Spiritual

Broad subject-matter, including reflections on the Bible, personal beliefs, spiritual leaders, theology

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Our Chief End

What is our [man’s]  chief end? Our [Man’s] chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy God for ever.                                  Westminster Shorter Catechism

The defining words of Christian life are the praising and the living. My second miracle was how I learned both of these ends.

For some young Christians in the 1970’s, the yearning for “more” was satisfied by the “Baptism of the Spirit.”  Mainline Christians became “charismatic,” experiencing what Pentecostal Christians had been practicing for decades: speaking in tongues, interpretation, prophesying, singing in the spirit.  Pentecostalism had gone mainline across the denominations, even in the Catholic church. Christians who received this gift called themselves “completed Christians.”

One Sunday evening, in search of this completion, I drove to Mount Vernon, N.Y., about forty miles from my home. It was a Presbyterian church, pastored by Harold Bredesen, an outspoken, published, charismatic Christian. I sat in a large sanctuary listening to Christians of diverse denominations singing and speaking in tongues. A few stood up and interpreted tongues in English. It was unlike any Presbyterian service I had ever attended.

At the end of the service I knelt on the steps of the platform in front of the altar.  A “Spirit-filled” woman laid hands on me, while speaking in tongues. I didn’t feel anything and became nervous. She encouraged me: “Just start speaking, it will come.” Sure enough, when I opened my mouth to speak, I felt a rush of excitement, and I was speaking in tongues. It felt truly “charismatic.” It sounded to me like an Arabic tongue, but I never believed it was an identifiable language. It was more the excitement of praising God without processing the words. It was scintillating. I left the service with a new voice.

By the time I got home my parents were in bed. I went into my bedroom to pray, opened my mouth in praise, and the same rush of the Spirit filled me. I was speaking in tongues again. Excited, I went into my parents’ bedroom to tell them what had happened. My mother was perplexed, but glad for me. My father was asleep, so I didn’t know what he thought. His brother was a Pentecostal minister. We had visited his church, but tongues never happened for us. It seemed so foreign. My Dad said he had previously heard of Puerto Rican Christians speaking in Spanish, and that did not sound like a gift of the Spirit.

The next morning, Dad said he was glad about my gift, but guarded about what this meant. The baptism was nothing he expected to receive, but he never openly questioned the authenticity of my experience. I took some secret satisfaction that I had gone beyond my parents’ spiritual experience.

This was the second miracle in my life, but I link it with life in  graduate school. Some doubt the authenticity of charismatic gifts, even many conservative Christian churches. For me, it was assurance that God was active in my life. It was the most physical manifestation of God I had experienced. It made faith less theoretical, more pervasive, at a time when faith was fragile, finding my way onto a new campus with a new direction.

I found a Presbyterian church in Cambridge like the place where I had “received the Spirit.” They had traditional services on Sunday morning, but charismatic services on Sunday evening and smaller groups teaching and worshipping in the Spirit on Wednesday night. It was also a college church, where students from Harvard and M.I.T. attended for the time they were students and then moved on. The pastor and church leaders felt this transient congregation was part of the mission of the church. It was a dynamic, multi-cultural church.

This church became my life through fifteen years. I found room mates from the church during graduate school. I found other room mates from graduation until I was married to Kathy Hessert in 1974. I found my wife in this church. I struggled to find a teaching job for two and a half years in this church. They prayed for my longing to teach.

I found my first full-time job from a member of the church. He taught me to be a bookkeeper. I found my first teaching job during this time. My employer let me out of work to go to every teaching interview I had, knowing I would be leaving when I was hired to teach.

I learned to live in Christian community in this church. The idea of maturing in faith kept us aspiring to change as a community. We formed small groups that made our faith more experiential. We had open discussions with each other about what we were learning about ourselves, about our shortcomings and gifts.  Kathy and I shared leadership in one of the groups.

Kathy and I experimented with communal living with another couple from the church. It ended after a year, but we learned more about “life together.” To this day I have friends who shared our life together in the church, even though it went through a painful transition in our last five years there.

After I found my first teaching job we moved about fifteen miles away from church and infrequently went back to visit.

But in those fifteen years I learned how to “glorify God and and enjoy God forever.” There was glory and there was life. That was my second miracle.

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The Great Teacher

For some reason students are glad to give teachers credit for identity or character formation. If it weren’t so immune to measurement or controlled experiments, we might believe that teaching is more about compassion and example than test score elevation. A classroom:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah, and still other Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?”he asked. “Who do you say that I am?
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
(Matthew 16: 13-18)

Jesus was concerned with unleashing the potential of his followers. He planned a short stay on this planet, and he needed disciples who would seamlessly take up his work after he left. In the verses above he contrived an unstandardized test to measure the readiness of his disciples.
1) Who do people say the Son of Man is?
2) Who do you say that I am?
The first question has several answers, more in the way of reporting than solving a problem. “Who do people say that I am?” ranged everywhere from “John the Baptist” to “Jeremiah.”
The second question “Who do you say that I am?” is clearly the summative measure of their progress, and Peter, the star pupil, steps into the breach with the best answer “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The next move is where the teaching really begins, even as the learning curve often rises in the post-mortem of a test, more than from the test itself. Why do these questions even matter?

Jesus’s first lesson is “this was revealed . . . by my father in heaven.”  You learn by listening to God, not those who speculate that Jesus was Elijah come back from the dead.

The next move is lending perspective to what has just happened. Another thing you can’t readily assess: the pupil graduating to a new identity. First, Jesus addresses him as “Simon,” then as “Peter” signifying his growth and potential for growth. And then prophetically, “On this rock I will build my church.”

