Sunday, January 30, 2011

Punishment

One of the reasons I sometimes have trouble defining my beliefs is that I don't have a whole lot of solid evidence to work on. It's hard to experiment on an omnipotent being, so I'm left with the jumbled record of people's experiences of God that we call the Bible, and with the equally jumbled experiences of people since then up into the present, and with my own reasoning and that of much smarter people who wrote stuff down. But there's so much inconsistency in the experiences and so many different ideas and no way to test them. I can talk about what resonates with me, what aligns with my own experience, what seems to make sense, what seems morally good, but I have no way to find out what's really real as far as the divine is concerned. So I have trouble talking about what I believe because in some sense, it seems like it doesn't matter – the nature of ultimate reality is unlikely to be determined by my beliefs about it.

So instead of making claims about what I believe God to be like, I make declarations about what I think God should be like. This is, of course, dangerous territory. For one thing, there's the hubris of me, a mere mortal, daring to pass judgment on God. But I think I've demonstrated in my previous posts that I'm willing to do that. My moral compass may be just a mortal one, but it's all I have. If I'm going to think in moral terms at all, that's what I have to use, and that same moral compass tells me that actions that would be condemned if carried out by humans can't then be morally okay for God. I may be cosmically wrong, but I'm constitutionally incapable of believing otherwise.

The other danger, and I think a much more real one, is that of just deciding that God agrees with me – of completely enshrining my own desires and inclinations and calling them the will of God. In order to fight this tendency, I feel like I need to ask myself do I really believe that something is right, or just that it's convenient and I want it to be justified? But humans are good at self-deception, so it's entirely possible that I will sometimes fall into that trap and probably not be aware of it.

But I don't see much in the way of other options. If my religion is to inform my life, it has to have some content. In order for it to have content, I have to evaluate ideas in some way, mortal and fallible though I am. I have to use my own judgment because I have nothing else to use – even if I decide to defer to someone else's judgment, I have to use my judgment to make that decision.

And all that was just so I could get around to saying that I can't quite say that I don't believe that God uses punishment, but I do say that I think God ought not to use punishment and I'm not sure I want to worship a God who punishes.

I've done some reading on animal training, and one of the things that's emphasized very heavily is reliance on positive reinforcement as much as possible for the simple reason that punishment damages trust. This is especially true with animals because without verbal communication it's hard to give warnings or make yourself understood – you can't explain as easily that you still love them and only punished them because it was important that the animal not carry out that behavior. But I think punishment damages trust among humans too. If someone punishes you, however necessary it seems to them, it also makes it clear that they are willing, at least in some situations, to cause you suffering in order to enforce their will upon you. It's hard to have complete trust in someone who will do that.

I want to clarify here that I'm not suggesting that humans should never use punishment. We're imperfect and often pressed for time, and I doubt that it would be possible to raise a typical child to functional adulthood without using punishment sometimes. We just don't have the time or the wisdom to manage with only positive reinforcement. There are definitely times when punishment is the lesser of two evils. But here's the thing: it's still an evil. I think one of the reasons probably everyone could benefit from therapy to a degree is that as children, we all have to deal with coercion. Some parents may manage it less, but even the best parents will have to sometimes just make their kids do stuff they don't want to do. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with their parenting – it's just the nature of the world. But I think part of that reality is that we all develop ways to deal with being coerced and punished and having our freedom curtailed – even if it really is for our own good and it would be irresponsible for our parents not to do it – we still find ways to function that don't always work well in adulthood. But I'm getting off track – the point is, the world is imperfect. I think one of the clearest signs of what we might call the fallenness of our world is the fact that we sometimes do have to choose between evils – that the very best thing we can choose might still cause some harm.

But that's humans. We are mortal and imperfect and finite and living in a broken world. By many understandings, God doesn't have those limitations. An omnipotent God should have the wisdom and the time to teach us to be good without punishing us. For God to use threats and plagues and fire to get us to do His will sounds like a cop-out, and, assuming omnipotence, doesn't sound like a loving God. So for the time being, I'm working under the hypothesis that God can be trusted wholeheartedly and doesn't punish us in order to lead us into His will. If I'm wrong, then...I'll probably be punished someday.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Luke Woes

Today's sermon was about the blessings and woes in Luke, and about the commands to love your enemy that come afterward. As usual, my thoughts are halfway about the actual sermon and halfway about my own tangents that the readings and sermon sent me on.

The Beatitudes in Luke are much scarier than the ones in Matthew because of the woes. It's not just that you're blessed even if things are going badly right now because eventually your needs will be met, it's also that you're in trouble if things are going well right now because eventually that won't be the case. And as someone who is full and happy and able to get along in society, that means woe to me.

