Missing an Opportunity?

The sermon this morning was pretty ironic.  My Mom was driving me to church, and she and I were discussing the Armstrongs (see here and here for background information).  My Mom said that she does not think that sort of movement could become popular nowadays, for people are jaded about religion.  She also noted that televangelism has declined over the years.

And what was the sermon about?  The pastor was lamenting that a growing number of people do not attend churches, and that the “none-of-the-above” category is becoming larger in terms of religious affiliation.

The pastor was sensitive to reasons that people do not attend churches: the politics, the arguments, etc.  But he said that going to church is important because then people can put themselves in a position to experience a renewal by the Holy Spirit, the same way that the apostles in Acts 2 gathered together and were baptized by the Holy Spirit.  The pastor envisioned this resulting in a wave of mutual love and understanding, as (to use an example) Republican Christians and Democratic Christians listen to one another.

I know that I myself would like to become a loving person, to be overwhelmed with a sense of peace and joy and a willingness to try to understand where others are coming from—-to be at a place where love is doable rather than being a difficult chore, due to my own insecurities.  In some people’s case, however, they may feel that church sets them on the opposite path, with its politics, authoritarianism, closed-mindedness, etc. (and I am not referring to my church here, but to others’ experiences of different churches), and so they choose not to attend.

Unconditional Love

We had our Mother’s Day service at church this morning.  I appreciated my pastor’s point that, in a world that is often a cold and lonely place, it’s good if we have a mother who cares for us.  I find that to be true in my own life.  In the outside world, I’m liked if I’m brilliant or witty or meeting people’s expectations.  But I don’t have to earn my Mom’s love, for I already have it.

“So How Was Your Easter…Really?” My Responses

In this post, I’ll be using as a lauch-pad Rachel Held Evans’ recent post, So how was your Easter…really?   I’ll quote Rachel’s post, then I’ll discuss how her thoughts resonate or don’t resonate with my own experience of Easter this year.

“I had my moments of faith: at the little Catholic church down the road on Good Friday, pressing my forehead into the wooden cross at the front of the sanctuary and silently praying, ‘God, I don’t understand this, but I believe, and I am thankful.’”

I went to a Catholic service with my Mom and her husband on Saturday night.  Were there elements of the service that I could believe or identify with spiritually?  Well, one piece of the liturgy talked about restoring fallen people to innocence.  I do not know if the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 is historical—-certainly many scientists and historians do not think so!  But I cannot escape the fact that the world is imperfect, and that includes me.  We have all done things that we shouldn’t, and we crave wholeness, or innocence. 

I felt a little put-off by the part of the service in which we were asking saints to intercede for us before God.  For one, after watching the depiction of St. Cyril of Alexandria in the movie Agora last week, I have my doubts that all of the saints were really that saintly!  Second, as a Protestant, I have a hard time talking to anyone in prayer except for God, plus I am leery about praying to any intercessor except for Jesus Christ.  But, as I thought some more, I could appreciate the ritual of talking to the saints of the past.  Many of us want people to pray for us.  We ask for other Christians to pray for us and to show us that they care.  What’s wrong, then, with thinking that our Christian family goes back many centuries, and that saints in the past pray for us?  I’m not sure if I buy that, but I can understand how such a concept would give Catholics a feeling of connection.

There was a baptism at the Catholic church, and the initiate was asked if he renounced Satan with all of his lies.  I wondered if I did so.  Christianity essentially portrays sexual desire (“lusting after a woman”) as adultery of the heart, but I have a hard time renouncing that.  It just seems unnatural to ask any man to do so!  But does Satan lie to me?  When I am taught to look to people and things for my sense of self-worth, is that not a lie of Satan?  When I am tempted to disregard the dignity of others, am I not being accosted by one of Satan’s lies?

“I had my moments of doubt: in the evangelical church of my childhood on Easter morning, struggling to listen to the familiar resurrection story that suddenly strikes me as a rather inventive way to escape our fear of death.”

