Natalie's Narrative

When suffering doesn't make the headlines

photo © 2010 Garry Knight | more info (via: Wylio)

 

In 2005, in the wake of Katrina and a devastating earthquake in Pakistan, I commented on the information overload we experience with 24-hour news channels, and how our "social location" can affect how we choose to react to disasters:

I get frustrated by the “information overload” that comes from 24-hour news channels, being at a Christian college where there’s always a campaign to help somebody, and access to the internet. Those things are good, but it gets overwhelming at times, and can possibly make us apathetic and de-sensitized to what is going on around the world. One person in my class shared a story about Chinese persecuted Christians. An American missionary told them about some Christians in Somalia who were being persecuted, so the next morning, the Chinese Christians got up an hour early to pray for the Somalians. Hearing that story was very convicting, considering the information with which I’m daily inundated and the utter lack of concern or action that I show. Seeing the effects of the earthquake in Pakistan really makes me want to get involved and help, but Pakistan is far away and perhaps I want to do more than just send money. The earthquake and other horrible things around the world, such as malnutrition and genocide, should not make us feel down and powerless; instead, they should make us all the more willing to look around our own social location to see what we CAN do.

But Kurt Willems, on the Red Letter Christians blog, said it much better last week:

[T]here can be a dark side to having access to all of the suffering throughout the world, however. Empathic capacity overload quickly overwhelms the senses potentially leading to post-tragedy paralysis.  We easily become convinced that this is just another tragedy that makes us sad (like Haiti, Japan, Katrina, etc), so we shut down and decide to do nothing.  Tomorrow the news will only get worse.  Empathy overload!

Follow this to its logical conclusion and what happens to our everyday lives in our local contexts?  The suffering person on the street corner by the Starbucks we study at becomes easier to ignore.  The need for healthcare and education in our inner-city becomes someone else’s problem.  And the most tragic result of this localized empathic paralysis is this: regular human needs that we encounter everyday do not make good headlines.  Therefore, needs that could be dealt with locally become overwhelming and global needs become our quick $25 donation justice fix for the next 6 months until the next disaster hits. This is the natural disaster of empathy overload.

His post made me wonder what needs I'm ignoring that don't make the headlines, but not at the expense of global needs.  There should be room for both. 

I also briefly wondered how we can become aware of needs if they aren't publicized like the Joplin tornado, but realized if we have isolated and ghettoized ourselves to the extent that our surroundings are sanitized from suffering, then we have a major problem.   We shouldn't have to rely on the media to tell us where the greatest needs are.  Rather, as the church we should already be there in the first place, having already built relationships with the struggling single parent or the person who is dealing with substance abuse. 

Women's bodies: Challies and theology in a vacuum

Blogger and author Rachel Held Evans recently critiqued the idea pervasive in American evangelicalism that a certain type of "biblical womanhood" is required of us, which means we cannot "let ourselves go," lest our husbands stray.  I wholeheartedly agree with Evans' critique and wish we had more women (and men too!) speaking up in this way.

Another blogger and author, Tim Challies, has responded to Evans.  I can affirm and appreciate portions of the response, but was left with a bothersome, nagging feeling...something was "off."  

As a longtime critic of leaders like Mark Driscoll, I can't help but speak up in this conversation.  So, in an effort to pinpoint what bothered me, I simply want to point out that we don't do theology and work out what Scripture says in a vacuum.  That is, if a middle-class white male wants to interpret parts of the Bible that appear to apply to women, we simply cannot ignore our American, consumerist context.

We don't hear about this issue often enough, probably because the loudest and most conspicuous voices in evangelicalism are male:  many, many women and young girls struggle with body image issues.  These issues are often fraught with complex, damaging relationships with food, exercise, other women, men, health...the list goes on.  

I can't even articulate how difficult it can be as an American woman to have what should be a normal, healthy view of her body.  We are constantly fed photo-shopped images of long bronzed legs, shiny smooth hair, poreless skin, and protruding collarbones.  The pressure for young girls is unbelievable.  Just google the word "thinspiration."  It will break your heart.