One interpretation of this that seemed to be indicated in the sermon is that the kingdom of God is about turning the social order upside-down. It's not just that the people who have power and material abundance commit or tolerate injustice in order to maintain their positions, though that does certainly happen. It's also that people who have their needs met have a tendency to see themselves as deserving what they get, and not just in the sense that all people deserve adequate food and shelter and love and respect, but that it's somehow cosmically more important that their needs are met than those of others. In psychology this is sometimes referred to as the just-world hypothesis, and I'm probably more guilty of it than I realize.

There doesn't seem to be in Luke any indication that the woes are escapable, except perhaps by a change in situation – to being hungry, rejected, etc. But it doesn't say anything like “Woe to you who are full now, unless you help to feed the hungry” - it's just woe. I wonder if that's maybe because the just-world thinking is so pervasive, and so much a part of human nature, that it's nearly impossible to truly give it up – or even fully see it – if you're in a situation where you're susceptible. In which case, maybe part of the woe is about the fact that eventually we'll have to really, truly see that we aren't special just because we're lucky – that we aren't more important, more valuable, more worthy, more anything. And I can write this, and think that it's true, but even then I don't think I truly understand and believe it on the deepest level. And I'm ashamed of that, but there it is. I expect that really experiencing that revelation will be painful – to have my self-centeredness and self-prioritizing exposed, even to myself since I think some of it is probably unknown and unquestioned. Of course, after that will be the deeper understanding of the fact that we are all loved and valued, regardless of what the world says about us, and that the fact that we are all loved doesn't lessen the degree to which any one of us is loved. And I also kind of think that's true but also kind of don't really understand and believe in in the way I think I ought to. But at any rate, this is one way that makes sense to me for the woe to be inescapable, necessary, and consistent with a just and loving God.   

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Wrestling Despair

Even though I don't think I should be living for an afterlife as much as for doing good in the here and now, I do hope that death isn't the end, and my intuition is that it isn't. By “intuition” I mean “hunch”, “gut feeling”, all those kinds of words. It's not a matter of weighing the evidence – there is none. It's just the fact that I have a hard time really believing in final mortality. Not in the sense of finding it logically problematic, but in the sense that my mind won't really accept it. I'm not alone in this – people have been believing in something after death probably about as long as we've been consciously aware of it. Cultures all over the world have developed traditions and rituals that speak to that belief. On the other hand, the fact that my mind won't believe in its extinction doesn't mean it can't happen. It could be that the belief is very adaptive – maybe it allowed our ancestors to deal with mortality without being overtaken by terror or despair, such that they were able to get on with the business of surviving and reproducing and passing on their genes. In which case, it wouldn't be necessary for the belief to be correlated with reality at all. So I can't tell, though of course I hope for existence over nonexistence.

Beside my own personal survival, I hope for something beyond death because I just don't see how things can be really put right for everyone otherwise. Various philosophers whose names I can't remember are scrambling around in my head trying to put their ideas forward – the one I remember the most is something along the lines of “finding it intolerable that the murderer should triumph over his innocent victim.” To me, that speaks of a hunger for justice – justice delayed perhaps, but justice in the end. Without that hope, I don't think I could live. On one hand, it might seem like it would be easy to say that it doesn't matter – God's going to take care of it all in the end anyway, so why work to improve things? But without some sort of sense that things will ultimately be put right, I don't know if I'd be able to even do my little bit – I'd just be paralyzed with despair.

It's an odd tension. During the dolphin sermon, another point mentioned was that God has given us freedom and invites us to be participants in bringing about God's kingdom – and that it doesn't make sense to ask God to save us from the very ills that we're causing through our decisions. That it is, to some degree, up to us to change the world. And my first thought was “Does He know we can't do it?” So much is wrong, and so much seems unchangeable, and furthermore there's all the suffering and death that has gone before – people who have lived and died in hunger and pain, without hope. If there's nothing else, those miserable lives have to stand forever. I could maybe accept permanent mortality if it weren't for that, if everyone had one good life, maybe that would be enough – but so many people don't, and even though, yes I can do something, I can't fix it entirely, and right now the number of people who are trying to fix it aren't enough, and there's still nothing any of can do for those who have already died.

So we need help. I don't know what kind of form that help can take, whether it's anything in the here and now or just hope that eventually Someone will finish the job. I understand that, as the priest mentioned above said, it doesn't make sense to ask God to “deliver us from the effects of climate change, no matter what we put in our car” and similar things like that – it doesn't make sense to ask God to protect us from the fire if we decide to leap into a volcano. But can we ask for clarity? For new ideas, for inspiration? For some clue as to how to really get ourselves out of this mess we're in? There are things I can do; there are things I am doing – but I doubt that they're enough; and I'm not sure that I can do enough while still being part of the culture I grew up in; and I don't have the courage to entirely leave that culture because I don't know what to do instead, and everyone I know is part of that culture and I don't think I could stand being entirely alone; and even if I did leave the culture, that alone wouldn't be enough to change things – it might protect me from being guilty, and it might slow down the damage a bit, but it wouldn't end injustice; and then would it actually be better for me to stay in the culture where I can do more overall and possibly do more good – is it selfish to just cut myself off from society to protect my own conscience but in doing so, actually do less to solve the huge problems we're facing – or is that just a case of trying to make the ends justify the means? Can we ask God to help sort that out? Please?