I especially felt this way at the Catholic service: I wondered if Jesus truly rose from the dead, or if that were merely one religious story amidst a host of religious stories that are in the world—-many of which Christians would consider untrue because they fall outside of Christianity.  I decided to just kick back and observe what other people believe, and I found that I was especially moved by the music of the service—-how it was loud and powerful, and thereby majestic.

My Mom has struggled with Christianity, and, after the service, she remarked that she believes that something happened on Easter morning to give people hope.  To that, I say “Why not?”  I believe that there are things that occur in all sorts of religions or in life that give people hope—-hope that the future will be brighter, or that they can have a new beginning.  It’s even built into nature, as spring follows winter.  Perhaps that sort of event occurred for the early Christians.

“I had my moments of connection: holding hands with my neighbors during the Lord’s prayer, sharing a meal with family, watching the lady in the wheelchair in the pew in front of me pull herself up, determined to stand through ‘Christ the Lord Has Risen Today,’ seeing fellow Christians raise their hands in joy.”

I especially felt connected during the passing-of-the-peace part of the Catholic service.  I often dread that part of the service.  In fact, I was thinking of staying home specifically to avoid that part of the service!  I fear being ignored, or extending my hand at the wrong time and getting rebuffed.  But the people at the Catholic service were friendly, and so I felt connected.

“I had my moments of disconnect: sitting out the Eucharist because I’m not Catholic, hearing the gospel reduced to salvation from hell, welcomes that felt patronizing from people who have been praying that I come to my senses and go back to believing, behaving, and voting just like them.”

Probably the only time I felt this was when the priest was saying that Christ brings forgiveness to believers.  I thought, “What about everyone else?”  And what about someone like me, who is not even sure what he believes?

Bara, the Golden Rule

I’m continuing my way through Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson.  I read two essays:

1.  One essay that I read was S. Lee’s “Power Not Novelty: The Connotations of [Bara] in the Hebrew Bible.”  Lee’s argument is that the Hebrew word “bara”—which is often translated as “create”—relates to God’s sovereignty or control more than the creation of something new.  At times, “bara” does not refer to the creation of something new, but rather to renewal or refurbishing.  And, in the case of Exodus 34:10, “bara” is used to refer to the Conquest, which, for Lee, pertains to God’s power and sovereignty.  When “bara” does appear to highlight God as creator, as in Second Isaiah, the context is usually a discussion of God’s sovereignty.  You can see all of the appearances of “bara” in the Hebrew Bible here.  Personally, I don’t see the problem with translating “bara” as “create”—although it’s not necessarily creation ex-nihilo, but can entail making something out of already existing material, or situations.  And God’s status as creator relates to his power and sovereignty.

2.  I also read J.I.H. McDonald’s “The Great Commandment and the Golden Rule”.  McDonald talks about the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule, which, within the New Testament and rabbinic literature, are viewed as a summary of the entire Torah.  Or, in the Gospel of Mark, love of neighbor as oneself is contrasted with ritual.  McDonald criticizes a tendency—within Greek and Latin literature, and also in scholarly commentaries on the New Testament—to treat the Golden Rule as a matter of reciprocity: If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.  That is why McDonald believes that another factor is important, a factor that is highlighted in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God’s grace to people, which is undeserved.

I do not really understand how the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule relate to reciprocity—though I do suppose that there is a degree of egoism in them, since how I want to be treated is an essential aspect of them.  Also, McDonald does well to highlight how Greek and Latin authors had a Golden Rule, and yet they also had a notion of fairness—that their enemies should be punished.  But I don’t think that the Golden Rule necessarily implies reciprocity.  As my Mom told me repeatedly when I was growing up, “The rule is not ‘Do unto others as they do unto you’, but ‘Do unto others as you want others to do unto you’.”

I appreciated a point that McDonald makes about Jewish and Christian dialogue.  He said that, often, it has degenerated into a clash over which side came up with the Golden Rule first—the Jews or the Christians?  But what we should do is learn from one another.