Women's bodies are used every day, all over the place, to sell things.  Women are constantly objectified, because of the meaning that our culture has assigned to our physical appearance.  A woman cannot simply be lauded for her intelligence or expertise on a subject - we just have to throw in a reference to her physical attributes.  

In an introduction to an academic lecture or a sermon (if she is even allowed to approach the pulpit), or in a newspaper article, physical descriptions are often included, such as "lovely" or a reference to clothing or jewelry.  I just read this description of a successful comedian and author in the NY Times: "[She] had on khaki pants and a blousy sleeveless top with small gold jewelry."  Do we feel the need to introduce or describe a man, before an academic lecture or in a NY Times profile, as handsome?  Do we mention whether his watch is gold or silver?  Very rarely, because to do so would seem ridiculous.

So as a Christian woman I constantly have to face these distorted images of what my body should look like, trying my best to call them out for what they are.  I have to be ever-conscious of the fact that women's bodies have been commodified and objectified in our culture, just to sell more things.  I have to be extra careful, in my workplace as an attorney-to-be, to prove myself based on my intellect and skill only.  And I can only hope my physical appearance is secondary rather than primary. 

It's tiring.  And I worry what it's doing to young girls who aren't able to name these sexist, consumerist, objectifying forces for what they are.  This is what our culture throws at us every day.  

What's even more worrisome and heartbreaking, however, is when the church is no different from our consumerist, damaging society.  Women and girls should be able to find redemption, healing, and new creation in the gospel, as worked out in our church communities.  Instead, we are told to choose "an attractive sweater instead of the stained Mickey Mouse t-shirt."  We are told to be "available" to our husbands.  I don't even want to unpack what the word "available" is supposed to mean.

Were I a mom, possibly struggling with post-partum depression, who has had a rough day attempting to wear the many hats we impose on women and mothers, and were I to read Challies' post, I would probably lose my shit, because some days we are lucky to throw on even a stained Mickey Mouse shirt.  Heaven help us.

Thankfully we do have voices like Evans' speaking up so that women--especially young girls--will realize that there is neither male nor female at the foot of the cross.  The radical message of Jesus deconstructs the devastating, objectifying, and not-good-enough images that are hurled at women these days.

Challies makes an excellent point that what is on the inside should inevitably reflect one's outward appearance, but even if he couches his emphasis on a woman's appearance in terms of "love" and "respect," his message comes across as no different from the one that bombards us in our consumerist society.  Yes, our outer appearance matters, but we absolutely cannot discuss the expectations of women's physical appearance without reckoning with the destructive, complex, and often-taboo issue of female body image and the effects of advertising.  To miss this important point would be an attempt at theology in a vacuum.

I do have hope that we can unpack this sensitive issue, especially as we move away from hearing exclusively male voices in evangelical-dom.  Any thoughts on Challies' response? 

Photo credit

Desperation

(Government of Chiapas)

Last week, the stomach-turning news broke that 513 migrants, crammed inside two tractor trailers, were intercepted in Mexico, en route to the U.S.: 

Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after traveling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright as the trucks bounced along from the Guatemalan border, and allow more migrants to be more crammed in on the floor.

The trucks had air holes punched in the tops of the containers, but migrants interviewed at the state prosecutors' office said they lacked air and water. The trucks were bound for the central city of Puebla, where the migrants said they had been told they would be loaded aboard a second set of vehicles for the trip to the U.S. border.

The majority of the migrants were from Guatemala.  One man remarked that staying in his hometown in Guatemala was not an option: "a lot of us are Indians, and we can't stay in our homes. There is no work, and there's nothing to eat."

There were also people from Japan, China, and Nepal crammed into the trailers, having trafficked themselves with outrageous sums of borrowed money, probably passing through several different countries.  (For an informative but heartwrenching description of what these migrants undergo, I recommend Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives.)

