A Personal Note

This was the year I tested out the waters of first-time blogging.  And I feel I've learned a lot.  But I'm taking some time off now to rethink how best to use this medium.  I especially thank those who in the last week or so expressed to me personally their appreciation from my most recent series on "Making Sense of Life."  I plan to return to blogging and blogging more frequently early in the new year.

On Life: Part 5, Faith from First to Last

And finally, in making sense of life, it does come down to trusting God.  It is, as Paul says in Romans 1:17, “faith from first to last.”  Trust that whether or not it is clear to you things may well be working out exactly as they should.  And sometimes even when things seem tough, you might just stop and ask, “What if this were all alright?”  All the things that are troubling, confounding and perplexing you, what if these were all alright?  God loves you.  Let nothing stand between you and the God who is love, not your brightest days or your darkest nights, no doctrinal understanding (or rather misunderstanding) and no life experience, no tragedy, no setback.  Trust God.  Let everything be.  Let it all go, and let it all come back to you.

               

Rise above yourself, above the things you’re still stuck  in, whatever it is you feel you can’t be happy with, and find the real story of which your life story is a part.  Rise above the petty dramas you keep telling yourself, the little stories that make you miserable, and find the large story of which your life story is a part.  But make sure it’s large, that it’s big enough for all the true and loving stories of the world.  And then, knowing this, you’ll see what needs to be done that you can do that just may not happen unless you start doing it.

Jesus once said that he came so that we might have life and have it to the full (John 10:10).  One caution I would make: If the way you understand something restricts or diminishes life, it’s not a principle of Jesus – at least not as it’s currently understood.  The call of Jesus is always to life, to get over yourself, to get unstuck from the things that hold you back, and to begin to live a life animated by trust, animated by the kind of invincibility that comes from trusting God and the life that he is giving you.

But where will you learn this and with whom?  

On Life: Part 4, Getting Unstuck

Over the years in my efforts to make sense of life I have read broadly and appreciatively from many sources, from many faith traditions, from many disciplines of study.  Often I have found in this pursuit marvelous insight, sometimes just a turn of phrase that opens up a seeming universe of new and richer meaning.  Still when all is said and done I believe almost all I’ve learned comes down to a very few basic principles taught by Jesus.  One, the first, is the fundamental necessity of getting over oneself.  This we looked at in my last post.

The second principle of Jesus that is absolutely fundamental to understanding how life works is to get over whatever you’re attached to, to somehow get unstuck from all the things that keep you from really living.  Jesus says this often, in many ways, in many of his stories, in many of his encounters, one of the most famous being with the rich young ruler in Matthew 19.  But the most startling way he said it is in Luke 14:25-27, “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.  And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’”

This is, of course, a shocking text, that we are to hate our fathers and mothers, our wives and children, our brothers and sisters – that we are to hate those to whom we are most naturally bound.  So what’s going on?  Didn’t Jesus speak of love all the time and didn’t he undeniably love his own mother?  It’s helpful to remember, I think, that Jesus is so much more Eastern than readers in twenty-first-century America suppose, and he has this way about him that only Eastern masters have: the stunning paradox, the apparent non sequitur, the seemingly outlandish proposal – “Gouge out your eye,” “Cut off your hand,” “Sell all that you have,” or “Oh, hate your father and mother” – to break up our patterns of thought, to disrupt our complacency, to smash our clichés and platitudes, to force us to look at life again and think.  It’s almost what a Zen master would say.  And I think there is a certain truth to that.

Perhaps the answer, however, is simpler still; perhaps it lies in the real meaning of the Semitic word for “hate” (or the word translated “hate” here), because the word means “to turn away from, or to detach yourself from.”  There is nothing of the emotion we experience in the expression “I hate you.”  Jesus is warning his followers, “If you cannot detach or get unstuck from your father or mother, from your wife or children, or from your brothers or sisters, you cannot really follow me.” 

Certainly this is true in this particular historical moment, Jesus setting out resolutely for Jerusalem, knowing he will be killed there, but this is also timeless, universal truth that goes to the heart of being alive.  This is brilliant insight that the wisest have always known.  Whatever you cling to in life, whatever you have convinced yourself you cannot be happy without, has “potential nightmare” written all over it.  It may be a person, a place or an outcome.  

Think about it; most of your misery in life comes from the things you’re attached to.  Think of the things you cling to in life and see them for what they are – nightmares that cause you excitement and pleasure on the one hand (and in small doses) but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear and unhappiness on the other (and often in large doses).  And in fact you keep going through that cycle.  You find something or someone or some outcome you convince yourself you can’t be happy without.  You do have these moments of exquisite pleasure.  Then fear (fear that this will all be lost), and worry, anxiety and unhappiness.  Then pleasure again.  And then worry.  And pleasure and worry.  And you’re completely missing out on life, on all the people God gives you, on all the things God gives you, and on all the outcomes he makes possible, some of which are more glorious than the one you’re stuck on.  Life is giving you so much, but all you can see is the thing you cannot be happy without.  Yes, things are always coming together and falling apart, and coming together again and falling apart again, but often it’s their falling apart that creates space for what is new and better.

On Life: Part 3, It Begins with Getting over Yourself

There are, I've found, many insights into learning to live more wisely and compassionately.  I learn to make my peace with change and to live in the present moment.  I learn to drop certain story lines.  I learn to open myself up to larger and larger perspectives.  In the end, however, all these insights come down to three basic principles of Jesus.  The first I’ll work with right now, the other two in posts to come.  

This is the first one.  Jesus in Matthew 16:21-28 urges those who wish to make sense of life – those who wish to “find” life – to get over their selves: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.  What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul?  Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”  It’s important to realize that the word translated both “life” and “soul” here is the same Greek word, ψυχή, transliterated “psyche” and meaning one’s inner life, essentially one’s self.

This text, of course, has a context, Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (in Matthew 16:16), and then Jesus beginning to “explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things … , and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”  Peter of course objects to this: “This shall never happen to you – all this talk about suffering.”  But Jesus has heard that voice before.  Back in time.  Out in the wilderness of Judea.  So he turns to Peter (in verse 23) and says, “Get behind me, Satan!”  Peter, there is no other way than turning the other check, going the second mile, in fact, all the way to the cross.  The power is in getting over yourself. 

So Jesus says (in verse 24), “If anyone would come after me,  he must deny himself.”  He must renounce self as the center of life and action.  He must renounce self as the center of the universe.  Of course this goes against almost everything our culture, especially our culture, tells us, but it’s exactly what every world faith eventually tells us.  After all what is the self?  Stop and look and see.  Try to describe your real self – the core “you.”  What exactly is it?  Quick!  I ask, “Who are you?  No, who are you really?”  How do you answer?  What exactly is the self?  Is it your name?  Your age?  Your gender?  Your job, what you do for a living?  Your fears?  Your dreams?  Your beliefs or even your behavior patterns?  Is it your personality?  What is the core you?  Any idea?  So we have built a whole culture on this thing called self when we have very little idea what it even is.