Nature As Holy Ground

On page 270 of Gaia and God, Rosemary Ruether states:

“We need to take time to sit under trees, look at water, and at the sky, observe small biotic communities of plants and animals with close attention, get back in touch with the living earth.  We can start to release the stifled intuitive and creative powers of our organism, to draw and to write poetry, and to know that we stand on holy ground.”

On page 299, in an endnote about the biblical personification of nature, Ruether says:

“These attributions of personlike qualities to nature are often dismissed as either meaningless ‘poetry’ or as survivals of Baalism in Hebrew scripture.  Either way, they can be ignored as a serious part of the theology of the biblical God.  Although they may be survivals of Baalism, I see that neither as bad nor as incompatible with Yahwism.  Clearly the Old Testament authors who used such language did not either.  It is important to understand that ‘animism’ does not mean deification of nature, but simply the recognition of personlike life in nature.”

I’ve often had a hard time being inspired by nature.  When I was a child, every Sabbath, my Dad showed us kids two things on TV: an episode of Superbook, which was an animated Bible story, and New Wilderness, a show about animals that was hosted by the late Lorne Greene.  (And, come to think of it, I watched Lorne Greene on this before I even knew about Bonanza!)  Then, we’d draw a picture of our favorite scene.  I mostly drew something from the Superbook episode because I found nature shows to be boring.  When I complained one time about my Dad having a nature show on, my Dad told me to write a paper on Romans 1:20, which says that God’s attributes are evident in what God has made.  My Dad’s basis for showing us a Bible show and a nature show on the Sabbath was probably what Christianity calls the two books of God: God’s book of Scripture, and God’s book of nature.  By looking at both, we can see what God is like.

In my recollection, there was one time when nature inspired me.  I was at Indiana Wesleyan University for a conference on the Gospel, and I was awash in religious sentiment, after having heard some awesome messages, and having sung some fantastic praise songs.  I went to a TV room early one morning, flipped on the TV, and noticed that New Wilderness was on.  I watched it, and, this time, I liked it.

Why has nature bored me?  A while back in biblical scholarship, there was a notion that ancient Near Eastern religions were nature-based and animistic, whereas the religion of the Hebrew Bible was different because it had a God who acted in history.  Nowadays, as far as I know, that view has pretty much been discarded, for ancient Near Eastern religions have gods who act in history, and there are times when the Yahwistic religions in the Hebrew Bible talk about the natural cycle.  Does nature have a personality?  Does not the Hebrew Bible talk about nature doing personal things?  I think that there are still many scholars who read such passages as poetic personification, meaning that they don’t take them literally.  But Rosemary Ruether asks why we shouldn’t take them literally.  Maybe we’d treat nature better if we regarded it as sentient!

But, if I had to choose between nature and history (or, for biblical minimalists, stories about humans), I’d choose the latter, for I find humans to be more interesting.  I move around in a world of ideas.  Looking at a waterfall or a mountain doesn’t do much for me!  I do like animals as pets, but I get bored by shows about animals.

Also, I wonder: Is there a sense deep down within me that learning more about nature will lead me away from God?  There are ideas among scientists that appear to contradict a literal interpretation of the Bible.  But, also, I am more awed by nature when I view it as beautiful for its own sake—and as something that came about through a process of development rather than instantaneously at creation.  And so, somewhere in my mind, an appreciation of nature contradicts my worship of God.  One reason that I have a hard time incorporating nature into my spirituality is that efforts to reconcile the Bible with science appear rather contrived and artificial to me, and so they don’t exactly inspire me.  Also, attempts to draw theological conclusions from nature seem contrived and artificial as well.

I’d like to appreciate nature, though.  And perhaps Ruether’s presentation of nature as a balanced organism can lead me to appreciate it as a work of art, and as something that sustains humans and other creatures.  Interestingly, my family when I was growing up presented nature as such.

My Pro-Environment Family

In Gaia and God, I found some interesting things on pages 260-261, things that relate to my family.  Rosemary Ruether advocates “greatly improved insulation”, which can contribute to lessening heating costs.  That is relevant to my family because my Dad insulates houses.  Although my Dad has conservative ideas, he’s said that the Carter years were actually good for his business, since Carter was encouraging conservation.  And Ruether also promotes organic foods, which is relevant to my family because my Mom and my Grandma owned a health food store for over a decade.

