Pew Sitting

Our family has continued to regularly attend the local ELCA(Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) congregation in our area, and I must say that I have felt more comfortable at this particular church than I have in years. I say that with some trepidation, afraid that I might "break the spell" and suddenly reverse my opinion on the matter.

I've tried to analyze what it is about this church that makes me feel welcome, or slightly relieved, when I walk through the doors. I'm not sure that I can completely quantify how I feel, but I'll try.

Lack of politics mentioned in the service/sermon: Neither conservative, nor liberal slants have seemed to surface in the actual services. I'm sure that doesn't mean that the congregants don't have opinions, but they remain just that...opinions held by people attending the church, not opinions held forth as truth from the pulpit.

The service is liturgical, but with contemporary music....which is contemporary while also being simultaneously reverential, as opposed to full-on rock band mode that I've been used to in non-denominational, evangelical churches. This has been good for the kids, because they have known several of the worship songs and it has eased them into this different type of a service.

There is also a lot of singing.

Typical evangelical churches have a strict 3-4 song structure to the service: Welcoming song, announcements, worship song, sermon, closing song. There may be a "special" song thrown in there by a vocalist or group. But, the actual singing by the congregation is frequently broken up, or made difficult by churches using music which is not meant to be sung by large groups of people....making half of the congregation unable to participate because the key is too high. Male, tenor, worship leaders are notorious for this. They pick the songs they like, which show off their range but which also exclude everyone who isn't a tenor or soprano from doing a halfway decent job singing along.

The worship leader at this church has done a good job of picking songs that are meaningful and using them in the appropriate key for congregational singing.

So...right off the bat...the church does several things that appeal to me emotionally. That probably seems superficial, but I don't care. ;-)

Most importantly, I think one of the main reasons I like the church is the way that following a liturgy nips certain practices in the bud. Because communion is the climax of each service, the altar is always reserved for the bread and wine. The worship leader and musicians are off to the side, instead of occupying the space as a stage. There are also no "specials". Everything in the service is directly tied to congregational participation. After the Scripture reading, the congregation replies with "Thanks be to God". After the pastor says "Peace be with you" the congregation says "and also with you." If there is a prayer the congregation responds with an "amen".

The creed is sung together and the Lord's Prayer is sung with the congregation holding hands, and with a nice musical arrangement.

Aesthetically speaking, it appeals to me.

The pastor does brief sermons, but he does them well and is generally a good speaker. His points are always relevant to the text and generally encouraging, even while exhorting people to be more faithful in their relationship with God.

Every time I leave the service, I leave feeling more uplifted than when I went in. Every time I leave the service I have some hope that I will be able to maintain my faith somehow...no matter how bleak my heart might feel before the service.

At this point, I am forcing myself to attend church, hoping against hope that I will find a way forward, while also knowing that there is no returning to certain paths for me. And, at this particular church, "forcing" myself has been easy. I don't feel pressured. I don't feel as if I am surrounded by people waiting to dissect my thoughts and show disapproval.

On the other hand, we haven't made any real effort to dig deeper into the church. I'm not even sure if I am capable of it right now. I can't teach Sunday School as I used to because I can't teach the Bible stories with the credulity that most churches would want. A literary, critical, anthropological approach isn't going to fly with the elementary students...or even most adults.

Being honest that it is easier for me to state the things I don't believe rather than the things I do believe would be another obstacle for me.

Every Sunday in which we attend, we participate in communion, except for our children. Coming from a Baptist background, infant baptism was something we didn't believe in or practice. In this Lutheran church baptism is required to participate in communion, and also a brief class or two is taken by children before their first communion. Our children haven't been baptized and when they walk up with us to receive communion, they instead receive a "blessing", which is a quick prayer said over them. I know the pastor is always perplexed when we show up and tell him to "bless" the children who are much older than the usual first communicants, but we haven't actually spoken with him.

Today, as we approached the altar he reached for the communion wafer and I had to explain that the children weren't baptized. He replied, "Well, we should probably talk about that." He said it with a smile, not in a particularly stern way. I simply answered that it was a long story.

Truthfully DH and I have talked about wanting to speak with the pastor about many things, but we have always been busy or hesitant.

Honestly I am slightly afraid to have the conversation that I need to have. Afraid that revealing all of my doubts will not be met with understanding and compassion, but disapproval and trite answers.

How do I tell a pastor, "I may not believe half of what you do, but I still like coming here."? How do I reveal that I am agnostic about many things of which I used to be so certain, and I am OK with that?

And if this revelation of my inner thoughts is met with rejection...then where do I go?

Most of what I think, I keep to myself. I don't want to disturb the faith of others. I don't desire to cause anyone to go through what I am going through.

I also won't stay at this church, or any other church, under false pretenses. When we have a conversation with the pastor, it will be with brutal honesty from me. If that means that I simply attend and never participate in any leadership position...then that is what it will be. If even that is untenable....then I guess that I will be on my own, though that isn't what I want.

Experiencing God and Emotional Identification

I've spent hours each day for the last few years rethinking what I believe about God and why. I usually end up back at my conversion experience at the age of almost 17, a point at which I experienced a deep shift in my thinking and felt the beginnings of a "spiritual" life.

Something I have always known about my conversion experience was that it wasn't based on fear of hell, or deep remorse for my sins, or even belief in the historical resurrection of Jesus and the miracles in the Bible. In the back of my mind I knew about these things. I knew what it meant to feel guilty and sinful. I knew the Bible stories that I had read and learned in my childhood church attendance. I imagined there was such a thing as heaven or hell, though I didn't spend much time thinking about it.

No. None of those concepts mattered that much to me. They didn't speak to me or motivate my mind and heart in any discernible way.

What led me to become a Christian was a deep emotional identification with Christ and a love that sacrificed itself for people who didn't even care about it, or have enough of it themselves to appreciate its depth.

At the time, I had made a choice to move with my mother and younger brothers to Florida for the last two years of high school. Just before that move, my mother and I had a terrible, physical fight that had been indirectly instigated by her abusive boyfriend. I had bruises all over my face and arms and was completely distraught. I ran away and stayed with my best friend's family for a week or two until my mother apologized and asked me to come back home.

I did eventually go back home and that physical incident turned out to be an isolated one. It never happened again, even though my mother still had quite a temper.

However, the abusive boyfriend was still in the picture. You see my youngest brother, who was about 2 years old at the time, was the son of the abusive boyfriend. Although he and my mother would periodically break up violently and then reconcile in the typical, cyclical way that dysfunctional abusive relationships do, he would never really be out of the picture because my younger brother tied he and my mother together.

Being a teenager living in that kind of chaos was maddening. It is frustrating to be a child with more sense than the adults in your family. The helplessness of being a minor in a household in which you have no control over what's happening, and no ability to stop the bad choices that are being made is torture. All you can do is lock yourself up in your room and count the days until you turn 18 and graduate from high school so that you can shake the dust off your feet and be free to live a sane life.

The problem was that I didn't want to go to Florida, because the abusive boyfriend was going to be going also and living with us.

I didn't want to go. I knew what would happen in Florida, more of the same in a different location. Yet, I was in a quandary. I had to make a choice. You see, even though my parents divorced when I was two, I always knew that if things got really bad I could ask to move in with my father. The only obstacle preventing me from leaving was the prospect of abandoning my two younger to the chaos that was to come.

I had to choose between a way of escape for myself, or forcing myself to head into a life that I knew would be miserable.

Whenever events in our household went downhill, I was the one to pull it together. If the boyfriend got violent, I called the police...frequently. When he got nasty, I intervened. I truly believed that my presence kept things from being worse because I wasn't afraid of my mother's boyfriend and he knew it. He also knew that, unlike my mother, who would never have the will to press and pursue charges against him, that I would relish the opportunity to see him behind bars if he ever laid a finger on me or on one of my brothers.

I was the boundary around my family that he couldn't cross, even at the young ages of 14, 15, and 16.

