Contentment vs fact

For lunch on Sunday, I made "Israeli Salad" (and the accompanying cocktail) from Zahav.  This was a deliberate choice on a number of levels: 1) it's summer, and tomatoes and cucumbers are in season, and delicious and 2) Saturday was mostly spent running around and all I could really manage to eat was potato chips, rice snacks, and a bowl of cereal, so I was feeling kind of carb-heavy.

Now, #2 is entirely silly.  Eating vegetables for lunch was kind of an act of "cleansing" which doesn't work.  The idea that some foods rid your body of other foods is entirely unscientific, except for the possible exception of insoluble fiber.  I know this is a nonsense idea.  But psychologically, it feels satisfying to eat vegetables to make up for eating lots of carbs.

And I am wondering if this psychological sense of contentment, of something that feels satisfying in the face of facts, is partly what is going on in this election season.  I mean, when majorities of Trump's supporters don't even believe half of what he is saying, facts are obviously not what is carrying the day.  It feels good (for them) to hear someone saying what he is saying.  It feels scary to know that black people, brown people, non-English-speaking people, and women are gaining power in society, power that had previously been reserved for white, English-native men.  Even if they have never actually seen these effects, they know they're out there.  It's not the actual disenfranchisement as much as the fear of it.

I'm not really sure what can be done about it, though.  In pastoral care and counseling classes, we are taught that feelings are neither right nor wrong, and that one of the first steps to dialogue is validating the other person's feelings, regardless of whether the other party thinks they are "valid" or "fair."  But when those feelings and emotions lead to real harm, to hatred and violence, validating them may not be the way to begin.  Where do you go when you've validated vitriolic hatred?  Not even that the hatred is valid, but that the person feeling it has good reason to.  That is what people are doing when they point to the hollowing of the middle class, wage stagnation, and the disappearance of jobs that don't demand a college education.  But for all the analysis of the validation, no solution is offered to get the people who are hating to stop hating.  Value systems aren't easily changed after generations.

And even educated, informed people can act contrary to fact and their own knowledge.

You don't have to believe.

One of the things that has bugged me for a long time and has been a driving force personally in my very vague career direction is people tacking things on to Christianity and forcing people to accept a whole bunch of stuff that is not, in fact, universal to Christianity. 

As far as I'm concerned, the Nicene Creed pretty much sums it up.* 

There are a whole bunch of things that people of all stripes add on that drive people away from Jesus.  So I'm going to list some of the things here that piss me off.

You do not have to believe:

1.  The earth is 6,000, or 10,000 or whatever years old.

2.  Evolution doesn't happen.

3.  God meticulously controls everything.

4.  God created evil.  Also under this heading: God planned the Holocaust, God plans for children to die, God plans serial killers, God endorses war.

5.  God likes or endorses patriarchy.

6.  Only certain special people control access to God.

7.  The Bible is an instruction book.

8.  God is obsessed with what you do with your genitals.

9.  The best Christian is an unthinking, blindly believing Christian.

10.  One slip-up in activity dooms you for life and/or eternity.

11.  Christianity is just a series of guidelines invented over the years to help people live better.

All of these things are things you can believe if you want.  I would argues that all of them are wrong, actually, but I don't condemn anyone for believing them.  But absolutely none of them are essential to being a Christian.

*Normally, I would have linked here to Wikipedia or whatever, but I'm actually working on my own translation of the Nicene Creed.  I'll probably unveil it some day.  In the meantime, GIYF.

What crisis in theology?

It is common to say that the Holocaust caused a crisis in theology.  What kind of god would allow the systematic and mechanized murder of millions of human beings?  But it also caused a deep crisis for many Christians who had to stare at the rhetoric of the church's history and its use by the abhorrent Deutsche Christen of the Nazis as well as the general acquiescence to anti-Semitism by European and white American Christians.  Not only God, but the church itself had to undergo redefinition.

Earlier this week, I was reading a very insightful article on Donald Trump.  The author argues cogently

Barack Obama is many things, but conservative rhetoric aside, he’s no radical.

We can’t say the same for Obama as a political symbol, however. In a nation shaped and defined by a rigid racial hierarchy, his election was very much a radical event, in which a man from one of the nation’s lowest castes ascended to the summit of its political landscape.  ...