In my latter years of teaching teachers, I suddenly began to hear myself say “You’re going to be a great teacher” when a student shared a great insight or experience. And I wished I had made such outrageous predictions much earlier in my career. Because I realize now that students remember those moments better than all the professional wisdom I could impart, and the memory may help them later in their careers.

Why did Peter need to hear that bold prediction from Jesus at that moment? First, he had made himself vulnerable by saying what other disciples were afraid to utter. Many were thinking it. Only Peter was willing to say it. Second, he was about to see the man he called “the Christ” imprisoned and tortured. The whole dream was dissolving. Third, Peter was going to contribute to Jesus’s humiliation with the three denials, something he swore he would never do. The timing of Jesus’s prediction was crucial, because it would carry Peter through his trial by fire.

There is a cliche in teaching that we teach the student, not the subject matter.  Students remember who you are and how you teach, not just what you teach. Research shows that education students often imitate their best teachers in the past more than the teacher we try to impose on them in their teacher education. This is good from the point of view of knowing good teaching, but bad from the point of view of developing your own character as a teacher.

In teaching student teachers I finally learned that how I teach and how I treat students is the curriculum students receive more than the research about best practices and new classroom approaches. I began to realize that Jesus’ effectiveness as a teacher came from his daily actions as a compassionate, inclusive and personal teacher that left the most enduring memory on his pupils.

My conversion to Jesus, the teacher, came late in my life. At least half way through my journey.  But it came in the nick of time, when I was trying to teach teachers, who were eager for my experience as a high school teacher. What they did not know was that I was teaching more and more by example as I learned what the real curriculum was, what they would carry with them into student teaching.

Jesus shows us that character and identity formation are the heart of great teaching. His teaching was not successful because his disciples had a good grasp of the Law and the Prophets or even impressive faith. He was successful because he taught them as individuals, as much as the curriculum of the Good News.. He was successful because they could take up the cross as they had seen him do it: feed the hungry, heal the hurting, encourage the hopeless. They caught the spirit and the intent of his teachings, the part that would stay with them after graduation.

And that’s what made this rabbi a Great Teacher.

 

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Assurances and Hopes

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats “ The Second Coming”

What is faith? Is it an unshakable conviction? Is it the bottom line for what we believe? Is faith a certainty? Is it sometimes  fragile trust in God?  Is it a hope that battles with doubt?

Certainty

“Faith of our Fathers . . . We will be true to thee till death.”

“T’is so sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to take him at his word . . . Just to know, Thus saith the Lord.”

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.”

These lines of favorite old Protestant hymns reminded me that nothing has been more sure than my faith in God. In a life that might be upset, faith was a guarantee that I  was safe and confident. My parents and grandparents passed down a faith that could not be shaken.

In Sunday School I was taught that faith was the opposite of doubt.  Cautionary tales of doubting were important: Peter walking on the water till his confidence failed, and he sank;  Zechariah struck dumb by his lack of faith that his wife would become pregnant with John the Baptist; “Doubting Thomas” challenging the resurrection until he touched the nail prints in the hands of Jesus.

Faith was an available commodity we could pass on, but should not lose. We needed to be steadfast: “We will be true to thee till death.”  Our unsaved friends also treated faith as a commodity. “I wish I had your faith,” some said to me, as if I had a stash of it in my wallet.  It existed as a scarce, but reliable resource.

Jesus reinforced this concept of faith by scolding his disciples for their lack of faith, especially in the Gospel of Matthew (6:30, 8:26, 14:31; 16:8;17:20; 21:21). Yet Mark shows the paradox of having faith, yet needing faith, in the healing of the boy possessed by demons. When Jesus tells the father of the possessed boy, “All things can be done for the one who believes,” the father exclaims, “I believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 8:24).”  Jesus proceeded to heal the son despite the father’s admission of doubt.

Matthew’s concept that faith defied doubt and physical evidence found its way into the dictionary definition of faith:

  1. “unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence” (Webster’s New World College Dictionary)

Constancy in faith is the understanding that does not require “proof or evidence.” True faith dismissed the appearance of things. Jesus healed contrary to the evidence of hopeless infirmity. Jesus ignored the political predicament of his people. He also counseled against fortifying our material security with wealth in Matthew (6:19-21).  The only reality was the coming of an invisible kingdom, “not of this world.”

In my family our middle class poverty was compensated by our future heavenly wealth. A lack of regard for money was considered a sign of faith.   My mother’s favorite hymn was:

This world is not my home

I’m just a-passing through

My treasures are laid up

Somewhere beyond the blue

It can be liberating to cast off materialistic goals, but in our family it minimized our savings or investment for retirement.  We imagined spiritual wealth, and so believed we were never poor, even though a day never went by when my Dad did not say, “We can’t afford . . . .”

Because of our hope for heaven, we did not see social and political events as consequential. For example, we saw the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s as a compromise of faith in our future heavenly liberation. Faith meant that the material world did not matter as much as the spiritual world.

Faith devoted to permanent beliefs, independent of experience, could be described as “dogmatic” from the Latin word meaning “an opinion which one believes.” Experience does not threaten or revise dogmatic beliefs.

In my early experience, faith was certainty, and certainty became a disregard for material reality, a detachment from facts and evidence. Peter walking on water was total faith; his sinking in the waves was a loss of faith.  Enduring faith dismissed the material circumstances of life.

