zahl will be giving two talks: Revisiting the Gospel Message: Grace Again and Connecting with the Gospel in and Through the Culture Around Us. John Zahl will speak about Grace in Addiction; David Browder will treat us to The Theology on the Cross with Meat on the Bones (and Horseradish on the Side); and I'll be on hand to present Broken on the Wheels of Living: Grace in Suffering.

AND DON'T MISS THIS! In addition to the main conference, Dr. Zahl is leading a special "pre-conference seminar" on preaching during the day on Friday. Even if you're not a preacher, it's going to be amazing. Come if you can.

The cost to attend the main conference is $65 ($85 after November 1) which includes dinner Friday and lunch Saturday; The cost to attend Dr. Zahl's preaching pre-conference during the day on Friday is $75 ($95 after November 1) which includes lunch; The cost to attend both the main conference and the preaching pre-conference is $120 ($150 after November 1) which includes lunch and dinner on Friday and lunch on Saturday. The deadline to register is November 15. Childcare is available.

Follow This Link For More Information.

Follow This Link To Register.

Ivan Karamazov and the Devil

Young Man Blues

"...much of what teenage boys talk about is wild-eyed or unrealistic. A father has difficulty hearing a teenager's exaggerations for what they are - an experiment in thinking or a necessary calibration of an unfolding identity. When a father hears foolishness, he sees a fool. He fears a collapse of character and intelligence, or an unacceptably cavalier attitude about the future, and he's quick to try to set his son straight."

- from Raising Cain

The Brain Hemorrhage and the Nosebleed

"When school is not a good fit for a boy, when his normal expressions of energy and action routinely meet with negative responses from teachers and classmates, he stews in feelings of failure – feelings of sadness, shame, and anger, which can be very hard to detect beneath that brash exterior. Unable to “talk out” the emotional pressure, boys typically act out through verbal or physical aggression that walls them off emotionally from others, straining or severing emotional connections to the people and circumstances they find painful. And the worse a boy behaves, the more he invites negative reactions from teachers and other adults.” (Raising Cain)

My wife and I just found out we are having a little boy in December and it has been quite a joy to ponder all the mud puddles, puppy dogs, ball games, and baited fish hooks. It has also been an opportunity to re-acquaint myself (this time non-objectively) with the thought of Professor Rod Rosenbladt (on fathers and sons) and the documentary and book Raising Cain (h/t to Aaron Zimmerman for recommending it).

It is amazing how things that are actually true dovetail in the form of analogy. As I go through Raising Cain, I will pause to share interesting insights from the book as they lend themselves to analogy of the insights of the Reformation. In the particular piece I shared above, the analogy is to sin as condition rather than action. Bondage to self-assertion rather than free will acting through objective choice.

I usually describe it to my class as the difference between a brain hemorrhage and a nosebleed. If there is a brain hemorrhage (internal) and its symptom is a nosebleed (plainly visible), it is always our first instinct to treat the symptom without regard to that which we cannot see. So, we stuff Q-Tips up our noses and call it a day. But it is a symptom! Its status as outward manifestation is totally irrelevant compared to the brain hemorrhage that exists away from plain view!

Listen to what Jesus says in Mark 7:

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The Preaching of the Law

Romans 7:7-11 (ESV) What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

The Mockingpolitics of Soda Tax (or Co-Cola if you live in my neck of the woods)

"...we have a problem with "sin taxes," such as the penny-per-ounce surcharge on sweetened beverages championed by CDC Director Thomas Frieden. Most of us would probably agree that we'd be better off if we drank less soda, but any government action designed to control consumption puts us on alert. A tax is far less likely to induce reactance than an outright ban, but we feel queasy whenever we think The Man is trying to influence our behavior. In the case of the sugar-sweetened-beverage tax, which has often been referred to as a "fat tax," our discomfort is greater because the measure seems to encourage finger-pointing. In defense of the proposal, New York Gov. David Paterson has said, "Someone has got to contribute to the $7.6 billion the state spends every year to treat diseases from obesity." Those who are not obese may feel that they should not have to pay for the "sins" of the fat people over there, the ones creating the problem. Those who are obese are likely to feel shamed and persecuted. And we all recoil at the thought of the government trying to regulate our bodies."

Read the whole article here.

You're going to have to peel my cold, dead hands off my Co-Cola. - DOB

Repost: Fathers, Sons, and the Reformation, Part II

"...Go forth into the world, there thou wilt learn what poverty is. But as thou hast not a bad heart, and as I mean well by thee, there is one thing I will grant thee; if thou fallest into any difficulty, come to the forest and cry, "Iron John," and then I will come and help thee. My power is great, greater than thou thinkest, and I have gold and silver in abundance."

- From the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Iron John

If there is one thing I have noticed over the years about the male gender, it is the need. There is an interesting contradiction in the masculine. On one hand, he will run up the stairs of a burning World Trade Center tower to rescue survivors, cover a live grenade with his body in order to save his friends, endure unspeakable torture in order to keep faith to his country, and defend his family's home to the death. On the other hand, a negative word from a father or respected elder will fold him like a house of cards. There is a deep, deep need in the inside of a man.

