I Hate Metallica's Black Album: It Sounds Like a Dusty Hillbilly

I don't hate many things in this life, but I hate Metallica's Black Album. It's not a festering hate. I don't even realize how much I hate it until it somehow comes up, and of course it's going to come up on the 25th anniversary of its release.

I hate it while knowing the album extremely well. I've listened to it countless times. At least once a year I listen to it for the ten millionth time just to make sure that I haven't missed something. My first copy of the album was the Japanese import that has "So What!" as the bonus track. As much as I hate the Black Album, I hate it ten times more for that stupid song. It cost $30 in mid-90's money and would be about $90 now if everything on it hadn't be made available for free on many different formats.

My friend Scott posted something about it online and I must've blacked out when I saw it. When I came to, this is what was on my screen. It's unusually cruel and dismissive of people who poured their hearts and souls into such a bad piece of art. They spent about a year on that album and I am so sorry they wasted their time. It contains some of the most recognizable songs in the history of radio, some of which almost fool me into thinking that they are good. That feeling usually dissipates soon after but not without me feeling guilty for falling for it all over again.

Any time I've put it on, I get a bad feeling in my stomach. Then I'm bored. Then I'm angry and a little embarrassed. I make a face like I just sipped milk that is in the process of turning bad, like I'm mulling it over when it was clearly a mistake, when the decision to ingest it was regretted far too long after my initial unease.

I feel most bad for the things I said about Bob Rock in the below. He's a person and he's probably very nice. He was just trying to make the band sound their best. He's very patient in the "Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica" home video (which was 2 videotapes long), trying to get Kirk Hammett to reach deep within to play the Unforgiven solo at a level he'd only hoped he could reach. He's so patient and professional and I reduced him to an assortment of bad hair and poor decisions. I hope that he never reads my theology/culture blog that has a readership of about 5 people.

Someone might say that people who write on theology and culture shouldn't write like this...but clearly they have never read anything by St. Jerome.

Thanks to Scott for the opportunity.

Ricky Martin in 1999: Latin America, Endless

When Dreams Come True

In 2014, Ricky Martin had already sang "Livin' La Vida Loca" hundreds, THOUSANDS, of times.

He was tired.

But it wasn't always that way.

Not in 1999...

Not on Oprah...

Or on Jay Leno...

On television, still excited...

At the Blockbuster Awards, getting tired...

Duets and diversification with Kylie Minogue...

In Italy...

..and in Monaco, an international star. 

With shaggy hair...

Finally he would have the chance to sing something else, something different... 

...but only for 2 short minutes...

Eternally sad...

...and forever exhausted...

...all because...

...his dreams came true.

Blessings and Curses

I have Hebrew class in about 45 minutes and this chapter isn't going well. It's Deuteronomy 28 and it's just piles and piles of unique vocabulary. Up to now I felt like a Hebraic rockstar and now I feel like I'm fumbling through the main riff of Iron Man.

It's also a depressing chapter, the blessings and curses that Israel takes upon themselves in accepting a covenant with God. They seem more than a little vivid and harsh but my Hebrew teacher passed on to me the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon, an Assyrian royal document from the 7th century BCE, giving a sense of a cultural milieu that wrapped the destinies of two parties into a binding and everlasting covenant, which neither party is looking to transgress, calling curses upon themselves if they do so. In Assyria this is between the king and a number of vassal princes. In Israel it's between God and Israel.

Plus, as uncomfortable as Deuteronomy 28 is, it can't really rival this treaty's curses. The line "may the urine of an ass be your drink, may naphtha be your ointment...may demon, devil and evil spirit select your house" really gives Assyria a leg up on imagining something that would make even an Eli Roth cringe.

But that's why context matters and why recovering the (non-homogenous, multivalent, and unceasingly fascinating) biblical world is important. We have so few strands that run through the scope of global human history that extend up through today, that reconnect us to this path that humanity has travelled over thousands of years and what has consistently mattered to us. Is this a story of gross insensibility? Of course not. The grotesque and extreme always finds its way back into the culture. If you're not sure of this, check your local Redbox.

But here in Deuteronomy (and even in the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon) these fates - some imagined but some real observations of illness, affliction and desperation - are to be avoided at the service of fidelity and honor. At weddings we say the words "til death to us part" not thinking of funeral parlors, embalming fluid, and coffins but it's all assumed and it's all there.

As much as I don't like the passage I remember that at the very core of this section (and this is apparent, not the product of creative readings) is the desire to bind ourselves irrevocably to the Wholly Mysterious, Wholly Other who communicates Himself not in silence but Presence and Providence. Where some see a gap we see an eye. Where some see neglect we see a hand hovering just below to carry and rescue. Faith isn't a flight of fancy but fidelity to one who is experienced as wholly faithful.

