Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

          Happy Thanksgiving, the one day of national gratefulness maybe, but (in all seriousness) a great time of spending time with family.  I'm in California using my family's Internet access to type this while some of them are finishing up their morning chores et al. before we all get to it.
          So, last night, at the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Jose, while going upstairs to the arcade/restrooms with my siblings, a video-game idea struck me.  I need a developer of NES-emulation software to take up this idea and help it toward its beautiful incarnation.  This video-game would be a racing game (like Cruisin' America and such) in which the player's avatar's Granny is riding along with him/her, complete with a small and Nintendo-esque picture of Granny in the bottom-right corner.  With each obstacle hit (railing, pedestrians, curbs, etc.) the player's avatar - the driver of the sports car - will hurl out obscenities (such as the classic #$%&!) in a cloud of anger; each time this happens, the portrait representing Granny will grow less and less enchanted, and eventually more and more angry.  The object of the race is to make it to the finish line as fast as possible and yet avoid making Granny too angry.  When Granny gets to the point of a grimace, a red face, squinty eyes, and steam periodically spewing from her ears, a bump or two more will end the race - Granny forcing your car recklessly to the curb, pulling the player's avatar out of the car, beating the player's avatar with a giant wooden paddle, and dragging the player off to the nearest bar-of-soap store.
          An alternate mode of play, thanks to my brother James's imagination: A points-race with a highscore board, in which the player tries to accrue the most points before ending the race; the catch is that, to earn points, one must activate an 'insult' button that says something nasty about the mom of the frat-boy sitting in the passenger seat.  The same rules apply as far as the hitting obstacles in addition to the insults, and the trick is to anger the frat-boy enough to cash a lot of points without making him so angry as to go bust.  And when you go bust, instead of the soap-store and paddle, it's just a downright drunken beating on-screen.
          It's called Cruisin' for a Bruisin', and I believe it would fit right along with the other retro-modern games that have been made in recent years.  Thank you for your time.

-r

Jesus and Your Heart: Holy Scriptures, Part 1 - Sola Scriptura or Sola Ecclesia?

          I will break into two entries the topic of Holy Scriptures as it relates to (1) 'asking Jesus into your heart' theology and (2) the theology of traditional Catholic teaching concerning God's salvific grace.

          The theology of 'asking Jesus into one's heart' is one of the many befuddling realities that resides within befuddling realities.  Make no mistake: it does make sense as a stand-alone systemme, and it has a wide constituency - that is, it can be sustained on sheer force of will and inertia.  In many protestant denominations/groups, it has reached the point of magisterial, dogmatic teaching - that is, it is a doctrine as undeniable as Jesus Christ's divinity.  Yet this is a befuddling doctrine, if it could be considered such, because it is an informal but iron-clad magisterial teaching in a broad group of people who generally deny magisterial teachings; it is furthermore a teaching that is curiously free of/with Holy Scriptures, taught among a broad group of people who hold Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) as a central tenet of faith.
          The less compelling (and more common) rendering of 'asking Jesus into one's heart' theology involves two proof-texts that evoke/serve a conceptual image.  First, the letter to the angel of the church of Laodicea is pulled into service.  In Holy Scriptures, in the Apocalypse of John, Christ knocks at the church of Laodicea (a particular church with particular issues being addressed by Christ), hoping to be allowed in by the congregation there to feast with them; this image is beautiful and complex in its original context (e.g. the imaginative repercussions of the presence of Christ in the feast of the Eucharist, 'breaking the bread' in the Gospels and feasting with His disciples), but this complex reality is promptly reinterpreted to be flatly symbolic of the individual (not communal, not individual among a context of community) 'sinner' (not believers).  Coupled with this, the less compelling argument furthermore asserts John 3:16-17 - that God loved the world and sent Jesus not with judgment but to save.  With these two snippets of Holy Scripture in hand, some protestant Christians proceed to describe a philosophical idea that has become all but a doctrine.
          The more compelling (and more complex) rendering of 'asking Jesus into one's heart' theology is that of the oft-cited Romans Road.  Even this evokes serious questions of interpretation: even though more proof-texts are employed than in the less compelling argument, they are still proof-texts.  Two-dozen verses hijacked are hardly more compelling than two verses hijacked.  However, without careful meta-queries (questioning the foundation/manner of the topic-at-hand itself instead of simply the topic-at-hand), this more complex argument is more compelling than the simple two verses coupled together.  I will consider the most stalwart proof-text among these mentioned, beginning with a Romans Road example which will serve as a general springboard for my critique:

          Romans 3:23 - The use of this verse is not so problematic as some of the other proof-texts used, if simply because we can generally look around us and see the effects of sin in our world; but this is a good starting point, because it clearly demonstrates the sort of simplistic interpretation necessary to sustain a 'asking Jesus into my heart' theology.  Verse 23 is Verse #23, meaning 22 verses have preceded it (at the least) and that, perhaps, many other verses proceed after it; and this is further complicated by the fact that there are two preceding chapters and, perhaps, at least a few chapters after it (and this is all, of course, going with the established chapters and verses, which were later additions for our ease of reading).  The thought strikes the casual observer of the Romans Road formula: 'Hmm, okay - but what did Verse 22 say? or Verse 24, for that matter?'
          It is certainly possible that 'all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' makes a general, individualistic philosophical statement.  Therefore, Jesus must have sinned.  'Well, wait a minute . . . '  Well, then we have an issue of interpretation and application here.  Who is 'all'?  To whom does 'all' refer?  But even with that assertion granted - that it is a general philosophical statement about each human individual - is this the only way to interpret this verse?  I would argue (as would many scholars and studied laymen) that Chapters 1-2 are important for Chapter 3.  In Chapter 1, St. Paul appears to condemn the Gentiles who have rejected the revelation of God, all of this in the very specific context of the Gospel/revelation/euaggelion of God being revealed.  In Chapter 2, St. Paul brilliantly turns the tables on any Jewish Christian who would lord their heritage over the Gentile Christians, noting that they too (even and ESPECIALLY with the Law) are guilty.  In this context, then, it is not so much a philosophical, non-contextual statement that 'all have sinned' but more that 'all [parties involved here] have sinned and fall short of the glory of God', Jew and Gentile; the Greek word pantes can indicate either interpretive choice - 'all' meaning every individual or 'all' meaning every element (i.e., here, every collective ethnic group) in the particular discussion at hand.  But the latter translation seems (to me) more responsible to what St. Paul was trying to say in the first place.  It seems to me St. Paul was trying to make a specific point about Jews and Gentiles (as whole groups) being guilty in God's sight.  Disclaimer for those who have leapt on me and no doubt will leap on me: I do believe in Original Sin, and I know for a fact that I am and have been a sinner - that is not the question here.  The question is whether St. Paul was trying to address a broad reality in a curiously nascent-modern, individualistic voice or else trying to address something altogether different.
          So, again, sure, we can translate Romans 3:23 to be an abstract, individualistic philosophical statement about every human being, and that is a valid interpretive choice; but it is not the only interpretive choice available, and this verse does have a context.  So what am I trying to say?  In conclusion, here we see a protestant tendency - as protestantism is a theological/philosophical movement within a particular context of Western civilisation and the Catholic Church - to interpret Romans 3:23 as an attempt on St. Paul's part to abstractly and individualistically address each believer in an across-the-board statement.  However, the protestant(s) who would make this interpretive choice generally do not realise that they are making an interpretive choice - one among at least one other choice - that in fact reveals their interpretive lense.
          So we proceed to the most solid citation of the bunch . . .

