The Wayfarer

Relativism, part IV: The Medieval Ethos

2010-04-05T22:01:00.005-04:00

Without the Roman Empire, Europe fell into chaos. Germanic tribes, bandits, and many other malevolent (translate: Anti-Roman) forces roamed the countryside to take un-checked advantage of merchants and travellers - and eventually the villages themselves. But in the midst of this political upheaval, the Church stepped in, gradually imposing a much-needed social conscience on Europe. The Archbishop of Rome, the Pope, became a highly influential figure in both European religious life and European politics. Eventually, Charlemagne, an ambitious Frank from Western Europe, was crowned the Emperor of the new "Holy Roman Empire" in 800CE, and developed what he called the "feudal system" as a means of governing localities. Feudal Lords - some of whom would eventually become Kings - were those who still had land, those who could still afford to claim ownership, those who were able to hire soldiers and maintain personal armies. Tributes were given to these Lords by the peasantry doing the hard labor in exchange for protection.

In this culture, the Church enjoyed special privilege. For more than a thousand years, kingdoms rose and fell because of the church, or more accurately, because of the Pope and his emmisaries. With this tremendous opportunity, however, came great responsibility, much of which was squandered. The Church began to play the game of politics; Rome set its eyes on expanding its borders. Two cities would find their way to the Holy Roman Empire's agenda for the next millennium: Byzantium (Constantinople, later Istanbul), a trade-route crossroads and thus economic stronghold was no longer part of the Holy Roman Empire due to the great schism of 1054, and - for a much longer period - the Holy Land from the Muslims, who had taken Jerusalem in 638 CE under Caliph Umar.

The move towards a much stronger bureaucracy came its benefits (some of the most notable art and architecture of European History comes from this period), but in the reform movements of this age we see its tragedies. The Franciscans, Dominicans, and other Mendicant orders were founded in the early thirteenth century as a direct response to the growing problems associated with the power of the clergy. Many believed that the Church had lost its way, that it had become corrupted by its strong ties to political power. Evangelization of other nations was done at the point of a sword rather than through preaching, and economic interests often precluded spiritual principles. Francis of Assisi, for example, founded a monastic order (later named in his honor) in which no one owned property, but all found their daily wages through begging of the charity of others.

The great lesson of the medieval period is that power is not only frighteningly easy to misuse, but it also tends to corrupt even those with the best intentions, principles, or guiding theologies. But we also can learn that God perseveres through this, that even when we, the Church do not seem very good at loving Him (particularly when we abuse others), the very stones of the Earth cry out and give birth to new expressions of the body that better suit the culture of a world still very much in need of Christ. We learn, as we study this period of history, that along with Buddhists and Muslims and Indians and Atheists, Christians need a relationship with Jesus.

Relabeling

2010-03-15T19:12:00.004-04:00

I've been doing some research on the web for other bloggers, journalists, etc. who talk about "Christian Agnosticism" and the results have disturbed me a little. I've begun to suspect that, most of the time, what people call "Christian Agnosticism" has less to do with learning and growing in faith and praxis - loving God, loving others - and more to do with political agendas. I call myself a Christian agnostic because of a starting point, a place where faith meets context, where my doubt can be openly and freely expressed and then worked out in the midst of God's grace. I love the paradox of the name, the linking of two very different streams of thought in one paradigm. Unfortunately, these others do not seem to share this mission, and I worry that I may have inadvertently linked myself to a movement I do not support.

I named this blog based on the idea that we don't have everything figured out - I don't understand everything, and neither do you. The numenous, a word coined by Rudolf Otto, seemed to express this idea well. It's an invitation to a journey where the end is about getting to better know a person (Jesus) and not a set of rules. Because these others do not share this sentiment, I'm beginning to consider what other labels could work that both inspire others to ask hard questions, but also does not invite unwelcome assumptions. The term "Jesus Follower" was coined because the term "Christian" had picked up so much negative baggage in postmodern circles, and I'm starting to find that "Christian Agnostic" similarly already carries a great deal of baggage, none of which I wish to inherit. A name is just a name, and if it ceases to hold meaning useful for conveying its message it ought to be dropped and given a new name that more accurately reflects its content.

That said, I'm taking suggestions, particularly from those of you that have already been on this journey with me for some time now. What ought someone of this way of thinking call himself, if not a "Christian agnostic"?

Einstein

2010-01-31T23:19:00.007-05:00

I found this interesting. I sincerely doubt its historical accuracy (in fact, most websites I've found verify that it's not something that actually happened), but the conversation is rather fascinating as a theoretical, theological, and philosophical exercise. And whoever wrote it wasn't that bad a writer either. Take a gander.

'Let me explain the problem science has with religion.' The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.

'You're a Christian, aren't you, son?'

'Yes sir,' the student says.

'So you believe in God?'

'Absolutely.'

'Is God good?'

'Sure! God's good.'

'Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?'

'Yes'

'Are you good or evil?'

'The Bible says I'm evil.'

The professor grins knowingly. 'Aha! The Bible! He considers for a moment. 'Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?'

'Yes sir, I would.'

'So you're good...!'

'I wouldn't say that...'

'But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't.'

The student does not answer, so the professor continues. 'He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Can you answer that one?'

The student remains silent. 'No, you can't, can you?' the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. 'Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?'

'Er..yes,' the student says.

'Is Satan good?'

The student doesn't hesitate on this one. 'No.'

'Then where does Satan come from?'

The student falters. 'From God'

'That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?'

'Yes'

'So who created evil?' The professor continued, 'If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.'

Again, the student has no answer. 'Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?'

The student squirms on his feet. 'Yes.'

'So who created them?'

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. 'Who created them?' There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. 'Tell me,' he continues onto another student. 'Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?'

The student's voice betrays him and cracks. 'Yes, professor, I do.'

The old man stops pacing. 'Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?'

'No sir. I've never seen Him.'

'Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?'

'No, sir, I have not..'

'Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?'

'No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't.'

'Yet you still believe in him?'

'Yes'
'According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist... What do you say to that, son?'

'Nothing,' the student replies.. 'I only have my faith.'

'Yes, faith,' the professor repeats. 'And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith.'

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. 'Professor, is there such thing as heat? '

' Yes.

'And is there such a thing as cold?'

'Yes, son, there's cold too.'

'No sir, there isn't.'

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. 'You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit down to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.'

Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

'What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?'

'Yes,' the professor replies without hesitation. 'What is night if it isn't darkness?'

'You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?'

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. 'So what point are you making, young man?'

'Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed.'

The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time. 'Flawed? Can you explain how?'

'You are working on the premise of duality,' the student explains.. 'You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought.' 'It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it.' 'Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?'

'If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do.'

'Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?'

The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going.. A very good semester, indeed.

'Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?'

The class is in uproar.. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. 'To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean.' The student looks around the room. 'Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?' The class breaks out into laughter. 'Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir.' 'So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?'

Now the room is silent.. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. 'I Guess you'll have to take them on faith.'

'Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life,' the student continues. 'Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?' Now uncertain, the professor responds, 'Of course, there is. We see it Everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in The multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil..'

To this the student, Albert Einstein, replied, 'Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.'

The professor sat down.

Discuss.

