My favorite part of Quaker meeting each week is hearing what people have to say about how they’re experiencing their faith. And for multiple meetings in a row, I’ve really wanted to say something, but have felt like I’d be squashing someone’s joy if I said what I wanted to say. I don’t know why, but I feel a strong pressure to be the prodigal son coming home, and when I can’t be that person, I tend to shut myself up, afraid of ruining the positive experience so many people have. I hope I’ll eventually have the courage to speak off the cuff, but for now, this is the best I can do.
There’s a show on TV called Catfish. It’s about people who are in online relationships with people they’ve never met in real life. Most of them have never seen the face of the person they’ve been chatting or talking on the phone with. In the show, the mysterious other person is tracked down, and introduced to their online significant other. Most of the time, the mysterious online person turns out not to be who they claimed to be. Sometimes they’re a different gender than they claimed to be. Sometimes they’re overweight and afraid to be seen. Sometimes they’re just mean people having fun at the expense of others.
In my life, God has been my catfish. The relationship I thought I had turned out not to be real. And like the people on the TV show, even if the relationship wasn’t real, the emotions I felt during that time were real, and have to be dealt with. It’s an awkward situation. I’m simultaneously mourning the loss of, and being disappointed in, someone who probably doesn’t exist.
The weight of the loss of God is with me all the time. It’s like being a widow in a restaurant, quietly watching the couple next to you celebrate an anniversary. All I want is closure. To either discover that I’m wrong about God, or to accept the loss and let it go. Of all the things I’m afraid of, what I’m afraid of most is that neither will happen, and I'll spend the rest of my life waiting for someone who never shows up.
In the week since I first wrote this, I've tried to distance myself from theology, and have found it rewarding. The searching had its purpose, but I suspect that time is nearing an end. At some point life has to be lived and not just analyzed. The weight of the search has so overwhelmed me with unhappiness that it's made it difficult to tackle any other goals I have. Food, for example. I would love to be able to eat better and exercise. But when there's such a heavy negative pull related to God issues, how do I turn away food, which is always a positive experience? I need to take back some control of my mental health, and let go of the need for answers. God, if she exists, ought to be plenty capable of making herself known. I don't know why I've felt obligated to do the looking. I no longer do.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Friday, January 31, 2014
Agnosticism Revisited
18 months ago I wrote about why I’m not an agnostic. You can read that here if you want. In the middle of writing another post a few
months ago I accidentally discovered I might be one after all. This post will be heavy on quibbles and
semantics, so apologies in advance.
As discussed in that post from 2012, agnosticism is not just
a state of being unsure or confused. It’s
a philosophical position that the question of “does God exist?” can’t be
answered one way or the other for a variety of reasons. One reason would be that the scientific
method requires tangible things that can be tested. God(s) are by most definitions not part of
the physical universe, and therefore can’t be tested. Should God(s) show up and talk, as described
in various religious books, that would certainly be something that the
scientific method could use. But they
don’t, so they can’t be tested in that manner.
My agnostic realization is more philosophical than
scientific. When we discuss things in
our every day life, most of the time we’re talking about something with which we
have real life experience. We can talk
about coffee or sports or sex because we have experience with these
things. With God(s), I’m not sure the
language we use is so accurate. What,
for example, is omniscience? We have a
vague idea of what we mean by it, but we don’t have any real life points of
data. An adult knows more than a child,
a computer “knows” more than an adult, but none of us has seen or met anyone
with knows everything about everything all the time. Same goes for omnipresence and
omnipotence. We’ve experienced varying
degrees strength and presence, but nothing close to what would be defined as
being able to do anything, and being able to be everywhere at once. So when we speak of these things, are we
saying anything sensical?
The response to the ontological argument for the existence
of God gives us another way to view agnosticism as an appropriate
position. To steal from Anselm, the
ontological argument goes like this:
- Our understanding of God is a being than which no greater can be conceived.
- The idea of God exists in the mind.
- A being that exists both in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
- If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being—that which exists in reality.
- We cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
- Therefore, God exists.
There are many reasons the argument doesn’t work (presumably
a 50 foot zombie that eats babies would not be made greater by existing in
reality instead of just the mind), point number 2 being the most
discussed. Most theists would not claim
that they fully comprehend God. They have
rough outlines of what they God is, but not so much knowledge that they’d be
comfortable saying they “know” what God is.
This lack of clarity is an example showing agnosticism is how people
operate in real life.
Douglas Gasking had an interesting (and mostly sarcastic)
critique of the ontological argument, postulating that the more difficult it
was for God to create the universe, the greater accomplishment it would
be. The greatest challenge would be to
create the universe while not existing. The
universe exists, therefore God does not exist.
Most definitions of God(s) also contain an element of being
infinite. We certainly don’t have a real
grasp on what infinite is. As the old
riddle goes, if there’s a library with an infinite number of books, and you
take one off the shelf, is it still an infinite number of books? The existence of the infinite is still a
debated topic among philosophers and mathematicians.
So, if we can’t be sure we know what we’re talking about
with any of the defining characteristics of God(s), how can we make positive
statements such as “God exists” or “God does not exist”?
For now, even if I accept that I’m an agnostic atheist
(agnostics still don’t believe in God(s)), it doesn’t change anything but the
label. But labels are fun, and useful
for clarification.
If you had to give yourself a label, what would it be?
Friday, January 24, 2014
Taking Yes For An Answer
When Rob Portman, Republican senator from Ohio, changed
course and announced his support for gay marriage after learning that his own
son was gay, my initial reaction wasn’t very positive. “How convenient,” I figured. “People have been trying to advance the cause
of gay rights for decades, and only when it affects you directly are you
finally convinced?” I didn’t think very highly
of Portman’s change of heart. Real
character change shouldn’t require the issue being so close to home.
Surprisingly, my gay friends didn’t see it that way. Having likely seen this change occur in
multiple before, usually people they know, it wasn’t news to them that personal
experience is often the motivator for changing one’s outlook. They were happy enough to have the senator’s
vote, and weren’t very concerned about the sincerity of his turnaround.