Reading about these horrors in attempts to arrive here reinforces the fact that no one goes through such harrowing experiences simply because they want to flout the law and avoid waiting in the (nonexistent) legal immigration line.

That 513 people (32 women and 4 children) are willing to scrape together $7,000 a piece and cram themselves into a trailer speaks volumes.  No one chooses this.  Rather, forced by economic desperation and hunger, people are pushed from their homes.  The pull is just as strong as the push: an immigrant can make six times more working here in the U.S. 

Each time a tragic report like this comes out, such desperation reminds me that our broken immigration system is exacerbating a humanitarian crisis.  And once undocumented immigrants arrive here, they are even more susceptible to exploitation, by virtue of being forced to live in the shadows.  

My more cynical side tends to view President Obama's recent immigration reform push as simply another move in the election chess game.  Whatever the motivation behind this renewed discussion, I hope we can be careful not to view immigration overhaul as solely an economic matter.  The millions of undocumented people here are not simply saviors of bankrupt Social Security or a source of young, cheap labor.  They are human beings who deserve dignity, and who have been through hell and back.

Also, many anti-immigrant groups like to paint the undocumented population as one-dimensional: simply lawbreakers.  But we can't forget that folks who have been forced to go this route often end up victims themselves once they get here.  What does a person whose "status" here is unauthorized do in the face of labor violations?  Nothing.  And many employers take advantage of this.  The same goes for many landlords and abusive partners.

So I try to keep this in mind during the immigration debate, along with the fact that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus themselves had to flee to Egypt shortly after Jesus' birth.  Following him, I hope I can take the side of these economic refugees, forced into horrifying situations, rather than take the side of fence-builders and exploiters.

From "Why me" to "I will follow"

Beal, in The Rise and Fall of the Bible, provides a clear description of the problem of theodicy:

Imagine the problem as a triangle: on one corner you have the belief that God is just; on the next you have the belief that God is all-powerful; on the third, you have the observation that people suffer unjustly.

It's a logical problem.  You can't hold the three corners of the triangle together.  So any solution to the problem of theodicy inevitably lops off one of them. (p. 160)

Some of us cut off the God-is-all-powerful corner, while others cut off the God-is-just corner.  Still others claim that no suffering is unjust.  

Beal notes that the Bible (remember, it's a collection/library) does not resolve theodicy.  Instead, it argues, wrestles, and explores different responses to it.  The texts end up "affirming the question over any and every solution" (p. 160).  Again, the Bible is not univocal, and we cannot reduce it as such.

Psalms 13 and 88, and Pharoah's hardened heart, stand in tension with the idea that God is always just.  This should rightly horrify us, and we feel the need to turn away.  These stories and outpourings to God cause discomfort, and so we seek reassurance.  But Beal points out:

[T]he psalm itself, indeed the Bible itself, doesn't turn away with us.  It stays with the voice of pain.  Even as it lingers in the hollow silence after Jesus' own lonely cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" [...] The library of the Bible has spaces to let suffering speak and be heard. (p. 161)

This way of looking at those troublesome passages of Scripture, and the troublesome suffering we experience today, is intriguing, but it still begs the question.  I still want to know why God would supposedly harden Pharoah's heart and render plagues the way She allegedly did.  The notion that humans are pawns in a cosmic game is disconcerting.

photo © 2010 NOAA Photo Library | more info (via: Wylio)

Aside from my lingering concerns, though, the idea that the Bible doesn't seek to resolve the tension of theodicy is compelling.  Perhaps we shouldn't expect the Christian faith to resolve those tensions either.  In the same way that Beal criticizes the expectation that the Bible is an answer-book, I've realized that I'm expecting the Christian gospel to provide an answer to the theodicy problem.  

In demanding that my faith provide answers it perhaps was not designed to provide, and in turn rejecting this version of the faith, I do it a disservice.  Maybe what is repugnant to me is not the failure of Christianity to solve the theodicy issue once and for all, but at the heart of it, it's a failure of the expectations that I've imposed.

