Answering AVI on Evolution and Belief

I took the time to go back and re-read the posts and comments that AVI asked me about last week. I was actually surprised because I thought I was going to cringe while I re-read my comments. I assumed that my thoughts were going to be radically different than they currently are.

They weren't...not really. In fact, you can see what I was struggling with even then, almost 3 and 1/2 years ago. I realized the implications of certain propositional beliefs and where they might eventually lead in terms of my evangelical version of Christianity.

So...what has changed?

I think the most fundamental change in me has been an epistemological shift. What I was wrestling with in my comments on those posts was, by and large, directly related to how I viewed Scripture. Even though I was never a complete, credulous literalist, and I understood that many things in Scripture were figurative, I still fundamentally believed that Scripture was divinely inspired and a reflection of God's revelatory interaction with humans. I acknowledged intellectually that the Bible had "errors" but saw those as insignificant in the grand themes of Scripture. I still took Scripture very seriously and was looking for a way to hold on to it and also be honest about what science had to say.

I wish that I could say that after 3 years I have figured out how all of this fits together, but I can't. I still have the same thoughts, although I have moved considerably to the theological left in my attempt to reconcile a semblance faith and belief with an acknowledgement with the facts on the ground...otherwise known as "reality".

Any belief system that requires people to look hard evidence in the eye and deny it for the sake of epistemological certainty is fundamentally lacking integrity. If something is true, then it must be true in more than the realm of personal belief. It must, at least in part, show up in reality occasionally....maybe not every day, maybe not dramatically...but it must be present enough that it doesn't require only faith to exist.

Many conservative Christians would decry that assertion, such as Al Mohler did in his recent essay that wound its way through the religious and evolutionary blogosphere with this quote coming to the forefront:

As I have stated repeatedly, I accept without hesitation the fact that the world indeed looks old. Armed with naturalistic assumptions, I would almost assuredly come to the same conclusions as BioLogos and the evolutionary establishment, or I would at least find evolutionary arguments credible. But the most basic issue is, and has always been, that of worldview and basic presuppositions. The entire intellectual enterprise of evolution is based on naturalistic assumptions, and I do not share those presuppositions. Indeed, the entire enterprise of Christianity is based on supernaturalistic, rather than merely naturalistic, assumptions. There is absolutely no reason that a Christian theologian should accept the uniformitarian assumptions of evolution. In fact, given a plain reading of Scripture, there is every reason that Christians should reject a uniformitarian presupposition. The Bible itself offers a very different understanding of natural phenomena, with explanations that should be compelling to believers. In sum, there is every reason for Christians to view the appearance of the cosmos as graphic evidence of the ravages of sin and the catastrophic nature of God’s judgment upon sin. [emphasis mine]

Ultimately, Mohler--a significant voice in conservative, evangelical Christianity--rejects evolution purely on an epistemological commitment to the Bible as the last word on all matters. If observable reality contradicts his interpretation of the Bible, or impinges on a dearly held theological view, then he makes the choice to reject that reality, or come up with scenarios in which "observable" reality isn't "actual" reality.

He safely insulates himself with those prior commitments. Reject observable data because it undermines the Bible and its theology on the basis that the Bible, in Mohler's view, goes against observable data. And we know we can prioritize what the Bible says because the Bible tells us we should.

It's like the telling question asked by the man caught in the act of infidelity, trying to defend himself:

"Who are you going to believe...me, or your own lying eyes?!"

The truth is that the worldview that Mohler espouses, by its very definition, must be predicated on the supernatural. Yet, it isn't just run-of-the-mill supernaturalism--the idea that there is something more than the material world that we see and understand--it is a supernaturalism which includes the concepts of supernatural evil and the impossibility of trusting one's own, or any human's, opinion on the matter. In a cosmos populated by Satan and demons, and man's own inability to know the truth, hard-core scientists and naturalists are the devil's pawns, leading the masses away from the true knowledge of God and reality.

There is no amount of arguing that can convince a person who is committed to this particular combination of propositions that they might be wrong. It's a trifecta; supernaturalism, active, unseen forces purposely trying to deceive us, and our own moral and intellectual deficiencies preventing us from being objective. At any point in which you might make some headway, one of these propositions will pop up and undermine any progress towards accepting anything other than what that person believes is Divine revelation.