This week I’ve seen a much more public display of this dynamic on
display in the blogosphere. One of my
favorite bloggers, Benjamin Corey, wrote a very nice article apologizing to the
LGBT community for his past behavior.
You can read it here. The
comments on his blog are mostly other Christians agreeing that they too had
behaved badly, and agreed with the apology.
One of Ben’s friends at the Friendly Atheist blog shared the article on that site. The difference in
the comments is striking. In addition to
the usual masturbatory comments about how any shift to the left should
logically lead to atheism, a number of people attacked Mr. Corey for his
apology, accusing him of being too late to the party, and finding multiple ways
to be offended. These people are for me the equivalent of who fundamentalists are for Benjamin Corey - an offensive extreme of an otherwise reasonable conclusion.
If the whole point of advocating for social causes is to
change the minds of those we disagree with, why is it so hard for us to take
yes for answer when people finally do change their minds?
Monday, January 13, 2014
Adjusting Death - A Memoir, Chapters 1-4
Death is a real bitch. As an insurance adjuster, my involvement with death on a professional level is less about the existential issues that plague me in the evenings, and more about the nit and grit that accompany sudden death within the home. Death at work takes it out of its romanticized form and forces you to confront it down to the smallest detail, along with the family members forced to deal with the aftermath. The following are the stories of the four death claims I’ve had the privilege/misfortune of handling.
Claim 1: The Drunk
In the claims world, when a new claims comes in, the first thing most adjusters do is look at the summary description of what happened. Shortly into my tenure in the property department of my prior employer, I received a new claim, clicked on the summary description, and read “Cause of Loss: suicide.”
Insurance policies are pretty specific documents. They operate in 2 ways. Either they cover everything unless specifically excluded, or they cover nothing unless specifically stated. With buildings it’s usually the former, and with personal belongings, usually the latter. When this claim in, having never handled one like it before, my first thought was “why would someone file a claim for suicide? What’s suicide got to do with property?” Without reading much further into the details, I picked up the phone, called the number, and asked to speak to Mr. B. Very politely, the woman who had answered the phone replied, “I’m sorry, my husband committed suicide a few months ago.” I’d asked to speak to the dead guy.
As Mrs. B. explained why she had filed the claim, it was hard to imagine having had a worse evening than she had that night in December. Her husband was drunk again, and this time was threatening to kill her. She locked herself in a bedroom and called the policy. It wasn’t the first time. Too drunk to know better, and knowing the police had been called, he stumbled downstairs and out into the front yard, still waving his gun around and yelling. According to Mrs. B., when the first police lights were visible on the street, her husband walked around to the side of the house, screamed something at the police, then shot himself in the head.
Having had a few months between the suicide and the filing of the claim, Mrs. B was remarkably composed. By the time she finished her story, I’d forgotten why we were on the phone. Eventually she got to the point. “So, I just got a quote for replacing the piece of siding with the bullet hole in it. And there’s the clean-up bill of course…” The clean-up bill. For his brains. That had been on the walkway next to her garden. When the clean-up company came, they figured the most practical thing to do was to use a hose to spray his brains into the dirt, then shovel the dirt out in a wheelbarrow. Apparently your average wet vac is not designed for such purposes.
My job, as always, was to figure out what I could pay for under the insurance policy. It turns out, bullet holes are not excluded under the policy. While damage done on purpose IS excluded, since the widow is the only person benefiting from payment, the claims department decided not to enforce the exclusion. How nice of them. Policies also do not cover dirt under any circumstances. I made my call to clean-up company and asked for a copy of their bill, hopefully without mention of the dirt so I could pay the whole thing. As death claims go, this would be the easiest.
Claim 2: The Old Man
Mr. C was tired of his family members calling him all the time. He was convinced that they only called to see if he was still alive. He was really old, after all. So he told them to stop. A week later, you can guess what happened. Mr. C died in the most unfortunate of places. 6 weeks after his death, his body was found just inside the front door of his tri-level home. His family had apparently decided 6 weeks was long enough, and asked a neighbor to check on him. The neighbor didn’t have to knock on the door to know what happened. Rotting human is a smell one never forgets.
The front door wasn’t a very convenient place for Mr. C to die. The human body is not polite as it decomposes, so not only did Mr. C’s corpse stink the place up, his liquids went down the stairs towards the garage, and down the heating duct next to his body. The heat was set at “old man lived here,” which is not a low temperature.
The guy’s family lived out of town, which made my job easier. I met the clean-up company in the driveway, where I was cautioned to wear a mask. I should have listened. Entering the house, the smell-that-one-never-forgets almost floored me. If you’ve never had the pleasure, imagine a dead raccoon wrapped in an airtight plastic bag for a week or two, and then imagine you open the bag and stick your face in it really quick. It’s kind of like that.
Once I’d recovered from the smell, I asked where we should start. The tech pointed at my feet and said, “well, he died right there. The anti-microbial spray should be dry by now.” I looked down to find I was standing on wood sub floor, as the carpet, pad, and underlayment had all been removed in a radius of about 8 feet in each direction. So too had the carpeted stairs been taken out leading to the garage, and the ducting under the house. This was the only physical damage to the home. If only that were the extent of it…
Talking to the tech, I learned that dead body smell isn’t something that goes away with a few open windows. Most of the time, companies will clean and paint every surface of the house, clean every item in the house, and throw away anything made of paper. As for the paper, Mr. C’s family told me that they had taken a box of important papers back to Seattle with them after coming down to deal with the funeral arrangements. “Now that the papers have been here for a few days, our house smells like his house,” his son told me.
Claim 3: The Son
With claims 1 and 2, my arrival on site happened after the worst of the mess was taken care of. Not so with claim number three. Immediately after receiving the claim, I got a call from the homeowner. “Can you come out here right away? The clean-up people are here, but I don’t want them to get started until you’ve documented the damage.”
