On First Things (Part Two - The Son)

Read Part One here.

The tenants of Judaism are on the one hand confirmed and deepened by the teachings of Jesus, and on the other hand they are renounced as obsolete. Jesus approaches religion in a way that is remarkably complex and would be deeply offensive to the community around him (as well as to our community today).

In the second chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus and his followers pick wheat on the Sabbath, which is forbidden by religious law. When the Pharisees criticize him, he reminds them that when King David and his men were hungry, they ate bread that had been set aside as a sacrifice to God even though only priests were allowed to eat this bread. David had privileged the basic human needs of his companions over the dogmas of religious law. Jesus says “The Sabbath was made for the good of human beings; they (human beings) were not made for the Sabbath.” This is a humanist position, one that demands that the needs of human beings be put above religious precepts and that these precepts have value only insofar as they benefit human beings. Because that is not always the case, the value and purpose of these precepts must be reconsidered.

In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. To “fulfill the law” meant to interpret and follow it perfectly. A very pious, observant Jew “fulfilled the law” when he understood it comprehensively and adhered to it above all other things. Jesus claims that he is fulfilling the law even though he and his followers, on the surface, disobey the precepts of that law.

This is more than simply a challenge to religious fundamentalism. Jesus proclaims that he is the truly pious one, in no small part by virtue of the fact that he does NOT necessarily adhere to the rigid moral codes of his faith. It is as if there is something beyond the law, something to which the law points and that “something” is the real reason for the law. If we take him at his word, this means the law was always (and by necessity) doomed to fail, that this religion, and by extension ALL religion, serves its true function only when it fails. Jesus was pushing anyone who would listen to step beyond religion. This is not a step back from religion, or a step around it. It is a step beyond, using the lessons learned from humanity’s religious experience to transcend that experience, an experience which is rapidly losing relevance and meaning.

This is a step beyond the law as well as a step beyond morality. Jesus structures many of his teachings in a formula that says “You have heard it said… But I am telling you…” Each of these sayings builds on the moral rule even as that rule is rejected in favor of a more abstract principle. Not committing murder is adherence to a moral code, while loving your enemy is embracing an abstract principle. Abstract principles must be applied anew in every unique situation to account for the virtually infinite number of possible ethical dilemmas. Now the comparatively abstract theology of Judaism is merged with an equally abstract ethical dimension.

In his excellent book The Subversion of Christianity, Jacques Ellul argues concurrently on the basis of much more orthodox theology:

Not only is it honestly impossible to derive a moral system from the Gospels and Epistles, but further, the main keys in the gospel-the proclamation of grace, the declaration of pardon, and the opening up of life to freedom-are the direct opposite of morality… To elaborate a moral system is to be a sinner before God, not because the conduct is bad but because, even if it is good, another good is substituted for the will of God.

This is not exactly the same as my position, but the practical result is the same, and it illuminates the fact that the incompatibility of Christianity and morality is not unique to any one specific Christian theology. It is essential to the Truth of the Gospel: the truth that humanity is absolved. This absolution is not earned, it is given. A person’s good deeds or bad deeds are not tallied. They have no bearing on a person’s standing or eternal fate.

In light of this, behavior can no longer be based on rule and authority. Concepts of eternal reward and punishment (contrary to superstitions frequently used as fear-based recruiting tools) lose their meaning. Belief in this absolution can be (and often is) abused as a free pass to behave in selfish and destructive ways, but if correctly applied within the larger picture of the Christian ideal, it means that a person chooses to do the right thing because it is the right thing. This is motivation superior to a construct of reward and punishment. It is a sign of a maturing world-view, and that maturity is essential because the “right thing” will be situational, and principles must be uniquely applied by a developed ethical imagination.

This is wildly idealistic, and places a great deal of faith in humanity, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Is it ethical anarchy? In a certain sense, yes, but it is not ethical nihilism. The apostle Paul said “Everything is permissible” but he immediately followed that statement with the statement that “not everything is beneficial” and an exhortation to seek well-being of others instead of one’s own well-being. What that will look like will depend on our own abilities and circumstances.

But what becomes of our relationship with God if this is the case? What role does God play if not the role of law-giver and judge?

Read Part Three here.

