MARKED: Struggles in Thought and Theology

Mystical at Heart

2009-05-13T00:05:00.002-04:00

I’m currently in the middle of the finals crunch, and my head has become a swirl of theories and names and books. This semester I have been lucky to take a wonderful selection of courses on topics that are absolutely fascinating to me, so even though I have brain-fatigue from writing my various term papers, it is almost worth it.

Today I handed in a terribly confusing paper about self-identity and theology. Drawing on Giving an Account of Oneself by Judith Butler and Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity theory, I argued that every time I try to talk about who I am, every time I try to identify myself through narrative, I am simultaneously doing theology. Strange, I know. And, no, there is no way I can explain it in a single blog post. But it got me thinking….

Talking about God is one thing—a very difficult and worthwhile thing, no doubt—but relating to God is very different. At the heart of a relationship with God, at the heart of Christian belief, is mysticism. While this is likely not surprising to most people, it is not normally how I think about it.

In the study of religion, especially historical theology, mysticism is often singled out as its own branch. While some scholars don’t like the distinction, it is often contrasted with movements like scholasticism. But the thing is, Christian belief is always mystical.

Now, the flavor of Christianity that I was raised with had an interesting relationship with mysticism (though it would never have used that term). It was made very clear that real Christians weren’t like those crazy people who spoke in tongues and got healed and ran around the sanctuary with flags and tambourines. Those sorts of things were written off as feelings, as momentary—they weren’t real Christianity.

Real Christianity was about knowing the truth. It was about believing that Jesus was the Son of God who came to earth and died for our sins. It was about believing in the trinity and the dual-nature of Christ. It was about fighting the good fight, about renouncing the devil and living a life of faith—something that could not be pinned down by reason.

So, even though certain expressions of Christian faith were written off as bogus and unrealistic, we were asked to embrace something that was admittedly non-rational. But I didn’t realize that back then.

Here I am now, years later, studying theology in an academic setting. I’m writing papers about the efficacy of God-talk by Hindu theologians, about the connection between narrative identity and theology, and about the rhetorical structures of works of Christian ethics—but Christian belief is mystical. That’s not to say it is wholly non-rational, somehow devoid of reason. It can be reasonable and rational and intelligent—but it has to be more than that. It has to go beyond that. If it doesn’t, it is nothing more than a set of textbook answers, interesting to study, but not relevant to anything at all.

Heretical Parables of Jesus

2009-05-05T15:42:00.004-04:00

Jesus went up to the hill to teach the crowds, saying, “Those who keep their faith will lose it, but to those who lose their faith, faith will be given. Again I say to you: All who hide their shame will be laid bare, but to them who are honest, shelter will be provided.”

Then Jesus said to them, “The kingdom of God is like a rock that fell from a great height. The foolish people said, ‘There is a rock! Let us take it home with us.’ However, when they went to retrieve it, they were crushed by the rock’s weight. But when the wise saw the rock they said, ‘There is a great mystery. Let us not approach too close, lest we be killed.’”

Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “The kingdom of God is like an American auto-maker. When the economy was strong, the company produced many American cars and made great profits. Seeing the great profits, the workers began to grumble because they were not paid well. The workers formed a union and fought the company for better wages and better pensions. After long negotiations the auto-maker finally compromised and the workers’ union gained great power. When the economy weakened, the company still produced many cars, but it could not make a profit. After too many quarters with no profit and after too many workers were laid off, the auto-maker went bankrupt. Then there were no more workers and no more new cars, no more union and no more company. The bad economy was just too bad, the union’s demands were just too demanding, and the American cars were just not American enough. After all these losses what can be said for the economy? Is it not time for the workers to rise up in revolt?”

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the disciples whispered to each other, “What can this mean? This is surely a hard saying.” Then they turned and walked back to the city confused.

Nevertheless, I Believe

2009-04-21T13:31:00.002-04:00

Recently, one of my professors told us a brief story about the faith of one of her professors. He was on the religion faculty where she went to school and straddled the difficult line between skeptical academic inquiry and religious faith. Each week when his church recited the Nicene Creed, he would join in—with one small addition. Just as he was about to begin reciting the creed he would say under his breath, “Nevertheless….”

That one word captures a whole host of thoughts and feelings—it is a faithful word, a doubting word, a word that expresses hope and despair. Despite the difficulties that he was confronted with, despite the thoughts he might have to the contrary, he expressed his faith. With that single word he was able to express his commitment to God and to his community of faith without denying his own struggles. That word is honest. That word is humble. That word is human.

For him, that word is holy.

Nevertheless, I believe….

A Symbolic God

2009-04-15T22:32:00.001-04:00

Right now I’m in the process of writing a short essay on In Face of Mystery by Gordon Kaufman. From what I can tell from the portion of the book we read for class, I very much identify with his approach. One of the things that is central to his theology (and very interesting to me) is his understanding of religious traditions as symbolic frames. Here’s a quick run-down on “symbolic frames”:

Humans, as creatures whose lives are embedded in culture (we are “sociocultural animals”), try to make sense of their lives through symbolic frames. Early in human history, these symbolic frames took the form of stories—myths about humans and their place in our world. Over time these stories were modified and fleshed out, creating broadly encompassing worldviews that provided a framework for meaning in human life. Religious traditions are perfect examples of these symbolic frames—they had origins in early myths but were developed into what we now recognize as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.

What’s important to note, however, is that religious traditions aren’t static. They are culturally located and dynamic. Christianity in first century Palestine was drastically different from Christianity in fifth century Egypt, and that is drastically different from Christianity in twenty-first century America. The symbolic frame we call Christianity has grown and morphed over time along with the changing culture. As new ideas and new kinds of experiences became a part of people’s lives, the symbolic frame had to change in order to accommodate and make sense of the new aspects of life.

What’s important about this is that the symbols within the framework—the symbols that hold meaning and importance in our lives—are understood to be human creations. Because symbolic frames are socially constructed over time in particular cultures, the symbols within that frame are ever-changing in their valences and meanings.

This includes the symbol “God.” Anytime we talk about God, we are talking about something that is a human creation.

Whoa … hold up! Let me offer a quick explanation that may alleviate some distress. A symbol is made up two parts—the signifier and the signified. Take for instance an apple. We use the word “apple” (either the two syllables that you say with your mouth or the five written marks you make with your pen) to point to an object. The word “apple” is the signifier. The actual apple itself (either the slightly mushy one in your kitchen or a shiny, imaginary one in your head) is the signified. The signifier points to the signified. Put these two together, and you get a symbol. And it is only through symbols that we can have meaning. Symbols are the connection between our meaningful thoughts and the things we are thinking about.

Meaning is expressed in symbols. And symbols are human creations.

There may be an actual God (“God” the signified) whom we try to talk about with words (“God” the signifier)—but we have to recognize that there is no such thing as access to that God except through symbols. The only way we can talk about or think about God is by using humanly created symbols, or as Kaufman puts it: “all talk of God belongs to and has its meaning within a particular symbolical frame for orientation for human life.”

What this means is that anytime we talk about God, we are confronted by the symbols and meanings that we have created. But this human limitation also makes us more aware of the vastness of the mystery of God. Since we are limited in the face of a mysterious, ungraspable God, what option do we have except humble agnosticism?

The Church of the Dead

2009-03-26T11:21:00.002-04:00

On my way home from class this afternoon, I took time to notice the old graveyard on the left. Surrounded by a simple wrought iron fence, the burying ground (that's what they're called out here) is a small church yard of rolling hills punctuated haphazardly by slim stone grave markers. For the first time in weeks all the snow has finally melted away, revealing the depressingly brown grass beneath. When I had reached the far end, I glanced backwards toward the burying ground and the church steeple caught my eye. Suddenly a thought popped into my head:

Too often the church is a graveyard.

One of the tragic things about the church is that it can be so oriented toward the hereafter that Christians begin to rest-in-peace here in this life. People get saved in the pews and die right there in the sanctuary—and before long the church begins to stink.

In a few of my classes, death comes up frequently in conversation. The idea of living our lives oriented toward death is often tied up with ideas of nihilism and meaninglessness. For thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger, there is something about this crushing reality, when grasped in all its weight and finality, that throws into sharp relief the value and beauty of our present life. Living toward death necessitates creating meaning and saying a bold "Yes!" to the time that we have.

What is odd is that Christianity is also oriented toward death—but too often with the opposite result. Instead of generating a life-affirming "Yes!" to our lives here and now, Christianity too often casts an austere, reprimanding glance toward this life and then stares soberly ahead toward what is yet to come.

Honestly, this sort of attitude makes no sense to me. There is no reason that the anticipation of a grand future has to cast a grim shadow on the present. This life needs to be reclaimed. God has placed us here on this earth in this particular place at this particular time with these particular people for a reason. To neglect this life—with its great blessings as well as its great adversities—is to shrug off our connectedness with God. This life is where we meet our fellow humans in a deep and intimate way. This life is where we do the work of God. This life is where we first truly see God.

God is not the God of corpse-like living, of sitting and rotting in the church pews while the organist's dirge echoes around the sanctuary. God is the God of yes-saying, of vibrant and engaged living here and now. God has given us life—it is our responsibility to live.

A Fork in the Road

2009-02-26T17:37:00.003-05:00

Right now I feel like I'm caught in an endless sea of questions, being thrashed about by the waves. As far as storms go, this isn't a big one—in fact, I rather like the choppy water. But the problem is that the sky is cloudy and I've lost my bearing. I'm disoriented. Which direction am I supposed to be heading? But more fundamental than that is the question: in my search for God, what am I looking for?

In some ways it seems like God should be easy to find. If all I want to do is to locate God, then it seems like all I need to do is stop by one of those old buildings with steeples that are scattered around my neighborhood. But there's obviously more to it than that. I'm not trying to find God in a National Geographic Explorer sort of way. What I'm looking for is somehow deeper than that.

That big question (what am I looking for?) inevitably brings up a whole host of other related questions. What do I expect to find? How do I expect to find it? Do I really believe that I can find it through intellectual pursuit? To what extent does the pursuit have to be spiritual? If the journey is 100% spiritual (and, thus, subjective), can I trust what I find? What about if it's only 50% spiritual? Can these things be quantified? What good does it do for me, as a particular human being, to search, anyway?

And then arises the most troubling dilemma for me: what exactly am I willing to presuppose?

We all come from somewhere. We all have starting points and worldviews. And if we truly examine our thoughts and beliefs, we reach about point where we can offer no further explanations. As Wittgenstein puts it:

If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

For me to continue my exploration of God in earnest, I have to address the problem of presuppositions. On the one hand, if I allow myself to question everything, ultimately I can go nowhere. On the other hand, if I just accept a number of presuppositions, much progress can be made. But does the progress outweigh what I give up?

Ultimately, what is to be gained? What is to be lost?

As you can see, I am at something of a crossroads. But chances are I'll end up punching it into four-wheel drive and going off-road....

I'm Not Alone

2009-01-26T19:40:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder whether I am alone in my uncertainty and blindness. Then I read things like this:

"And do thou, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek thee, where and how to find thee. Lord, if thou art not here, where shall I seek thee who art absent? But if thou art everywhere, why do I not see thee who art present?"

"O Lord, thou art my God and thou art my Lord, and I have never seen thee. Thou hast made me and remade me, and thou hat bestowed on me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know thee. Finally, I was made in order to see thee, and I have not yet done that for which I was made."

- Anselm of Canterbury, An Address, from A Scholastic Miscellany pp 69-70, trans. and ed. by E. Fairweather

It feels good to have some company.

Degrees of Uncertainty

2009-01-26T17:44:00.004-05:00

In a recent conversation, my friend Nigel brought to my attention a problem with my discussion of the latency of God—I haven't been defining my terms well. To a certain extent my ambiguity is on purpose because I'm still doing quite a bit of searching, but I suppose a little clarity would be helpful. Although I'm not sure I can offer much of a definition of latency yet, here's some more explanation....

The basis for much of my thinking about God (and the rest of life, for that matter) is that I cannot know anything with complete certainty for the simple reason that I am not omniscient. Because I am a limited, finite human being, there is always a chance that I am wrong about the things I think I know. It is important to note, however, that this isn't a crippling realization for me. It's something we all deal with everyday—it's a simple fact of life. Not knowing for certain which apple will be crisp, juicy, and sweet doesn't stop me from picking out apples in the produce section. Not knowing with absolute certainty whether my wife loves me didn't stop me from marrying her. Every decision I make is based on either approximations or trust (or occasionally on blind guesses).

So, I guess that means that my uncertainty about God is not qualitatively different from my uncertainty about which apples are tastiest. But there is certainly a quantitative difference. If we limit our discussion to the notion of existence, I can't be absolutely certain that the table I'm sitting at or the computer I'm using actually exist. There is some chance that I'm hallucinating or that I'm actually in some sort of interactive simulation (like in the Matrix). However, my uncertainty about the existence of the table or computer are obviously quite different from my uncertainty about God. I think what it comes down to is sensation....

In ordinary life, the way that we "know" something exists is that we can sense it. That means we rely on sight or touch or some combination of our senses (or, in the case of scientists, they rely on their instruments to do the sensing for them) to suggest to our minds that there is something there. For the most part it is pretty straight-forward—I can see a chair in front of me, I can touch its wooden back and padded seat, and I "know" that it exists. In ordinary life, it doesn't matter that theoretically I could be wrong. I base my day-to-day living on this type of "knowledge."