During this time I was severely hurt and angry. I blamed my mother for her weakness and for subjecting us to her chaos. Each time she welcomed back the boyfriend I was crushed. She was choosing him over us. She was choosing a few moments of "love" over the safety and well-being of her children.

So...when the time came for this move to Florida, I didn't know what to do. I desperately wanted to escape but I felt a deep obligation to protect my brothers with my presence.

I eventually chose to go to Florida, giving up my way of escape for my mother and family even though the protection I offered was never recognized or understood by my mother. I was performing a thankless service.

A few months after making that decision, I was "witnessed" to by my older brother and his pastor. What broke me and instantly sliced through my heart was one question that the pastor posed to me:

"Do you know that Jesus suffered for you, because he loves you?"

Which he followed up with,"Do you know what it means to sacrifice yourself for people you love, even if they don;t realize it?"

Why, yes! I knew exactly what that was like. I burst into tears, not only because I suddenly believed, but because I identified myself emotionally with all that Jesus represented. I began to follow him because he was like me in some essential way and I was like him in some essential way.

That is what it means to experience God. We experience a moment in which we recognize Him in us and us in Him.

All of our worship, all of our singing, all of our praying...these are all ways that we emotionally identify ourselves with God and experience Him.

Realizing this has made me worry much less about whether I have a unified explanation for my beliefs, or sometimes lack of beliefs.

I've had a chance to catch my breath and come to terms with the whole house situation...yet again.

The remaining termite damage is small compared to what we repaired over the last year; the short end of the garage and maybe some involvement near the kitchen wall that connects to the garage. I know that things are structurally sound because we made major structural repairs to every other wall in the house, and I know what's on the inside of those walls.

So....I've taken a breath and decided to move forward with renting the house out and buying my brother out of his portion of it.

Yep....I'll be rivaling Donald Trump in no time flat....investor and landlord will be added to my current jack-of-all-trades tool belt.

After catching my breath, I went in search of the deed to the house. It was paid off years ago, and I hadn't looked for it because it was low on the list of priorities in managing the estate. While going through the relevant stack of house-related papers, I found my father's original settlement papers from when he bought the house.

Much to my frustration, I also chanced across an envelope dated one month before his closing date. It was a termite inspection report. It noted termite infestation in several areas of the house.A shock passed through me as I realized that my father knew the whole time that his house had been infested and damaged.

There had been some speculation on my part about how much and when my father knew about this disaster. He had mentioned to me once many years before that he thought he might have termites. This conversation took place in the context of him eventually selling his home.

Now, I realize that it was a lie/half-truth. He didn't suspect....he knew. He knew it before he ever bought the house. He knew it the whole time he was living there. He knew it as he made plans to retire, sell the house, and move to Alabama.

He knew the whole time and he was going to pass it off onto someone else if he could get away with it.

Suddenly this problem wasn't a result of his procrastination, or denial of what was happening...it was the result of his outright attempt to buy a house on the cheap and unload it on someone else, later.

What a family pedigree I have!

Alas, I can't say that the image of my father is tainted by all this. I knew that he wasn't exactly the most integrity-driven person in the world.

As I discussed in my other post about forgiveness, the world can't survive without redeemers.

In small and large ways the Christian life is one of taking the crap and refuse that the world, and other people, spew out and repairing, restoring, and renewing it.

My dad left us a rotting pile of a house and we have turned it into a solid, new, improved home.

He planned to pass a problem onto someone else; we planned to prevent someone else from having the problem.

Lately I don't sermonize much, or have any great illusions about my ability to communicate with God, or for God, but trying to see the situation through these themes is the only thing keeping me going right now.

Absorbing the Cost

I haven't posted in quite a while, though I have shown up here and there in the comments sections of a few blogs.

The truth is that, besides being insanely busy and out of town quite a bit, I simply haven't felt desirous of blogging. There's too much going on in my head to pluck out an idea and flesh it out.

I've also had to learn yet another lesson in the school of forgiveness, a lesson inflicted upon me by a repeat offender....and it has been difficult. The gift of consistent forgiveness is taking its toll on me and each time I have to give it....it comes with more reluctance and pain and is harder to summon.

As I have had to sift through everything that I've been feeling, looking for the right way forward, I can't escape the fact that relationships, families, and society itself cannot survive without people who are willing to absorb the pain and consequences caused by other people.

As the saying goes--an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will leave the whole world blind and toothless.

Forgiveness isn't fair. When we forgive, it's costing us something. Sometimes the price is light and simply a matter of releasing annoyance with another person, but sometimes the price cuts to the center of who you are and the "pound of flesh" extracted for payment is your heart.

The refusal of forgiveness causes its own collateral damage either because of the anger and resentment simmering below the surface, or because not forgiving allows the pain inflicted upon us to continue working its way through those around us. Like a tsunami heading for an unprotected shore, sin and its after-effects threaten to wipe everything out. Forgiveness becomes a shield against the coming tidal wave, taking on the full force of what's coming in order to protect the populated village in danger of being devastated.

Thinking of forgiveness in such noble, heroic terms doesn't make it less of a deep sacrifice.

At each point of intense forgiveness I have had to surrender some part of myself....letting go of idealized dreams and hopes connected to that person, or situation. Sometimes it seems as if there is little left to let go of.....as if I am scraping the bottom of the barrel of my hopes and dreams looking for some small scrap to offer up.

*******

DH and I spent last weekend finishing up fixing the garage to my father's house. It was the last major project left in this process and as I scraped old paint and prepared to caulk some cracks where drywall met drywall, I discovered that hidden behind this upper section of drywall was more termite damage. I inserted a screwdriver into the crack and felt it push through rotted, decimated wood and instantly teared up.

It wasn't over. I wasn't "done" with this house. I couldn't sell this house with this going on beneath the drywall.

I was filled with anger at my father who I know had put up this drywall to purposely hide this damage. I was filled with frustration at his chronic procrastination, denial of the seriousness of the situation, and the high likelihood that his solution to this mess was to cover it up and let someone else deal with.

That someone turned out to be me.

That's the way that it works. Our actions frequently fall back on the people around us who are innocent bystanders.

I stood on the paint-covered step-ladder with my head in my hands and felt that pang of knowing I was going to have to pay the price for someone else's bad decisions again. I couldn't sell the house and pass those consequences onto an innocent, unsuspecting victim. I could let someone know up front about the damage, and take a huge hit on the value of the house, undermining all of the hard work and investment of time and money we have put into this house.

Or....I could hold onto this house that I never wanted, rent it out until there was enough money to make repairs, and then sell it.

I wouldn't be "done". I wouldn't benefit from the house in any significant way for a couple of years. I would continue to bear the responsibility of handling this mess.

Another situation calling for me to "fix" something I didn't cause.

********

Lately my faith seems non-existent. Maybe not non-existent, but so different and foreign in nature to what it used to be that it feels wholly "other" to me. And yet in the midst of the emotional turbulence I feel, I sense those themes of Christ's forgiveness, suffering, and perseverance moving through me. As I contemplate the chaos caused by others, I see Christ. I hear "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God."

So, I try. I try to be a peacemaker. I try to reconcile what I face in a way that will be beneficial to everyone.

I'm hoping I don't fail.

Everything Happens For A Reason...Part 2

I like to put the smackdown on people like Pat Robertson for their crazy, inappropriate notions when they invoke God's will as the reason for disaster. It's probably not fair of me, but I can't help it.

If I'm going to be perfectly honest, though, I can't really say that I don't believe in Providence, or Sacred Coincidences. In fact I can think of a few events in my life in which I would be dead without these Sacred Coincidences. To deny them or declare them mere happenstance would be almost sacrilegious to my being.

I couldn't utter the words, "I was just lucky," without feeling it a betrayal to God and myself. When moments pass through my mind in which I see the path that might have been, a cold chill settles over me which is then replaced by a feeling of immense gratitude. That gratitude is almost always directed towards God.

If I were completely consistent, I would deny these serendipitous moments possession of any intrinsic meaning.

Yet, I can't. It's impossible for me.