Family of Four

2010-01-30T22:21:00.000-05:00

Caedmon Jace Logan, born 1-29-10 at 4:09am, weighed in at 8 lbs 9 oz. He's got his daddy's height and his momma's pouty lip; the girls are and forever will be going wild because of that. Liz is doing exceedingly well after being induced and having a subsequent 25 hours of labor. Thanks to everyone who was praying for us, God listened; when it seemed that we'd be inducing for two more full days, she suddenly went into active labor and dialated 7cm in the span of an hour. Caedmon was born not too long after, just a few hours - 45 minutes of pushing (very short).

His name is Gaelic; "Caedmon", the warrior, and "Jace", derivative of "Jason", healer. Warrior-healer. Liz calls him CJ. We pray he lives up to his name.

Pictures via Flickr

Relativism, part III: Postpatristicism

2010-01-26T23:25:00.003-05:00

It didn't take as much to take out Rome as you'd think. A few well-placed plagues, constant harrassment by organized tribes on the borders, and the empire practically tore itself apart. It's the so-called "Yoko Factor." When the Beatles disbanded, Lenon's love interest Yoko Ono was accused of breaking the band apart, but on further investigation, Yoko was but a catalyst of pre-existing issues. They broke themselves up, Yoko merely brought their issues to the surface.

The rub for the Romans was, as far as I can tell, the way that the upper eschelons became so dependent upon their luxuries that they would do anything to maintain their way of life. They could not adapt to change, and when the empire was unable to support their decadence, they became its worst parasites. For one, wealthy citizens became increasingly violent and peculiarly exotic in their tastes for entertainment; a well known example, the gladiators provided gory entertainment at the expense of life itself. It was their extravagence that ran the empire into the ground (an example from which contemporary Americans ought learn carefully). But of the strongest importance is a simple fact: those that once were patriots and willing to give up their time and finances for the greater good of the empire - the Aristocrats - were no longer willing to do so. As individualist selfishness replaced social consciousness, the empire slowly and methodically bled to death from within. The sacking of Rome in 410CE - and several times afterward - goes to show just how far the Empire had fallen from its former glory.

It was in this period of transition that the great councils of the Church were held: Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. During the persecution of the previous centuries, heresies were generally addressed by apostles or missionaries in letters networked through the underground movement. Paul, for example, wrote extensively on the issue of circumcision, or more broadly, why one need not first become Jewish before one became Christian. However, the relative security (migration in any form was always dangerous, but much less so now that they were no longer a hunted group) of their new positions afforded the clergy the chance to meet and begin hammering out, in an "official" capacity, creeds that stated in broad, sweeping strokes what the Christian Religion was really about. What did they all believe? The majority of scholars agree that these councils were, for the most part, responses to various influential cults. These "heterodoxies," as they would later be called, questioned the very essence of what it meant to be a Christian with varying interpretations. In some cases, such as gnostism, it was to possess a secret knowledge afforded only to the initiated elite. Other cases questioned the very nature of Jesus' essence (such as arianism and docetism). In any event, the councils all addressed many of the issues and questions floating around the waning Roman Empire, culminating in a set of creeds (the most well-known of which is the Nicene Creed, still found in many hymnals and even some Bibles) that stated the nature of orthodox belief according to the most learned and respected Christian scholars of the time:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. [Nicene Creed]

The creeds mark an important step in the history of Christianity, but also in the morphing of one cultural ethos into another. As patristicism waned with the Roman Empire's fall, the rise of the coucils and their subsequent creeds shows that the very nature of Christianity itself - what it meant to be a christian - began to morph. Instead of a set of beliefs that were holistically integrated into lifestyle, a person now must only recite their beliefs as memorized from the creeds. Without the need to worry about the controversy of those beliefs, Christianity became much more tempered to social norms. To put it another way, when one didn't have to worry about dying for one's beliefs, it started to matter less and less what one did with them or who one told about them. Christianity became a fashion, and then became the norm across many of the mediterranian cultures (especially those in the north and east), even as the Roman Empire itself struggled for survival.

Equilibrium

2010-01-04T23:02:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid, my parents had this habit of taking me and my sister to a dentist every six months or so. I always wondered if he intentionally tried to fit most of his little tools into my mouth at the time just to see if he could, but by the end of the appointment he’d be satisfied that my teeth were in satisfactory health and give me a new toothbrush and a stern warning to floss better. And if it had been a really good appointment, I’d be told to walk out the door into the lobby and press a doorbell button that lit up a big sign that said “hey hey hey, no decay.” This was a really big deal to the dentists and hygienists that I would be able to press this button.

Why?

I mean, nobody expected me to get more teeth, only to keep them healthy. Our basic assumptions tend to be limited to maintenance, not expansion; we don’t expect growth, we expect things to stay just the way they are now. Obviously our experience tells us that a single person can’t actually have more teeth, but aside from that, we think it’s a silly question because we don’t like decay. We don’t like teeth that can rot and cause pain and make us eat only yogurt and applesauce. We don’t like that things break down, that they wear out, that it takes energy and effort to maintain them at their present state. In the science of thermodynamics we call this “dynamic equilibrium,” the way that it takes energy and effort and work to just keep things the way that they are instead of decaying – we call it “entropy.”

It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to keep things at dynamic equilibrium. Your body’s mitochondria, the little powerhouses of your cells, are feverishly working day and night to produce chemical energy, something called ATP, from your food. Furthermore, maintenance requires more than just energy, it also requires your cells to die on a regular basis as they wear out, and are replaced by new versions with new mitochondria and take up the call to keep being a body. When a person’s body decides to stop fighting the entropy, something called static equilibrium begins to take hold. Without all that effort, the body re-equilibrates with the environment around it and the elements begin doing their own thing. Another word for static equilibrium is “death.” When your body stops fighting the decay, it dies.

All this effort to keep one thing going.

But let’s say that my assumptions were different, that I still wanted the world to have more teeth. What would it take? Despite the limitations of my own mouth, there is a way – I could always get together with a girl (she’d have to be a cute girl if I wanted good teeth) and then make a few tiny people that could then grow their own teeth. Speaking from experience – I’ve done it twice now – I can say that it works. There are now more teeth in the world than before.

You can sleep easier tonight.

In order for growth to happen, it requires one to transcend dynamic equilibrium. Massive changes have to take effect in order to reproduce; new hormones are created, entirely new structures are built to house this new creature until it can sustain itself, great amounts of energy are spent in the making. And when at long last the day comes, there is pain and discomfort and separation. We literally cut the two apart sometimes when the growth hasn’t gone exactly according to plan. But in the end, there’s this beautiful new infant, fragile and vulnerable. And the process is still not finished; more energy is poured in, more effort is made to make muscles and bones and organs bigger, brain cells grow and fit into new patterns, and eventually, there is no longer an infant, but a fully capable, mobile adult that can make decisions, laugh, cry, and eat sushi.

God asks us to grow.

See, growth doesn’t happen when we simply try to maintain what we have. Sure, it takes a measured amount of energy to fight decay. But in reality, the amount of energy it takes to fight against decay is best spent growing bigger, in reproducing. In the end, it is in reproducing that we are able to live as a species. But when we reproduce, we cannot make the other into clones of ourselves, we must allow them to be unique, capable on their own, with their own set of gifts and talents. We don’t dictate who they are, God works with them so they can be the best they can be.