However, there are some things that aren't quite as straight-forward, some things that are kind of on the edges. Usually they are things that we sense only briefly, infrequently or faintly, like hearing noises when we're home alone or like seeing faint, quick shooting stars. We sense them but because we can't really hear or see them again, we're uncertain about their existence. To some extent, it seems to me that God often falls into this category. Experiences of God are often hard to grasp and hold onto, they are brief and often occur when we least expect it. For some people, these brief experiences are enough to say that they "know" God exists. However, for many of us, our experiences of God are similar to uncertain noises or faint shooting stars, leaving us unsure whether the experience was real.

So, when I talk about being uncertain about God's existence, I'm not talking in a purely theoretical sense—for me, the latency of God has as much to do with lived experience as it does with theory. As much as I wish God's existence were as apparent to me as the physical objects I encounter in everyday life, that just isn't the case. Even if the existence of physical objects is theoretically questionable, it seems to me that God is questionable in a much more real sense than that.

You can call God mysterious, unfathomable, unknowable, or infinite.

I'll call God uncertain.

The Elephant in the Room

2008-12-11T13:59:00.008-05:00

I have to admit that in my descriptions of agnostic theology and a latent God there has been something that I've been avoiding—revelation. For the most part, the avoidance has been accidental. I just didn't happen to post on it. However, I think there is a part of me that just isn't sure what to make of revelation, and so I just (unconsciously?) skipped over it.

I think the reason I struggle with revelation has to do with my understanding of human limitations/frailty/finitude/stupidity. What I mean is that I'm not sure that how capable we, as humans, are of distinguishing the voice of God from voices in our heads. We've all had the experience of hearing something and asking the person next to us,"What'd you say?" when really no one said anything at all. If can't distinguish the voices of people physical present to us from noises in our heads, how can we possibly distinguish the voice of God from self-delusions?

Yes, I know that there are plenty of responses to that kind of skepticism (and at times I've been the one defending revelation), but I want to be clear about what I'm trying say: The only claim I'm making is that revelation is hard for me to grapple with.

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten that revelation includes more than just God-spoke-to-me-in-a-dream kind of stuff. There is, of course, the Bible (at this moment I'm imagining an ancient leather-bound book falling from the sky and landing with a staggering thud, throwing up an immense cloud of dust—as the dust clears, you can see that the ground beneath it is fractured, evidence of the book's great weight and power).

The Bible has it's own set of issues. To start, it didn't miraculously come down from heaven as a complete, bound book (like in the description above). The Bible was written over a vast period of time by many different people. The Bible was edited, reworked, added to, and subtracted from. It was written from many different viewpoints and suggests many different (and sometimes competing) understandings of God. It doesn't even make any claims about it's own authority (we can debate about 2 Timothy 3:16). It is normative for Christian faith, not because God said so, but because Christians said so.

And to make it all more complicated, every book of the Bible began as the kind of revelatory claim I describe at the beginning—someone said God spoke to them (and other related claims).

Again, this all comes back to one big question for me—what do I do with revelation? It's not that I necessarily discount or disbelieve revelation as a whole, but I think it is clear that sometimes "revelation" turns out to be wrong (David Koresh, for example). How, then, are we to distinguish between true and false revelation?

I started to list different possibilities and plenty of examples and counterexamples, but I think it is better just to let the question stand because, honestly, I don't know. Revelation is something that is hard for me to deal with because it doesn't fit neatly into the realm of my experience. It is a troubling, up-ending, messy thing. It turns my notions of what is and isn't upside-down.

And that is precisely what makes revelation an elephant in the room. It is something that common sense says shouldn't be there, but it's there whether we like it or not. So, I guess we have to talk about it....

What Am I Doing?

2008-12-04T00:43:00.005-05:00

As my first semester of grad school draws to a close, I have to ask myself: "What am I doing?"

When I started this blog, I was venturing out on a personal journey into the unknown. I was tired of being bombarded with half-baked theology from self-assured Christians who just knew that they were in the truth. That didn't work for me. I could see through it. I needed to figure out what a humble Christianity might look like. I needed a fresh start in my persistent search for God.

It's funny that after being on this journey for more than a year, I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten anywhere. I didn't expect to have any of my questions answered, but I also didn't expect that I'd still be asking the same questions. What I have learned, though, is that I am not alone. Not only have I met many people who think along the same lines, I have learned that there have been Christians asking similar questions for the last 2000 years. (Yes, I know that many of them were heretics—but not all of them!)

What everything seems to boil down to is that I am human. So are you. And humans, as it turns out, aren't really that big or strong or even that smart. With that in mind, what can we really know about God? What can we truly say about God?

So, I guess that helps me answer the question I began this post with: "What am I doing? I'm striving to find God, to know God, to talk about God."

Over previous centuries countless people have undertaken that task, and I'm convinced that the same questions will be taken up again and again in the centuries to come. None of us will find any complete answers, but that's no reason to stop the chase.

I'll close with the words of a kindred spirit from the 5th century who helped blaze the trail ahead of me:

[God's] transcendent darkness remains hidden from all light and concealed from all knowledge. Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God [...] [God] is completely unknown and non-existent. [God] exists beyond being and [God] is known beyond the mind. And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of [God] who is above everything that is known.

-Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter One

Talking about God

2008-11-28T22:27:00.005-05:00

Recently I've been thinking a lot about what it means to talk about God. It's almost funny that we, petty humans, even try to talk about someone so great—someone who is by nature ineffable and undescribable. God is so far above/beyond our intellect and language that anything we say about God is at best insufficient and at worst flat-out wrong.

But that doesn't mean we should stop. On the contrary, we must talk about God. God is so ever present in our human lives that it would be disingenuous to remain silent. It would be like ignoring an elephant in the room.

Yesterday, I ran across a passage in Mirror of Simple Souls by Margaret Porette (sometimes spelled Marguerite Porete) that expresses my thoughts perfectly:

For there is no God, other than he of whom one can know nothing perfectly; and he alone is my God of whom one cannot say a word [...] But I wish to speak of it, and I do not know what to say. But none the less [...] my love is such a mind that I had rather hear what is not true of you than that people should say nothing about you. And that without a doubt is what I do. I say of you what is not true, for everything which I say of you is nothing but untruth about your goodness. But you must pardon what I say which is not true of you.

I agree with her—I would rather talk about our ineffable God and fail than remain silent. I know that in my search for God I will say many wrong things, and I hope God will forgive my failings. However, like Porette, I will continue to speak about God, even if it means I am bound to be wrong.

Then again, perhaps that isn't the best idea—Porette was burned at the stake as a heretic....

The Religious

2008-11-24T22:04:00.008-05:00

Over the last few weeks and months, I've been trying to discern what direction I should head with my graduate studies. Recently, I've begun to narrow things down a bit. I think what I really want to explore is expressions of the religious apart from specifically religious institutions. I find it fascinating that when people write and speak and think and hope and dream, so often religious elements are subtly present. It seems that being human almost necessitates being religious.

Of course, that is a pretty broad claim—and I know people who would strongly object. But to clarify, when I say "religious" I don't have in mind particular religions or rituals or doctrines. What I do have in mind, however, is notoriously difficult to pin down. When I say "religious" I mean it in a broad sense. For instance, what I would identify as the "religious" part of Christianity would not only be the beliefs and practices (like going to church, taking communion, etc.) but also the desire deep inside that drives Christians to follow God in the first place.

The deep-seated desire that motivates Christians to follow God, I believe, exists in everyone. Certainly it manifests itself differently in various peoples and cultures (and it can lead down some very divergent paths), but it is something common to all humans. We all grapple with the religious because, at its core, the religious has to do with a search for meaning and identity. It is, as one of my professors calls it, the "enduring presence and absence that is the mystery at the center of life."

This may seem a bit strange and possibly irrelevant to Chrisitanity, but it points to something interesting—because humans are inherently religious, that means that religious themes pop up all over the place. The religious shows up in art, music, poetry, novels, architecture and in almost anything else that people create, and because it is all driven by the same deep-seated desire that everyone shares, that means that it is all potentially relevant to me. If something by a Muslim novelist, a Mormon artist, or an atheist poet really strikes a chord in me, there is no need for me to discount it. It is all relevant to me and my own search for God.

We are all engaged in the same task of finding meaning and identity, so I'm certain that there is a lot we can learn from others—even when we have drastically different outlooks.

*In case it wasn't clear, I don't use "religious" in the perjorative sense that many evangelicals do. For me, the religious is something akin to "spiritual" (although that word can get me in trouble, too). Maybe it is something like the "God-shaped hole in my heart" that I learned about in Sunday school when I was young. Perhaps that's a crude way to phrase it, but I think I like it....

Reminding Myself that I Don't Know

2008-11-10T01:48:00.011-05:00

Although I haven't written about it much in the last few months, agnosticism seems to be almost constantly on my mind. I've been doing some thinking lately, trying to figure out why it is such an important concept to me, so I decided that I should reiterate (for my own benefit as much as yours) what I mean by agnosticism. When I usethe word agnostic here on this blog, I'm not trying to call to mind all of the negative, apathetic, anti-religious, and sometimes nihilistic connotations that burden the term. I'm not making any broadly sweeping claims about religion, God, or the universe. By agnostic I simply mean a three word phrase, uttered out of conscious humility—I don't know.

For me, agnosticism is not the end of faith. Agnosticism isn't a box that I check on surveys instead of a religion. It isn't a term I toss around glibbly at 2 am in hip coffee shops, trying to show people that I'm enlightened. It isn't something that can ever be an identity. There are lots of things that agnosticism is not—but most importantly agnosticism is not the end.

Agnosticism is a beginning.

Imagine this situation: You invite me over tomorrow evening, we plop down on your couch, and you open up a bottle of cheap red wine, ready to enjoy a long night of lively conversation. After the ordinary what-have-you-been-up-to-latelys and how's-life-been-treating-yous, you jump right in, asking my opinion on some of life's big questions: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? How can we know the truth? Is there a God?

Assuming I haven't had too much wine, all of my answers will begin with the same three words: I don't know. I begin my answers that way because it is the truth. I am a human being, embodying plenty of possibilities and perils, but as limited as a shrink-wrapped potato. No matter how much I am able to do or how much I fail, I am bound to this one body and this one mind. Because I am a limited, fallible, finite human being, all of my answers have to begin with that three-word admission of humility.

But agnosticism is not an end. It cannot be an end. If I want to live and love and breathe, I have to find meaning. I have to try. After all, just because I don't know with certainty doesn't mean I can't make a good guess.

That is what agnostic theology is all about. It starts with the humble admission I don't know, but it presses on from there. None of us know, but we can't stop at that. The world would be a large, mushy lump of nothingness if we let agnosticism be the end. Just because we are limited human beings does not mean we don't experience longing and yearning for something greater.

For millenia, humans have reached toward the heavens for answers, and agnosticism does not give impetus to stop. Agnosticism has to be the beginning—a vocalization of our humanness which gets that truth out in the open—from which we then search and work and build.

When I write about agnosticism, I don't mean anything negative. I mean something realistic. When it comes to God and meaning and the universe, the fact of the matter is that I don't know....

But that's a beginning, not an end.

Change We Can Believe In

2008-11-04T18:38:00.007-05:00

One of the things that strikes me about the 2008 Presidential campaign is how optimistic the whole thing is.

I don't mean that there hasn't been any negativity. Certainly the campaigns have taken a negative turn over the last few months. Additionally, many voters desperately fear what will happen to our country if their particular candidate doesn't win. But it's the opposite side of that fear that I find very interesting.

There is a notion that one candidate or the other possesses some extraordinary ability to transform our country. As much as anything else, this campaign season has been marked by hope. And it seems that what people are placing their hope in is change.

Yes, change has been the buzz word for the last year—and for good reason—but believing in change is a funny thing. Above all, it is terribly optimistic. Believing in change is believing in our ability (or our candidate's ability) to improve our world. It is believing in our ability to overcome evils—whether moral, systemic, or otherwise—and to transform things for the better.

But this belief in change is in tension with the idea of a fallen world. If all humans are ultimately disfigured by sin, to what degree is change actually possible? Sure, names and faces will change. Political balances of power will change. New systems and structures will be instituted and others will die out. But can we really change anything for the better? If so, how much better?

I don't mean to come across as cynical—I only mean to point out that if we truly live in a fallen world, then that is a reality we need to take into account. And that applies to more than just this election season. Social action organizations and human rights campaign face the same reality. In fact, any attempt to feed the hungry, quench the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and care for the sick and imprisoned is openly in tension with the reality of a fallen world.

Admittedly, I believe very strongly in social action efforts. I believe in the importance to working to improve our world. I believe in change.

But, is change really something we can believe in?

Bouncy Balls, Checkbooks, and Salvation

2008-10-26T21:36:00.005-04:00

I spent most of this afternoon reading excerpts from various works by Medieval theologians. It isn't always captivating stuff to read, but for some reason there tends to be at least one thing that really catches my attention. While I was reading a portion of On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith by Hugh of Saint Victor (sounds a bit obscure, no?), I was struck by a passage where he explains how and why salvation works the way it does. After describing our debt to God, Satan's dominion over us, and the way God's justice plays into all of that, he writes:

In order, therefore, that God might be placated by man, God freely gave to man that which he was in duty bound to repay to God.