As I was thinking these things over, I couldn't help but think that everything may not happen for a reason, but that's not the same thing as saying that everything is meaningless. Meaning can be found in anything. However large or small a moment, however important or insignificant the times, there is always a place for finding purpose and meaning. It's not that God is causing A, B or C to happen, but that He is asking us what we will do with A, B, or C.

Maybe the best attitude to have is one of zen-like surrender, which doesn't fight against what is happening, but only seeks to react in a righteous way to it. Deep gratitude seems to well up in the hearts of those who understand the lack of control they have in a given situation. When you know you are at the mercy of Fate/God/Life/The Universe, and you surrender to whatever might be coming for you, you find the starting place for peace.

That sounds very Buddha-like... but it's no different than Paul learning to be content in all things or the lilies of the field being dressed by God. To worry about the "reasons" for some things is to lose a spiritual peace that is being offered to us.

Everything Happens for a Reason, Part 1

The Pat Robertson Brouhaha continues to both Brou and Haha throughout the internet and the world at large. Robertson's epitaph will undoubtedly refer to his death by Foot-in-Mouth Disease, a terminal case if ever there was one.

The question that is being asked throughout many Christian blogs revolves around whether or not God actively causes or allows disasters, such as Haiti's earthquake, as a punishment or judgement. Many of us, myself included, disavow the idea that events like Haiti's earthquake are any sort of divine reprimand or sign from God.

So where does that leave us? Do we deny the possibility that God could use death and destruction to achieve some sort of eternal purpose?

It puts Christians who want to view God's goodness as his Ultimate attribute in a sticky situation; if God doesn't interact in such a way with humankind, then we must explain most of the stories of the Old Testament in some way that isn't an avoidance of the idea of Divine Retribution.

One approach to take with biblical literalists/inerrantists would be to point out that in most of the Old Testament stories of God's divine judgement, people are warned beforehand. They are told of the impending doom headed their way, and if they repent of their wickedness, they are spared.....like Ninevah in the book of Jonah. I don't recall any prophets proclaiming that God was going to destroy a large portion of Haiti by an earthquake if they didn't break their supposed pact with the devil. It's only people like Pat Robertson, who like to play Monday Morning Quarterback, who make connections between disaster and God's judgement, at which point any message from God is moot.

A day late and a dollar short.

They might as well be reading chicken bones and tea leaves, because after-the-fact warnings are always based on speculation and trying to find reasons for things that have no discernible reason.

The Bible has competing themes communicated within it; one theme which confirms everything that happens as part of God's will, and another theme portraying God's will as less certain and changeable.

The idea that God fore-ordained everything, that He is in control of every action and every consequence, is at the heart of how the Israelites made sense of the world around them. If they wanted to know what God thought about something and hadn't felt that they had heard from Him, they would cast lots, consulting the Urim and Thummim to divine His will, or uncover information. If a husband was uncertain of his wife faithfulness, the priests would make her drink a special drink. If she got sick, or died, then that was proof that she had been unfaithful, if she had no ill effects, then she must be innocent of the charges.

A God who operates through the inference of disaster, lots, and poison drinks is the kind of God that operates the way Pat Robertson thinks he does. There is no difference between the two.

However, as Christians, we don't deal with God that way, and He is not said to deal with us that way. This is a break between the Old Testament portrayal of God and the New Testament portrayal of God. The Old Testament portrayal of God is of a God who is very precise and particular. He cares about details and ceremony and exactness.

Profaning God's holiness in some way, like accidentally touching the Ark of the Covenant, or burning the wrong kind of incense, or performing duties only meant for priests, resulted in quick deaths for the profaners, however accidental or purposeful their acts were.

But, in the New Testament, is that completely lost?

Maybe not. Paul talks about people dying for taking communion unworthily, and we have Ananias and Sapphira suddenly keeling over after misrepresenting the size of their donation, and Herod dying and being eaten by worms because he let people attribute God-like qualities to him.

The examples of Paul's unworthy communion eaters and Herod's death could possibly both be explained as early Christians reading into the events the idea that everything happens for a reason. Therefore, the conclusion they reach seems to fit within the overall view of a God who is in control of all things. However, this is a loose inference, not a claim of direct revelation from God. Paul frequently states conclusions based on his own logical if/thens without making any claim to have received a clear word or explanation from God.

While discussing those unworthy communion participants he writes:

1 Corinthians 11:18-19

18In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 19No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval.

Really? Why do there have to be differences among them?

This is a holdover of Paul's background beliefs. He makes no claim to knowing that the differences are from God. He just simply assumes that they exist because God must want it that way.

When trying to explain God's sovereignty, Paul uses his rhetorical skill once again:

Romans 9:19-24

19One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' " 21Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

22What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

It's important to notice that Paul doesn't say these are the exact reasons that God has done certain things. No. Paul is simply arguing a point from what appears to be logical and consistent to him and his view of God. Once again, it's not a direct claim of knowledge about God's reasons, just a likely explanation in Paul's mind.

Yet....many people have taken Paul's strong opinions as direct communication from God, instead of simply taking them as an honest attempt by Paul to offer an explanation that makes sense to him and will hopefully redirect some of the problems the churches he is writing to are experiencing.

I'd liken it to what happens in life when we are discussing things we don't have an answer for. We comfort each other and propose theories about why such and such did, or didn't, happen to us. Maybe we lost our job because God has something better for us. Maybe we became sick in order to learn gratitude for the things we have in life. Maybe we missed that plane that wound up crashing without us on it because God has a plan for us. Maybe every trial we face is supposed to teach us a lesson of some sort.

These are the types of suppositions we all put forth in times of crisis, but we can never declare such ideas as completely true....and most of us would hesitate to put forth these speculations with any level of certainty.

Simple and Complex

Sometimes things I've been thinking about for a very long time, but can't quite find the words to articulate, are prompted by reading someone else's blog and commenting there. I'm like an enzyme; by myself I don't do much, but stir in the right ingredients and I actually find something to say or do.

What makes a religion become widespread? What makes it accessible and attractive to people? Why do some religions have memberships which grow into the millions, while others remain obscure and cult-like?

If one spends much time thinking about Christianity in comparison to other religions, trying to tease out its claims to exclusivity, comparing its beginnings to the beginning of other religions, one can quickly become discouraged by the similarities.

We can't simply rely on the argument that millions of people couldn't believe something that seems unlikely as a proof for our faith.

There is no good answer for why millions upon millions would believe that an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him some golden plates, revealing "truths" about Jesus interacting with people in the Americas.

It seems preposterous and easily falsifiable. Where are these plates? Well, the angel took them back. What language were they written in? Reformed Egyptian, a language never seen or depicted anywhere else...except in Joseph Smith's mind. How did Joseph Smith know how to translate this unknown language? God magically revealed it to him.

It's preposterous. It's laughable. It's downright comedy gold. Yet, millions of people believe this and participate in a religion based upon the story of the golden plates.

Why?

Because Mormonism has enough basic "truth" in it for the average person to be persuaded that there might be something to it. A focus on family and service to the community, and a co-opting of most of Christianity's themes, make it accessible to people. People don't really worry about whether Joseph Smith was a big, fat liar if they are getting their basic spiritual needs met through a community of like-minded believers. Mormonism is simple enough to be appealing to people.

It's also complex enough to keep people coming back. Secret rituals, sacred spaces that one must be approved of in order to enter, and the highly organized, institutional nature of the Mormon church; all of them create a religion in which a person can spend quite a bit of time trying to obtain the next level of spirituality, the next level of approval by the religious leaders, and the feeling that they are actively going somewhere in their faith.

It "works" in some sense.

In order for something to be believed, in order for it to be perceived as True, it must be both utterly simple and very complex.

Scientology might be another candidate for the simple/complex concept. The unvarnished story of Scientology's underlying themes is as incredible and worthy of mockery as Joseph Smith's golden plates. Lord Xenu and the intergalactic battle that left behind disembodied "thetans" that invade our minds and cause us trouble, impeding our spiritual growth and success...are better suited to a comic book than to the real world. Yet, millions of people believe and participate in Scientology.