If any one of those propositions are removed, then there is the possibility of beginning to accept scientific theories on evolution, or any number of things. A world in which supernatural beings aren't trying to mislead us at least gives us the chance to think things through without manipulative interference. A world in which humans can objectively, to the best of their ability, evaluate evidence and think theories through, is a world in which we can trust much of what we learn. We wouldn't second-guess every motivation in this search for truth, wondering if we're simply looking for the easy way out, or the theory that makes us feel more in control of our world. A world in which supernaturalism is absent is a world in which all we have is the attempt to understand the world around us, even if we are bound to viewing things through strictly human eyes which may misunderstand the world. Even if we have humans with prior epistemological commitments who purposely try to manipulate, or deceive others, we have the possibility of overcoming that as an obstacle.

Having enumerated a few of the obstacles to a conservative, evangelical acceptance of evolution, I will admit that the beginning of changing my mind about these things was in the dropping of two of the three propositions of the trifecta. I rejected the idea that Satan, or demons, had any sway at all in the visible world around me. Having been exposed to many instances of people trying to identify the "demonic" it became clear to me that every instance I encountered was simply psychological manipulation and suggestion. And most of the things that my fellow believers listed as the devil's schemes, or demonic activity, were simply instances of bad luck, or misunderstood mental states. I never once saw or heard of anything that was remotely "demonic".

The fodder for "spiritual warfare" ideas were almost always attributed to what can only be called Christian urban legends.....or unbalanced people trying to sell books or get paid to speak at church events. So...I stopped even considering evil, spiritual forces as something I needed to take seriously. At the time, I probably wouldn't have worded that quite so strongly. I would simply not dwell upon it or worry about it. After all, if there really were evil forces trying to manipulate my thinking, then what hope would I have that I could ever accurately identify them anyway. By very definition they were unobservable and more powerful than me.

Next to be eliminated from the trifecta was the idea that it was impossible to objectively know things. I rejected this because if we can't objectively know things, then life is utterly absurd and meaningless. At any point something which we think might be "good", could be displeasing to God, or very "bad". And how would we know the difference? The conservative answer is that God would reveal it to us. Yet, how can we trust what it is that we think God is revealing to us if we are hopelessly unable to know things objectively?

We can't. When Christians put forth this argument they are sowing the seeds of their own epistemological undoing. If you can't trust yourself, or humanity, you can't trust anything. Our own striving to understand is all that we have. Take that away and you have no way forward in faith, or science.

More later....

Redaction and Control

I have changed quite a bit over the years. Maybe I haven't changed, but what I think about things has changed...drastically in some areas. This is something of which I am constantly aware.

Assistant Village Idiot/AVI, while posting some of his older posts from previous years, which I happened to have commented on, realized that they provided a history of my thoughts.

He writes:

I hadn’t realized that one of the functions of my "Best of” series is to trace the development of terri’s thought. Almost four years later, terri, where do you stand on these two related posts now?

Great. The internets are in my head! ;-)

I won't answer AVI's question in this post, because I would rather spend some time thinking about it and how I will reply, but I will address a topic related to the question; self-redaction.

People change. Their opinions change. Their confidence level changes.

As they change, the need to overturn previous ideas and reformulate their identity comes to the forefront. Normally, this is not a public transformation. People familiar with "the changer" may decide that they no longer have anything in common with them. They may slowly pull away, or "the changer" may naturally drift in a different direction. It usually is not an event that is documented, or perhaps even understood by the people around them, except for maybe their closest relationships.

That is not the current case for anyone who blogs, or for anyone who has any sort of public life, or public stance. Now, anything you have written, or spoken out loud is recorded somewhere, whether it's in the basement archive of the internet, or posted as a video on youtube, or distributed through Facebook profiles. The amount of readily available information on any person who has had any online presence, no matter how minuscule, is staggering.

The only comfort is that there is so much information online that only people who are actively trying to find you, and information about you, will come across the outline of your life.

So, try not to attract stalkers! ;-)

What should bloggers do when they change? I have known some who actively go back and delete previous posts, either out of embarrassment, or a desire to present their current persona as unified.

I have purposely resisted that urge. If I started going through my archives, deleting posts that I wrote and no longer agree with 100%, I would see it as a kind of cannibalism and the worst type of self-deceit. I have the luxury of feeling that way because my blog and readership are pretty small, and I don't plan on running for public office any time soon. I can afford to leave my life and thoughts up, warts and all.