For millions of white Americans who weren’t attuned to growing diversity and cosmopolitanism, however, Obama was a shock, a figure who appeared out of nowhere to dominate the country’s political life. And with talk of an “emerging Democratic majority,” he presaged a time when their votes—which had elected George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan—would no longer matter. More than simply “change,” Obama’s election felt like an inversion. (emphasis original)

This "shock" is the loss of white power and loss of the white perspective as normative.  And I think this is the same shock that Christian theology is undergoing in the century after the Holocaust.  It is not so much that Christianity was wrong as it was centuries of white male theology culminated in something so horrific.  That the "historical-critical method" could be brought to bear on the wholesale slaughter of human beings.

However, for anyone who was paying attention, this should not be surprising.  Many of the scholars who pioneered the historical-critical method were openly anti-Semitic, because the Christian church had been for centuries.  From the constant expulsions and denial of citizenship to the slaughter of Jews during Passion Week to the forced conversions of the Inquisition to the pogroms of eastern Europe, the church had been arguing, in many of its myriad Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, that Jews were members of a decadent, dead religion, abandoned by their God, and deserving of death.  The famous documentary hypothesis of Welhausen rests implicitly on these assumptions (e.g. P must be late, because the Law was a corruption of God's original religion).

And so, with a weekend's reflection, I am going to say that there should be no crisis of theology or faith for Christians because of the Holocaust, but only a crisis of unexamined, un-self-conscious assumption of white supremacy.  White Europeans are not special, and have no more intellectual capacity and insight than anyone else, and the Holocaust proves they can sometimes get it catastrophically, barbarously wrong.

#fail

well.  i got the final phd rejection email this morning.

technically, there is hope, i guess... i've been accepted to one master's program, and waitlisted for one phd program.  but i can't afford another master's, and i consider the waitlisting incredibly tenuous and effectively another shut door.

well, it is lent.  time to learn how to die, i guess.

part of my... despair?  that might be too strong.  part of my intense disappointment and also bewilderment is that for most of my life, i didn't have much of a direction.  my parents always said, "when you go away to college..." and i went to college full of ideals about higher education and got myself a real, traditional education.  i walked out reading french, latin, and greek, with a head full of over 2000 years of literature, art, and philosophy.

but i had no network, no connections, and honestly no real professional ambitions.  i knew i hated secretarial and administrative work.

eventually i did go work for my church, and i felt a call to teaching, so i went back to get more education.  i graduated from seminary last spring.  but in the meantime, we had moved, and my church had collapsed and i had been deeply, deeply hurt in the process.  once again i had no network, no connections, and still not much professional ambition.

but i did feel i had ideas, and i had spent 3 of the 4 years in seminary teaching both in the church and in a classroom, so i spent the summer and fall researching and applying for phd programs.  it was always a possibility after my first degree, but i had been immature and unprepared (and, quite frankly, not realizing that i was dealing with the onset of clinical depression) at the time and my grades kind of sucked.

the sucking grades might be part of what crippled me this time around, although i also got some unintentional feedback that implied my statement of purpose essay was mis-focused.  my seminary grades were much better and i had hoped they might balance out, especially being so much more recent.

i thought i had a direction the last several months.  obviously, i was wrong.

i'd like to have a direction.  i've spent most of my adult life just walking through the first door that opened because i thought i needed "something to do," "a job," whatever, without really thinking about the future or a direction or anything like that.  the hard part now is going to be not doing that again, not grasping at the first straw that looks like it will pay the bills.

i just wish i did know what to do.

staying connected.

i graduated in may, ended my internship at a church, and i haven't been back to a church, any church building or local community, since.

This is not really a good thing.  i do realize this.

Not precisely as defense, but as explanation, the church i was a member, employee, and leader of before i left to go to seminary full-time and work at my internship was somewhat abusive.  Because of the senior pastor's insecurities and ambition, the community i had been a part of was dissolved by the leadership.  This happened 2 weeks after i had gone to a new church to intern.

Part of the problem is also that i went from being a leader in a community to being a seminarian-intern, another leadership position.  i've been teaching in churches for the last 4 years, and i've been a resource for church leaders for even longer than that.

The prospect of finding a new community to worship with is exhausting.

Also the problem is that i have some strong theological and ecclesiological commitments these days, and part of what i would be looking for in a church is either closely shared ideological stances, or openness to them.  i'm really not willing to compromise on women being in ministry, the church adopting missional ecclesiology, following and supporting social justice, or a belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures and the supernatural.  This puts me in a very awkward position, half liberal, half evangelical.  both sides have things that irritate me.

i want a church that believes in the resurrection, that believes that Jesus' followers are empowered by the Spirit sent by the Father, that believes that "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27 NRSV).