Will Willimon recently remarked on Bart Ehrman and theodicy in The Christian Century.  In the context of the recent tornados that pummeled the South, Willimon acknowledges the limits of explanation, but comments that an Ehrman-like rejection of Christianity is not the only option:

No one around me at those locations of terrible destruction asked, “Why me? Why God?” Most of them were too busy, drenched in sweat, and dust from the rubble to pause to engage in philosophical speculation. Their most persistent question was, “How can we do more to support and work for the victims?”

And that seems very Christian to me. Jesus was not a great philosopher who came with a set of noble precepts and brilliant ideals. Jesus never said, “Think about me.” Rather it was always, “Follow me!”

Jesus was among us as a victim of horrible injustice. He offered us few explications of suffering and injustice; he offered himself as fellow sufferer. As Hebrews says, Jesus not only came to us but suffered with us. He offered us not reasoned explanations but rather empathetic, life-giving presence with us. He gave us not a great way to think about tragedy but a way of acting in and through tragedy.

The mindset of the tornado survivors who turned around the "Why me" question strikes me as very powerful.  In my cerebral, analytical way, I have begged God, Scripture, and my faith community to please give me an answer in the face of global suffering and my very own personal nightmares.  

The very fact that I've had the luxury to stop and think about suffering, analyzing the why's every which way, is telling.  Just like those in the U.S. who have had their houses leveled, I doubt that those without clean water and enough food for their children around the world care which theodicy-triangle corner to lop off at the moment.  

Yes, I still definitely struggle with what Ehrman dubs "God's problem," and at this time I'm close to lopping off the God-is-all-powerful corner.  But Beal and Willimon have reminded me that Jesus calls us to follow him where we are.  Perhaps instead of spilling liters of ink and writing wordy blog posts on theodicy, we should subvert those questions.  We can't be expected to first solve all philosophical problems, or expect the gospel to solve them, before we begin to follow Jesus.

The Bible story you never heard in Sunday School

Timothy Beal, in The Rise and Fall of the Bible, points out the story of Phineas, found in Numbers 25.  Israel is suffering from a plague, and Moses' explanation is that God is punishing them for their inter-ethnic marriages.  A priest, Phineas, discovers an inter-ethnic couple, and impales both of them on the same spear.  As a result, God then lifts the deadly plague, blesses Phineas, and promises him an everlasting priesthood.  Today, many white supremacist groups rely on this story to bolster their ideas of racial and ethnic purity.

Chapter 7 of Beal's book paints the Bible as a library, a collection, rather than one univocal book.  In fact, the Greek word for Scripture was "ta biblia," which is a plural form of book or scroll.  Due to mistranslation, a word that was supposed to signify a collection of biblical literature now represents a single, unified, authoritative text. 

photo © 2009 K Sandberg | more info (via: Wylio)

Beal quotes the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who fleshed out the idea of "impoverishment by univocality."  When we force a text to be univocal, having one voice, then we miss out on its richness.  Beal writes, "To interpret with the goal of 'getting to the point' about what a text really means is an act of impoverishment" (p. 147).  Not allowing the contradictions, tensions, and ambiguities to stand is making the Bible out to be something that it isn't.

Beal highlights the polyvocality of the Bible, to avoid forcing our univocal expectations on it.  He points out many instances of contradictory stories in Scripture - too many to name here.  Many are well aware of the contradictions.  

But Beal makes an excellent point that hit home.  This polyvocality can become difficult for those of us who emphasize the Bible's message of love and nonviolence.  

The Bible has been used to both support and abolish slavery.  It has been quoted to both oppress and liberate women.  It has served as fodder for both warriors and peacemakers.  As a progressive Christian, I get very uncomfortable, especially when I read stories like the one in Numbers 25.  Beal notes:

Countering such atrocious uses of biblical literature is not so simple as calling them misrepresentations of the Bible.  We must face the fact that stories like that of Phineas are there, generating suspicion of ethnic otherness and motivating violence against others in our midst. (p. 156)

Reading the text honestly, Beal remarks, it's difficult to deny that the text is a source of both oppression and liberation from that oppression.  If I'm going to accept the God-is-love message of the Bible, I have to come to terms with all of the Bible, even the parts that I want to push away.  I can't pretend that the verses that seemingly support a white supremacy movement aren't there.  Beal explains:

When we pretend that, deep down, all the voices are really saying the same thing and ought to be able to get along, we forfeit our responsibility as inheritors of this richly, sometimes disturbingly, contradictive literature. 