Concluding My Falsani Series

Source: Cathleen Falsani’s Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).

The Cathleen Falsani book is due tomorrow, and I’ll be getting my exercise today by walking to the library to return it. Consequently, I want to finish up the series I began a long time ago on Cathleen Falsani’s Sin Boldly.

Part 6 was supposed to be about God speaking, but there are three other themes that I also want to discuss. And so here we go!

1. At the very beginning of her book, Falsani talks about learning about God’s grace as she watched the movie Bruce Almighty. She was having an especially bad day, and she stumbled on the movie as she flipped through her several HBO channels.

Bruce Almighty was a good movie for her situation, for it’s about a discontent reporter who learns to see others through God’s eyes. At the beginning, Bruce is not happy about his life (even though his girlfriend is Jennifer Aniston). He works at a news station, but he doesn’t do serious news. He does funny, inspirational, touchy-feely stories, which sometimes get cut for segments deemed more important. Bruce also has a crush on the female news anchor (not Jennifer Aniston, but the lady from JAG), who doesn’t give him the time of day. When Bruce doesn’t get the job as news anchor, he has a meltdown and is fired.

Eventually, God lets Bruce be God for a while. In the course of this experience, Bruce loses his girlfriend and gets run over (if my memory is correct). In heaven, God asks him what he wants, and Bruce responds that he wants Grace (his girlfriend, aka Jennifer Aniston) to find someone who sees her through God’s eyes (love). Bruce has moved beyond thinking only about himself.

Cathleen is moved to tears by God’s love, patience, and grace towards Bruce, a real malcontent. I could identify with this part of the book because TV, movies, and books are often a catharsis for me, and they give me something different to experience and think about as I plough through my discontentment.

That brings me to the second point:

2. Somewhere in the book, Falsani defines God speaking as God interrupting our thoughts, as he gets us to stop and think. Many of us are continually on the move, as we go with the flow with the inertia of our day-to-day thoughts. But God can interrupt that inertia and get us to think about the good and the beautiful. He can do so through books, movies, TV shows, people, and nature.

I like that perspective because it’s so open. It seems to assert that God is somehow involved in the lives of everyone, not just those who accept Christ as their personal Savior. And Acts 14 and 17 has passages that indicate such to be the case (although not everyone is saved). Falsani gets impatient with those who like to divide grace and make it so technical, with their labels of “common grace” (for everyone) and “special grace” (for the redeemed). In her mind, why can’t we just say that God shows people grace (undeserved favor), period?

Part of me likes what I learned about Friedrich Schleiermacher in college. For Schleiermacher, “God-consciousness” is recognizing that there’s a power greater than ourselves–that we are not autonomous and did not bring ourselves into being. My understanding is that Schleiermacher thought all sorts of things could bring us to a God-conscious state: literature, nature, the Bible, maybe even other religions. Schleiermacher’s definition of religion bypassed the problems posed by modernity, such as the attacks on biblical inerrancy by historical-criticism and evolution. For him, biblical inerrancy on history and science was not necessary to have a religious life, since religion wasn’t about that. Rather, it concerned us arriving at “God-consciousness.” If the Bible could encourage that through its stories, laws, poems, and prophecies, then it was doing its job.

One way I’ve changed over the past few years is that I’m more open to people drawing from different sources for their spirituality. Years ago at DePauw, I attended a forum of homeless people, and one of them remarked that he drew from all sorts of books (e.g., the Bible, the Tao) and went with what “worked” with him spiritually. That sounded to me like chaos! For me, one had to pick a book–preferably the Bible–and accept everything it said about God. Otherwise, that person was making God in his own image, and how could something he made up be reliable or trustworthy (as Tim Keller has pointed out)?