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Afterlife

So I'm pretty sure I'm going to die someday. Hopefully not any time soon; I really like being alive – but as far as we know death seems to be a human universal. And we don't know what happens after – not the way we know that spring follows winter (in temperate climates), not the kind of knowing that comes from millions of people all making the same observations without even really trying. And this is just as true for the people who believe that there's nothing after as for those who believe that there's something. We as a species have seen enough to say that it's really unlikely that someone who's dead is going to come back to life (though our definitions of “dead” have changed as medical technology has developed) but we have nothing to tell us that the someone who used to inhabit that body doesn't exist anywhere else – or to tell us that they do.

Throughout history, people have tried to figure it out and have acted on their best guesses, from leaving offerings for dead relatives and ancestors to purchasing indulgences believed to help speed loved ones from purgatory to heaven. Even today, you can see bumper stickers and pamphlets asking you where you'll spend eternity. (The flames surrounding the word “eternity” can usually give you a pretty good idea of where the writer thinks you'll end up). The formula in those cases seems to be that you have to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and died for your sins, and that you have to make some sort of statement of that fact, or else you'll go to hell, and furthermore, it will be right and just for you to go to hell in that case.

I think this is totally wrong. Not just that it's untrue – I hope it is, but I don't know for sure. But that it would be a mistake for me to live my life according to that formula. I have problems both with the requirement and with the idea that it would be right for this requirement to exist. So first the requirement. Oddly enough, I think the idea may have started with a concept of mercy – the idea that anyone could be saved, no matter what they'd done; the idea that even a deathbed confession resulted in salvation, if it was sincere. That idea I'm in some ways okay with. I believe in mercy. Some part of me wants some sort of penance for those who have done really horrible things, but I think part of that is a desire for vengeance that I don't think is truly who I'm meant to be, and part of it is a desire to see things set right. I don't want to see the murderer happy while his victims suffer, but I might be okay with seeing the murderer happy if his victims are happy too and everything is restored. But I'm wandering off topic (it's a frequent problem for me). I think somewhere it got morphed from being considered sufficient for salvation to being considered necessary – not just “if you do this, then you'll be saved” but “if you don't do this, you won't be saved” which is not logically equivalent.

But I have an even bigger problem with the idea that not only is this confessional formula necessary, but it is right and good that it's necessary. The idea seems to go that no one is capable of meeting God's moral standards, so we all deserve damnation, so God can set whatever conditions He wants – it's His right to do so and because He's God, His conditions will by necessity be morally correct. First of all, the idea that you're not capable of doing something so therefore you deserve to be punished for not doing it makes no sense. All cats are equally unable to bark; does that mean I should destroy them? No, it means that if I want a barking animal I should get a dog. But instead, let's say that I decide I can tolerate a cat that doesn't bark if it climbs trees really well. But all the cats that don't climb trees are going to be killed because they don't bark. (This is what comes of blogging with a cat on your lap). Even if I legally owned all the cats, this wouldn't be right – people would condemn me for the cruelty of killing an animal for something it couldn't help. But because it's God, there's this argument that that alone makes it morally right – who am I to go against God, who could destroy me in an instant? The thing is, it's generally understood that might doesn't make right. Having the power to make people miserable if they don't obey me doesn't mean that it's okay for me to use power in that way. I don't think it's any different for God. If God is punishing people for things they can't control, or if God is punishing them infinitely for the necessarily finite crimes of a finite lifespan, than God is cruel and unjust. If that's the case, I believe that the right thing for me to do would be to fight against such a deity.

Now one might argue that fighting against God would be very unwise, even if God is a tyrant who creates people only to destroy most of them. After all, if there's no other reality and no other authority to turn to, wouldn't it be smarter to stay on the good side of the guy in charge? It might be smarter, but that doesn't mean it would be right. And that's where my biggest problem with this whole idea comes from: if what's good just means what gets you into a pleasant afterlife, what's the point? If that's all Jesus lived and died for, then the gospel is worthless. Staying under the radar, being inconspicuous, doing what you have to do to get by and not be noticed by whoever is in power – that's what human beings have been doing forever. If all Christianity offers is more of the same, I don't see the appeal.