           

Jon Kabat-Zinn in his classic book Wherever You Go There You Are introduces the concept of Selfing.  Selfing is the way we construct out of almost everything and every situation an “I,” a “me,” and a “mine,” and then operate in the world from that limited perspective which turns out to be mostly fantasy and defense.  If you really think about it, you will see, he says, that what we call “the self” is really a construct of our own mind, and hardly a permanent one either.  This “I” construct is continually dissolving and reconstructing itself, always slightly differently, virtually moment by moment.  So it’s no wonder that we so easily feel put down or diminished, small, insecure and uncertain, since the existence of “self” is so fragile. 

Jesus is saying, “For life to work you have to shift your spiritual center of gravity off your self.”  You have to shift your spiritual center of gravity off your ego, off of all those thoughts by which you separate yourself from others.  The truth is – and it’s taught in all world literature and mythology – that in every culture the really creative acts are understood to involve some sort of dying to self.  Deep down inside, we have always known that. 

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t identifies eleven companies who have outperformed the market almost seven times over, over a period of fifteen years.  He found that in every case their leaders were self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy, and that they hardly ever talked about themselves.  There were no Donald Trumps.

You find yourself by losing yourself, by getting out from under the pressure of having the details of your own life be central to the operation of the universe so that every outcome, decision, success or failure seems so deadly important.  Only the soul set free from agonizing self-consciousness is fully free to explore and participate in the world beyond the self.  Only such a soul is free to see, to understand and to love.  As long as you are obsessed with your own security, or your reputation, or how you come across, or even your own spiritual journey, you are not available either to give yourself to others or to be kind to yourself.  And you are not free to live, or even to make sense of life.

But where does one go to learn this, and practice this?  Are we all on our own?

On Life: Part 2, Voices Far Way from Where I Grew Up

The faith of my childhood having failed in substantial ways  to make sense out of life, I kept thinking.  And reading.  And exploring.  And traveling.  Discovering and listening to voices far away from where I grew up.  And I have come across many amazing insights that do help me make sense of life.  

I have learned, for instance, that change and pain and hard knocks are inevitable.  I have learned to accept that I can never know what will happen to me next.  I am learning to relax with the idea that we are always in transition – that things are always coming together and falling apart, and coming together again and falling apart again, and that often their falling apart brings healing and creates space for what is new and better.[i]

                                                                                   

When emotional distress arises, I am learning to let the story line go.  Behind unhappiness there is always an unhappy story, a drama I keep telling myself that fuels my distress.  And I am learning that only if I am not caught up in my own version of things can I see what’s really happening.[ii]       

I am learning to live in the present moment, to show up for whatever life offers, to not hold back because things are not going as I wish, but to let go of my preferences and acquire the kind of invincibility that comes from not being attached to any particular outcome.[iii]

I am learning not to swing at every pitch.  Not all problems require a solution.  Now instead of keeping everything stirred up all the time, in the words of the Tao Te Ching, I am learning

the patience to wait

till my mud settles

and the water is clear. 

And often I find that when I quit reacting against a situation, the solution arises out of the situation itself.

I am learning to move gently toward what scares me, to lean toward the pain, knowing that the pain is usually a sign that I’m still holding on to something – often my own ego.[iv]   

I am learning, not without pain, that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.[v]

                                                                                               

I am learning to connect with bigger and bigger perspectives, to evolve beyond the little me that seeks to cocoon in comfort zones.  I know that God is always larger and kinder than I suppose.  And I am learning that the only actions that do not cause strong reactions are – drum roll, please – those aimed at the good of all.  They are things that include, not exclude; that bring people together, not drive them apart.  They are for all of us, not just for me and people like me.  They are for all humanity, not just my country, not just “my” religion. [vi]  

           

And I am learning (thank you, C.S. Lewis) that if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy it means that I was made for another world.[vii]

There are then many, many insights – too many!  But I think they come down to come to some basic insights of Jesus, three in particular, which I will begin focusing on in my next post.  Due to travel plans, however, this will be three weeks from now. 

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[i] Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 8.

[ii] Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 50-51, 56, 79, 123; The Places That Scare You, 28.

[iii] Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal, 171.

[iv] Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You, 50, 94.

[v] Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 66.

[vi] Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, 290.

[vii] As cited in Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, 180.

On Life: Part 1, Rethinking the Reason for Being Alive

One way or another, we are always trying to make sense of being alive.  And each day brings us new ways to be bewildered, new things to wonder about, maybe to be deeply concerned about.  To begin with, a lot of things depend on where we were born, and to whom, and where life has led us.  Life is a very different matter for many of us than it is for those who live in a Palestinian refugee camp, or an AIDS-ravaged village in sub-Sahara Africa, or in earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Yet almost all of us have some basic concerns in common:  Why am I alive?  For what purpose?  How am I connected to others? Why do these powerful emotions and desires surge within me and drive me to do what’s not in my best interest to do?  What am I meant to do with my life?  How am I meant to spend my days?  And why are things so hard?  Why sickness, suffering, tragedy and loss?  Why constant struggle, conflict and fear?  Why are so many relationships unsatisfying?  Why the injustices and inequities of life?  There are, it seems, a thousand questions, and for each many conflicting answers. 

I look in Scripture, and I find help.  I remember what Paul wrote in Romans 7:15-19, “I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. … I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”  And this makes sense up to a point, and when I’m in certain moods.  But why?  Why are things this way?

I think of life as I was growing up.  We had made sense of it, after a fashion.  By we, I mean the adults in the little churches I went to.  Life was about obeying God.  Obeying God meant being right on baptism, communion, church organization and worship, in fact, on all matters pertaining to the church.  And there was only one true church – specifically ours.  There were also lists of things not to do: divorce, drinking, dancing, or really anything on Sunday other than church and napping, which some did simultaneously.  The other kinds of questions didn’t matter really.  Life was just hard.  What did matter was that those who did these things correctly did not go to Hell.  That was the purpose of life, to save one’s soul from Hell, and of course, if one could, to save a few other souls too though people were known to be stubborn.  That the story ended with vast numbers burning for ever and ever was thought to be regrettable but not catastrophic.   And all of this made sense as long as we just kept talking to ourselves.  But the longer I lived the more I realized that much, much more is going on in life, that it does not make sense that the earth with its six billion plus people is just a backdrop for a few hundred thousand of God’s elect. 

How did we ever, in a universe that seemingly stretches forever, come to think in ways that are so small, so sectarian?