After I read that line, I just stopped and stared blankly at the page. Something about that whole transaction of giving and sacrifice and repayment seemed really odd to me. Why would God give us something that wasn't ours just so we could give it right back to God? It never actually belonged to us, so how could it repay our debt? Why did God go through all that trouble—essentially giving the payment, not actually to us, but right back to to where it came from—when it would have been easier just to forgive the debt?

As I sat there with the book in my lap, still staring at the page, I realized that that strange transaction reminded me of something. Remember when you were about six years old and Christmas came around? You were old enough to know that people exchanged gifts that time of year, but you weren't old enough to recieve any sort of allowance—so what did you do? Your parents gave you a couple of dollars and took you to the store so that you could by them gifts. In purely economical terms, you didn't actually give your parents anything. In fact, they really didn't even like the Santa eraser and Rudolph bouncy ball that you gave them.

But that wasn't the point. Something took place at a level that went deeper than the transaction itself. At the heart of it, it was about you. It was to show you something, to teach you something. Although the money and the eraser and bouncy ball were meaningful, they weren't what was really important....

I have to wonder if the same is true of the salvation narrative. Surely God could have saved us in some other way. Nothing forced God to become incarnate and die a terrible death for us. But that's what God chose—not because it makes the most sense economically—because God wanted to show us something. Perhaps the incarnation had more to do with teaching us about God's ultimate love and less to do with fulfilling cosmic justice.

I remember wondering about salvation when I was young. The transaction never seemed to line up right. No matter how I rearranged things in my head, the balance sheet never quite worked out right. Maybe the incarnation was about much more than cosmic accounting. Maybe God cared more about us than a balanced checkbook.

Meaning in the Universe

2008-10-15T02:16:00.014-04:00

While I was at work tonight, I had one of those random "big-question" conversations with a co-worker. It turns out that we both share skeptical/cynical tendencies, but we also share a sense of hope and yearning for something greater. While we were talking about human sacredness and our place in the grand scheme of things, she shared this vision of the cosmos with me (well, this is my paraphrase):

So here we are, living in a particular time among billions of other humans on this thing called Earth. And Earth is just one of many millions of planets in the glaxay, which is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. Even the universe itself may be one of infinitely many universes in the multiverse.

And that makes us really tiny.

In this vast, swirling cosmos, untouchable and devoid of meaning for us, we are nothing. On such scales of immensity, we are infinitely small. But because everything else is so unreachable, this cramped little world of ours is everything. In the face of such emptiness, our lives and world are infintely meaningful.

And what does all of that mean for us?

"Don't be an asshole," she said.

Know Thyself

2008-10-12T02:37:00.005-04:00

The first time I encountered the phrase "Know Thyself" was in The Matrix. At one point in the scene where Neo meets the Oracle, she points up to an inscription above the doorway (that reads, "Temet Nosce") and says, "You know what that means? It's Latin. Means 'know thyself.'" She tells Neo that if he looks deep within himself he will find out whether he is the salvation of humanity....

Strangely, a similar notion of self-knowledge has been coming up in some of my reading recently. Early on in Christianity, especially in the east, it seems that there was a concept that self-knowledge could lead to salvation. Although it's a bit foreign to me, I find it very intriguing.

Essentially, it all boils down to being created in the image of God. Because we were created in God's image, there is something inside of us that connects us to God. If we truly develop self-knowledge, we will come to know the image of God inside of us—and that means we will know God. Such intimate self-knowledge is deeply connected with purity of the soul and spiritual maturity. It takes purity and maturity to know ourselves (and God), but it is through knowing God that we develop purity and maturity. They seem to work in a profound spiral leading inward toward ever-increasing knowledge of God.

This knowledge of ourselves and of God is our salvation. If we truly know ourselves, we will know God, and if we truly know God, we will love God. That true knowledge of and love of God transforms our every action (we are able to see God in others and love them accordingly), making us more and more like God. And that is what salvation is—being wrapped up, in knowledge and in action, totally in communion with God.

My reaction to this vision of salvation is both enthusiastic and skeptical. The wonderful thing about this vision is that being created in the image of God takes on substantial meaning. It goes beyond just giving me a basis for my self-esteem. Instead, just by virtue of being human, I have a direct and profound connection with God—I have a part of God within me. Being created in the image of God is something that can be acted upon and forms the basis for how I should live my life.

On the other hand, though, this is so drastically different than the pessimistic picture of human nature that I learned growing up Protestant. If humans are as horrendously depraved and incurably evil as Luther and Calvin would suggest, how could we possibly find the image of God within us? Has sin distorted the image of God within us beyond the point of recognizability?

I have to wonder whether it is possible to know myself so deeply that I could find God inside. How optomistic am I about human nature? Do I really believe that humans still bear any recognizable image of God? Or are we so corrupt that the image has been warped completely out of shape?

What would I find if I looked deep inside and truly heeded the words, "Know thyself"?

Inalienable(?) Human Rights

2008-09-25T01:23:00.000-04:00

There are many injustices occurring in our world that need desparately to be fixed. From poor working conditions to genocide, from torture to sexism—we, as humans, must enact change for the better. There is no question about that.

But why do we need to act?

The concept of human rights is interesting to me. Exactly what rights people have and where those rights come from are notoriously difficult things to nail down. The Declaration of Independence asserts that people have the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's a good starting point, but there are many more rights to add to that list (but what to add may be trickier than you think).

But even if it is possible to agree on what rights we all have, we are still left with the question of where those rights come from. The easy, Christian answer is that they come from God. We are created in God's image and, thus, we are endowed with dignity and worth.

But what happens if the God that gives us rights is latent? Does an uncertain God undermine our claim to God-given dignity? Since we can't quite put our finger on God, are human rights just out of our grasp as well?

Is there some other place where we can look for human rights? Or is there something altogether different that we should be looking for?

Am I Blind?

2008-09-15T21:37:00.000-04:00

In my last bit of downtime before school kicks into full gear, I've been reading a lot on the internet. I've been following the presidential race fairly intently, and recently I've been getting quite a bit of amusement out of the attacks back and forth. Each new TV ad or speech gives the opposing party a whole new set of ammunition. The more one side says, the more opportunities there are for the other side to point out faults.

It turns out that it's a really good thing that I don't have any opponents ripping apart my every sentence. If I were to be rhetorically torn limb from limb, two things would become aparent very quickly: (1) I am probably a blabbering idiot and (2) it is likely that my glasses aren't strong enough because I seem to have some serious vision problems. The first of those revelations may or may not be true, but there's nothing I can do about it either way so I'll just let it be. The second one, however, is really what I want to get at.

With all my talk about God's latency* (i.e., God being hidden and uncertain), it would be a very reasonable thing to ask whether I can really see straight. Throughout my life I have met a good number of people who know God is there and have seen God act in their lives. I've met many people who talk about God as though God is as concrete as a desk or a car. For them, God is not followed by a question mark but by a period.

And they would be right to question my vision. After all, the entire concept of a latent God is centered around my inability to see. Although this criticism does not come as a surprise to me (heck, it's basically built in), it still makes me uneasy from time to time.

I know that God is not so clear for everyone. I've met many people (even Christians!) who readily admit that they don't see God. Nonetheless, I sometimes fear that the fact that I can't see means that there is something wrong with me.

Perhaps I'm blind....

*[Since it's been a while, here's a quick refresher: To say that God is latent is to say that God exists as potential. It's the idea that God seems about to burst into the world with unmistakable power—but that it hasn't happened yet and there is no way to prove anything one way or the other. The latency of God is what makes people doubt and what causes people to believe (as opposed to know). It means that we are forced to live in this strange almost-but-not-quite world where God is hidden from view.]

The Winding and Narrow

2008-09-10T23:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I last posted, and a lot has changed in that time. I just married a smart and adventurous young woman, and we moved to the Boston area to pursue our academic interests in grad school. So, new marriage, new city, new schools—there's quite a lot going on right now....

In the midst of all the craziness, I took a short break yesterday to walk a labyrinth in an open green space just outside one of the academic buildings at school. It was a cool morning with heavy gray skies and a soft breeze, and as I approached the labyrinth I took a moment to read the sign posted at the beginning. The sign pointed out something that I had never noticed before—the labyrinth has only one path to follow, so there is never any worry about getting lost. Although the path is narrow and winding, it will always take you to the center.

It seems to me that the labyrinth is a more fitting picture of my spiritual journey than the idea of the "straight and narrow road." For better or for worse, I can't manage to walk in a straight line. I can hear God calling out to me, but I keep losing my bearings. I'll be walking one direction and then suddenly God's voice will seem to be coming from way off to the left. I turn to follow, but it isn't long at all before I hear no voice at all. I begin to feel dizzy and disoriented and slowly I veer off another direction until I seem to be heading the opposite direction from before. Finally I hear God's voice again, but this time it is coming from directly in front of me. And on and on I go like that, winding around constantly losing my way.

But the wonderful thing is that I am not afraid. No matter how disoriented I may become, I know that I will never end up utterly lost. All of the twists and turns are part of the path that will one day lead me to the center.

If there is a straight and narrow road, I haven't found it yet. Perhaps it is somewhere near the end of the journey. Perhaps it doesn't exist at all. Either way, I'll continue winding along the path knowing full well that I'm always walking toward the center.

Laying Claim to Love

2008-07-15T01:59:00.000-04:00

"We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19

That is the first Bible verse I ever memorized. I was about four years old when my Sunday School teacher decided that it was a good time for us to start memorizing Bible verses, and she chose this one. It was perfect because it's short, simple, and it's easy to understand—we are able to love because God loved us first.

For most of my life, I understood that verse to mean that we as Christians are able to love because we received Jesus, who is the ultimate manifestation of God's love. And that shaped how I understood the world. I walked around my school's hallways saddened because I believed that all of my non-Christian friends were not truly able to experience love. "If only they would accept Jesus as their savior," I thought, "then they would finally know what love is really like...."

All of that was a mistake.

For some reason (that I don't completely understand) Christians decided at some point to lay claim to love. They snatched love away from the herd of human emotions, tackled it to the ground, and branded it with a red-hot cross. They claimed love as their own, believing that it was something perfect and holy—and exclusive.

The only problem is that the rest of the world didn't notice. No one realized that love had been stolen and that it now belonged only to a small band of religious fanatics. No one went around looking for it. Everyone just went on loving as they had always done before.

And that's because love didn't go anywhere.

For so much of my life I believed that Christians were better people than everyone else. I thought Christians were more honest, more loving, more hospitable, and more ethical. After all, isn't God sanctifying us now that we know Jesus?

As far as I can tell, though, Christians don't seem to be much different than anyone else. Sure, Christians are more likely to follow their own moral code (even that isn't the case all the time!), but that's only because other people have their own sets of morals. But as far as most of the basics go—like honesty, loyalty, compassion, and justice—Christians don't seem to be doing much better than anyone else.

This became very apparent to me at work recently. One of my multiple bosses is a Christian who is very up-front about her faith. She is constantly talking in pathetically veiled "Christianese," nearly always speaking in terms of believing and having faith (regardless of what the conversation is about). The only problem is that she is one of the most dishonest, manipulative, two-faced, selfish people I have ever met. Don't get me wrong—she always has good intentions, but it seems that she believes that the end always justifies the means.

On the other side is another one of my bosses, who is a staunch atheist. She is cynical, harshly realistic, and has no intention of believing in a god. But the funny thing is that she is very truthful, fiercly loyal, and exceedingly compassionate. She is the most thoughtfully ethical person I've ever met, always taking time out to evaluate her decisions. For her, the means are at least as important as the end.

I don't think that those are just two freak exceptions. Being Christian or otherwise doesn't seem to have much to do with being loving or truthful or anything else. I've met Christians and Mormons and Buddhists and atheists who are all very moral people. And I've met people from all of those groups who aren't.

It may seem funny that I started talking about love and then jumped straight into ethics, but I really believe that they are one in the same. Love is about much more than a fuzzy feeling inside—it is about giving people the respect and compassion they deserve. So, when Christians tried to claim love as their own private property, they were grabbing at all the other moral virtues as well.

To be honest, I think Christians missed. When they tried to steal love away from everyone else, all they ended up doing was creating a sad counterfeit. Love is not about telling people they are sinners. It is not about serving them in the name of your own agenda. It is not about manipulating others to achieve the ends you believe are right.

Everyone loves because God first loved all of us. God gave his creations the gift of love, so we're all capable of showing love—regardless of where we place our faith.

Casting Out Evil

2008-06-29T01:04:00.000-04:00

Social work has hijacked my brain. It opened the car door, pushed me into the passenger seat, and tore off down the highway. It took me by force, taking me places I'd never been before.

One remarkable thing about social work is that it has taught me new ways to answer questions:

Q: Is it ever a good idea to drink a forty of beer before 9am?
A: Yes, if you're drinking the beer instead of a pint of whiskey before 9am.
Q: Is it ever okay to spend half your monthly income smoking crack?
A: Yes, if you used the other half to pay your rent for the first time rather than smoking all your money away like last month.
Q: Is it ever good to panhandle, illegally tamper with parking meters, and sell bootlegged porn on the streets?
A: Yes, if it means you aren't prostituting anymore.

The most important thing that I have learned from doing social work is that so much depends on context. If someone has smoked crack for the last 30 years and has spent that whole time alternating between jail and the streets, that impacts the very core of the individual. When people have little or no income, don't have a bed of their own, are addicted to drugs, and live in a community that values self-preservation over honesty and responsibility, it doesn't make sense to demand that they adhere to middle-class norms and expectations. Under circumstances like these, "good decisions" must be understood as decisions that are small movements in the right direction.

