We’re flying out of the country tonight to New Zealand for a couple of weeks of much needed vacation—a reward of sorts for both of us finishing graduate studies. We’ll be backpacking with Carey’s family on the Milford Track for four days and three nights. Then Carey and I will tour around the South Island for a while on our own and make our way up to the North Island to spend some time with family friends and to see the sights there.

This is all to say that I doubt the blog will have many updates for the next while. I don’t plan to spend much time in internet cafes, but would rather see the country when I have the chance. I’ll be sure to post pictures when I get back.

Way deep in the catacombs of comments to my post on being in relationship as essential to being a person, Micah made the brief and important statement, “Fortunately, I can’t think of a single real-life difference either of our positions would make.” This is an important statement in that if our views—whether mine or my dissenter’s—do not affect the way we live, it likely isn’t worth the time and effort to either hold that position or to argue for it. I don’t mean to belittle the long discussion we had and I especially don’t want to belittle the position Timbo argued for as he was my main challenger in the discussion. This post is not intended to continue that debate, but to respond to Micah’s claim through a personal narrative. Of course, one should always be wary when reading a post that opens with a disclaimer, especially a disclaimer this long.

I came to my view of communion as necessary for personhood rather late in the game, as it were. As I said in the post I mentioned, the view as articulated by John Zizioulas that relationship is essential to personhood came to me through my studies in systematic theology during my time in seminary. It immediately resonated with me and like so many things that resonate with me, the view did not so much show me something altogether new, but put into words what I had been thinking and experiencing for quite some time. Zizioulas may have put matters in terms I would have never considered prior since philosophy and systematic theology have never been the disciplines I naturally gravitate toward.

Carey and I decided that in our time off between school and the beginning of residency (and when we’re actually in the country) that we would try to tour the great sandwich locations of the greater Los Angeles area. So you know, I love good food of most backgrounds even though I am a picky eater, but I have a special place in my heart for a good sandwich. There is something about its simplicity and combination of flavors that makes the sandwich the go-to food for me. I’m no restaurant reviewer, so bear with me.

In this first installment of this on-going series, I’ll discuss two locations we’ve visited.

Porto’s Bakery (Glendale)

Porto’s is a Cuban bakery and cafe that appears to do most of its business during the lunch hours. Well, it closes at 6pm on weekdays, so it obviously isn’t catering to the dinner crowd. We’ve eaten there twice in the past month and I must say I am ashamed I haven’t been there in the prior four years. Both sandwiches I ate—the Pan con Lechon and the Media Noche—were excellent. The pork on both was juicy and delicious. The Pan con Lechon is more of a loose meat type of sandwich whereas the Media Noche also has ham and mayonaise and makes for a more textured experience. The Media Noche also comes with mustard, but I hate mustard of all kinds, so I cannot give a decent review to that. It is a packed restaurant whether you go there on a weekday or a weekend, but the wait is worth it as are the treats from the bakery, which display excellent artistry. Also, the sandwiches come with plantain chips, a fun twist on traditional American side dishes. The chips only add to the uniqueness of the cuisine, which is familiar, but wonderfully different. By the way, the potato balls are astounding and it’s always worth ordering one and eating it while waiting at your table for your sandwich.

The Apple Pan (West Los Angeles)

The Apple Pan may serve one of the best burgers if not the best burgers I’ve had in Los Angeles. The Apple Pan has been around forever and when you walk into its perfectly symmetrical lunch counter dining room, you get the sense that if you visited fifty years ago, not much would be different. The burgers are juicy and have a great mix of fresh ingredients. Both Carey and I had the Hickory burger which is slathered in barbecue sauce and comes with Tillamook cheddar. The meat is warm and the lettuce is cool and crisp. I know some may argue that the hamburger really isn’t a sandwich but belongs in its own category and I could agree. Still, it’s meat, some fixin’s, and sauce between two pieces of bread (in this case a wonderfully toasted bun), so it is at least a cousin of the sandwich, if not a sibling. The fries are good, but not out of this world. The waiters pour your catsup (ketchup) for you, but that’s about as classy as it gets. Everyone sits at the counter and we had to wait as it’s basically first come, first served. Don’t expect to get a big group sittting together during the lunch rush.

