Hope and Heaven - or Heaven as Hope

Christianity cannot exist!  Or so suggests John Caputo in "What would Jesus Deconstruct", a book I have recently reviewed here.  One of the ideas in the book is that some things are never realised under the existing conditions.  Caputo explains that in some rabbinic traditions the Messiah never turns up, but instead is a name for hope and expectation.  He goes on to point out that, having received a Messiah, Christianity is now awaiting the Second Coming.

This set me thinking about the need for hope, not just religious hope, but hope in life generally.  Victor Frankl wrote about "Mans Search for Meaning" and suggested that all manner of persecution can be endured if there is an understanding of meaning.
I think that I want to see that as an expression of hope, so...  Heaven could be seen as an expression of future hope, and what more natural  way of expressing that in the culture and time in which it was first expressed.  Now that we are not sure where Heaven is (having travelled above the sky) I find this a helpful way to think about it.  Of course as a post modern, I don't think that you have to!

And finally...  This post reminded me John Cleese in Clockwise, couldn't find the clip, but the quote is:

"It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the hope"

Even though it completely contradicts the post J

The Cats Done Good!

I have blogged elsewhere on how I blamed the cats for buying a couple of books on a friends Amazon account, but now I have read the books I thought I would blog on the contents.  The two books in question are also reviewed here and here (which is where I got the idea that I might like to read them!) by Jonny Baker.6MACS98SBPWA
Both books follow a similar structure, they start by explaining their subject in reference to something else (perhaps not that surprising as Caputo states that Derrida presents his views by reflecting on a previous text).  Caputo uses the book "In His Steps" (which introduced "What Would Jesus Do" to the language) as a way of discussing Derrida whereas Smith uses The Matrix, Memento, O Brother, Where Art Thou and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to discuss the general topic of Post Modernism, Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault respectively.  So far so good, and as a non expert in these topics I found these explanations enlightening and exciting.  They then go on to explore the implications for their analysis in the wider church, and at this point I started finding myself unconvinced.  Smith believes that Post Modernism leads to Radical Orthodoxy and I have to say that I did not follow the link.  Caputo retells the story of two books as examples of Post Modernism.  The first "Diary of a City Priest" tells the story of a seemingly "normal" Catholic Priest in inner city Philadelphia, the other, "How (Not) to Speak of God", by Peter Rollins (who has starred on this page before) tells of an innovative worship collective in Belfast.  Again I am not convinced that the preceding explanation leads to the examples - but of course one of the critiques of Post Modernism is that it can be used to justify anything!  Not that I have a problem with that - after all, I have blogged on giving up certainty and control!

Below the fold a bit more in depth stuff!

The cats are innocent

A friend of mine has blogged how she bought some books by accident and that a friend (ahem - yours truly) blamed the cats.  I have recently been reading the offending books, as they were ones that I thought looked interesting and memories are now coming back that perhaps it wasn't the cats fault after all!  I have a vague recollection of using her computer to browse the web while she was busy one day.  If I see interesting looking books while doing that I "buy" them from Amazon and then, whenever I place an order, I review what is in my basket and see whether I really want it.

Looks like the second part didn't happen J.

When this post was initially made I had no idea it was me - then as I browsed the books I started to wonder - how clever of the cats to buy something that interested me!  Finally last night I went looking for evidence and found these two blog entries ("What would Jesus Deconstruct?" and "Who's afraid of Postmodernism?") and vaguely remembered reading them a few months ago - so problem solved - as usual with computer glitches it was a user error (bitterness from a past life coming throughJ) or the "nut on the end of the keyboard" as we used to say.

The moral of this story - "check the contents of your basket before the check out - you never know when the  children have put some sweeties in it".