However… (you knew it was coming)…
I think you’re looking at this strictly from an anti-war perspective. I think you forgot to think like a family member of a soldier… and you are just that. Yes, you mentioned that your brother is deployed currently, but let me remind you that we are not currently under a draft, nor have we been in many years. Each of our soldiers now have chosen to join - including my brother and yours. Some, yes, joined because the government and military have become pros at making joining look glamorous and offer perks that make it difficult for some to turn away from (i.e., money for college, bonuses,etc… and perhaps that’s why your brother joined. Regardless, they made a choice to do what they felt was necessary. They signed the papers.

I think what got me was that you mentioned “warriors are not the highest class of men (contrary to the speech the general gave at Joe’s memorial service).” Many of our soldiers serving are also His faithful servants - fulfilling the shoes in both roles (the warrior and the peacemaker). If it were your brother inside that flag-draped casket and his General that was speaking to his honor as a “high class” of men, would you disapprove? Can you honestly say that you would make the same remark as above to the face of your friend Joe, or his mourning mother?

No war is glorious. Lives are lost. It is not what He had intended. But it occurs, often, and is unlikely to cease anytime soon - there are too many people on this Earth unwilling to open their minds to change. You have said to me many times that God has a plan for everyone. What’s to say that this isn’t the plan He had for Joe? Or your brother or mine?

I’m curious what you have to say. You know me, always up for good conversation.

Having read Smith’s article, I’m still trying to get my head around his notion that believing a “church (or any other community) is at best a collection of consenting adults” is a bad idea.

Smith says his claim will sound counter-intuitive, and it does. Precisely because he criticizes the deconstruction of the church vs undecontructiveness of the kingdom as setting up a false dichotomy and then proceeds to argue the results of that false dichotomy with his own false dichotomy of liberal/conservative. His is a false dichotomy because the hypocrisy and self-righteousness he criticizes aren’t due to political ideologies.

He criticizes modern liberalism for its emphasis on self-interested “whims” toward community and thinks Jesus expects a “fundamentally communitarian and anti-liberal conception of persons and community”, yet this focus on duty over love was already there in the Jewish community, so what was Jesus coming to change if not simply the motivations?

I completely agree with Smith’s disgust at liberal hypocrisy. Still, it doesn’t take a “do-gooder” to do his duty and go home to his comfort with self-congratulations. It just takes someone doing his duty for the wrong reasons.

Smith’s article rallies for church as authority and interpreter for the very reason that Jesus became a deconstructible being. In other words, Smith believes the Incarnation means he came not to free us from human sovereignty but only to “rightly” order every contingent thing so it “might reach its proper telos”.

Such words make me shudder because, of course, you have the question about who evaluates “rightly” and who determines the proper “telos”.

As someone still new to the concept of Christian anarchy (although I’ve read a great deal of thinkers like Kierkegaard and Tolstoy), I wonder if you would believe in seeking an inner authority as a guide to external community rather than the other way around? Is that not the essence of the anarchy, and is it not then a lot like mysticism?

Another way of looking at this is cruelty is an intentional act. If we didn’t know about this dog, it wouldn’t have been cruel if it starved (as so many animals do regularly), but because we are aware of it, it is cruel. We are blinded to cruelty because if we knew of the hunger around the world we would be indicted for not caring, but since we are blissfully unaware, we are free from guilt.

I think it is art in the strongest sense, when viewed this way. Art not for entertainment, but art that changes the perspective of the world.

Kris,

I checked, there wasn’t much I didn’t have here. If it’s true that the exhibit was promoted as being a starving animal, that doesn’t exactly make the artist look good - but my point is just that the sorts of horrific things being attributed to him are apparently not true. That still doesn’t necessarily mean that what he did was appropriate - there’s not enough reliable information to make that judgment so far as I can see. At any rate, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of tying a dog up as an art exhibit, starving or healthy.