On the other hand, I have severely limited the personal topics which I write about. Only when I need to vent my spleen, do I venture into that territory. I have censored myself because I realize that it is only a matter of time before my blog will be found by someone, somewhere who I know and interact with in real life.

As such, I don't want to write things that I would regret. I also am very aware that as my children grow older and more cognizant of "the blog" that at some future point they will probably read through it. I used to pore over my mother's high school year book and read all of the notes that people wrote in it. It was interesting to think of my mother as a separate person and to peer into her high school relationships in such an innocuous way.

Considering that nothing ever truly disappears on the internet, I choose much more cautiously the things which I write about my experience of motherhood and my relationships with my children. I am always aware that my kids may choose to bore themselves to death, at some point in the future, by reading what I write here.

When I first started blogging, I thought that I was going to be a "mommy blogger" writing posts about the battle of parenthood and how my kids were driving me crazy. I definitely have some of those posts, but I soon realized that I didn't want to write about my daily existence as a mom. That was my 24-7 real life.

I much more enjoyed, and do enjoy, writing about things that had/have little to do with what I spend most of my time doing, managing a family. I know that what I do is important, but I need a slice of myself to not be determined by that role.

I am more than a mom and wife, so I write about everything else that interests me.

About once a month, I have a desperate urge to wipe this blog out....to just stop blogging....to erase as much of my online existence as I can. This usually happens when I have an uptick in traffic.

When someone links to me and actually takes anything I said seriously, it startles me. I want to shrink back and withdraw and ask,"You're listening to me? Really? Are you sure you want to do that?" Because even though I am narcissistic, in the way that all regular bloggers must be in order to think that anyone cares what they have to say in the first place, I am also uncomfortable with being scrutinized. I like to be in control of who knows me and how well they know me. I like to have a sense for who's reading and why and what the likely reaction will be.

The longer I blog, the more open I leave myself to being mentally dissected by anyone who chooses to spend the time dissecting me. My safety lies in the fact that most people are not all that interested in the task. So...Yay for that!

Even though I have the urges to delete and redact and be in control of my online persona, I resist that urge because I think that it's bad for me to give in to it. Keeping the ugly parts, and the not-so-coherent parts, and the parts I would rather forget, and the earnest, innocent parts is important. It causes me, most of the time, to speak/write with some humility...because I am sure that somewhere, someone could find something I wrote and throw it right back at me. At least in keeping all of what I have written, it's possible to trace where I started and how I got there.

When we essentially erase our history and rewrite a better, more pleasing(to ourselves) version of it we lose touch with reality and present a reality that doesn't quite adhere to itself. We put forth a history which isn't true or real...at least in the sense of "history".

Unfortunately, the common impulse is to do just that. History is replete with empires and religions and movements which have, upon coming into power, tried to erase all mention of previous empires, religions, and movements.

I think of the biography I read about Henry the VIII's wives, and how when he moved on to a new wife, he would try to erase any mention of the old one. One, in particular, had been so thoroughly erased that there was only one spot in the royal house which had her initials, an overlooked artifact that had been missed in the "cleansing" of her memory.

Self-redaction is a mild form of self-destruction and denial.

I am trying to look at myself unflinchingly...though I do sometimes flinch at the sight of myself and what the changing appearance means for me. Yet....I won't completely break the mirror and pretend that I don't see myself for who I am and where I came from.

Puppets For the Win!!

My gainful employment consists of performing a Bunraku-style puppet show for 4th graders at a different elementary school each day.

My job is a strange mixture of performance, improv, and public speaking. Most of the time it is a lot of fun, especially during the Q and A session in which the kids get to ask the puppets questions, or offer solutions to them, directly. You never know what a kid is going to say and you have to find funny, entertaining, affirming ways to acknowledge them while also directing the conversation where you want it to go.

To the kids...I am a rock star. To adults, it's slightly embarrassing to list my occupation as Puppeteer. However, the laughter I can elicit from a bunch of fourth-graders is a boost to my self-esteem even though I have a very low-paying, low-prestige kind of job.

While driving through downtown Tampa on my way to a show, I saw this guy walk through the busy traffic in front of me:

I had spotted a fellow puppeteer! In public! Unashamed!