World War I and the Hell We Create

Franz Ferdinand, Whose Assasination Sparked a World War

I recently read that if we live in a "post" anything world (postmodern, post-colonial, post-patriarchal, or anything else), it's a "post-World War I" world. It's the single most important event in modernity.

It signaled the end of the confidence in the ability of modern technology, economics, national structures, and art to provide solutions in a new world. It reinvigorated old rivalries while bringing new innovations in mass murder. It scarred soldiers and redrew gender and family roles in their absence. The retribution of the victorious nations was so crippling to the losing nation that they welcomed a lunatic dictator who would give the world an unprecedented embodiment of evil.

I don't think that there is a single issue we deal with today that wasn't in some way affected by the First World War. It should shock us still if for no other reason then we don't flinch at mass violence in the media, at least not as much as our parents and grandparents did.

We're constantly swirling around a lot of big issues and controversies and tragedies but when we're in that mindset it's probably helpful to put things in perspective. I think that by going back to "patient zero" and reexamine the circumstances that brought in the era we live in today. It's all there: the weird "cause célèbre" of a scandalous relationship, class struggle, international politics, new technologies, national hubris, a myopic concern for particular issues over and against brotherhood and coexistence.

It's like no one wants to get along unless the other side changes. It's not even like we try to build bridges. We just want our enemies to disappear or at least change their mind (and even if they did they would never be trusted again...I don't think we're as much a culture of "forgiveness" than a culture of protracted penances that seem to ever go on unappeased).

World War I didn't happen because an Archduke was shot. It started with thousands of little things and attitudes that fermented and collided until it almost had to happen. At the beginning of the war it seemed like an adventure until it brought hell on earth. While we cheerfully goad and gloat at the people we don't like and the sides who are always wrong, when we welcome the conflict we shouldn't be surprised when we find ourselves living in a hell of our own creation.

A Pamphlet War in New Jersey

I just left a parish Mass in New Jersey while on vacation. I was flipping through their fairly innocuous collection pamphlets when I found these little gems peppered in with trifolds about Sacraments and the dignity of all human life.

It's a weak and cowardly move to leave pamphlets instead of talking to people. I hate the passive aggressive Christian pamphlets that masquerade as comic books or fake money to get you to say a special prayer with the suggestion to find a church. But these pamphlets are the opposite side of the same coin. Filled with presumptions, mischaracterizations, and, worse, zero real engagement. It deals with the impression of Christians found in the media or in random family members rather than an entire tradition. The same goes with some Christian mischaracterizations of atheists. Both hardly deal with the real thing because it's so much easier to drop a pamphlet than deal with the real thing, have a good conversation, respectfully disagree or concede each other's fair points, and to find common ground in a world of division.

The really sad part is that both sets DID have a common ground if the person who dropped them bothered to read the others instead of cowardly dropping a couple papers and running away. There could have been a great conversation in that. Both sets of articles affirm the "dignity" of every person. "Dignity" means the inestimable wealth of every person, which involves the complicated amalgamation of thoughts, experiences, values, and understanding that make up each of us. To treat people with "dignity" involves not seeing them as deluded idiots, the kind that can be swayed by a silent, uncaring pamphlet.

A Parable on False Gods, Faking Faith and Vertiginous Modernity

The best thing I read today:

Secretly Seduced By Science: Hasidic Atheists Lead a Double Life

The essay describes the experiences of Hasidic Jews who have lost their faith in God but who also stand to lose their community and families in the process. Instead of leaving them, they still live their lives within their tradition while trying to reconcile their newfound joy in personal enlightenment with their devastation at having lost something so integral to their identity and personal foundation.

Some of the stories sound bitter, some resigned and others are a little wry. But the theme involves the incruguity of their undeirstanding of the biblical Book of Genesis and modern science. This isn't a new story, though usually you don't see it from a Hasidic perspective, and it's at the crux of many contemporary science and religion debates. It's a crisis of faith and it's overwhelming to have so many doubts yet so few answers.

It's also avoidable. For ministers it is easy to trade in difficult questions -and the far more difficult realities that they force you to face - for pious platitudes. I do not believe that God is interested in pious posturing. I do not believe that God is asking a person who is imbued with, animated by, and themselves embody the same rationality that sustains His creation to accept absurdities. It's not fair to people who have serious questions to give them riddles if they're looking for answers. Yes, challenge a worldview that is radically materialistic, even to the ontological level. Yes, insist that divinity cannot be reduced to atoms and particles any more than it can be divided into turns of phrases and the accidents of grammar. But more than anything, challenge your own understanding of God because anything other than God Himself is an idol, a false representation, a concept masquerading as the real thing.