And i've been hurt.  A few weeks ago, we were staying with my parents, and i couldn't go to church with them.  the prospect of stepping inside that building stressed me out and upset me so much.

But see, this is where things like the lectionary come in.  For the last couple years, i've been buying these devotionals that follow the lectionary with ancient christian commentary.  Paleo-orthodoxy has its own problems, but i'm a historian, and reading what my brothers and sisters left behind as relics from their spiritual journeys makes me feel connected to them.  Also, reading with the lectionary allows me to follow the church year and the same scripture readings along with the huge numbers of other christians who do the same.  So i just bought myself the volume for the "A" year, as well as the Episcopal Church's book "Holy Men, Holy Women," which is something like a calendar of saints, but a little more contemporary, yes, liberal, and Protestantized.

It's not real community, but it's the best i can do for now.  Sort of my Advent longing.

obstacles.

i need a job.

the problem is, i have no job-searching skills.  the only jobs i've ever gotten have been because i knew people, or it was an artificial environment like my internships.

in fact, the last time i was in this position (newly graduated, looking for employment), my dad got me a job at the company he worked for.

it's not (or at least, i tell myself it's not) that i'm unemployable with no skills.  i have a lot of skills.  i have a ton of things i can do, and i've had a pretty eclectic employment history. i just don't know how to explain that to people.

also, i am sick to death of office assistant jobs.  i don't have the personality to answer phones or sit at a front desk, and i get bored to tears doing data entry.

when i started seminary, i had the confidence that this was my next step, and that God was going to work things out somehow in the end.  but here i am, at the end, with no job, no phd acceptance, in a new city with no network, sending out resume after resume with no response.

now i don't know what to do.

milestone.

well, i have graduated.  Master of Divinity degree conferred.

now what?

doubting thomas.

so i just moved and don't have internet regularly except when i'm at school.  and i preached the second sunday after easter again this year.  as with me, this sermon goes all over the place, but people said afterwards they really appreciated it.  so here it is.

every year for the past few years, i have either taught or co-taught a class for "skeptics," people who are honestly interested in christianity, but have questions. very often, one of those questions is, "is it ok if i have questions?" this class always works my own faith pretty hard, but i really value the experience and would not give any of the past few years up. this sermon came out of some of that reflection.

Doubting Thomas

Have you ever had anyone ask you if you have “accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior”? If you haven’t, let me say that you are lucky. It seems to happen to me with uncomfortable regularity. I guess I just don’t look like someone who has. Once, I just had someone mutter, “There’s hope in Jesus” as they walked past me.

Every time this happens, I think to myself, is that what Christianity is? Accepting Jesus as personal Lord and Savior? Getting some kind of nebulous hope? Going to heaven when we die? This sounds so different from our gospel reading today, doesn’t it? “But these [signs] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.”

Man! Someone call the Bible translation committees! John got it so wrong! We’re not supposed to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. We’re supposed to believe that he is our personal Savior, right? And “life in his name”? Where’s heaven? Where’s what happens after I die? That’s what Christianity is all about. Heaven or hell. Right? ...Right?

My point here is not to belittle street evangelists. They are obviously sincere enough about their faith in Jesus to go up to complete strangers and try to share that faith. They believe what they’re doing is the right thing, and I won’t say that street evangelism has never had any effect. God uses us all in different ways, and God can use anything to build the kingdom of heaven.

But what I am saying is that the “don’t you want to go to heaven when you die” gospel that the street evangelists share with people is only part of the gospel. It’s a compressed, simplified, and to some extent, a reduced gospel.

What does John’s gospel say today? Notice that there is no mention of heaven in the statement where the writer says why he’s written this book. John says only, “that through believing, you may have life in his name.” Heaven isn’t mentioned anywhere. And this statement comes right after the story of “doubting Thomas.” And before that story is the story of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance in John to the disciples where he says to them, “receive the Holy Spirit.” And then he gives them some instructions that seem strangely this-worldly, doesn’t he? Again, nothing about heaven or what’s going to happen after you die.

We are now in this period between Easter and Ascension Day, between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension into heaven. In studying this text, I kind of noticed something for the first time: Jesus didn’t go to heaven after he died! He came back to the world for a while. He taught his disciples more, he ate with them, he had a body they could touch. And after he did go to heaven, he left them with a promise that he would come back to this world. So there’s something more to this than going to heaven when you die.

