Human history is replete with cycles of ominous political or environmental circumstances attended with prophets confidently predicting the end of all things. We witnessed this phenomenon most recently as 1999 clocked over to 2000, and it appears we are witnessing it again. Logic says that at some point (astronomers tell us that in 2 billion years when the sun consumes half of our solar system, including the earth!) the prognosticators will be right. History tells us that there is always a crowd that will be drawn to these prophets, even when they are wrong (when the date passes peacefully and the world continues).
I read an interesting book about this phenomenon a couple of years ago – Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things”. His answer: Because we want to. There must be something comforting about knowing how or when it all ends, even if that means trading away a future. Shermer devotes a chapter to apocalyptic prophets and their followers over the last two centuries in America and Europe. I was particularly amazed at his finding that when the prophet was proved wrong, his followers typically hung in there with him when he announced that he had made a miscalculation and adjusted the end date to another time in the not-too-distant future.
I have always taken my cue from Acts 1:6-8.
“So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, "Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?" He replied, "The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere-- in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (NLT)
Jesus’ authoritative “[These end times] are not for you to know” followed by his command to tell people about him everywhere seem straightforward enough to me. Getting all wrapped up in predicting and worrying about “those dates and times” is an age old human temptation Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount:
32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.
33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
34 "So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today. (Mat 6:32-34 NLT)
That said, since our own scriptures include sections of apocalyptic literature, I have a theory about why – which has little to do with knowing or predicting things that Jesus tells us are not for us to know. I believe that the apocalyptic stories and visions are not about the future, which, thanks to God’s gift of free will, is an ever-unfolding tapestry of our making as co-creators with God. I believe that these stories and vision are about our own time – our present. They are a warning, to be sure, of the probable end points of a trajectory of our present actions and behaviors, perhaps. But I think that even more, they are a way of understanding what is happening now, and how we might make better choices, by adopting a perspective of one who looks back toward our present from one possible, nightmarish future.
I believe that apocalyptic literature is like the game we play with ourselves at times when we imagine what a person from the future might say to us – the advice they might give to us, given what they know about the consequences of the decisions we make now. One key element of apocalyptic literature lost on the false prophets who use it as a scare tactic for gullible believers unfamiliar with the teachings of Jesus involves the triumphant way in which God’s kingdom rule prevails. If we have faith in such a future, we can live in hope that this will be true regardless of the many ways in which our senses tell us otherwise – and make choices as if it were already true. So ironically, apocalyptic is not about the end of all things, but a new beginning of hope in the midst of chaos – it’s a way for the blind to see.
In our upcoming worship series: “Letters from the Future: Daniel’s Apocalypse” we hope to explore the many messages of hope from this apocalyptic message written in the between times of the Bible, when the prophets were silent and shortly (a century or two) before Jesus’ birth. The book of Daniel looks both to the past (the exiles in Babylon) and to the future (to a time when the Ptolemies no longer desecrate the Temple and Jewish culture. The upshot is that the people whose lives are enriched by the stories are empowered to live in their own time with a renewed sense of God’s rule in history. And in that sense, they (and we) create a new future by the way they live in the present.
In addition to the worship series, I’m offering a Sunday morning Bible study linking scripture texts with a series of apocalyptic movies from the past five years, starting October 17. If there is enough interest, I’d be happy to offer the course during the week as well. I pray that looking at these tales of a dark and terrible future will enable us to live now as if our lives and the choices we make have significance in creating a new future – a future where all people recognize and rejoice in the Kingdom of God drawing near to us all.
Peace,
Bo
Showing posts with label Gordy-Stith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gordy-Stith. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Oil Spills, Prayers and Babies with Eyedroppers
The Louisiana legislature officially declared Sunday, June 20 a Day of Prayer in the wake of repeated failed efforts by BP and the US government to stanch the relentless flow of oil into the Gulf in what has become the worst environmental disaster in modern history. The lawmakers invited people to invoke the hand of Providence to heal this wounding of the earth and it's inhabitants because we have grown frustrated with humanity's efforts to handle this crisis.
This call to prayer prompts in myself and in our society an exploration into the nature of prayer and the God to whom we pray. We refer to disasters of this scale caused by storms as "Acts of God" regardless of our theology. Predictably, reaction from the New (read: "loud and proud") Atheists among us assumes the knee-jerk caustic tone of mockery and derision. God is a delusion, they say, and an infant sucking up an eyedropper of oil on the beaches accomplishes more than the prayers of any deluded multitude.
Yet religious adherents of any flavor would be hard-pressed to deliver incontrovertible evidence of the kind that skeptics demand that prayer actually "works". And it would be hard to imagine anyone, regardless of their religious fervor, who in their heart of hearts expects that the combined prayers of the faithful will in some demonstrably miraculous way turn the tide of this monstrous environmental disaster. More on that thought later. For starters, if prayers somehow moved God to intervene in a way wholly inconsistent from the way of the world in which this disaster occurred, we would be forced to contend with an incomprehensibly capricious God.
The skeptics compare the apparent passivity of prayer to action and agency (the ability to affect action) in the world. Entering this debate, I am intrigued and frustrated by the false dichotomy of action/inaction or cause and effect presumed by the principal antagonists. My love for God-in-others informs and in enriched by my search for Truth. I spend much of my time listening to stories of ways in which the practice of hope creates fertile ground for new life - in a symbiosis that transcends the boundary between the spheres of the physical and metaphysical. The Scriptural invitation to "pray without ceasing" recognizes the ubiquitous nature of prayer, not only in this boundary zone, but extending deeply into all realms of existence.
My daughter senses this symbiosis in prayer. We talked about the false dichotomy implied by the debate between skeptics and believers over the "usefulness" of prayer in response to the current environmental disaster in the Gulf. She suggested that the most powerful promise of prayer in this situation would be the creation of a sense of culpability and repentance in the experience of prayer. This experience of repentance, she believes, would lead to a communal response to this crisis and to the cultural practices that fostered it.
Prayer, in this perspective, serves as an analog to the efforts of BP to drill relief wells that will render the frantic, ineffectual efforts to cap the damaged wellhead moot. Like the relief wells, prayer holds out the possibility of reaching the foundation of a cultural pattern that has inevitably led to this current disaster. I join the skeptics in using the word "possibility" above because the practice of prayer cannot guarantee this broadening of perspective, nor can it determine the actions or effectiveness that might follow such spiritual and communal consciousness. Yet without this awakening, ignorance and chance must necessarily govern all "action", like leaving the cleanup to an army of infants with eyedroppers - the blind leading the blind.
We who follow Jesus the Messiah grope in this kind of darkness as well. Yet moments of clarity and vision dot the landscape of uncertainty, creating enough of a pattern and perspective - even a Presence - we are boldly hopeful enough to name God. Our prayers enfold us in God as they bind us to all humanity and all creation. The prayers of the faithful (and hopeful) create a vision that makes possible a life free from the prison of systemic evil. We hesitate because we know that the power of prayer lies precisely in it's relentless call to die to the blindness we confuse for sight in order to raise us to new lives in a realm where God's will is perfectly done.
In America we have learned to hedge our prayers by passing the ammunition (and in this case, the eyedroppers). Yet if this present crisis could catalyze something truly transformative, we (believers and skeptics alike) would do well to put away our childish notions of effectiveness and open ourselves to the possibility of new life in a vast communion that extends far beyond our garages and climate-controlled SUV cabins. What a tragedy it would be to simply clean up our mess while hurtling toward the brink of greater disaster in the blindness that causes this and many other disastrous collisions of unconsciousness.