What's heartbreaking in all of these stories is that the people who they went to for answers didn't seem to engage with the real problems that they faced. If you're not willing to accompany them down a road that can challenge your own view of things then at least know enough to at least point them in the right direction. If a friend asked me to get them to Los Angeles I might not be able to personally get them to California but I can at least drive them to the airport. I think the greatest experts don't see themselves as experts. They see themselves as students who know where there own understanding of things ends and are honest about it.

When I began studying the Bible seriously -serious enough to learn the main biblical languages, serious enough to learn everything I could about the world that produced the people who made it, serious enough to make it my life's work (and I am by no means an expert)- I found that I had a pretty huge choice to make early on. I could either be an apologist for a bunch of things I didn't quite understand at the service of things that I thought would be challenged by asking hard questions, or I could just be open to what I was hearing. When I tried to the former, I learned nothing, confirmed suspicions, and became arrogant. It never worked and I would skim through the difficult stuff and posture an agonizingly putrid sense of authority. Maybe no one noticed it but I sure did. It's poisonous.

But I did a couple things that I think helped me learn more and, I believe, afforded me a much greater faith.

• Keeping an open mind - For every potential "deal breaker" that could potentially destroy my faith I found an opportunity. Realizing that the first chapter of Genesis isn't a science textbook doesn't destroy Genesis. It allowed me to learn more about the conceptual world of the priestly writer who saw creation as a great Temple to God where mankind is imbued with a great dignity. The idea that perhaps the early Israelites were originally Canaanites gave a whole new hope in resolving religious conflict. Dealing with the most violent stories of the Bible helped me see how those instances weren't granting permission to do likewise but cautionary tales whose consequences would have been missed without a proper perspective. 
  
• Trying not to be defensive - If my faith is so fragile that it can't withstand some difficult questions, then maybe I need to learn some more. If I can't handle being wrong, then I'm never going to find the right answer. If I can't keep my cool in a dispute then I really am being irrational. 
  
• Not mischaracterizing people who think differently and not mischaracterizing their opinions - What I love most about Pope Benedict XVI as a theologian is that he would always refuse to be anything but fair to other people's points of views. He could spend pages recounting an opinion before criticizing it and it would be done in such a way that the person who he was criticizing could hardly accuse him of being unfair. If someone puts an idea out there, it's intellectually dishonest to reduce their ideas just so you can deal with it better. You can't get to the heart of an argument unless you are willing to deal with it as it's presented. Sometimes an argument is framed poorly and needs to be reoriented. But if your going to venture having an opponent at least be fair to them. 
  
• Being fair but critical - ...and while you want to be fair to someone you disagree with you also have to be able to question assumptions, clarify loaded terminology, point out biases and so on. 
• Be okay with feeling dumb and being wrong - I read a quote attributed to Al Pacino that said "If you are the smartest person in the room then you are in the wrong room". Maybe it was Madonna. Either way, it's right on. I've been lucky enough to be around lots of smarter, older people with way more experience than me and I've always been better for it. In biblical studies you'll find yourself in the room with people who might know a few dozen languages between them all and have more abbreviations appended to their name than you could possibly discern. If you want to be the smartest person in that room then you'll have a lot of work to do. 
• Enter the debate - For every idea, there is someone else who can debate it. For every great point made by a Richard Dawkins there are a hundred responses that you owe to yourself to read if your going to take his as the right one. And those responses have responses. And so on. It doesn't end. If you hold up one quote or one meme or one bad example as an exemplar without offering a challenge to it, then you are no different than someone who uses the Bible to justify the belief that the cavemen rode dinosaurs. You got caught up in your thing and stopped there. It doesn't stop and you'll learn a lot more from the debate.
• Concede a point, even if it conflicts with yours - being right is severely overrated. The truth matters more and no one says you have to be the one that has it. The obsessive need to be right pales in comparison to being lucky enough to be around to hear or witness the truth for yourself. 
• Respecting those who came before - GK Chesterton referred to the "democracy or the dead", those people in history who are silent simply because they were too busy preparing the world for you. I think mostly of those respectable and kind members of our families who have passed on but left a tradition of faith and core values. I simply refuse to believe that my great-grandmother, who was one of the greatest witnesses to my Catholic faith in my life, was simply deluded at best or a fool at worst. As a kid I could tell that she had something precious and I'm still trying to understand it. 
  