Now, that's just an extreme example, but the general principle applies to all of us. It doesn't matter whether we're from the streets of Skid Row or the mansions of Beverly Hills or anywhere in between—for any sort of useful value judgment to be made about us, our backgrounds and circumstances must be taken into consideration.

Before I go any further, I need to be clear. I am only talking about useful moral judgments. Since I can't make claims about moral absolutes with any certainty, I won't even try. Absolute Good may or may not exist, but there's nothing I can do about it either way. Absolute Evil may or may not be out there, but I can't do anything about that one either. So, I just want to focus on useful moral judgments—like when parents, pastors or mentors provide moral guidance.

All too often, it seems that the "right thing to do" is horrendously unclear. It is exceedingly difficult to nail down a set of moral principles that always point us in the right direction. Growing up we are taught that lying is wrong, but many of us have been in situations where we can protect innocent people from harm if we tell a little fib. Should moral judgments about lying be based on the liar's intentions, or is it wrong in every situation?

And then there are issues like drinking alcohol. Some people consider drinking to be wrong all together, while others have no problem with it. Is drinking okay as long as you don't get too drunk? If so, how drunk is too drunk? Or is the problem really the bad decisions that intoxication facilitates? In that case, is it okay to get blitzed in your living room while watching TV but not okay to get tipsy in a bar where you might end up making out with a stranger? If there are so many different opinions and so many different circumstances to be taken into account, how can we ever decide what is right?

Although people cannot seem to agree on what is absolutely good and what is absolutely evil, it seems to me that we can probably come to a consensus on what is better and what is worse. We can probably agree that it is generally better to be truthful rather than deceitful, even if we can't agree on what is best in every circumstance. Likewise, we can probably agree that it is generally better to drink less rather than more, even if we can't agree on an exact rule about alcohol.

Not only are absolute good and absolute evil hard to nail down, they aren't particularly useful most of the time. Being compared to the standard of absolute good can intimidating. On the other hand, being compared to absolute evil can feel horribly condemning. I've met plenty of people who have made conscious decisions to resign to bad choices because they think: "Since I'm already a bad person, why should I even bother trying?" Although a few people may be motivated by being called evil, for most people it is simply a turn-off—they'll just go talk to someone else who doesn't seem to hate them.

Too often, good and evil aren't viewed as two extremes—they are viewed as the only options. People get the impression that if they aren't perfectly good, then that means they are completely evil. Since it is impossible to be perfectly good, then we'll always end up in the evil category. So where's the motivation to try to be better?

In reality, I believe that there is a continuum between the two extremes. No person is entirely good and no person is entirely evil, so when we're counseling someone about moral choices, the goal is to help them become better than they are right now. And we have to be realistic—we can't expect people who have spent their whole lives being deceitful to become entirely honest by tomorrow. Choosing the lesser of two evils is a step in the right direction, even if the decision is still an evil one.

When we discuss our decisions only in terms of good and evil, we leave out the possibilities in between. People aren't good at being good, and if we only have the two categories to choose from, we'll always turn out to be evil. And that isn't particularly encouraging. If our goal is truly to help people become better, then our vocabulary needs to allow us to be something other than just evil.

Since our goal is to become better, we need to have some concept of good as our point of reference. Good should be important because it is the direction we are heading, not because it is a tool we use to measure people with. It's usefulness lies in its ability to guide us in the direction we want to go.

On the other hand, the usefulness of evil is essentially that it is the opposite of good. No one is absolutely evil and it isn't a goal that we reach for, so it isn't very valuable to us most of the time. More than that, it is a concept that can be hurtful, discouraging, and repelling. If goal is to help people become better, slapping them in the face with their evilness isn't very helpful.

Morality should be about making better lives, and becomingbetter people—not about condemning people to the category of evil. Although we need both absolute good and absolute evil as end points for our continuum, our focus should be on continuing movement in the right direction. Regardless of how evil our starting point may be, our concern is with gradually becoming. In our personal discussions about morality, the word "evil," with all it's connotative baggage, is not useful.

If our goal is truly to help people move toward good, there is no place for condemnation. In our personal discussions about morality, we need to cast "evil" our of our vocabularies and focus on a more constructive dialog about making better decisions.

None of us will ever be perfectly good, but that does not mean we should point fingers at each others' evilness. If we are truly focusing on becoming better, we need to leave our condemnations behind and spend our energy taking small steps in the right direction.

The Problem of Perception

2008-06-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

Recently, I've been reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. The stated purpose of the book is to turn every reader into an atheist, so it is certainly making for an interesting read. While I'm not particularly convinced by any of his arguments so far (they keep devolving into rhetoric), they have brought up an interesting dilemma for me to chew on--the problem of perception.

In the book, Dawkins suggests that religion should be held to the same high standards as science. Religion, he believes, should be investigated as thoroughly and critically as any other discipline, rather than being given a get-out-of-jail-free card as is often the case. Dawkins harps on religion's inferiority to science, often sloughing it off as "superstition." While I have no intention of engaging Dawkins on this issue, I will use it as a jumping-off point. That distinction between science and superstition, which may be very clear to him, does not seem clear at all to me. I'm not sure that separating the two as qualitatively different is possible.

I think the main difference between science and superstition is the data that support them. Science is based on objective facts, precise experimentation, and logical reasoning. In science, everything is tested, retested, interpreted, retested again, reinterpreted, and then retested a few more times. Scientific facts are experimentally proven and create an ever-more exact picture of our universe. Superstition, however, is based on subjective experience and patchwork attempts to explain our lives. Superstitious truths are believed without evidence and in spite of any contradictions. There is a clear-cut difference between science and superstition, right?

I'm not so sure. Science is not always as "hard" as it's made out to be. Just because something is called "scientific" that doesn't mean that it is true. By it's very nature, science is based on observations and estimates. In order to test something, it must be observable (or else we wouldn't see anything to test) and it must be measurable (or else it wouldn't be much of a test at all).

Observation itself creates problems--observing a phenomenon means that we are interacting with it and potentially interfering with it. By watching something, we run the risk of somehow influencing its outcome. This "observer effect" can be minimized, but as long as we are observing something we are basically getting in the way. Measurement is also a problem because it is impossible to be exact. For example, if I hold my hand at arms-length and measure my thumbnail with a ruler, I see that my thumbnail is 1/2 inch wide. If I take a closer look, it turns out that it is actually 5/8 inch wide. But if I were able to examine it under microscope with a more precise ruler, it may actually turn out to be 37/64 inch wide. The farther you zoom in, the more precisely you can measure (assuming you have a tool that is exact enough). But there are limits to how close we can get. At some point, every measurement becomes an approximation.

What all of that means is that we are limited by the fact that we cannot know anything perfectly, absolutely, and without interference. To some extent we are always guessing. We are perpetually bound by our perception. Granted, the degree of our uncertainty varies depending on the subject. We can be more precisely certain about the interactions of atoms in a combustion reaction than we can be about the nature of God--but we still cannot know everything about either one.

I guess what this all boils down to is subjectivity. Because we observe and interpret the world around us, everything is warped by the lens of our perception. Once something passes through that lens and into our minds, there is no way for us to verify with certainty what it is like on the outside. In our human experience, everything is tainted by our finitude. There really is no way to tell the difference between "empirical" science and "fairytale" superstition.

So even if there is a qualitative difference between science and superstition, as far as we are concerned, they are one in the same.

Probable God

2008-04-03T00:49:00.000-04:00

As you may have guessed, I'm still trying to figure out what this whole latency of God thing means. I continue to struggle with how to be an agnostic Christian (see my brief and flawed explanation here) and a faithful one at the same time. What does it mean to be uncertain about God but still believe in God? How does all of this crazy stuff work?

One of the things that troubles me the most is the inevitability of being a "relativist." Now, I have to admit that the main reason I'm afraid of being a relativist is because of my up-bringing--as a kid it was made very clear to me that relativism meant wishy-washy meant sinner meant hell-bound. So, as I reckon with the idea of God existing as potential, I'm forced to deal with my own relativism as well.

It recently occurred to me, however, that I am actually no more relativistic than my high school math teacher. Mrs. Salvidge was a brilliant older woman with a well-kempt puff of white hair on her head, who had the remarkable ability to be both tediously meticulous and engaging at the same time.

One thing that I hated, though, was the day she explained probability to us. Of course we all knew that the chance of rolling a two was 1 in 6, and we had all done plenty of boring word-problems that involved drawing colored marbles from a hat. But none of us knew what probability really meant until that day.

The way she explained probability was with a deck of cards. Holding up the cards, she asked us what the top card was. Students shouted out various guesses: "Six of spades!" "Queen of diamonds!" "Ace of clubs!" But the correct answer was: "It is any and all of them. It is two, seven, and jack of hearts all at the same time. It is each and every possibility--until you turn it over."

And that pissed me off. I knew that there is only one reality. Physically, the top card is a four of spades regardless of whether I have seen it yet. The values and suits aren't mystically changing around until just before I reach to flip over the card. There is only one truth--it is a four of spades.

However, since high school I have come to accept probability as a useful concept. It is how gamblers, real estate agents and venture capitalists make their money (I know there is more to it than luck, but calculated risk is really just a probability). But more than being a means for getting rich, probability is a useful term because of how descriptive it is. What is surprising, though, is that it doesn't actually describe dice or cards or colored marbles--it describes us as humans.

The truth behind any given situation is that we don't know what is going to happen. We can make guesses. We can estimate. We can take calculated risks. But we really don't know what is actually going to happen. What probability really describes is our perpetual lack of knowledge. Even if we've been counting cards, we can never be absolutely certain what the next card will be. The reason we talk about probability is that we don't know what the outcome is going to be--if we knew exactly what was going to happen when we roll the die, then there would be no 1 in 6.

As it turns out, latency is little more than probability--it is a term that describes us and what we don't know. In reality there either is or is not a God in the same way that the top card either is or is not the ace of spades. In both cases there is a reality that we just plain don't know for sure. Probability and latency both describe our uncertainty about that reality.

Don't misunderstand me--I'm not trying to calculate the chances of God's existence. I guess that what I'm really saying is that the strange concept of latency may not really be that strange after all. Yes, it is a term that describes an uncomfortable unknown, but it is surprisingly similar to something we've all dealt with in math class.

There is no way we can be absolutely certain about God's existence, so the best we can do is begin with latency. In our experience, God exists as potential. The truth about God is out there, but it is something we cannot know for sure. . . .

So, does God exist? It is probable.

Redemption of the World?

2008-03-14T19:04:00.000-04:00

One of my former religion professors really didn't like the idea of propitiation. For him the concept of appeasing an offended God or dispelling God's wrath didn't make sense in the context of the New Testament. His understanding of God led him to embrace expiation instead--the idea of making amends or reconciling a broken bond.

Although this may seem like splitting hairs to some people, it really is a significant distinction. Propitiation evokes the image of an angry Old Testament God with a rapacious bloodlust--the only way to satisfy this God is through the ultimate bloodshed. By embracing expiation, my professor was effectively throwing out that Old Testament image of God in exchange for a God who blesses the peacemakers and seeks out the lost.

I understand God in a similar way. I believe in a God who is more concerned with reconciliation than retribution, who is more likely to pardon than to punish, and who cares more that justice is given to the lowly than that justice is served to the law-breakers. I believe in redemption.

But it recently occurred to me that I don't really know what redemption looks like. Growing up, I was taught that redemption had something to do with God forgiving me so I could get into heaven. Since we were fallen people in a fallen world, redemption meant being perfected (after we died) and living in a perfect world (heaven).

That's all fine and dandy, but is that all that redemption is? Is it really so individualistic? Is it only about me getting into heaven? What about the service of others in God's name? What about the reign of God on earth? What about the redemption of this life and this world?

I believe that the redemption that God has in mind is the redemption of the world--not just of individuals. It isn't something that clergy or conservatives or Christians have a monopoly over. It is God reconciling the world to Godself. Redemption is tied up intimately with the gospel of the kingdom: "Get ready! God's reign on earth is coming!"

But how do we get ready? What do we need to do? How can we contribute to a project (like reconciliation) that really belongs to God? What does the redemption of the world look like?

Can this world even be redeemed?

Where Do You Go When You Die?

2008-03-12T13:03:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about death a lot lately.

Well, I guess I've actually been thinking about aging more than death, but for me they are both wrapped up together. I'm beginning to reach a point where aging is no longer something I look forward to. My grandma is dying and my dad just celebrated another birthday--and it's kinda freaking me out.

I remember as a little kid, all you want is to be older. With each birthday comes more privileges, more freedoms, and more knowledge. The older kids are always bigger and cooler. As a kid, you idolize your friend's 16 year-old brother who gets his first car and starts going on dates. You wish you were a high schooler with a locker and text books like you see on your favorite TV shows. But once you are that 16 year old with a car and a girlfriend and a locker and text books, all you want is to be in college. Each birthday is something you look forward to--up to a point.

So, I realize I'm still very young, but I've reached the point where I don't have any birthdays to look forward to until I retire. There's nothing special about turning 25 or 29, and there is certainly nothing exciting about the tens digit getting higher. Each new birthday I celebrate brings me a year closer to death.