Scientology cheats in one regard that is similar to Mormonism; the holding back of "secret" knowledge until a member is deemed worthy of possessing it. It's not hard for people to believe crazy things if they are not told the nitty gritty details at the beginning of their faith. By the time they reach the proper spiritual level, they have been so encroached in the religion that it would be unthinkable to suddenly question the beliefs that have "worked" for them.

Scientology is "simple" in its belief that most of the trouble that we face as humans emanates from our mind and the destructive, negative thoughts we perpetuate. There is enough "truth" in that belief to appeal to people. Most people have the ability to recognize that they are frequently their own worst enemies. Scientology thrives on that simple "truth" and builds a complexity into it with all sorts of elaborations and secret knowledge. It keeps people coming back, hoping to obtain new levels in the religion.

The simple/complex principle pops up everywhere. Even the most uneducated person in the world understands gravity and what will happen to them if they fall off a ladder, and yet scientists spend their life's work exploring the ramifications of gravity on the macro and micro levels. The way gravity interacts with other forces is stunningly complex...but a five-year old doesn't need the stunningly complex explanation to know that the theory of gravity is "true".

The creationism/evolution debate is raging in faith communities because of the simple/complex concept. While creationism, on its face, may seem much simpler with its "God did it all in 6 days" answer, in comparison to evolution, I believe that creationism is failing because it is becoming much more complicated to believe in it. It isn't "simple" anymore. In order to explain discrepancies with scientific data, it has to posit scientific conspiracies and a God who wanted to "trick" us by making things seem older than they really are. Once a trickster God enters the picture, and the whole scientific community is viewed as a conspiracy-minded Illuminati, simplicity goes out the window.

Evolution, though complex, is also a simple enough concept that the general population can understand it and appreciate the "truth" of things changing and becoming new things....because our own lives, and bodies, are always changing. Evolution fits into concepts we already have.

Any "truth" that is really True must fit into the Simple/Complex category.

This comes into play in Christianity through our doctrine, what we believe, and how we approach finding the "answer" to something.

If we're trying to understand what Scripture says about something and our interpretation relies on an intricate, difficult to understand principle, then we need to re-think our interpretation. On the other hand, if everything gets boiled to down to "Be Nice", with no engagement of how exactly we do that in a complex, social environment, then that interpretation fails just as rapidly as the overly complex interpretation.

Often I read bloggers who are slightly snobby in their approach to Scripture, academics, and the right way to interpret a passage, sing worship songs and promote Christianity. They advocate that people should put in long, hard years of study before being allowed a public platform, or leadership, in churches or religious societies. I see their point and agree to some extent.

However, if a belief system operates at such a complex level that the novice can find no place to enter into it, no way to easily integrate it into their lives, then that belief system fails on a very substantive level. If only experts can apprehend a supposedly universal concept, then the concept must not be very universal.

If one has to learn Hebrew and Greek in order to properly understand Scripture and find the points of truth it holds, then it calls into question the idea that Scripture is meant to be understood and have an audience made up of common, average people. If one has to learn Hebrew and Greek, not to simply understand the text, but to better clarify details, fleshing out already established, simple truths, then one has found an approach that integrates the simple/complex concept quite nicely.

Working Out My Theology

I've had several months to let my thoughts about annihilation and conditional immortality sink in. (posts about it here, here, here and here.) I've had to spend some time mulling this over, and seeing how it comes into play in my life and how it affects what I think, say and do.

It's been an interesting thought experiment.

One of the first things that happened was that I realized that old habits die hard. A friend of our family lost her elderly mother to age and sickness. In the wake of her death, while we were talking about how sick her mother had been before her death, I instinctively said,"Well, at least she's in a better place now. She's not struggling with sickness anymore." Immediately, I realized that I was saying something that I wasn't sure of any longer. Without a doubt I believed she was no longer suffering, but I wasn't so sure that she was conscious somewhere enjoying restored health and the perfection of life.

It gave me pause.

I continued to feel the impact of my new theology while at church. I share responsibility for teaching Sunday School at our church, and it soon became obvious that all of the children, between 2nd and 5th grade, had already formed strong ideas about hell and who was going there. During one of our lessons, which didn't mention hell at all, while we were talking about good and bad choices, the kids started discussing how they didn't want to go "down there". They animatedly began describing the people who were going "down there" and what it was going to be like....with sound effects and silly voices and pantomime. I reminded them that Jesus promises us eternal life and forgiveness for our bad choices and sins, and slowly pulled them back in the direction of the lesson, but my heart sank as I realized what we as parents, myself included, had already put in the minds of our children.

Because I am part of a community which doesn't necessarily believe what I currently do, I won't teach the children what my specific beliefs are out of respect for that community. However, I have changed the language I use, never referring to salvation as "going to Heaven", or "living in Heaven forever with God". I simply use the term Jesus used--eternal life. I talk about resurrection, having new bodies, and a new heaven and a new earth.....all completely Scriptural descriptions of salvation.

I wonder if that's enough, or if there will come a time when I need to speak openly about what I'm thinking. I don't think that I am quite there yet.

I got involved in the blog comments at dangerous idea, on a post about whether Catholics worship Mary and the saints, a subject which is probably the single biggest stumbling block I would have to converting to Catholicism, and halfway through the conversation I realized that I was arguing about whether Mary and saints could see, hear and respond to people's requests for help on earth.....and it was completely moot to me. Because I was pretty sure that humans weren't residing in a conscious spiritual state in between death and resurrection, arguing about what powers they did or didn't have was quite silly for me. I should have excused myself from commenting at that point.

Another consequence of this theological stance is that death has taken on a completely new meaning for me. It has paradoxically become both more tragic and less tragic in my mind. More tragic, because life seems so much more transitory and valuable. Without the comfort of thinking that those who have passed on are somehow "up there" looking out for us, or having a good time waiting for us to join them, life and death somehow suddenly seem more lonely, and more real, than before.

Death becomes less tragic once the traditional picture of hell is gone. While people may disappear into nothingness, never to exist again, at least the torturous image of eons of punishment dissipates. There is mercy to even the wicked in true death.

I'm not sure where this will continue to take me. Every now and then the implications of this view will pop up in unexpected, unpredictable ways, catching me off guard.

I'm not done figuring this all out, yet.

Reconciliation with Paul

The Apostle Paul.

There has existed within me a love-hate relationship with Paul. As a fairly intelligent woman, reading his restrictions on women is vexing to me:

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

As in all the congregations of the saints, 34. women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

and

1 Timothy 2:11-15
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

It's a puzzling thing to read after Paul's freeing declarations in other Epistles--

27. for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Even considering that the contexts are different--the first two statements relating to an order of worship and practical roles, the third being a refutation of being bound by the Mosaic Law--it still seems a contradictory attitude. If there is no male or female in Christ, in Paul's mind, why does he still lay Eve's sin at the feet of women and restrict their roles and participation in Christian life?

The picture becomes more confusing when one considers the fact that Paul often worked with women and seemed to appreciate their contributions in contending for the faith. He takes the time to acknowledge them in various writings and owes much to the support of women like Lydia and Priscilla working with her husband Aquilla.

However, this is not Paul's only idiosyncrasy. Depending on Paul's mood, he can be abrasive and harsh, referencing castration as a wish towards Judaizers of Christianity, or weepy and emotional as he describes his desire for the Jewish people to come to salvation. He can urge the church in Corinth to cast out an unrepentant member without mercy, and then implore them to have mercy and let him back into the fold. An iron fist in a velvet glove.

Perhaps more than any other writer of Scripture, we get a clear picture of his personality which seems inseparable from his epistles and teachings. He is emotive and self-reflective in a way other New Testament authors are not. He speaks of his own experiences and feelings, using them to further his arguments and convince his audience of the trustworthiness of his beliefs.

We have a picture of a whole, complete person in what he has left behind.