On First Things (Part One - The Father)

I have long struggled to put what I believe into a coherent written statement, and for the next few posts, I'll be relating portions of my most recent attempt to do this. My views shift and mutate, like anyone else's, but I want to let this writing stand as a reminder of a particular point in my journey.

Originally, I began writing this when asked to contribute a guest-post to a blog on Atheism, and I intended to appeal, first and foremost, to unbelievers, not to proselytize, but to explain myself as a part of a dialogue.

Like most Christians, I share with most atheists a firm belief in the importance of critical thinking and skepticism, and in most of the day-to-day arguments between atheists and Christians (school prayer, evolution and such) I side firmly (I am “excluding the middle” for the sake of brevity) with atheists. I am a secularist not in spite of my faith, but because of my faith. Not only do I wish to keep something that I understand to be a beautiful, complex truth out of the hands of those who would cynically exploit a version of it for political, social (and even moral) purposes, but I also believe that the leaders of institutionalized Christianity have domesticated a radical idea (an idea that should stand in complete opposition to our social, moral, political and economic norms) and turned it into another obsolete dogma alongside others. I believe that the message of Christ is not a religion at all. It is a transformative perception of a Truth (post-modernity, tremble at that capital “T”!) that carries serious implications for our lives.

Thus far my Christian friends and neighbors are likely to agree, but I wish to be absolutely clear that the issue is not semantic; it is not a matter of placing Christianity above “religion” in order to stress Christianity’s privileged place. Not only is the Christian message not a creedal, dogmatic religion, it is an absolute rejection of all creeds, dogmas, ideologies, rituals, and moral laws.

Everything that is a part of religion is renounced by Christ. Even, finally, the traditional relationship with an anthropomorphic supreme being is abandoned. The things gained from humanity’s experiences with these traditions are not abandoned however. If we are willing to rise to the challenge it sets before us, the Gospel (the message that the first Christians derived from their experiences) offers a tenable step forward in the process of which religion is a part; an exit from religion that accounts for the value and meaning of humanity’s religious experiences.

Because the Christian message can only be understood as a leap that follows the leap taken by ancient Judaism, I should say a brief word about the Bible: I believe that our spiritual predecessors, while often brilliant and insightful, were also imperfect people troubled and prejudiced by the mores, political situations and pre-scientific world-views of the times in which they lived. They communicated their ideas and questions through myth and folklore, and their writings should not be understood as inerrant or literal. These stories are not intended as historical stories; they are spiritual literature that uses symbols and tropes that had profound meaning for the text’s intended audience.

This is not a new or unique position. Rudolf Bultmann, for example, said as much in his attempts to “de-mythologize” the New Testament, to lift the meaning out of its mythological construct, and Paul Tillich, (more prone than Bultmann to preserve the symbols), stressed that the symbolic is not less true than the literal, it is more true. Bultmann and Tillich had all the advantages of a 20th Century understanding of the world, but their arguments were not unprecedented. Origen, the 3rd Century Biblical scholar wrote in De Principiis (First Principles) that we misunderstand Scripture when we “understand Scripture not according to the spiritual meaning but according to the sound of the letter” because the mysteries transmitted there are hidden “in ordinary Words under the pretext of a narrative.”

The Old Testament narrative is not simply the surface conflict between the followers of Yahweh and the other cultures they encounter; it is a conflict between a convent with the mysterious God who defies concrete depiction and a worldly need for tangible, graven images and the religious security they offer.

In the beginning, humanity occupies a place of total innocence, represented by Eden. This paradise is lost when human beings eat, not from the tree of “knowledge”, as critics are fond of saying (in order to accuse Judaic faiths of anti-intellectualism), but the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil.” Humanity discovers “good” and “evil”, precursors to the concept of “sin” and this is the beginning of humanity’s great problem. Adam and Eve, the archetypical human beings, become ashamed of their nakedness. This nakedness posed no problem before, but with the burden of morality, they irrationally clothe themselves, not simply in literal clothing, but in divisive social constructions. They are now estranged by sin, but their sins are not the problem. The concept of sin is the problem. “Good” and “Evil” become categories into which behavior and even people are divided. As a result, human beings are estranged not only from an original place of innocence, an authentic life that encompasses the fullness and complexity of human-ness, but also from each other: We are expelled from paradise into a harsh world where brother kills brother (the Cain and Abel story) and people are separated into nations by barriers of culture and language (the Tower of Babel story.)