If nature is any sort of reflection of God’s intentions – and the scriptures and our tradition resonate that it is – then we are to move beyond simply maintaining ourselves. Life is not, in the end, about us, but about something bigger, more than ourselves. God’s assumptions are not our assumptions. And so our church programs have to give up on being static, because if we try to maintain them just-so in a changing world, we’re simply prolonging the inevitable move to equilibrium. When it’s about keeping it just like it always was, we’re really saying it’s all about us. But if we grow, if we reproduce and allow the children to grow up and think for themselves, we’ve begun to act out something bigger, something grander. We act in the very character of God.

Relativism, part II: the Patristic Ethos

2009-07-30T17:17:00.005-04:00

We begin back in the waning days of the Roman Empire, a period I've called "Patristic." At its height, Rome stretched from the cost of Europe and Africa on the Atlantic all the way into modern-day Turkey, and from as far north as England to its southernmost settlements in Ethiopia. What is most important about this period is the pluralism and the multiculturalism of the Roman machine; vast armies were summoned from three continents; traders moved from Tarsus to Rome to Jerusalem to Cairo and back again; cities arose from the desert, the countryside, and everywhere in between. Rome was the known world, and treatises from this period often reflect the sentiment that anything beyond its borders were of little consequence.

The state religion, known to historians as the "cult of the emperor," permeated this culture from East to West, North to South. It demanded the worship of the Roman Emperor by every citizen - with severe penalties, including witholding of marketplace privileges - but also allowed them the freedom to worship additional deities as they saw fit. Religion was as such almost buffet-style, a pick-and-choose-my-favorites culture (so long as one favorite was the Emperor). Popular culture was filled with religious icons, imagery, and rituals of every imaginable variety; temples of every imaginable shape, size, and flavor dotted the cityscapes. Many of the so-called "mystery religions" served as a sort of supplemental insurance, the rider attached to one's normal religion or local deity, that insured a positive outcome in the next life. It was a colorful, multifaceted culture of indulgence in the upper classes and of earnest passion in the lower.

But corruption in politics led to many attempts - some successful - to usurp power. Emperors came and went, and eventually the once proud empire was split in two, East and West. Both were at war, with one another and with various cultures and tribes on their borders looking to take advantage of the political turmoil (namely the tribes of Germania in the north and the Turks in the East). Into the fray came a young general, Constantine.

Legend holds that Constantine received a vision of the symbol of the Chi-Rho, a Christian symbol, and was told by a divine voice, "with this symbol, victory." He immediately had the symbol affixed to the banners, the shields, and any other available surfaces of his army, and later that week, his armies defeated those of Maxentius in a fierce battle at Milvian Bridge. The civil war was over, the East and West reunited under a single banner. Thereafter, the Roman Empire began sweeping changes to its legal system, legalizing the growing Christian movement as a valid religion, eventually making it the official religion of the Empire (though not under Constantine, who himself was only ever baptized on his deathbed, preferring instead to keep his options open and even allowing the maintenance of the cult of the Emperor). Never before had Christianity, an offshoot of Judaism that had endured and even grown in the face of harsh persecution, enjoyed such wide acceptance. A clergy class sprang up, and gradually life became ... shall we say, "soft" for them.

This was the birth of Christendom, and I believe an event that marked the highpoint of the transition between the Patristic period and what I'll call the Medieval period. As the clergy became more powerful, tolerance for the many religions and cults of the Roman Empire began to fade; social and legal pressures became responsible for as many conversions as legitimate conversions. Gradually, European culture in particular began to shift away from the anything-goes religious diversity of the Roman Empire and toward a state-centered Christendom, the (re)melding of politics with religion, towards an Empire with Christianity at its center.

And then Rome fell.

Relativism, part I: A Brief History of Nearly Everything

2009-07-29T19:59:00.001-04:00

"Questions aren’t producing answers anymore, which is more and more okay - they produce great conversations. Conversations aren’t lasting for one meal anymore either, they are as ongoing as dishes in the sink. I think this is the case because many questions don’t have simple, straightforward answers, at least if you want a good answer. That’s too neat, and life is not neat. It is messy, big, complicated, but amazing. In the conversations we have with friends, life gets unraveled, or better painted, life gets untangled so as to be unfurled." [Jeremiah Aja]

Just because you label something one way doesn't mean it is that thing, and just because you don't label it doesn't mean it's not. You can call the kettle black, but that actually tells the rest of us more about you than it tells us about the kettle. It's the problem with labels: they're - really - more informative about ourselves than about others. For example, the best way to understand a culture is not to go to the neighbors and ask them about that culture (although it does give you some useful information), but to rather talk to the people and live with them a while and then find out what they call themselves and why. The neighbors are often the ones who give the culture names like "people who desecrate nature" or "people who enjoy hyeina doodie" or "people who eat children." A lot of early anthropologists made this mistake when exploring Africa and North America; many tribes were completely misunderstood because rival tribes - who wanted to make allies out of the technologically superior Europeans - demonized their neighbors. (As a side note, the romantic view that the Native Americans and Native Africans respectively were peace-loving and unified is about as accurate as saying the same of Europe; Europeans just happened to mobilize first).

That is why one should not ask someone from the older generations to describe the younger generations unless he or she is prepared to take the answer with a salt mine (a grain of salt is, in this case, a gross understatement). Postmodernity has gotten an undeserved mark on its record for being "morally and ethically relativistic," a label that is at best misunderstood, and at worst slander. To understand this, though, we have to go back and take a look at some of the paradigm changes over the past few millenia.

Over the past two thousand years, there have been - roughly - four distinct cultural ethoi that have permeated the globe. I want to be sure that I'm clear: this is an extremely rough generalization that does not take into account the plethura of cultures or the complexities of intercultural relations. It's also a bit euro-centric in its approach, as you'll see from the labels I've given them, but it suits our purposes since postmodernity is first and foremost a western phenomenon, and secondly a developed-nations phenomenon.

It all makes a lot more sense at the end, after we get through the history. And we're going to start back in Rome.

Freedom and Choices: Political Involvement

2009-07-08T13:23:00.004-04:00

Patrick over at Tentpegs has written a phenomenal article on the political involvement of Christians. I wholeheartedly agree with the way he puts it:

"I will simply say that it isn’t our job to make a new law for the nation. It is our job to graciously and with great kindness approach our culture in such a way as to turn its heart away from abortion. We don’t need new laws; we need new hearts. Laws will always be broken by those who want to break them whether they be laws about abortion or laws about speed limits. It is the heart we must change and that is much, much harder work than convincing five out of nine Supreme Court justices to vote our way on abortion."

When did we decide that our freedom, our ability to choose what is good, was worth handing over to somebody else? The Christian Agnostic realizes that freedom is a matter of perspective. While our actions always have consequences, a person always has, at the very least, two choices in every situation, and often far more than that. When it comes to marriage, the Christian Agnostic ought to ask "why am I letting the government decide for me if I am married or not?" In all things, we ask ourselves, "who says so, and why?" and then "how does this help the situation, in light of what we know?" I like what Patrick says because, when it comes down to it, he asks us to question everything - what the Left says, what the Right says, and what we say. And then he asks us to ask God what He thinks.