So I will continue to live in a state of prayerful awareness and anticipation. I join others, skeptical and faithful, who have ceased a fruitless search for a bigger eyedropper. Though I am still captive in a world encompassed by myself and those I love deeply, surrounded by strangers and darkness, I have yet seen intimations of a larger, more comprehensive creation that refuse to leave me alone in my delusions. And with each moment in prayer, the realm of God draws nearer - and with it a new birth into a communion far, far beyond the confines of this womb of myself.
This call to prayer prompts in myself and in our society an exploration into the nature of prayer and the God to whom we pray. We refer to disasters of this scale caused by storms as "Acts of God" regardless of our theology. Predictably, reaction from the New (read: "loud and proud") Atheists among us assumes the knee-jerk caustic tone of mockery and derision. God is a delusion, they say, and an infant sucking up an eyedropper of oil on the beaches accomplishes more than the prayers of any deluded multitude.
Yet religious adherents of any flavor would be hard-pressed to deliver incontrovertible evidence of the kind that skeptics demand that prayer actually "works". And it would be hard to imagine anyone, regardless of their religious fervor, who in their heart of hearts expects that the combined prayers of the faithful will in some demonstrably miraculous way turn the tide of this monstrous environmental disaster. More on that thought later. For starters, if prayers somehow moved God to intervene in a way wholly inconsistent from the way of the world in which this disaster occurred, we would be forced to contend with an incomprehensibly capricious God.
The skeptics compare the apparent passivity of prayer to action and agency (the ability to affect action) in the world. Entering this debate, I am intrigued and frustrated by the false dichotomy of action/inaction or cause and effect presumed by the principal antagonists. My love for God-in-others informs and in enriched by my search for Truth. I spend much of my time listening to stories of ways in which the practice of hope creates fertile ground for new life - in a symbiosis that transcends the boundary between the spheres of the physical and metaphysical. The Scriptural invitation to "pray without ceasing" recognizes the ubiquitous nature of prayer, not only in this boundary zone, but extending deeply into all realms of existence.
My daughter senses this symbiosis in prayer. We talked about the false dichotomy implied by the debate between skeptics and believers over the "usefulness" of prayer in response to the current environmental disaster in the Gulf. She suggested that the most powerful promise of prayer in this situation would be the creation of a sense of culpability and repentance in the experience of prayer. This experience of repentance, she believes, would lead to a communal response to this crisis and to the cultural practices that fostered it.
Prayer, in this perspective, serves as an analog to the efforts of BP to drill relief wells that will render the frantic, ineffectual efforts to cap the damaged wellhead moot. Like the relief wells, prayer holds out the possibility of reaching the foundation of a cultural pattern that has inevitably led to this current disaster. I join the skeptics in using the word "possibility" above because the practice of prayer cannot guarantee this broadening of perspective, nor can it determine the actions or effectiveness that might follow such spiritual and communal consciousness. Yet without this awakening, ignorance and chance must necessarily govern all "action", like leaving the cleanup to an army of infants with eyedroppers - the blind leading the blind.
We who follow Jesus the Messiah grope in this kind of darkness as well. Yet moments of clarity and vision dot the landscape of uncertainty, creating enough of a pattern and perspective - even a Presence - we are boldly hopeful enough to name God. Our prayers enfold us in God as they bind us to all humanity and all creation. The prayers of the faithful (and hopeful) create a vision that makes possible a life free from the prison of systemic evil. We hesitate because we know that the power of prayer lies precisely in it's relentless call to die to the blindness we confuse for sight in order to raise us to new lives in a realm where God's will is perfectly done.
In America we have learned to hedge our prayers by passing the ammunition (and in this case, the eyedroppers). Yet if this present crisis could catalyze something truly transformative, we (believers and skeptics alike) would do well to put away our childish notions of effectiveness and open ourselves to the possibility of new life in a vast communion that extends far beyond our garages and climate-controlled SUV cabins. What a tragedy it would be to simply clean up our mess while hurtling toward the brink of greater disaster in the blindness that causes this and many other disastrous collisions of unconsciousness.
So I will continue to live in a state of prayerful awareness and anticipation. I join others, skeptical and faithful, who have ceased a fruitless search for a bigger eyedropper. Though I am still captive in a world encompassed by myself and those I love deeply, surrounded by strangers and darkness, I have yet seen intimations of a larger, more comprehensive creation that refuse to leave me alone in my delusions. And with each moment in prayer, the realm of God draws nearer - and with it a new birth into a communion far, far beyond the confines of this womb of myself.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Holy Week 2010 - A Resurrection of the Body of Christ
During this season of Lent, I've been consistently invited into sacred spaces of waiting - with people who are dying to this life (and wondering without knowing what happens next), within silence together with other pilgrims not searching for answers but content with stillness together, experiencing worship itself as a pilgrimage (and enjoying the journey together), and waiting in the confusing timelessness of the hope of healing from an injury.
So much of this waiting is new to me - though it shouldn't be - that it feels in many ways like a new birth. This season of Lent, I have with the earth shaken off my slumber - even as my (limping) pace has slowed to allow time for silent waiting in the presence of God (?) that defies any attempt to contain or explain it (or even to claim it). As the earth leans again into the warming rays of the Springtime sunlight, I have been reminded everywhere I turn that while I can participate in Spring, I cannot hasten its arrival. So, too, with God.
Lent this year has been a journey of waiting - but as I have slowed my spiritual pace, I have begun to notice many things that escaped my attention before. As I have settled into places of tension in my life, and in the life of my family and church community, I have found that submitting to the death of my attempts to flee or to relieve this tension in destructive ways has given rise to the realization that this tension will not kill me - it becomes a catalyst for creativity and abundant life.
I have begun to see the community of people gathered at Skyline for the treasure we are - by no means perfect but holding onto a vision of God's love for all people with passionate intensity and faith. Seeds that have been nurtured in the warmth of the tension we have experienced for several years now are beginning to sprout and to give some indication of the potential explosive growth in grace and love through our life together: in reaching out in love in many tangible ways to people in our surrounding community (people searching for sanctuaries of wellness, healing and recreation for the body and the soul).
Jesus, who invites us to this place of tension and creativity, paid with his life for his refusal to bow to the pretend gods of convention and compromise in his day. Yet he continues to invite us all to follow him into a realm of God's presence and power breaking in on all who are willing to wake from our contented sleep into a vision of a world where peace, love and merciful justice prevail. And because that vision conflicts constantly with our world and with our lives, to walk into this vision is to walk into unbearable tension. Jesus reminds us with his life and with his death that this tension cannot kill or silence us - only our fear of it.
Love binds us - binds the poles of tension to relate them if not to reconcile (or to remove) them. In this love we live and move and have our being. Jesus reveals this Love to us and calls us to life in Love - Love that birthed us into existence, and that now calls us into Life in all its Abundance. Follow me, he calls relentlessly and patiently. To the cross, where you will surely die to a false notion of your self-hood that hopelessly traps you in a prison of your own making. Follow me through the cross and beyond, to a place of existence beyond yourself - to a place of being for others, of communion in that Body that transcends all dividing walls and participates in an ongoing ministry of reconciliation for all people - for all creation.
So don't let's rush too quickly into Sunday. How can we ever hope to interpret the emptiness we will find there unless we have watched and waited with Jesus, who knows and shows us to be the Way where he is going? It's Wednesday, time for silence. And tomorrow the time of our betrayal will come. Yet he will not refuse us a place at his Table, knowing what it means to dip bread together with us in a common bowl. Then the howling crowd, and the terrible silence of Friday afternoon, when he will have to die alone because we will have deserted him (not wanting to walk into that pain). And a Sabbath that forces us to rest in (an uneasy) peace. And then (we know) another week will begin. A dawning of a new creation as the Spirit hovers fitfully yet purposefully over the face of the deep darkness.