I don't mean to be morbid (I promise I'm not one of those people who thinks that being fixated on death is somehow sophisticated), but I'm beginning to wonder if my apprehension of aging/death has something to do with my uncertainty about the afterlife. My biblical studies have made it clear that the Bible is equivocal about the afterlife. Sometimes there is nothing, sometimes there is sheol (a state of partial existence that fades into nonexistence), sometimes there is heaven and hell, and sometimes it is just really unclear.

If you were to ask me about heaven and hell, I would have to respond, "I really don't know that there is much to say about either one." Sure, my agnosticism on the issue may seem like a cop out, but I really don't think we can be very certain about something that no living person can experience. But that doesn't mean that it isn't an important question--after all, that question is what makes me apprehensive about death.

We all want something to live for and we want our lives to be more than just a short-lived battle against entropy. For some of us, there is hope and meaning in the prospect of an afterlife. Because I was raised knowing that there is a heaven and a hell, having that certainty disappear on me is unsettling.

So, where do you go when you die? I'm just not sure that there is much I can say on the subject. I believe in God. I believe in redemption.

I just hope I'm right.

Disillusionment and Illumination

2008-02-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

One thing I have noticed about many young Christians (myself included) is we are weighed down by a sense of disillusionment with the church. We feel put off by the dogma, frustrated with the leadership, and rejected by the conservative culture. There are too many questions that we're not allowed to ask and too many thoughts that we're not allowed to think--there may be freedom in Christ, but we've been stifled by the church.

It is because of my own experiences (as well as many discussions with friends) that I understand God to be latent. Despite a few personal interactions with God, for the most part God seems so far removed from normal life. Although God occasionally shows up in the small things, God seems totally absent from the heavier issues. My feelings toward "the God question" waver between hope and despair--and I know I'm not the only one.

I ran across the following poem by R. S. Thomas (as reproduced in Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin) that really captures some of my darker thoughts. This poem is about disillusionment, futility, and questioning. . . .

The Empty Church

They laid this stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there.
Ah, he had burned himself
before in the human flame
and escaped, leaving the reason
torn. He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart? Is it in hope one
of them will ignite yet and throw
on its illumined walls the shadow
of someone greater than I can understand?

I don't know why I still search for God--but I can't seem to give up. So I continue to strike prayers like matches, hoping that the small lights will illuminate "someone greater than I can understand."

Gone Baby Gone

2008-02-26T17:10:00.000-05:00

As I was reading a book today, I was struck a possibility that I had never considered before: God might be gone.

I don't mean that God mysteriously disappeared or that somehow we misplaced our conception of God. Rather, I mean that God may have become fed up with certain parts of our world and simply withdrew from them. While we were busy preserving our institutions and self-absorbed ideations, God slipped out the back door.

This was not an act of exasperation, where God lost control of the world, threw a tantrum, and walked away from the mess. It was an act of power and an act of judgment. God declared that what we were doing was not okay, so instead of enabling our misdirected ways, God left. And I don't mean that God left the whole world to its own devices. Perhaps God has chosen to leave this misguided church or that corrupt institution, but God was probably intimately involved with some other group of people at the very same time.

And really, I don't mean to assert that God has actually left at all. I just mean that God could have left. And that God still can.

There is no reason for us to assume that God is involved just because a church calls itself Christian or an organization claims to be faith-based. And to a large extent, I think that most of us realize that. I don't know anyone who actually believes that God was involved with David Koresh or with Heaven's Gate. It is pretty apparent that God is not involved with everyone who makes that claim.

However, we tend to abandon that skepticism when it comes to anything familiar. We see churches along the streets of our cities and towns and we just assume that God is active there. Unless we have reason to suspect foul play (or unless we are particularly radical/hardline) we believe that God is there. In fact, it is almost unthinkable that God would abandon the flock--God is faithful, right?

Now, I'm not advocating skepticism toward religious institutions, nor am I trying to malign God's character. It just seems arrogant on our part to assume that God will bless any endeavor we do in God's name. Surely God has the freedom to choose where to be involved and whom to bless.

Since we are seeing problems on a large scale, both in our churches and in our culture, it seems important for us to face the possibility that God may be gone. Perhaps God has moved on past our current traditions and institutions. Perhaps we have wandered off the path. Perhaps we aren't as right as we think. Perhaps we need to examine ourselves critically and ask a hard question: "Has God left us?"

Call It for What It Is

2008-02-07T11:26:00.000-05:00

I wish I could go back to the way things used to be. Growing up I was taught the historic truths of Christianity--things that were undebatable and absolute. I read books and went to Bible studies that proved the existence of God and gave undeniable evidence for the Christian faith. I remember feeling humbled, fortunate, and empowered because I was one of the few who really knew the truth. I felt compelled to prove to both friends and strangers that Jesus is the way. And that's what was important to me--proving Christianity--and I genuinely believed that I could succeed.

Later on, I remember getting frustrated when things stopped being so clear. There were debates among Christians in my hometown about baptism, predestination and salvation that shook up my neatly framed theological world. I began to realize that the tidy little explanations that used to explain everything actually didn't explain anything at all. Things that I had once known with certainty started to become fuzzy and gray. The theological masterpiece that I had been given in my youth turned out to be little more than a simple paint-by-number.

What I've come to realize is that Christianity at its core is non-rational (i.e., not based on reason). That really should be an obvious statement, but it came as a surprise to me. If faith were something that could be arrived at through reason, those proofs from my childhood would have worked--but that's not what faith is all about. I can't step logically from cogito ergo sum to crucifixus etiam pro nobis. I can't prove Christianity. I can't prove salvation. I can't prove God.

And that's frustrating. I could pretend that it's actually wonderful because it allows me the opportunity to show God how committed I am--or something like that--but that would be a lie. Really, I just find it frustrating. I don't like that faith is something I can't wrap my head around. I don't like that it's all shades of gray. But that's all I've got to work with--something that is unclear, uncertain, and unresolvable.

What it all boils down to is that all the evidence, arguments, and proofs in the world can't help me make the leap of faith. I guess I just have to call it for what it is: Christianity is non-rational.

Relating to God

2008-02-06T15:24:00.000-05:00

When I think about God I tend to think in terms of relationship. I've always been taught to believe in a God who loves me and wants to be involved in my life. The image I have of God is of a benevolent deity who is concerned about my daily choices, actions and attitudes. Further reinforcing my relational understanding of God is my tendency to understand the world through the lens of subjectivity. The way I see it, any knowledge that I can have of God is available to me only by personal experience. There is no way for me to know anything about God objectively, so the only way I can know God is the way I know other people--through interaction. Because of my background and my personal inclinations, I often conceive of and speak about God in terms of relationship.

Relationships are funny things. Even though we think we know our friends objectively, most of what we know about them comes to us subjectively, through things like inference and personal experience. Sure, we may know how old they are, how many siblings they have, where they grew up, and many other objective facts, but when we say we know someone, those factual details aren’t really what we’re talking about. When we say we know someone, we’re talking about their personality, attitude, and character. We know how people would act in given situations by making inferences from past experiences we’ve had with them. We can vouch for people’s character because we’ve gone through difficult times with them. When we say we know people, we aren’t talking about things that can be tabulated in a spreadsheet—we’re talking about subjective, relational aspects of their personality and character.

It is through this kind of subjective relationship that we come to know God. Since we can’t really see God or have conversations with God, we don’t really have the option of knowing any objective facts about God. Our knowledge of God comes to us only by subjective means. I suppose that really isn’t a problem, though, because those objective details aren’t really important in the relationship anyway. Who cares how tall God is or what God’s favorite color is? What matters is God’s character—God’s commitment to faithfulness, honesty, justice, and love. And those are things that we can only know subjectively—through the experience of a life lived with God.

But there’s a problem: If we aren’t certain that God exists, how can we have any sort of relationship with God? If we’ve already acknowledged that God is latent—that in our experience God exists as potential—where can we go from there?

Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), the answer to that question is faith. If we want to try to know God, at some point we have to start by trusting that God is there. We must take that leap of faith with the hope that, if we operate from the assumption that God exists, eventually we’ll rack up enough experience to know God subjectively. We start by trusting that God is there, and as we journey through life we have experiences that teach us who God is—and these become the foundation for our relationship with God. The more we experience God, the deeper our relationship becomes and the more we understand who God is. God is increasingly revealed to us through relationship.

It may seem like we’re trying to build a castle on a toothpick—trying to build a solid knowledge of God on a risky little assumption—but that really isn’t the case. What we’re trying to do is to replace the objective assumption of God’s existence with the subjective knowledge of who God is. The assumption of God’s existence isn’t a foundation that we’re trying build upon—it’s the starting point of our journey.

But all this talk about relationships brings us to another important question: Is this latent God relational?

We can only hope.

Struggling for a Latent God

2008-01-14T14:23:00.000-05:00

If I want to take a leap of faith and place my hope in our latent God, first I have to find God. Even if I am able to wade through the mucky uncertainties that faith creates, even if I am willing to overcome the hurdles that doubt presents, I still have to find God somewhere. If God is latent, is there any way to find God? Or am I doomed to be disappointed, with lots of faith to give but nowhere to put it?

Are we forced to find this God we want to believe in? If God is not readily evident, how does God become real to us? The God who is hidden from the world must somehow become visible if we are going to believe in God. If God is latent, is it up to us to make God manifest? Must we must struggle against the odds to bring God into our reality?

Perhaps in some way faith is how we find God. Perhaps faith is what makes God visible. This act of finding/revealing makes us into dramatic incarnations of God in the world. Through faith God becomes evident to us by becoming visible through us. The act of believing brings God into our world in a real way. Without faith, God is intangible. God is nowhere to be touched or seen or heard or felt. A God who is known only through hypothesis and conjecture is a shadow of hope, nothing more. But when we come to know God through faith, God becomes real and actual to us. As God lives in and through our lives, we become incarnations of God in the world.

If God is latent, existing as potential in the world, we must struggle to bring that latent God into our reality. Without faith, God remains distant and intangible, but by the act of believing God enters into our lives. It is through our struggle of faith that God becomes incarnate in us--and that is how God comes into our world.

Read my first three posts on this subject: "Acknowledging a Latent God," "Confronting a Latent God," and "Wrestling with a Latent God."

Revaluation of Values

2008-01-13T20:49:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure when I first ran across Nietzsche's phrase "revaluation of values," but I want to co-opt it to describe my journey over the last few years. I have experienced a change in outlook and attitude that stems from changing values. Everything has been revalued--some things that used to seem essential have faded into the background and other things that didn't used to register on my radar have become of paramount importance to me. In a recent email to a friend I attempted to list (in no particular order) my old and new values. Here is what I came up with:

OLD:
-conservatism for the sake of conservatism
-being visibly pious
-affirming the absolute, orthodox truths of Christianity
-identifying rules to live by
-living by those rules and telling others that they need to do the same
-fitting God into a unified, comprehensive theological system
-reaching others for Christ

NEW:
-spending my time doing things that are worthwhile
-meeting people's needs
-showing people love
-being realistic
-giving the benefit of the doubt
-coming to working conclusions rather than final ones

It is strange to think about the changes I've undergone. If the old Matt were to meet my current self, he would be thoroughly disappointed. He would probably call me something like a "wishy-washy, postmodern, socially-active relativist" and mean it as an insult. Although it may be a bit silly, it's still a little uncomfortable for me to think about. I am so different than I was just a couple of years ago it makes me wonder what happened. While I can recount the progression, I can't really explain why it happened. I'd like to think that somewhere deep inside I've always held these "new" values, but I'm not sure that's the case.

I guess it doesn't really matter. The fact is that I have changed. I've undergone a revaluation of values, and I hope it's for the better....

Finding Identity in Pluralism

2008-01-11T11:50:00.000-05:00

The following is an essay I wrote for one of my grad school applications:

To say that we live in a multifaith, multiethnic, multinational society is to recognize its complexity and its diversity. Our society is marked by many competing values and beliefs, each one making truth claims. Because of their significant variety, there is pressure to be tolerant and accepting of all of the different options. While it may be tempting to view such inclusiveness as an imperative for living in a pluralistic society, this is not true. There is nothing that requires us to downplay our own beliefs or to honor others’ values. Although politically incorrect, it is entirely possible to reject all but one’s own beliefs as misguided, errant, and evil. The only true imperative for living in a pluralistic society is that of developing an identity, both personal and corporate, in relation to others in society.

In order for us to live and interact meaningfully within society, we must have some starting point. There is very little that we can say or do if we do not know who we are in relation to those around us. Without the guides of identity, there is no possibility of intercourse because we will have nothing to say and no way of interpreting what we hear. For us to truly live in a pluralistic society, it is essential that we develop a balanced identity that is defined both independently of others and in relation to others.

The core of our identity is formed by the convictions and values that we have inherited or chosen from among our variety of options. It is forged independently of those outside our particular tradition. However, our identity is not complete without understanding how it is that we relate to those outside of ourselves. We must establish relationships with other groups and cultures in order to demarcate the boundaries of our identity. It is only from the starting point of identity that we can truly converse with society.

The formulation of identity is an on-going process because the relationships that help define it are fluid. Because the people we interact with help us to create our identity, they have a tremendous impact upon us. Our exchange with them alters the way we see the world and ourselves. As a result we move from merely acknowledging diversity to valuing it. It is because of this level of respect for those who are different from us that we are able to carry on honest and edifying conversations with them.