I am posting my thoughts about this book as I'm reading it, so I don't yet know where Beal will go after this.  It's times like these I wish I weren't a layperson, and that I had a biblical studies and/or theology background.  However, I don't think it should take a seminary degree to work out one's faith in the face of a Bible that can be disturbing to that faith at times.  

I will be sure to share what, if anything, Beal proposes. (Ah, how I so want everything to be all figured out and presented to me in a tidy box.  I'm afraid it won't be the case here...)

Space for "the other"

I noticed this description of three people in a book I'm reading: "I overheard a conversation between two dark-suited, middle-aged ministers and a young African American woman..."

I know that the mention of suits implies the ministers were male, but this description immediately bothered me because it demonstrated how the white male is the norm, while anyone who is not a white male requires a qualifier.  This happens all the time - if a writer describes a person but does not include the person's race or gender, we as readers are to assume that person is a white male.  These kinds of implied, assumed references constantly remind non-white and non-males that they are the "other."

Due to the fact that U.S. American, middle-class, white males tend to dominate discourse and our society in general, I make an effort to point to the "other."  I try to avoid considering myself a "voice for the voiceless," because that notion, while well-intentioned, can be problematic.  I don't claim to speak for those who allegedly cannot speak, nor would I ever want to.  

photo © 2009 Rupert Ganzer | more info (via: Wylio)

But I do make a conscious effort to ensure that my little corner of the web does not exclusively interact with ideas by the majority.  This is why, although straight, I try to add my voice to the chorus of those in favor of compassion and acceptance of the LBGTQ community.  This is why, although white, I try to focus on the global church and minorities within the U.S. 

Efrem Smith has another excellent post up, this time discussing the phenomenon of black leaders being "relegated" to black communities only.  I put the word relegated in quotes because it implies that leading a black community is an inferior duty.  Smith's point is that, often, a black CEO, college president, pastor, or principal leads predominantly black institutions.  Thankfully, however, with the election of Obama, we may be seeing a reversal of this trend.

Smith's post reminded me that this phenomenon occurs in other contexts.  Many feminist scholars are women.  Many Latino studies professors are Latino.  I know of too few gay rights activists who are straight. 

I wonder what would happen if those in dominant, majority positions "specialize" or lend some of their space to those who are marginalized?  I wonder what would happen if those whose existence is the norm, who don't need writers to qualify their race and gender, would devote their thesis or career to the "other," who are constantly burdened with adjectives?

Repost: A Rapture Parable

photo © 2010 Lauren Tucker | more info (via: Wylio)

 

In light of today, I thought it would be fitting to re-post this.  I originally shared Peter Rollins' parable in February 2010.  Enjoy.

Peter Rollins is an excellent allegorist, and he posted this modern-day parable about the Rapture on his blog.  It turns the escapist, vindictive, misguided belief in a Rapture on its head:

Just as it was written by those prophets of old, the last days of the Earth overflowed with suffering and pain. In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through the earth with Death upon its back and Hell in its wake. During this great tribulation the Earth was scorched with the fires of war, rivers ran red with blood, the soil withheld its fruit and disease descended like a mist. One by one all the nations of the Earth were brought to their knees.

Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly realm, God watched the events unfold with a heavy heart. An ominous silence had descended upon heaven as the angels witnessed the Earth being plunged into darkness and despair. But this could only continue for so long for, at a designated time, God stood upright, breathed deeply and addressed the angels,

“The time has now come for me to separate the sheep from the goats, the healthy wheat from the inedible chaff”

Having spoken these words God slowly turned to face the world and called forth to the church with a booming voice,

“Rise up and ascend to heaven all of you who have who have sought to escape the horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing. Come to me all who have turned from this suffering world by calling out ‘Lord, Lord’”.