I want to write more on this, but I think for now I'm going to have to let it percolate a bit more before I get too eager.

The Batman of Scandinavia: Presumption of Proof

2009-06-12T18:10:00.002-04:00

I ran across an interesting quote today over at Dan Miessler's blog and thought it'd be great to get some feedback on this one. I have a few thoughts on it myself, but figured I'd throw it out there and let others comment first. What say you?

Everyone is walking around presuming to know that there isn’t a Zeus, there isn’t a Poseidon, and there isn’t a Thor. Can you prove that Thor with his hammer isn’t sending down lightning bolts? No, you can’t prove it. But that’s not the right question. The right question is, “Is there any reason whatsoever to think there’s a god named Thor?” And of course there isn’t. There are many good reasons to think that he was a fictional character. The Batman of Scandinavia.

The problem for religious people is that the god of the Bible is on no firmer footing, epistemologically, than these dead gods. Which is to say that nobody ever discovered that Thor doesn’t exist, but that the biblical god really does. So we have learned to talk and use the word ‘god’ in a way so as not to notice that we’re using a very strange word and evoking a very vacuous concept, like the concept of Thor. — Sam Harris

Precision

2009-04-29T14:10:00.004-04:00

Thanks to my good friend Shawn for pointing this out. It seems that Oswald Chambers was also an advocate for what I have been calling "Christian Agnosticism." In this entry, he writes about the leap of faith required in light of the uncertainty involved in life, and the uncertainty that comes with trust. Based on 1 John 3:2, he writes:

Our natural inclination is to be so precise— trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next— that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We think that we must reach some predetermined goal, but that is not the nature of the spiritual life. The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty. Consequently, we do not put down roots. Our common sense says, "Well, what if I were in that circumstance?" We cannot presume to see ourselves in any circumstance in which we have never been.

Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life— gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we become simply a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That is not believing God — it is only believing our belief about Him. Jesus said, ". . . unless you . . . become as little children . . ." (Matthew 18:3 ). The spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next. If our certainty is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, ". . . believe also in Me" (John 14:1 ), not, "Believe certain things about Me". Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in— but you can be certain that He will come. Remain faithful to Him.

Christian Agnostic, part VII: Danger

2009-04-12T13:05:00.005-04:00

Nothing is - really - that safe. Anybody that tells you "you're safe now" is only telling you a half-truth, because safety is only temporary. So of course, it makes sense that we like to make ourselves feel like we're more safe than we really are, to foster the illusion of security. We do it in so many ways - through our attitudes of certainty, through arrogance, through indifference, through cynicism. Each is an emotional blanket, in a manner of speaking, to keep ourselves blissfully unaware (to degrees) of the dangers we face everyday. Asteroids could pummel our house, an earthquake could sink our city, a tsunami could drown all we know, global warming could burn us into oblivion ... we could lose our jobs ... the list could go on. It doesn't help that the movie industry makes about ten movies for every problem, a constant graphic reminder that our lives are shadows and dust in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention religion - so many philosophers have made it a lifetime work to either prove or disprove religion, seeking that certainty to quell their inner fears of the danger.

Are there any true places of safety? Not really, not while we're in this reality. I suppose one could question "safety" in its grander, eternal definition, but for now, let's stick with the place most of us agree is important - here and now. We are not safe here and now, not really.

So why do I bring up all this "Christian Agnosticism" talk of skepticism and uncertainty in the face of these dangers? Surely, you say, it has its flaws and imperfections that provoke the danger. True, of course; the benefits of being an agnostic who has decided to follow Christ does not eliminate the uncertainty - by definition. In some ways, it is a psychological tool for dealing with the dangers of the everyday. Just as certainty is a blissful self-deception that aids our fragile minds in continuing life, so too is skepticism a form of assuaging the mind; "it's ok" I tell myself, "nobody knows it all, but we're working on it." And then we do.

So what are these dangers?

Any worldview that is coupled with a relative skepticism faces a dangerous balancing act. On the one hand, the emotions of doom and gloom can push us into cynicism, nihilism, and indifference. On the other, our continuing quest for truth can push us towards arrogance and the illusion of certainty. And that's just to name a few.

Cynicism

It's a foregone conclusion that nobody will ever quite figure it all out. If you've ever doubted this, just look at the manner in which science and industry has become increasingly specialized; neurobiologists can spend their entire lives focusing on one single cluster of neurons in the human brain; a factory worker could spend his whole life putting the bottom of a globe onto the top; military technicians can specialize in one or two kinds of planes. The more one person specializes, the smaller chance he or she has to figure out other aspects of life. However, upon the unpleasant realization that nobody will ever quite figure it all out, a person could become cynical, derisive, and generally bad-tempered. The journey of life, for such a person, becomes a burden rather than a joy.

Anarchism

Beyond cynicism, the skeptic could encounter a certain selfishness and think "since I don't have it figured out, nobody else does either, why should I listen to anyone?" The purely rational mind might then reason that laws are simply human creations that are imperfect, a societal construct, and thus are completely dependent upon the compliance of the group. This same person might then ignore those rules, turning to anarchy and hedonism in the selfish, individualized pursuit of self-realized experience.

The Christian Agnostic ought to avoid this, obviously. Aside from the fact that God disapproves of such utter lack of restraint, our skepticism is meant to pursue truth as a cognitive whole. We learn from each other, not just from ourselves. The agnostic ought to be the MOST trusting of anyone precisely because he or she cannot know everything. Our ability to, as a race, understand the world that has been placed around us (or the world in which we have been placed, depending on one's perspective) depends on our ability to live with one another in relative harmony. The Christian Agnostic should be the first person to seek this harmony because it is the only way towards understanding. The scriptures resonate this, over and over again; we are to seek justice for the oppressed, care for the widows and orphans, love the unloved. It is through our interactions with others that we gain new experience and understanding into who God is and who we are.

Indifference ("Apatheism")

One might take another route out of skepticism. Instead of a cynical depression, one might simply become indifferent, apathetic to the pursuit of truth. This is the self-deception of the unimportance of truth; to deal with the psycholoical dissonance, such people tell themselves that it doesn't really matter, that truth isn't really that useful anyway. I would wager that this is actually the most common reaction among today's Postmodern generation. While the pursuit of truth is important to many, many more seem indifferent to truth, preferring instead to live and let live. Theirs is an apatheism born of the value of "tolerance" for others' beliefs, out of the worry that their pursuit of truth might offend another and disrupt their relationship. Of course, such people do not consider that good relationships are not built on the prospect of NOT offending, but rather on principles of honesty and seeking truth together. Tolerance is a shallow virtue, one that is built on avoiding emotional pain rather than the pursuit of something constructive, and thus has no real relational potential. I'll talk more about relativism and tolerance another time, but for now, suffice it to say that it isn't good for much else than a temporary band-aid.