The industrial and technological revolutions of the past couple of centuries have done a lot of good in terms of material prosperity and quality of life. The ill it has done, however, is to take fathers away from their sons at critical junctures. Gone are the days of the father teaching the son about seasons of planting and harvest, the habits of the whitetail deer, and the various uses of particular timber stands. Of course, these skills are not the important thing. What is important is the amount of time spent with the son... that the son is worthy of time and effort and vitally important to the family.

The industrial and technological revolutions have placed a premium on a high level of expertise. They have also created a workplace away from the home and that leads to the father's absence for most of the day. Boys are placed in schools which are often geared toward feminine ways of learning (a good documentary to watch on this subject is Raising Cain). Frustration sets in and self-worth deteriorates. The essence of who he is seems to be obsolete and even frowned upon. He then grows up and the same pattern is repeated with his son. The need of the boy to be affirmed by an older male is acute and underestimated by society.

Sadly, the male reticence about expressing emotions is frequently assumed to be indicative of emotional hardness. Nothing could be further from the truth. A denial of blessing often leads to a quite desperate young man.

[CONTINUE READING]

Repost: Fathers, Sons, and the Reformation, Part I

A little over a year ago, I posted the following series on how the theology of the Reformation addresses the relationship between fathers and sons. Since the material was taken completely from the famous (and truly pivotal and historic) talk Professor Rod Rosenbladt gave in Birmingham, AL in 2003, I thought it would be good to repost it for new eyes. It is no stretch to say that these talks in 2003 re-oriented the course of my life and the lives of many others.

In November of 2003, I was attending the Cathedral of the Advent in Birmingham, AL and just beginning to understand the Gospel and its implications. During one service, it was announced that the Rev. Dr. Rod Rosenbladt (LCMS) was flying in from California to give a seminar on how the theology of the Protestant Reformation interacts with father-son relationships. My decision to attend was a benchmark in my understanding of Jesus Christ and who He is. I could probably even trace my call to the ministry to Professor Rosenbladt’s presentation (to listen/obtain, visit New Reformation Press - the indispensible online center for all things Rosenbladt- and Reformation-related).

In this post, I wish to discuss the Reformers’ (particularly Martin Luther’s) insight into justification as it relates to masculinity and identity. Later this week, I will discuss the Reformation’s doctrine of justification as it relates to imputation and blessing. Big words that will hopefully make more sense when I'm done.

One of the most striking things Professor Rosenbladt said in his presentation was; “Masculinity is not 12 gauge. It’s .410.” For all you New Yorkers whose idea of comparison is Gucci and Prada, a .410 is a much lighter and smaller bore shotgun than the 12 gauge. Usually, small-in-stature kids who are just beginning to hunt use a .410. I, personally, use a 12 gauge for ducks and turkeys. For the purposes of our conversation, the 12 gauge makes a considerably louder “boom” than a .410.

It’s this loud “boom” in perceived forms of masculinity that manifests itself when a true father is not present. As Professor Rosenbladt quipped, the lack of a father looks like the movie Heat, i.e. Al Pacino and a bunch of .223 AR-15’s. It is a desperate exercise of inventing what a man is perceived to be; the idea that masculinity means actively creating one’s own identity. Asserting itself to the detriment of others, often violently and certainly unethically (as we have seen in the recent economic crisis). It is a mindset of fatherless men that is driven by fear. Fear of accusation, condemnation, failure, and impotency.

What breaks the chain is a driving away of this fear. You cannot be left to create your own identity in a world this big and mean. It is pure futility. You need the arm of a father around your neck. In theological language, you must passively receive your identity rather than actively create it.
[CONTINUE READING]

Good Friday

The Distinctives, Part III

Article 12 of the 39 Articles of Religion...

XII. Of Good Works.

Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.


1) Automatic for the People - R.E.M.
2) Songs from the Heart - George Jones
3) Change - The Dismemberment Plan
4) Spirit of Eden - Talk Talk
5) Black Music for White People - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
6) Wait Long By The River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By - The Drones
7) You Have the Right to Remain Awesome - Electric President
8) Let It Bleed - Rolling Stones
9) It Just Comes Natural - George Strait
10) Halos & Horns - Dolly Parton

The Distinctives, Part II

From our Anglican 39 Articles of Religion...

XI. Of the Justification of Man.

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

1) Beggars Banquet - Rolling Stones
2) The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Pink Floyd
3) Space Oddity - David Bowie
4) The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
5) Gimme Fiction - Spoon
6) Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not - - Arctic Monkeys
7) Something Else by The Kinks - The Kinks
8) Uh Huh - John Cougar Mellencamp
9) Good News for People Who Love Bad News - Modest Mouse
10) If You Want Blood You Got It - AC/DC