He walked across the intersection and was gone before I could really get a good listen to what he was saying. He held his puppet in front of him, speaking with it, and had a huge sign strapped to his back that seemed to reference God. All I could read from my vantage point was PoorPennyCarson.com. So, intrigued by a street preacher with both a puppet and a website, when I got home later that day, I tried to look up the website. It didn't exist, but I found tons of hits and a few youtube videos about Poor Penny Carson.(that link has a brief video in which Carson explains himself)

From everything I could gather, Poor Penny Carson and his puppet, Sweetpea Johnson, have been doing this for years...preaching about God and the end of the world, throughout Georgia and Florida for the last few years.

Even the "end of the world" is appealing when you talk about it through a puppet, right? ;-)

On the serious side, I wondered how Penny Carson has managed to survive all these years doing this and how he provides for himself and if he has any relatives who wonder where he's at and what he's doing and how he's doing.

It's alternatively funny, sad, and worrisome to think about a guy spending his whole life doing this.

On a happier note...Puppets + Queen = Awesome!

The Tower of Babel and Heaven's Staircase

Last week was the first week that I ever told my children that a story in the Bible wasn't true, in the sense of historical, literal fact.

We were actually on the way to church and DH was trying to see if they noticed that one of their Yu-Gi-Oh card references, which was a power called babel, was actually a biblical reference. The power of the particular game card caused confusion for your opponent.

Genesis 11:1-9

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people werebuilding. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Eventually, we had to make the connection to the Tower of Babel for them, at which point they said, "Oh....yeah!" Reminding them of the story led them to speculate about what the first, original language was

This was when I broached the idea that some stories are meant to explain ideas and may not be literally true....that there may never have been one original language, but that the story was a way to explain the world as the writer saw it.

What's funny is that, by complete coincidence, DoOrDoNot has a post up about the Tower of Babel right now poking fun at taking it literally. She quotes a parody of "All True Bible Stories for Children". It's funny but also irreverent...so beware that you may be offended by the parodist's parody, not of the text, but of the simpleton attitude portrayed by the literal interpreters of the text.

As a literal story, the Tower of Babel makes no sense to most of us. Why does God care if we cooperate? Why does he want humanity to be confused and separate? Why does he seem afraid of what they might be able to accomplish?

It doesn't make sense. Isn't God the one who wants to live in peace? Isn't God the one who wants us to cooperate within our communities?

Why would he do such a thing? Why would the author of the story cast God in such a light?

The book I am currently reading, Joseph's Bones, by Jerome M. Segal, proposes that God is fearful about man's accomplishments and development of technology; the ability to make bricks and mortar rather than having to rely on stone. They have learned to create things:

...Mankind has an awareness of danger, senses the importance of being unified, and successfully carries out a breakthrough project of technological and social accomplishment.

God experiences the power it represents. He projects it forward, saying that if this is what mankind can do at this early stage, then ultimately nothing, "will be out of their reach." Such a belief is not unlike the belief that if mankind does not blow itself up first, through science, we will will ultimately be able to conquer every constraint.

In the Babel story God expresses a fear of an ever-expanding human capability, a fear of human reach. He envisions that humans will develop powers that will make them godlike, able to achieve whatever they desire.(pg. 88)

I think Segal is right that the story portrays a God fearful of humanity, but I think he gets the motivation slightly wrong. The goal of humanity, in the story, is to build a tower that reaches up to the heavens.

The "heavens" as we think of them today, are simply what we would call stars, or the space filled with the sun, moon and stars. We know what stars are. We have some sense of distance, and matter and the meaning of their movements.

Now imagine a world in which you knew nothing about space, or stars, or celestial phenomena. You would see these incredible lights in the sky, moving predictably for the most part, except for the occasional eclipse, or comet, or meteorite. You wouldn't know what the movements represented, but your culture may have realized that certain heavenly bodies had cycles, like the phases of the moon, or that the sun shone less in winter than it did in summer. You would think that these celestial movements meant something. You might even ascribe personalities to them, or associate them with gods or powerful beings.

Whatever the case, the imagination could populate the heavens with power and beauty that was out of reach, yet somehow also a part of the Earth.

You would have no conception that there were other planets...or even what the word "planet" meant. You wouldn't imagine that there were other "earths" out there with other "suns". The universe was probably a single connected place in your mind.