Arrogance

It is a foregone conclusion that arrogance can be a problem no matter what position one takes. But one can be arrogant in one's skepticism, ironically enough because of a certainty of one's position. Skepticism, in this case, becomes a crutch rather than a partner or tool; instead of allowing one's skepticism to help pursue truth, to find the self-deceptions in one's life and root them out in humility, skepticism itself becomes an end, a firm position. One who becomes so certain in one's skeptical position (rather than also questioning its usefulness from time to time) can instead find it convenient to point out to others the "correctness" of their skepticism, the "I question everything, therefore I am better than you." This is not the purpose of skepticism or agnosticism, which is supposed to be a tool to humility and illumination of one's own inadequacies. It's also a fine line from here towards cynicism.

Do you see how each of these promotes an illusion of safety? In truth, each attempts to foster the illusion of a sort of certainty. Cynicism is the certainty of hopelessness, Anarchism the certainty of one's freedom from the authority of others, Apatheism the certainty of futility, and arrogance the certainty of one's own position. In each of these bastardizations of skepticism, the skeptic becomes unwilling to continue questioning the universe in the pursuit of truth. True skepticism, on the other hand, finds hope in the fact that we can learn through questioning, that learning is enough itself, that the truth we do find is precious in and of itself, and that learning more about ourselves, about the universe, and about the realities beyond this one are worth the effort. This is not a safe place to be.

But it is good.

Christian Agnostic, part VI: Disciple

2009-04-04T14:27:00.002-04:00

By now I hope that it makes at least a little sense how a person could start as an agnostic and end up a Christian. Perhaps Thomas' example even helps us see that it's possible to be an agnostic and still place one's faith in Christ. But - and this is directed particularly at any reader who calls him or herself a Christian - why is it important to maintain one's skepticism? Why must a person remain a Christian Agnostic once he has stepped out in faith, instead of simply a "Christian"?

The first thought that comes to mind is that it is towards our own benefit. Skeptics are ever-learning. They do not live under the illusion that they have everything together, that all the answers that are worth having have already been discovered. A skeptic is ever probing, on a journey into the mountains, its view growing ever wider, more beautiful, more complete; a skeptic begins to see connections and the bigger pictures because he has stopped dissecting the world and started building it back together. The questions asked by skeptics - disciples, really - probe ever-deeper, ever-refining the broader picture. When I said this is to "our" own benefit, I meant the plural - this is not just an individual thing, although it is that. The questions asked by the skeptic impact everyone around him, like a pebble thrown into a pond, its ripples caressing the furthest shores.

Agnosticism is really a tool, a method. It is a way of seeking answers, but realizing that those answers can never be complete. The skeptic realizes that answers only generate more question marks, not periods, produce more new subjects to investigate, new applications. How many times did Jesus answer a question with another question? To know that you don't really know, not really, is a humbling experience; when we remain skeptical, we maintain our humility towards our own abilities. We take the focus off of ourselves and begin placing it elsewhere, on the investigation of Truth. And that's what a skeptic is after: Truth. In short, a skeptic is a disciple.

A disciple does not want half-answers, to behave only a little bit like the Master; the disciple wants it just right. Skepticism not only aids us in our humility, but it also aids us in excellence. We are ever-improving, ever-growing because we see that the painting is never quite finished; we could always get the colors just a little clearer, or play with the clay just a little more, play the music just a bit better, if only we'd try one more time. It moves us forward; it does not allow stagnance or decay. We maintain awareness of our humanity, rather than becoming shells of people that find dispute with one another over the small answers. It's remarkable how often Christians proved the necessity of Christ's death and resurrection simply out of their petty disputes over a single word. Instead of acknowledging their inability to find The Answer, they allowed their own arrogance to blind them, as if God is an equation to be solved rather than a beautiful mystery that beckons to us yet is big enough that we cannot ever get to its end. That's why relationships are such an amazing image - there are always new things to learn about a person, and it takes a lifetime to learn them. Every time the world around me changes, I get to know God a little better in new circumstances.

Most importantly, skepticism helps us maintain connections with those who do not believe as we do. If Jesus was serious when he said "go make disciples of all nations," then how are we to communicate the good news and help make disciples if we do not speak the language of those we seek to help? Without a healthy sense of skepticism about our own beliefs, how are we to answer when our faith is challenged?

I've been reading Wesley this week for my Christian History class, and his answer was one of incredulity; he couldn't fathom why anyone would deny Christ, or deny God, or deny sin. Could not fathom it. It bothered him that somebody would even consider denying what was, to him, obvious. And yet he acknowledged that people still denied his message no matter how well he spoke. See, Wesley lived in an age when he could rightly assume that those things were givens, assumptions built in the very fabric of common society. Though many rebelled against it, it was still anchored within their culture to know "right" from "wrong"; a solid, universal morality still was assumed to exist, even if its finer points were debated.

But we no longer live in that time.

As Christians, if we do not understand those that we seek to help, even slightly, then any actions we take are fruitless. Skepticism of one's own position helps him see the places where the non-believer might take issue. It gives us the ability to say "well, I can see why you might think that, and this is how I've worked through the issue," or perhaps "sure, I get what you're saying, and it's hard for me too, and here's why ... but I'm still working on it." We become more real, human beings with flesh and blood and even doubts and misgivings. We remind ourselves that we are still like everybody else, that we might be wrong, and that it's not worth shedding blood over our beliefs when it's entirely possible that the other guy might be right. But it's also not an excuse to just allow them the comfort of thinking that their beliefs are just fine as they are. The Christian Agnostic does the world a favor by asking the hard questions; through the questions, everybody begins to understand reality better. If we can inspire the world to once again seek the Truth, humbly and honestly and openly, we would be in a very good place indeed. To seek is to find, and once the door has opened ... well, the story doesn't really end there, does it?

Christian Agnostic, part V: Doubt

2009-04-04T14:27:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if everything that will ever be thought has already been written down somewhere; we can always find precedents. For example, I just found the evolution debate in a text by Athanasius from the early fourth century. The worldview of the Christian Agnostic is not totally unprecidented. There was a man even among Jesus' disciples that was a skeptic, that was willing to voice his doubts when others were not.

His name was Thomas.

But contrary to popular belief, Thomas was not the only one who doubted. In fact, both Mark and Luke's accounts record that though the disciples are told by both Mary Magdeline and several travellers that Jesus is alive, they didn't believe it (Mark 16:9-11, Luke 24:9-12). In fact, in Luke's account, it took Jesus eating and allowing them to touch his scars to convince ALL the disciples, not just Thomas (v.36ff).

But this is not about the other disciples. Peter and John ran to the tomb and were amazed, according to John's account. Jesus appeared to the disciples and they believed. But Thomas is, for some reason, away from the other disciples on this particular day.

People give Thomas a hard time, I think, because he had to ask for proof. But this sort of condemnation misses something: the other disciples already had it. Proof, I mean. They'd already seen the indirect evidence: the empty tomb, the stone rolled away, the strips of linnen laying empty on a stone slab. They'd heard the stories told by the women of an Angel and of meeting a mysterious Gardener, and of a pair of disciples on the road to Emmaus encountering a wise stranger. But Thomas missed all this. Why, we don't know, it doesn't say. But he's not there. The disciples tell him all this stuff, but Thomas is a skeptic, a true agnostic: "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side," he said, "I will not believe."

