What's a Stand Up Theology??

Why Stand Up theology?

The title has two sources. First, as some of you may know, I have somewhat of a U2 fan for the past three decades or so, since I first heard Gloria!  wayyyy back in high school.  In their latest album the preacher says this:
“I can stand up for hope, faith, love
But while I'm getting over certainty
Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady” 

Which is an interesting observation about our late modern age, (“postmodern”  if you prefer) that has little consensus about what it means to have hope, faith, and love today. In an time when not only the traditional answers about Life’s Big Questions, but the very questions themselves,  are found to be insufficient,  can we learn to welcome and even embrace uncertainty? 

The other source for the title, is the wry observation by several of my graduate school professor’s that perhaps some form of stand up comedy, rather than academics, was my life’s calling.  The joke’s on them, as it were, as I probably wouldn’t have made it in comedy either. 

So in some sense, whilst this blog may tread on serious, weighty, and perhaps difficult topics from time to time, I shall also attempt to keep it entertaining. I think it was Dostoyevsky that observed that theology with irony is empty, or something to that effect. 

So there’s  this deep sense that humor can help us understand our fragility, and help to remind us of Kierkegaard’s “infinite qualitative distinction” between us and the infinite- god if you will.  Christian theology, perhaps, has now and again felt the need to take up the slack, to use a machete to clear the way for the divine. This blog is committed to the idea that the divine is doing just fine, thank you very much, and rather than “helping god across the street like a little old lady”, the voices here are going to let the divine carry it’s own weight.  In his brilliant book, “Denying and Disclosing God: the ambiguous progress of modern Atheism”  Michael Buckley argues that in its attempt to “defend” God, modern Christendom created the very circumstances that allowed Atheism to flourish. It’s a fascinating, and challenging read.

So one of my goals for this blog is to “stand up” for hope, faith, and love, while at the same time letting the divine do the heavy lifting. It makes sense, that if there is such a thing as the divine, that the divine should be able to take care of itself. And, if the divine is characterized by such things as love, while then, that love ought to be able to be experienced by the objects of this love. And if that’s true, then the divine isn’t so much a divine scorekeeper, or taskmaster, or tyrant, but the consummate lover and seducer. 

These are things on which my mind and spirit feed, but since I’m somewhat of a scattered personality, this thing is going to veer off into a number of completely different areas as well. So if you come on looking for some ridiculous, unsubstantiated and borderline heretical theological discussion and find yourself reading topics like “lake superior steelhead fly patterns”, “what the MN Wild needs via trade…NOW”, or “the surprising usefulness of Excel crosstab queries” the internets are not playing tricks on you…it’s just a reflection of my scattered interests. Thanks for joining me on this journey! 

de