In an instant millions where caught up in the clouds and ascended into the heavenly realm. Leaving the suffering world behind them.

Once this great rapture had taken place God paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying,

“It is done, I have separated the people born of my spirit from those who have turned from me. It is time now for us leave this place and take up residence in the Earth, for it is there that we shall find our people. The ones who would forsake heaven in order to serve the earth. The few who would turn away from eternity itself to serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life that passes from existence in but an instant”.

And so it was that God and the heavenly host left that place to dwell among those who had rooted themselves upon the earth. Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for the world and thus who bore the mark God. The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of forsaking it.

 

And you survive.

  

I usually don't listen to contemporary Christian music.  But one artist, Natalie Grant, came out with a song a few years ago, "Held," that breaks me every time I hear it.  

Who told us we’d be rescued? 
What has changed and 
Why should we be saved from nightmares? 
Were asking why this happens to us 
Who have died to live, it’s unfair 

[...]

This hand is bitterness 
We want to taste it and 
Let the hatred numb our sorrows 
The wise hand opens slowly 
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow 

Like many who have struggled with grief, I had a hard time keeping the faith (I still do).  A little over a year after losing my dad, a friend from youth group, a Marine, was killed in Iraq.  By this time, the fog and shock from grieving my dad's death had lifted, and those still-open wounds hurt to the touch.  I was also struggling, as a new pacifist, to deal with the confluence of the church's complicity, U.S. policy, war, and the loss of such an amazing young man all at the same time.  It was a dark time.  

photo © 2010 Robin Riat | more info (via: Wylio)

Each time a loved one would pass, it would just wreck me and bring everything to the surface again.  An especially low moment was Kenny's unexpected death.  A high school basketball coach, family friend, and fellow church member, his decline in a matter of weeks thanks to a brain tumor dealt a crushing blow to the bits and pieces of faith I had been trying to pick up.  I literally had thoughts like, "We live and we die and that's it.  And God is cruel if she even exists."

The losses that I've experienced after my dad's death have ended up serving as a gauge of my faith.  In the aftermath of Jan's passing a few weeks ago--an especially devastating loss--I noticed this time that I didn't spiral into bitterness and despair.  Yes, it's still painful and difficult, but somehow, this time, God was a healer, rather than the object of my anger.

Matthew Paul Turner shared a post yesterday, about how pointless it is to try to scientifically assert or disprove the existence of heaven or God:

When the topic at hand is “provable” only by faith, the less helpful and constructive, in my opinion, these types of conversations become.

Why? Because the reasons people believe and the reasons people are skeptical are personal and often complicated and are usually very difficult to explain. And when we’re debating big topics like God and heaven, it’s easy to become so caught up in our own story and belief and passions that we forget to consider the story and beliefs of the one we’re debating.

He continues, discussing his belief that Jesus rose from the grave:

It's a belief that, for some crazy reason, I can’t escape or leave behind or forget or “unbelieve”. And not because I’m afraid not to believe it. But because it does something to me.

But I have no proof that Jesus rose from the dead–nothing physical or scientific or measurable or anything that would impress somebody[.] 

I have no proof of the resurrection, but for some reason, the fact that Jan's funeral was on Holy Saturday caused something to click.  Honestly, I haven't felt God's presence since my dad died, and I feel like such a failure to admit that.  I've completely lost that emotional, comforting connection that many Christians claim to feel, and that I felt in the past.  

But for some crazy reason I still feel a longing to follow Jesus and to continue to hang out with these messy Christian folk.  Like Turner, it has done something to me.  Although I can't prove absolutely anything, and at times that darkness and bitterness creep up again, I can't unbelieve.  

I'm not sure why I'm still drawn to following Jesus, but I think part of it is the hope and transformation and community and renewal that Christ and his church offer.  Actually, I can't put it into words.  So, thankful that I've survived this round of doubt somewhat intact, I think I'll just allow myself to be held for now.