Let there be Light. And he will shine in us.
So much of this waiting is new to me - though it shouldn't be - that it feels in many ways like a new birth. This season of Lent, I have with the earth shaken off my slumber - even as my (limping) pace has slowed to allow time for silent waiting in the presence of God (?) that defies any attempt to contain or explain it (or even to claim it). As the earth leans again into the warming rays of the Springtime sunlight, I have been reminded everywhere I turn that while I can participate in Spring, I cannot hasten its arrival. So, too, with God.
Lent this year has been a journey of waiting - but as I have slowed my spiritual pace, I have begun to notice many things that escaped my attention before. As I have settled into places of tension in my life, and in the life of my family and church community, I have found that submitting to the death of my attempts to flee or to relieve this tension in destructive ways has given rise to the realization that this tension will not kill me - it becomes a catalyst for creativity and abundant life.
I have begun to see the community of people gathered at Skyline for the treasure we are - by no means perfect but holding onto a vision of God's love for all people with passionate intensity and faith. Seeds that have been nurtured in the warmth of the tension we have experienced for several years now are beginning to sprout and to give some indication of the potential explosive growth in grace and love through our life together: in reaching out in love in many tangible ways to people in our surrounding community (people searching for sanctuaries of wellness, healing and recreation for the body and the soul).
Jesus, who invites us to this place of tension and creativity, paid with his life for his refusal to bow to the pretend gods of convention and compromise in his day. Yet he continues to invite us all to follow him into a realm of God's presence and power breaking in on all who are willing to wake from our contented sleep into a vision of a world where peace, love and merciful justice prevail. And because that vision conflicts constantly with our world and with our lives, to walk into this vision is to walk into unbearable tension. Jesus reminds us with his life and with his death that this tension cannot kill or silence us - only our fear of it.
Love binds us - binds the poles of tension to relate them if not to reconcile (or to remove) them. In this love we live and move and have our being. Jesus reveals this Love to us and calls us to life in Love - Love that birthed us into existence, and that now calls us into Life in all its Abundance. Follow me, he calls relentlessly and patiently. To the cross, where you will surely die to a false notion of your self-hood that hopelessly traps you in a prison of your own making. Follow me through the cross and beyond, to a place of existence beyond yourself - to a place of being for others, of communion in that Body that transcends all dividing walls and participates in an ongoing ministry of reconciliation for all people - for all creation.
So don't let's rush too quickly into Sunday. How can we ever hope to interpret the emptiness we will find there unless we have watched and waited with Jesus, who knows and shows us to be the Way where he is going? It's Wednesday, time for silence. And tomorrow the time of our betrayal will come. Yet he will not refuse us a place at his Table, knowing what it means to dip bread together with us in a common bowl. Then the howling crowd, and the terrible silence of Friday afternoon, when he will have to die alone because we will have deserted him (not wanting to walk into that pain). And a Sabbath that forces us to rest in (an uneasy) peace. And then (we know) another week will begin. A dawning of a new creation as the Spirit hovers fitfully yet purposefully over the face of the deep darkness.
Let there be Light. And he will shine in us.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
A Church Without Walls
On Monday evening, after 21 months of conversation and study and dialogue, the Church Conference of Skyline UMC voted 48-6 (with 2 abstentions) to adopt an expanded Mission Statement of welcome to all people into a community of followers of Jesus (regardless of age, racial, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental ability, marital status, religious experience, affectional orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status). Such debate as there was focused on why we would need to specify who we are welcoming, when the word All might suffice. The overwhelming majority felt that while most churches claim to welcome All, the reality is that they restrict their welcome to exclude people on the margins of society - the very people Jesus came to serve. The group hopes for the day when spelling out our welcome won't be necessary, when the walls are broken down - but 86% of the 56 members of the church who voted felt that our church needs to make an explicit welcome statement to people for whom All does not in fact mean all in typical churches.
The Statement adopted June 22 reads:
The Mission of Skyline United Methodist Church is to
Reach Out to all people seeking a deeper relationship with God, regardless of age, racial, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental ability, marital status, religious experience, affectional orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status,
Welcome them into a community followers of Jesus who freely choose to worship, serve, and live together prayerfullyand in peace following a Methodist understanding of God's gift of grace,
Equip them to live as the Holy Spirit gifts and guides, and
Send them to serve and reach out to all people in Christ's name.
Before the vote on the Welcome Statement, there was considerable debate over the budget. We recognize that we have paid a price for standing with people on the margins, and that we will continue to pay a price. Many in the church want to see us fail - they would rather shut us down than see us open our doors to all people. As we consider the plans God has for us (Jeremiah 29:11-14a), I feel a sense of hope that outweighs fear. Among those who voted last night were our children (including our foster daughter). They joined us in voting to be a part of a church without walls, and then they served us communion. We have fought for the past few years here for their place in God's house as much as anyone else's. Whatever the future holds, last night we affirmed a Light that shines in the darkness (of fear and ignorance and hatred) that can never be extinguished.
The Statement adopted June 22 reads:
The Mission of Skyline United Methodist Church is to
Reach Out to all people seeking a deeper relationship with God, regardless of age, racial, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental ability, marital status, religious experience, affectional orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status,
Welcome them into a community followers of Jesus who freely choose to worship, serve, and live together prayerfullyand in peace following a Methodist understanding of God's gift of grace,
Equip them to live as the Holy Spirit gifts and guides, and
Send them to serve and reach out to all people in Christ's name.
Before the vote on the Welcome Statement, there was considerable debate over the budget. We recognize that we have paid a price for standing with people on the margins, and that we will continue to pay a price. Many in the church want to see us fail - they would rather shut us down than see us open our doors to all people. As we consider the plans God has for us (Jeremiah 29:11-14a), I feel a sense of hope that outweighs fear. Among those who voted last night were our children (including our foster daughter). They joined us in voting to be a part of a church without walls, and then they served us communion. We have fought for the past few years here for their place in God's house as much as anyone else's. Whatever the future holds, last night we affirmed a Light that shines in the darkness (of fear and ignorance and hatred) that can never be extinguished.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Scripture and Prayer
I write today in response to a query from a good friend about my purpose in offering a Bible study on scripture and homosexuality (in particular) and about my overall understanding of the place of scripture in spiritual discernment, vis-a-vis the many other ways spiritual seekers experience the presence and guidance of the Divine. Joy puts it best when she summarizes that scripture and prayer (in words and in action) are profoundly related and necessary to each other, both in confirming and in conforming (transforming) human experience of the divine.
As an ordained pastor, I am accountable to scriptural authority - but the interpretive latitude of that mandate embraces tradition, reason, and experience in what amounts to an understanding of ongoing inspiration, at least in practice (if not officially). Of course, in the church, the latitude is considerably more vast - given what many pundits call scriptural illiteracy in the church (among laity and clergy, to be blunt). That illiteracy accounts for our flocking around such spurious projects as "The Prayer of Jabez" or "Your Best Life Now".
As I continue to grow in faith, especially in the wake of Divinity School, I experience scripture in the way I have been taught that an icon functions in prayer, as a spiritual catalyst or window through which we can (though by no means always do) experience greater clarity of understanding of God's presence, will and Way. I have come to understand that scriptural authority is not inherent in itself, but lies in its appropriation in the faith community that gathers around it to confirm their experience of the Holy in every generation and to reinforce the Spirit's call to live for God and others.
Different people will understand scriptural authority (and it's place in Christian discernment) in different ways - as the scriptures themselves amply attest. My purpose in offering an examination of scriptural passages traditionally used in the church to justify discrimination and abuse of homosexual persons is to demonstrate one way to resolve an apparent conflict between scriptural discernment (an apparent divine justification of punishment of homosexual people) and human experience (the fruit of faithfulness and love expressed in the lives of homosexual persons). I do not believe there is any conflict - traditional interpretations of scripture notwithstanding.