So far in this series on churches and parachurches we have defined our terms, discussed the origins of the current form of parachurches, described some of the tensions between the two types of organizations, and I have given a personal anecdotal narrative on my observations of their relationships. Now let us turnin this final post of the series to a vision of how churches and parachurches can better work together.

I would like to offer some corrections and suggestions for reconciliation and partnership between modalities and sodalities, or churches and parachurches, respectively. These suggestions are theological and pragmatic. Please do not take my suggestions as sequential—that is, there is not a necessarily logical progression through these suggestions and one can start in any place.

Anyone else concerned about George W. Bush filling Andy Card’s vacancy with Joshua Bolten? First the President picks John R. Bolton to be the US ambassador to the UN and now Joshua Bolten moves up in the administration. Something tells me that these moves are only preparing the way for Bush to appoint Michael Bolton to some cabinet position and then endorse him as his successor in the 2008 election.

On The A-Team Blog, Timbo and I have had an ongoing conversation about gender and whether it is a cultural creation or if it is something deeper.

Timbo asked me this question:

I don’t think gender is inherently relational (though I do think that gender is inherently potentially relational). My thought-experiment was not intended to imply Adam, but was an attempt to look at the concept of gender without interference from anything non-essential to it. If there had only ever been one male, would he be gendered?

I would like to respond here on my blog.

Here is where Timbo and I are going to split as I do see being in relationship as essential to being a person and I will explain this point below. I’m comfortable saying that gender as an aspect of being human is relational. The question about someone being gendered apart from relationship is a hypothetical one that I cannot see happening. (That last sentence may come off as being dismissive of Timbo’s question, but please know that certainly is not my intention.) I suppose I have been influenced by what I understand of John Zizioulas’ theology that holds that communion is not an addition to being, but an ontological category in and of itself. Zizioulas has built off the Cappodocian fathers. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen summarizes Zizioulas’ theology in An Introduction to Ecclesiology (2002):

There is no true being without communion; nothing exists as an “individual” in itself. Communion is an ontological category; even God exists in communion….

Being in communion does not, however, mean downplaying the distinctive personhood of each individual. “The person cannot exist without communion; but every form of communion which denies or suppresses the person is inadmissable. (93-94)

My point in quoting the above is this: if personhood and being means being in communion (with God and with others), those aspects of our identities such as gender would be rooted in our being in communion and thus be relational categories. Just as Zizioulas would know of no person not in some form of communion, I know of no male or female not in relationship with others. Now I don’t know if Zizioulas would take the turn I have with regard to gender; I am merely using him as my starting point.

That is a long response as to why my understanding of personhood and gender cannot adequately answer the question Timbo posed above. Not only has the idea of an individual person existing completely in isolation never been an historical reality, it is in my understanding an impossibility philosophically since I hold that being a person means being in community. Community is not interference to the person, but the essence of being human. All aspects of being human will be grounded in the notion of being in communion. I may have taken us down another rabbit-trail with this post, but I hope it clarifies my position on how I view persons.

We have the results of the match.

The location of Carey’s residency is…

Great googley moogley! Student Recites 8,784 Digits of Pi.

The amazing thing about this fact is that Gaurav Rajav’s (the student) feat makes him only third best in the US and twelfth best in the world in terms of Pi recitation.

As a former student of Greek, I feel I must offer this public service announcement. Pi in Greek is not pronounced, “pie,” but “pee.” But considering its popular use in mathematics and other scientific fields, the “pie” pronunciation is acceptable…just don’t say “pie” in your Koine Greek class. Consider yourselves warned, people.

From “Intimate Makeover,” by Melissa Healy in the March 13 edition of the Los Angeles Times (warning, the whole story is not for the faint of heart):

Even as the small but growing group of genital plastic surgeons devise new and better surgical techniques, they acknowledge the standards women hope to achieve are set mostly by adult film actresses, strippers and nude denizens of the Internet.