As we dialog with a pluralistic society there is a tendency to become increasingly accepting of its various values and beliefs. To a large extent this is healthy and helpful for continuing identity formation, but we can take it too far. One of the potential pitfalls that we face in such a diverse society is the temptation to become overly inclusive. Inclusiveness for its own sake leads only to a pale gray end, where there is no room for opinion, and the conversation becomes nothing more than an endless repetition of “yes.” Without the ability to distinguish ourselves from others, this extreme inclusiveness can lead to a dramatic loss of identity.

When we acknowledge that we live in a pluralistic society, we face the challenge of finding our identity. We must strike a balance between our convictions and others’ influence in order to create an identity that will allow us to interact meaningfully with society. If we are to engage society, we must be attentive enough to hear what others say and we must also be confident enough to have something to say back.

What's Jesus got to do with it?

2007-12-21T11:55:00.000-05:00

As I was walking back to my office during lunch yesterday, I was looking around at all the buildings and people and a question popped into my head: "What does Jesus have to do with that building over there?" As I continued walking, I asked that same question about other things that I saw: "What does Jesus have to do with that security guard in front of the child development center? Or with the dead vine on that wall? Or with the homeless man asleep by the warehouse? Or with the small business owner standing outside of her shop?" I kept asking those questions without really knowing what I meant by them. I didn't mean to be offensive or secular--I just didn't see how Jesus related to those things at that moment.

Just before I got back to my office, I was finally able to vocalize the big question I was trying to ask: "What does it mean to be truly Christocentric?" Sure, I can put on my pious hat and relate everything I see back to Jesus, mumbling something about redemption and saving grace each time. But I'm not sure that that is any different than a game I used to play when I was little. I'd pick out two very different objects--say, a clock and my toothpaste cap--and try to connect them in as few steps as possible (the clock helps me keep track of time, and it is only at certain times of day that I remove the toothpaste cap so that I can brush my teeth). So perhaps I need to rephrase my question: "In what substantial way does Jesus relate to the woman selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the corner?"

I think what I'm getting at is that I'm not sure exactly how Jesus relates metaphysically to the common occurrences of everyday life. Yes, Jesus came to release humanity from our bondage to sin and to reconcile us to God. But I'm not sure that I can identify exactly how Jesus, dead and raised, actively relates to the drunk man on the corner. It's not that there is no relation--I just I don't know how it all works.

Because of the limits of my knowledge in that area, I am compelled to focus on ethics. Perhaps the way Jesus relates to everyday people and everyday events is through the lives and examples of Christians. Since I don't know for sure how Jesus is connected to the rest of the world, I feel drawn to be the connection. I don't know to what extent Jesus works actively in the world and I don't know to what extent he has left that up to us. But it would certainly be a shame to sit around lazily, only to find out later that Jesus expected us to make the connection.

So, what's Jesus got to do with it? Perhaps the answer to that question is up to us....

Starting with Skid Row

2007-12-19T18:13:00.000-05:00

I'm currently in the process of applying to graduate school, so I've been thinking a lot about my future. I'm trying to decide what I want to do with me life, what avenues I'd like to pursue. While theology is definitely what I want to study, I don't like the idea of being cooped up in a stuffy office at some university for the rest of my life. I am convinced that theology cannot be divorced from ethics, and ethics has to grapple with the problems in our world hands on. I relish the prospect of entering academia, but I know that in order for my studies to be worthwhile I must be actively involved in social issues.

Maybe that is part of why I wanted to do social work. Working on Skid Row is not my dream job and it doesn't lead naturally to a career in theology, but somehow it is really important to me. I love the people I work with and the personal connections I get to make with them. I like that I am in the business of providing hope. But I can't pretend that it isn't sad, too.

More than a hundred people come in our doors each day, and all of them are homeless. There are lots of reasons that people end up down here, but the most common reason is bad luck. One thing went wrong that sent them sliding down a slippery slope and they crash-landed on Skid Row. These people have reached a point where they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps--they need compassion and they need help.

Even though I've only worked here a short time, I know that I will never be able to formulate any sort of theology or Christian ethic that leaves these people out. A gospel of prosperity based on good words and happy thoughts won't do. A message of middle-class individualistic pietism won't cut it. If we are bold enough to call ourselves Christians, we cannot allow the homeless, the drug addicted, the HIV infected, the mentally ill, and the lonely to be neglected. I know that it is something that I cannot ignore, and I'm sure it will influence the direction my life takes. From here on out, my thought and theology will probably start with Skid Row.

A Relative Confession

2007-12-01T02:46:00.001-05:00

I was thinking earlier today about a conversation I had with a friend in high school. I described to him what I thought was the ultimate goal of intellectual pursuit: to align one's personal conception of reality as closely as possible with cosmic Truth. I understood that we, as humans, are inevitably bound to our limited perspectives, so we are forever faced with the challenge of pinning down that elusive Truth.

I find that I have been endorsing relativism a lot lately, and I feel like I need to make clear why that is. The reasons are simple. First, that is how I understand the world. When I consider difficult problems--moral, theological, and otherwise--I find that I think that way. Secondly, that is the direction that our culture is heading, so it is something that the church has come to terms with. If Christianity wants to be vital well into the 21st century, it has to learn to speak the same vocabulary as the people it wants to reach. It's not that I consider relativism to be superior to or more valuable than other frameworks for theology--it's that we need to learn how to situate ourselves within relativism in order to speak coherently to our culture.

Wrestling with a Latent God

2007-11-27T18:23:00.000-05:00

The idea of a latent God is unsettling to me. What does it mean for my faith if I am forced to recognize that--as far as I can tell--God exists as potential? Does it mean that I don't really believe in God? Or is all of this just part of faith? Is there such thing as faithful agnosticism? Does the latency of God change everything? Or does it change nothing? What are the consequences of acknowledging that God is latent?

One of the big questions this raises for me is this: What/who do I believe in if God is only potential? Does that mean that I believe in nothing? Does that mean that all I am holding on to is a thin strand of hope? Or does it actually have no effect on faith? Perhaps all I am doing is placing emphasis on the uncertainty that makes faith possible. When I acknowledge that God exists as potential, does that undermine or undergird my faith? I'm not sure that I have an answer to that yet.

Even if that question remains unanswered, I am faced with another: What does the latency of God mean for the way I live my life? I'm not sure what it means in a broad way, but I know that it affects many small things. It means that whenever I pray for help I am faced with the possibility that there is no one who will help me. In a way, it makes everything conditional. My prayer becomes, "God, if you are there, please help me." (But please note that the conditional clause is not an expression of doubt; rather, it is a recognition of the reality of my situation.) On the other hand, because God is uncertain, any ordinary faithful act is transformed into an act of faith. It means that going to church on Sunday or reading the Bible are more than just activities that Christians commonly do; instead, they are active expressions of faith in spite of uncertainty. Even though the latency of God transforms these simple acts into demonstrations of faith, it also means that life is lived with the knowledge that these Christian acts could be for naught. The hopeful possibility of faith can never be separated from the morose possibility that faith is in vain.

Does it make any sense to place my faith in a God whom I recognize to be latent? Is it really faith or is it merely hoping in some faint possibility? Is this faith just something I do to console myself in the face of a tragic world and an uncomfortable life?

Is there a difference between believing in God while ignoring all the uncertainty and purposely believing in that uncertain God? Is it crazier to have faith while denying the obvious morose possibilities or to have faith despite those possibilities?

Read my first two posts on this subject: "Acknowledging a Latent God" and "Confronting a Latent God."

Giving the Benefit of the Doubt

2007-11-19T13:19:00.000-05:00

My job on Skid Row is to work with homeless people who are applying for housing (specifically those with severe mental illness and/or substance abuse problems). What this means is that I get to work with crazy, drug-addicted people who are living on the streets and in emergency shelters. For the most part, they are upbeat and motivated. They come in telling me about all of the programs they're involved in, that they're going to tons of 12-step meetings each week, and that they're seeing a psychiatrist and taking their meds. They insist that they are trying to turn their lives around and that ever since they hit rock bottom they've been gung-ho about making real changes.

However, after talking with other case managers in the organization, I've found out that the majority of the people in our housing are still drinking heavily, smoking crack, and hanging around the streets like before. The only thing that is different is that now they have a bed of their own. All of those people came into our housing wanting to change their lives, but all they've managed to change is their sleeping situation.

Don't get me wrong--it's not that I think those people don't deserve housing. It's just sad to me that they come in with such high hopes only to fall flat. I have to say, though, it is a big achievement for many of these people to get permanent housing in the first place. Many of them have been homeless for so long that they don't remember anything else. They've developed survival techniques--functional dysfunctions--that help them survive on the streets but that work against them in regular life.

When I'm meeting with my clients, I can't help but think that it won't be long before they're smoking crack and drinking again and that nothing will really change. However, I need to be hopeful for them and help them get into housing so that they can have a chance. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I have to wonder what God thinks of my job. If Jesus were a young twentysomething in Los Angeles, would he consider sitting at my desk? If he were like me (no supernatural powers, socially awkward, and financially limited) would he be a case manager or would he consider my work a waste of time? I don't save anyone's souls. I don't help them beat their addictions. I don't feed them or clothe them. All I do is help them get housing. I give them the benefit of the doubt so they can have a chance.

I'm sure there are plenty of important questions I could ask about the intersection of social work with the kingdom of God, holistic soteriology and Christian living, but there is one question I have to ask first:

Is my work worthwhile?

Active Compassion

2007-11-14T17:35:00.000-05:00

I work for a non-profit organization that provides permanent housing to homeless people on Skid Row. A woman who is waiting for housing said something to me yesterday that took me by surprise: "You all have beds at night so you're in no rush to find me a place to stay! You know, it's a lot more important to me than it is to you!" My first inclination was to defend our organization and the work we do--we try to house people as fast as possible any time there is a vacancy, but there are just more applicants than rooms. But as soon as I opened my mouth I realized that, regardless of how hard we try to provide housing, she was right.

Even though all of us in the organization really care about the homeless, at the end of the day we get to leave Skid Row and go home to our own beds. As I drive home each day, she's waiting in line trying to get into one of the shelters. While I'm eating my salmon and asparagus in lemon butter for dinner, she's eating the shelter's cafeteria food. Every night while I sleep in my own room, she's grateful to be sleeping in the shelter again. After I leave work, her problems don't even cross my mind.

I'm not saying that I should constantly be worried about everyone's problems. There is nothing I can do to magically transform Skid Row. There is nothing we can do to house everyone instantly. But that woman was right--it means a lot more to her than it does to me. And that's shameful. I should care just as much as she does.

It got me thinking that we (Americans, Christians, humans) need to have a greater sense of urgency--truly active compassion--for the problems we see around us. It is so easy to give 47¢ to the homeless guy on the corner and then walk into Gap and drop $100 on a sweet pair of jeans and a sweater. We feel good that we made a contribution to someone who needed it, but it isn't good enough to care about someone for thirty seconds only to revert back to our self-centered consumerism. Compassion and action need to consume us to the same extent that poverty and problems consume the lives of those who are less fortunate.

"You know, it's a lot more important to me than it is to you." Of course that's going to be the case--the person who needs help is going to value it more than the helper--but it shouldn't be so lopsided. We shouldn't give so apathetically to someone who's crying out in need. It should be embarrassing to us that our cities can't provide enough beds for the homeless, let alone the psychiatric and counseling services they need. It should be embarrassing that we get distracted so easily and we forget about the poverty in our backyards. It should be embarrassing that sometimes we don't even notice. We need to exhibit active compassion toward others--we should care about others' problems enough to do something about them.

Confronting a Latent God

2007-11-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

The latency of God should come as no great surprise. The fact that we believe in God suggests that we do not conclusively know that God is there. We cannot see God. We cannot hold a conversation with God. We have no proof that God exists. Sure, some people have visions, hear God speak, and believe that the natural world is proof enough, but all of that is debatable. What this reveals is something that should be obvious--that to some degree God is hidden. Because we do not fully know who God is, where God is, and what God is doing, we are left to guess (and read and pray and theologize) about it.

We believe God can work miracles, can move mountains, can change hearts, and can save the world, but we have no way of knowing whether God is really doing those things. Thus, to us as limited humans, God exists as potential. God potentially exists, potentially does supernatural works, and potentially loves us. We choose to believe those things--it's just that we have no proof.

Describing God as latent neither denies God's existence nor undermines God's attributes--it just recognizes that God is not readily evident. It is honest. We can makes claims about God until theology runs out of our ears, but those claims are no more valid than the claims made by atheism. We've all met people who count their lucky stars rather than thank God, people who see emptiness where we see presence. God is not evident, not obviously manifest. Atheists have just as much evidence as we have; they have just as many compelling stories about injustice and chaos as we have stories of providence. God remains a question, a possibility. That is what latency describes.

What does latency mean for faith? It has no new ramifications. If we are to see God it must by faith. If we are to know God it must be by faith. It forces us to look into the depths of uncertainty and acknowledge faith for what it is--a risk. Latency requires honesty and humility. It causes us to respect people with different ideas than our own--there is no way for us to determine (at least in the short term) who is right. It means that we must embrace faith as a personal decision, not as an inevitability. It means that we must strive and struggle with it. Faith is not simple because knowing God is not simple. We are left to work out our faith with fear and trembling in the face of our latent God.

Read my first post on this subject: "Acknowledging a Latent God."