If hope is born of suffering 
If this is only the beginning 
Can we not wait, for one hour 
Watching for our savior 

This is what it means to be held 
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life 
And you survive 

This is what it is to be loved and to know 
That the promise was that when everything fell 
We’d be held  

An alternative to the rapture...

With some Christians claiming recently that the rapture will occur this Saturday, I'm reminded again of a richer, more transformative alternative to premillennial dispensationalism.  

Premillennials' interpretation of the book of Revelation holds that a rapture (as in the carrying of Christians to heaven) could occur at any moment, say May 21.  Afterward, a leader dubbed "the Anti-Christ" will rise to power.  I'm radically oversimplifying this, but after much bloody battle and other events, eventually Jesus will return and all of God's promises will be fulfilled.  We will finally experience complete redemption at this time.  As a Southern Baptist, I used to believe that this sequence of events would literally happen.

After I learned an alternative viewpoint, I'll admit that any talk of eschatology and prophecy previously weirded me out.  What a shame, though, because the church's living in the already/not yet, of considering ourselves to be in the "end times" -- maybe an N.T. Wright-esque "fifth act? -- can be such a powerful idea.

photo © 2008 Mattias | more info (via: Wylio)

Eschatology literally means "final matters," and in the sense that St. Paul understood it, it provides a great context for ethics.  The cross and the resurrection were, to Paul, apocalyptic events, creating a rupture in time that ushered in the new order.  Paul is constantly keeping this in mind as he outlines his ethic, because to him, the church can only find its appropriate role in light of its eschatological significance.  Ushering in new creation is the church’s role.  New creation entails reconciliation and living out the subversive, prophetic, anti-violent gospel.  The church is located at the juncture between the old order and the new.

But a powerful thing about this type of eschatology, that premillennial dispensationalism sadly misses out on, is the idea that this new creation is now.  Paul’s focus on eschatology does not devalue the present, and does not provide for an ethic that ignores what we are dealing with now, such as environmental or social justice issues. It does not fixate on a date on the calendar, for which we simply wait because Jesus won't establish new creation until after a certain sequence of events has occurred.

The church’s living out of the apocalyptic gospel leads to activity rather than passivity (much of this I'm drawing from Richard Hays, by the way).  Also, the church is supposed to be a sneak preview of God’s final redemption of the world.

It's true that in Revelation the church is encouraged to remain steadfast and hold on to the hope that Christ will come soon, but Revelation is still a subversive, political text.  The church's allegiance should be to God’s kingdom first and foremost.  Revelation encourages political resistance, because Christians are only to acknowledge God as their ruler. 

The ethic of the kingdom is a subversion of the current-day political rule, because Christ-followers are not to coerce or rule by force, but to submit and to suffer.  So the church, if it were to actually live this out now instead of waiting for the next era, is living with the tension of already/not yet.  

I found this on the Open Source Theology website, which is a much better articulation of what I'm trying to say.  This article discusses the church's prophetic role, and draws from John Howard Yoder:

When incarnation moves out of the simple historic arena and into a properly construed communal context it requires that serious attention be given to a hermeneutic of peoplehood. It is within this setting, particularly, that the “one who prophesies” (1 Cor. 14:3, 29) serves as anagent of direction for both the community’s singular moral/ethical stance and as a motivator for the world at large. Ecclesia that conforms to this rendering of peoplehood happily embraces its own identity in terms of theo-political categories, preferring in fact to situate itself in the very midst of worldly concerns with communally prophetic intentions. Furthermore, when ecclesial life is so conceived, Pauline and Johannine contrasts (Romans 13 and Revelation 13) turn out to be less about differing states and more a reflection of the enduring ambiguous reality of any state. It compels the church to be a community of prophetic dissent, not apolitical but hyperpolitical, offering more original, creative and intensive ways of realizing a healthy polis.