On Globalization: Part 4, Jesus' Point Exactly

Although globalization – the world coming together culturally and economically – involves substantial and large-scale risks, there is every reason for followers of Jesus to take heart.  Scripture, in fact, is all about globalization.  It’s all about Jesus who came to save the world (John 3:17), who is acclaimed as the light of the world over and over, in whom God reconciles the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).  It’s all about Jesus when he is truly lifted up from the earth drawing all people to himself (John 12:31).  It’s what the great Hebrew prophets foretold – that one day the earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).  It takes us back to the original meaning of “salvation” in Scripture, the Hebrew yeshu’a, to save from danger, from harm, from disease, from evil intent or violence.  Yes, salvation is about a glorious life after death, but first it’s very much a hands-on, this-world, here-and-how, real-life salvation.  In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, it’s “on earth as it is in heaven” salvation.  It’s about people everywhere being freed to realize their full potential.

Jesus, you see, is about a whole lot more than saving souls after death.  He’s about saving the world, the flow of history, the majesty of creation, the wonder of the universe, the whole thing, the whole process from beginning to end, the unfolding of the story from beginning to end.  He’s about the redemption of the cosmos, the stars in their galaxies, the plants and animals, the rivers and seas, the forests and fields, people in all their amazingly colorful diversity.  He’s about saving the planet from greed, from fear, from desires run amuck, from people looking out only for their own interests.

It was this that Paul anticipates in that glorious beginning of his Ephesian letter, Ephesians 1:3-14.  He writes it (and this makes it all the more remarkable) while under arrest in Rome expecting to appear before of all people Nero.  In a breathless run-on sentence (Ephesians 1:3-14), Paul hardly comes up for air.  These are his primal beliefs.  This is what he is most excited about, and most sure of.  Long before Jesus was co-opted for sectarian purposes, before the Christian church turned dark and fearful, Paul sees the world in a different, new, glorious light.  He praises God over and over.  He talks of redemption.  He talks of God’s grace lavished on us.  And he declares that this is our destiny – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ.  He could say this because he knew that Jesus was the most inclusive person he’d ever known.  Jesus truly was, is and always will be, for everyone.

As Paul goes on in the Ephesian letter, he over and over marks our calling as global, as cosmic.  It’s to bring peace, proclaim peace, to those both far way and near (2:17).  It’s to destroy dividing walls of hostility (2:14).  It’s grasping how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (3:18).  It’s to bring all things in heaven and on earth together.  But for globalization to work best, it is best founded in an understanding of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.  Globalization is for Christians.  It always has been.  With Christ, the call to “love your neighbor as yourself” turns global.  It calls for our becoming knowledgeable, conscious, aware, seeing the people who have fallen among thieves and are now being passed by, challenging patterns of exploitation, working toward solutions that are just, sustainable and compassionate.  For all people.  Everywhere.

But then of course you would have to find some people with whom to do this.

On Globalization: Part 3, If There's a Will

As we have seen, globalization – the process whereby the world is coming together culturally and economically – entails certain risks, large-scale risks.  Democracy can suffer.  So can local and regional cultures, as well as local and regional systems of agriculture and production.  Even the Earth’s life-support system can be threatened by the short-sighted economic interests of players far, far away from the zones of impact.  Still, there is reason for optimism.  As more and more understand the process, as more and more scrutinize the process, as more and more become conscious of the process (hence these posts), the more transparent the transactions will be, the more accountable the process will be to an informed global market, the more the poorest of the poor will be taken care of, the more knowledgeable investors will realize that the welfare of people anywhere depends on the welfare of people everywhere.  And globalization will fulfill its promise of a world coming together as one. 

And all of this is economically doable.  If there’s a will to do it.  A 1998 survey found that the world’s 225 richest people have (or had then) a combined wealth of over $1 trillion.  It is estimated that 4% of that would achieve and maintain access to basic education, basic health care, adequate food, and safe water and sanitation for all those still without these things.1  I’m not suggesting – horror of horrors – redistribution here; I’m simply noting the very manageable scale of the problem.  This is beyond question  doable. The challenge then is moral.  It’s spiritual.  And this would be no surprise to Adam Smith who seventeen years before writing The Wealth of Nations wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  In that book of 1759 Adam Smith observed that for the invisible hand of the free market to work its magic it would take moral sentiments – specifically, it would take sympathy, the ability of economic players to identify with the emotions of others and to care about the general welfare.

But from where do we derive, from where do we inspire, such sympathy?  Whose voices must be heard and in what settings would they best be heard?

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1 The United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1998, pp. 29-30. 

On Globalization: Part 2, Economics Trumps Democracy

Globalization is big word.  You hear it a lot, but few take the time to understand it.  So bear down.  Read closely (this second of four posts), and I bet you get it.

At the heart of economic globalization is the freedom of foreign investment from regulation, a freedom worked out by bilateral and multilateral national agreements.  So goods, services and capital (think money), that is, trade and investment, flow ever more easily across international borders.  But in order to ease that flow increasingly democracy – that is, the informed  will and action of the people – gives way to unaccountable economic power.  More and more significant decisions about life are removed from public discussion and influence and left to an elite few.  A growing portion of the global economy is now planned and directed in ways that are unaccountable to the public as a whole.  People elect governments, but not corporations.  So decisions made in a boardroom in New York or London may affect the people of, say, Bangladesh a whole lot more than those made by the elected government of Bangladesh.

And increasingly goods and services needed by everyone (such as water, electricity and education) are privatized; that is, they are owned by corporations and individuals usually not accountable to the people most impacted.  For instance, a foreign corporation can purchase the water supply of some impoverished South American country and export it at whatever price the market will bear to California.  Meanwhile, more and more life forms (for example, genetic materials or seed strains developed over centuries by indigenous people) and life experiences (experiences related to spiritual growth and happiness) are being commodified and marketed.  Western consumer-oriented ways of life spread around the world.  And money is increasingly commodified; that is, more and more wealth is created by speculative trade in money for short-term gain rather than by trade in goods and services and rather than by investment in long-term production of goods and services.  So sudden shifts in capital may dramatically affect the well-being of millions.

O.K. that was the hard part.  We can ease up just a bit.  But just a bit because perhaps you have detected that there may be some real problems associated with globalization.  And there are.  Local and regional systems of agriculture and other production may be crippled.  Transnational corporations that grow beans, beef and bananas for North American tables may dislocate many Central American farmers from their family plots.  And who knows where the dislocated may show up.  

Then there’s the issue of accountability as democratic political power gives way to unaccountable economic power in the hands of relatively few economic players.  There are also issues of sustainability as short-sighted economic interests assault the Earth’s life-support system.  And there is the matter of the richer nations dictating inequitable terms of trade to poorer nations. 