“I know what women want,” says Dr. David L. Matlock of Los Angeles, an obstetrician turned plastic surgeon who has been a pioneer in devising and popularizing the procedures. He knows, he says, because so many of his patients tote their husband’s or boyfriend’s magazines into his office and point to photos almost as explicit as the before-and-after ones posted on many surgeons’ websites….

Sharon Mitchell, executive director of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills, says few of today’s adult film actresses are having the surgery because so many are already very young. But Mitchell, an adult film actress for 25 years before she earned a doctorate in human sexuality, says the adult film industry’s emphasis on youth, as well as its growing audience among beauty-conscious women, is almost certainly driving the upsurge in the surgery.

And many women take the standards set by sex workers very much to heart, say doctors performing the surgeries.

“I hear it time and time again,” says Dr. Gary Alter, a urologist-turned-plastic-surgeon who operates out of offices in Beverly Hills and New York City. “The woman says, ‘I thought I was normal and I watch these movies with my boyfriends and now I feel like I must be a freak.’ They feel they’re the only ones in the world.”

I know stories like this one have been receiving more attention lately. It disturbs me that a growing number of women are undergoing expensive surgery to restore their hymens or alter other parts of their sexual organs. To date, however, many of the stories have not emphasized the point made in the quotation above, that is, much of the demand for these surgeries stems from the unrealistic standards set by women’s bodies involved in pornographic industries—many of whom have gone under the knife themselves to “improve” their bodies. But who creates the demand for both the porn industry and subsequently these cosmetic surgeries? Men.

This isn’t a male-bashing post, don’t worry. Rather, I find this story sobering. While these surgeries are the choices of the women who seek them out, I cannot help but think that except for the cases in which the surgeries occur “to repair childbirth-related injuries, and by urologists and reconstructive surgeons who repair birth defects,” that the demand for these surgeries stem from women noticing the men in their lives being more attracted to the fantasy world (and, let’s face it, fantasy women) in the porn industry. I for one cannot claim that the pornography has not enticed me, so I do not speak as a clean person above the sin, but as one who has sadly swam into the deep end of its cesspool. When I read this story, I couldn’t stop thinking of the women in my life and how heartbroken I would be if they sought after similar surgeries because they thought they could steal back their husbands’ or boyfriends’ attention from the porn actresses. How is it that those women who have undergone radical plastic surgery to be porn actresses or strippers have set the standard of normalcy? Why is it that women who have not had surgery, who live with the bodies they were given, feel as if, in the words of Dr. Alter (a ripe choice of a name considering this story), they are “freaks”? (By the way, Dr. Alter’s comments throughout the story become more and more disturbing.) The porn industry and the promiscuous lifestyle it presents are far from the standard of public health and I strongly disagree that pornography should set the standard of body image. I think that it is already sad that so many women in the sex industry undergo surgery in order to be more desirable in that market—it is even sadder, however, that such a picture of physical beauty and further commodification of sex is becoming more mainstream.

Men, many of us have to repent of our buying into the lies of the pornographic world, and I am most definitely including myself here. The pain and evil that pornography wreaks does not only affect our lives and our minds. It affects our loved ones, specifically the women in our lives. It anguishes me to hear how my feeding of that industry has played a part in women seeking expensive alterations to their bodies.

Here are some random quotations from some books I’ve been reading: Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness, Christ and Culture, and Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.

From Lois Y. Barrett, et al., Treasure in Clay Jars:

A proper, biblical ecclesiology looks at everything the church is and does in relation to the mission of God in the world. The church does not exist for itself, but for participation in God’s mission of reconciliation. “Mission” is not just an activity carried out by special people in faraway places. Mission is the character of the church in whatever context it exists. (ix-x)

But discernment and vocation are not one-time matters. Discerning is a constant challenge, as is following. Yesterday’s discernments are met by today’s new questions and visions. (54)

The life of the New Testament churches was centered around their missional vocation and their formation to practice it. This is what discipling was all about. This formation happens as the biblical word works powerfully within the community. (62)