The decision is made to become “moral” people. Moral codes are demanded by such a decision. Religion is a way to preserve and teach these moral codes. For Israel, the stewards of truth in this narrative, God is kept invisible to prevent a shallow, superstitious faith. However, Israel loses faith, someone erects an idol, this idol is worshipped and the worshippers are severely reprimanded. Clearly, the more nuanced faith now demanded is difficult. Their God is anthropomorphic, and he is understood through their eyes but his Ultimate Otherness is still preserved by the prohibition against turning him into a visible object. This will (to an extent) prevent them from totally obscuring God with a god-image based on their prejudices and ideas. It does not work perfectly, but it is a step in the Process. Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, succinctly summarizes the significance of this:

The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture.

This new kind of theology was, I believe, a major step away from obsolete religious formulations. Christianity, then, arises from this tradition in the figure of Jesus, who provides the next major step.

Read Part Two here.

Unity

Story here

Story here

Relayed without comment:

"What moral conservatives fail to perceive is thus how, to put it in Hegelese, in fighting the dissolute liberal permissive culture, they are fighting the necessary ideological consequence of the unbridled capitalist economy that they themselves fully and passionately support." –Slavoj Zizek

We Will Never Be Ancestors

I have never been able to imagine a future for humanity, only a timeline that extends far behind and not far ahead. We may have children and grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren, but we will never be anyone’s ancient ancestors, I just know it.

Maybe this is why I’ve always been so drawn to speculative fiction about future scenarios. Any future is better than no future, and with few exceptions, even the most dire dystopia has hope. I like to imagine that we will be able to overcome anything we face. I wish I could believe it, too.

The Well of Sacred Text

"Don't fall down the well of scripture.
Use the words to keep moving.

Thousands are trapped in the Qur'an
and the Bible, holding to a
rope.

It's not the rope's fault.
Let the wellrope pull you out.
Then let the wellrope go."

-Rumi "The Well of Sacred Text"

Election Day

If we chose to follow Christ, we are making a commitment to provide for the needs of others even at the expense of our own comfort and liberty. It is the Christian’s responsibility to love the poor, the marginalized and the victims of violence. It’s not always easy to know how to do that, and it will not look the same in every situation, but if our best resource for helping others is some arm of government, so be it. We should be open to that possibility.

I would prefer that Christians take the initiative to alleviate poverty by choice and conviction, but this has not happened. There are people in America eating out of dumpsters while Christians (and I indict myself first of all) accumulate luxury. Until this changes, we are in no position to argue. It is true that government aid is abused by some, but this is vastly preferable to the negative consequences that could result from withholding aid just because some take advantage. Even if the majority of those receiving aid are taking advantage, it is not the Christian's place to judge or withhold. The Gospel is clear: Give to anyone who asks.

That is not to say that Christians should be taking wealth by force and redistributing. The role of the Christian is to be the person from whom wealth is taken. We should surrender these worldly treasures with a glad heart. If the government taxes your robe, give them also your cloak. The uniqueness of the Christian Gospel is most evident in the fact that it is absurd by any worldly standard and will give us no comfort or happiness, and in the fact that we are not saved by these works but will live for others anyway, even at the cost of our own lives, simply out of love. That is the decision.

Our willingness to serve and suffer gladly will potentially be an example to the rest of humanity that there is a way beyond power and coercion. We won't live to see it, but we will do what we can anyway. Or perhaps our servitude and suffering will never impact the world around us and we will apparently sacrifice for nothing, but that's the risk. Better to follow Christ into hell than to stay with Satan in paradise.

The message of Christ is not one of fairness; it is one of absolute and unconditional compassion. It is not justice; it is grace. If we understand God as a just ruler who indulges our pretenses of legal jurisprudence, condones our wars as righteous, and proposes for us a rule-based political philosophy, then Jesus is not our savior. The Gospel stands in total opposition to individualist and American values, but if we are to profess Christ, this affiliation must take precedence over all else. It may even exclude all other affiliations. Our economic philosophies and our proud politics are idols and we should busy ourselves with the destruction of our idols. Find your life and lose it, lose your life and find it.