Having said all this, I am still optimistic.  More to the point, because I am Christian, I am hopeful.  But do I have reason to be?

On Globalization: Part 1, A World Coming Together as One

In our time, disciples are being made of all nations, though maybe not quite the way nineteenth-century missionaries may have supposed. The world is coming together.  The worldwide web is the metaphor of our time.  Ideas travel almost instantaneously around our globe.  In fact, the violence of certain conservative Islamists  can probably be best understood as part of a fearful reaction to the world becoming one.  But even rioters in the streets of Cairo or Teheran wear blue jeans and sip Cokes. 

The world is coming together, and it’s this process that is called globalization.  It bears watching.  It calls for understanding.  In this, conservative Muslims are not wrong.  If the world is coming together as one, then it matters a great deal on whose terms and at what cost to the human spirit.  And it is especially important that those who follow Jesus be paying attention.  We live today on the front edge of one of history’s greatest turning points.  So I offer my thoughts here as a brief beginning toward understanding globalization.  I will begin with some analysis of globalization and then in future posts turn to Scripture.  I will identify some problems and then sketch out a direction toward solutions.

Globalization is both cultural and economic.  One world culture, essentially Western, is spreading around the world.  At some cost to cultural diversity.  There are customs and languages that will not survive.  At some possible loss to perhaps all of us.  But primarily I will focus on economic globalization.  Ah, economics!  You may feel that economics has no place on a minister’s blog.  And I would essentially agree with you.  I would entirely agree with you if it weren’t for the niggling little matter of economics being the primary way life is structured.  So to rule it out of bounds for churches is to rule much of life out of bounds for spiritual discussion and to contribute to the ongoing moral paralysis and irrelevance of many, many churches.  Still, economics should be discussed with great care in church settings because in most cases those speaking in churches are not economically trained.  I’m not.  I’m trained in history but not economics.  I freely acknowledge my limitations.  Still I do my homework carefully.

Before saying another word, let me stake out my own perspective.  I am American.  By choice.  I believe that it is the verdict of history that the economic system called capitalism and associated with Adam Smith and his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, works.  I do not believe that greed works, not in the long run, but I do believe that free markets and free trade work.  The problem is that there are always those in both Big Government and Big Business who seek to restrict free markets and free trade to their own personal advantage.  And there are always dislocations; labor can never move as quickly as capital.  But over time truly free markets and trade work.  And so I am essentially optimistic.  Globalization is the future.  And while it has its critics (thank goodness, every system needs its critics), globalization is, in my judgment, more the solution than the problem.

The world is becoming more and more economically interconnected.  Of the world’s one hundred largest economies, forty-nine are nations and – get this – fifty-one are multi-national corporations.1  And this offers the remarkable hope that nations will be increasingly disinclined to go to war with other nations.  Their economies are too dependent on one another.  But – and here’s the rub – the process of globalization involves some real risks and vulnerabilities.2 

What are your thoughts on globalization?  Does church – does faith – have a say in this?  Should it?

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1 Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God, 20.

2 Ibid., 19ff. 

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 4, Back to our Beginnings

Postmodernism is thought by some to be avant-garde, perhaps dangerously so.  But, in fact, it takes us, as Christians, back to our beginnings.  I think of Paul writing to the cerebral, brilliant, sophisticated, highly educated, worldly wise Greeks in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5.  He’s already written: “Where is the wise man?  Where is the scholar? … God choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.  God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”  He sounds Postmodernist, and this is no surprise.  Postmodernism goes way back, long before Modernism.  It seeks origins in their context.  It seeks to go back to beginnings.  Then in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Paul writes, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.  For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”  Exactly.  Instead of a God preached and argued about, we offer a God who became human and who lived amongst us and now lives in us! 

For us, truth is to be incarnate not intellectualized, lived not argued.  We offer not definitive, unarguable answers but transformed life lived in conscious awareness of the Spirit of God.  We own up to our own premises – that all this is by faith – but we also  recognize, as all Postmodernists do, that all thought systems are based on faith commitments.  What we ask is that everyone get their presuppositions on the table, and then we narrate the story of Christian faith.  It’s a reasonable story.  It makes sense.  It answers life’s biggest questions.  How do we best account for life as it is?  What works?  What offers hope?  Down on street level and out in real life, what are the real human needs?  And how are they best satisfied?  How do we best make sense of human experience as a whole?  But this story is not so much intellectual as it is spiritual.  This story is not so much about building institutions as building community.  It’s a story to be lived not argued.

We know that context matters.  Circumstance matters.  Yes, people will interpret in different ways.  What matters most is what we do with our differences, how we treat those who are different and think differently than us.  We know that many of life’s deepest truths do not lend themselves to scientific verification.  And inspired by Jesus, and open to his Spirit in our lives, we know that there is much to be learned from the stories of others, especially the marginalized, the powerless, the widows and orphans, the previously silenced and unheard.  These are all things Jesus knew and taught.  And now this thing called Postmodernism leads us back home to what we once knew.  For too long now, modern men and women have lived in a spiritual desert, a dry and dusty place, filled with argument and conflict over whose little goodness is most good, over whose little rightness is most right.  And we are so thirsty.

But God offers us a fresh wind of the Spirit bringing life back again to the dry bones of the church, a world open to mystery, to awe and wonder, to miracle, a world gloriously re-enchanted, life open to the sacred all around us, minds surrounded by grace and with this consciousness being able to see so much more than we ever could before.  And this one thing more.  Now it just might be possible that all people might one day come together in love and understanding.

So, really, to whom is Postmodernism a threat?  Well, other than to those who don’t like any of the above?

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 3, Truths Such Churches Know Not Of

Postmodernism or the way we think today, say, in the past thirty years or so, is not so much a threat to faith as a threat to Modernism and to churches steeped in Modernism, to churches that ignore historical context and turn truth into universal, timeless abstractions, that accept as true only those things that are held up to “scientific” standards, that thereby define, list and categorize everything, that in their quest for certainty downplay mystery, awe, multiple perspectives and diversity.  More and more people today coming to such churches cannot make sense of what they are hearing.  Over and over their hearts know truths such churches know not of.

But emphatically Postmodernism is not a threat to faith.  In fact it opens the world back up to faith.  For those with eyes to see, it is a fresh wind of the Spirit bringing life back again to the dry bones of the church.  It’s wide open to the deep past, to ancient and medieval sources, to premodern ways of knowing, being and doing, to the stories of the marginalized, the poor and persecuted, the widows and orphans, the previously silenced, to the truths that the heart knows best: what is loving, what is decent and honorable, what is caring and wise. 