Uncertainty

After a mid-life battle with doubt, I looked back at what the Christian Bible said about faith. I found a new definition in the Epistle to the Hebrews, attributed to a contemporary of the Apostle Paul:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  (Hebrews 11:1)

This version of faith seemed more paradoxical, less certain than what I had been taught.

“Convictions” and “assurance” were something we chose to believe. Not banked commodities, but high-stakes beliefs.  As defined in Hebrews, faith seemed less a legacy or acquisition, but a gift. This faith is “organic,” because experience could revise our beliefs, allowing us to grow in understanding, as well as faith.

The biblical epistles are likely to show faith as a gift, as in the letter to the Ephesians “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (2:8). Or when enumerating the gifts of the Spirit, Paul says, “To one is given the utterance of wisdom . . , to another faith by the same Spirit (I Corinthians 12:9).

Faith was not about guarantees, but about hopes. Faith was not about a substitute reality, but about a conviction we could not empirically prove.  Therefore, faith was not certain, not a foregone conclusion,  but an “organic” faith that could change with experience. We had a faith that could struggle with doubt.

I think of the Yeats poem, quoted above, as prophetic for this time and place. My alternatives for faith relate to the famous lines from “The Second Coming:”

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

 

Sometimes “passionate intensity” can be dangerous.  With passionate intensity, Crusaders killed Muslims; Muslims killed Crusaders.  With passionate intensity the Spanish Inquisition killed both.  With passionate intensity Protestants killed Catholics in the war Yeats wrote about.

There’s something about the tension between faith and doubt that makes us humble. We are not so vindictive, when we realize we are blessed with a gift of faith, not a guarantee.  It may be all right to have convictions, not certainties.  We can hope to listen and hope we can be heard.

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The Jonah Syndrome

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.  Jonah 4:1-3

Most people remember Jonah being swallowed by a whale.  A few others remember he was running from God when the “whale” (actually a “sea monster”) swallowed him. Sunday school scholars actually remember what happened after the whale threw him up: he went to preach to the Ninevites.  Sunday graduate school scholars remember what happened after Jonah’s day-long sermon: the Ninevites repented. And God actually forgave them, relenting from the plan to destroy the wicked city.

But almost no one can remember what happened in Chapter 4, when Jonah saw his prophesy of doom reversed by God.  He had a hissy-fit.  The last chapter of the story of Jonah consists mostly of Jonah complaining that God had betrayed him and that God’s mercy for Nineveh was more than he could stand.

Jonah was expected to deal with a divine-ordered reform: the acceptance of repentant pagan people. As a traditional Hebrew prophet, Jonah held the belief that Gentiles, all non-Jewish people, were not favored by God. What God says at the conclusion of the book of Jonah is: And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals? (Jonah 4:12).

The implied response to God’s question is “Of course,” but Jonah’s final words in this book are: Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 4:3). Laughable, but also pitiable, because even three days in the whale could not shake Jonah’s fixation on the rights of the “chosen people.” The tale instructs us that God is more tolerant and merciful than his chosen people.

I call the rigidity of faith against new revelation or compromise the “Jonah Syndrome.” It means a faith that expects a certain universal order and rejects anything that disrupts it. Jonah is the extreme case. He says, Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. 

Could the certainty of some people’s faith instill a prejudice against human differences? Differences in gender preference, the role of women, race, political preference ? “True faith” people can sometimes mean stubborn people.

I remember having a discussion about homosexuals with a friend and former Lutheran pastor. We were both members of the first church I had attended after a desperate period of my life.  He asked me to consider the human identity of those born to prefer their own sex. I had preconceptions that I could not see through, and I told him I thought the gay identity was an aberration, learned in the culture.  I remember his disappointed expression, when he realized I was implacable.

Two years later Kathy and I moved to Ypsilanti, MI to take my first academic appointment at Eastern Michigan University. We moved to Depot Town, a lovely historical neighborhood. After a year I realized that my new next-door neighbors were lesbians, and, a year later, that my back yard neighbors were gay men.  I realized there were several gay professors where I worked.  It was a classic case of cognitive dissonance: believing something that was utterly challenged by circumstances.

Kathy was much more tolerant of homosexuality than I, and she invited our next-door neighbors over for coffee and conversation. I was nervous about entertaining them, because of my own hang-ups, but I found we had much more in common than I imagined.

They were married. They were musicians and had met in Europe, where gay marriage had been normalized. They wore ordinary clothes, a little more “mannish” than an avowed heterosexual might expect, but nothing disturbing. They were interested in acquiring a dog. We had three dogs, and Kathy obliged with most of what she knew about small dogs. We had two Papillons and had bred another Papillon twice, and they were interested in all the details. Kathy loved gardening. So did they. They were the most compatible neighbors we could ask for, and they won my heart over a period of months. It was obvious they were truly in love with each other no differently than Kathy and I were in love.

The guys over the back yard fence were very friendly. In the summer we would meet at the fence to share the news of the city and the neighborhood. It took me longer to accept gay men, but my prejudices toward lesbians had been broken, so I gradually felt comfortable with my male neighbors.

As for the workplace, my department head was gay as well as many in my department, so I learned acceptance just by working with people I had never known.  We were all just colleagues with shared experiences. It was what some conservative believers call “normalization.”

The city of Ypsilanti brought forth an equal rights referendum, including same-sex rights, within two years of our moving there. It passed by a three to one vote. Clearly, we were in a new culture! My experience convinced me that integrating with people was a powerful way to learn to accept them. I chose not to call it “normalization .”