I still hold this view to a certain extent, but I saw that an eclectic approach to spirituality could work when I met an alcohol counselor. He said that he didn’t follow a specific religion but drew on a variety of sources. Two that he told me about were Nathaniel Branden’s book on self-esteem, and a tape series on anger and forgiveness. He called these sources “powerful.” He wasn’t necessarily accepting them as inerrant or authoritative, but he believed that they had a certain wisdom on how to approach life and live it successfully. I learned from him that having an eclectic approach to spirituality didn’t always have to mean total anarchy.

There are times when I feel as if my negative thoughts are “interrupted.” It occurs when I’m grumbling, and a thought enters my mind that’s actually constructive, or when I forget about my problems as I watch Lost or Desperate Housewives. I wish they could be interrupted more, to tell you the truth!

3. Cathleen writes about an elderly nun who admires Ingrid Bergman, notwithstanding her sexual scandal. I’m not sure why that stands out to me. Maybe it’s because it evokes for me a Reader’s Digest view on life–one that admires celebrities and looks for the good in them, even though they don’t always do the “right thing.” This sort of approach goes beyond the partisanship, cultural wars, and us vs. them mindset that pervades American life. I think of Reader’s Digest interviewing Julia Roberts about her family life. Reader’s Digest is very conservative, and Julia Roberts is far from being a Christian conservative Republican! Yet, they could see beyond that difference and interact with each other on a human level. Julia probably saw Reader’s Digest as an American institution, and Reader’s Digest viewed Julia as a part of America’s life and a mother who loves her kids. I’ve seen this sort of thing also among my relatives, many of whom are very conservative. Even they can still say something nice about Ted Kennedy or Al Gore!

4. Somewhere in the book, Cathleen talks about having writer’s block. In the course of her struggle, her mind turns to an episode of Friends, in which a character walks through the park in an eccentric manner. Cathleen decides not to worry about phrasing everything right and appeasing an audience, choosing instead to be herself and let the chips fall where they may.

That reminds me of the movie Little Women, with Katherine Hepburn. Jo writes mystery stories for publication, and a kindly middle-aged gentleman tells her that her work is bad. He encourages her not to write anything unless it comes straight from her heart.

Does this work in real life? Not always. Writing is a business, and people need to like someone’s work (or at least be affected by it) for the writer to be successful. Sometimes, that can lead to pandering to the least common denominator. At other times, as in Cathleen’s case, a person can write from the heart, touch a lot of people, and attain a great deal of success.

Good book!

Christine Rosen and Oracular Adults

I just finished a book entitled My Fundamentalist Education, by Christine Rosen. I was in the library, I saw it, and I grabbed it, or, rather, it grabbed me. The book is primarily about Christine Rosen’s fundamentalist education at Keswick Christian School, but she also talks a lot about the sites of St. Petersburg and her radical Pentecostal mother (or “biomom,” as she calls her).

The Washington Post Book World named My Fundamentalist Education one of the best non-fiction books of 2006. I initially thought that this was going a little too far, even though I must admit that I don’t know what other non-fiction books were out there in 2006. I just thought (at least at first) that her book didn’t communicate anything that is profoundly new. I already realized that there are fundamentalists who think that the earth is 6,000 years old, encourage evangelism to non-Christians, and expect a coming Antichrist to rule the world near the end of time. And then, suddenly, her book started to provoke some interesting reflections.

Specifically, the book caused me to reflect about which adults I trusted when I was a child. As a young girl, Christine Rosen heard conflicting ideas from the adults in her life. At a summer science center, she learned about evolution and the universe being millions of years old. At school, her teachers interpreted Genesis 1 to mean that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Her school and her mother told her to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with non-Christians. Her dad and step-mother, on the other hand, promoted religious pluralism. And some in her extended family wanted nothing to do with church.

I’ve heard some say that adults are oracular in the eyes of young children, meaning that kids look to their elders as authoritative. I wouldn’t accept this claim as an absolute, but I do think that it has some merit. Kids just beginning to learn about the world around them tend to trust those who are older than they are. But what if the adults contradict each other? Which oracle do they believe then?