I don't think we need to focus on the afterlife as Christians. I think it's enough to say that it's in God's hands, and then to work on bringing about the kingdom of God in the here and now.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Kingdom of God - Part 1

One of the things I do believe in, and that might even be at the core of my faith, is the idea of the kingdom of God. I can believe in Jesus' purpose being to initiate and open our eyes to that kingdom much more readily than I believe in anything in particular about obtaining forgiveness of sins. I can even believe in the Resurrection as God's yes to the vision Jesus presents – much more readily and meaningfully than I believe in it as some sort of demonstration that there's an afterlife. To my understanding, the kingdom of God is about sustainability, social justice, love, and community.

Sustainability might seem out of place there, but I think it's critically necessary for the others to work. It's true that the gospels don't say much (or anything?) about environmental issues, but that's really not hugely surprising for the time period – it wasn't so much on humanity's radar at that point. There is a bit of biblical support in Ezekiel 34:17-19 “As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?” To me it seems to at least talk about the injustice of destroying natural resources such that others are preventing from having access to them. It might be vague, but it stopped me in my tracks when I first came across the passage in high school.

And of course there's the part in Genesis where all creation is proclaimed by God to be good, and the fact that the garden is given into humanity's keeping. This concept has a history of being used to justify humanity's domination over the natural world and bending it to our own uses, but there is presently a movement towards understanding it as more of a stewardship role which includes preserving the goodness of the earth for the future. Or, in the words of a friend (paraphrased because I don't remember the exact words): “God made all these species and we have a responsibility to preserve them.” (Which belief, by the way, does not preclude an understanding of evolution as the way in which God made all these species).

In addition to the biblical ideas, it seems to me that there's also just a common sense aspect. The world is in fact finite. Any other planets we could use are a long way away, and the species that live on Earth are unlikely to be found on some other planet. We can't have justice while we're using up resources and destroying natural systems – denying them to future generations. So we need to figure out what is actually doable for the long term – what can we as a society use and consume without doing permanent damage to the other life on the planet and to our own descendants? As the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (www.steadystate.org) points out, it's hard to have justice without knowing where you stand.

Social justice is the next point I want to talk about – one could argue that the reason sustainability is important is that it's necessary for social justice. And unlike sustainability in and of itself, the Bible is full of exhortations to social justice. These start in the Old Testament in the very basics of the Law: only go through your fields to harvest once so those in need can glean from the remains, don't keep someone's only coat as collateral on a loan overnight, every 50 or so years all debts are canceled and all land reverts to its original owners – no possibility of someone building up personal wealth forever while others long for a clean slate. (I understand that it's unclear whether some of these laws were actually really in force, but they remain as ideals that were valued at the time and perhaps deserve to be taken seriously today).

Getting into the prophets, there are fierce condemnations of the people of Israel, and particularly those in power, for taking advantage of the poor. The passage in Ezekiel that I quoted above is surrounded on both sides by more traditional-sounding social justice verses: 15-16 “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice” and 20-22 “Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.” And of course there's Micah's instruction to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

Finally, Jesus himself talks constantly about social justice: the commands to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, etc; the instruction to give to anyone who asks of you; the stories of the rich young man, of Lazarus in Hades, of a camel through the eye of a needle; the cleansing of the Temple; etc. And the fact that we never see Jesus turn away anyone who asks for his help. It almost seems silly to go looking for references to wealth and poverty issues in the gospels because you practically trip over them.

But we as a society aren't very good at this. Some of us, myself included, have far more than we need, while others lack nutrition, shelter, medical care, and hope for improving their situation. Practices like predatory lending and sweatshop employment take advantage of people's desperation – is that so different from the false weights and measures the prophets condemn? Some individuals grow very wealthy from practices that take advantage of others, but we're all complicit when we buy food and clothing that can be sold at low prices because those who labor to produce them aren't justly compensated. And selling all our belongings and distributing the money to the poor doesn't look any more appealing or feasible than it did in Jesus' time.

But in the idea of the kingdom of God, I see a different vision: one where everyone does work that truly helps society, and everyone shares in the benefits. One where cheating your neighbor is unthinkable. One where we don't need so many rules because we can trust one another to act in good faith. One where all God's creatures are cherished and protected. One where love and community are the basis of day-to-day life.

In future posts, I'll talk more about love and community, and also about the actual work of bringing about the kingdom of God and my own inadequate efforts there.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Body of Christ

One of the biggest things I learned from my time away from the church in general and my church in particular is that I do have a place there and that people care whether I'm there or not. My entire experience has been of people not just willing but apparently eager to accept me on every part of this journey. When I've posted notes about my religious struggles on Facebook, someone from the church was always there to share ideas, tell me that I still belong, or just click “Like” so that I knew I'd been heard. (Not to neglect friends from other walks of life who have also been very supportive – if you're reading, I love you too!)