So maybe I wasn’t rigid. I certainly had my prejudices changed over a couple of years, and nothing has happened since then to challenge my reform. But I know what I believed before we moved to Ypsilanti, and probably nothing but a transplant into another community, i.e. divine intervention, could have changed those beliefs.

The Jonah Syndrome prevented me from seeing gay people as real people, as chosen as much as any of us, for God’s mercy. I had to give up my dualistic view of gender to accept sincere couples, who practiced monogamy and cared about their heterosexual neighbors.

The narrative of Jonah ends quite differently than the book of Job,  a narrative written about the same time. In the very end, Job is restored to double his original family and fortune, but first he says when God appears from a terrifying whirlwind:

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

But now my eye sees you;

Therefore I despise myself

And repent in dust and ashes.  Job 42:5-6)

How different from Jonah, who hears the dreaded truth and says, Lord, take away my life. Job survives with a new understanding of God. Jonah despairs, because he cannot accept the new understanding. He is trapped in an ethnocentric view of God, instead of the new vision of an omnipresent God who favors all people. Faced with a “cognitive dissonance,” Job turns from anger to worship.

It is harder for me to identify with Job, who bears so much and hangs on to fragments of faith, in spite of unfathomable hardship. It is easier for me to see myself as the sad sack prophet who cannot accept what I now believe: that God’s mercy is to all people, not just a select few.

I find it easier to learn from Jonah. His lesson is basic: don’t assume you know who God favors and doesn’t favor. Let faith be a matter of “the conviction of things unseen,” things I don’t already know or think I know. Faith is not only what I believe, but what I might believe, as my understanding of God grows. God may be unchanging, but God is not always who I think God is. I can learn from the hapless, whale-devoured prophet, Jonah.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. (Isaiah 55:8)

 

 

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Where is Your Faith?

Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!

We will be true to thee till death

Frederick William Faber, 1848

Steadfastness was traditionally a sign of true faith in my early Christian education.  In Sunday School we were taught not to doubt. Cautionary tales of doubting included: Peter walking on the water till his confidence failed and he sank; Zechariah struck dumb by his lack of faith that his wife would become pregnant with John the Baptist; Jesus prevented from healing in Nazareth, because of their lack of faith;  Jesus scolding his disciples for their lack of faith; Thomas doubting the resurrection until he touched the nail prints in the hands of Jesus.

Faith was a commodity we could not do without. We could have a lot of faith or a minimal faith, but not “no faith.”  No one I knew could see faith as a continuum, a work in progress.

On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible honors a tradition of questioning or negotiating with God. Abraham, the paragon of faith, questioned the angel, who promised that his elderly wife would bear a child. Lot famously cross-examined God about his mercy on the city of Sodom and Gomorrah (Shall not the Judge of the earth do what is just?” (Gen 18:25). Jacob wrestled with the angel of God the night before confronting his estranged brother, Esau. Moses tried to escape the role of prophetic leader by insisting he was inarticulate. Called by God to lead his people against the powerful Midianites, Gideon insisted on sign after sign to prove God’s call. Despite the awesome power and holiness of God, Jewish history and literature honors dialogue, even argument, with God.

Contrast this with the one incident in the Christian Bible when Jesus is challenged by Peter for predicting that the Messiah must suffer and die.  Jesus harshly rebukes him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16:21).

And what does Jesus say after Peter bravely walks on the water to meet Jesus, then has a panic attack? “You of little faith. . . .why did you doubt?” What about the other disciples who cowered in the boat? How little was their faith?

If Peter were a character in Genesis, he would be honored for his nerve like Jacob, who wrestled with God, but in the Gospel of Matthew he is an object lesson for his lack of faith.  The disciples of Jesus are frequently chastised for their lack of faith, whereas when Moses balks, he is given Aaron as a spokesperson and manages to become the most honored prophet in Jewish history.

The examples from the Christian scriptures have made Protestant Christians consider faith dualistically. You either have it or you don’t. If you had it you were favored or “saved.”  If you lacked it,  you were judged or “unsaved.” Even my unchurched friends saw this dualism in me. They might say, “I wish I had your faith,” as if I had a secure stash of faith in my wallet.

The discrepancy between the God of  Jacob and the God of the Gospels may turn on what faith means in different traditions. In the Hebrew Bible the prophets were respected for their audacity for questioning God, but, for some Christians, challenging God shows a lack of faith. And faith is a commodity that you have or you don’t have.

Father Richard Rohr notes the limitations of this dualistic way of thinking or believing:

The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. 

Should faith and doubt be considered a dualism, where the absence of one reveals the existence of the other? Or are faith and doubt relative to each other, where faith may lapse into doubt, while doubt may restore faith?

Brian McLaren, in his study of doubt (Faith After Doubt, St Martins Essentials, 2021), suggests that honest doubt can actually enrich faith. In profiles of numerous pastors and church leaders, he claims the struggle with doubt can restore an abandoned faith, that doubt should be faced, not stigmatized, that doubt may be a sign of a healthy faith.

This is apparently the view of doubt in the Hebrew Bible, where some of the exemplars of faith actually challenged God.  And some of the pretenders of faith were called “false prophets.”  When Elijah, the heroic antagonist of the wicked King Ahab, fled from the wrath of his idolatrous wife Jezebel, he cowered in a cave at Mount Horeb, where God had first spoken to Moses:

Lord God who rules over all, I’ve been very committed to you. The Israelites have turned their backs on your covenant. They have torn down your altars. They’ve put your prophets to death with their swords. I’m the only one left. And they are trying to kill me.”