 Postmodernism does not suppose that wisdom began with seventeenth-century science and philosophy.  It’s wide open to mystery, to awe and wonder, to miracle, to paradox and multiple perspective.  It’s wide open to the glorious re-enchantment of the world, to the sacred being seen and experienced everywhere.      To either/or it offers both/and.  It suggests that being strictly rational is not necessarily the same as being reasonable: that to the penetrating light of cold logic, one wisely adds the warmth of intuition.  To boundary-markers it adds bridge-builders.  In place of what is authoritarian, it honors authenticity.  In place of conformity, it celebrates diversity.  In place of the quest for certainty, it offers intellectual modesty and openness to others.  It makes it conceivable the all people might one day come together in love and understanding, learning from their differences.

Now who could be afraid of that? 

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 2, There’s No Way Around It

So what is this Postmodernism that creates so much fear and trembling in many churches today?  Bear down now.  I will try to simplify this message in every way I can.  I will mention some unrepeatable names (don’t bother trying to repeat them, or remember them), and then I will highlight three concepts.  I will name the concepts, and you may feel for a moment ready to give up, but hang in here.  If you’re in High School and catch all this, you’ll be able to wow ’em in your Senior seminar or your college essay.  I will name these three concepts first and then develop them, and as I develop them, you will realize that they are all concepts that are almost second-nature to us now.  In fact, they are concepts the heart has long known.

Historically Postmodernism arose out of post-war Paris – which was probably reason enough for some to suspect it – and the thinking of men like Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault. All French.  And I will note in passing that unless you have recently brushed up on your High School French, seeing these names will not help you pronounce them.  But never mind.  For our purposes right now, you’ll not need to.  I will not mention them again.

What’s important is what they were saying.   Their thought, which would come to be known as Postmodernism, was associated with three large concepts: (1) deconstruction of the text; (2) skepticism toward metanarratives; and (3) the notion that power is knowledge, or more simply stated, that power corrupts knowledge.  Each of these concepts have been turned into “bumper-sticker” slogans and used to deride Postmodernism.  But, in fact, each of these concepts when looked at more closely and in context makes sense. Let’s take them one at a time.1

#1 – Deconstruction of the text, that is, deconstruction of all that is written or communicated.  What Postmodernism is saying is that the meaning in a “text” (or any form of communication) is often found not in its surface reading, but in its deeper readings, in what it implies, in what its premises are, in its historical context.  To this end, to interpret a text well, you deconstruct it.  It’s important to notice not just what a text says but also what it does not say.  It’s important not just to read its words; you also need to “read” the gap between its words.  In brief, Postmodernism is saying: Context matters.  Circumstance matters.  The circumstances of both the writer and the reader matter and need to be taken into consideration to interpret well.  And every “text” – every form of communication – requires interpretation and, as such, is subject to the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of different interpretations.  And there is no way around this.  And there isn’t.

#2 – Skepticism toward metanarratives.  Postmodernism is skeptical of any large controlling narratives that claim to explain everything else, that claim to be abstract, universal, timeless truths apart from context or circumstance, and that will not own up to their own premises and presuppositions.  Postmodernism sees such metanarratives as controlling; it will speak of such metanarratives as imperialistic, colonizing, and totalizing.  Many church leaders leaped to the conclusion that this was a threat to Christianity, but again they failed to see the context of what was being said.  Postmodernism directs this skepticism primarily at science as the ultimate theory of everything.  It challenges the hegemony of science.  It notes that technology often outstrips morality, and that there are many truths that do not lend themselves to scientific verification.  Rather than attacking faith, it opens the world back up to faith, to mystery and miracle.  And it recognizes that sacred texts, in fact, contain multiple perspectives and narratives.  And they do.

#3 – The notion that power is knowledge.  Postmodernism understands that what passes for knowledge is often what those in power want passed for knowledge, leaving out other perspectives, other insights and other stories.  It observes that what passes for knowledge is never neutrally determined.  Much of what passes for knowledge is what serves the best interests of political, societal or church leaders.  Stated simply, Postmodernism stresses that power corrupts – that power even corrupts knowledge.  And it does.

So what’s the real reason for fear of Postmodernism?  Who would really contest any of these points? 

---

1 This organization of thought I owe largely to James K. A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?  Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, a book I recommend to anyone wishing to look more deeply into these matters. 

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 1, Why Many Cannot Make Sense of Church

Many people today cannot make sense of church because the way we think today is not the way we used to think.  Many churches, most churches, still think in one way; more and more people today think in another way.  Many, many churches – including our own heritage, the Churches of Christ – grew their structures and forged their creedal identities in the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century thought world of Newton, Locke, Voltaire and Hume:

committed to the pursuit of timeless, abstract, universal truths that are true for all people in all times, regardless of context or circumstance;

enthralled by science and accepting as true only those “facts” that are scientifically verifiable; and

in quest of certitude and consequently having little patience with mystery or diversity. 

All this has been rigorously challenged in the past fifty years by a kind of thought called Postmodernism. 

“Postmodernism” means – drum roll, please – that that which comes after modernism.  The world of, say, 1950 prided itself on being modern.  And there was some reason for pride.  Much had been learned from modern thought.  There was a sense of having arrived, of having arrived at ultimate truth.  But a number of thinkers kept thinking.  They thought of a world that had just survived two World Wars and the monstrous ethnic-cleansing of the Holocaust, and was now split down Cold War lines and threatened by nuclear annihilation.  (Good grief!  Back in that day in school little kids like me were being drilled in “duck and cover.”)  And they wondered if all this horrifying conflict might not in some ways be explained by the modern pursuit of timeless, abstract, universal truths; a purified Master Race, for instance, is just such a concept, clinically rational, deadly wrong.  Maybe all the conflict, the turmoil, the violence, arose out of  the very quest for certitude, the worship of science and technology, and the disregard for context, circumstance, diversity and the truths that are known best by the heart. 

When Postmodernism crashed against the denominational citadels of Christianity, it was largely seen as bad news.  It created consternation.  Churches molded by modernism sensed the real threat in Postmodernism.  Their institutions were being scrutinized, as were many of their theological certitudes.  And many church leaders circled their wagons and took aim at Postmodernism which drove them deeper into decline. 

But why?  What if God were offering us through new thought a fresh wind of the Spirit bringing life back to the dry bones of the church, a world open to mystery, to awe and wonder, to miracle, a world gloriously re-enchanted, life open to the sacred all around us, minds surrounded by grace and with this consciousness being able to see so much more than we ever could before?  And what if this might make possible all people one day coming together in faith? 

Context Always Matters

So it's been a fascinating week or two since word went out about Naomi's Ministry in Residence program with us starting in September.  Many  people have been incredibly supportive of what we are doing.  Others have been critical but in civil, respectful ways.  Others, well, there are ... always others.

I'm going to take one posting (I have many other interests to move on to) to deal with what seems to me to be the sticking point for many people skeptical of gender egalitarian views.  They are convinced that Paul in both 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 and 1 Timothy 2:9-15 anchors women’s silence and submission in church in creation.