When I shared uncertainties about my personal life with the women in the church book group, I was again overwhelmingly told that I'm still welcome and that, agree or disagree, they'd still be happy to share the Eucharist with me. Even when that book group was my only connection to the church, I always felt welcome to be there, and welcome to return to church, but never as if I was less accepted for being away.

And every time I went back to church on a Sunday morning, there was always someone (besides clergy) saying it was good to see me, they'd missed me, where had I been. But, just as importantly, never with a scolding tone, never with a sense of what's wrong with you, why aren't you doing your duty? One of the major turning points for me was a couple weeks before Christmas at the 11:00 service, a woman whose face was familiar but whose name I didn't recall greeted me by name and said she'd missed seeing me in church. Besides feeling ashamed that I didn't know her name when she cared enough to know mine, I realized much more strongly that this church was a place where I belonged. Whether I understand it or not, my presence there matters.

Of course, that isn't unique to me. One of the central ideas that makes Christianity at its best different from our culture at its low-average to worst is the idea that everyone does matter. And not just that everyone ought to have their basic needs met and that we should feed the hungry and so forth – though that is also very important – but that everyone has value and adds to the community. Someone you serve casserole to at the homeless shelter is also someone whose voice and presence would add to worship on Sunday and who should be welcomed there as an equal, not as a supplicant – or at least, not any more as a supplicant than all of us are before God. And at my church, I see that lived – not always as thoroughly as I might wish for – I would love to see more shared worship between the “regular” Sunday congregation and the folks at the shelter next door – but at least consistently when the opportunity presents itself. And I've gotten well off topic, and some of this material would make for parts of a whole 'nother post, so dragging my train of thought back....

I don't know if I so much believe that the church is the body of Christ as I depend on it. I don't have much sense of a “personal relationship with Jesus” (again, a topic for another day). The Christ I see is the church in a very concrete sense.   

Monday, January 10, 2011

We Don't Live In Eden

Note: In all my posts, words like "today" refer to the day the post was written, not the day it was posted.  There can be a delay of up to two weeks between writing and posting.


The sermon this morning was about dolphins. It was about other things as well, but for me it was mostly about dolphins. The priest talked about a documentary that showed how dolphins were being slaughtered as their killers searched for dolphins that would work for things like aquarium shows and swim-with-the-dolphins programs. I found this really distressing and instantly decided that I will never go to one of those dolphin swim things even if I have the opportunity, but it also got me thinking about a bigger issue: we don't live in Eden.

In this case, I'm not talking about the idea of the Fall, but more about the fact that we don't have the kind of idyllic relationship with nature that's evoked by images of Adam naming the animals or St. Francis preaching to the birds. I think there's a part of us that longs for that kind of relationship with nature – I know I do: I love animals – I like to see them, but even better is to interact with them and get to touch them. My husband will attest to the fact that I will happily get bitten if that's the type of interaction that's available. But I think it's also possible for that longing to become a temptation – to get in the way of things that are more important.

The dolphin slaughter from the sermon is a great example. It makes perfect sense that people would want to swim with a dolphin – they're magnificent creatures, intelligent, often curious – so like us and yet so different. To want to connect with that other life seems the most natural thing in the world. But it's not real. If making those experiences available means killing other dolphins that don't fit the bill, and also possibly providing a miserable life for the dolphins that survive only to be taken into captivity, then we're not really connecting with nature – we're exploiting it in order to get the illusion of a connection.

Things have gotten better, but this used to be the case with zoos: creatures housed in tiny, artificial cages so that people could marvel while the animals suffered – and of course all the animals captured that didn't survive to get into a zoo. Most major zoos do a lot of conservation and species survival breeding and so forth, and there's more emphasis on enrichment and allowing for natural behaviors, but I think we still need to be very careful about respecting the animals' needs more than the humans' desires.

Certainly this is an issue for most people who try to keep animals like big cats as pets. Most people can't actually provide for the physical and psychological needs of a tiger, and even a tiger that doesn't mean any harm can easily kill a person. But maybe it's also an issue for me. I used to have a parrot: a green-cheeked conure that my husband and I fell in love with and bought from the pet store. We had misgivings about buying from the pet store, but at the time balanced those with the fact that this bird was here now, and we would know that at least that one would get a good home. And he did, until he got outside and – we think – was eaten by a hawk. But the question now is whether we should get another one someday. On one hand, they're great little birds, and it is much easier to care for a conure than a tiger. On the other hand, there's the entire industry of breeding parrots that are all too often relinquished because people don't understand what they're getting into when purchasing one of these intelligent and long-lived birds. There are parrots out there that need homes – but the ones that do are generally species that we definitely aren't looking for because we do have some idea how much work they take and know that we're not up for it. The green-cheeks are easy as far as parrots go. But I still don't know whether my adopting one would be a good thing overall – it would mean supporting the breeding of that particular species at least, and I don't know if that's something that should be supported.