Christine Rosen tended to trust her school, at least when she was younger, since she abandoned her fundamentalism once she became an adult. As a child, for example, she continued to proselytize despite her dad and step-mom’s rejection of fundamentalism. Why did she side with her school? My impression from her book is that her dad and step-mom were “hands-off” sorts of parents who weren’t rigorously committed to teaching their children a specific ideology. Her school, by contrast, had her memorize Bible verses and actually told her what to believe. Her response to the creation/evolution controversy was more complex, however, for there she tried to find a way to believe that both were correct. In that case, she wanted to accept both oracles (the science center and the Christian school).

Unlike Rosen, I mostly sided with my parents over my school, at least up to the fifth grade (when I became a rebel and questioned both of them). My situation was different from Rosen’s in that my parents were fundamentalist whereas my school was secular (at least for the Bible belt). To their credit, my parents were actively engaged with their kids. They took seriously the biblical command to teach their children while they are sitting down, standing up, and walking about the gates (or, in our case, the fence). And they clearly told me that the majority viewpoint is not always the correct one. In general, my family was rather different from everyone else in our small town. As devotees of a Worldwide Church of God offshoot, we went to church on Saturday rather than Sunday. We didn’t keep Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. Every year, I took off school for a whole week to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. And, during the Days of Unleavened Bread, I brought these bumpy crackers to school. And I believed my parents when they told me that we were following God’s will. They showed me the relevant Bible passages, after all.

And my parents also emphasized that my teachers are not always right. We should respect and obey our teachers, yes, but what our teachers told us was not necessarily the unvarnished truth. One time, a teacher of mine referred to human beings as animals, and I told my mom about it when I came home. My mom replied that people are not animals but are special because they were made in God’s image. She also told me stories about when she was a kid and an evolutionist teacher tried to force his ideas down the students’ throats. And I believed my mom. My parents usually made a lot of sense when they discussed ideas with me.

Right now, I agree with my parents on some things, but I also disagree with them. And, interestingly enough, my parents don’t even believe everything that they accepted when I was a child. People change. But Christine Rosen made me think back to when I was little, as I asked myself what oracular adults I followed at that time and why.

Grandma and Mr. Rogers

I was watching Mr. Rogers recently, and he seemed to be speaking directly to my situation. Has that ever happened to you in church—you feel like the sermon is directed right at you, and yet you realize that the pastor cannot know about your specific problem? You may conclude that God is speaking through the message to help you face your challenges.

Well, I’m not going to be that dogmatic, but Mr. Rogers was giving good advice. He was drawing a house with some scenery, and he said, “Let’s color the sky blue.” Then he said (and this is my paraphrase), “Notice that the sky did not become blue by my wishing or daydreaming or talking. I had to make it blue.”

I’ve been working on this paper, and I really do not enjoy writing it. I don’t know what the problem is. The topic is not terribly boring, as far as topics go. I’m just not in the mood to sit down and write a paper. In writing, I have to make sure that everything is phrased smoothly, that all my facts are correct, that I document every detail, and that I cover as many bases as possible. Plus, I have to plow through 103 pages of my notes. I’m just not motivated at the moment. But, as Mr. Rogers would say, we do not create something through wishing and dreaming; we have to work.

Mr. Rogers also said that creating something makes you feel good, whether or not others like your creation. On some level, this is true. I always have a feeling of pride and accomplishment whenever I finish a paper. But, I admit, I am twice as happy when others like my work or give me a good grade.

Something else that Mr. Rogers emphasized was the value of the process. He said that he is not good at drawing, but what is important is that he tries, enjoys himself, and creates something. I can see his point. I want an A on this paper, but I will have a sense of accomplishment after completing it, even if it is not the best paper in history.

Later that day, I was talking to my grandma on the phone. She does not watch Mr. Rogers, but she is reading a book. She was sharing with me some insights from her reading. She said, “This is your paper, and you are a unique person. Just do things your own way and write what you think is important. You don’t have to please everyone else.” She was giving me similar advice to what Mr. Rogers was saying. Could this be a sign?

I’m not dismissing the importance of turning in quality work. But I am going to take my time and enjoy the process. That is better than burdening myself with the pressure to be perfect.