Origami Theology

2007-10-30T14:42:00.000-04:00

I feel like I often have a hard time explaining myself to others who do not share my presuppositions. My thoughts about subjectivity or relativism are quickly written off as liberal and unorthodox. That may be the case, but I am not convinced that I am wrong about them. We live in a society that views the world differently than peoples of the past, so God must be described in a way that makes sense in our current thought framework. Theology is dependent on the people who create it, and because people create it, theology is not absolute.

I was browsing through blogs today and I ran across an entry that really captured (at least in part) the way I understand theology, people, and our relationship to God. The author likens humans to origami created by someone much greater. Here is an excerpt from the entry "Describing God" from christiancrunch.wordpress.com:

We are that origami-race of men and women who lack ears to hear or brains to understand our Maker. “Oh!” we exclaim. “I have ears!”

Yes, but not the same ears of our Maker. We do not have the mind of our Maker. Everything we hear is with blue-ink ears. Everything we think with our brain was folded and weaved into our being when we were created.

Any conclusion we come up with would be an origami-conclusion; a paper thing readily torn.

And origami-conclusions cannot ever compare to flesh and blood truths.

Origami-conclusions are not the real thing.
They are an effigy. They are symbols of it. They remind us of it.

But they do not describe God. They simply compare Him to us.

I think that analogy is a beautiful way to understand who we are in relation to God, and it puts our attempts at theology in perspective. We will never get it right because our descriptions are confined by our vocabulary and experience. That should not be discouraging; rather, it means that there is infinite room for growth.

From My Theological Journal IX

2007-10-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

This is an excerpt from my final entry in a journal I kept last school year. If my posts seem scattered and my thoughts seem incohesive, perhaps this will explain why:

February 18, 2007

... While listening to the sermon, I had an interesting thought: “What would it look like to examine Jesus’ death and resurrection (and the implications for our lives) from numerous perspectives—forgiveness, mercy, justice, reconciliation, etc.?” I don’t like that theologians tend to create whole, thoroughly cohesive theologies, forgetting that the Bible doesn’t always present a thoroughly cohesive message. Perhaps the Bible can speak to us in contrasting, but equally valid and powerful ways about a single subject. Maybe the issue of God’s forgiveness can be drawn out into a very beautiful whole that is different from the beautiful whole theology of mercy. Obviously these ideas will have a great deal of overlap, but they each have different emphases because each of them holds something different as vitally important. Can I find a passage (or few passages) to draw on to develop a theology for each? Will the messages for each subject speak a different word? I believe so. It is something I am very interested in pursuing. We shall see.

From My Theological Journal VIII

2007-10-29T19:51:00.000-04:00

The following is an excerpt from a journal I kept during my senior year of college. This entry arose from some of my readings in Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination:

Early Morning February 5, 2007

... We are too numb to shiver. Although this is true of American society at large, this is most shameful for Christians. We are too numb to the pain and trouble around us to take any notice, much less to lend a helping hand. But what is this trouble that we continuously overlook? There are the most obvious—social injustices like poverty, racism, inadequate community support, and even things like gay rights—but there are others that are just as important that are not so obvious. These less obvious ones include the misuse of the gospel, the inadequacy of the current church structure, the apathy and severe lack of love in the church, the hatred and fear that are fostered by the church, and unilateralism and intolerance that are rooted in the church. We are so used to these things that we do not even recognize them as problems. In some cases, we actually have appropriated them into the “gospel” and see them as part of “true Christianity.” Our numbness has grown so deep that we fail to react to the troubles on even the most basic of levels. We do not recognize the cold enough even to shiver, much less to build a fire.

I need to take time to explore these issues—both social and religious—so that I can more effectively campaign against them. Brueggemann urges me to imagine how things could be different, how things should look in the future. He calls me to be poetry in the midst of prose, to stand up to the status quo and call it out on its misbehavior—not as an enemy, but as a dear friend. The church is going down in flames and it is my job to talk about the elephant in the room, to help people come to grips with reality, and to move forward to an “alternative consciousness.”

Acknowledging a Latent God

2007-10-29T18:45:00.000-04:00

At some point in their lives most Christians must face up to the tension between their faith and experience. No matter how much they believe that God is good and healing and gracious, no matter how vehemently they acknowledge that God is watching over them, their houses still burn down, their wallets get stolen, they lose their jobs and their loved ones die. No amount of piety will improve their luck.

There is a very notable tension between the ever-present God we learn about in church and a God who can be so painfully absent. For many people--even the most devout Christians--God's presence is hardly an active one. Since most of us don't have supernatural experiences on a regular basis, we are left to guess when and how God is involved in our lives. There is no way to say definitively whether God is involved in an experience. We can go ahead and assume (based on our theology) that God's hand is in everything, but then we are forced to deal with a God who creates disasters in addition to miracles. In my experience, even those who assume that God is actively involved in everything often end up having moments of doubt. The truth is that much of the time God can be hard to see. We are forced to deal with a latent God.

latent [leyt-nt] adj.
1. present or potential but not evident or active; existing as potential

As I was studying for the GRE, I ran across the word latent. It was one of those words that I had read many times before, but I had never looked it up in the dictionary. As soon as I read the definition, I thought, "Wow, that's a great description of God." I think it really captures the way many of us experience God. With our hearts we admit that there is a wonderful God, but our experiences suggest differently. When we utter the words "God is love" and "God is in control" we intend to praise God, but it often turns out that we are actually trying to convince ourselves of those facts. Pesky memories of times that God has failed us creep into our heads--thoughts we wish to forget--and suddenly our worship becomes equal parts rejoicing and repression.

Throughout my life I have struggled with the latency of God in a number of different ways. There has always been something in the back of my mind that made me uncomfortable with the confessions I made in church. It wasn't that I didn't believe that Jesus was the Son of God or that God graciously sent Jesus to die for me. It was that I wasn't 100% sure. What made me uncomfortable was that I felt like the confessions weren't completely honest. The words were so definitive and certain, but they didn't completely reflect my thoughts. I believed as much as I could, but I had trouble reconciling the active God of church with the silent God of life.

For a long time I felt like a heretic, but I've come to realize that the latency of God is something everyone must come to terms with. No matter what we say about God, most of the time we are left to live our lives without dramatic interference or intervention. God may show up powerfully on occasion, but most of the time God hangs in the background. The difficulty of living by faith is that much of the time our faith is blind, whether we like it or not.

The beginning of a realistic, humble theology is the acknowledgment of the latency of God. We all live in a world where we need God but where God is not immediately evident. If we are to be taken seriously by the outside world, we must admit that our experience is like theirs--God is not obvious.

From My Theological Journal VII

2007-10-26T18:31:00.000-04:00

The following is another entry from an old journal I kept on my computer. This one is a little harsh, but there's no sense in watering it down now:

December 30, 2006

Sometimes I feel like this is the message that Christians give out to the world:

“For Christians so hated the world that they took God’s only Son so that only they might believe in him, and so that the world would perish and that only they would have eternal life.”

Yeah, I know this is pretty pessimistic, but too often I feel that it’s the attitude Christians are perceived to have. There is certainly a lofty sense of exclusivity that many Christians have and they couple that with a super-pious condemnation of everything they see as unclean, creating a deadly combination. And that combination is deadly for Christianity. We are killing the relevance of our faith, our ability to speak faithfully about our God, and our ability to bring him to the world that he so loves. Our piety and judgment, though usually well intended, are out of control—they have become virtuous in and of themselves and are in danger of being divorced from any connection with God. If we were truly connected with God, we would not be so standoffish and condemning—instead, we would exhibit the radically forgiving and accepting love of Jesus Christ. And that is in no way wishy-washy. It is acting as God would have us do. Our mark as believers is our love. But who on the outside would ever construe our hateful, self-righteous behavior as love?

Agnostic Theology

2007-10-26T13:16:00.000-04:00

I’m currently in the process of applying to grad school, so I’ve been trying to figure out what I should write about in my statements of purpose. What is it that I want to pursue? What area of study am I passionate about? Where might I make a significant contribution? I’m interested doing some sort of constructive theology with great weight given to theological and social ethics. For me, theology has to be honest and relevant. That means that I’m not really interested in discussing lofty issues like the trinity or soteriology unless those discussions are intimately linked with daily life. Questions about God aren’t that important unless they mean something to us on an intimate level.

As I try to define what it is that I want to pursue, I keep coming back to one phrase: agnostic theology. What I mean by that is working out a humble theology that recognizes our inability to know God completely, where even the surest of statements is never more than a “possibility.” I always have to be willing to admit, no matter how strongly I feel about an issue, that there is a decent chance that I am wrong. There are so many competing ideas about God that it is asinine to claim to be the sole bearer of truth. Every pious person is as sure as the next that he or she has the truth, but there is no way to evaluate the competing claims. Can anyone tell who is more certain? Who can judge whose experience is most legitimate? Maybe there’s some crazy stuff that can be ruled out on the fringes, but by and large it is one claim against another.

So I am forced to pursue agnostic theology—speaking about God with honesty. The word “agnostic” may immediately raise red flags for some, but even the Bible admits that faith is based on incomplete knowledge—faith is being “certain of what we do not see.” My brand of agnostic theology is not meant to be a threat to faith—it is choosing to speak faithfully about God while fully recognizing the uncertainties that are inherent to faith. Because our knowledge of God is doomed to be incomplete, we don’t have to worry about getting everything 100% correct. There is freedom in that. Agnostic theology allows us to move beyond endless debates over the minutiae of metaphysical truth and to step toward discussions about what it means to live as Christians in a world where God is both revealed and disguised.

From My Theological Journal VI

2007-10-25T18:29:00.000-04:00

Once again, here is an entry from the journal that has been trapped in the confines of my hard drive for the last year. This one is probably heretical--maybe I should have kept it on my computer:

November 9, 2006

One thing that troubles me about my own theological thoughts is the way I think about Jesus. As long as I can remember, “Jesus” has bothered me. Not his life or atonement or anything like that—it has just bothered me that people talk about him and to him so much. I’ve always been more comfortable praying to “God” and not Jesus. It makes me uncomfortable when people make reference to Jesus in their everyday speech. I understand that in Christian theology, Jesus plays an important role—he is God. He is the way and the truth and the life, but why just him? More recently, this has been what has troubled me. There are so many people who do not know Jesus and will never know Jesus, but who earnestly seek God through their own cultures and religions. Is their sincerity and piety worthless? Perhaps what is important is recognizing our need for God (which is where Jesus comes in), and regardless of culture it is this recognition (and the resulting lifestyle change) that God is interested in. I am just uncomfortable with Jesus.

Another thing that has been troubling to me is the idea that Jesus is God. I essentially reject the trinity as a definition for God. Why must only those three be “God”—why not the other manifestations of God throughout the Bible? Also, the definition of God is too neatly defined. How do we know who begot whom and what substance each has? The Bible is not that explicit about any of it. And what good does the idea of the trinity do, anyway? Historically, it was used to fend off heresy, but I’m not sure that coming up with a human definition of God is a very good idea…. This was verified to me when my theology professor admitted that the idea of the trinity is essentially a hedge around the truth about God, and it is not the truth itself. To bring this back to Jesus, my professor in Johannine Writings has reaffirmed my thinking by showing us that Jesus is not necessarily understood as God anywhere in Johannine literature (or anywhere else in the New Testament). Yes, Jesus was divine, but his exact metaphysical relation to the Father is not laid out. What is his nature? How is he human and divine? The Bible doesn’t say, and early Christians didn’t know. Exactly how it works is not clear, so it should be okay if it is unclear for me….

But I am still left with the difficulty I have with Jesus. I don’t know what I think, but I know that I tend to avoid him, except when it comes to atonement. And that is unfair—I can’t pick and choose when I want Jesus and when I don’t. I just don’t know what to think. I am interested to see what Bonhoeffer does with Jesus (especially in the LLP). It makes me uncomfortable that Barth and Bonhoeffer are so Christologically focused, but maybe they can show me how to reconcile Jesus, God, and the real world I live in.

From My Theological Journal V

2007-10-25T18:01:00.000-04:00

Here's another entry from the journal that I kept last year:

November 6, 2006

Earlier today I picked up a Bible and flipped open to 1 Corinthians 7:11 (a passage that Kierkegaard mistakenly refers to in his notes on Problema II in Fear and Trembling). It is in the section discussing divorce—that couples shouldn’t divorce, but if they do they should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to one another. And it got me thinking about how the church handles situations like divorce. Many times I’ve heard of pastors not being allowed to minister at certain churches because they were divorced or remarried, and I always find that ridiculous. Just because the pastor has gotten a divorce and has remarried (which Paul says not to do), that doesn’t mean that he is unfit for service. Perhaps it is fair to call that act wrong, but once it is done it is done. What does the church expect him to do? Divorce his new wife, too? Of course not. Perhaps he made a mistake in getting divorce or in getting remarried, but that does not disqualify him from service any more than the fact that at some point in his life he has lied.

Here’s the point that I’m getting at—too often we (the church) dwell on past sins and talk all about what we should have done, instead of dealing with the situation at hand and moving forward. We need to deal with the present reality, not past possibilities. Even Paul acknowledges this in the section on divorce. He gives the command that a wife should not separate from her husband, but in the next verse he deals with the reality of divorce saying, “But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband.” I believe Paul would also have taken the next step—the woman should not remarry, but if she does she should strengthen that marriage and make it holy and pleasing to God.

