How interesting to be going through a transition from Skyline Church, where I have been privileged to serve for the past 14 years, to Asbury Church, to which God is leading me to help nurture and encourage the movement of God's people gathered there. The resources I have gathered to help me navigate this passage describe leaving a long-term pastorate as a form of death - saying so many goodbye's and handing over ministry tasks among the saints here that have defined me for so long to other capable followers of Jesus who will carry on some of these tasks and lay others that have meant so much to me aside. At the same time, we are in this season of Lent walking together a spiritual path of remembrance of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross - a journey that beckons each of us to take up our cross and follow Jesus - to lose our lives to save them.
This journey of Lent calls into question everything we think we know about death and life. We think that death marks the end of our lives - the obliteration of all that we are. We fear death, as the last inevitable sign of our weakness and powerlessness before the power of evil and darkness in this world. Each day of our lives when we sin, and fail ourselves, or others, or God, by doing something that breaks our connection to God and others or failing to do something that would strengthen our connection to God and others, we draw closer to the ultimate separation from all things which is our death.
Or so we think.
The death of Jesus is so different from any of these misconceptions - these haunted dreams we carry with us about death - that his death on a cross in Jerusalem redefines what it means to die (and what it means to live). Throughout this journey of Lent, Jesus reminds us of the inevitable destination: the Son of Man will be handed over to his enemies; he will suffer terribly; and he will be put to death. The disciples don't want to hear it, of course. What can his demise mean for the movement toward God that his life represents that they have each given up everything to follow? Without Jesus, they are nothing. They will be utterly lost. Yet on he leads them towards the Holy City where he will suffer and die for the sake of love. On he leads us all.
You get the idea that Jesus has in mind a different destination that the one that strikes fear into our timid hearts. He walks resolutely and purposefully toward this death; this death begins to look like what he was born to do. And as we follow Jesus in our own time, toward our own inevitable death, we can learn something invaluable by resisting the temptation to move to quickly to the resolution of Easter and the miracle of the resurrection.
In my own between time, God calls me to pay close attention to the way Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem and death. He walks with an absolute trust that follows a trajectory beyond the veil of death - his own death or the death of his followers or the many, many people he has come to love. And he invites me (and you) to walk on this reimagined path as well (those who cling to their lives will lose them; but those who lose their lives, for my sake, will find true and abundant life).
So what does walking along this new path that leads to and beyond death look like? The principle characteristic of this path is peace - freedom from anxiety and fear - a peace that defines each step with intentionality and gratitude. There are no coincidences and nothing is left to blind chance. Every moment on the path that leads beyond death participates in an eternal unity that profoundly connects to God. We ware walking this path, yet every step brings us to an arrival, a homecoming, a place of belonging - we are at any particular "here" for a reason - receiving and participating in God's presence and power as we bestow and receive the blessings of all creation.
Can we ever say enough about this peace that passes all understanding? The angels sang of this blessing Jesus would bring to all people at his birth. On his last night with his friends, Jesus blessed them with peace - not as the world gives - but the peace that enabled him to lay his life down for his friends, and to invite them to love each other as he loved them. We cannot imagine the power and promise of this peace of Christ - our birthright. Peace that transcends pain, paves the path of forgiveness, invites us to rejoice in all things, swallows up death in victory, and trumpets the nearness of the Kingdom of God.
He has not left us orphans. We know the way he is going. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Toward death, certainly, but also in peace that sees beyond the death of our pride, our fear and our isolation, toward communion with God and with all creation. I should be glad for such a death.
Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Friday, April 1, 2011
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Two Concerts at Christmastime
We attended two concerts in the last two nights. We watched the first one, Messiah Rocks, at the DuPont Theater, and performed the second one, Festival of Light VI, at Skyline. Whether listening or singing, I experienced a surprising sense of celebration and joy.
I had sung the Messiah several times in college, graduate school and while serving at my first church, Bethesda UMC in Salisbury, MD. I know the tenor part of the Hallelujah chorus by heart, as well as several more of the choruses and tenor solos. But Jason Howland's fresh approach to Handel's classic oratorio opened a window of fascination for me to hear and see (and to participate in) the celebration of God's gift of the Messiah in a new way.