15 The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came.” (I Kings 19:14-15).

Elijah turns from faith to fear to faith again in a few chapters of I Kings. The Apostle Peter ran the same course, from confessor to denier of the Messiah to the inspiring leader of the church at Pentecost.  Doubt propelled these two heroes into stronger faith.

And yet many Evangelical Protestants conceive of doubt as abandonment of faith.  Doubt can be battled, but it cannot be confronted as a viable option.  It can only be opposed with fierce opposition. As a lapsed Evangelical pastor, Brian McLaren, writes:

Good Christians (and I’m sure good people of other religions) were expected, quickly and privately, to mend their doubts like an embarrassing tear in the pants and, failing that, to silence and suppress their doubts, to fake confidence and certainty in desperate hope that the next sermon, hymn, praise song, conference, book, or prayer would be the silver bullet that would vanquish doubt forever. (Faith After Doubt, 208)

Yet following  the example of the great heroes of faith, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Peter, we see that faith can be lost and regained. Further, that the  exploration of doubt can bring a later resurgence of faith. McLaren and so many pastors he counseled found doubt as a counterpoint to faith, potentially a route to a restored faith.

Perhaps the “Faith of our Fathers” has come full circle, where doubt can be acknowledged without condemnation. “We will be true to thee, till death,” may not be the last word in the hymn.  Faith and doubt are more similar than we know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Of Prophets and Skeptics

Jonah is probably most famous for spending three days inside the belly of a whale. A few readers may remember his ridiculous attempt to escape God by taking a boat to the reaches of the known world.  But Jonah’s most critical lesson is the failure of his faith to grow, when it is challenged to understand the mystery of God.

The story of a man with a purpose but trying to escape it.  He tries to run  from God. He’s trapped for three days in the belly of a “sea monster” and forced to confront his doubts. He decides to accept his destiny by preaching to wicked Nineveh and moves an entire city to change their way of life.  God reverses his plan to destroy the city. The man is disillusioned with the outcome, because his prophecy was negated by God’s mercy. He bitterly complains to God because his life seems pointless. A parable tells the reason for God’s forgiveness: mercy on a repenting pagan city. The story ends affirming the universal mercy of God and the bitterness of his prophet.

If you went to Sunday School you probably heard about the whale and Jonah’s  ultimate decision to submit to God’s call. The result saved a city. The featured character was the whale, more accurately translated as a “sea monster.” But there is more, that the teacher left out.

In modern biblical studies Jonah is considered a satire on the privileged status that the Jewish people claimed after the loss of their homeland (after 539 BCE). They anticipated God’s deliverance for his chosen people, but they had no concept of a universal God, who shed grace on all nations.  A few elements supply the humor in the story:

  • a prophet running from an omnipresent God
  • a sea monster getting the prophet’s attention by swallowing him
  • the prophet’s sulking after God’s mercy overturns his prophecy
  • a bush as an object lesson on the mercy of God.

Some Christians balk at a less-than-literal interpretation, but the idea of surviving the ingestion of a whale suggests it is fiction, yet no less important in its message. The whale seems more like comic relief from a desperate prophet’s rebellion.

But between the lines of satire, the message of God’s mercy to the Gentiles (non-Jews) is thematic from start to finish. It is a funny story with a serious message. Is God just or merciful? Is God selectively merciful to a chosen people? What is faith and what happens to faith when it confronts a reversal?

1But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. Jonah 4:1-3

Jonah has a static faith. He doesn’t believe in a non-partisan God who favors all nations. He doesn’t debate with God like Moses or Abraham. He doesn’t express his skepticism like “Doubting Thomas.” about the resurrection: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands . . .I will not believe” (Luke 20:25). Instead, when God calls him to Nineveh, he runs.

Jonah’s  faith is based on his judgment of the heathen. He interprets the mercy of God as undermining his prophecy.  He cannot fathom a God who does not follow through on his threats. Unlike Moses or Abraham, he doesn’t question God, he just says, “Now Lord take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

It is this brittle faith that Jonah satirizes. Jonah cannot adapt to the universality of God, of God’s mercy extended to the heathen. Rather than learn and adapt, Jonah asks to die. Even when God offers a parable about preserving the life of a bush that protected Jonah from the sun, Jonah doesn’t get it. Or we assume he doesn’t, because he has nothing more to say in this story.

What does this story say about faith? Faith needs to expand as our vision of God grows, as God reveals a nature we never knew. Faith must expand to accommodate what we are learning about God, not insist on old dogma.

This message shows the modernity of this story. Some believers are sure their faith is unchanging, because God is unchanging. That was Jonah’s problem. He thought an unchanging God meant Jonah’s understanding of God was also unchanging. He insisted that God’s mercy was only for the Jews so stubbornly that he wanted to die rather than consider it. But our understanding of God can change. The infinite, merciful God has more to teach us.

When a true believer says, “God said it; I believe it; that settles it,” that suggests that God has nothing new to say.   Jonah’s story says otherwise. It taught an ethnocentric people that the mercy of God is universal.

 

 

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The Addiction of Dualism

Addiction: we know it’s bad for us, but how hard it is to stop! I’ve had battles with caffeine, sugar, sports ranting with relative success, but in the past month I have had to abandon all three, just to preserve my sanity.

Caffeine was the most obvious one. I stayed up all night twice in a week, and when I was sleeping, it was the wrong time, such as during sermons and when my wife was telling me something important and when the evening news was on.  So I bought some de-caffeinated coffee, and the sleeplessness stopped. I found out the other antidote was afternoon naps.

