luke 7:20-23

"When the men had come to him, they said, "John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, 'Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?'" Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."  -NOAB

i've been thinking about this passage for a couple of weeks now. not in a helpful, personal-studies sort of way, but in an intellectual sort of way. and you could make a lot out of it. john, mr. intensity, displays an interesting mix of skepticism and willingness to believe - after all, you're asking someone who could easily lie to you to vouch for himself. it's also an interesting last line - not the follow me, obey me and you'll be blessed sort of message (which, to be fair, we tend to get from god, not jesus, and i will likely never break my JW habit of seeing them as different entities) but more like a don't fight against my purpose, don't get in my way and you'll be blessed message.

but what's *really* interesting to me is really the part that is 22. this is slavoj zizek, in what might be his own words or a paraphrase of frederick jameson: "Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism." that has stayed with me for years - we can imagine the end of the world easier than we can imagine an end to capitalism. and obviously the bible wasn't written in the heyday of capitalism. but there's something similar at work here, no doubt. i mean, really think about that verse. the blind see, the deaf hear, the afflicted are cured, the lame walk, the very *dead* are raised, but the poor only have good news.

i'm not trying to belittle that good news here. and yes, i get that this was new. nobody was bothering with the poor, and so this was truly remarkable, and i appreciate that. but what this also indicates to me is that even at that time, before capitalism, and even within the confines of christian ideology, we can more easily imagine a triumph over death than we can imagine the end of poverty. the poor are not given food and jobs that allow them to live with dignity. they're given the message, instead of being ignored. this is as good as it gets for the poor - they get to be part of the audience. and again, not trying to belittle. but, really, the dead can live again and the poor will still be there. they are so eternal we can't even imagine an end to them. i feel like maybe this says everything you need to know about the human race.

donald spoto - In Silence 2

Prayer as Petition:

-all prayer is petition, he says, because it is always an acknowledgment that we stand in need of god

(from Book of Common Prayer: "Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil." Unrelated to my primary concerns, but interesting for its acknowledgment on our interdependence. I could get into how we seem to forget this most of the time, but why beat that drum again? Could also say that our prosperity depends on the suffering of others, in the system we've adopted...)

-we don't tell god anything he doesn't know, so instead "our requests reveal us to ourselves, they interpret our desires and show us what is important to us" (52)

-"it is always tempting to regard prayer as the solution to a problem -or, worse, to all problems. But prayer is not a means of escape from the ordinary lot of physical and emotional life, which necessarily involves experiences of diminishment, darkness and dying. In fact, prayer is rarely the solution to any problem at all." (76) he suggests that we might think of god's will as god's willingness - to allow us to use our own will to make choices.

Prayer as Forgiveness:

-we tend to cling to grievances and our culture supports victimization and entitlement

-another reminder in this chapter that spiritual aridness can happen, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. it can be good, because apparently prayer should not only be for pleasure. it should be work, perhaps?

-much of this chapter tells me that i need to see myself in need of god's forgiveness, and this is why i forgive others. i sin, and thus others sin because we're all human, and they're in the same boat as me. says that "Forgiveness, the making right of my relationship with God, is something I need" (92). so it's practical in this sense - i do it because it brings me closer to being able to ask for the forgiveness i need.

-also practical because forgiveness is the only way to resolve difference and preserve life - it ends revenge, retaliation, and judgment.

Reflection:

the petition section is probably more interesting to me. i remember asking my aunt, when i was a kid, what happens to people who never had the Jehovah's Witnesses come and tell them the truth. and she said that god knew what you would have done with the truth even if you never actually heard it. so the witnesses were, in some ways, going through the motions, performing an unnecessary task. it was an act of service more than a requirement. in some ways, this seems similar. we don't really need to tell an omnipotent god anything, because it's all already known - even more so, presumably, because an omnipotent god would know both what we intend to say and what we *actually* need.

i like the idea that prayer actually is no solution to anything, perhaps mostly because it justifies my dislike of the "I Lift Detroit In Prayer" bumperstickers that always make me want to say "what else do you do? just this? does that seem sufficient to you?" and i also like the idea that we use prayer to help us think. martha nussbaum says that we tend to think that emotions are the opposite of rational thought, but in fact that are complex evaluations - emotions, what we grieve for, what we hope for, reveal to us what we value, and the things we value have gone through some sort of judgment in our minds. this seems similar. prayer shows us what we're worried about, what we hope for, what we believe.

the forgiveness section is more difficult for me. i have a complicated relationship with forgiveness. both my mom and my sister have been in al-anon at one time or another, but i never liked it. there's an angry core in me, i guess, that doesn't want to love the addict and hate the addiction, that doesn't want to focus on myself. forgiveness is difficult, even if it's more healthy, and anger is easy, even if it's exhausting. and it seems selfish. i should forgive others because it humbles me and brings me closer to god? it reveals to me how much i need god? what a self-centered reason to forgive anyone.

let me just say right here, though, that i know that "forgiveness" doesn't exist. i know that it's an ideal, and we can't ever actually get there. i even think it might be dangerous to think we can, because then we ignore or explain away lingering negative feelings. it's not important that we be able to forgive so much as that we *try,* that we never quit trying, and that we never quit trying knowing that we're always going to fail. and i think that this is important for exactly the reasons spoto mentions - it helps us move forward, it ends revenge and retaliation.

so why am i not okay with this idea that i forgive people because *i* need *my* relationship with god to be good? because i expect better of something like religion? i know that there's a part of me that is resistant to acknowledging that i need anything, much less god. that whole "surrendering to a higher power" thing is another reason al-anon never worked for me. i'm not good at it. and i'm less good at it when it's all dependent on this idea of sin. i can acknowledge the interdependentness of the world and my place in that, but what i have trouble doing is thinking of myself as a sinner. it's all bound up in The Rules that determine what is and isn't a sin, and i so often don't agree with the definitions. i know not everyone feels the way i do, but it feels to me like the "bigger" god is, the more rules he imposes on my day-to-day actions, the smaller he becomes. it diminishes god for me.

but how do you pray for forgiveness if your motivation is supposed to be getting your own forgiveness for things you're not really convinced are sins? although i suppose there's nothing stopping me from ignoring this, and praying for forgiveness just because i feel it's the right thing to do.

at some point i'm going to have to put all this together, i know.