It is only through thinking of Paul and his writings in this particular way that I can reconcile myself to him, making sense of his varied attitudes which seem contradictory or complicated. He reminds me of the uncle at Thanksgiving who everybody loves and respects, but who can also be slightly obnoxious and overbearing. People put up with the bad traits because they are heavily outweighed by the good traits.

I actually have a warm spot in my heart for Paul, now.

Reading through the many debates about the Historical Jesus, the possibly late dating of the gospels and the contention that most of what Christianity is today was somehow invented/accumulated much later than the events the gospels record, I am always struck by the stalwart arguments we have in Paul. The gospels can be debated and re-dated. Compelling arguments can be made about the development of Christology coming much later, placing the Gospel of John in a category of highly developed treatise instead of a simple retelling of Jesus' life. Points can be made about dubious insertions into the other, non-Pauline epistles.

In many ways Paul stands at the crux of Christianity and its self-understanding. He answers the questions with which we are left about Jesus. He makes the interpretive leaps that give Christianity forward momentum and direction. Without his work we would be left with little guidance about the meaning and purpose of Jesus' story.

It is precisely this point which some people use as a contrast to the Jesus of the gospels, making distinctions between how Paul engages Jesus and how the synoptic gospels engage him.

Yet....no matter how sketchy and perilous the academic study of an Historical Jesus becomes, teetering on the edge of obliterating any spiritual frame of reference for Christianity, there is always Paul standing in the way.

This powerful figure, this indefatigable creature, warts and all, has left a record not only of what he believed, but clues as to what those around him believed. It is a priceless snapshot of the conversation and movement surrounding Jesus and how it was playing out in the first century.

I can forgive Paul for his wavering on women. I can forgive Paul for his sometimes harsh way. I can look past that and see a man trying his utmost to spread a message that he truly believed, letting nothing stand in his way.

This is the way that I am beginning to rebuild with the lumber of the tree which I have hacked down. I reconcile myself to Scripture, not because it is inerrant, or scientific, or unchangeable, but because I am reconciling myself to a community, to people, and to the figures who have, through their own lives, attempted to birth God's kingdom into this world.

How I Changed My Mind, Part 2

I wrote this some time ago and never quite completed it, but there are a few posts coming up that will be related to it...so here it is.

When I last wrote about inerrancy, I outlined how a belief in it could only be supported by two ideas, one of which consisted of believing that everything that happens, happens because of God's will, thereby making the case that the Scriptures we have were preserved perfectly throughout history because God so willed it to be. They exist as they are because God willed them to exist just as they are.

I dealt with that.

Now, I want to move on to an idea which has gained strength in me for some time; questioning the infallibility of Biblical authors.

As a Protestant, I have always been taught--in almost every church/denomination--that Scripture takes precedence over any particular person or church. If someone preaches something that is "non-biblical" then a good Protestant is supposed to defer to Scripture and ignore that particular pastor, teacher, or church. There is no allegiance extended to any person or organization that isn't contingent upon a "right" understanding of the Scriptures.

Protestants--the original "show me" people.

I am not opposed to such a bent in people. I think that anyone and anything should be up for questioning if people are uncertain about what something means. However, this very trait which is so intrinsic to Protestantism is at the root of the problem I began to have with inerrancy.

The typical narrative for Protestants goes something like this--Once upon a time there was this really great church that was following Jesus in exactly the way they were supposed to. Eventually the church grew in number and political leaders became Christians and began to use their authority to influence the government to be favorable to Christianity. When enough Christians were in power, they began to meddle in church life, causing all kinds of political and worldly entanglements, corrupting the purity of the church. Eventually, the church itself became powerful and proscribed all sorts of unbiblical and false doctrines. It also became overly wealthy and involved in politics. All of that changed when Martin Luther pounded his 95 theses on the door at Wittenburg. Sola Scriptura brought Christianity back to its roots, back to its "true" form. We no longer needed to fear "The Church" or its leaders. WE could each know what God had said through the Scriptures. When tradition was not found to be based on the Bible....we could comfortably toss it away.

In concept, this was an equalizing, democratic, revolutionary idea. Really, all it boils down to is trust no one.

The problem with trusting no one, is that there is an infinite regress of ones not to trust. We eventually wind up all the way back with the Church fathers whose faith and beliefs are very different from those of modern Protestants, even those Protestants who fervently believe in inerrancy.

As an example, belief in transubstantiation--the idea that the communion elements become the actual, literal Body and Blood of Jesus--was developed very early in the church. By the 2nd century, it was being taught as the accepted doctrine of communion.

This becomes a problem for Protestants, most of whom see communion as simply a remembrance meal, some who see it as intrinsically holy and spiritual, and others who are slightly closer to transubstantiation but don't believe that the actual elements are transformed. In general, Protestants don't fret over the fact that they reject a doctrine which has been in force since the very early church fathers. We are comfortable in assuming that in our modern context, we can assert that even though the church fathers believe that's what happened to the bread and wine, they were mistaken in how far they extended the doctrine and belief.

This intersects with inerrancy only in the method by which Protestants believe things. Protestants may say that they don't believe in transubstantiation because it isn't "biblical". They find no evidence for such a detailed doctrine in the Scriptures. They concede that there is to be communion, by the Lord's own institution of it, but they disagree about its purpose.

At first, it may seem reasonable for Protestants to rely scientifically on the Scriptures for their doctrine, rejecting what seems out of place to them. However, the implications of such an approach are far-reaching. When we reject the conclusions of early Christian leaders who were much closer to the original events and people recorded in Scripture, we are removing the foundations of the religion which we think we are defending. It's like standing in the top of a very tall tree while commanding someone on the ground to chop it down. Once the cut severs the trunk, it will take a while for the highest tip of the tree to fall to the ground, but there can be no doubt that gravity will eventually pull it from its lofty height.

In order for Christianity to sustain itself, there must be a quantifiable level of trust in its beginnings and in its early teachers.

A confidence in inerrancy undermines trust in the church fathers insomuch as simply taking their word about things. Protestants tend to be willing to revise any and all held beliefs until we get to the original apostles, the gospel writers and Paul; we place them and their writings in a special case, declaring them to be inspired and holy.

This creates a dilemma....if we are willing to discard doctrines developed by the early church fathers, going all the way back until we reach the apostles, what's to keep us from going that last step and questioning the doctrines and writings developed by them? There is nothing to logically stop us from doing that. Protestants don't go that far because they recognize that the destruction of the Christian faith would soon follow in the wake of that last step. So, it is not that their particular brand of reasoning and argumentation changes, but that they purposely and consciously suspend it upon arriving at the end point of the apostles.

Catholics are not quite in the same predicament. While they have a high view of Scripture, the ultimate authority of what Scripture means, or what doctrines are in force, comes from their confidence in the infallibility of their popes in all spiritual matters. Catholic Christianity is much more malleable over time. Believing that whatever the current spiritual leader "binds or loosens" has God's stamp of approval, removes some of the issues created by changing doctrines and teachings.

So what's a Protestant to do? The choices seem to be a) convert to Catholicism, or perhaps Orthodoxy, b) believe in inerrancy as a way to sweep away beliefs we currently find uncomfortable or false, c) begin to question the very starting points of Christianity.

None of those choices are remotely appealing to me.

1. I have too many fundamentally anti-Catholic beliefs to sweep aside. Whatever I am, it remains thoroughly Protestant.

2. I can't believe in inerrancy as a way to make myself feel more confident, ignoring the things I've learned in order to ease the struggle of my soul.

3. If I begin to question the very beginnings of Christianity, what will I be left with?

I have chopped down the tree I scaled so eagerly in my life. I have watched it tumble to the ground.

Will I be able to make something useful of the lumber?

Relationship Rules

My encounters with God can come and go. I have had frequent times of silence from Him and other times of sublime peace and reassurance. I have had times when I wonder if I have wandered too far off track and times of feeling as if I am in the exact place I was meant to be in.

It's a slippery thing to try and capture.