I think we often misinterpret this skepticism. Thomas doesn't want to just be told about the whole event by others - he wants to experience Jesus himself, to feel the wounds and touch the hole in Jesus' side where the Centaurian's spear broke open his heart after death. For Thomas, someone who seems used to getting the proof he needs in a world FULL of decievers, the experience is necessary. And I think the story of the Gospel would be less without Thomas' doubt. Because Thomas asked for proof, Jesus gave it to him - he actually appeared to him and let him touch the nail marks in his wrists, the scars on his forehead, the hole in his side. He ate bread and drank wine to show the disciples that he wasn't just some apparition, some mass hallucination, but a living, breathing, back-from-the-dead guy who was who he claimed to be.

But Thomas was the one who was honest and asked.

The rest of the disciples, I think, don't admit their skepticism. The gospels resonate with their doubt, especially Mark's gospel - he likes to talk about how the disciples just didn't get it, didn't understand. But Thomas goes ahead and voices his concerns, puts himself behind his doubt, and here's the thing:

Jesus actually answered.

Thomas' response? "My Lord and my God!" It's not a question in his mind anymore - he's had the experience, and it was all he needed. He suspended disbelief and lo and behold Jesus really was there. John talks about Thomas a lot, compared to the other gospels. I think it's ironic and somewhat telling that earlier in his gospel (ch. 11), he describes a scene where Jesus is going to go and heal Lazarus in a town where the priests warned him not to return lest he be stoned. Thomas is the one who says "let's go and die with him." Thomas, incidentally, is credited (with minor historical criticism) with the evangelization of India. There are still churches there, in the southern regions, that trace their spiritual heritage to Thomas' missionary journey. The experience of being with Jesus was what Thomas needed and it transformed him into someone with enough faith to travel farther than any of the other disciples ever did to spread the good news.

Jesus goes on to say "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." I don't think that this is a condemnation - Jesus doesn't say "you moron, why didn't you believe the others?" He doesn't get angry, doesn't reproach Thomas. Instead, he simply says "you asked and I gave you the proof. But lots of people from here on out won't get that sort of direct proof; and it's to their credit that they believe anyway." It's not foolishness to ask God for the experience - but it requires a suspension of disbelief. We have to actually seek as if God is there for this to make sense. Otherwise, as the scriptures say, it appears as foolishness. But when we have the experience, what else can we do but exclaim "it's True!" and serve Him with the rest of our lives, with the best that we can give.

(to be continued)

Chrisitan Agnostic, part IV: Forward

2009-04-04T14:26:00.000-04:00

Let's sum up what we've said so far. We can't know everything; there's too much to know and our senses, memories, and in general, our humanity just aren't reliable enough. Because of this, we have to start with the assumption and suspician that we may be wrong. The Bible is not a science text, it is a text written by people with their own cultures and their own languages and motivations that God inspired to write the way they did. And so we read the scriptures with the assumption that our own history and culture and experiences are clouding our vision, and learn to read it from the perspective of those who wrote it, doing our best to push our own culture aside until we come around to applying it.

But apply it we must. How then can we move forward as Christians? If scripture is about a relationship with a non-verifiable being based on non-verifiable history, what's the point?

Faith.

Faith is the point. As I mentioned in my first post on this, the Christian agnostic is not just an agnostic, he is a person who realizes that he must make a choice, and chooses to believe a certain way. What is agnosticism not? It is not the belief in no God; it cannot be, by definition, because that would mean having drawn a definite conclusion on the subject. To claim to believe no God exists for sure is to claim to be an atheist. While most agnostics really end up as atheists, I think there's another way to put this that might help.

Since we look at the world based on our perspective, which is generated from our history, our culture, our (subjective) experiences, our personalities, etc, it would follow that we are unable to do much about the things we believe. But human beings have proven (within skeptical reason) their ability to freely choose to change. I'm beginning to think that this applies to our cultural lenses as well. Our ability to think creatively, through the lenses of another, change our worldview every time. By inserting ourselves into the story, by placing ourselves in the midst of a worldview and immersing ourselves in a new culture, we become different, we are able to see things we never saw before.

I learned this in Australia. Despite the fact that, to many Americans, the Aussies SEEM mostly like us, they're in fact quite different. Of course there are similarities, but they prove quite effective in masking some much larger differences that run beneath the skin. Australians, for example, do not value work in the same way that Americans do. Americans view work as a way of life; we work ourselves to the bone for the chance to get ahead in a never-ending downward spiral. The Aussies, on the other hand, strongly value relaxation, so much so that their (socialist) society has build-in safeguards, such as 4-weeks vacation to entry-level salaried positions. Americans are lucky to get that, even if they work for twenty years in the same place, and often don't bother to take all four weeks for fear of "under-performing." It took me living among the Aussies to learn to see my own view of work; being confronted with an alternative viewpoint helped me to grow in understanding myself.

Since then, I've often wished that everybody could live in another culture to learn the way I did. While it's obviously impractical and more or less impossible for 350 million Americans to go live abroad for a year, I do think it's possible to recognize that within our own country, there are many cultures, and that it IS possible to learn this way. To move forward, to learn and grow in a new perspective, the Christian Agnostic must grow beyond his self-imposed borders and try something new. Hang out at a bar with some guys playing foosball, go to a football game, spend some time with the poor in the inner city ... just do something you wouldn't normally do, and keep doing it. Put yourself out in the open, at risk, in a foreign place with foreign people - even if it's just down the road.

And this is just like the way the Christian Agnostic learns about God - he suspends disbelief, as it were, and prays. I did this when I was fourteen, and was surprised when I actually got an answer. I was so surprised that I kept on conversing.

See, relationships are about interaction, and when the Agnostic moves beyond his skepticism (though keeping it in the background, an undercurrent in our stream of investigation), he begins to see the world in a new way. By taking leaps of faith into new cultures, new surroundings, new ideas, and new practices, the agnostic begins to uncover truth in a way that, as a pure skeptic, he could not. Now, understand that the skepticism must still be maintained, lest the Chrisitan Agnostic come to believe in everything that feels good. The question "why" is always helpful and should be ever-present. Agnosticism, in other words, is always a starting point. It is a baseline that gives the story authenticity and credibility, rather than a conclusion. To conclude agnosticism is pointless and leads to depression and intellectual death and despair; to begin with agnosticism leads to investigation and discovery. While the Christian Agnostic remains ever-aware that everything he is experiencing, learning, reasoning, feeling, and practicing could turn out to be wrong, this baseline allows the Christian Agnostic to further refine attitudes and claims towards and about the Truth. By ever-questioning, we are looking ever-deeper, and thus constantly growing.

(to be continued)

Christian Agnostic, part III: Science

2009-04-04T14:25:00.000-04:00

One of my biggest pet-peeves is when a Christian or a Church says "the Bible is the scientifically-accurate word of God." Now, I do understand the context for such a qualifier - science has challenged a lot of what Christians through history have assumed to be true. Galileo noticed that we're not the center of the universe, and then Einstein showed that we could be, depending on our perspective. Darwin noticed that organisms adapt to their surroundings as they change, challenging the notion that once creation happened, nothing changed afterwards.