This is not an easy commitment to make, but I hope to truly make it someday. Until then, I'm not sure I have any right to call myself a Christian. The uncomfortable irony of my life has been that I repeatedly encounter people who live radically in accordance with Christ's teachings but in no way profess to be Christians, while those who do profess to be Christians so frequently slam the door in their Messiah's face. What we do to each other we do to Christ, after all.

If you choose to vote today, please remember that.

Waiting for The Great Pumpkin with Richard Dawkins

The title of this post is the title of a snazzy one-act (one joke?) play that I am too uninspired to write.

Though more commonly known as That Guy Who’s Married to That Girl Who Used to Be Married to Your Favorite Incarnation of Dr. Who, English scientist Richard Dawkins is also one of the more articulate and outspoken public faces of the New (sic) Atheism. While not likely to be remembered as an innovator on that front, Mr. Dawkins has a knack for maintaining composure in the face of the most exasperating questions, and his sense of wonder regarding the beauty of our universe is a contagious awe that makes him the most accessible among the latest batch of religious fundamentalism’s critics.

Some of his pithiest remarks, immortalized in Facebook profiles and countless blogs, reveal his limitations (calling pantheism “sexed-up atheism” is akin to calling biochemistry “sexed-up alchemy”) but no one mistakes him for a philosopher or sociologist. It is unfortunate in a way that the current de facto voice of atheism has to be a scientist. Working from that discipline enables a critique of only the most superstitious theological models. Horses don’t come much deader than that, though in the fallout from this (now obsolete) conversation, thinkers who remain in the religious spehere will happily find themselves in more sophisticated company.

To the project of developing a Christian position that was tenable for the 20th Century, it could be said that no one has contributed more than Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. (My friend Michael Stohrer told me this is a suggestion that would "make Nietzsche’s moustache quiver with rage".) In the same way, the popular atheists of this moment, by funneling essentially old-hat arguments into shiny new best-sellers, have brought the purging fire skepticism to a large audience, and the spiritual ideas that survive will be the ones worth saving. For that, believers should be grateful.

Rather than an heir to Bertrand Russell and Antony Flew, Dawkins is a charismatic provocateur whose civil and unwavering rhetoric could potentially contribute to getting participants in the popular conversation onto the same page so we can take the conversation farther.

Tomorrow’s Dawkins will have to be more sophisticated, someone who, like his audience, will accept the conclusions of hard science as a given but is willing to dive into abstract, even subjective concepts beyond myopic materialism. In any conversation, the no-saying position must be meaningfully occupied, (lest we fall into a sheepish consensus) and this position requires three-dimensional thinkers able to adapt, thinkers who are unbeholden to predecessors. The 21st Century’s religious conversation must move past simplistic science/religion binaries as well as the common inability to understand or distinguish between the diverse positions that exist within one tradition.

Parable #2

There was a man named Adam who walked the Earth when it was new. He had a wife who was beautiful and kind. God walked with them, and taught them how to care for the Earth and receive from it everything they would need.

Adam’s wife bore many children and, as Adam’s progeny multiplied, God promised that Adam would be the father of many nations. The children of Adam delighted in their world, bathing in the rivers and cooling their bodies in the shade of the trees. God walked among them in friendship, often appearing as a son of Adam so he could live among them without making them afraid.

Only Adam knew the secret name of God, because his relationship with God was a special bond. The whole Earth was a gift to Adam, given on the condition that he would attend to it faithfully and serve all who inhabit it with compassion and love. Adam served faithfully, and lived with his children in paradise.

Eventually, Adam took a second wife, who spoke to serpents and shared with him knowledge about new things called Good and Evil. She taught Adam that some people, called “sinners”, were not to be loved as others were loved. Adam and his new wife made laws, and began to rule over the nations they had begotten. They demanded that their children revere God, whom they believed had given them the wisdom to rule. Many rebelled against Adam and they were punished. Others obeyed and they were rewarded. God watched in silence as the Earth was divided.