As I sat in church today, watching the people enter and find their seats, seeing the young children skip down the aisle and dart in and out of the pews, I had one of those moments of clarity and peace.

Everything I ever learned came from another human being. Stretching all the way back to my childhood there is a genealogy of transmitted ideas that shaped who I am. Like some sort of unseen electricity passing through a superconductor, the thoughts of others have flowed through me, sometimes causing new thoughts within me which I later passed on to someone else in an endless game of telephone.

While I have had experiences with God as an individual, it is as a part of humanity that I have most often heard or seen Him. Whether it's listening to music which speaks to me, or reading something that gives me a new insight, or simply the physical touch of people who care about me, there is a consistent sense that I am a part of something larger than myself....something better than myself.

It's easy to think of wild-eyed prophets eating locusts and honey in the wilderness as examples of piety, swallowed up by isolation as they try to hear the voice of God away from the noise of all the other voices. The monastic life, meant to be dedicated wholly to God, seems purer and more holy than the ordinary existence most of us live.

Yet.....I wonder if the idea of retreats and pilgrimages and self-imposed isolation is a doomed enterprise, spiritually speaking.

When Jesus preaches to the crowds and heals the sick, it is it in the masses that the power of God is coming upon the world. When he delivers the Sermon on the Mount, he is teaching people righteousness through right relationships. He uses the Good Samaritan to cement the idea that loving God is loving people....serving God is serving people. He is pointing us in the direction of living relationally with people.

We are refined through other people. We are comforted through other people. We are given opportunities to live sacrificially and unselfishly through people.

Nothing comes to us that doesn't first pass through another person, both good and evil.

When we withdraw from life, or people, we hamper our own spiritual growth. I have been guilty of hiding within myself when I have felt misunderstood, or not quite accepted....but I never overcome those feelings without re-entering relationships and choosing to attempt to be forgiving and gracious to people who don't "deserve" it.

In the same way, I have been most satisfied when I have been useful to someone else. Knowing that I was a small part of the endless transmission of God's encouragement and love, in my own meager way, fills me with peace.

How I Changed My Mind

My change in perspective has come about in several ways.  The first step was in realizing that the doctrine of "inerrancy" that I had been taught and embraced for much of my Christian journey was basically wrong. The aftershocks of that still rumble through me every once in a while. I had become so used to looking at The Bible as a singular "Word of God" in which every word, every story, and every principle had been handed down through perfect, divine revelation that when I began to poke at the concept a little and noticed it crumbling under pressure I was distraught.

When I was younger, I attended a Christian University. I took several religion courses, some as requirements, and some for my own personal interest. I probably would have majored in Religion if I had belonged to a denomination in which women were valued in leadership roles. However, I belonged to the SBC which has been, and continues to be, disproportionately obsessed with enforcing traditional gender roles in the Church. As such, it seemed like getting a Religion degree would serve no purpose in that particular denomination for me. It would be useless as far as pursuing any official role in ministry. I wasn't really open to other denominations at that point, convinced that while the SBC wasn't perfect it was as close as possible to what I thought of at the time as "biblical" Christianity. 

I wasn't ignorant of New Testament studies, or even the knowledge that the compilation of the Canon was not as straightforward as it seemed. I had a divided mind on the issue without realizing it. That divided mind was reinforced and affirmed not only by my fellow students, but by most of my professors. I was blind to the fact that the ways in which we spoke about Scripture were contradictory. On the one hand, we would have great discussions about conflicts surrounding the formation of the Canon, or particular doctrines, noting the uncertainty of what it all meant. On the other hand, each Sunday would find most of us in very conservative churches affirming that Scripture was the "Word of God" in that mystical, magical way that imported great meaning into every verse we read.

Some of my professors were also ministers in local churches who, without a doubt, taught their congregations the doctrine of inerrancy. I didn't think it at all unusual.

The two prongs undergirding inerrancy, without which it can't stand, are the beliefs that everything that happens in history happens by God's purposeful, sovereign will, and secondly that the writers of Scripture were somehow more holy and peculiar in their relationship with God, passing along insights which were given only to a very elite group of people. Without belief in those two ideas, inerrancy cannot hold up.

I've recently connected the first idea to Calvinism, finally understanding the ways in which it interacts with that strain of Christianity. It is no coincidence that Calvinists and the doctrine of inerrancy are so interlocked. It's hard to tell which came first; the belief in inerrancy causing the formation of Calvinist theology, or the idea of God's far-reaching, sovereign, active control of every aspect of the Universe causing a belief in inerrancy. Because the Church assembled these texts, it must be God's will that The Bible we have is the one we were meant to have and has been carefully inspired and preserved by God. In other words, it happened in a particular way, so God must have willed it to happen that way because nothing happens, in this view, that God hasn't willed to happen.

Is that clear as mud?

If you're a Calvinist, then you have no problems that can't eventually be solved through this circular logic. I don't mean to sound uncharitable, because to be truthful I can't find any belief system which doesn't at some level have circular, self-validating logic. We can't know all things, so any comprehensive opinion on the matter will always have some basic presuppositions guiding it. Some presuppositions are simply more sweeping in scale than others.

Now I have long glanced down my nose at Calvinism ever since my freshman year in college when one of my new friends explained that her pastor taught that Christ didn't die for everyone's sins, but only for those whom he chose beforehand. Everyone else was just plain out of luck and better bring some marshmallows to roast during their long stay in Hell. I was outraged, aghast, revolted, and convinced that this was the worst heresy I had ever heard of. Slowly, I began to realize that not only did this particular friend believe this, but so did many other people, including some of the professors I knew. There were variations in how strongly individuals held to TULIP(only follow that link if you're up to tasting some strong Calvinist Kool-Aid), some expressed a weak assent, while others wholeheartedly viewed it as the "theory of everything" making sense of the Cosmos for us lowly humans.

I was young and earnest in my faith. While never completely reconciling myself to Calvinism, I did begin incorporating some of its theology into my view of God. I was proving the principle that humans, despite their best intentions to be objective, are notoriously easily influenced through time, repetition, and the appearance of authority. Because pastors and professors were communicating these concepts, they must be at least partly true...right? 

To concede that they were completely wrong would have shaken my faith to its core. I wasn't at a mature enough age to handle that kind of dissonance and keep any shred of belief intact. It was all or nothing. To believe that the people who were teaching me were gravely mistaken would have called into question any trust I might have had that I  knew anything about God, or that my experiences with Him had any merit to them.

So what changed?

Well, I could never get around the Calvinist version of God's Sovereignty and the horrific tragedies throughout history. There are really only two ways to reconcile them.  One way is to dispassionately declare that God willed even the most terrible things to happen because he had some higher purpose, or just because he wanted to. He has some master plan going on and even The Holocaust was a part of that plan.  Another way is to consider that much of what transpires on this blue planet is in no way connected to God's divine will. Evil is perpetuated by people who make evil choices. Not everything that happens occurs on the basis of God's active choosing.

I could never, in any way, make God the author of Evil in the way that Calvinism does. Calvinists will say that's not what Calvinism teaches, going to great lengths and producing voluminous works to try and redefine very basic ideas of good and evil and causes in order to portray God as both Sovereign and guiltless of evil.

It doesn't matter how many words are used to do this. Even my 9 and 7 year old children would be able to see through that kind of reasoning in a few minutes....see my last post for more evidence of that. (As an aside, I think it's funny that people always tell us to "be as little children" when we question things, implying that children readily believe whatever they are told.  My experience with children is that they are the most severe critics and detectors of BS....hardly unquestioning drones.  They naturally poke and prod at most everything they are told.)

If God doesn't cause everything to happen...if circumstances aren't the way they are because God caused them to be...if events happen in history which aren't God's will....then on what basis can we declare Divine intervention in the compilation of the Canon? It doesn't mean that God couldn't have intervened and caused the Church to assemble this particular set of Scriptures. It doesn't mean that God couldn't have inerrantly inspired the biblical writers. However, it does mean we can't appeal to the logic of " it happened in this way, so it must have been by God's will."

