Judas: Saint or Villain?

It's funny that Jared should make the request that he did.  Just this last week I read this in "Christians at the Cross," which is a book of  Easter week sermons by NT Wright:

"... those of us who are used to hearing the story of Judas Iscariot may be a little hardened to it, and we need to remind ourselves what was actually happening.

Judas was one of Jesus' closest friends and trusted companions.  Trusted?  Yes: he kept the

 purse.  He was the treasurer... you give them a great temptation to misuse their trust, but

 Jesus presumably had trusted Judas, at least in the beginning.  We of course look back on the story and we know from early on that Judas was the traitor, but nobody else knew that at the time.  In the story we've just read, when Jesus says, 'One of you is going to betray me,' they don't all turn round and point the finder at Judas and say, 'Oh yes, we all know who that's going to be.'  They were all worried: it isn't going to be me, is it?  Only Jesus knows.  Judas is one of them.  He has been part of it all, has seen Jesus heal lepers, preach the gospel, raise the dead.  He's done it himself, casting out demons in Jesus' name, watching God's 

power do new things.  And now...

We don't know why Judas did it" (Wright 34).

What do you think?

Why did Judas do it?

Have turned Judas into a villain?

If so, does he deserve it?

Music

Unfortunately I've been kind of busy and uncreative lately and that has resulted in my lack blogging.

What I've got for you today is some of my musical inspirations.  Most days, as I work in my office, I have soundtrack music playing.  I love movie scores.  It works for me as I work because they are instrumental (I always get distracted by lyrical music... I end up singing along) and evocative.

So here are just a few of my favourite composers:

Joe Hisaishi performing one of his songs from the movie "Spirited Away."

Here's Hans Zimmer performing music from "Pirates of the Caribbean."  

It's not my favourite of his compositions, but it's sweet to see Hans rocking out on the guitar!

And, of course, since I'm a big LOTR fan here's a clip of Howard Shore's score:

I hope that you enjoyed these.

What do you listen to?

Why?

And because I'm temporarily out of compelling ideas:

What should I blog about next?
Any ideas?

148

How big is too big?

This is a question that every growing church or organization has to ask itself. This is especially an issue in churches (like mine) where one of the "growth engines" is relationships or fellowship or community or however you want to describe it. It's kind of ironic that people are drawn to community yet the more people that are drawn the harder it is to maintain; the very thing that draws people to the church is endangered by them being drawn into it.

As I've been thinking about these sorts of things over the past year or so, I keep coming back to Dunbar's Number: 148. Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist who has stated that 147.8(usually just referred to as 150) is the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships." Of course, he has done a crazy amount of research pointing from primate colonies to hunter/gatherer groups and tribalism, to military organizations (Ancient Rome's military units were 150 strong), etc...

Dunbar has given a pretty large margin of error for his number but has a "95% confidence interval of 100 to 230." As our church attendance nears 200+ I begin to wonder, "what do we do now?" This last year I met a pastor from BC whose church had planted several times. He said that once they got close to 150 they began preparing to split and plant a new church. I have no idea why he chose 150 but it does line up with Dunbar's number.

The fact is that the bigger a church gets the more likely (and maybe even necessary?) it is that cliques form in order for people to maintain a sense of closeness and connectedness with at least some people in the church. After all, if you can't get to know everyone you have to know someone.

Outside of the church there is a movement called "Neo-Tribalism" which is partially based on Dunbar's Number. This is a movement of people who say that, with the increase of globalization, the foundations of society have fallen apart. To combat this they have formed "tribes" of people who live (literally or even virtually) together. They base many of their principles on the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others.

Christian Anthropologist David W. Shenk describes in his book, "Global Gods" the strengths of African Tribalism. He says that tribalism can be summarized as "'I am because we are, and we are because I am.' The person can exist only in community, and community can thrive only through the harmonious involvement of the person. The relationship between the person and the community is reciprocal, creative, and life enhancing."

I think it is safe to say that life in our contemporary society is far from "reciprocal, creative, and life enhancing."

What do you think?

So where does that leave each one of us?

What about the church?

How big is too big?

What do you think about Dunbar's Number?

What do you think of Neo-Tribalism?

More than Scripture?

Following up on the heels of my sermon from this last Sunday (which proposed that we need more than the Bible for our spiritual survival) here is another offering. On Sunday I asserted that we need community to survive. If you want to discuss that we certainly can but I'd also like to propose what has come to be known as the "Wesleyan Quadrilateral."


John and Charles Wesley were the 18th Century-Oxford-educated-brothers who founded the Methodist Movement. While I certainly don't buy into all of their theology these guys did some pretty sweet, radical things. They also preached in cool gowns as can be seen in this picture of John on the right.

Anyway, John proposed that we can know God in four different ways (hence the whole "quadrilateral" thing) and that without all four our relationship with God is incomplete and unstable. Thus the analogy is often of a square (4 sides) or of a 4-legged stool. Without 4 sides a square is not a square... without 4 legs the 4-legged stool will not hold weight, etc. You get the idea.

John's 4 ways to know God are usually summarized as:
1. Scripture
2. Tradition
3. Reason
4. Experience

In his own words, "… the Holy Scriptures [scripture] stand first and foremost, and yet subject to interpretations that are informed by ‘Christian Antiquity’ [tradition], critical reason [reason] and an existential appeal to the ‘Christian experience’ of grace [experience].”

So, while I know that evangelicals tend to get pretty squeamish when it sounds like we're taking any steps away from "sola scriptura" I think I stand closer to Wesley than Luther on this one.

Wesley very appropriately puts scripture "first and foremost." I don't think any of us would have any arguments with that. But while it is good that we hold firmly to the scriptures they cannot stand alone. We have only to look to our fundamentalist "cousins" to see what happens when people hold to nothing but the scriptures. I think they could use a little reason and experience to balance things out.

#2 poses a few more questions for a lot of evangelicals. Many evangelicals balk at the very mentioning of the word "tradition." They picture priests and monks quoting obscure "saints" alongside scripture as if they had equal authority and all sorts of stuff like that. However, most of this is myth.

Pretty much all denominations (including Catholics) that give any sort of credence to tradition define tradition as Wesley does: the "interpretations that are informed by ‘Christian Antiquity’." Tradition is simply the way in which others have historically interpreted scripture. I don't have much of a problem with that. In fact, according to this definition, any time that I quote someone in a paper or a sermon I am appealing to some sort of tradition.

#3 is reason. I don't think many of us will argue with this one either. We have all seen how people have used and abused scripture or misrepresented the Christian faith because they weren't using their brains. In order for us to properly interpret scripture (and thus create a healthy repository of tradition) it requires that we think critically. Without critical thought we are lost.

But reason needs to be balanced out by experience. I appreciate that Wesley said this back in the 1700s otherwise people might just think that this is a post-modern thing. But no, we need to recognize that the way that we interpret scripture and all of our critical thought is shaped by the ways in which we have (or haven't) experienced God in a personal way. I love the way John Wesley puts it: "an existential appeal to the ‘Christian experience’ of grace."

Of course, each one of these four could be expanded on but I don't want my posts to be too long or people will stop reading. The only remaining thing to be said is that in order for the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to work properly none of the 4 can contradict any of the others. All of our traditions, our thoughts, and our experiences must be consistent with the Word of God and visa versa.

So, what do you think?
Are you comfortable with all of these?
Are there any of these 4 that you are more or less comfortable with?
In what ways can the Quadrilateral help us in our Christian walk?