A related issue is the balancing of conservation areas and human recreation. On one hand, ecotourism sounds like a great idea: preserve the wilderness, and make it more economically feasible by allowing people to come see and learn about what's being preserved. And sometimes that works really well. But some ecosystems are fragile; a lot of people trampling through might cause problems of its own. There are stories of rare birds being stressed to death from being chased by overenthusiastic birdwatchers. None of those people probably wanted to harm the bird, but the desire to connect overwhelmed their ability to perceive the actual needs of the animal. Some animals, and some ecosystems, might just need to be left alone.

And that's hard. Not just because humans in general have tended to take the “dominion over the earth” thing a bit too far, but also because the desire itself is not a bad thing. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to connect with all the wonderful creatures on the planet, but sometimes it can't be done without causing harm. The fact is that we don't live in Eden, and trying to pretend that we do carries the risk of helping to destroy the very things we long for.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

No One True Way

Last time I talked about the reasons why I still consider myself Christian, and the hope and guidance that my faith provides. Today I want to emphasize the fact that I don't believe in “one true way.” One of the biggest difficulties I've had with Christianity is the question of other religions. It's perfectly clear from my experience that people of all religious backgrounds and none can be kind or unkind, charitable or selfish, hopeful or despairing. And of course just about every major religion and ethical system teaches some version of the golden rule – on some level, we all get that people are basically alike in their essential needs and desires and that we ought to care for each other. I'm aware of three major ways that Christians deal with this fact.

The first is what I think of as the “too bad” approach: the idea that only Christians can be saved and everyone else will be condemned to hell, or at best, nonexistence. This is a great way to motivate people to evangelize very aggressively – you might lose your friend for now, but you could save them for eternity! But I just can't buy it. A God that accepts people who assent to a certain set of beliefs, even if they've done horrible things (though repented for them) but rejects people who have tried to be good all their lives but don't share those particular beliefs is a God who has His priorities backwards. I know or know of plenty of good people of all belief systems – including atheism – and if God doesn't want them than I don't want God.

Then there's the C.S. Lewis approach - “we know that no one is saved except through Christ, but we don't know that only those who know Him are saved through Him.” This is a much nicer idea, in that it doesn't require me to think of half the people I care about as hell-bound. In this version, God is bright enough to notice that lots of people are basically decent even if they never heard of Jesus, or heard of Him but were raised in and accepted another religion, or had a bad experience with the church, or just couldn't get their minds around the idea of a deity in general. And also, God is compassionate enough to still want everyone who is at all willing to have Him.

So basically in the C.S. Lewis approach, there's something of an idea that maybe it isn't someone's fault if they're not Christian. And that's where the problem is for me. It seems sort of like saying that it's not someone's fault if they're black or if they're gay – it may be true, but it's insulting to even consider the situation as having fault attached – as if it's obvious that it would be better to be white, or straight – or Christian – but we're nice people so we won't condemn people for something that's no fault of their own. It seems to me that true acceptance of diversity means much more than just tolerating the fact that people are different – and that goes for religion as well as ethnicity and orientation.

So I want to be able to work under the assumption that other people's belief systems are just as good a choice for them as Christianity is for me. To do that, I have to give up a couple ideas about religion that I once accepted without even being aware of them. The first is that religion is primarily about what happens after death, and how to make sure that good things instead of bad things happen to you. In this system, Christianity is about gaining heaven and avoiding hell, and the way to do that is to connect yourself to Jesus in the appropriate way. And other religions have their own ideas about salvation, but they're wrong, but luckily they might be able to get on the Jesus train anyway. I reject that whole idea. Whatever happens after death is too mysterious and lacking in data for me to get any sort of hold on, and it's not what my faith is about for me.

The second idea I'm throwing out is that religion is primarily (or maybe secondarily) a set of beliefs about the nature of reality. In the Christian view, some of those ideas about the nature of reality would be that there is one creator deity, that said deity exists in three interrelated modes, and so forth. Assuming that there's only one ultimate real reality, I then have to assert that my non-evidence-based ideas about reality are true and those of other people are false – but of course I can and should still love those people anyway. To me, it doesn't seem very loving to hold in my heart the belief that I have the truth about reality and other people are deluded, even though none of us can demonstrate any evidence for our beliefs.