The house wasn’t far from the office, so I got there within half an hour. The clean-up crew was standing outside in their full body hazmat suits, looking ready for the apocalypse. The owner took me outside, and explained that his son had shot himself last night, and damaged the carpet. His son, I learned, was in his 20s, and for reasons unknown to me, had chosen to kill himself at his parents’ house, in his childhood bedroom. The scene in the bedroom was surreal. Trophies were still on the shelves, sports pennants were on the wall, and the bed looked like it was made for a 10 year-old. While the son’s body was gone, the mess he left behind was not. Someone tried to cover it up with a kid’s blanket, but it didn’t really work. I quietly measure the dimensions of the room so I’d know how much carpet needed to be replaced, and come back downstairs. The family seemed to be in shock, so they weren’t very emotional, and seemed to understand the claims process.
A few weeks later, my own shock came when I got the bill for the clean-up. To take the carpet out of one room and dispose of the biohazard material, the company was charging over $14,000. I looked at the itemized bill. $400 per small box of carpet. $100 per hour for labor. 20% overhead and profit (a charge only owed to general contractor who coordinate sub-contractors). I called and yelled at someone at the company’s main office, but their lines are well rehearsed. "Well, you see, brain fluid is clear, so it can't always been seen with the naked eye, so we have to make sure we....blah blah blah." I had three other companies write my comparable bids for the same work. The highest was $5k. None of that mattered. The company wasn’t backing down, and had mailed their bill to the grieving dad.
Most insurance companies make exceptions in the case of suicide. Biohazardous materials are specifically excluded from coverage. So is intentional damage, as mentioned earlier. But nobody wants to be on the news because they denied some grieving father’s claim, so we cover these things anyway. If that changes someday, companies like this will be to blame. I certainly wasn’t going to call the guy and tell him we weren’t going to pay the bill. I’m sure the clean-up company counts on this. Shame on them.
Claim 4: The Realtor
My most recent death claim is also the most interesting. A local realtor, having been convicted of some kind of mortgage impropriety which resulted in his license being taken away, decided he didn’t want to live anymore. As a realtor, he had a magic box which gave him access to any listed property with a lockbox on the door. This realtor scoped out an empty house, then went shopping.
As far as we could tell, the order of events went like this: The realtor parked his BMW in the garage of the empty house and shut the garage door. He taped a note on the front door of the house that read, “Dead body inside. Call the police.” He then went into the bathroom, where he put two tabletop barbecue grills in the bathtub, and filled them both with charcoal. I found out later that due to current emissions standards, the old trick of running a hose from your exhaust pipe into the car or garage doesn’t work anymore. The realtor consumed most of a bottle of Jack Daniels, snorted some heroin, lit the grills, and waited for the end. Two days later, a prospective buyer discovered the note and called the police. The police contacted the homeowner, who lived in the house next door, unaware that a corpse had been inhabiting his rental property.
There is no moral to these stories.
Claim 1: The Drunk
In the claims world, when a new claims comes in, the first thing most adjusters do is look at the summary description of what happened. Shortly into my tenure in the property department of my prior employer, I received a new claim, clicked on the summary description, and read “Cause of Loss: suicide.”
Insurance policies are pretty specific documents. They operate in 2 ways. Either they cover everything unless specifically excluded, or they cover nothing unless specifically stated. With buildings it’s usually the former, and with personal belongings, usually the latter. When this claim in, having never handled one like it before, my first thought was “why would someone file a claim for suicide? What’s suicide got to do with property?” Without reading much further into the details, I picked up the phone, called the number, and asked to speak to Mr. B. Very politely, the woman who had answered the phone replied, “I’m sorry, my husband committed suicide a few months ago.” I’d asked to speak to the dead guy.
As Mrs. B. explained why she had filed the claim, it was hard to imagine having had a worse evening than she had that night in December. Her husband was drunk again, and this time was threatening to kill her. She locked herself in a bedroom and called the policy. It wasn’t the first time. Too drunk to know better, and knowing the police had been called, he stumbled downstairs and out into the front yard, still waving his gun around and yelling. According to Mrs. B., when the first police lights were visible on the street, her husband walked around to the side of the house, screamed something at the police, then shot himself in the head.
Having had a few months between the suicide and the filing of the claim, Mrs. B was remarkably composed. By the time she finished her story, I’d forgotten why we were on the phone. Eventually she got to the point. “So, I just got a quote for replacing the piece of siding with the bullet hole in it. And there’s the clean-up bill of course…” The clean-up bill. For his brains. That had been on the walkway next to her garden. When the clean-up company came, they figured the most practical thing to do was to use a hose to spray his brains into the dirt, then shovel the dirt out in a wheelbarrow. Apparently your average wet vac is not designed for such purposes.
My job, as always, was to figure out what I could pay for under the insurance policy. It turns out, bullet holes are not excluded under the policy. While damage done on purpose IS excluded, since the widow is the only person benefiting from payment, the claims department decided not to enforce the exclusion. How nice of them. Policies also do not cover dirt under any circumstances. I made my call to clean-up company and asked for a copy of their bill, hopefully without mention of the dirt so I could pay the whole thing. As death claims go, this would be the easiest.
Claim 2: The Old Man
Mr. C was tired of his family members calling him all the time. He was convinced that they only called to see if he was still alive. He was really old, after all. So he told them to stop. A week later, you can guess what happened. Mr. C died in the most unfortunate of places. 6 weeks after his death, his body was found just inside the front door of his tri-level home. His family had apparently decided 6 weeks was long enough, and asked a neighbor to check on him. The neighbor didn’t have to knock on the door to know what happened. Rotting human is a smell one never forgets.
The front door wasn’t a very convenient place for Mr. C to die. The human body is not polite as it decomposes, so not only did Mr. C’s corpse stink the place up, his liquids went down the stairs towards the garage, and down the heating duct next to his body. The heat was set at “old man lived here,” which is not a low temperature.
