Ship of Fools: Sex and violence

Thread: Sex and violence Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Knew that would get you.

I am reading Brian McLaren's works and have got up to A New Kind Of Christianity.

I've gone from Armstrongite (strict Sabbatarian, binitarian, dispensationalist, chilialist, Anglo-Israelite etc, etc) outsider from '68 to '97, a brief dip in to extreme charismatic, Evangelical from '05 to '08, then perichoretic (thanks to the reformed cult) to emergent.

I finally lost dispensationalism just this year. By another order or two of magnitude. So that has made me susceptible to Jesus being pacific in His return. I ain't lost THAT yet! His return. That He will not be violent. Now THAT is new. Head spinningly new.

I have argued for His pragmatism here for years. Especially His pre-incarnational pragmatism. Typified by the Flood - for which there is no evidence whatsoever I've known for some years - and Sodom and Gomorrah.

I now do not know what to think.

And as for sex ...

The strange thing is, SOF mainly polarizes in the liberal - traditional quadrant it seems, where neither sex nor violence are an issue, so I do not know what to expect. Over to you guys.

Posted by Bartolomeo (# 8352) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Over to you guys.

I've read your post through three times, Martin, and still can't figure out exactly what sort of reply you're trying to elicit.

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

Whatever response you wish to give.

My response to the OP title:

Yes please and no thanks.

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

I'm beginning to understand the appeal of the hell-call...

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Thank you Bartolomeo. Sorry!

I've ALWAYS been an apologist for the extremely violent God of the Judeo-Christian narrative either side of the incarnate God.

Brian McLaren makes a case for God either side of the incarnation being non-violent. I'd LIKE to be convinced, for the first time in my life, but I'm not fully yet. By a long way. For the obvious reasons that even after junking dispensationalism, seeing eschatology fulfilled - with figurative, spiritual violence attributed to God - if one squints a bit, in the C1st and now liberated and open, there are more questions than answers.

Jesus was a tad more than passively resistant and the Holy Spirit is apostolically attributed as lethal to at least three people.

And I'm REALLY not comfortable with rationalizing away the violence of God in the Old Testament, not because I want Him to be violent, but because it makes it all so socially evolutionary and makes God fade to a projection of the iterated idealized selves of generations of editors.

So is Brian merely being Marcionite ? I don't think so.

And I've ALWAYS been a conservative Christian - at least in theory ... ... with regard to sexual expression.

Again, Brian makes a case for there being an open, inclusive, broad, tolerant, evolving approach ... as there always has been. As David Instone-Brewer generously orthodoxly shows on divorce and remarriage. And the point is so well made that Christendom obsesses about 5% of human sexuality 95% of the time. My mind is open, but ...

I'm struggling to be generously orthodox when I thought I progressively HAD been for years !

Posted by Pyx_e (# 57) on :

Ah the unknown, unknown.

This world seems incapable of understanding that what God calls peace seems to be (to others) violence. Where He brings a storm calmed or a cross conquered all we see is waves and nails.

What to say? My mum once told me (when I was VERY young in faith) that when she died she was going to ask God “Why?” Why , the wars, the cancer, the broken children. My priest asked me that when I saw my God there would be anything on my mind apart from to kneel in awe and wonder. Yet some would see that kneeling as falling and subjection.

We are both incapable of seeing peace whilst eminently capable of see hurt. Maybe because we are so hurt, so violent, so uncaring we cannot see the truth. God’s love may break through my armour, is that peaceful or violent. It may feel violent to bring me to peace.

How can we know what we don’t know? How can we, so fallen, find words to describe Him? So we use fallen words, fallen images.

AtB, Pyx_e

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

There is a hymn, "They Cast Their Nets In Galilee", which unfortunately is copyrighted. Here is the last stanza.

The peace of God, it is no peace
But strife closed in the sod.
Yet brothers pray for but one thing
The marvellous peace of God.

Moo

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

It really depends on what you mean by violence. I was just thinking about how a lot of people seem to think that capitalism is better because it's less violent (state intervention at some point comes down to guns) except that causing someone else to suffer deprivation because of your own ethical negligence is in its own way a form of violence.

And I'm not as much of a pacifist as I may have been.

[ 16. August 2012, 02:31: Message edited by: Bullfrog. ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Pyx_e, Moo - MOST affecting.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Pyx_e:
....

This world seems incapable of understanding that what God calls peace seems to be (to others) violence. Where He brings a storm calmed or a cross conquered all we see is waves and nails.

....

Some people seem to understand it - I read a letter to a magazine (Philosophy Now) sometime back where someone (a priest but I forget the name) claimed that the Inquisition could be seen as a necessary "public health" measure.

It isn't the crucifixion of Jesus that troubles me, it's all the other genocide and torture. What great good came from Auschwitz? From the Armenian massacres, the great famines of China, the Soviet Union, Africa or India?