And the heavens...well they must be where God, or the gods, lived. Because no one ever saw God, or gods, on earth. And....the night sky instilled such wonder in people. Just looking at it can give modern people chills, how much more wondrous did it seem to ancient peoples?

.

So, assuming that an ancient people believed that "heaven" was where God lived, and that it was a physical location directly above earth, what would it mean for people to build a tower to the heavens?

Could it be that they imagined that they would be able to enter the place where God dwelt? That if the tower was high enough they could knock on his front door?

This conception of God being "up there" wasn't far-fetched in ancient cosmology. When Jacob has a dream/vision at Bethel, he sees angels ascending and descending a "ladder" that reaches from the earth into heaven.

So, when the people decide to build a Tower to heaven, this is a direct threat to God. They will soon be on his doorstep. They will be powerful. They may war against him.

In that context, one in which Heaven is a physical place that could be reached if humanity had the resources to get there, the story of the Tower of Babel makes sense. It is comprehensible. It holds together.

God is keeping humanity from cooperating together in order to prevent a physical intrusion of his dwelling place. He is preventing that in the same way he prevented Adam and Eve from returning to the Garden of Eden, through a physical guard; cherubim and a flaming sword.

If taken in that context, God's move to confuse humanity with different languages and cultures is not arbitrary. He is guarding his home and pre-empting an unwelcome invasion of his space.

The problem that anyone trying to interpret the story literally will have, is that a story which made sense 3,000 years ago, makes no sense today. We know, now, that no matter how high the Tower of Babel became, they were never going to reach Heaven's doorstep....and because we know that, we also know that God would have no reason to fear a million such towers...and because we know that the motivation imputed to God in the story is based on a conception of the world which was based in ancient, incorrect cosmology....the story has lost any sense for us.

This particular story is so reliant upon ancient, cultural context, that to take it literally in our modern times, is to make God an arbitrary trickster. Wouldn't he have gotten a bigger laugh by letting humanity build their towers and discover that...no...they couldn't reach Him that way?

What's the old proverb?

Man plans, God laughs.

Games and Word Play

I mentioned in my New Year's post that my mother's side of the family always plays games on Christmas Day...once everyone is hopped up on turkey, mashed potatoes and seven-layer salad.

Their favorite game is Guesstures, which is kind of like charades with a time limit. It moves quickly and is fun with large groups of people. It's hilarious watching people trying to act out words or concepts while everyone on their team is shouting out random guesses. It's a lot of fun.

Another game we played at my aunt's house was Buzzword. It consisted of trying to identify particular phrases or sayings that used a particular word. You would receive clues about the phrase which explained the meaning of the phrase, but in a very different, often unnatural way.

One of the games that we got for Christmas was Catchphrase, which is a lot like Password. You can use any words you want to explain what the catchphrase is without actually using any part of it.

So, other than listing a bunch of games that we have played, where am I going with this?

Well, I began to wonder about games throughout history and what made something an entertaining game. Most of the ancient games I know of are strategy based games like chess, checkers, or mancala. There are games which rely on strategy combined with trickery/bluffing, like certain card games..Poker, for example.

While those games are still very popular, I wondered at how different modern games are from those games. So many of the games that we play and know are directly related to language and words, or communicating concepts, or associating what seem like disparate concepts with one another as in the game Tri-Bond, in which you have to discern what the common theme running between three words/ideas is.

It's all very language-based fun.

You don't actually prove yourself in "battle" as much as you show your superior communication skills.

It reflects some sort of a shift in our human priorities.

While we still have sports games, and strategy games, language-based games seem to have commanded a large market share of what we think is fun. And considering that "fun"can usually be a dress rehearsal for real life, it points to an emphasis on the importance of effective communicators, and the admiration we have for someone who is really good at using and mastering communication.

Those are my random thoughts. If anyone knows of ancient language and communication games, leave a comment. I'd like to know if I have grasped something real or am just making stuff up! ;-)

Evangelical Egalitarianism

A good essay on egalitarianism from an evangelical perspective by Professor John Stackhouse.

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.

Entitlement and Women's Work

A couple of weeks before Christmas I participated in some troll-baiting at Assistant Village Idiot's blog. One of the links he put up led to an article in which a blogger, towards the end of a post on various topics, declared that 70-80% of entitlement spending programs, like Social Security and Medicare, are simply transfers of wealth from men to women.