The guy’s family lived out of town, which made my job easier. I met the clean-up company in the driveway, where I was cautioned to wear a mask. I should have listened. Entering the house, the smell-that-one-never-forgets almost floored me. If you’ve never had the pleasure, imagine a dead raccoon wrapped in an airtight plastic bag for a week or two, and then imagine you open the bag and stick your face in it really quick. It’s kind of like that.
Once I’d recovered from the smell, I asked where we should start. The tech pointed at my feet and said, “well, he died right there. The anti-microbial spray should be dry by now.” I looked down to find I was standing on wood sub floor, as the carpet, pad, and underlayment had all been removed in a radius of about 8 feet in each direction. So too had the carpeted stairs been taken out leading to the garage, and the ducting under the house. This was the only physical damage to the home. If only that were the extent of it…
Talking to the tech, I learned that dead body smell isn’t something that goes away with a few open windows. Most of the time, companies will clean and paint every surface of the house, clean every item in the house, and throw away anything made of paper. As for the paper, Mr. C’s family told me that they had taken a box of important papers back to Seattle with them after coming down to deal with the funeral arrangements. “Now that the papers have been here for a few days, our house smells like his house,” his son told me.
Claim 3: The Son
With claims 1 and 2, my arrival on site happened after the worst of the mess was taken care of. Not so with claim number three. Immediately after receiving the claim, I got a call from the homeowner. “Can you come out here right away? The clean-up people are here, but I don’t want them to get started until you’ve documented the damage.”
The house wasn’t far from the office, so I got there within half an hour. The clean-up crew was standing outside in their full body hazmat suits, looking ready for the apocalypse. The owner took me outside, and explained that his son had shot himself last night, and damaged the carpet. His son, I learned, was in his 20s, and for reasons unknown to me, had chosen to kill himself at his parents’ house, in his childhood bedroom. The scene in the bedroom was surreal. Trophies were still on the shelves, sports pennants were on the wall, and the bed looked like it was made for a 10 year-old. While the son’s body was gone, the mess he left behind was not. Someone tried to cover it up with a kid’s blanket, but it didn’t really work. I quietly measure the dimensions of the room so I’d know how much carpet needed to be replaced, and come back downstairs. The family seemed to be in shock, so they weren’t very emotional, and seemed to understand the claims process.
A few weeks later, my own shock came when I got the bill for the clean-up. To take the carpet out of one room and dispose of the biohazard material, the company was charging over $14,000. I looked at the itemized bill. $400 per small box of carpet. $100 per hour for labor. 20% overhead and profit (a charge only owed to general contractor who coordinate sub-contractors). I called and yelled at someone at the company’s main office, but their lines are well rehearsed. "Well, you see, brain fluid is clear, so it can't always been seen with the naked eye, so we have to make sure we....blah blah blah." I had three other companies write my comparable bids for the same work. The highest was $5k. None of that mattered. The company wasn’t backing down, and had mailed their bill to the grieving dad.
Most insurance companies make exceptions in the case of suicide. Biohazardous materials are specifically excluded from coverage. So is intentional damage, as mentioned earlier. But nobody wants to be on the news because they denied some grieving father’s claim, so we cover these things anyway. If that changes someday, companies like this will be to blame. I certainly wasn’t going to call the guy and tell him we weren’t going to pay the bill. I’m sure the clean-up company counts on this. Shame on them.
Claim 4: The Realtor
My most recent death claim is also the most interesting. A local realtor, having been convicted of some kind of mortgage impropriety which resulted in his license being taken away, decided he didn’t want to live anymore. As a realtor, he had a magic box which gave him access to any listed property with a lockbox on the door. This realtor scoped out an empty house, then went shopping.
As far as we could tell, the order of events went like this: The realtor parked his BMW in the garage of the empty house and shut the garage door. He taped a note on the front door of the house that read, “Dead body inside. Call the police.” He then went into the bathroom, where he put two tabletop barbecue grills in the bathtub, and filled them both with charcoal. I found out later that due to current emissions standards, the old trick of running a hose from your exhaust pipe into the car or garage doesn’t work anymore. The realtor consumed most of a bottle of Jack Daniels, snorted some heroin, lit the grills, and waited for the end. Two days later, a prospective buyer discovered the note and called the police. The police contacted the homeowner, who lived in the house next door, unaware that a corpse had been inhabiting his rental property.
There is no moral to these stories.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
The Christmas Ache
The ache was there again this year. Settled down beneath the more present and relevant feelings, the ache gnawed, “something is wrong. something is missing.”
I have unfairly great memories of Christmas as a child. All my memories of it are in the same house, with the same people. Each year, at around 6:30, the four of us kids would tip toe downstairs to the living room, where the tree was always lit just dimly enough to cast a glow on all the presents; The presents! Most of them newly placed since the night before. Eventually mom and dad would saunter down the hall, all of us still in pajamas. The youngest of us that could read would read the entirety of the Golden Books version of the Christmas story. When it was over, dad would pick the baby Jesus figure up from above the grandfather clock, and set it in the manger above the fireplace. One by one we would take our stockings down from the fireplace, and each of us would watch the other discover what was inside. We savored the excitement, drawing out each step so that it wouldn’t end any faster than it had to. After breakfast, which always included an amazing souffle, we nestled back into our couch seats for round after round of gift giving.
Dad was a Christmas master. Married to my mom, who hated surprises, didn’t get most jokes, and bought her Christmas presents from the lists she insisted her loved ones complete for her, Christmas was dad’s day to go nuts. There were years we received presents he’d found for us 7 or 8 months earlier; A favorite sweater from the gift shop of a museum we’d visited, a CD of whale sounds because one of us expressed interest in a whale this one time, or the last piece of my mom’s antique book collection. It took dozens of phone calls to book stores across the country, but he’d found it.
Christmas had the potential to change your adolescent life. On Christmas, you could go from a kid with no Nintendo, to a Kid With A Nintendo!!! It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 80s, that was a huge change in one’s quality of life. On Christmas, your NFL pennant collection might finally get complete. The final Dairy Queen Blazers glass might be in one of those boxes.