I am well aware that there may be no receptive audience for what I have to say. On the one hand, those Christians who hold to a more traditional (they might claim that it is more "literal") understanding of scriptural interpretation and authority certainly argue that my interpretation is de facto liberal revisionism in order to reconcile scripture to the higher authority (for me, they might argue) of human reason and experience. On the other hand, someone who holds a far more nuanced understanding of scriptural authority and interpetation might see my project as an anachronistic gloss on a hopelessly time-bound document that has little contemporary relevance either for religious or philosophical seekers of Truth. I prayed long and hard about scrapping the entire project for those reasons. But in the end, I felt I needed to speak my mind, not so much for the defense of scriptural authority, but as a testimony and thanksgiving of how scripture functions in my life as a means of discernment and experience of the reality of the divine in the human community (past and present).
Given my profession as a scholar of scripture and a theologian, I suppose my passion for this project should come as no surprise. I grew up in a tradition that valued scripture as the sine qua non of spiritual discernment, and I continue to experience God's presence in it's profound testimony. Though I no longer understand scriptural inspiration in a magical way (i.e., divine dictation), I value more than I can say the power of scripture to draw me into conversation with a community that spans six millennia and more of companions in this spiritual journey that is life. These include nomads, prophets, poets, kings, beggars, lepers, messiahs, disciples, governors, soldiers, revolutionaries, farmers and fishers, shepherds, prostitutes, children and their parents. They are not dead to me. Their testimony (both implicit and "literal") interprets my life and experience just as I am compelled to interpret its mysterious meanings (sometimes a different facet with each fresh reading), and calls me far beyond the boundaries of myself - to experience something that begins to take the shape of what we (too casually, more often than not) refer to as God.
I am a student of literature, and the scriptures are certainly great literature. But I have inherited, for better or worse, a tradition of interpretation and a community that has gathered and gathered around this collection (canon) as a vessel for understanding God's ways among the human community. Their relevance or authority in every generation comes from our engagement not so much with the words but with the community that gathered around those words in many ages and times. We ratify their authority and ability to "lead us into all Truth" not a priori, because they are the Holy writings, but because more and more of us experience their power to interpret our experience (of prayer and of life) as related by love to one another and to God. For some, this happens on a surface level that I am tempted to dismiss as naive and immature. At moments of better clarity, I realize that even in this apparent disparity, God's grace meets each of us at our point of need and receptivity.
As an ordained pastor, I am accountable to scriptural authority - but the interpretive latitude of that mandate embraces tradition, reason, and experience in what amounts to an understanding of ongoing inspiration, at least in practice (if not officially). Of course, in the church, the latitude is considerably more vast - given what many pundits call scriptural illiteracy in the church (among laity and clergy, to be blunt). That illiteracy accounts for our flocking around such spurious projects as "The Prayer of Jabez" or "Your Best Life Now".
As I continue to grow in faith, especially in the wake of Divinity School, I experience scripture in the way I have been taught that an icon functions in prayer, as a spiritual catalyst or window through which we can (though by no means always do) experience greater clarity of understanding of God's presence, will and Way. I have come to understand that scriptural authority is not inherent in itself, but lies in its appropriation in the faith community that gathers around it to confirm their experience of the Holy in every generation and to reinforce the Spirit's call to live for God and others.
Different people will understand scriptural authority (and it's place in Christian discernment) in different ways - as the scriptures themselves amply attest. My purpose in offering an examination of scriptural passages traditionally used in the church to justify discrimination and abuse of homosexual persons is to demonstrate one way to resolve an apparent conflict between scriptural discernment (an apparent divine justification of punishment of homosexual people) and human experience (the fruit of faithfulness and love expressed in the lives of homosexual persons). I do not believe there is any conflict - traditional interpretations of scripture notwithstanding.
I am well aware that there may be no receptive audience for what I have to say. On the one hand, those Christians who hold to a more traditional (they might claim that it is more "literal") understanding of scriptural interpretation and authority certainly argue that my interpretation is de facto liberal revisionism in order to reconcile scripture to the higher authority (for me, they might argue) of human reason and experience. On the other hand, someone who holds a far more nuanced understanding of scriptural authority and interpetation might see my project as an anachronistic gloss on a hopelessly time-bound document that has little contemporary relevance either for religious or philosophical seekers of Truth. I prayed long and hard about scrapping the entire project for those reasons. But in the end, I felt I needed to speak my mind, not so much for the defense of scriptural authority, but as a testimony and thanksgiving of how scripture functions in my life as a means of discernment and experience of the reality of the divine in the human community (past and present).
Given my profession as a scholar of scripture and a theologian, I suppose my passion for this project should come as no surprise. I grew up in a tradition that valued scripture as the sine qua non of spiritual discernment, and I continue to experience God's presence in it's profound testimony. Though I no longer understand scriptural inspiration in a magical way (i.e., divine dictation), I value more than I can say the power of scripture to draw me into conversation with a community that spans six millennia and more of companions in this spiritual journey that is life. These include nomads, prophets, poets, kings, beggars, lepers, messiahs, disciples, governors, soldiers, revolutionaries, farmers and fishers, shepherds, prostitutes, children and their parents. They are not dead to me. Their testimony (both implicit and "literal") interprets my life and experience just as I am compelled to interpret its mysterious meanings (sometimes a different facet with each fresh reading), and calls me far beyond the boundaries of myself - to experience something that begins to take the shape of what we (too casually, more often than not) refer to as God.
I am a student of literature, and the scriptures are certainly great literature. But I have inherited, for better or worse, a tradition of interpretation and a community that has gathered and gathered around this collection (canon) as a vessel for understanding God's ways among the human community. Their relevance or authority in every generation comes from our engagement not so much with the words but with the community that gathered around those words in many ages and times. We ratify their authority and ability to "lead us into all Truth" not a priori, because they are the Holy writings, but because more and more of us experience their power to interpret our experience (of prayer and of life) as related by love to one another and to God. For some, this happens on a surface level that I am tempted to dismiss as naive and immature. At moments of better clarity, I realize that even in this apparent disparity, God's grace meets each of us at our point of need and receptivity.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Outliers and the Fate We Make That Makes Us
Bo Gordy-Stith's review of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success" (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)
I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest study of human behavior, Outliers, about the backstory of success in America and to a lesser degree, in the world. The other books are The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Outliers did not disappoint. Gladwell delivers a diverse range of applications of his thesis with humor and the kind of penetrating wisdom you would expect from a poet who can reveal some hidden secret in something you think you know all about but have never really seen.
Someone asked me if Outliers was a religious book, and I told them that it could be a way to understand the more subtle and powerful ways of grace in our world. But while Gladwell prompts an exploration of the road to success (and how we might widen it a bit), his definition of success creates an extraordinary tension he can never resolve.
Stratospheric success, it turns out, according to Gladwell, involves the gift of talent and extraordinary, relentless hours of practice - 10,000 hours of practice. That's the kind of precision Gladwell delivers repeatedly, like the fact that you can recall a series of numbers you can recite in 2 seconds, or how the ability to stay with a math problem for 22 minutes makes the difference between excelling in math and merely surviving. Or if you're a southerner who has just received an insult, you'll walk to within 2 feet of a bouncer before turning aside, rather than 6 feet (for anyone not from the south). All of the numbers, of course, are based on studies Gladwell cites to buttress his argument that reads more like a conversation over a really good meal.