From the opening guitar and violin riffs, as the tenor sang "Comfort" with an easy confidence and infectious enthusiasm, my tears told me that these old songs had discovered a new way to speak to the deepest longings of my heart. The concert Friday night reminded me what its like to breathe the fresh air of (there's no other way to say it) salvation.
I'm not talking about a ticket to paradise. Nor do I mean some imagined divine seal of approval for a particular religious understanding. By salvation I mean the foundation of the hope of creation and the joy of life in all it's fullness. Perhaps because these concepts are so mysterious, they can only be glimpsed in the majestic mystery of song. How telling Friday night when the performers repeatedly invited us all to join in that song: "For all of us a child is born!"
Then of course, we had our own songs to sing the following night. It was the concert that shouldn't have been. We faced so many obstacles and scheduling crises, they ceased to surprise us. And for an hour Saturday night, we came together as a band in a way I could never have imagined.
And it was fun.
For most of the previous five Festival of Light concerts we have put on at Skyline, the music has involved far more work for me than play. For one thing, the project of an hour-long concert involves many hours of creative, musical, interpersonal and technical skills. And for various reasons, the task of music selection and rehearsal direction has fallen to me.
For the past five years at Christmastime, I have felt too keenly the responsibility of pulling everything and everyone together for the FOL concert. And before last night, I had always assumed that this crushing responsibility came with the territory of taking on such a difficult task. Last night should have been worse because of all of the difficulty we had pulling everything together in the days and weeks before the concert.
But perhaps because of the over-the-top difficulty we navigated en route to the concert, adapting became a part of the plan. Gregg McCauley said it best after the show when we were backstage together: "life is improv". In the weeks leading up to the concert, and during the Festival (in every sense of that word) I discovered the joy and not the cynicism of that statement.
I've been reading a bit of philosophy lately. Through the tough sledding, I've discovered some insightful statements about the nature of life that invite me to focus on the simple daily transactions between our experiences (life that happens to us) and our creative response to life (so much more than merely reacting).
So much of the life we experience runs counter to what we expect, we run the risk of being immobilized by our frustration that nothing goes according to our plan. Recently I read an evolutionary sociologist's contention that without forgiveness, community would be impossible - because humans consistently fail each other's expectations.
Sometimes, these failures involve moral violations. But most of the time, failed expectations signify only that we are vastly diverse creatures. I suppose they also remind us constantly of our limited perspective of the world. And in one sense, that nagging reminder of our blindness and contingency only adds to our anxiety, fear and loneliness.
But in another sense, we can interpret our boundedness on all sides as a vast network of experience, perspective, and creative response that expands our sense of self and profoundly connects us to the human community. Two people standing back to back see completely different views of their world, but together they can see a range of nearly 360 degrees.
The secret involves recognizing that the limits of our perspective, precisely those places where our expectations are thwarted, form the gateways to the vast frontiers of human community. Repeatedly as the concert approached, I found it easier to look beyond the frustration of my failed expectations of others because new possibilities emerged - both in my (new) reactions and the creative wonder of others' lives.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul celebrates a God
"who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20). Our thwarted plans make way for new possibilities beyond what we can ask for or imagine. So when another person does not (or cannot) meet my expectations, I am learning to expect a creative response (from both of us) that expands my imagination.
This year's FOL concert far exceeded my expectations and imagination. I stood amazed at the many unexpected creative gifts of people connected to me with bonds of forgiveness, understanding and creativity. And I learned to be amazed at myself - especially at the ways I am learning to look beyond my frustration to the very real possibility of amazement and wonder.
So we sang. And we danced. And we were not for a moment trapped in anyone's expectations (least of all mine!) of how a concert should go. We were singing love songs to our Savior, who confounds and expands our expectations of ourselves and of others every moment. The words and the music flowed. A child joined us and danced while we sang. And the music flowed far beyond our ability to perform it - in everyone who was present not merely to witness but to participate in the joy of a Festival of Light.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never overcome it!
I had sung the Messiah several times in college, graduate school and while serving at my first church, Bethesda UMC in Salisbury, MD. I know the tenor part of the Hallelujah chorus by heart, as well as several more of the choruses and tenor solos. But Jason Howland's fresh approach to Handel's classic oratorio opened a window of fascination for me to hear and see (and to participate in) the celebration of God's gift of the Messiah in a new way.