• Not being the center of the world - My worldview is not the world. The way I see things is not the way. I am not the way, the truth, or the life. Only one person dared say that He was and that's a role I'm most happy to relinquish. Just because something doesn't make sense to me doesn't mean it's wrong.
• Praying - God is not a character in a book. My faith is not in a book. The "book" isn't even a proper book. It wasn't written in one sitting. It's the product of an entire tradition engaging with the real world and wrestling with their understanding of God, so feel free to do the same. They had powerful experiences of God and they didn't want you to read the book so it would all terminate in the book. That would be like a book on dating hoping to rope you into its pages instead of engaging a potential mate. Engaging God directly means being unafraid to shatter your idols, even if that idol is a lovingly recreated version of Him.

And that's really at the center of my heartbreak over that article. We make idols of God all the time. Any concept of God is ultimately an idol because a concept is your mind's way of reducing something so it's understandable to you. It's like someone who is obsessed about getting married and thinks they understand it without actually being married. The idea is not the reality. It's an invitation to the reality but it can also mar any meaningful engagement with that reality, especially when the object is the relationship itself and not the person that it is supposed to link you with.

Lastly, we have more access to information and more possibilities than anyone in history. With that comes a danger: we can confirm any suspicion or validate any bias. Working in ministry, I am tempted by laziness to gather a collection of platitudes and factoids as though they were snake oils in a charlatan's bag, promising to salve cancers and serious maladies with simple postures that ultimately offer no real solutions. They won't work for the day it matters most and my faith in a living God won't allow it. I can't face Him having faced modernity so poorly and having offered no real contribution to helping people to understand Him honestly.

Dissolving the Habit of Faith

I posted this a couple years ago, but it's still worth thinking about...

------------------------------------------

The passage above might not seem like a big thing, but it's been gnawing on my mind this last week.

This passage is from Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, a book from 1952 that presents Catholic teachings with the weight that each teaching has in the Tradition. For example, "de fide" teaching has the strongest level of authority and that includes things that deal with things that either God has Himself revealed in this tradition (either through the life of Christ and Scripture or through the wider Tradition, or something more or less "direct") or that has been declared with the formal teaching authority of the Church, which the Church understands as something given to it by God. This probably makes no sense if it's not your thing, but it's a 5-cent overview of dogmatic theology (dogma is a very dirty word in this culture, which should be unusual because it's etymology is basically related to the idea of a weighted teaching).

Other teachings carry a different weight. Some are theological opinions with varying degree of consensus, some are pious opinions, some are merely tolerated, and so on.  Knowing this stuff gives you a sense of how Catholic theologians think, agree, and even disagree about different teachings.

This passage is the one that's been getting to me. The big line is highlighted: "The habit of the light of glory dissolves the light of faith." It's an explanation of an oft forgotten Catholic teaching: that one day faith will become unnecessary and obsolete for us. In the Catholic tradition, faith is a way of "knowing", a way to get to a certain kind of "knowledge". "Faith" is synonymous with "trust", but just as we act on trust in our every day life (trust that certain people love us, trust that trains run on time, trust that our money has some kind of value, trust that traffic lights are programmed properly, etc) and we allow that trust to become a sort of knowledge (or at least a working hypothesis) that allows us to live our lives, so it is with our faith in God. 

But when our life is through, we no longer know God through trust or faith, with something that allows for the possibility of uncertainty. After this life, we know God through His glory (this is what the passage in the picture is saying). What is glory? We've more or less ceased to use this word in our every day lives (and have begun to lose the concept), but glory is an absolutely tangible expression of greatness. For example, I could refer to real things that I've done that I'm proud of as my "glory" or even my children (who I love greatly and am most proud of) as my "glory". God communicates His glory in ways that are both tangible (like in nature or in the presence of great Love or in the presence of His Son) or seemingly-intangible ("seemingly" because they refer to the metaphysical underpinning to reality, things that we think are less real but are in reality more intensely real).

If that last point is true (that being-as-such represents the ground, the basis, of everything real) then to be in the presence of God is to be in the presence of a Being who is "more real" than the reality we know. This life is the shadow, the next is the real deal. Because of that, we'll know God differently and it will be a far more immediate experience than anything we experience here. God will always be mysterious, whether in this life or the next, but we'll have a better grasp on what all that means.

Sometimes we get hints of this here in this life: when we experience a love that takes us out of ourselves, when we "transcend" ourselves in prayer or even meditation, when we come to a knowledge of something profound that shakes how we see the world, when we experience purpose. When its real, it's not an opiate or masking of reality. Rather, it uncovers reality. And the beauty of it is that most of us have had those experiences, whether we are religious or not, whether we acknowledge them or not. No matter what we make of those experiences, they most definitely point us to someplace and it would be wise to take a step in that direction.