CASTLE CHURCH - News and Brews

Can Beer Be a Holy Thing?

10/19/2017

Jared Witt l October 19, 2017

Recently, I wrote a blog about an interview in which one of my favorite artists, Matisyahu, the Jewish rapper, was asked point blank why he is writing music that is so much more interesting than the vast majority of Christian artists.

As a pastor, who loves music and hates most "Christian music," I’ve been pondering this question for some time and thought that I had already cycled through all of the explanations. But Matis’ answer was stated more succinctly than I’ve been able to—shamefully so since it turned out to be the explanation that should come most quickly to a Lutheran. He said, “I let the music be the holy thing.”

For most Christian artists, the music is not the holy thing itself. It is only a tool we use to point to some grander doctrine or idea of the divine. After all, wouldn’t it be idolatrous to make a holy thing of something as palpable and finite as a song? At first glance, this all sounds very pious and right-headed (and weary churchgoers like myself might swear that many praise songs have attempted to solve this problem by simply not being finite).

What We Mean When We Say 'Word of God'

10/5/2017

Jared Witt l October 5, 2017

When I say that the Bible reveals the “word of God,” I don’t mean the same thing as your average TV preacher means when he says it.

He (sometimes she but typically he) means flatly that the words in his leather bound Bible were more or less dictated by the the alpha and omega of the universe, and the human hands which physically penned those words were employed solely for secretarial purposes. If you were to suggest to this TV preacher that human brains, let alone those subsets of brain activity which we refer to as imagination, learning, prejudice, agenda, and the like were engaged in this purely stenographical procedure, it would be an offense bordering on heresy. His worldview requires him, as much as possible, to eliminate the middle man between God's mind and the biblical page.

If he were to learn that I, as an occasionally humble Lutheran pastor with no TV following, don’t mean what he means when I refer to the “word of God” in scripture, he’s likely to accuse me of needing to “go back” or “return” to the “tradition,” as if his way of reading the Bible is the ancient way, whereas I am just capitulating to modern intellectual trends.

Millennials, we need to talk about the social medias

9/29/2017

Jared Witt l September 29, 2017

I love my generation. Can I just say that? All things being relative, I think we Millennials are thoughtful, evolved, emotionally intelligent, we mostly give the benefit of the doubt to people who are different than us, and we have high cultural IQs. And maybe the thing I value most in another human being, we’re funny. We have a sharp and caustic sense of humor. So much so, at times, our sarcasm presses the semantic borders of becoming a secret language. And this shouldn’t be confused with cynicism, as it’s sometimes perceived. We are sarcastic because we’ve noticed how you really shouldn’t care about everything that everyone says you should care about. And a lot of the things they say you shouldn’t care about, you should. Sarcasm is a tool which helps us dismiss the former so we can embrace the latter.

We also suck in some ways, if maybe not all the ways they would have you believe. Understand, most of the Millennial bashing we hear in the Boomer driven media is baseless calumny. Lord only knows where they decided that the generation which has worked more unpaid internships, and studied longer for less professional benefit, and graduated with more student debt than any other somehow has an entitlement complex. But there is, I'm sad to say, a kernel of truth to some of what they say. We don’t show up when we say we will. We don’t organize well. We don’t commit. We are very good at pointing out how the world could be better but don’t always put much elbow grease into changing it.

The gods we create

9/14/2017

Jared Witt l September 14, 2017

Martin Luther had this phrase that would’ve unnerved a lot of stuffy church folk if he had uttered it yesterday, let alone in the 16th century, when he sparked the movement that would become all of western Protestantism.

“Faith creates the deity.”

He wasn’t trying to be heretical. He was just trying to take seriously what the Bible says about gods and our relationship to them. From Genesis forward, God, the creator, goes by many regional names and qualitative descriptions in the Hebrew scriptures. El Elyon (“God Most High”), Adonai (“Lord”), Elohim (“God of gods”), and El Shaddai (“the many breasted one”) are among the most popular. Then, as of Exodus, the mysterious YHWH, the unpronounceable anti-name given to Moses at the burning bush, begins to push those other identifiers to the side. By design, we don't really know anything about this unnameable name other than that it's associated with One who has a particular concern for the poor and the marginalized.

As we move into the proto-Trinitarian thinking of the Christian Testament, Jesus becomes the face of God the Father (note that "father" is a metaphor, not an identifier) by the power of the Holy Spirit, but just like YHWH, that also seems to be a paradoxical refusal give us an easy handle on the divine. So, biblically, “God” is not a proper noun, despite how comfortable we get using the term that way. If the creator of the universe had a birth certificate, it would not read:

Name - God
Birthdate - 01/01/00
Birthplace - The Center
Parents - Judith and Reginald van Nihilo

Where Saints Find God

9/8/2017

Jared Witt l September 8, 2017

“The transition from the good [person] to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things.” This is a quote taken from turn of the 20th century, English writer G.K. Chesterton in his book on the life of St. Francis.

He goes on, “It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady” (St. Francis of Assisi).

Given that this is a book about a saint, perhaps THE saint in the minds of many, Chesterton sounds as if he’s saying there is some discreet difference between a saint and the rest of us. In another blog sometime I’ll write about how Lutherans believe that all of us are saints and sinners at the same time, that sainthood isn’t something unattainably distinct from personhood, and how the saint part comes in is not at all by our own moral fortitude but entirely from the unconditional love of God, which we experience in bread, wine, water and words of forgiveness. Then I’ll write all about the transformative effect that realizing we are loved unconditionally tends to have on our lives. Catholics and Lutherans actually fought a lot on this point back in the day. It was a whole thing.