So if religion isn't about salvation and it isn't about knowledge of reality, that what is it? For me, it's about having a community and a path, a set of stories and ideals that I use to inform my life and help me find or create meaning. Because of my background and personality, Christianity is the path that works the best for me, and I choose to walk that path and not others, even though I see that others have beauty and value as well, and I may borrow from them at times. Other people choose other paths, and I find those to be equally valid because they have their own backgrounds and personalities, and I can respect and admire their faithfulness to their own paths – and I don't have to think that it would be even better if they were Christian – it's not for me to say. Some people choose not to have religious lives at all – but the people I know who make that choice are still trying to live good and meaningful lives, so who am I to say that that's not right for them? Even though I find truth and beauty in all the religions I've learned about, Christianity is the one that resonates for me. I can borrow images and stories from other faiths, but ultimately for me the church is home. But again, there are those who feel able to walk more than one path, who feel committed to two (or more) different religions – and again, if that's what works for an individual, then great. Reality is whatever it is, and none of us really know what happens after this life, but if we can find meaning while we're here, that's probably enough to keep us busy.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Read John's Website!

Up in the corner where you can barely see it, I posted a link to my friend John's website.  He's a friend of mine from college, and he's way ahead of me on a lot of this figuring-out-the-world stuff.  Currently a lot of the posts are about sustainability and social justice issues and the very big problems with our economic system.  I highly recommend you go read!

Why Christian?

One of the things I've had to figure out as I made my way back to the church is whether and how I can call myself a Christian. Part of my time away was to give me space to question everything about my beliefs, and not all of those beliefs have made it through. I don't actively disbelieve anything that I believed before, but there's a lot more on the maybe list.

If being a Christian requires me to go down the creed and check off a series of statements as being believed, then by that definition I'm no longer a Christian. I'm no longer comfortable with the formula of “Jesus was God and saved you from your sins by taking your place on the cross in order to satisfy the Father who was also God. And by the way, he was raised.” This is an admittedly rather flip and incomplete description of substitutionary atonement. To be fair, though, I haven't been comfortable with that interpretation for quite a while, even when I was a regular churchgoer. I've never been really good with the idea of the crucifixion as a sort of in-kind trade for suffering in order to satisfy an angry God.

What I had from the church more recently was something along the lines of “Jesus was God, and by being incarnate as a human he showed us up-close and personal what God is like; he was crucified because God's ways are threatening to human ways; by accepting that death he somehow dealt with sin in a permanent way; the resurrection shows that God's love is not overcome by evil and death.”

I'm good with a lot more parts of this – still not sure about the dealing with sin part, and still not sure about the divinity of Jesus, and still not sure what actually, literally, historically happened. (I understand there is good independent historical evidence for the fact that someone named Jesus lived and was killed by crucifixion, but as far as I know, that's about it without getting into religious literature). But what I am good with is the meaning of the story, and it's on those grounds that I still call myself Christian.

Whether or not Jesus was actually God, I still get a lot of my understanding of God from the gospel stories. I still take Jesus' acceptance and welcoming of all people to be indicative of God's welcome to everyone. Whether or not the crucifixion actually did anything about sin (and whether or not sin is actually a useful concept – a topic for another post), going through the Holy Week liturgy goes make me face up to the ways in which I don't follow my conscience. Whether or not Jesus literally rose from the dead, I hope to find that love is more powerful than death. These are the stories and ideas that I kept coming back to even while I was away from the church.

So I call myself a Christian not because I believe all the things that Christians are supposed to believe, but because I find in the Christian stories a hope for a better world: a world where no one is excluded or exploited, where fear is unnecessary and hatred is unheard of, where our desires are in balance with the natural world, and where everyone can have the fullest experience of being human. The Christian stories and the community of the church feed that hope for me and both help me and challenge me to live towards seeing that hope become real.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Wandering

I've spent most of the past year in varying degrees of wandering from the church. This isn't the fault of the church, or at least not my church – I had issues that needed to be dealt with, and I think part of what I was doing was experimenting with not being religious. I couldn't go as far as atheism – that just wouldn't be honest on my part – but I would have described myself as agnostic for a while, and probably as partially agnostic even now.

Basically I went through a period where I just wasn't going to worry about God. I didn't try for any sort of spiritual discipline, I didn't concern myself with the church's teachings on morality, and I didn't go to church every week. For a few months, I didn't go at all. Then once I felt like I had a solid enough break, I started going back every now and then – once or twice a month. During this time, I was still not at all sure about the religious aspect, but I wanted to keep in touch with the community and keep my hand in for the occasional service project and the like.