So, if you're not fully Calvinist in scope, you can't rely on that presupposition to support inerrancy.

I'll work on another post about the second prong of upholding inerrancy next.

Motivation by Fear

This video has made the rounds on several sites I have encountered, most recently at internetmonk's. His post covered it pretty well.

During the past week, I have been struck by how frequently fear has undergirded some of the conversations and opinions I have come across. Whether it's the swine flu, questions about torture, or the economy, I think it's safe to say that the general atmosphere is a fearful one.

We become used to fear in our daily lives. The news relies on it almost exclusively to draw in viewers. If there isn't something spectacularly frightening happening, then they'll do a story on freak accidents, or one-in-a-million syndromes that you...yes, you...could be suffering from.

A little bit of fear can be a good thing. It keeps us from taking dangerous risks. It makes us think twice about our actions and the likely consequences. It reminds us to wear our seat belts and put smoke detectors in our house.

In one sense, a smidgen of fear is our friend.

Yet, have we moved past a smidgen? Are we swimming in a cultural ocean of fear?

From my perspective, it appears as if we are.

In some circles, the fear is palpable. Between Obama being elected, causing some conservatives to quake with fear, the threat of terrorism, and the general uncertainty of the very near future, people are worried. The video at the top of the post is a good example of the doomsday-ish feeling which can so easily seep in.

Even I had to mentally fight against the fear after watching it. Do I want my children to grow up in a radical, Muslim-populated future? No!  I need to start popping out more children and making sure everyone else does too!

If we stop and take a breath for a minute and try to logically assess what the video communicates, we can start to pull out a few threads and see the argument begin to fray. 

It is likely that growing Muslim populations in Western countries will begin to have lower fertility rates as they assimilate into their respective cultures. It is just as likely that Western Muslims will not be willing to relinquish the freedoms they have. People who become used to having human and legal rights are not usually prone to surrendering them.

That doesn't mean that some of the bad things we fear won't transpire.

Has bravery lost its place of honor among us?

There are all kinds of bravery. Heading into combat, knowing that you might not make it out is brave, and we respect those who do so...as we should. It's the definition which springs to mind when words like bravery and courage are mentioned.

Though we respect the virtues of courage and bravery in our soldiers, we seldom practice it in our individual lives or in our communities.

Instead, we frequently make choices as a reaction to fearful events or concepts.  Sometimes those choices don't have any negative impact on us. They don't matter one way or another. At other times, it leads us down a path of confining choices and suffocating attitudes. We don't do the things we want to because we're afraid that we'll fail. We don't speak up for ourselves or others because we're afraid of the social implications at school or work. 

For those of us who believe in Christ's message, it is to our shame that we let fear make our choices for us. We should feel secure, shouldn't we? Death has no permanent hold on us. God has declared peace with us.  Everything else in life should be a cake walk.

However, we don't walk in that knowledge. Churches can unwittingly promote a culture of fear when they continuously hammer messages of the decaying culture of society, or the schemes of the devil in people's lives. After enough of those references, we can lose our sense of peace and begin worrying about all the terrible things waiting to ensnare us.

It's easy to slip into.

When it happens..when we feel the fear closing in around us and making us anxious of the future..we must resist it. We must counteract it. We must make choices fueled by hope and faith.

Someone will say,"You can't just stick your head in the sand!  Bad things will happen. Be practical!"

Being practical is not the same as being brave. Practicality can eventually drain the value  out of the things we cherish most. 

Jesus was not practical. Think of all the people he could have ministered to if he had never faced the cross. It's not practical to be led into your enemy's den and offer yourself up willingly to those who want to kill you. Practicality would have sent him running the other way when he saw Judas approaching.

Yet...in the face of his fears...he made a most impractical, courageous choice.

May we do the same.

In Search of Spiritual Contentment

It's a hard thing to be a simultaneously spiritually content Christian and a thinking Christian. The urge to constantly poke and prod ourselves and our concept of God is like trying not to pick at a scab.  We know that leaving it alone will help it heal faster, but it itches.  We scratch it, ripping off the protective barrier and start the whole bleeding process again.  It will eventually heal, but it's going to take much longer to do so.

Adult Sunday School has always been an exercise in frustration for me. I realized that this Sunday morning as I listened to a group venture way off-topic and express cliches and sentimentalities that have no real wisdom in them. It's a chronic complaint of mine.  

When I was younger and attended SBC churches, it was even more frustrating because combined with the off-the-mark interpretations and missing-the-point applications, I had to deal with the hovering idea of submission to authority, and the submission of women to male leadership.  I would bite my lip as leaders made nonsensical statements or took passages completely out of context.  Even when I didn't feel constrained by the general gender attitudes, I would ration how often I would speak up in an attempt to correct what was said, which I usually did in non-confrontational ways, phrasing things in terms of "I wonder if maybe so and so meant this."

Nobody likes to be corrected.  Nobody likes people who are always correcting other people.

Over the years, I've accepted that roughly 60% of what I hear from pulpits and Bible studies is generally chaff.  It's incorrect.  It's biased.  It's shallow.  It has no lasting impact on the speaker or the hearer.  It's noise.

You would think that having such a low opinion of Sunday School and sermons would make me run for the hills, and yet I still attend church. I haven't surrendered my hope for a spiritual home.

Considering how wrong I think my fellow believers can be--digressing into Young Earth Creation arguments, falling for Urban Legends as proof for faith, justifying terrible suffering as God's will--it may seem as if I foolishly cling to my personal faith. If the people by which I am surrounded have such low accuracy in these things, then why would I want to associate with them? Surely I can't expect to learn anything from these people.

To be honest, I have had moments in which I felt that way.....but those moments always pass.

My faith is my faith because of what it means to me.  I selfishly protect it from the errors I know of.  Yet, even now I must acknowledge that I probably possess errors of my own of which I am completely unaware.  It would be the height of arrogance to assume that my knowledge of God is complete and whole. If I am willing to allow for God's grace to cover over my own misunderstandings and gaffes, then it would be rank hypocrisy to not extend the same grace to others.

While trying to continue to poke and prod my faith and my understanding of it, there comes the recognition that all of the things I ponder and think about, all the pie-in-the-sky wanderings of my mind, have very little to do with the very basic tenets of Christianity--the reduction of all the Scriptures to loving God with all that I have, and to loving others as I wish to be loved.

I need a lot of loving...a lot of overlooking of my annoying qualities....a lot of grace for my many mistakes and imperfections...a lot of patience. 

I put up with the crazy ideas people spout, because I sense that sometimes I am the crazy person spouting ideas.

In searching for spiritual contentment, I find I have to release my urges to always have things just so. I have to let go of the professional critic that speaks inside my head and accept people for where they are in their particular journey with God. 

I find that when I set those things aside and focus on the actual people, and not the things that they say, it becomes much easier.

The God of Love

Considering all of my recent posts about Annihilation and Hell, I'm left pondering what it all means to me, personally.

In some ways, looking at things from this new perspective is very freeing for me.  Things make more sense to me.  I actually feel as if God is a God of Love, rather than paying lip service to the concept while justifying a doctrine of hell which damns the large majority of people who have ever existed to eternal torment.

Besides the tactic of not thinking about it much, most conservative Christians harmonize the God of Love and the God of Wrath by explaining that we all deserve Hell, therefore God is loving towards us by providing Jesus as a way for some of us to be saved and avoid damnation. It's our own damn fault and we should be grateful for the meager scraps God throws our way...or so such an attitude appears to express.

My mind conjures an image of an exasperated Father, irritated with His children, not really liking them, wanting to simply show them the door, but then Child Protective Services might show up....so He guesses rather than hassle with all that, He might as well try to do something about them.

That picture of God, while definitely not consciously being drawn by Christians, is at the heart of many people's relationship with God. God is our Father, but it's not a trusting relationship. It's an uneasy one in which we're never quite sure where we stand.  Is He going to open His arms to draw us in, or raise his voice and shout at us, maybe even slap us if we get too far out of line?