20-25 years later, the strength of emotion that came with anticipating and experiencing Christmas doesn’t exist. There’s nothing in the adult life that comes close. But what is it about those feelings that made them so irreplaceable? Why is it so hard to transition from the receiver to the giver, and try to make memories for my kids the way my parents did for me? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?
My running theory is that as a child, you are repeatedly shown how much you are loved. It is abundantly clear that your happiness has been thoroughly considered, and deemed worthy of fulfillment. Contrast that with what we do as adults. We discuss amongst ourselves who we still “have to get something for,” or “which ones you’ve got covered” while “I’ll handle them, them and them.” And because that’s how we treat others at Christmas, we’re confident that’s how people are thinking about us. And so we start to wonder how many lists we’re on; for how many people have we reached “Need to get something for them” status? And it’s not about getting their present. It’s the hope that at least for a few minutes, somebody thought of us, and our happiness, and found it worthy of fulfillment.
I think the Christmas ache is the loss of childhood. It’s the realization that nobody loves us like they did when we were young. That we’re not the center of someone’s universe, not the person someone is staying up late to find that last antique book for. The things I had as a kid - the family bond, the shared anticipation, the companionship of a personal savior - those things are gone.
But I think the ache has had its last year. Being able to name it has made it lose its power. My dad set a great example of how to do it right, and I think I’m up for the challenge. I tried something new this year - getting presents for a few people that wouldn’t be on my “have to get something for” list. It helped me understand my dad’s love of Christmas, as the reward for giving the unexpected gift is immediate and lasting. Next year , having named and rejected the ache, I’ll be ready to set my kids up for their own Christmas ache.
I have unfairly great memories of Christmas as a child. All my memories of it are in the same house, with the same people. Each year, at around 6:30, the four of us kids would tip toe downstairs to the living room, where the tree was always lit just dimly enough to cast a glow on all the presents; The presents! Most of them newly placed since the night before. Eventually mom and dad would saunter down the hall, all of us still in pajamas. The youngest of us that could read would read the entirety of the Golden Books version of the Christmas story. When it was over, dad would pick the baby Jesus figure up from above the grandfather clock, and set it in the manger above the fireplace. One by one we would take our stockings down from the fireplace, and each of us would watch the other discover what was inside. We savored the excitement, drawing out each step so that it wouldn’t end any faster than it had to. After breakfast, which always included an amazing souffle, we nestled back into our couch seats for round after round of gift giving.
Dad was a Christmas master. Married to my mom, who hated surprises, didn’t get most jokes, and bought her Christmas presents from the lists she insisted her loved ones complete for her, Christmas was dad’s day to go nuts. There were years we received presents he’d found for us 7 or 8 months earlier; A favorite sweater from the gift shop of a museum we’d visited, a CD of whale sounds because one of us expressed interest in a whale this one time, or the last piece of my mom’s antique book collection. It took dozens of phone calls to book stores across the country, but he’d found it.
Christmas had the potential to change your adolescent life. On Christmas, you could go from a kid with no Nintendo, to a Kid With A Nintendo!!! It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 80s, that was a huge change in one’s quality of life. On Christmas, your NFL pennant collection might finally get complete. The final Dairy Queen Blazers glass might be in one of those boxes.
20-25 years later, the strength of emotion that came with anticipating and experiencing Christmas doesn’t exist. There’s nothing in the adult life that comes close. But what is it about those feelings that made them so irreplaceable? Why is it so hard to transition from the receiver to the giver, and try to make memories for my kids the way my parents did for me? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?
My running theory is that as a child, you are repeatedly shown how much you are loved. It is abundantly clear that your happiness has been thoroughly considered, and deemed worthy of fulfillment. Contrast that with what we do as adults. We discuss amongst ourselves who we still “have to get something for,” or “which ones you’ve got covered” while “I’ll handle them, them and them.” And because that’s how we treat others at Christmas, we’re confident that’s how people are thinking about us. And so we start to wonder how many lists we’re on; for how many people have we reached “Need to get something for them” status? And it’s not about getting their present. It’s the hope that at least for a few minutes, somebody thought of us, and our happiness, and found it worthy of fulfillment.
I think the Christmas ache is the loss of childhood. It’s the realization that nobody loves us like they did when we were young. That we’re not the center of someone’s universe, not the person someone is staying up late to find that last antique book for. The things I had as a kid - the family bond, the shared anticipation, the companionship of a personal savior - those things are gone.
But I think the ache has had its last year. Being able to name it has made it lose its power. My dad set a great example of how to do it right, and I think I’m up for the challenge. I tried something new this year - getting presents for a few people that wouldn’t be on my “have to get something for” list. It helped me understand my dad’s love of Christmas, as the reward for giving the unexpected gift is immediate and lasting. Next year , having named and rejected the ache, I’ll be ready to set my kids up for their own Christmas ache.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Building a Hypothetical Theology
I’ve recently found myself nodding along with a number of
Christian writers and speakers, almost as if I’m part of the group. “Well, that’s weird”, I thought to myself. If
I really broke it down, these beliefs are just like anything else lacking sufficient evidence, so why do I
like what they’re saying so much? I realized that despite my lack of belief, I’ve
started developing a hypothetical theology.
A theology built around values that make sense, and a God that would
embody those ideas. My hypothetical
theology isn’t tethered to a particular book of alleged inspiration, just what
seems to me to be common sense, and valuing of humanity. It agrees with the part of the traditional
philosophical definition of God contained within the ontological argument, that
God is that which none greater can be conceived. While I don’t think this argument necessitates
God, I think it’s a fair definition.
With that definition in place, here are some of the basics of the
hypothetical theology I’ve started to form (and as always, I could be wrong about everything):
God is superior to a
human being
Taken literally, I doubt many would disagree with this
statement. But in practice, it’s perhaps
the least believed in concept in Christianity.