But could it be that Paul in the 1 Timothy text is a contesting a specific notion of creation rather than making an argument from creation?  In the shadow of the great Temple of Artemis worshiped in Ephesus as the Mother Goddess, there were those in Ephesus, and apparently in the church there as well, who believed that women were created first (a more widespread belief in the ancient world than most suppose) and that women had special insight.  Paul observes that the biblical creation account offers no support for such views.  For more on this, perhaps you could check out  http://gal328.org/resources/congregational-studies-and-statements-on-gender/ where you will find in my writings and others further development of this point.  There is also an extensive bibliography on this same website that advances our understanding in these matters.

As for 1 Corinthians 11, the first ten verses do make some kind of argument from creation, though scholars differ widely in the understanding of what headship in this text means, and in any case, this text does not rule out women praying and prophesying.  With verse 11, however, Paul makes an always important transition, “In the Lord, however … ,” as he moves from a fallen world to a world redeemed by trust and grace.

Could it be that one day the "arguments from creation" will be seen in their contexts, in both their spiritual and historical contexts?  Context always matters. Could it be that one day more and more people will align their thinking and behavior with Jesus’ teachings that we are not to be concerned about who is the greatest but we, as his followers, are to be servants of all?  

Reflections on Our Hiring a Woman

The following are the reflections I gave Sunday morning, July 7th, upon the announcement of our Ministry in Residence program with Naomi Walters.  I realize that these reflections have spread far and wide already, but it seemed strange if they were absent from my blog.  I will note that these are reflections upon an announcement not a substantially developed position in support of gender equality.  For that I direct you to  http://gal328.org/resources/congregational-studies-and-statements-on-gender/ where you find some other writings.  The same website will point you to an extensive bibliography for further study and reflection.

*****

"This is a big Sunday here at the Stamford Church of Christ.  This is a landmark summer, and this is a big Sunday when we formally announce our one-year Ministry in Residence with Naomi Walters starting in September.  And so I decided to break from our series on Philippians and share with you more personally my own thoughts on this auspicious occasion.

I begin by thinking back to how I became a minister.  To many people it seemed fore-ordained.  I was a minister’s kid, more precisely, a minister’s son; so when I was in my very early teens I was already preaching sermons in small country congregations near where we lived.  I am glad that this was long before the days of audio-visual record and that there remains no evidence of those sermons, but it just seemed natural that I would be a minister. 

Well, natural to everyone but me.  So I  took a detour on the way to ministry, studied pre-med, then psychology, then sociology, and only when I was already in graduate school in sociology at the University of Michigan did I feel drawn back to studying religion.  And that’s what I was drawn to, studying religion not necessarily ministry.  I was fascinated by Jesus and by things spiritual, but about ministry I was reluctant. 

Still when three years later I graduated from Harding Graduate School of Religion, I already had a job waiting for me with a mission church in East Brunswick, New Jersey sponsored by the Madison Church of Christ in Tennessee.  A year later I had a job waiting for me at Michigan Christian College, now Rochester College.  Two years after that I was here.

Naomi’s path was a bit different.  No one expected her to be a minister.  To no one – except perhaps God – was it fore-ordained.  Many people otherwise close to her did not want her to be a minister.  Still she graduated from Rochester College in Michigan with a major in Biblical Studies and a minor in Counseling.  She then went on to Abilene Christian University where she excelled academically and received her M.Div.  There was no job waiting for Naomi.  It was well-known in ACU circles and circles that spread out from there that Naomi Walters was exceptionally skilled at preaching.  I heard her name, and I heard she was the best, long before I ever met her.  But no one was lined up to offer her a job.  For one reason only – she was a woman.

Other women in her position, and there are others, in increasing numbers all the time, are simply leaving the Churches of Christ, but Naomi choose a different track and determined to do her very best to stay within our fellowship.  Almost two years ago, she and Jamey began driving up here from Princeton, New Jersey passing East Brunswick (where I began) on the way.  This past Christmas Day they brought into our lives dear little Simon.  This summer Naomi begins an on-line D. Min. program at David Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.  The D. Min. program is a practical program that supposes you already have a ministry position and ministerial experience.  The wise people who run David Lipscomb’s D. Min. program made an exception for Naomi.  But no one else did.  No churches did.  No churches offered her an opportunity to gain ministerial experience. 

That is, until Naomi summoned up her courage and approached us wondering if we might be able to find a way to give her at least part-time ministerial experience.  So conversations began and then on Sunday, May 16^th, she met for an extensive interview with our elders and ministers.  We were all blown away.  E-mails flew back and forth – the morning-after gist of which were, “Wow!  Could you believe that interview?”  Most of us had been part of many interviews; few of us had ever seen a person who interviewed as well as Naomi, who came across with her poise, wisdom and spiritual insight. 

So we proposed a part-time year-long Ministry in Residence position for Naomi to all of you, and the response was strongly supportive.  As the current minister here, the support seemed maybe too strongly supportive.  My favorite response was in an email from Kelly Beel, “What about you, Dale?  You won’t be giving the sermon?”  Thank you, Kelly.  But that seemed to trouble no one else, and in fact wasn’t the case anyway.  I will be giving sermons.  Lots of them.  And they will likely be listened to with the same measure of interest and indifference as usual.  The larger point is this proposal was strongly supported.  So we sent Naomi an offer letter which she signed.  And that brings us to this day, Sunday, July 7^th, 2013.

Still I am struck by the difference between my story and Naomi’s.  All because of gender.  And I am deeply disappointed that Churches of Christ have made such slow progress on all this.  Too many ministers who know better, who agree with what we are doing here, are simply, for the sake of survival, I guess, staying silent.  Too many churches are being held back by the traditional views of just one or two of elders (even when most elders are open to progress).  Too many people in the pews who have nothing to lose are sitting this out; in the process they risk losing much.

All this does not auger well for Churches of Christ.  I am by academic training a historian, so I find it natural to think historically, to catch a sense of the flow of history and to from that map out where the future will be taking us.  One day almost all churches will be gender egalitarian.  Outside of Catholicism, most in the West already are.  One day Catholicism will be.  And those movements that prove resistant to this will be in serious decline.  Again, for most the decline has already begun.

