Mystical at Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.