Men pay into the system, women reap the benefits.

I made some mild comment about the post needing a warning label that certain people's heads(mine, in particular) might explode upon reading such a post. That was all an anonymous commenter and aforementioned troll needed to begin personally insulting me. And, knowing from the outset the type of person I was dealing with, I engaged in some rhetorical, obnoxious troll-baiting. At times, I tried to comment fairly and seriously....but, as anyone who's been using the internet for more than 20 minutes can tell you, it was all for naught.

It's impossible to talk reasonably with unreasonable people.

I won't go into the entire discussion because I tediously repeated my points ad nauseum already on AVI's post.

However, the discussion did spark some more reflections on the nature of the relationship between men, women and finances.

My troll conversation partner stated that most wealth belonged to men. I asked how those men's wives and daughters would feel about such a statement, and he, in the midst of other things, glancingly referred to the sense of entitlement that my comment implied.

I had to think about that for a minute. Do I feel that women are entitled to the wealth their male partners produce? In today's day and age, many women work and have their own assets. They are not necessarily beholden to men for their financial well-being.

On the other hand, a woman like me, who has stayed home for many years raising children , or worked part-time in order to facilitate the family's needs and provide stability and a constant parental presence in the home, depends greatly on her husband to provide for her and the family.

When DH and I had children we had already decided that I was going to stay home in order to take care of them. This was a mutual decision. At first it was very uncomfortable for me. I was used to paying my own way for things and contributing financially to our marriage/family. I paid my own way through college, bought my own car as a teenager, and had been providing for myself since high school. Learning to be financially dependent upon someone else was disconcerting to me.

And it showed. I felt very constrained about spending money. DH and I are not big spenders anyway, but I still felt self-conscious, at first, about buying a new shirt, or a pair of jeans, or a book at the bookstore. In the beginning it felt as if all the money was DH's money and I was some hanger-on asking, "Please, sir...can I have some more?"

DH never made me feel this way....it was just how I felt because of not feeling as if I had any control over the situation and thinking that I wasn't making a real contribution to the family.

I knew that what I was doing was important, but I hadn't yet realized my worth.

I no longer worry about those types of things. When you have been married for a good length of time and have raised your children together and been through family and health crises together....you realize that marriage and family is all about partnership, working together to build something of value.

In the midst of this partnership you come to the realization that "equality" does not mean that at any particular point in time in a relationship that both parties have completely equal burdens and responsibilities and benefits. There is no such thing as a 50-50 relationship. Life precludes it. Many times it is an 80-20 relationship, or a 0-100 relationship. The hope is that those times of inequality flip-flop and the partner who has formerly contributed "more" will be on the receiving end.

To be comfortable with the inevitable inequalities in relationships, you have to trust the person with whom you are in partnership. They have to be reliable and responsible and aiming for the same goal, one that is larger than one person's particular satisfaction. In the context of such a relationship, "mine" and "yours" fades away. There is only "ours" or "the family's".

In that vein...I do feel "entitled"(though that word has negative connotations for me) to my "husband's" wealth...because I don't see it as his. We are working together. He brings in the most money....I provide our family a maternal glue that holds us together. The loss of either of us would devastate our family.....financially and emotionally.

When my husband gives up "his" wealth and I give up "my" opportunities to get my own wealth, we all benefit.

Dying to self, in the service of something greater than oneself, inevitably brings oneself something even better.

Self-sacrifice is ultimately self-serving...in a good way.

maybe more on this later....

Happy New Year!!

Trying to expose our children to new, exotic experiences, we drug the family up to Illinois for an extended family Christmas and the children's first sighting of some strange white powder that the natives call "snow".

Our little Florida Corolla Before the Christmas Eve Blizzard:

And After:

The Rationalist desperately worked to make a snowman, but the snow wasn't quite wet enough and Frosty was only about 12 inches high

A good first attempt.

The Intuitive tried catching snowflakes on his tongue.

We all prepared for the snowball battle...except for DH who was being the camera man.

We had great fun and the boys spent hours freezing their fingers off playing in the snow. However, The Intuitive suddenly changed his tune about wanting to move to Canada when he's older. After a week of temperatures in the teens and twenties, he's decided that he might stick around Florida after all.