The last tidbit exemplifies the thesis that gives the book title an ironic twist: in addition to talent and determination, outliers are inevitably products of their families and the larger communities (living and dead) and even history - in other words, they're not really outliers at all - they're inescapably woven into the human social fabric. And though Gladwell spends much more time exploring this thesis than suggesting ways to capitalize on it in society, he repeatedly asserts that taking the social environment part of the success equation far more seriously would result in far more opportunity for success.
Near the end of the book, he cites an inner city school program that closes the well-known learning gap between rich and poor students by extending the classroom hours and nixing a three-month summer break (where studies Gladwell cites demonstrate the real reason for the learning gap between rich and poor occurs). Earlier in the book, Gladwell writes about a group of geniuses followed by a sociologist whose success or failure correlated well with the income and education levels of their parents. The extended hours school program recognizes this cultural reality and then mitigates it essentially by removing the kids from their unsupportive home environment.
Another example of what Gladwell refers to as taking cultural factors seriously involves the retraining of Korean pilots in the wake of a series of accidents. Recognizing that a Korean culture of deference to superiors made it difficult for co-pilots to correct pilot errors, an (American) consultant banished the Korean language from the cockpits, essentially creating a competing cockpit culture that would allow the egalitarian cooperation necessary to safely fly commercial jets. And of course it worked.
But this is just where Gladwell's highly entertaining book leaves me unsettled. The author shifts between the draconian social re-engineering I mention above on the one hand and a resignation to the fate of (for instance) being born in 1835, 1917, 1951, or on January 1, which would give you a much better chance to be one of the richest persons in the history of the world, a highly successful Jewish lawyer in New York, an architect of the PC revolution, or a professional Canadian hockey player, respectively.
Radical social reengineering (or, more to the point, eradication, as in the Korean Airline cockpits) to level the playing field for far more people to succeed and "luck" (to use Bill Gates' words) form opposite poles of Gladwell's study of success. But I can find no middle ground - no spectrum of what I have come to call Grace in between the harsh poles of Make and Fate. In the end, Gladwell refuses a "bloom where you're planted" ethic for a success standard imposed by a non-existent patchwork culture he forms from Asian rice paddies to European tailors and obnoxious air traffic controllers from the Bronx - all with the goal of getting into a mythical house on a hill, via a road marked with 10,000 hours of unrelenting toil for greatness.
His epilogue is a colorful description of his own patchwork Jamaican/English/African cultural history, which makes a kind of sense, given the thrust of his thesis. The view from his house on a hill must be marvelous, and he justly recognizes that it is built literally on the foundation of the backs of his tireless and blessed forebears (blessed by fortune in ironic ways).
As it happens, I'm also reading Tom Sawyer to my 12 year old son and 11 year old foster son, each night as they go to bed. They boys love the hero of the quintessentially American tale, and strive to emulate him in their lives. They look forward to a golden summer of delights at the helm of a mountain bike, in the pool, surrounded by budding beauty they (like Tom) are beginning more and more to appreciate, and at the computer screen, where they live out a heroic existence Tom would not have been able to imagine. My son is gifted with extraordinary intelligence in math and science. My foster son is a whiz on the basketball court and skating rink - and is remarkably observant. My daughter already dreams of putting her considerable empathy and music talent together into a career in music therapy.
The idea of sending them to a rice paddy this summer to increase their chance at success seems to mock the very idea of success. And grace. No doubt hard work finds its own reward. But the culture that nurtures them and my wife and me encourages us to value other virtues as well, like friendship, sacrifice for others, and Sabbath. And grace. Which promises me and my community that God has indeed gifted us all for a purpose.
In the midst of his discussion of the arduous labor involved in rice farming in China, Gladwell defines what he calls meaningful work. To be meaningful, Gladwell asserts that work must involve (1) a clear relationship between effort and reward; (2) complexity; and (3) autonomy (p. 236). Those sound like the reflections of an entrepreneur - an author, perhaps, from the vantage point of the house on a hill. They are the words of a self-made man (albeit haunted by the injustice of fate that allowed him to make himself on the backs of others).
The words I would use to define meaningful work would be challenge, variety, and value (not merely defined in terms of money, of course). Life work should be stimulating, worthy of the creator and their creativity, and it should make the world a better place. Perhaps that's too much to ask, but in the end, I'd rather not settle for anything less (for myself or for anyone else). Success does not mean masking my cultural impediments, but recognizing in them (and in myself) unique strengths and (as I would label them as a pastor) gifts from God.
Gladwell entertains, surely. And he has collected a stunning amount of data to ponder the meaning of success. But his title dooms his thesis by posing an insoluble dilemma: how to escape the bonds of one's culture in order to achieve “success”. He is right about one thing, certainly. There are no true outliers in the human community. No islands. We are bound together in a shared history and family, and we truly succeed only when we reclaim both our cultural heritage as a gift - and our lives as God's gift to the human family.
I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest study of human behavior, Outliers, about the backstory of success in America and to a lesser degree, in the world. The other books are The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Outliers did not disappoint. Gladwell delivers a diverse range of applications of his thesis with humor and the kind of penetrating wisdom you would expect from a poet who can reveal some hidden secret in something you think you know all about but have never really seen.
Someone asked me if Outliers was a religious book, and I told them that it could be a way to understand the more subtle and powerful ways of grace in our world. But while Gladwell prompts an exploration of the road to success (and how we might widen it a bit), his definition of success creates an extraordinary tension he can never resolve.
Stratospheric success, it turns out, according to Gladwell, involves the gift of talent and extraordinary, relentless hours of practice - 10,000 hours of practice. That's the kind of precision Gladwell delivers repeatedly, like the fact that you can recall a series of numbers you can recite in 2 seconds, or how the ability to stay with a math problem for 22 minutes makes the difference between excelling in math and merely surviving. Or if you're a southerner who has just received an insult, you'll walk to within 2 feet of a bouncer before turning aside, rather than 6 feet (for anyone not from the south). All of the numbers, of course, are based on studies Gladwell cites to buttress his argument that reads more like a conversation over a really good meal.
The last tidbit exemplifies the thesis that gives the book title an ironic twist: in addition to talent and determination, outliers are inevitably products of their families and the larger communities (living and dead) and even history - in other words, they're not really outliers at all - they're inescapably woven into the human social fabric. And though Gladwell spends much more time exploring this thesis than suggesting ways to capitalize on it in society, he repeatedly asserts that taking the social environment part of the success equation far more seriously would result in far more opportunity for success.
Near the end of the book, he cites an inner city school program that closes the well-known learning gap between rich and poor students by extending the classroom hours and nixing a three-month summer break (where studies Gladwell cites demonstrate the real reason for the learning gap between rich and poor occurs). Earlier in the book, Gladwell writes about a group of geniuses followed by a sociologist whose success or failure correlated well with the income and education levels of their parents. The extended hours school program recognizes this cultural reality and then mitigates it essentially by removing the kids from their unsupportive home environment.
Another example of what Gladwell refers to as taking cultural factors seriously involves the retraining of Korean pilots in the wake of a series of accidents. Recognizing that a Korean culture of deference to superiors made it difficult for co-pilots to correct pilot errors, an (American) consultant banished the Korean language from the cockpits, essentially creating a competing cockpit culture that would allow the egalitarian cooperation necessary to safely fly commercial jets. And of course it worked.
But this is just where Gladwell's highly entertaining book leaves me unsettled. The author shifts between the draconian social re-engineering I mention above on the one hand and a resignation to the fate of (for instance) being born in 1835, 1917, 1951, or on January 1, which would give you a much better chance to be one of the richest persons in the history of the world, a highly successful Jewish lawyer in New York, an architect of the PC revolution, or a professional Canadian hockey player, respectively.