On the other hand, it’s easy to go the other way from the street evangelist and make the gospel all about this world. Jesus’ teaching certainly concentrates on how we should live for God in this world, in the here and now. But again, the gospel of John does not quite fit that either. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says. There is a spiritual reality that also cannot be lost from believing in Jesus. And that spiritual reality contains a word we don’t like very much: sin. Now the church has disagreed over Jesus’ saying here for centuries, and to be honest it baffles me as well, because Jesus also says that only God can judge sin. But at least it must mean that there is a spiritual reality that we engage as Christians as well as a physical one rooted in this world. To lose either side is to shrink Jesus. It may be easier to get people to sign on to a shrunken Jesus, but then, who are they believing in?

And what does it mean to believe? I recently read an article that talked about Protestant problems with doubt. As you might know, one of the key pushes during the Protestant Reformation was to ground salvation in “faith alone.” “Sola fide” as it’s often quoted in Latin. There are a few of these grounding elements of the Reformation; some people call them the “solas.” But since the reformers put such an emphasis on faith, on belief, doubt became an enemy. We all know what a “doubting Thomas” is, right? And we all know that it’s not a compliment.

After the Reformation, the Enlightenment made certainty its holy grail. If you could just be certain about something, you had a place to stand. If you could just be certain about your faith, you are saved. It’s simple. It’s easy.

And it’s totally unrealistic.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That sure makes it seem like doubt can’t be part of your life if you follow Jesus, doesn’t it? And yet what often gets missed in this story is Thomas’ shocking answer: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas may have doubted, but he came to such an amazing declaration of faith.

Many scholars see an echo of the Shema in Thomas’ answer. The Shema is the basic prayer of Judaism. It is one of the first things an observant Jew will say in the morning after waking up, and one of the last things said at night before going to bed. It is called the “Shema” because that is the first word of the prayer in Hebrew. We know it in English as “Hear O Israel: The LORD your God, the LORD is one.” In Hebrew, LORD stands in for the proper name of God, and the Greek Jewish writings carry that tradition over. When Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” he is making an extreme declaration of faith for any Jew.

And tradition tells us that Thomas went to India to spread belief in Jesus there. There are still churches in India today that trace their heritage back to Thomas. And of course, Thomas’ tradition was strong enough in the first two centuries of Christianity that we have a collection of Jesus’ sayings named after him: the gospel of Thomas. Regardless of its later reception by the church, you do not get a gospel named after you if you are considered the paramount example of someone who failed in your Christian journey.

If doubt is the enemy of faith, we would have to not only disqualify Thomas, but a huge number of the Psalms as well. Many, many Psalms express doubt about God and God’s purposes. They cry from the darkness of despair and depression. Just last week on Good Friday, we heard Jesus cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If that is not doubt, I don’t know what is. If even Jesus doubt, and not only Jesus, but the psalm-writer before him, how can we say doubt is the enemy of faith?

Notice Jesus’ response to Thomas: “Stop doubting and believe.” Doubt is normal. A faith that never doubts, that never wrestles with questions like the possibility or impossibility of resurrection is not much of a belief. But a faith that never stops doubting is not much of a belief either. Chronic, constant doubt kills our belief. On one side, we have to lose our affection for certainty and realize that we will never have it. Faith, belief, trust - these are not certainty. They are instead the voice that says, “My LORD and my God!” even in the dark times. But on the other hand, if we can never say that either because we are too concerned with getting something right, with missing something, with something being impossible, we do not have faith either.

Remember where Jesus appears: in the middle of the disciples. They are all in a group, relying on each other to get them through this dark time. And it is the group that bears witness to Thomas. One of the promises of Jesus is that he formed a community to carry on his work and his teaching. Everyone receives the Holy Spirit. In the dark, in the doubting times, we never have to go it alone. Thomas might doubt, but he sticks with his fellow disciples anyway. When our own faith is falling to pieces, the church picks us up and carries us until we can see Jesus again in our lives.

Jesus isn’t my personal savior. He is all our savior! And he is not just “my Lord” but all our Lord. And sometimes we might get something wrong, but there is always someone else to offer another viewpoint. Jesus is not just spiritual and not just of this world. We question and we doubt, but we gather with Christians every week or month or year to fall on our knees and say, “my LORD and my God!”

Amen.