Imagine, if you will, a child stealing a pack of gum. The child’s parent, upon discovering the
theft, confines the child to a bed and applies a mildly acidic lotion to the
child’s entire body. The pain is immense
and constant, but is not fatal. The
parent ensures this lotion is present every day, all the time, for the duration
of the child’s life. We recognize this
scenario as absurd and unjust. And yet
we are asked to believe, on a much more hideous scale, this is how God treats
sinners, only with God, the sinners never get the mercy of death. Somehow God’s “nature” demands this, though
the maturity gap between God and human must surely be greater than parent and
child. We wouldn’t accept it from a person, but we’ll try so hard to justify it
for God.
Or consider a close friend who meets someone new, and
decides to end the friendship with you, crowning this new person as best
friend. Out of insecurity, we subject
our former friend to the same punishment as the thieving child. We wouldn’t accept it from a person, but God
is allowed to be eternally insecure over those who leave the faith.
Time after time, the behavior of God, as described by the
authors of the Bible, is far worse than we would ever accept from a mere
fallible human being, but because BIBLE!, we’ll fall over ourselves making
excuses for God’s behavior. In my
hypothetical theology, God is not an asshole, and if someone says she is, they’re
wrong. A God that forgives is greater
than one that does not.
God does not have a
favorite genitalia
I suspect that even complementarians would admit that if
they were in charge of things, the male superiority they’ve extracted from the
Bible would be done away with. They’ll
assure us that they’re just trying to obey the Bible, and it’s not their fault
that women aren’t allowed to lead. But
as we’ve all experienced in day to day life, sometimes our mothers have more
wisdom than our fathers, and our sisters more than our brothers. But if we’re talking about God, it’s
different. In my hypothetical theology,
gender bias is recognized for what it is – the privileged men of thousands of
years ago enforcing their own privilege, and stamping God’s name on it. A God that doesn’t have a favorite gender is
greater than one that does.
God is not mute
Many Christians have embraced a strange idea without knowing
it; The only words God ever spoke have already been spoken. The Biblical authors can be trusted to have
communicated them correctly, and every human being since is so unreliable that
they must be prevented from changing or adding to these previously expressed
words. We don’t think so highly of the
iron age in any other arena. We reject
their medicine, their hygiene, their lust for war, their science, their
polygamy and their sense of style, but we’ll totally trust them to give us all
the words we need from an all-powerful, totally living God. This all-powerful God has been stuffed into a
book, and if the believer were marooned on an island, their only method of
knowing what God has to say to them would be whatever verses they’d
memorized. On this point, I think the
Mormons are right. It doesn’t make any
sense that God just arbitrarily shut up 2000 years ago. An accessible God is superior to a silent
God.
We can’t accurately
imagine God in its entirety
A huge piece of what created problems for me and my faith is
that I was taught that God can be heard, understood, followed, trusted, loved,
and rationalized. I don’t think it makes
sense to say any of these things. When
we speak of light years, that light travels 671 million miles an hour, and
would take 100,000 years to cross the milky way, we can assign words to these
ideas, but we can’t truly understand them.
With light years, we at least have a relative frame of reference with
which to speak of distance and time.
With God, we’re left stumbling in the dark. We’ve never seen someone or something that’s
even close to all knowing, let alone omni-present. Yet we speak of God as if we can understand
him. We assign silly concepts to God
like being unable to tolerate sin, as if that would be any big deal to an
entity that can be everywhere all the time.
We assign emotions of jealousy and anger to God, as if our “sins” can
somehow truly offend an entity that exists at all times of history
simultaneously. We pretend we know God’s nature, and that’s why people must be
divided, built up or held down. And by
mere coincidence, when we speak of God’s nature as an individual, it is we, as
individuals, who tend to benefit from our understanding of God (I’m doing this
right now). Rare would be the religion
that believes God looks more favorably on another group, another individual, or
another set of ideas.
The infinite is not something we can understand. Omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, these
are incomprehensible concepts that we try to bottle up, and then we base our
worldview and our behavior on the scraps we can hold onto. In my hypothetical theology, most of God is,
and will always be, an unknowable mystery.
And that God is greater than a fake one locked inside a book.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Pastors Saving Faith
Over the last year, I’ve had the unexpected pleasure of becoming acquainted with a number of excellent pastors. This might be a strange thing to say, since I don’t believe in the foundation of what they preach. But these people have redeemed pastors for me, and by contrast, shown me where things went wrong for the pastors I grew up with, none of whom would have dreamed I’d say goodbye to faith.
Like a lot of young evangelicals, I experienced my “on fire for Jesus” phase during middle school. Puberty brings about lots of emotions, and among them, an emotional connection to the faith I’d been taught from birth. Apologetics were the norm for me, and my youth pastor, a drop-out from Multnomah Bible College, fed those flames with a lot of skill. People like me were his dream; We were young, outspoken, confident Christians who wanted nothing more than to set the world on fire for Christ. If youth group had been held every night, I would have been there. Retreats were the highlight of the season, and summer camp couldn’t come soon enough. Looking back, the best (and in retrospect, the worst) parts of my childhood involved that youth group, and that youth pastor.
Like most things that begin with an emphasis on emotion over intellect, eventually the zeal simmered down, and the focus on apologetics increased. Entering high school, and with it, the high school youth pastor (my church had different pastors for middle and high school), my zeal for my faith lessened as I realized that the pastor couldn’t handle the questions I was asking. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He just hadn’t been trained on things outside the very narrow scope of evangelicalism. So many times, the answer to a question was, “We’re humans. We’re not capable of understanding everything. We just have to have faith.” At 12, this was sufficient. At 16, it was not. Josh McDowell books were passed around, and some of the staff that were attending seminary would try their best to answer all the questions, but evangelicalism wasn’t built for doubt, and it showed. Doubt was a sign of spiritual weakness. Faith was the starting point, not the conclusion. While each point of doctrine had been arrived at somehow, now that those items have been decided upon, it was apparently not necessary to explain how or why they became known to be true.