Radical social reengineering (or, more to the point, eradication, as in the Korean Airline cockpits) to level the playing field for far more people to succeed and "luck" (to use Bill Gates' words) form opposite poles of Gladwell's study of success. But I can find no middle ground - no spectrum of what I have come to call Grace in between the harsh poles of Make and Fate. In the end, Gladwell refuses a "bloom where you're planted" ethic for a success standard imposed by a non-existent patchwork culture he forms from Asian rice paddies to European tailors and obnoxious air traffic controllers from the Bronx - all with the goal of getting into a mythical house on a hill, via a road marked with 10,000 hours of unrelenting toil for greatness.
His epilogue is a colorful description of his own patchwork Jamaican/English/African cultural history, which makes a kind of sense, given the thrust of his thesis. The view from his house on a hill must be marvelous, and he justly recognizes that it is built literally on the foundation of the backs of his tireless and blessed forebears (blessed by fortune in ironic ways).
As it happens, I'm also reading Tom Sawyer to my 12 year old son and 11 year old foster son, each night as they go to bed. They boys love the hero of the quintessentially American tale, and strive to emulate him in their lives. They look forward to a golden summer of delights at the helm of a mountain bike, in the pool, surrounded by budding beauty they (like Tom) are beginning more and more to appreciate, and at the computer screen, where they live out a heroic existence Tom would not have been able to imagine. My son is gifted with extraordinary intelligence in math and science. My foster son is a whiz on the basketball court and skating rink - and is remarkably observant. My daughter already dreams of putting her considerable empathy and music talent together into a career in music therapy.
The idea of sending them to a rice paddy this summer to increase their chance at success seems to mock the very idea of success. And grace. No doubt hard work finds its own reward. But the culture that nurtures them and my wife and me encourages us to value other virtues as well, like friendship, sacrifice for others, and Sabbath. And grace. Which promises me and my community that God has indeed gifted us all for a purpose.
In the midst of his discussion of the arduous labor involved in rice farming in China, Gladwell defines what he calls meaningful work. To be meaningful, Gladwell asserts that work must involve (1) a clear relationship between effort and reward; (2) complexity; and (3) autonomy (p. 236). Those sound like the reflections of an entrepreneur - an author, perhaps, from the vantage point of the house on a hill. They are the words of a self-made man (albeit haunted by the injustice of fate that allowed him to make himself on the backs of others).
The words I would use to define meaningful work would be challenge, variety, and value (not merely defined in terms of money, of course). Life work should be stimulating, worthy of the creator and their creativity, and it should make the world a better place. Perhaps that's too much to ask, but in the end, I'd rather not settle for anything less (for myself or for anyone else). Success does not mean masking my cultural impediments, but recognizing in them (and in myself) unique strengths and (as I would label them as a pastor) gifts from God.
Gladwell entertains, surely. And he has collected a stunning amount of data to ponder the meaning of success. But his title dooms his thesis by posing an insoluble dilemma: how to escape the bonds of one's culture in order to achieve “success”. He is right about one thing, certainly. There are no true outliers in the human community. No islands. We are bound together in a shared history and family, and we truly succeed only when we reclaim both our cultural heritage as a gift - and our lives as God's gift to the human family.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Review of Christopher Hitchens' Book: "God is Not Great"
I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” (New York: Twelve Books, 2007). It’s one of a half-dozen or so atheist screeds that have been making the rounds since our communal 9/11 scare in America, in the new world order where fear and finger-pointing are the new gold rush territory for hucksters. After my review, I quote a few of the reviews which closely examine Hitchens’ naïve argument for an Enlightenment utopia.
As a deconstructionist, Hitchens presents some well-worn arguments that monotheistic faith is based on fables used to explain a pre-scientific understanding of human existence as if he discovered them. He presents the argument that the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8 and the ending of Mark are not found in the earliest manuscripts as “shocking” (p. 122) and “astonishing” (p. 142). Yet even translations of the New Testament published by conservative publishing houses have acknowledged these facts in the texts themselves for decades. Hitchens, who only quotes the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, apparently did not know this until he read Bart Ehrman, who Hitchen’s credits with the “astonishing finding” of the short ending of Mark (in Ehrman's 2005 book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.).
Other reviews comment on similar factual blunders, or on Hitchens’ presentation of editorial gloss as fact in this work purported to be a paean to reason, Truth, and enlightened discourse. Which raises a problem when considering Hitchens’ other arguments and factual claims, covering a huge swath of human history, theology, and scientific inquiry. From a macro perspective, his argument that religious expression has been tainted with atrocity in the course of human history sounds plausible enough. Yet to leap with Hitchens to the conclusion that all religious expression must be so tainted (the thesis of his book) requires faith that his patchwork anecdotal claims are both representative and accurate. And close examination of many of these claims would strain all but the most blind faith.
His commentary on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures "covers" a bare 26 pages. The Qur’an gets another 13 pages. Søren Kierkegaard examines the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) in over 100 pages of his 1843 book, Fear and Trembling. Hitchens claims to cover the “plain meaning of this frightful story” in a paragraph. In this, Christopher Hitchens shares far more in common with Christian fundamentalists than he cares to acknowledge (and who for him represent the sum total of Christian experience). Here lies Hitchens’ argument’s greatest flaw in rationale: straw-man arguments can only be a strong as the version of their adversary’s claim they attempt to undermine.
As a Christian pastor and theologian, I don’t need an atheist to make me aware of the misdeeds of the church throughout history. Nor do I need him to point out for me the discoveries of scriptural textual scholarship, criticism and archaeology. Hitchens trots forward the archaeological research works of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (page 102) as evidence that the "Mosaic myths" of the Exodus and conquest of the promised land "can be safely discarded". I have read their books with fascination. They have enriched my reasoned faith in God and in the patchwork stories of generations of people who have sought to know and worship God and serve each other in love. I have used Bart Ehrman’s books on New Testament textual criticism in my sermons at Skyline UMC. So many of the “show-stoppers” Hitchens employs as proof that religion and the "god" of religion are no longer useful in a technologically advanced world are for me but another sign that the church is a curious incarnation of the divine and humanity at our best and worst.
Here’s an amazing news flash for anyone convinced by Hitchens’ anecdotal arguments: religion is neither the cause nor the cure for the human capacity of evil and of goodness. Neither is religion some monolithic reality, in its bewildering variety of expressions and practices throughout human history. It can claim no monopoly on morality or truth, or freedom from error. What it can demonstrate is a vast collection of human experience of love, truth, and striving after the ever-elusive goal of escaping the bounds of self in search of unity with a reality that encompasses and transcends the mystery of life.
A man of letters can surely appreciate the power of metaphor where the sum of observable facts cannot begin to do justice to the reality to which they only hint. Religion is itself a grand metaphor – a collaboration of the human tribe throughout time that persists not merely because of our desire for spiritual comfort but precisely because of our insatiable thirst for knowledge and inquiry. No human discipline or tradition holds a monopoly either on epistemology or pedagogy, including science, reason, art or any other human expression of understanding and contemplation. That Hitchens claims that his own pedagogy and experience qualify as the pinnacle of human understanding seems more than a little absurd – and dogmatic.
At times, he asks to be left alone. For the most part, Hitchens lives in an imaginary world where it would be possible to divorce human understanding from religious experience and understanding. He frequently resorts to name-calling (“stupid” and “boobie” are his favorite epitaphs for anyone who disagrees with his assessment of religious experience, which he repeatedly boils down to a fear of death). Which brings me to a final point.