Besides the first sighting of snow, the boys were able to meet many of their cousins and great-aunts and uncles for the very first time and take part in the giant family gathering that happens every year at Christmas. They pack about 75 people into my aunt's house and fill it with food and general revelry...and serious board and card game competitions.

I spent almost every Christmas in the same way when I was growing up.

Later in the week we traveled up to Chicago and took the boys to the Field Museum of Natural History, where they house Sue, the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever excavated.

They weren't as impressed with the Egyptian mummies as I thought they would be. Those always fascinated me when I was their age. They enjoyed the meteorite exhibit and the gold and gem exhibits, but the 3D movie about Sue was probably their favorite part.

After the museum closed, we met my youngest brother near his tiny apartment in Chinatown and took him out for dinner. He's 22 now and noticeably more mature than the last time we saw him a few years ago. He's got a good job, some career goals and surprised us with gift cards for Christmas.

Even former selfish, surly teenagers grow up to be decent people!!

I told him that I was proud of him, and I think it meant a lot to him.

We had a really good visit with my mother, and as we left The Rationalist said that he felt sad that we were leaving Grandma Jan's.

Other than the colds that we were all fighting during our visit, there were nothing but positive experiences. No family drama. No grumpy children. No car problems.

A Norman Rockwell tableau if ever there was one.

It's funny how you never know when those will occur. You can never summon them at will. They just magically emerge for a few moments to be enjoyed and make fond memories to return to again and again.

Christmas Break...from blogging

Things are super-busy for me right now and probably won't let up until the after the New Year.

So, I am simply going to take a break from reading, commenting, and blogging for the most part.

Be well and have a Merry Christmas!!

Soccer Pics

The Rationalist is the furthest kid on the left in the orange Jersey. His team was so evenly matched with the opposing team that the entire game went by with no goals on either side.....several near misses for both teams...but no points. They each had good goalies defending the goal.

The Rationalist, while being much smaller than everyone else on his team, always makes a few good strategic moves in getting the ball away from the opposing team. He is a good support member and always gives it his best shot.

The Intuitive got to try his hand at being goalie for the second half of his game. His team is a lot like the Bad New Bears of the soccer league.

However, even though his team lost by several points, The Intuitive did make several important saves that kept the defeat from being even worse.

He was very pleased with himself.

The Fourteenth Apostle

I have become convinced that as far as Evangelicals are concerned, C.S. Lewis is officially the Fourteenth Apostle of the Christian church, St. Paul being the thirteenth.

Countless conversations that delve deeply into theology that I have been involved in will inevitably have someone bring Lewis into the picture, with a quote from one of his essays, or more commonly a reference to one of his novels, be it the space trilogy, or the Narnia series, or The Screwtape Letters.

He has affected the way modern, Protestant, Christians think and express themselves so deeply that most don't even realize the debt that they owe him.

Most interesting to me is the way that Lewis' stories have resonated with Christians and, sometimes, seem to carry a general authority in their portrayals. Conversations about hell will have someone quoting The Last Battle or The Great Divorce. Discussions about temptation or spiritual warfare will have someone referring to Screwtape and Wormwood.

Lewis' work has become so absorbed that there is no self-consciousness in even mentioning it within the context of theology and practical church matters. No one seems concerned with the fact that these concepts come from fictitious fantasy novels.

My point is not demote the stories' importance....but to turn that observation to something else.

Lewis' work successfully captures the imagination because he has taken our sacred stories and made them bigger . He has expanded ideas about God, mankind and salvation and sewn them into other dimensions and worlds. He has left the door open for a future that might indeed be perplexing to us; worlds with sentient, alien life, worlds with talking beasts, and dimensions of a reality just outside of our senses.

Whether those worlds do, or even could, exist is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he provides a way for us to imagine how it might be, or could be...and that speaks to people in powerful ways.

Jeff Dunn, over at internetmonk.com, has a post up about his disappointment with the newly released Voyage of the Dawn Treader. His disappointment is almost completely tied into his assessment that the theology of the book was somehow lost in translation in the making of the film. In a strange way his severe reaction highlights the weight given to Lewis' work, because although most book-lovers are frequently dissatisfied with movie renderings, few are so upset at the loss of meaning that he attributes to the rendering. He even goes on to discuss how a portrayal from the book has changed his life, or given him hope.