My mom thinks if I had attended Portland State, I would have remained a Christian. It’s her belief that my atheism is some kind of rebellion against authority. For her, it can’t be real. Surely it’s just a phase, a sad detour on the road back to Jesus. While I can’t say what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to a Christian college, where I finally lost all my faith, I do think that if my upbringing had been in a more flexible environment, things might be different. As I said in my sermon a few weeks ago, faith is tenuous. It comes and it goes, and it does this without our permission. I firmly believe this. But I also believe there is value in community, and a community that can handle a divergence of opinion is a community that can keep its members while they sway wildly back and forth in the ideology.
Tonight I was reading from the blog of Eric Muhr, a youth pastor at Newberg Friends Church. I’ve never met Eric. I hear you want to avoid his van on a road trip. In any event, in reading his blog, I felt really sad. After thinking on it for awhile, I think what’s so sad about Eric’s blog is that he is the kind of pastor that might have saved Christianity for me.
In an entry from November of 2012, Eric writes:
“I want to normalize doubt for those who might otherwise feel abandoned by God and by their community. I want to encourage serious questions that challenge our thinking and open up opportunities for growth. I want to be part of a community that used faith as a tool (never as a weapon).
And I hope.
That 20 years from now.
Some former student.
Watching graduation reruns.
Might ask herself why she’s still at church.
And think of people who weren’t afraid of her questions, people who loved her because of (not in spite of), people who inspired and encouraged and modeled for and listened to and learned from…
That should would think of so many people
And that one of them might be me.”
A professor at George Fox recently commented on something Eric wrote, saying, “I’m so grateful that you’re involved in the religious development of my children.”
At the meeting we attend as a family, Taylor’s youth pastor, Mark, is the kind of person that I believe will preserve the option of faith for her. It won’t be ruined with too much certainty, and it won’t be made silly with too much subjectivity. Mark once told me that over half of his high school students don’t believe in God. And yet, they show up. They think together, learn together, and form a community together. This is a pastor I would trust my child with. Faith will be presented in its best light, and when they’re old enough, my kids will decide for themselves.
Quakers are unique in that the pastor isn’t a dictator. He or she doesn’t have much executive power. His/her opinion isn’t the most important opinion. As I see it, the pastor’s most important contribution is setting the tone for how the meeting will be. And in that regard, Mike Huber is a helluva pastor. While listening to Biblical sermons as an atheist can be a challenge, on multiple occasions I’ve been startled by the direction he has taken with verses I’ve heard a million times. One Sunday I had to bite my lip as he started telling one of my least favorite stories, the story of Abraham and Isaac. I’d been waiting to be disappointed for a long time, and it had finally come. But as the sermon turned from the verses into practical application, I was stunned when he said, “God does not ask us to sacrifice our children. We. Don’t. Sacrifice. Our children. We don’t sacrifice children in hoodies. We don’t sacrifice our LGBT children. We don’t sacrifice…”
What I appreciate most about Mike is that he’s never told me no. When I’d only been visiting for two months, and asked to give an atheist manifesto from the pulpit, Mike said yes. 3 months later when I wanted to do it again, Mike said yes. And a month ago, when I asked to give a sermon that included rejection of Biblical infallibility, and rejection of religious dogma, Mike said yes. With each of those events, I finally got to air my grievances about church, to a church. And each time, I’ve been swarmed with smiles, hugs, hand shakes, and “Can I get a copy of that?” I’m in a community that can handle my lack of belief. And if faith ever comes back, they’ll be able to handle that too.
Pastors are important. There is nothing more personal than the things we believe about life and death. And I’m so grateful, after 10 years of myself and the wind, to have people I can trust with these questions, especially when they tell me they can’t answer them.
Like a lot of young evangelicals, I experienced my “on fire for Jesus” phase during middle school. Puberty brings about lots of emotions, and among them, an emotional connection to the faith I’d been taught from birth. Apologetics were the norm for me, and my youth pastor, a drop-out from Multnomah Bible College, fed those flames with a lot of skill. People like me were his dream; We were young, outspoken, confident Christians who wanted nothing more than to set the world on fire for Christ. If youth group had been held every night, I would have been there. Retreats were the highlight of the season, and summer camp couldn’t come soon enough. Looking back, the best (and in retrospect, the worst) parts of my childhood involved that youth group, and that youth pastor.
Like most things that begin with an emphasis on emotion over intellect, eventually the zeal simmered down, and the focus on apologetics increased. Entering high school, and with it, the high school youth pastor (my church had different pastors for middle and high school), my zeal for my faith lessened as I realized that the pastor couldn’t handle the questions I was asking. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He just hadn’t been trained on things outside the very narrow scope of evangelicalism. So many times, the answer to a question was, “We’re humans. We’re not capable of understanding everything. We just have to have faith.” At 12, this was sufficient. At 16, it was not. Josh McDowell books were passed around, and some of the staff that were attending seminary would try their best to answer all the questions, but evangelicalism wasn’t built for doubt, and it showed. Doubt was a sign of spiritual weakness. Faith was the starting point, not the conclusion. While each point of doctrine had been arrived at somehow, now that those items have been decided upon, it was apparently not necessary to explain how or why they became known to be true.
My mom thinks if I had attended Portland State, I would have remained a Christian. It’s her belief that my atheism is some kind of rebellion against authority. For her, it can’t be real. Surely it’s just a phase, a sad detour on the road back to Jesus. While I can’t say what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to a Christian college, where I finally lost all my faith, I do think that if my upbringing had been in a more flexible environment, things might be different. As I said in my sermon a few weeks ago, faith is tenuous. It comes and it goes, and it does this without our permission. I firmly believe this. But I also believe there is value in community, and a community that can handle a divergence of opinion is a community that can keep its members while they sway wildly back and forth in the ideology.
Tonight I was reading from the blog of Eric Muhr, a youth pastor at Newberg Friends Church. I’ve never met Eric. I hear you want to avoid his van on a road trip. In any event, in reading his blog, I felt really sad. After thinking on it for awhile, I think what’s so sad about Eric’s blog is that he is the kind of pastor that might have saved Christianity for me.