Christopher Hitchens wears his personal religious experience like some chest of cub scout achievement awards, which he believes gives him the street cred to critique Christian Protestantism, in particular, from within. That his grandmother was Jewish does not, however, give him some sort of inside track on understanding religious experience, any more than does his abandonment of the Anglican expression of Christianity at the age of 9 (when his tutor, Mrs. Jean Watts, overstepped her understanding of theology on a nature walk – see pages 1-3). Basing his understanding of Christianity on his dogmatic (his claims to the contrary notwithstanding) re-reading of anecdotal history and a 9-year old experience of Anglican faith is like calling his baptism into the Greek Orthodox Church in order to marry his first wife a conversion.
That Hitchens' argument with religious excess is justified goes almost without saying. As a Christian ordained minister, I fight against misogyny, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and nationalism that masquerade as religiosity. Though I treasure, study, and regularly preach on passages of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, I do not worship them by treating the translations or manuscripts as "infallible" – or stoop to such a transparent way of privileging my interpretation over any other. I apply the many understandings of textual criticism not to undermine but to understand this collection of human experience and wisdom about the search for and experience of God. As a pastor, I don’t threaten children or adults with hell or any other kind of punishment, though I have many times personally and corporately experienced the power of God’s forgiveness in Jesus the Christ.
I am not planning anyone’s demise in Hell, as Hitchins claims I am. I am a follower of the Way of Jesus the Christ because I have, since before and long after I was 9 years old, repeatedly experienced in myself and witnessed in others the transforming power of the new life an experience of Christ's presence makes possible. For me, and for the community of Christ-followers with whom I am privileged to serve, our experience of the religion of Christianity, not merely in our own time but for many generations preceding us, has been a calling to live in ways that recognize our lives and the lives of others as a gift from God. We experience this faith practice intellectually and spiritually. The most common expression of our faith is our daily response to God’s call to relinquish a subjective delusion and empathize (in thought and action) with the human community.
That we or other followers of Christ sometimes get this maddeningly and sinfully wrong does not stop us from daily striving to keep faith with God and with each other. That is the leap we make every day. For us, the doctrine of the atonement does not so much represent a gruesome get-out-of-jail-free card as it does an invitation to see our lives as a sacrifice of love to others – particularly to others in need. Every Sunday, we gather not “to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness” (p. 6), but to celebrate life itself as a magnificent gift we can choose to offer to others – and thereby to God.
Hitchens joins a long line of prophets, priests and believers (notably Isaiah and Jesus) in naming some of the sins of the church. His conclusion that these sins constitute sufficient rationale that “religion poisons everything” betrays his own myopic hubris and naiveté concerning the human capacity of evil and goodness. He is, after all, a reporter of human suffering, and claims some mythic objective stance from which to judge the compass of human striving for knowledge and understanding. He mistakes inquiry for wisdom, and does not practice or value the very real need for empathy in his writing.
Here are some quotes from other reviews of the book I found particularly interesting:
I write in the book [I Don't Believe in Atheists] that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right.
…I think part of the problem is people who create a morality based on their own experience, which is what of course the New Atheists and the Christian fundamentalists have done.
…I think people who start dividing the world into us and them fail to have empathy.
…I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think that if you live in Somalia, it's fine to mutilate little girls. There is nothing wrong with taking a moral stand, but when we take a moral stand and then use it to elevate ourselves to another moral plane above other human beings, then it becomes, in biblical terms, a form of self-worship. That's what the New Atheists have, and that's what the Christian fundamentalists have.
(Chris Hedges, in a March 13, 2008 interview with Charly Wilder on Salon.com)
Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?
The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain, but then he seems to be perplexed as well, given how quickly his attempt to apply evolutionary theory to the thorny problem of abortion collapses into unfortunate-sounding appeals to "creative destruction" and "the pitilessness of nature."
This detour into Social Darwinism is mercifully brief, and for the most part Hitchens hews faithfully to Thomas Jefferson's famous attempt to carve all the miracles out of the Gospels and leave the ethical teaching intact. I do not mean to give offense in calling Hitchens a quasi-Christian moralist, but in his better moments that is what he plainly is—a true believer in the branch of the Enlightenment tradition that is epistemologically materialist but otherwise takes its cues from Christianity. The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever since—toward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case.
(Ross Douthat – The Claremont Institute for the study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, July 9, 2007)
What Hitchens really wants to toss into the pyre is religious coercion, whether it is parents scaring children into belief with the idea of Hell, American religious groups attempting to ban stem cell research or foist creationism into the classrooms, the Catholic Church bewailing that condom-use is worse than AIDS, or the Islamic fanatics who are trying to impose their more militant brand of religion on the rest of the world.
…Hitchens closes his book with a chapter called "The Need For a New Enlightenment," in which he asks us to eschew blind credulity; to resolve our ethical dilemmas not with outmoded religious texts but with the literature of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Schiller and Dostoyevsky; to pursue unfettered scientific inquiry; and to divorce sexual life from fear and tyranny. Well over a century ago, the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called for a similar new enlightenment, yet the century that followed his was plagued by blind credulity which in turn hoisted dangerous wannabe demigods to the helms of several nations.
Today, when our personal freedoms are stronger than ever, we are seeing a resurgence of this dangerous credulity.
…Hitchens' subtitle, while catchy, is misleading. It is a statistical fact that the majority of religious people support the separation of church and state and practice their religion in an innocuously personal way. Religion also enriches people's lives and gives them hope in their darkest moments. When Hitchens says religion "poisons everything" or is a "threat to human survival," he is only half right. He certainly gives us egregious examples of religious people or religious teachings that would cause any sensible person to recoil. But one wonders how much of what Hitchens takes to task is religion as a motive or religion as an excuse.
— Jeremy Carlos Foster (jcarlosfoster@gmail.com)
Flak magazine
As a deconstructionist, Hitchens presents some well-worn arguments that monotheistic faith is based on fables used to explain a pre-scientific understanding of human existence as if he discovered them. He presents the argument that the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8 and the ending of Mark are not found in the earliest manuscripts as “shocking” (p. 122) and “astonishing” (p. 142). Yet even translations of the New Testament published by conservative publishing houses have acknowledged these facts in the texts themselves for decades. Hitchens, who only quotes the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, apparently did not know this until he read Bart Ehrman, who Hitchen’s credits with the “astonishing finding” of the short ending of Mark (in Ehrman's 2005 book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.).
Other reviews comment on similar factual blunders, or on Hitchens’ presentation of editorial gloss as fact in this work purported to be a paean to reason, Truth, and enlightened discourse. Which raises a problem when considering Hitchens’ other arguments and factual claims, covering a huge swath of human history, theology, and scientific inquiry. From a macro perspective, his argument that religious expression has been tainted with atrocity in the course of human history sounds plausible enough. Yet to leap with Hitchens to the conclusion that all religious expression must be so tainted (the thesis of his book) requires faith that his patchwork anecdotal claims are both representative and accurate. And close examination of many of these claims would strain all but the most blind faith.
His commentary on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures "covers" a bare 26 pages. The Qur’an gets another 13 pages. Søren Kierkegaard examines the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) in over 100 pages of his 1843 book, Fear and Trembling. Hitchens claims to cover the “plain meaning of this frightful story” in a paragraph. In this, Christopher Hitchens shares far more in common with Christian fundamentalists than he cares to acknowledge (and who for him represent the sum total of Christian experience). Here lies Hitchens’ argument’s greatest flaw in rationale: straw-man arguments can only be a strong as the version of their adversary’s claim they attempt to undermine.