Christianity and Its Angry Cousin of the Same Name

8/31/2017

Jared Witt l August 31, 2017

My wife, Nikki, is absolutely in love with people. And I don’t just mean that she loves the people who feel most familiar and comfortable to her. We all love those people. My wife loves strange people, foreign people, difficult people specifically because they are strange, foreign, or difficult.

I first started noticing this about her while we were still in school, dating and barista-ing together at Starbucks (kind of a big no no except that everyone in the history of baristas has done it). The café where we worked is in an uncharacteristically diverse pocket of Columbus, Ohio, which has one of the highest Jewish population densities in the US and people from several different central African cultures. Watching her interact with the neighborhood, while I spilled cappuccino on the floor, was where I first learned that my wife was going to become my wife.

I’d watch her face soften into pure, self-forgetful tenderness when our Eritrean and Ethiopian customers would come in and make an order through broken English. I’d watch her become as patient as a mother to one of our regulars, who was mentally ill, and several others who were just plain mean. Her short, tight crop of brown curly hair created more than a couple conversation in-roads with the African American women (I’m not sure if the term “white girl afro” is politically correct, but you get the idea). If you were well-traveled, she would ask you about it with the fascination of a two year old but would take equal interest in your story if you’d never even been out of the state.

What If the Bible IS a Fairy Tale?

8/24/2017

Jared Witt l August 24, 2017

Did the talking serpent in the story of Adam and Eve really exist? This question was once posed to Karl Barth, maybe the most influential theologian of the 21st century.

At the moment the question was asked, either a fundamentalist or a somewhat naïve critic of Christianity might expect the famous Christian to jump to a knee-jerk defense of scripture: “Ah, yes, well. It’s not for us to say what literally can and cannot happen, given that we ourselves cannot be present for every individual event.” A fellow academic might suppress an eye roll at the childishness of the question and wait for Barth to launch into an overview on the different types of literature that we find in scripture: “Well, you see, let us first understand the language of mythology and how it functioned in the ancient mind…”

But Barth, being neither a naïve nor an indifferent Bible reader, said something else: “I’m not interested in whether the talking serpent existed or not. I’m interested in what he said.”

Bringing Thinking Back

8/17/2017

Jared Witt l August 17, 2017

In ancient days, there existed a certain category of person who just isn't around anymore. All societies had them, and they went by many names. But we’ll just call them the wise people. Much of their “knowledge” was unsurprisingly folksy. But often times their charlatanism in one sphere was paired side by side with another in which they were as disciplined as any modern academic, albeit with access to far less source material. Specifically, the discrepancy in their expertise generally (though not always) ran along the same line that separates what we call “the humanities” and what we call “the sciences” in our universities.

So the same person who prescribed quack herbal remedies for headaches, which we know today to be unhelpul, might also have had complete mastery over six different languages and all of the major literature in each. The person who claimed to read the future based on the stars might also have discovered a brilliant geometric formula.

#firstworldproblems - They Actually Are Killing Us

8/10/2017

Jared Witt l August 10, 2017

Nice. An email from my Starbucks Rewards team – “Congratulations! The next one’s on us” – Score. Let’s see, 6:28pm. If I leave now I can grab a drink and still make my meeting at 7 – “Welcome to Starbucks. What can we make for you with today?” – One…uh…iced grande…Sorry, iced half-caf grande one pump vanilla breve iced coffee with milk – “Alright, one iced half-caf grande one pump vanilla breve iced coffee with milk. And you wanted that one pump vanilla in addition to the classic syrup?” – Oh, sorry, I meant ‘instead of’ – “Alright so…” – Oh, and I forgot to say, light ice. Really sorry – “Ohhh kaayyy, so, I have an iced half-caf grande one pump vanilla (instead of classic) breve light ice iced coffee…did you say with milk?” – That’s right – “Ok, sir, I’ll see you at the first window…Hi there. That’ll be $2.30” – K. My card is on my phone – “Alright. Here’s your receipt. Your drink will be right up” – Oh. Crap. I forgot to tell you I had a reward for a free drink – “Ohhh kaayyy. No problem. I can undo that, if I can just see your phone again.” – Aww. You know what? The app booted me for some reason. Just need to sign in – (Try the usual numeral and letter password) – “We’re sorry. Invalid username/password. Please try again. Forgot username? Forgot password?” – (Try the usual numeral and letter with one cap password) – “We’re sorry. Invalid username/password…” – (Try the usual numeral and letter with one cap and one symbol password) – “We’re sorry…” – You know what? I might just need to pull around and come inside. I don’t want to hold up the line –

Why Do Babies in Medieval Paintings Look So Ridiculous?

8/3/2017

via uglyrenaissancebabies.tumblr.com

Jared Witt l August 3, 2017

One universal rule of medieval art is that babies should always look ridiculous. Specifically, they should look like abominable, Benjamin Button-esque old men trapped in tiny bodies.

No, it’s not because the painters couldn’t paint or because they had never seen a baby before.

According to Matthew Averett, an art history professor at Creighton University, it’s because there was a pious notion that Jesus came out of the womb already bearing the fully formed likeness of adult Jesus. There was really no such thing in the medieval western world as non-religious art, and most of the babies you see are either direct depictions of baby Jesus or cherubic type beings modeled after Jesus. So the goal was not to depict what real human babies look like but rather to depict homunculi: “little men” whose disconcerting appearance matched some era's ideals.