I do not doubt that many people who resist change on this are acting in good faith.  But they are not studying the Bible.  They are not doing their homework.  They do not seek the original intent of Scripture nor do they seek to understand Scripture in its historical context.  So they do not understand that those passages that restrict women’s participation in public worship – 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:9-15 – address specific circumstances in the particular cultural context of their original first-century audiences.  They do not understand that Paul is calling his readers to live gracefully as disciples of Christ within the strongly patriarchal patterns of their day.  They do not understand that he is guiding Christians in the setting in which they live; he is not advocating their patriarchal, even misogynistic, setting for all time.  So they do not distinguish between what the New Testament says about the new life in Christ and the degree to which it was possible to implement this in first-century culture.  As a result, although they would no longer use the teaching, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters” (Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-4:1; Titus 2:9-10) to defend slavery in our time, they will still use 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 or 1 Timothy 2:9-15 to silence women’s voices in our public assemblies in our time.

This is a big Sunday.  This is landmark summer, and this is a big Sunday.  By giving Naomi this ministerial experience we are fulfilling the vision of Peter in Acts 2:17-21 that God has poured out his Spirit on all people, both men and women; our sons and our daughters will prophesy.  By insisting in this place that the use of God-given gifts will not be restricted on the basis of gender, we are being true to the spirit of Christ, true to the goodness in the gospel, true to the freedom we have in Christ, and true to the original intent and the historical context of the texts in question.  We help end patterns of prejudice and discrimination that bring shame to churches in our time.  We save our sons and daughters, and we play our part in seeing that women everywhere are treated with the same respect that men just naturally are by virtue of their being male.

In hiring Naomi to this part-time Ministry in Residence we are of course stepping out in faith in many ways, including our absorbing her $20,000 in salary.  We did not budget for this.  And so we ask those of you who can to give toward offsetting her salary.  And we will be asking people across the country who support what we are doing, who see the significance, even the necessity, of churches providing ministerial experience to women like Naomi, to help us in this.                      

TOGETHER we will build a future in which people will no longer be held back or held down simply by how they were born, where all people will be respected, honored and empowered not for how they were physically born but for how they are spiritual reborn.  The gospel will again be heard as gospel that is for all the people.  And the world will know that we all live in a world lit by resurrection and open to the Spirit of God, a world of amazing possibilities, a world where grace reigns, a world where in all things God works for our good, a world where we are all called to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, and that this is as true for women as it is for men."

What We Know: Simpler, Kinder and Not Alone

We’d all like some way to be more sure of what we know and how we know it.  Yet in a world in which we cannot reasonably be expected to think identically we must also learn to think graciously in ways that respect those who differ from us.  Jesus, I believe, showed us the way to do this when he promised his followers in John 16:13 that the Spirit of truth will guide them (us) into all the truth.  It’s a remarkable promise and an important part of understanding how we know what we know.  It tells us that even when we are feeling confused and unsure, even just plain stupid, the Spirit of truth will – in some sense – still guide us into all truth.  And that of course is gospel, great good news, and welcome news.

This promise is part of a sustained teaching section by Jesus that we find in John 13-17.  It’s Jesus talking at length to his closest circle of disciples the night of his betrayal and arrest.  He knows the next day he will die.  And he’s looking for some way to reassure them, something to get them through the horror of the next twenty-four hours, and then to prepare them for his eventual departure some weeks later.  For three years they’re been the closest of traveling companions, together day and night, always talking, always there for one another, but all that will end in just a few weeks.  And what he says to them is: “I will not leave you alone.”  In 14:16 he tells them, “God will give you another counselor – the Holy Spirit – to be with you forever.”  In the Greek, the word he uses for “counselor” is “paraclete.”  It means, literally, “one who is called to your side,” one who is on your side.  I will not leave you alone, Jesus promises.  I will give you the Spirit of truth.  The Spirit of God will be with you when you’re lonely and feeling abandoned, when life turns dark, when you’re down and out, and confused and weak, and you don’t know what to think or believe.  In fact, that’s precisely when he will be with you. 

But you will never be alone.  Picture yourself alone in a big empty room maybe as afternoon shadows fall, or laying in bed in the middle of the night wide awake because you can’t sleep.  You’re worried and confused.  Life has thrown another curve at you.  And you don’t know what to do or what to think.  You feel very alone in all this.  Picture then the Spirit of God entering that room, at first, maybe way up high in the corner of the room.  Sense this Spirit spreading through the room, bathing the room in warmth, coming closer and entering you.  Feel the healing, the warmth, the cleansing, the companionship of God.  You are never alone. 

It’s in this context that Jesus promises that when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.  But what does it mean to be guided into all this truth?  It’s been understood and misunderstood in many ways.  Some have believed that it applied only to the apostles and the Scriptures they wrote, or to the apostolic succession, to those with special authority in the church, to the apostles and their successors, the bishops, and ultimately to the Bishop of Rome.  Now what all these positions have in common is their need to control the truth, to restrict the truth, to restrict it to the New Testament, or to church authorities or Bible experts.  And somehow this kind of truth always turns out, sooner or later, to be timeless, heartless abstractions that do not fit real life, notions that work well in abstraction until you actually find yourself or someone you love in a real life situation trying to apply it.  The longer I live, the more my heart resists these presumptions.  The longer I know Jesus, the more I know that he’s saying something simpler and kinder.

What We Know: Taking Risks but the Right Ones

So I left behind a time when all I knew seemed clear, exact and certain.  I came to learn that even within Scripture, especially within Scripture, there is mystery and there are multiple perspectives.  I came to see that God is love and grace reigns everywhere.

Accordingly, I came to understand certain things about what we know.  I came to doubt universal and abstract truth claims lifted out of all living context that prove to be heartless down on street level where real life is lived.  I came to understand that power corrupts truthfulness as it corrupts everything else – that often what passes for knowledge is what those with power wish to pass for knowledge.  I came to realize, however, that there is a limit to what we can learn from skepticism and doubt.  Western civilization is built upon a hermeneutics (an interpretation) of suspicion.  But doubt is in the end corrosive, and there are deep, deep truths that can only be learned by a hermeneutics of empathy.  In the end, we fully understand only what we love. 

I came to see that every kind of systematic thought – scientific or otherwise – begins with taking some things for granted, with a faith commitment that calls for personal decision, and involves the risk of being wrong.  I came to see, on the basis of both common sense and my faith in God, that there is a trustworthy correspondence between us, those who know or seek to know, and what can be practically known.  Truth can be known.  We are wired to seek and find truth.  Over time and in a free marketplace of ideas truth can be known, though wise people may still speak of it in many ways.  But I also came to see that truths – scientific and otherwise – advance by intuitive and imaginative leaps that answer: How do we best account for life as it is?  What works?  What offers hope?  Down on street level and out in real life what are the real human needs, and how are they best satisfied?  What is wise and compassionate, decent and humane? 

