Curtis A. Bronzan

Got Kester Brewin’s new book Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures in the post today. Looks like the box had something of a difficult time en route from the UK, but the books inside are in good condition.

I can’t wait to get into it, but need to finish up some writing first (on Rene Girard, Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gianni Vattimo). I’ll try to post some of that here.

A while back Peter Rollins and Paraclete Press ran a competition of parable writing to mark the release of Rollins’ The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. The winner was announced last week via Rollins’ blog, and is none other than Kester Brewin, author of Signs of Emergence (The Complex Christ in the UK).

The parable is a sort of Žižekian parody of the well known Christian poem depicting life as a journey wherein God walks alongside us on the beach. When life was difficult, the author of the poem asks his Maker why during the difficult times of life God left him to walk alone. The response is, of course, that the one set of footprints seen in the sand was when God was carrying the author. Brewin’s reworking of the poem depicts, instead, the man carrying God:

The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when you carried me.

Alongside Rollins’ book title, this theological perspective is certainly heretical. As such, however, it reminds me of a number of things, including when ska band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones once defended themselves against riding the bandwagon, instead asserting that they had been carrying the bandwagon. Or, from a more theological perspective, Tom Waits’ song Road to Peace, which concludes:

And if God is great and God is good why can’t he change the hearts of men?
Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help
He’s out upon the road to peace

Or take John Caputo, who questions at the outset of The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event

Has not the name of God from time out of mind been associated with unlimited power so that “God Almighty” is practically a redundant expression? That I would never deny. I am not saying that power has not been a defining feature of theology right from the start; theology has been strong theology and religion has been strong religion, in love with strength, right from the gate. But I am suggesting that theology is a house divided against itself and that it lacks self-understanding to the point that it is intellectually bipolar, vacillating wildly between the heights of power and the depths of weakness. (The Weakness of God, 7-8)

There is no doubt an interesting conversation going on here between Waits, Brewin, Rollins, Žižek and Caputo (among countless others, including – I think – David Bazan). I certainly struggle with some of the ideas presented – especially when they limit the power of God – though I continue to affirm the centrality that we must start with Genesis 1, recognizing that all of humanity is called to co-creation and co-mission, to work together in remaking the world to what it was originally meant to be.

And, I will affirm the central message of the Last Judgment, that in caring for the created order we ultimately show devotion to the Creator:

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Which is what Brewin may have been getting at all along.