This jogged my memory of another post at internetmonk in July in which a father recounts reading a passage of Lewis to his children, barely able to keep from breaking down at the emotional impact it had on him after he had received bad news about his daughter's health. His post so closely identifies Jesus with Aslan, that I found it startling.

Part of my former evangelical self read his post disapprovingly. The more liberal part of me recognized that what this man was doing was what all people in all times do...they use the stories that convey deep meaning to their lives...stories that may, or may not, be literally true, factual stories.

This is a strange mixture of things. In circles in which people feel the necessity to defend the literalness of the biblical stories, there are also people who are incredibly touched by a modern fictitious story which they know is not true, but which has been equated as a valid representation of the sacred story.

This is how cultures incorporate and systematize their symbols, through the broad acceptance and reliance on particular distillations that speak to a particular group.

In my fanciful moments, I wonder if 500 years from now,--after more authors have continued to study and read Lewis and write books about him, and his influence continues to grow within Christianity--Lewis' work and symbols will be so ubiquitous that Jesus will be represent as a lion with a full mane.

And...I wonder what future generations would think of such a development.

DH's Links

DH sends me links all the time. I keep telling him he needs his own blog to feature the things he sends me...but he hasn't taken me up on the idea.

Here are a few links from him:

Dr. Seuss animates Star Wars

Cool, witty, still life photography

Freaky, amazing storm photo

TSA uses unwise tactics for children's pat-downs

Tax Cuts and Unemployment

So...let me get this straight. Republicans and Tea Party members who were overwhelmingly elected on a platform of cutting spending because of the doomsday scenario of our debt and deficit....are OK with extending unemployment benefits with money that we don't actually have.

And...Democrats are willing to not raise taxes, or revert them back to pre-Bush era rates, even though they know there is no way to dig ourselves out of debt until we bring in more income into the government in order to pay for things that we have already bought.

This is the worst of both worlds and part of why our country is so screwed up.

Politicians are not capable of unflinchingly doing what needs to be done. Either keep the tax cuts and don't continue to spend money we don't have....or spend money to alleviate the financial woes of the citizenry and raise taxes to help pay for it.

This makes Republican leaders look bad because it seems as if they are really only concerned with saving people within their own tax brackets from paying into the system.

It makes Democrats look bad because it seems like they are willing to just spend and spend and spend money that we don't have.

I don't think this is what "bipartisanship" is supposed to look like.

Instinctual Response

ugh.

Today, as I was walking to pick up the kids from school, I encountered a little, blond hellion of a boy who had just spit on another child and was inciting general violence. It wasn't his first time. I've caught him kicking and hitting at the same group of kids in the past as the sidewalk streams with kids on their way home.

This afternoon, without thinking, I caught him right after he had spit on another child and was dashing away.....and by "caught" I mean that I swooped my arms out and physically stopped him.

Automatic reflex. I didn't even think about it.

He began talking about how the other kids had said something mean to he and his sister on the "first day"...whatever that meant. I replied that it's not OK to spit on people, or hit them, or kick them just because they say mean things. I told his sister, who was older, to take him home and make sure that he stayed away form the other group of kids.

They left, and I finished walking to the school thinking to myself that I had done a really stupid thing by physically stopping the boy. I didn't grab him, or roughly handle him, but I did stop him. And....it's never a great idea to touch another person's child, no matter how completely awful they're being or how gentle the touch.

As I wondered whether or not I had made a huge mistake in intervening in the situation, I figured that I had better talk to one of the teachers and let them know what has been going on for some time.

This is when things get slightly worse. I approached the PE teacher, "Coach", and asked if he knew these children, who I described as a short, little, blond boy and went on to describe his older sister as taller, with blond hair and who is a little bit chubby.

Let's see...how could this go wrong?

Well, in the midst of my description, I hear a woman from about 5 feet away say, "Those are my children!"

Open mouth, insert foot. I hadn't said anything horrible, but who wants their child described in terms of being a "little bit chubby"?

I told the mother what had happened and she left pretty quickly, saying that she was looking for her children anyway.

Later, I went to the office and spoke with the Assistant Principal and told her about the escalating incidents and she took some notes and said that she would work on it.

Now I am sitting here wondering if this is all going to backfire on me and if I am going to have an irate mother in my face tomorrow.

Hopefully, she won't spit in my face and run away.