I beat the sugar habit decades ago, but I have occasional lapses. We went on a cruise in early February, where unlimited drinking was part of the package. Since I am not an alcoholic I enjoyed trying some mixed drinks for my inexperienced palate. It was fun, but I soon began to feel like I was getting a cold. Then the cold started to go away, when I stopped the mixed drinks, and I knew it had been my old nemesis sugar taking hold. Fortunately my sensitivity allows me to drink beer.

I decided to give up “angry writing” for Lent, because it created a permanent seething in me, instead of relieving my anger. I decided to stop ranting about the Cardinals’ not signing another top-of-the-rotation pitcher. A couple of weeks ago I deliberately went on Twitter to chew out the Cardinals’ President of Operations, John Mozeliak, for being too cheap to sign Jordan Montgomery. I’m very good at spending other people’s money.

So I stopped the ranting, and it wasn’t that hard, because the baseball writing at the beginning of Spring Training is so optimistic and hopeful, it is soothing to the soul.

Now political ranting is another thing. My blogs are full of political ranting, even though I always present evidence and counter-arguments. In the last thirty days I have posted twenty political pieces, and I write only about four times a week.  I really try to write on varied topics, but my favorite theme is the political, because, when I read the Op-ed’s and listen to “Morning Joe” on MSNBC every morning, they usually get my juices flowing.

None of these addictions are bad for most people, but I can’t keep up with the Happy Hour crowd, and I have to step back when I am with the ice cream gourmets, because I know I will feel bad tomorrow.  Caffeine is like poison to me, but I spent the first 75 years of my life loving it.  Political writing has become a guilty pleasure since I retired, but I notice it feeds the beast in me. Now I have something nasty to say about the Christian Nationalists every morning.  They may deserve it, but they have become my favorite scapegoat. I don’t like that.

Political writing has stirred up my dualistic self.  Jung would call it the “shadow self.” It’s the”us vs. them” mentality, almost the definition of politics. The professional politicians know how to keep this beast under control. It is a sign of the amateurs getting into politics that divisiveness has become the order of the day.

The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. Richard Rohr.

Sports fans are a prominently express dualism. They range  from true fanatics to connoisseurs of the game, who can cheer when an opposing outfielder makes a sterling play.  It may take a home run away from the home team, but the educated fan will probably sigh and say, “Good play you f – &^%$. ” It is often said that certain cities have savvy fans, because they appreciate good play, not just plays that favor their home team.

At the other end of the spectrum are the majority of fans who call into sports-talk radio shows. They are usually provoked by the host of the show, who knows the people who listen to him. The callers are all self-proclaimed experts who disagree about everything.  Where two or three sports fanatics are gathered, there are usually six or seven opinions. Avoiding the dualist trap, I will say that most of us are on the spectrum between the connoisseurs and the fanatics.  We are fans, but we love our team, even when they are losing.

Politics has a similar spectrum of experts and self-proclaimed experts. Some want to discuss issues to understand why the opposition thinks differently. Some want to prove their party is better than your party. And all of us in between.

For me politics is complex and needs untangling, so I often want to listen. But don’t get me started about the topics I think I know about: Christianity or public education.  Then you are in for a diatribe with enemies named and scorned.  Lately my anger has waxed about Christian Nationalism. I mean it, don’t get me started.

Nothing creates bitter enemies more than politics and religion, and that is one reason I need to fast from political writing. This is the dualism that hurts others, but it hurts the provocateur as well. In religion, especially, the dualistic mind turns us into self-righteous prigs. As Richard Rohr says

 Most of us settle for quick and easy answers instead of any deep perception, which we leave to poets, philosophers, and prophets. Yet depth and breadth of perception should be the primary arena for all authentic religion. How else could we possibly search for God?

Just as there is nothing wrong with drinking if you are not an alcoholic, there is nothing wrong with political writing unless it turns you into a raving dualist.  Sports ranting and political ranting are not that different. As we say, they generate more heat than light.

To replace the ranting of politics,  I will try to write more affirmative writing: inquiry, reflections, memoir, poetry, that kind of thing. My recent post on “Angry Writing” would qualify in the category of “reflections.” Probably this piece would qualify, as an inquiry into rants and diatribes.

But, to my surprise, my withdrawal from political writing has been much harder than my withdrawal from sports ranting.  Every morning I get incensed by political news and want to spout off about it.  There is evidence of addiction here, evidence that I want the Christian Nationalists to get my message, because they are sooo wrong and self-serving.  Maybe they are, but I probably will not be the one to convince them. I am too incensed.

See? I sneaked a little politics even in my “apolitical” writing. This is going to be a long Lent.

 

 

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Sleeper, Awake!

Well, I’ve finally humiliated myself for dozing during the day, in this case during a sermon, in this case sitting in the choir loft for all to see. The choir sits in public view on the congregation’s left in our sanctuary, so we are part of the service, even as we wait to sing after the sermon. Here I was, enacting my disregard for the Word spoken, sleeping in public.

In recent years I’ve had trouble sleeping more than six hours in a night. This is a new issue since most of my life I’ve been a sound sleeper, easily enjoying the standard eight hours a night. The result has been midday dozing, a habit that has offended Victoria, because of my checking out, taking absence, while she remains awake and alone in the living room. I’ve even faded out as she was talking to me. That, I understood, was offensive. The rest seemed to me the innocent behavior of a sleep-handicapped person.

I’ve seen a sleep therapist. I’ve taken on the onerous burden of a C-Pap gadget. I’ve taken afternoon naps. I’ve succumbed to decaffeinated coffee. I’ve tried, and still I doze during the nightly news and sometimes begin to fade while Victoria is in mid-sentence. I just check out without warning until she says, “Are you falling asleep?” with a slight edge in her voice.