          Romans 10:9-10 - Well, this verse settles it all, right?  '. . . [I]f you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved: for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.'  There is no way to deny the straightforward message of these verses with their obvious individualistic - and incidentally modern Lutheran - slant.  Heck, even the 'you' here is in the singular!  So that settles it: St. Paul was a Lutheran theologian.
          To the protestant, this is all self-explanatory, but therein is the problem.  Protestants find all of Holy Scripture self-explanatory, and it just so happens that the explanation resonates with their theological lenses; and if they encounter something like John 6, or Revelation 11:19-12:6, or Christ's curious commands, or Pauline admonitions, or Jacobean reflection, all of this in Holy Scripture is considered mysterious/puzzling teachings, breezed over, and/or written off as metaphor, or symbols that fit within protestant theology, or otherwise matters to deflect.  Thus, the Jesus-in-one's-heart protestant automatically/implicitly makes an argument for silence, having no frame of reference for anything like a Sacrament of Confirmation or a Sacrament of Baptism or a framework within which the Church/local community/believer all have an interwoven Faith.
          It would certainly be a premature and unsupported assertion to claim that St. Paul is describing a modern, Latin Rite Baptism/Confirmation service; but it would not be premature or unsupported to suggest that St. Paul could be (and probably is) describing the sort of credal affirmation implicit in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, the affirmations that existed even in the earliest kerygmatic practises of the Church.  Such affirmation was not something considered a magical incantation that, upon being uttered, saved a person's soul; rather, the utterance itself was bound up in the grace being outpoured in the early Christian liturgy and Sacraments.  This would not distort the words here but rather understand them in a katholik context.  In other words, as with Romans 3:23, there are at least two interpretive lenses available here; one of these lenses takes Romans 10:9-10 in a stand-alone manner and argues for silence in such a way that potentially oversimplifies soteriology; the other lense perhaps - perhaps - makes an argument from silence, but it at least reveals in a historically and scripturally responsible way that there is a valid interpretive lense available revealing simplistic, overly reductionist renderings of Holy Scripture to be questionable.
          Furthermore, these two verses - ripped out of St. Paul's letter to the Roman church - can hardly be considered the end-all, be-all verses concerning salvation in the New Testament.  How do we arrive at such a conclusion of these verses' end-all/be-all status?  The answer: by assuming that all Christian belief and practise is bound to the text of Scripture, which is itself an interpretive decision.  These verses aren't even a complete sentence in and of themselves, implying on the most basic level a context outside of themselves.  To quote another wonderful snippet, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved' - so we must believe, period, monochromatically? there is nothing else to be said?  What about persisting in our sin, still 'believing on Him'? or what about loving God?  'Well,' we might go on to say, 'all of these addendums are included elsewhere in Holy Scripture, and they are practises implicit within the believing.'  Well, yes, I would largely agree - but these are also not summarised in these two verses.  Perhaps there are other verses that further illuminate the mystery of God's grace in His work of salvation - that is, particularly, in how this salvation shapes up in a formative way within the Church that Christ has empowered on this earth.
          In the next entry, I will explore a few key passages that show an early (and founding) understanding of baptism at the heart of God's salvific grace.  As with these two proof-texts provided in this entry, these passages can be interpreted from a protestant perspective and parsed out as such; however, the Catholic has never claimed that Holy Scripture is the one and only means of doctrinal/dogmatic revelation.  The Catholic Church is an actual Church taking up an actual, definable space which was established by Christ Himself with His authority, who is able to translate Holy Scriptures (which are - the fundamentalist protestant tends to forget - a phenomenon within the Church Herself in the first place).  For Holy Scripture must be translated, as we can see here, one way or the other.  The protestant (particularly the Jesus-in-one's-heart subscriber) has a trickier time navigating these issues, because supposedly the text translates itself and coincidentally translates itself in a way that is conformative to Jesus-in-one's-heart theology.


-r

Helpful Computer

Arts and Crafts, and Three Pieces of Lost Crap

Jesus and Your Heart: A Brief Aside Regarding 'Works-based Salvation'