My intention is not to downplay God's right to judgment, or to minimize evil. Surely evil is all around us.  We see it everyday in the news.  We experience it in our lives. 

However, the window with which I view God has changed angles.  Instead of looking through it and seeing a brick wall, I see an endless blue ocean and vast white sand.  Instead of a sterile lobby, I see a cultivated courtyard.

Specifically, I have found focusing on eternal life as being physical resurrection and perfection, and condemnation as being true death/annihilation, to be life-affirming. God loves His creation.  He is not interested in its destruction, but in its redemption.  He is not interested in making us less human, but more human--perfectly human.  He is not interested in making us austere, stoic people, unaffected and unimpressed by life.

No.

He has placed a value on us that we cannot fully appreciate or understand.  It's useless to try and understand. Love is the only word for it; caring for us because He chooses to, because we are important to Him.

When you know that you are truly loved by somebody, your relationship with that person matures and becomes secure.  You don't worry that they are constantly evaluating you, looking for your weaknesses, and mentally counting up your insufficiencies.  You become relaxed in their presence and are able to be open and share what you're thinking and feeling without fear of reprisal. 

It's what John expresses in 1 John 4:13-18

¹³We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. ¹⁶And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. ¹⁷In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. ¹⁸There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Fear of God's judgment never moves us forward in our spiritual lives.  We don't overcome temptation and evil through fear. In contrast, we mature by apprehending God's love and grace. 

There is a paradox in life that certain things can only be overcome by caring about them less, not more. We become more confident in ourselves when we stop caring about what other people think of us, not when we constantly try to make sure that we measure up.  We learn to dance by enjoying the music, rather than slavishly trying to follow dance steps.  We lose weight when we stop obsessing on food and simply eat when we're hungry. We overcome addictions when we realize they don't really give us what we want and have no real power over us anyway.

In the same way, we overcome our failings and the fear of judgment by seeing them as nothing in the face of God's love for us.  We can only truly share God's love and grace once we begin to comprehend and accept it. We give from what has been given to us.

Reflecting on God's love lifts mankind from the depths of a pit and sets him on solid ground. It realigns us with God's original intent for us.  It fights against the view of mankind as pitiful vermin, worthy of destruction.

You must, in some ways, have a high view of yourself to enter into relationship with God in such a way. Yet, it is not regarding yourself as perfect because you're better than others, but because you have found your purpose as a child of God, valued by Him, because He has declared you valuable....not only you...but all who choose to follow Him.

In Acts 13 Paul and Barnabas travel throughout Israel spreading the message about Jesus.  At one point they worship at a synagogue and are asked to share a message of encouragement. Paul relates the history of Israel and Jesus' role as Savior.  People flock to hear their message and many believe.  The Jewish leaders became jealous of the attention and following Paul and Barnabas obtain and begin to persecute them, stirring up trouble for them. What is interesting, is Paul and Barnabas' response to them.  Out of exasperation, acknowledging that they have shared the message with the Jewish community there, they say:

Acts 13:46-47a 

Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: "We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. ⁴⁷For this is what the Lord has commanded us...

It's a compelling way to put things; they are rejecting the gospel because they do not consider themselves worthy of eternal life.  Granted, Paul may be responding sarcastically, yet even so, there's a nugget of truth in there.

It takes faith to trust in that love, to rely on it in the face of failure, to see it as steadfast, unconquerable by fear, to judge oneself worthy of the love of God and eternal life.

Body and Soul, Part 3

I was reading a post from the jollyblogger, who is dealing with a cancer diagnosis and is currently in treatment and receiving chemo, and it brought back memories of my own chemo experience. I had never really understood physical suffering up until that point.  Here's what the Jollyblogger had to say:

Embracing weakness was a challenging thought and compelling concept when I thought of it as a kind of metaphorical, spiritual kind of weakness. I could embrace this metaphorical, spiritual weakness as long as I could also remain strong and healthy and competent in the whole of my life. For me it was synonymous with humility, so in other words, I would try to be emotionally, spiritually and physically strong, but just be humble about my strengths. 

Then cancer struck and I also took another look at the classic passage from Paul on weakness - II Corinthians 12:7-10

7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I always lifted verse 9 out of the context and thought of the weakness here as a kind of "spiritual" weakness. But after I found I had cancer and started enduring some serious physical weakness I looked at the context more closely and saw that the weakness Paul is speaking of here is physical. It's a "thorn" in the flesh, not a "metaphor" in the flesh. It's a thorn in the "flesh" not a thorn in the "spirit" or the "soul.

I appreciate what he has to say and recognize that I used to do/still tend to do the same thing. It brought me back to what I've been pondering in my previous posts. 

While I've been kicking around the idea that human beings are by nature purely physical beings, without separate, immaterial "spirits", I realized how much what I thought I knew about certain Scriptures has been tainted by what I have assumed.  Much of what I have been taught, and also learned on my own, consists of the spiritualizing of passages which probably were meant to be taken literally, in a physical, material sense.

Some examples might be helpful. I think the one jollyblogger alludes to is a good example. Frequently that Scripture is quoted in the context of Christians struggling with sin. The thorn is the flesh is not really seen as having anything to do with the body, but is seen rather as a person's propensity for a particular sin. 

Another example...."For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23

I've read or heard that verse many times. When I have read or heard it, "death" did not hold its everyday, common use.  Instead, it became a spiritualized version of the word, meaning damnation, hell, really bad consequences for sinful choices.  Never in my mind, or in the minds of most Christians, is it interpreted as simply being physical death.

However, once again I notice that death is being contrasted by eternal life, whose source is a gift from God.

Why does this happen?  Why do we spiritualize what would otherwise be straightforward passages in Scripture?

There are a few things at play here.  The first problem may be that we are trying to reconcile our common experiences with what we've been taught about God.  When we see that there are many people who sin with abandon and without remorse, and yet they are still sucking air and living relatively untroubled lives, we attempt to make sense of it.  Obviously people don't die when they sin, unless their sin has somehow put them in physical danger. At the same time, because death is not immediate and because all people die--holy and unholy, believing and non-believing, saint and sinner--we assume that the verse doesn't mean what it clearly says.  It must mean "spiritual death" or hell, or any number of things.

We follow this same interpretation in the Genesis account.

Genesis 2:16

And the LORD God commanded the man ,"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Well, they didn't die, at least not instantaneously.  They eventually did die, but we tend to not like the messiness of explaining why they didn't die right away, especially when we have God quoted as saying "when you eat of it you will surely die."  To explain away this perceived contradiction, Christians usually say that Adam "died" in a spiritual sense when he ate the fruit. We spiritualize the verse to convey that something internal happened to Adam, and that physical death was eventually a consequence, but by no means the most important consequence.

Now, when I conjecture that man, in and of himself is simply a material being, some may think that I am putting him on the level of common animals, that somehow I see man as being less unique, or special than those who would divide a human into body and spirit. That isn't what I am aiming for.  What I am saying is that man's "soul" is part and parcel of his body.  The two can't be separated and are not meant to be.  If God wanted pure spiritual beings, then there would be no need for physical resurrections.  

God created a material universe.  He created material beings.  He condescended to become a material being himself.  I think it would be safe to say that He values physical reality and has chosen to work through it.

One of the more interesting aspects of following this train of thought is the recognition that in the Old Testament, God's wrath or judgement is always fulfilled through death.  Humanity becomes evil all the time, so God sends a flood to wipe them out.  The Israelites won't trust God and enter the promised land, so they stumble around the desert for another 40 years until the doubters are dead.  A guy who accidentally touches the Ark of the Covenant  is instantly struck dead.  

The prophecies of judgement all revolve around death and destruction with no hint of "spiritual" consequence, no never-ending conscious torment.

Of course...this all eventually rolls around to annihilationism again, which I plan to get back to at some point.

I know...this is probably boring to everyone who reads my blog.  "Enough already!", everyone's thinking.  What can I say? I'm boring and tedious sometimes.  Just look away.  Don't worry...I'll throw in a cute cat picture one of these days.