I’ve also found it hard to distinguish between meditation and sleep. When I have tried to meditate in my morning devotions or respectfully during the sermon, I pass into oblivion. That is not what meditation calls for. And yet meditation is a relaxed form of prayer, a sense of peace before God. How do I convert sleeping into worshipful prayer?  Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, while his disciples dozed. How did his earnest prayer for “Not my  will, but thine?” contrast with the weary catnapping of his followers?

Until now I have felt like the disciples, just trying to recover from a long day’s labor. I felt like Victoria was unnecessarily annoyed by my innocent drifting off. I remember my father taking a siesta during the sports segment of the late night news and my mother finding him in his recliner, chastising him, “Tuck, wake up and come to bed!” Then my Dad would rouse himself and say,” I just want to hear the sports,” after he had already missed the lead story. Why can’t a man sleep, when he wants to?

I felt it was an innocent dalliance, until I missed the last five minutes of the sermon, bent over in full view of the congregation and the choir during the Sunday service. This was a full-Monty from meditation to public humiliation. I’m not sure if the pastor observed my insult to his preaching the Word, but I hope my offense was ignored or forgiven.

Now it was public and chronic. Now it was failed meditation. Now it was ignoring the Word of God,  boring or not.  The sleeper was not innocently slipping into the Land of Nod. He was obstructing the Spirit from bringing home the message.

I get it. Sleeping at the wrong time is rude. Sleeping can  say, “I don’t think you are important enough for my undivided attention.” Sleeping can even say, “Don’t bother me, God. This sermon lacks relevance.” Or to anyone, “I’ve given you enough time; let me sleep.” Sleeping is the opposite of listening.

As Victoria has pointed out, I used to make my living as a listener. I hardly ever lectured as a college professor. I spent about 60 % of my class listening to my students. My students were future teachers. I was trying to model good listening for them, and they appreciated it. So I was pretty good at listening for 75-minute or 90-minute intervals. Not so sure about after that. I can be easily distracted, even when I stay awake.

I  need to apply some of those skills to my non-professional friends, not to mention my spouse. Actually I will mention my spouse, who has to live with this annoyance every day. I need to adopt a more alert posture. In fact I will begin with posture.

Through reading, I have been taught that it helps to stay as upright as possible while meditating, to maintain the boundary between listening and sleep. Not slumped or even bowing in the alleged posture of prayer. I have also learned to keep attention by focusing on my breathing and letting idle thoughts drift away. This works pretty well in prayer.

Could I apply this to people and TV?  Maintain an erect position and focus on the person, not on stray thoughts. This sounds a little formal, but recall this is a recovery behavior, not a casual reform. My falling asleep is so abrupt that I can’t catch myself in the act. It’s like a sudden blackout. I need a deliberate approach, kind of like abstinence for an alcoholic or an overeater.

So now, if I pretend to focus by closing my eyes, as I am wont to do, that should send an alarm to my conscious brain to straighten up and pay attention. I can try this during the news or when listening to Victoria’s sometimes rambling stories. I know, if I ask her to summarize and stop, she is very cooperative. No excuses there.

As for the twenty-minute sermon, I need to take the alert posture and turn to my left and follow the pastor as he journeys to the front of the platform and back to the pulpit.  Bowing in meditation is out for now, just as the alcoholic resolves not to take a small sip of alcohol. Maybe I’m distracted, but no one can tell from my focus, my alert posture, my portrayal of listening. As they say, “Fake it till you make it.”

Sleeper, awake!

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Our Graven Images

A  recent assertion from a Newsmax commentator about Taylor Swift got me to thinking about idolatry:

But I think what they call it is, they’re elevating her to an idol. Idolatry. This is a little bit what idolatry, I think, looks like. And you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin! So, I don’t like that.”  [ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/greg-kelly-taylor-swift-fans-idolatry-sin_n_65b907bfe4b0102bd2d62292 ]

I know the Second Commandment warns against idolatry, but Jesus does not make much of it in the Christian Testament. There are only three passages I know of where Jesus warns against worshipping an idol, and in no case does he use the word “idol.” Yet we may learn what Jesus did not want us to worship by considering them.

The first idol is “Mammon” in the passage from the King James Version:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (wealth) (Matthew 6:24)

The word “mammon” is usually translated as “money” or “wealth.” In the Middle Ages it was personified as one of the seven princes of hell, giving it more of a personal identity.  In any terms, the concept of serving or worshipping is built into the conflict of God vs. mammon. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon ]  Christians usually understand “serving wealth” as an uncontrolled desire for riches to the extent that faith in God is compromised. Where we cross the line of using money for the security to an obsession is never obvious, as would be true for most of Jesus’ teachings. But turning money into an idol is a violation of the Second Commandment.

The second idol is tyrannical government. We can assume that Jesus rejected the notion that Caesar should be worshipped as a God from the example of paying taxes.

   “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. (Mark 12:16-17)

What belongs to God is reverence and worship. Paying taxes is the duty of every citizen, although many of Jesus’ contemporaries would have disagreed.  Maybe our contemporaries, too. Since Caesar represents tyranny, it follows that modern tyranny should not be worshipped as well.  What constitutes tyranny in the modern sense is debatable.  I suppose leaders, who imply that loyalty to them supersedes the worship of God, would be considered idols. Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses have argued that they should be exempted from government requirements that contradict their religious beliefs. The law has upheld that argument. What if those rights were taken away? Would the government then become an idol that demands they violate their beliefs? Tyrannical government can be an idol.