The truth is there are a lot of things that we shouldn’t do but that we, in our infinite wisdom, go ahead and do anyway. Why? Because we’re stupid and sinful. But once we have made the mistake, there often is no going back, so we should move on and work with the situation at hand. It does no one any good to sit around and point out each others’ past errors at length (of course some accountability is both humbling and needed)—we need to work with the present reality. Sure, perhaps the pastor should not have been divorced and remarried, but if he is called by God to minister, let him minister. I have lied and cheated and stolen and hated and lusted—and that makes me a sinner—but that does not disqualify me from the service of God. Sin is a reality that we must deal with. We can’t engage the world if all we can do is talk about how people should have made better choices, letting them know what a tragedy their life is. Neither we nor they can change what they’ve done, so let’s talk about the future! Sure, we must understand the past, but dwelling on it does not promote growth or healing. Let’s move on, let bygones be bygones because that is exactly what God has done for us (see Psalm 103).

From My Theological Journal IV

2007-10-25T01:41:00.000-04:00

This is an entry in a journal I kept during the fall of my senior year in college. However incomplete and deficient it may be, hopefully it is at least interesting:

Early morning November 4, 2006

I was just reading an article on theooze.com about a pastor who invited his neighbors to church on Easter. Many of them came and as he stood to preach he realized what an odd feeling it was to preach to the people with whom he hung out with on a regular basis in a normal, egalitarian way. He made a few comments about how the time he spends with them in the neighborhood is just as important as having them come to church. This made me start thinking about my experiences bringing my friends to church. And I was shocked by the first thing that popped into my head—I was always embarrassed to have them come.

It’s not that I was embarrassed of my faith or of the fact that I went to church, but the experience was so awkward. Because it was always new to them I was always explaining things to them and letting them know what they should expect and what to do in different circumstances. That is to be expected, but there was more than that…. The problem was that I was always embarrassed about something. Inevitably someone would say something or do something that I would feel the need to apologize for or explain away. The preacher would always make some off-color comment or the worship team would play bad songs or the one person that I did not want my friend to have meet would be waiting for me in the parking lot. And it’s not just that one thing went wrong—it was always a disaster of a Sunday. Sure, you say, it was Murphy’s Law in action. The problem is that I don’t think that it was a fluke. It wasn’t just that one Sunday that was terrible—most Sundays were terrible and would have been embarrassing if I had had a friend with me.

I guess what I’m saying is that for most of my life I’ve found church irrelevant and old fashioned. And it’s not like I went to a conservative, backwater church either—no, the churches I’ve attended have always been decently progressive. They always utilized technology, were up on recent trends, and did their best to be relevant and seeker-sensitive. My next thought is obviously influenced heavily by Bonhoeffer, but I’m starting to be afraid that it’s the truth. The reason church seemed irrelevant is because it was. The way that we conduct church (whether we realize it or not) is based on the assumption that most people are religious or would be religious given the chance. The liturgical church service that brings people together in a building where they are led in singing and are preached at first came into existence once Christianity became the status quo. It wasn’t until Christianity was common and even assumed that we had “church” as we now describe it. And it was a decent model for hundreds and hundreds of years—until sometime around the twentieth century.

As society became increasingly secular during the twentieth century, it became more acceptable not to attend church or be religious. It was in the 1970s with the seeker-sensitive movement that the church first began to realize that it was being detached from society. All of the sudden, the church had to pull itself together and pay attention to what the culture was saying and doing—all of the sudden, the church was forced to compete with the culture. Unfortunately, as society has been becoming more and more secular, the church has been straining to make the old model fit something it wasn’t made to fit. It is not the church’s fault that the current model isn’t working—it wasn’t designed for this.

The underlying assumption of the current church model is something similar to what Bonhoeffer calls the “religious a priori” of humanity—I’ll call it the Christian a priori. The current model functions best when it is built-in as a part of society. It works best when it doesn’t have to fight for people’s attention, when people attend because they are already Christians. The current model was not made for evangelism—why would a non-Christian show up at a gathering that is meant for and directed at Christians? It is intended to edify and to grow up Christians, and it functions best in this way.

The current church model is based on the Christian a priori because that is how Western society has been for hundreds of years. Everyone was Christian in the Christian society, but that no longer holds true. For many years now, society has been loosening its grip on the Christian a priori and is in the process of letting go altogether. Meanwhile the church is still functioning under the Christian a priori model where people come to church and meet with God there. Eventually, this model will fail completely. What is difficult, though, is that the church feels that abandoning the current model is a form of compromise—as if altering the model is giving in to the culture.

The truth is, however, that church has not always looked the way it does now. It did not always function under the Christian a priori. There was a day when individual churches were just small gatherings in homes. Church was personal. It didn’t compete with the culture to try to be relevant—it was relevant because it was an intimate part of people’s lives. It didn’t consist of a building and a worship team and senior pastor. Church was not a building or a time of gathering—church was the group of people itself. Church did not occur only at a specific time and place. The people themselves were the church—when they went to work, when they went shopping, when they were sleeping, when they were eating. The underlying assumption for the structure of the church was that the people of the church needed God and they needed each other—and church was how both needs were met. Church was relationships. The web of believers who shared their lives together were the church. It was all about sharing—sharing Christ, food, trials, excitement, pity, drinks, time. In this model, bringing someone to church is easy—it is just introducing someone to your friends and family. This model of church assumes nothing about anyone’s beliefs—it just acknowledges everyone’s needs.

From My Theological Journal III

2007-10-24T12:40:00.000-04:00

Here is another entry from a journal I kept on my computer last year:

November 2, 2006

Right now I should be writing my paper for Johannine Writings, but I need a break. While I was in the bathroom, I had a thought (who knows how many great ideas throughout history have occurred in the bathroom?). I see a problem with the way contemporary Christian thought is proceeding. We are right in doing theology in the context of the church and for the sake of the church, but I’m not sure we are completely on target. We tend to focus on ecclesiology (which is good considering the contemporary church is in a state of crisis), but what I see an over-abundance of is ecclesiology supported by theology. Instead, it seems like we should be doing theology that results in ecclesiology. I know that the difference between the two is minute (and that perhaps there may be no difference at all), but I feel like we should be doing things differently.

After all, the contemporary church is great at defining itself in terms of being traditional, restorational, purpose-driven, missional, seeker-sensitive, organic, emerging, and countless other things, but we severely lack an understanding of who God is and especially of how God relates to our contemporary, post-modern, secular world. I have to wonder if we could come to a deep understanding of who God is and how he relates to us and then use that understanding as the basis for our ecclesiology. Instead of worrying so much about how to make the church relevant to society, I feel like we should come to a better understanding of how God relates to us (Christian and non-Christian alike). In the current emerging church movement, we seem to be trying to understand God in terms of our society (“What does a post-modern God look like?”). Doesn’t it make just as much (if not more) sense to try to understand our society in terms of God? To be honest, I have no idea what this looks like or how it could be done, but I have an inclination that focusing on God more than the methodology or circumstance is important….

* * * *

I just ran across a scrap of paper that I jotted two things down on a couple of weeks ago. They pertain to Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, with which I am still becoming acquainted:

“Risk making faith/theology subject to no authority/guidelines: all within oneself”

“[His writings are] Encouraging because I realize that my uncertainty is not only acceptable, but perhaps good. I’ve been swamped down by the feeling of needing to heed to evangelical orthodoxy. Things are figured out for me … but what if I don’t agree?”

From My Theological Journal II

2007-10-24T11:30:00.000-04:00

The following is the next entry from a journal I kept on my computer last year. Please keep in mind that these entries are questions and possibilities not conclusions:

Early morning October 30, 2006

Last Monday night I was up late completing a take-home test for Existentialism. Before I answered the final question on the test, I went into the chapel to think. I had to sort through Kierkegaard’s ideas in Fear and Trembling and try to apply them to real life Christianity. I was pacing around the chapel, talking out loud, frustrated because of my spastic thoughts. As I walked down the center aisle and neared the front, I was distracted by the altar. It was just a simple, blond table placed at the back of the small stage—and it was empty. I started thinking about the symbolism of that table, how in the days of the temple it was on the altar that animals were sacrificed to atone for our sins. It seemed funny to me that the altar had been transformed from a large, bloody stone structure to a simple table inside a chapel. But it makes sense theologically. The altar (like the cross) is there to remind us that our sins have been paid for already and are constantly being paid for. Jesus’ sacrifice was for all time. The altar and the cross are to remind us of Jesus’ enduring sacrifice, but they are free from a bloody victim (in the case of the protestant church) because he has been resurrected and is no longer dead. But then I had a horrible thought—what if it were just like the Emperor’s New Clothes? It is totally possible that some kid will stand up in the back row of the church and start laughing at us and point, saying, “The altar is empty! Don’t be silly! And there’s nothing on that cross at all!” What if everything we have been told by our preachers and teachers is a lie? What if they are just as deceived as the rest of us and there is nothing there? Perhaps we are all wrong. Perhaps we are seeing something where there is nothing. Perhaps, to our embarrassment, the emperor is naked.

From My Theological Journal I

2007-10-24T02:05:00.000-04:00

During the first semester of my senior year at Pepperdine (last fall) I began recording some of my thoughts about God, church, etc. on my computer. Over the next while I will be posting those entries here:

Early morning October 17, 2006

Relativism. Somehow this thing, relativism, has become the enemy of the modern church. Our leaders see it as an evil, as evidence of the moral decline of society. It is what is wrong with our world, it is what has ruined it. Relativism is the cause of the evil that we see today—if only we could return to the days when everyone knew God as king and Jesus as savior. Except that what our leaders forget is that there never was such a time. Before relativism it was modernity. Before modernity it was enlightenment. Before that it was humanism and mysticism and superstition and paganism. There never was a perfect time, a golden age of Christianity. Relativism is not the evil that is bound to eat up all of Christianity—it is the contemporary culture within which we must make Christianity understandable.

In our increasingly relativistic society the absolutes which the church holds to are being laughed at and rejected and beaten down. People find silly the notion that some antiquated institution might hold the wholeness of truth, even if science and reason suggest otherwise. Why would someone join this silly antiquated church and be forced to say certain prayers, kneel a certain way, have absolutes shoved down their throat in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion, when she can just as easily go to Starbucks, give a small tip to the hard-working barista, have a good conversation, all while enjoying her tall half-caf caramel macchiato with fresh whipped cream? After all, Starbucks lends her status, a chance to be benevolent, a place to socialize, an interesting thought or two and something that she can’t get at most churches—a cup of gourmet coffee made just how she likes it.

The church has lost its relevance to our culture. It talks about morality and family values that are set in stone and any differing idea is heresy. It gives warm, empty welcomes followed by a hailstorm of brimstone and a firm warning against all the liberals. And above all, the church is sure to remind you that it is the truth. The church sees itself as the cure for relativism, but I can pretty well guarantee that a relativistic, post-modern culture is not going to be won over by a clunky institution declaring that it is absolutely right and absolutely better.

The church is faced with a dilemma—it can either hold onto dogma and a false sense of control while it dies off along with its few remaining members, or it can embrace honesty, humbly reexamining its identity, at the risk of being vulnerably authentic.

The problem with the current state of the church is that it has sacrificed honesty for the sake of a sense of control. With dogma and firmly placed absolutes, the church retains a vestige of the power it once possessed because at least it can still definitively and haughtily point out where others stumble. Dogma lends the church a sense of stability and even of self-righteousness because it knows with absolute certainty that it is holding firmly to the truth. But, sadly, it has ceased to be honest with itself and with the world. It has forgotten the virtues of reflection and self-evaluation. It has forgotten that it is made up not of angels but of sinners—it has forgotten that it has the potential to be wrong.

To be relevant to the culture, we must live in the culture and engage its questions. We must be willing to admit that, as humans, we cannot be absolutely certain that we are right. We must acknowledge that Christians do not have a superior degree of understanding or perception, but that we all have the same starting point. We are no better, no smarter, no more holy than anyone else. If we are willing to admit that we are fallible, we can finally begin to converse with a culture that can’t stand philosophical arrogance. And if we can begin the conversation, we can find ourselves again and we can find a new relevance.

Marked

2007-10-23T17:11:00.001-04:00

When I was in high school I had a friend who was an Egyptian Orthodox Christian. One day between classes I noticed that she had a fuzzy diamond shaped tattoo on the inside of her right wrist. When I asked her about it, she let me take a closer look. It was a small, symmetrical cross that she received at her confirmation. The tattoo marked her forever as a Christian, a symbol of faith and solidarity.

A few years later I met a man named Ina while I was traveling in Egypt. He was small shop owner who had been run out of town and out of business multiple times because he was Christian. He showed me his small cross tattoo with a mix of pride and fear. The mark on his wrist gave him his identity—one which he could not deny.

Because of these two individuals and our shared spiritual commitment, I went down to the tattoo parlor to receive a mark of my own. Although less ceremonious than a confirmation, sitting in that sterile room I made a physical commitment that represents the spiritual commitment I had made many years prior.

In recent years, my thoughts on faith and religion have become increasingly complex. I underwent a dark period of deconstruction, questioning and rejecting many ideas from my childhood. I prayed and cried and stopped praying and stopped crying. Things that had once been essential and beloved were no longer attractive. But all the while, I was marked by that little cross.

Now it is time for me to reconstruct what has been torn down. This will not be simple and it may not be pretty, but it is necessary. I am establishing this blog in order to chronicle my intellectual and spiritual journey in the years to come. Please understand that these musings will be grossly unrefined and perpetually unfinished. You may think me a sinner, you may think me a heretic, but please remember that I strive to be a Christian.