From the opening guitar and violin riffs, as the tenor sang "Comfort" with an easy confidence and infectious enthusiasm, my tears told me that these old songs had discovered a new way to speak to the deepest longings of my heart. The concert Friday night reminded me what its like to breathe the fresh air of (there's no other way to say it) salvation.
I'm not talking about a ticket to paradise. Nor do I mean some imagined divine seal of approval for a particular religious understanding. By salvation I mean the foundation of the hope of creation and the joy of life in all it's fullness. Perhaps because these concepts are so mysterious, they can only be glimpsed in the majestic mystery of song. How telling Friday night when the performers repeatedly invited us all to join in that song: "For all of us a child is born!"
Then of course, we had our own songs to sing the following night. It was the concert that shouldn't have been. We faced so many obstacles and scheduling crises, they ceased to surprise us. And for an hour Saturday night, we came together as a band in a way I could never have imagined.
And it was fun.
For most of the previous five Festival of Light concerts we have put on at Skyline, the music has involved far more work for me than play. For one thing, the project of an hour-long concert involves many hours of creative, musical, interpersonal and technical skills. And for various reasons, the task of music selection and rehearsal direction has fallen to me.
For the past five years at Christmastime, I have felt too keenly the responsibility of pulling everything and everyone together for the FOL concert. And before last night, I had always assumed that this crushing responsibility came with the territory of taking on such a difficult task. Last night should have been worse because of all of the difficulty we had pulling everything together in the days and weeks before the concert.
But perhaps because of the over-the-top difficulty we navigated en route to the concert, adapting became a part of the plan. Gregg McCauley said it best after the show when we were backstage together: "life is improv". In the weeks leading up to the concert, and during the Festival (in every sense of that word) I discovered the joy and not the cynicism of that statement.
I've been reading a bit of philosophy lately. Through the tough sledding, I've discovered some insightful statements about the nature of life that invite me to focus on the simple daily transactions between our experiences (life that happens to us) and our creative response to life (so much more than merely reacting).
So much of the life we experience runs counter to what we expect, we run the risk of being immobilized by our frustration that nothing goes according to our plan. Recently I read an evolutionary sociologist's contention that without forgiveness, community would be impossible - because humans consistently fail each other's expectations.
Sometimes, these failures involve moral violations. But most of the time, failed expectations signify only that we are vastly diverse creatures. I suppose they also remind us constantly of our limited perspective of the world. And in one sense, that nagging reminder of our blindness and contingency only adds to our anxiety, fear and loneliness.
But in another sense, we can interpret our boundedness on all sides as a vast network of experience, perspective, and creative response that expands our sense of self and profoundly connects us to the human community. Two people standing back to back see completely different views of their world, but together they can see a range of nearly 360 degrees.
The secret involves recognizing that the limits of our perspective, precisely those places where our expectations are thwarted, form the gateways to the vast frontiers of human community. Repeatedly as the concert approached, I found it easier to look beyond the frustration of my failed expectations of others because new possibilities emerged - both in my (new) reactions and the creative wonder of others' lives.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul celebrates a God
"who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20). Our thwarted plans make way for new possibilities beyond what we can ask for or imagine. So when another person does not (or cannot) meet my expectations, I am learning to expect a creative response (from both of us) that expands my imagination.
This year's FOL concert far exceeded my expectations and imagination. I stood amazed at the many unexpected creative gifts of people connected to me with bonds of forgiveness, understanding and creativity. And I learned to be amazed at myself - especially at the ways I am learning to look beyond my frustration to the very real possibility of amazement and wonder.
So we sang. And we danced. And we were not for a moment trapped in anyone's expectations (least of all mine!) of how a concert should go. We were singing love songs to our Savior, who confounds and expands our expectations of ourselves and of others every moment. The words and the music flowed. A child joined us and danced while we sang. And the music flowed far beyond our ability to perform it - in everyone who was present not merely to witness but to participate in the joy of a Festival of Light.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never overcome it!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Pondering the End Times - and What That Means Today
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
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
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.
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
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