The third idol could be those who represent themselves as the returning Christ.

Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. (Luke 21:8)

Cult leaders could fall into the classification of an idol. They may call themselves “Christ” or claim their words come straight from Christ, but Jesus warns that they are part of “latter day”events. Who these “Christs” are might be controversial, but they are potential idols when they contradict what Jesus taught, while representing themselves as “the anointed one,” the meaning of the word “Christ.” Those who attempt to represent Christ, but fail to live by his example, might be considered idols.

In none of these examples are the commandments against “idolatry,” but rather objects of worship that might replace God. These objects might not represent idolatry to some, but Jesus’ laws are never as clear cut as we would like them to be.  Idolatry, in the modern sense, represents the disposition of the heart, not a legal definition.

Jesus warns about many other things, like “the leaven [legalism] of the Pharisees” or the “hypocrisy” of those who practice spirituality in public, but such behaviors are less than worship and not focused on an object of worship, so I don’t think of them as idols. Jesus did not expand much about idolatry per se.

Is the ardent following of Taylor Swift “idolatry” ? Perhaps, in a figurative, adolescent way. But then how do we distinguish “idols” from “heroes”?  Many adults have sports heroes, music heroes, historical heroes that don’t rise to the level of idolatry.The passion of teenagers is not so different from the devotion of adults.  So why quibble?

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them” Exodus 20:4.

It is dangerous to think of the Second Commandment  as irrelevant today, because there are modern equivalents, such as money and cult leaders, as Jesus has reminded us.  But let’s not get carried away and claim any passion or devotion is an idol.  It’s all right to be fans and followers, if we recognize our limits. Isn’t that what morality about?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Southern Lights

Spirit take us home

Take us home by another way

Take us long way ’round the tyrants

and their schemes

Give us strength to walk

Show us dreams of a better day

and we’ll pave the way with justice

Goin’ home by another way

(Christopher Grundy)    https://soundcloud.com/christopher-grundy/take-us-home-by-another-way-live-demo

We sang this refrain (plus three verses sung by Solveig Leithaug) at the “Southern Lights” conference this weekend  (January 12-14, 2024) at St. Simons Island. GA.  The song was an allusion to the current season of Epiphany, which celebrates the defiance of the tyrant Herod by the Magi, when they “went home by another way.”

As you may know, Herod intended to kill the infant Jesus, an apparent threat to his dominion, as prophesied by Micah.

Micah 5:2, “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will come forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His times of coming forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity”

The Gospel of Matthew (2:16) tells us,

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

Thus Herod proved himself the most ruthless tyrant in the Christian Testament, and an archetype of all tyrants, as conveyed by the song lyrics. That’s a lot of unpacking of a few lines of music, but no one had to explain it to the participants at the conference; they were largely of retirement age or older and knew their way around the Bible. A shoutout to the younger generations attending. No disparagement intended.

If a summary of the weekend was needed, the lyrics of “Spirit Take Us Home” would do it. It was about dealing with injustice in an inhospitable world.

From Cole Arthur Riley [ https://colearthurriley.com/ ] we learned “How emotional truth talking  can be recognized in an oppressive world.” Cole helped us see that, by-passing the necessary lament, middle class “niceness” could discount the real emotional damage of racism.

From Simran Singh[ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2470676/bio/ ] we learned to “Burn the practices that take you away from love,” as he recounted the hate he encountered as a Sikh growing up in San Antonio, TX.

From Elizabeth Schrader Polczer [ https://www.elizabethschrader.com/ ] we learned how Mary Magdalen was the second Mary in the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead: “He [Lazarus] was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.” This was a false transcription of “Mary and her sister, Mary.”

Papyrus 66 recorded Martha as the sister of Mary of Bethany, but Elizabeth discovered that the scribe of this text had scratched out the name  of the second “Mary” and substituted “Martha” in several places:  Why would this matter to us? Because the “Martha” in this chapter was the only person in the Christian Testament, other than Peter, to declare “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” It indicates her prophetic understanding of who Jesus truly is.

Libby gave us a lesson in manuscript analysis by projecting the Greek text on a screen to show where the scribe had substituted “Martha” for “Mary.” She accomplished a very technical explanation of textual analysis in layperson’s terms to show us the significance of a tiny manuscript editing choice. Amazing job.

After these extraordinary speakers, we heard an equally stirring concert Saturday night from Brian McLaren, Solveig Leithaug, Ken Medema, and Libbie Schrader. Brian shared a whimsical take on terrible times on the guitar, Solveig sang of her ancestors’ entry to Ellis Island with electric guitar, Ken Medema wrote an imaginative ballad about the prophet Ananias and Apostle Paul and played it on keyboard, and Libbie Schrader sang the tribute to Mary Magdalene she wrote, which started her exhaustive research on Magdalen’s role in the Christian scriptures.

Most wondrous of all: the stupefying improvisation of Ken Medema, as he responded to each of the speakers with a jazz rendering of their major theme. The unique talent of synthesizing a response to complex expressions of faith extended our understanding of “gifts of the Spirit.”  Ken is a visually-impaired keyboardist who accompanied the singing of the entire weekend, blessing all of us with his creativity and love.

I apologize if this cataloging of an amazing weekend gives a shallow understanding of glory.  It’s pathetic to say, “You had to be there,” because it just stirs up regret or envy. I only give a superficial appreciation of how much blessing was shared by many eloquent and talented people. Perhaps also an invitation to join “Southern Lights” a year from now.