It also dawned on me that if we learn to think for ourselves (which is the Western project), then we cannot be expected to think identically.  For this reason, our central values must be inclusive and pluralistic.  They must be founded upon those traditions in our various heritages, religious and otherwise, that encourage trust, forgiveness and love for one’s neighbor, even for one’s “enemy”; that promote sweet reasonableness in the face of life’s undeniable complexity, ambiguity and paradox; that allow for and learn from multiple perspectives; that ease our fears and teach us kindness and understanding in the response to our differences; and that nurture us to draw strength from historical change and cultural diversity.  Where there is respect, openness and freedom, truth wins through, but now truth that can draw people together including the many, many people who to this point have weighed religion in the scales and found it wanting. 

What We Know: Starting the Journey

One of the great challenges for the church in our times is to make sense of life, yes, for ourselves, but also for the many, many people who have weighed religion in the scales and have found it wanting, who seek compassion, decency, common sense and inclusiveness but who have not found these things in churches, mosques and synagogues, who seek to make sense of a God they still believe in but whom they struggle to find in religion as they have experienced it.  Many, many people are tired of churches but they throng to interpretive spaces, to interpretive centers, to interpretive channels, to interpretive blogs and websites, to places that make sense of life and origins and history and religion and doctrine. 

How then might we, as followers of Jesus and as church communities, make sense of life and make sense of the world in which we live?  It begins naturally with making sense of what we know.  What do we know and how do we know that we know it?  And on what basis can we feel confident that what we think we know is truthful and squares with the way things really are?  In a world filled with new ideas, many of which challenge the ways we’ve thought before, in a world filled with competing truth claims, in a world filled with works of spiritual genesis that are not a part of our own faith tradition, how do we make sense of what we know?  

I will begin by tracing my own story.  I, like many others, grew up in a universe where everything was clear, exact and certain.  At least at first sight, and few looked deeper.  You knew who you were, where you came from, and where you were going.  You knew what was right and what was wrong.  You knew what was false and what was true.  You even knew who was saved and who was lost.  In fact, everyone and everything fit exactly into his, her or its own precise category.  Perhaps it is no surprise then that  I  had a professor back in my graduate studies in religion many years ago who would tell us that we could ask him any question, any question at all about anything, and given a little time, he could give us a book, chapter and verse answer from Scripture.  For anything.  He might have to go off and think about it for an hour or so, maybe a day or so – please smile, though he seldom did – but given time, he could give a book-chapter-and-verse answer to any question imaginable.  And it could be a question about anything: physics, biology, astronomy, any ethical dilemma, certainly any doctrinal matter, or who to date, how to raise your children, or who to vote for.  For any question, he could find the answer because after all had not Jesus promised us that when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide his apostles into all the truth?  So, he reasoned, the Spirit came and inspired Scripture – gave us the Bible, and now we have this Scripture and it makes everything perfectly clear.

Even as he was saying these things, however, I came to realize that things were not at all that obvious to me or to most people.  I came to see on the basis of Scripture itself that there were many things that were not clear, exact and certain.  I began to read Scripture not through the lens or filter of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment but as it was written – true to its original intent and historical context.  I began to read it with empathy for others as Jesus did.  I  began to see that it was not primarily a law code, that, yes, there were parts of it that were ancient law codes, but much of it was narrative and poetry and prophetic oracle and literary correspondence.  Within it there is mystery, and within it there are multiple perspectives.  Within it, ideas develop over time.  Within in, there is dialectic, that is, point and counter-point leading us to seek transcendent principles.  We are invited by Scripture to wrestle with a God who is simply I AM, I AM WHO I AM, beyond words and beyond category.  And I learned all this as a follower of Jesus who asks me to open my heart and my mind to others, to others who are very different from me, who gives me this Golden Rule, that I should do to others what I would have them do to me.  So I learned to respect others and to seek to understand them.  And I learned all this as one who has come to see that God is, in fact, love.

Making Sense

I write as a Christian.  I value honesty.  That’s what I am, a Christian.  Others may question this, but I don’t.  And I find great joy and meaning in my Christian faith.  But I also write as one just trying to make sense of life and of the world in which we all live.  As things stand, our souls explode with questions.

What does the future hold, and what say do we have in this?  How do we know what we know, and how do we know that we know it?  What do we make of Jesus?  And what did Jesus really mean when he said he was the way and the truth and the life?  What do we make of Scripture?  Much of the evil that has happened in history and that still happens now comes from sacred texts being read in literalistic, legalistic ways; but then how are we to understand them?  [One clue: the title of this blog!]

And on and on. 

Why sickness, and disease, and suffering, and natural disasters, and personal tragedies?  What do we make of the faith of others – of profound spiritual works like the Tao Te Ching or the Bhagavad Gita?  How do we make sense of history, of the flow of history?  And what are we to make of a story that ends, according to tradition, with an allegedly loving God consigning hundreds of millions of people to excruciating agony for ever and ever and ever – not just for a minute or two, or an hour, or a day, or a week, but year after year, forever and ever?  How do we make sense of it all? 

And I go back to the question of why are more and more people, especially more and more young adults, unaffiliated with any community of faith?  What might we offer them?  How might we best serve them – the many people who have weighed religion in the scales and have found it wanting, who seek compassion, decency, common sense and inclusiveness but who cannot find it in churches, mosques and synagogues, who seek to make sense of a God they still believe in but whom they struggle to find in religion?

Several summers ago, my wife and I visited Atlantic Canada where I spent my pre-teen years.  I’d never been back.  We visited my hometown, Fredericton, and many other places I remembered from my childhood: the charming port city of Halifax, Port Royal, one of the great explorer Samuel Champlain’s early seventeenth-century settlements in the New World, and Grand Pré, Ground Zero for the eighteenth-century Acadian deportation immortalized by Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline.”  And we visited some of the most fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful spots on earth: the Hopewell Rocks, gigantic rocks now sculpted like towering flower pots by the fifty-foot tidal surges of the Bay of Fundy, and the spectacular Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island.  And everywhere we went  there were these buildings, simple, classic, elegant structures called Interpretive Centers where visitors went and read up on what they were seeing, visited artful displays, and listened to audio-visual presentations that made sense of what they were experiencing.  And it dawned on me that maybe this is one thing that churches in our time need to be - INTERPRETIVE CENTERS, places people can come and make sense of their lives and our world. 

Today many people who have substantially given up on churches throng to interpretive centers, to interpretive channels, to interpretive blogs and websites, to places that make sense of life and origins and history and religion and doctrine, where word and art and music come together to make sense of the realm of the Spirit, places that allow for multiple perspectives, places that make sense of differences, that respect differences and see dignity in the differences. 

Ever since then I’ve been inspired by the dream of the contemporary church being a such a place, a place that doesn’t have all the answers (no place does) but that does honor all the questions, a place light on dogma and bright with insight.  I believe that if we keep our wits about us, if we stop and look and see, we’ll find truths together that are not that far from what we already intuitively knew to be true, truths that our hearts have long known though words have often eluded us.