As a Christian pastor and theologian, I don’t need an atheist to make me aware of the misdeeds of the church throughout history. Nor do I need him to point out for me the discoveries of scriptural textual scholarship, criticism and archaeology. Hitchens trots forward the archaeological research works of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (page 102) as evidence that the "Mosaic myths" of the Exodus and conquest of the promised land "can be safely discarded". I have read their books with fascination. They have enriched my reasoned faith in God and in the patchwork stories of generations of people who have sought to know and worship God and serve each other in love. I have used Bart Ehrman’s books on New Testament textual criticism in my sermons at Skyline UMC. So many of the “show-stoppers” Hitchens employs as proof that religion and the "god" of religion are no longer useful in a technologically advanced world are for me but another sign that the church is a curious incarnation of the divine and humanity at our best and worst.
Here’s an amazing news flash for anyone convinced by Hitchens’ anecdotal arguments: religion is neither the cause nor the cure for the human capacity of evil and of goodness. Neither is religion some monolithic reality, in its bewildering variety of expressions and practices throughout human history. It can claim no monopoly on morality or truth, or freedom from error. What it can demonstrate is a vast collection of human experience of love, truth, and striving after the ever-elusive goal of escaping the bounds of self in search of unity with a reality that encompasses and transcends the mystery of life.
A man of letters can surely appreciate the power of metaphor where the sum of observable facts cannot begin to do justice to the reality to which they only hint. Religion is itself a grand metaphor – a collaboration of the human tribe throughout time that persists not merely because of our desire for spiritual comfort but precisely because of our insatiable thirst for knowledge and inquiry. No human discipline or tradition holds a monopoly either on epistemology or pedagogy, including science, reason, art or any other human expression of understanding and contemplation. That Hitchens claims that his own pedagogy and experience qualify as the pinnacle of human understanding seems more than a little absurd – and dogmatic.
At times, he asks to be left alone. For the most part, Hitchens lives in an imaginary world where it would be possible to divorce human understanding from religious experience and understanding. He frequently resorts to name-calling (“stupid” and “boobie” are his favorite epitaphs for anyone who disagrees with his assessment of religious experience, which he repeatedly boils down to a fear of death). Which brings me to a final point.
Christopher Hitchens wears his personal religious experience like some chest of cub scout achievement awards, which he believes gives him the street cred to critique Christian Protestantism, in particular, from within. That his grandmother was Jewish does not, however, give him some sort of inside track on understanding religious experience, any more than does his abandonment of the Anglican expression of Christianity at the age of 9 (when his tutor, Mrs. Jean Watts, overstepped her understanding of theology on a nature walk – see pages 1-3). Basing his understanding of Christianity on his dogmatic (his claims to the contrary notwithstanding) re-reading of anecdotal history and a 9-year old experience of Anglican faith is like calling his baptism into the Greek Orthodox Church in order to marry his first wife a conversion.
That Hitchens' argument with religious excess is justified goes almost without saying. As a Christian ordained minister, I fight against misogyny, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and nationalism that masquerade as religiosity. Though I treasure, study, and regularly preach on passages of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, I do not worship them by treating the translations or manuscripts as "infallible" – or stoop to such a transparent way of privileging my interpretation over any other. I apply the many understandings of textual criticism not to undermine but to understand this collection of human experience and wisdom about the search for and experience of God. As a pastor, I don’t threaten children or adults with hell or any other kind of punishment, though I have many times personally and corporately experienced the power of God’s forgiveness in Jesus the Christ.
I am not planning anyone’s demise in Hell, as Hitchins claims I am. I am a follower of the Way of Jesus the Christ because I have, since before and long after I was 9 years old, repeatedly experienced in myself and witnessed in others the transforming power of the new life an experience of Christ's presence makes possible. For me, and for the community of Christ-followers with whom I am privileged to serve, our experience of the religion of Christianity, not merely in our own time but for many generations preceding us, has been a calling to live in ways that recognize our lives and the lives of others as a gift from God. We experience this faith practice intellectually and spiritually. The most common expression of our faith is our daily response to God’s call to relinquish a subjective delusion and empathize (in thought and action) with the human community.
That we or other followers of Christ sometimes get this maddeningly and sinfully wrong does not stop us from daily striving to keep faith with God and with each other. That is the leap we make every day. For us, the doctrine of the atonement does not so much represent a gruesome get-out-of-jail-free card as it does an invitation to see our lives as a sacrifice of love to others – particularly to others in need. Every Sunday, we gather not “to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness” (p. 6), but to celebrate life itself as a magnificent gift we can choose to offer to others – and thereby to God.
Hitchens joins a long line of prophets, priests and believers (notably Isaiah and Jesus) in naming some of the sins of the church. His conclusion that these sins constitute sufficient rationale that “religion poisons everything” betrays his own myopic hubris and naiveté concerning the human capacity of evil and goodness. He is, after all, a reporter of human suffering, and claims some mythic objective stance from which to judge the compass of human striving for knowledge and understanding. He mistakes inquiry for wisdom, and does not practice or value the very real need for empathy in his writing.
Here are some quotes from other reviews of the book I found particularly interesting:
I write in the book [I Don't Believe in Atheists] that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right.
…I think part of the problem is people who create a morality based on their own experience, which is what of course the New Atheists and the Christian fundamentalists have done.
…I think people who start dividing the world into us and them fail to have empathy.
…I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think that if you live in Somalia, it's fine to mutilate little girls. There is nothing wrong with taking a moral stand, but when we take a moral stand and then use it to elevate ourselves to another moral plane above other human beings, then it becomes, in biblical terms, a form of self-worship. That's what the New Atheists have, and that's what the Christian fundamentalists have.
(Chris Hedges, in a March 13, 2008 interview with Charly Wilder on Salon.com)
Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?
The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain, but then he seems to be perplexed as well, given how quickly his attempt to apply evolutionary theory to the thorny problem of abortion collapses into unfortunate-sounding appeals to "creative destruction" and "the pitilessness of nature."
This detour into Social Darwinism is mercifully brief, and for the most part Hitchens hews faithfully to Thomas Jefferson's famous attempt to carve all the miracles out of the Gospels and leave the ethical teaching intact. I do not mean to give offense in calling Hitchens a quasi-Christian moralist, but in his better moments that is what he plainly is—a true believer in the branch of the Enlightenment tradition that is epistemologically materialist but otherwise takes its cues from Christianity. The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever since—toward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case.
(Ross Douthat – The Claremont Institute for the study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, July 9, 2007)
What Hitchens really wants to toss into the pyre is religious coercion, whether it is parents scaring children into belief with the idea of Hell, American religious groups attempting to ban stem cell research or foist creationism into the classrooms, the Catholic Church bewailing that condom-use is worse than AIDS, or the Islamic fanatics who are trying to impose their more militant brand of religion on the rest of the world.
…Hitchens closes his book with a chapter called "The Need For a New Enlightenment," in which he asks us to eschew blind credulity; to resolve our ethical dilemmas not with outmoded religious texts but with the literature of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Schiller and Dostoyevsky; to pursue unfettered scientific inquiry; and to divorce sexual life from fear and tyranny. Well over a century ago, the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called for a similar new enlightenment, yet the century that followed his was plagued by blind credulity which in turn hoisted dangerous wannabe demigods to the helms of several nations.
Today, when our personal freedoms are stronger than ever, we are seeing a resurgence of this dangerous credulity.
…Hitchens' subtitle, while catchy, is misleading. It is a statistical fact that the majority of religious people support the separation of church and state and practice their religion in an innocuously personal way. Religion also enriches people's lives and gives them hope in their darkest moments. When Hitchens says religion "poisons everything" or is a "threat to human survival," he is only half right. He certainly gives us egregious examples of religious people or religious teachings that would cause any sensible person to recoil. But one wonders how much of what Hitchens takes to task is religion as a motive or religion as an excuse.
— Jeremy Carlos Foster (jcarlosfoster@gmail.com)
Flak magazine
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)