The eschatological orientation of missional community of this sort, therefore, is both affirmed and intentional. It reasserts an ardent Christology by articulating what James McClendon (assessing Yoder’s contribution) refers to as a “politics of resurrection." It interprets the work of God in such a way that juxtaposes hope in the cumulative results of human achievement with hope in Yahweh who raises the dead. In this manner, Yoder situates the prophetic purpose of missional community within an eschatological framework that is deliberately anticipatory in nature. If communities of this kind have recourse only to their primitive origins, their social engagement cannot help but be severely limited and temporal. Far more resourceful are those that envision themselves as collectively progressing toward the future of Jesus Christ. “The people of God,” according to Yoder, “is called to be today what the world is called to be ultimately.” [bold emphasis added]

The Bible as (post)modern

Via Maggi Dawn, I found this great post by Jonathan Evens, a vicar in a church in the UK, which points out how modernist literature and Scripture are similar:

Maggi Dawn has noted in The Writing on the Wall a similarity between the middle style of Dante which moves between different modes of expression and the way "the Bible tells its stories, moving backwards and forwards between primitive and sophisticated forms, and covering a wide range of genres, again conforming to Dante’s ideal of an unmediated accessibility to God." Dawn uses the standard image of a small library to describe the diversity within which this movement occurs: "Its stories are not laid out chronologically, and it is the work of so many different authors, in different genres and from different times, that although it seems like a book it would be more apt to call it a small library." 

[...]

Similarly, Gabriel Josipovici, in The Book of God, quotes James Barr’s comment "about the Bible needing to be thought of not so much as a book but as a cave or cupboard in which a miscellany of scrolls has been crammed." He notes that "many modernist works might well be described as more like cupboards or caves crammed with scrolls than like carefully plotted nineteenth-century novels or even fairy stories and romances." As a result, a "generation which has experienced Ulysses and The Waste Land[...]" should be to view this image of the Bible positively more easily than would a generation "whose idea of a book and a unity was a novel by Balzac or George Eliot."

Evens points to the "modernist generations’ ability to recognise the diversity of scripture and to note the significance of the movement backwards and forwards within its form..."  

Although Evens uses modernist literature as an analogy for Scripture, the backward-and-forward, non-linear descriptions sound postmodern as well.  And just like Evens highlighted the modernist generation, I think that many postmoderns can understand the Bible in a unique way.

By postmodernism, I am referring to the idea that the world is a linguistic, social, and cultural construct.  Context is important, as is deconstruction of power, authority, authorship, and discourse.

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N.T. Wright, in a great example of this construct/context view of the world, employs a metaphor of a five-act Shakespeare play to describe the authority of Scripture (or rather, an alternative to an UN-postmodern notion of authority).  The fifth act is unfinished, however, because the church is to act it out for themselves.  Wright's metaphor hints at ideas in Evens' post: a backward-and-forward motion, and drawing stories together.

The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand.  That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution.  This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again.  It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.

This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities.  Among the detailed moves available within this model [...] is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus.  The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end.  The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. 

Chris Ridgeway also discusses the idea of Scripture as a drama in his thesis he has shared on his blog, and acknowledges its postmodern character.  Chapter 2, drawing from Kevin J. Vanhoozer, includes the following:

[H]ow then, does the church faithfully perform the script of scripture? Vanhoozer asserts that the actions themselves are generated by Scripture—"canonical practices." Genres of scripture provide much more than a taxonomy, but set directions and rules for fitting participation. Drawing from Russian literature professor Mikhail Bakhtin, he finds that speech genres are actually "life genres"—literature falls into generic types because certain human situations regularly recur. Genres of scripture such as recounting history (narrative), praising God (psalms), cultivating the fear of the Lord (wisdom) are communicative practices that instruct, mentor, and call for participation.

The stories in the Bible reflect our human situation, which is not a carefully-plotted novel.  Rather, these stories are part of an ongoing drama that we get to act out.  Whether these ways of looking at the Bible are drawn from modernist literature or postmodern philosophy, they seem compelling...