But the context doesn't seem to prevent my irritation.

It's ironic that so much of the debate is over a book that isn't actually a science textbook. On what level do we think that Moses was thinking "biology 101" when he compiled the accounts of creation in Genesis? Who writes a science text thousands of years before the idea of sceince even existed? Who, for that matter, would do so in poetry? Poetry is reserved for the things we can't explain, not the things we can!

I also find it ironic that many of the Christian notions challenged by science are actually cultural and not really biblical; many came from medieval notions of truth, which originated in their theology. For example, the medieval notion of the earth as the center of the solar system came from theology, not the theology from the evidence. The idea was that God made man last, therefore humanity is most important (interesting that they didn't extend this to gender). Now, from a certain perspective, no, the earth is not the center. The Earth revolves around the sun - we can look up (and even GO up) and see this to be so. However, Einstein being the genius that he was, changed all that. Because of perspective, we can literally be the center of the universe again; the universe, from a certain perspective (one with its fixed reference on our planet), quite literally revolves around us. But it is ALSO true that, from another perspective (one with its fixed reference outside our planet), the earth rotates and then orbits around the sun along with seven other planets and one planetoid (sorry Pluto), along with countless moons, comets, asteroids, etc. It's not either/or because of perspective. Western culture is actually one of the few cultures concerned with what literally happened in the past; most other cultures are more concerned with how we are to act NOW, and so they tell stories FROM the past in order to instruct the PRESENT.

And so I ask, must we think that scripture is scientifically accurate? Is the reason for scripture to show HOW things are, or to show WHY things are? Science and scripture are not necessarily incompatable. Science, for example, is quickly concluding that the universe was made out of nothing, that the Big Bang had to create matter from literally nothing in order for it all to work. Christians think that too - we call it "ex nihilio" (the fancy latin term for "out of nothing") except we say that the whole thing had a cause - God. Science is still "agnostic" about the cause. But are the two fundamentally incompatable? No. Scripture never says HOW God did it, only WHY He did it (and that He did it at all). But imagine you're a person ignorant of quantum mechanics and chemical microbiology (just imagine ... it shouldn't be too hard to imagine this) and living after all of this creation stuff has happened, and then think: how do you explain it to future generations? Of course:

Poetry!

And so to extend the argument further, when we say that organisms evolve and change and adapt to their surroundings, is that fundamentally incompatable with God breathing life into Adam? Only if you have a very narrow view of a God who doesn't work with what's present to change it. And if things can't change and adapt to new circumstances, what makes you think that people can change? Why bother with evangelism or mission if we think that people will always stay as they are, born sinful? I think that evolutionary theory is quite compatable with the story of the gospel, when told a certain way:

In the beginning was The Cause, and He created the universe out of nothing. He created it with order and purpose, with complex and intricate governing rules so that the atoms and molecules would know how to interact. The universe expanded to fill the space He had created, and by His hand, the planets took shape around stars, some around several stars. One planet was just right for a particular plan, and so he made it form in a certain way; volcanoes parted the waters and created fertile dry land. The volcanic activity also cleared the poisonous atmosphere, and in a puddle of green goo, God began moving the molecules into proteins, and the proteins into cells, and the cells into all sorts of organisms. God is like a potter, molding and forming a shapeless lump of clay into a masterpiece of artistic harmony, form and function. The animals grew ever complex, until one day, in the sixth age, God's last creation came to the point where He was ready for His best creative act yet: he breathed His own life into men and women. The two enjoyed the paradise of a planet God had created, until one day, something happened that changed all that ...

Is it perfect? Of course not, but like all things, it's open to interpretation, change, and refinement. God is ever creating, building life from chaos and confusion. Retelling it this way is very risky, but in the end, after refining it, I think it will be worth it. We need to retell anew the stories for our culture in a language that makes sense to each generation, lest they become old, stale, irrelevant.

(to be continued)

Christian Agnostic, part II: Scripture

2009-04-04T14:24:00.000-04:00

"Is there anyone who ever remembers
changing their mind from the paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who Is there anyone who really recalls
ever breaking rank at all for something someone yelled real loud one time?
Oh everyone believes in how they think it ought to be
Oh everyone believes, and they're not going easily

Belief is a beautiful armor, it makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're tryin' for
Some need the exhibition, some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon for the war that's raging on inside
Oh everyone believes from emptiness to everything
Oh everyone believes, and no one's going quietly ...

[John Mayer]

I'm not a huge fan of summer school, and to make matters worse, I'm taking an online class for the first time which is turning out much as I expected it to: there have been some pleasant surprises (it seems I provoke a lot of conversation with controversial opinions), but on the whole, it's a bit rough. Suffice it to say that I'm glad it's the only online class I'll be taking. One of the aforementioned conversations that we've been having (the longest running thread to date, actually) is about scripture. What is it? How do you treat it? Who gets to say how to interpret it?

It's been tense.

And why not? Scripture is the basis for the belief of so many Christians worldwide, and so of course they want to protect it, to make sure that nobody does anything "sacriligious" to it. Truth is truth, they say, and scripture is inerrant in every way. To be clear, I have no problem with saying that - that it's inerrant, I mean. But I do have to ask, what is inerrancy? Scripture might be "inerrant" (not wrong), but what does that tell us, and how does it help?

I think what claims of biblical inerrency usually mean in context are that OUR INTERPRETATIONS of scripture are inerrant. It doesn't matter what the interpretation is, though it is usually a literalist interpretation that has little regard for anything but one's first impressions of the text. "God informs my worldview," it is claimed, "and thus I have no use for human investigation and discovery because God has already told me what it says." Most often what happens is that we start to think that as Christians, we have some sort of monopoly on Truth. And that's simply not true. The next time you go to the doctor, for instance, you're likely to be treated by an agnostic or an atheist. That's not a rule, of course, there are plenty of doctors who are Christians too ... and Hindus and Jews and Sikhs. The point is that they are very, very smart and continually making discoveries about the truths of our bodies, about chemistry and physics; they are investigating truth, and they are using it to better people.

Now, what am I NOT saying? I'm not saying that the rest of the world has salvation figured out. I'm not saying that Jesus is one among many paths to truth. I'm saying that, while a more holistic truth requires Jesus as its foundation, truth is far bigger than one simple yet necessary statement. Anything that is true must be of God because He is Truth (and that I know it says in scripture). But so many Christians resist this because it might mean sharing their perceived power over others with salvation language; it can feel very intoxicating to "know" that you are going to pardise while those around you who do not think as you do are going to some place ... else, with pain and suffering and "gnashing of teeth," and potentially, nails on chalkboard. Scripture is accorded a category unto itself; we think that because we're Christian we already know everything there is to know about the human condition because "it says so in the Bible," and all we have to do is find the relevant verse (ah, proof texting).