I think the most important thing to note about this time is that it wasn't a disaster. Sometimes I hear stories along the lines of “I left the church, and my life just fell apart – I became morally bankrupt and totally lost my way and it wasn't until I hit rock bottom that I went back and got myself together.” It wasn't like that for me. For a good while, most of what I felt was relief. I wasn't trying to do things because I was “supposed to” anymore. I had Sunday mornings free, which gave me a bit more wiggle room in time management. I stopped trying to force myself to align with the religious moral ideals I'd been taught. This doesn't mean I lost all self-control. I didn't run out and rob banks because I don't want to. I didn't always act on my anger because I could see that doing so was likely to cause me more trouble than it was worth. I did give my emotions full reign inside my head – if I was having uncharitable thoughts, then I just went ahead and had uncharitable thoughts for as long as I felt like it. During this time, I described myself as amoral, and to some extent I still do. I don't find moral terms very useful – this doesn't mean that absolute right and wrong don't exist on some cosmic scale, just that the fact is that people don't all share the same moral ideas, so telling someone “You're morally wrong” is useless unless they share the same scale. Otherwise, you're just arguing over first principles. I find it much more effective to say (or at least think) “I cannot tolerate that action; if you persist in it, I am going to oppose you” without trying to convince either side of who's right. But that's all beside the point right now – material for another post.

So my life didn't fall apart when I left the church, I didn't become a raving psychopath, I didn't even experience anxiety about the state of my soul. So why go back? There were several reasons, but the one I'm going to look at right now is the fact that my basic nature seems to be more spiritual than otherwise. If I didn't concentrate on doing otherwise, I would slip back into approaching life from a religious perspective. If I didn't remind myself that I was agnostic, I would fall into the assumption that God existed. When I was at church, if I didn't concentrate on performing mental gymnastics and evaluating which part of the hymns and readings I could and couldn't believe in a literal sense, I would find myself swept up in the emotional meaning of the words. In my thoughts about what a good society would look like, I would find myself considering the gospel stories and taking them seriously. Add to that the fact that I still loved my church, and eventually I decided that it just wasn't worth the mental struggle. If I have to fight that hard to not be part of the church, maybe it's because, in fact, I am. I've still changed a lot as a result of my wandering, and some of it I think is good change that wouldn't have happened without my stepping away for a while, but now I don't need to be away anymore.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Boring Basics

My name is Kimberly and I live in Durham, NC and attend a wonderful Episcopal church there. Please don't use that information to stalk and kill me because I have a lot of things to do that involve not being dead. Thank you. Other ways to describe myself besides Episcopalian are: ecologist-in-training, geek, liberal, and introvert – just so you have some idea what you're in for. For the purposes of this blog, the Episcopalian is going to be the most salient trait.

I'm doing this blog because I hate to meditate. No, it's not going to be a blog against meditation. People who get something out of meditation should definitely keep doing it. But for me, it's like chewing rocks. I get nothing out of it and I hate trying to be still and empty my mind when my mind has lots of stuff it wants to be doing. And yes, I know it helps you focus and lowers your blood pressure and all sorts of other wonderful things. Which is all the more reason why those who find it tolerable should certainly stick with it if they want to. But no, I don't meditate, and I'm not much good at prayer either – not in the set-time, disciplined sort of way. Sooner or later, I'll quit because there's something more interesting to do.

But I do think about religious/spiritual stuff a lot, and I write, so it occurred to me that there's no reason that can't be my spiritual practice. This blog exists as a way for me to do so in some sort of a disciplined way, and also as a place for me to put my thoughts out in the world – I've never been much of one for writing just for myself. I'm going to try to post at least once a week, more frequently when I can. There will probably be a flurry of postings early on because it's a new project and I'm excited. I'm also writing this about a week before I intend to actually start the blog – setting up a backlog of postings so that I don't vanish when life gets crazy.

For my own reference: my privacy practices are going to be like this – I'll identify places as far as what kind of place they are in what city (church in Durham, university in Cleveland), myself by first name, and anyone else by relationship to me (my aunt, my friend, one of the clergy at my church) or just by a letter (N, M, J, etc). There are only 26 letters and I know more than 26 people, so letters may be reused at some point. That's okay – I'll mostly just be using them when I'm quoting someone who made me think.

If people decide to comment, I will first of all be really excited, and secondly moderate on a very simple basis – stuff that's totally irrelevant will be deleted (buy my chickens, lemons suck, etc), but if you disagree with me, that's fine, though again if your disagreements are totally irrelevant (strings of swear words and misspellings with no content), they'll still be deleted. And also anything that is threatening or personally identifies someone else. If you decide to personally identify yourself that's fine – but for other people, stick to first names at most.

I'm also going to limit myself to writing for no more than an hour for any given post. This is partly so I don't get totally sidetracked or neglect other things I have to do, and partly to avoid posts so long that no one will read them, which might still be an issue.

Finally, the general disclaimer, so that I only have to say it once: I have no formal religious training. I am not a clergy member. All I have are my own opinions, based on my own reasoning and experience. If you find something I say helpful, please use it. If you find it unhelpful, don't use it. If you disagree and would like to discuss it, feel free to use the comments. If you find that reading my thoughts is harmful to you in any way (emotional state, faith, etc) than please don't read them.

I think that's all for today – next post will have actual content, I promise!