Adam’s new wife had a jealous heart and she said to her husband “Your first wife is disgracing your name. Last night, on the bank of a river, I heard her talking to God and she called Him by his secret name, which is a privilege only allowed to you. This sin can not be pardoned. You must chase her away.” Adam, with a heavy heart did just that, and his first wife went away, never to be heard again.

Sensing a new possibility, the possibility of exile, Adam and his new wife made a decree that sinners would be banished to the vast deserts that surrounded their paradise. This banishment meant certain death, as nothing could thrive in those endless sands. Adam was feared by his children, but this fear made them righteous and good.

News reached Adam that God had been seen cooling in the shade of a tree with sinners, eating meals with them and calling them His friends. On the bank of a river one summer morning, Adam spoke to God. “You are spoiling our world. I rule by virtue, and in your name. When you are seen with sinners, my daughters and sons question your holiness.”

God rebuked Adam. “What do you know of holiness? I made you a steward of this Earth, not its ruler. I only asked that you serve with compassion and love, but you decided to rule over others with fear.”

Adam tried, but could not remember God’s secret name. He went away in anger, and in his heart he cursed God.

Adam told many others what God had said, and they all began to resent God. Finally, on one bright summer morning, Adam came to God, followed by a mob of his children.

Before nightfall, God hung from the gallows.

The following morning, the gallows was empty, and a young boy, who had been sleeping on the ground nearby, told Adam that God had come down from his noose in the night, waking up the boy to say goodbye. Now, said the boy, God would wander the endless sands of the desert with the sinners in exile. The child was whipped for his lies.

Without God’s company, Adam and his children felt a void in their hearts. So Adam made new gods. Some were statues, some were books and some were great buildings that reached toward heaven. Finally, even Adam himself became a god.

Proud and powerful, Adam and many of his children began to abuse the resources they had been given. Some acquired wealth and privilege, while others were left to suffer. Adam built machines to move across continents. He built terrible weapons and gave them to his children, who aligned themselves behind borders and waged bloody wars in the name of their gods. The keepers of the law tore through the lands of Adam’s children, persecuting anyone who blasphemed these new gods. Anyone who disobeyed was sent to the dessert.

Adam took many wives, and each bore him daughters and sons only to use them against him. Adman’s family was ravaged by manipulation and deceit.

Only physicians driven by avarice attended Adam’s bed as he died. The father of so many nations was buried in a secluded wood far from any city, and his burial was attended only by his children who had not reaped the riches of their legacy. Many of them had returned from exile in the desert. Standing over his grave, these sons and daughters of Adam made a pact with one another.

“On this spot, we renounce all that our father has built. We pledge to attend to this world faithfully and serve all who inhabit it with compassion and love.”

Not far away, in the dark of the wood, God smiled, approving. And He put faith in these new daughters and sons of Adam.

Tolerance

The arguments over the Islamic community center in New York have been frustrating, but they have given me the opportunity to think about what we are talking about when we talk about religious tolerance.

Tolerance is a fine ideal, but I think it sets the bar too low. We “tolerate” a crying baby on an airplane. We should try to sincerely RESPECT religious traditions, not just when it is fashionable to do so, and not out of a desire to feel More Multi-Cultural Than Thou.

Part of that respect means engaging in thoughtful, critical appraisals of the tenants of those traditions (and their countless permutations – those distinctions matter!) Patting people on the head and saying “Whatever beliefs make you happy are just swell with me, sport!” is not respect. That’s condescending bullshit. I’m not saying we all have to be Christopher Hitchens (I did say “thoughtful, critical” appraisals) but we don’t really respect these traditions if we don’t find them worthy of inquiry. For an example of what this respect might look like, we can turn to Islamic doctrine. One of the things about Islam that is so remarkable to me (even if it is an accident of chronology) is the way other faiths (well, the two other Abrahamic faiths, anyway) are deemed important and worthy of respect. That being said, Islamic doctrine is intellectually honest enough to temper that respect with the firm belief that (for example) the divinity of Christ is incorrect, perhaps even blasphemous. In that act of thoughtfully disagreeing, Islam is a million times more respectful than, say, the nebulous openness of Unitarian Universalists. (Sorry, UUs!)

We can think of the phrase “I respectfully disagree” as having an all-too-apt mirror-image: “I disrespectfully agree.”