See, the issue is not whether somebody else is actually wrong or not. The issue is that we Christians want to be right already. We don't want to have to do the research, to go through a process of investigation and positing ideas that could turn out to be wrong ... because that would make US wrong. Furthermore, we don't want to have to rely on so-called "secular" research in the social sciences - sociology, history, archeology, psychology, etc. - because that would mean using something developed without a Christian label. We don't want to be the ones informed or influenced by those "less holy" than we are, the "heathens" who've rejected something we hold very dear (that which defines us as Christians). And so we'd rather simply confirm what we already think is true under the guise of having God "on our side" instead of taking a chance and looking through their lenses once or twice.

Searching for truth is hard; it means doubt, it means risk, it means criticism, and it means failure; it means a lot of things that make us uneasy and distort the image we want to portray of a people who have all the answers. We are uncomfortable with those three little words - "I don't know" - because those words inflict that unfomfortable feeling that we may not yet be perfect. But I have news for the Christians that the rest of the world has already figured out:

You're not.

Deal with it. Admitting this is the first step towards recovery. Or maybe re-recovery. You do not have all the answers yet. You are not yet complete, you do not yet "lack nothing," you are part of a world that is still in rebellion. This world is in the redemptive process. Your refusal to see this is, ironically, confirmation of your status as a sinner. But that's ok, there's still hope for you, you have time yet to grow in understanding and grace.

So is scripture inerrant? I think so, in the "inspired" sense of the word. Yes, God mystically, somehow (I emphasize the "somehow") influenced those who wrote the text, and that makes it good and useful and helpful and something we should preserve to the letter, but what is that to you, a mere human being with a culture and a history and a zip code? You look through a lens like everybody else, and your lens has some smudges on it (perhaps some you drew there with indellible ink) that need to be wiped away. When you read the Bible, you read it as through an opaque window; you can make out some of it, but more likely your culture and history and social influences have grown you into a person that reads things a certain way with certain biases that don't necessarily reflect God's biases.

To read scripture as an agnostic, then, is to read scripture through the lens of one who is starting from scratch, who makes every effort to draw no conclusions from the start because he or she does not live in the illusion that he or she has all the answers. The agnostic Christian reads scripture assuming that God will confront him there, but knows that God worked through particular people in particular cultures in order to create the books we read today. This isn't about taking off our lenses, it's about understanding why we have them and that we CAN'T take them off, and learning to see through them more clearly. And so we start further back than our assumptions and learn about the culture, learn about the literary elements, learn about the psychology, learn about the history ... we take apart the context and reassemble it until we understand how the authors might have thought, why they might have said things the way they did, used the images and metaphors the way they did. Those authors, the ones that God inspired, were human beings with free wills who chose to phrase things in a certain way, chose to speak to a particular people group, who had parents and kids and sore feet and sandles.

To approach it this way is to approach it with humility: you do not assume its agenda for it, but rather you learn how it was read by those who read it first, and then you begin to draw applications for our time and our little corner of the planet. In this way, you honor both the authors and the Inspiration for the scriptures. But when Christians close their minds to the outside world and its ideas, to truth in other corners of humanity, we begin a process that leads inevitably to one end: we will eventually close our minds to God.

And that is the start of our downfall.

(to be continued)

Christian Agnostic, Part I: Verb

2009-04-04T10:37:00.000-04:00

I've imported these next six or seven posts from my other blog to give me something to start with, a primer as it were. Your comments are still appreciated.

What does it mean to call myself a "Christian Agnostic"? On the outset, the term is a loaded one, especially in today's evangelical and fundamentalist circles - agnosticism is looked upon quite disfavorably, as if it's a plague upon our nation, eroding at our values and distorting our destiny as a Christian America.

I'll get to that later in the series and why it irritates me.

For now, let's start with the basic concept of agnosticism, and go from there. To be an agnostic is to be a skeptic, to look at the world and realize that there is no possible way to know with 100% certainty anything that you want to. Our senses are not infallible; they have a remarkable tendency to fail on us from both external and internal causes. For instance, have you ever thought you heard somebody knock at the door, to discover that nobody was there? Or perhaps thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye - or perhaps even right in front of you - that wasn't there? How did you come to decide that those were hallucinations? You verified it with other people's senses that were ostensibly working well.

But why should their senses be any more accurate at that moment than your own?

True agnosticism understands that every act of belief requires a leap of faith, primarily faith that one's own senses are functioning properly and transmitting the information to one's mind in a way that is reliable and accurate. There cannot be certainty of the reliability, only relative certainty. But doubt is there, and so the agnostic is skeptical of any information he or she is given. To "know" for an agnostic, is a relative term, always heavily qualified with a statement such as "but I could be wrong, and so I continue to investigate."

However, if an agnostic was realistic, he or she would realize that taking "no position" is still making a set of belief claims. There is no such thing as a completely unbiased position, no such thing as a person that looks at the world without the influences of others or the influences of faulty equipment. Everyone has social influence, cultural influence, historical influence, and an informing worldview. In fact, to say "I take no solid beliefs" is to unconsciously take a set of beliefs and become a hypocrite! For this reason, the agnostic must still make a decision on what to believe (and a conscious decision is better than an unconscious one), and therefore must use whatever means at his or her disposal - senses (however faulty, they're all he has), experiences, investigation, and ultimately, another leap of faith - to discover the best worldview. The agnostic, though, will not cement in that worldview so strongly that it cannot be reinterpreted with new data, new input. This is not to say that every belief is ejected at the slightest whim, new information is also regarded with skepticism, especially when it conflicts with the worldview. The agnostic, in other words, is ever a seeker, drawing at best temporary conclusions, but remaining skeptical of information that challenges those conclusions.

I have chosen to put my faith in the living Triune God.

It is just as if I were to have decided that there is no God; I just happen to have experiences that testify very strongly to His existence. A Christian Agnostic, then, is one who has made the decision, in light of evidence as well as experience (and experience is a broad term that can include metaphysical realities) to believe in a "biblical" worldview. Now, what that means can be very tricky, and I think I'll wait until the next couple posts to talk about that. But suffice it to say that scripture is important.

I make no apologies for the fact that this is an imperfect worldview because that's the point - there IS no perfect worldview, at least as far as human beings are concerned. Christian Agnosticism is my effort, in a world that is broken and difficult and uncertain, to find a meaningful way of explaining the fact that I still have to live, still have to decide based on some sort of belief system. There is no such thing as "no beliefs", and you're just fooling yourself further to think otherwise. I must choose to place my faith accordingly.

You'll notice that Jesus didn't ask us to go and make believers of all nations - he asked us to make disciples. A disciple is one who follows and asks questions. In other words, Jesus expected us to forever be seekers of truth. "Seek and you shall find," he said. He was confident that our seeking would ultimately lead us to Him, as long as we didn't give up. And then we were to go out and help others begin and continue seeking. The hardest mission field for Christianity is not Islam or Hinduism, it is agnosticism for the simple reason that most agnostics are actually apathetic; they don't care about making a decision any one way and allow the currents of culture to pull them in many directions. Atheists and Muslims are far more likely to convert because they already take for granted that they believe something strongly; agnostics smile, say "that's nice" and ignore you.

It's time we contextualized the faith in a way that agnostics could appreciate. It's time we began inspiring the apathetic agnostics (and apathetic Christians as well!) to once again investigate truth because it IS important, to seek and investigate and discover in the context of a humble community.

(to be continued)