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.

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....

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.

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.

Casting Out Evil

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.

Where Do You Go When You Die?

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.

Gone Baby Gone

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

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.

What's Jesus got to do with it?

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

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

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

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

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?

Confronting a Latent God

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

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

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 VI

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

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 II

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.