But even if you do think the woman (mentioned in another thread) who was raped, mutilated and had to watch her husband and children being murdered was just failing to see the positive side of the experience, you are still open to Bayle's argument that God is the sort of father who breaks his childrens' legs to show how well he can heal them later. Is that a good father?

A Christian pastor once told me that thinking of sinners would spoil my enjoyment of "the sweet scent of God's love". I'm afraid he was right!

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

quote:
What would that world be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality. But my people, she thought, know only how to deny. Born in the dark shadow of power misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding and unattainable light. All we know to do is fight. Any peace one of us can make in our life is only a denial that the war is going on, a shadow of the shadow, a doubled unbelief.

Le Guin, Ursula K. - Four ways to forgiveness. - London : Vista, 1997.

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

Bloody hell Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard - I reckon that atheism is not only rather more rational than theism but not believing in a god or gods makes life a heck of a lot simpler.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

As an irredeemable Christian, I couldn't agree with you more 'aitchDubbyerAh. And with your sig.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Sorry for the double post, but the Jamat YEC Hell thread has resurrected this:

quote:
Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: ... I wept at the loss of Anglo-Israelism, so I understand. This year, at 57, I lost dispensationalism.

Now the violence and sexual conservatism of God, in that order, are up in the air.

Freedom is frightening.

Evensong: Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: Freedom is frightening.

Yer a brave and faithful servant Martin. Many faiths would have crumbled under such pressure.

Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: ... MY faith did crumble Evensong, but it was replaced and that process continues yet: I made the mistake of praying 'Dominus illunatio mea'. Truly whatsoever we ask in His name, He gives.

As for brave. HAH! I don't have the courage to live with [the] alternative.

Pyx_e: God help you when you find out they are the same thing.

Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: They are inseparable it would seem, aye Pyx_e.

How pragmatic is God, how far and how liberal, how conservative ?

Sioni Sais: I would suggest that God is not pragmatic, but He is wholly merciful, and entirely liberal within His law and covenant.

Does that reassure you?

Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard
I wish it did Sioni Sais! I appreciate it nonetheless. We need a grown ups' thread on this.

And here we are. Mancunians welcome.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

You're very kind, Martin - but I'm not sure I have much to add. My PM was trying to be encouraging, but/and my trajectory is not in the same direction as yours...I'm finding more dogma, more compelling (or at least finding the meat hiding inside the dogma) - not stripping things away.

The key thing is there's motion, which implies life, for both of us, I guess.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

There is something called "the myth of redemptive violence" that plays a large part in our collective psyche - essentially, if we are violent enough to the right people, they'll stop being violent and we can all live in peace.

You can see this played out in books and movies all the time, where the good guys are pushed to the limit by the bad guys, and feel forced to respond not just in kind, but with such overwhelming force that they literally destroy evil.

The problem is, as always, that we have a tendency to be seduced by this myth. That we only have to kill x number of bad guys before they'll stop. That yes, we'll have to do the killing, and we'll have to carry the war to our enemies and defeat them totally, or they'll just come back for the sequel and do it again, but worse.

The further problem being is that it is, and has been shown to be, a more than adequate solution against our immediate aggressors.

Peacemaking is much less appealing than warmongering, in our own lives as well as our national lives.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Doc Tor. Have I EVER partially let alone completely agreed with you before? What's happening to me?

Eminem - I've marked your card for a dance.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

Over in Dead Horses (horrible hymns) I've outed myself as more of a waltz man, since you asked. And as a connoisseur of the latest audio technology, I have the 'Skaters Waltz' playing beside me on the Edison cylinder phonograph, as I type. Ladies and Gentlemen, take your partners please - before the spring winds down.

[ 23. October 2012, 12:32: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
someone (a priest but I forget the name) claimed that the Inquisition could be seen as a necessary "public health" measure.

We humans have this huge capacity for justifying and excusing violence (or any other evil) committed by our own side, whilst talking up our abhorrence of the same acts committed by the other side...

The connection between sex and violence lies in the male hormone. We have a society in which men marry at an average age approaching 30, which is unimaginably distant for the average 13-year old boy awash with testosterone. The day that sex-robots become cheap enough for adolescents to have them, the amount of violence in western society will plummet.

Until then, we'll continue to struggle with the problem of how to credit God with all the good things in life without attributing to Him responsibility for the bad...

Sorry, Martin, maybe I'd have to have read the book to appreciate the point you're getting at.

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

As troublesome as it would be, you need a primer on Freud. The idea that violence is remotivated violence that is sublimated into excessive focus on irrelevancies such as work might clarify. Any subordinate wolf knows you let alpha mount you and avoid being torn apart. We use this language unconsciously all the time when we screw each other over and bend over backward for someone and eff something up.

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