In an entry from November of 2012, Eric writes:
“I want to normalize doubt for those who might otherwise feel abandoned by God and by their community. I want to encourage serious questions that challenge our thinking and open up opportunities for growth. I want to be part of a community that used faith as a tool (never as a weapon).
And I hope.
That 20 years from now.
Some former student.
Watching graduation reruns.
Might ask herself why she’s still at church.
And think of people who weren’t afraid of her questions, people who loved her because of (not in spite of), people who inspired and encouraged and modeled for and listened to and learned from…
That should would think of so many people
And that one of them might be me.”
A professor at George Fox recently commented on something Eric wrote, saying, “I’m so grateful that you’re involved in the religious development of my children.”
At the meeting we attend as a family, Taylor’s youth pastor, Mark, is the kind of person that I believe will preserve the option of faith for her. It won’t be ruined with too much certainty, and it won’t be made silly with too much subjectivity. Mark once told me that over half of his high school students don’t believe in God. And yet, they show up. They think together, learn together, and form a community together. This is a pastor I would trust my child with. Faith will be presented in its best light, and when they’re old enough, my kids will decide for themselves.
Quakers are unique in that the pastor isn’t a dictator. He or she doesn’t have much executive power. His/her opinion isn’t the most important opinion. As I see it, the pastor’s most important contribution is setting the tone for how the meeting will be. And in that regard, Mike Huber is a helluva pastor. While listening to Biblical sermons as an atheist can be a challenge, on multiple occasions I’ve been startled by the direction he has taken with verses I’ve heard a million times. One Sunday I had to bite my lip as he started telling one of my least favorite stories, the story of Abraham and Isaac. I’d been waiting to be disappointed for a long time, and it had finally come. But as the sermon turned from the verses into practical application, I was stunned when he said, “God does not ask us to sacrifice our children. We. Don’t. Sacrifice. Our children. We don’t sacrifice children in hoodies. We don’t sacrifice our LGBT children. We don’t sacrifice…”
What I appreciate most about Mike is that he’s never told me no. When I’d only been visiting for two months, and asked to give an atheist manifesto from the pulpit, Mike said yes. 3 months later when I wanted to do it again, Mike said yes. And a month ago, when I asked to give a sermon that included rejection of Biblical infallibility, and rejection of religious dogma, Mike said yes. With each of those events, I finally got to air my grievances about church, to a church. And each time, I’ve been swarmed with smiles, hugs, hand shakes, and “Can I get a copy of that?” I’m in a community that can handle my lack of belief. And if faith ever comes back, they’ll be able to handle that too.
Pastors are important. There is nothing more personal than the things we believe about life and death. And I’m so grateful, after 10 years of myself and the wind, to have people I can trust with these questions, especially when they tell me they can’t answer them.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Dogmatic Certainty
The following was a spoken message at West Hills Friends Church, given on November 10, 2013.
I’d like to open with a quote from the influential evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Mark Driscoll:
“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types want to re-caste Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand, and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper-wearing, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sins as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.”
This kind of statement is fairly representative of what I call dogmatic certainty. I was raised in it. Maybe you were too. For the believer who has certainty, there is truth, and there are lies. There are truth-holders, and there are those who are intentionally trying to squash the truth wherever it’s found. Certainty allows a person to not only proclaim that something is true, it lets them bellow it with conviction, as if the truth of the statement is so obvious that any doubter must be unintelligent. The person of certainty generally doesn’t care about history, tradition, or scholarly research. It is from the bowels of certainty, or perhaps to compensate for uncertainty, that fundamentalism emerged, and with it, the unfortunate doctrine of Biblical infallibility. Biblical infallibilists believe that the entirety of the Bible is true and without contradiction or error. Largely developed by evangelicals in the 1970s, infallibilists spend enormous amounts of time attempting to show that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, verse sequences like the following are completely in harmony with each other:
Proverbs 26:4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.
Proverbs 26:5: Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
1 Corinthians 14:33a: For God is not the author of confusion
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has this to say about the supposed lack of contradictions in the Bible:
“In Matthew, Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” In Mark, he says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Did he say both things? Could he mean both things? How can both be true at once? Or is it possible that one of the gospel writers got things switched around?”
I’ve yet to figure out the purpose of holding a certainty-based doctrine like Biblical inerrancy. If God is both real and alive, is it worth abandoning one’s intellect to try to make 66 books written over a thousand years by mostly unknown authors line up perfectly? Is that the point of Christianity? Are we talking about a faith system or a simple algebraic equation?
Just as religious certainty squashes civil conversation and ruins relationships, so does non-religious certainty. Consider this quote from atheist biologist Richard Dawkins. Consider if you, as a theist, would feel comfortable discussing your beliefs with him:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
I looked up a few of those words. Filicidal means someone who kills their own son or daughter. Pestilential means someone who tends to produce pestilence.
By stating his opinion with so much bile, Dawkins eliminates himself as a conversation partner, hurting the listener, and his own cause in the process. Maybe atheism is true. Plenty of smart people lean that direction. But to exhibit so much certainty about a position that is at least a simple lack of belief, and at most an aggressive reliance on an unproven negative, is to place conviction above evidence, and superiority above a relationship.
Very recently an evangelical pastor staged a conference whose goal was to announce that members of the charismatic traditions of Christianity are going to hell because they violate the Bible’s oh-so-clear admonishing that speaking in tongues is the work of the devil, and blasphemes the holy spirit. Ironically, it was Mark Driscoll, lover of the sword-swinging Jesus, who showed up to conference intending to pull the charismatics out of hell.
So if we shouldn’t display our beliefs with dogmatic certainty, what should we do? After all, for many people, their faith is their most cherished possession. I’d ask you to consider the times in your life when someone has impacted your life by a display of their faith. Did they persuade you with logic or reason? Did they dismantle your doctrine detail by detail, and replace it with their own? I’m guessing that’s not what happened. For me personally, my opinions on theology haven’t changed in years. What has changed is my attitude towards people of faith, and towards certainty.
When OneGeorgeFox hosted a lesbian Christian singer in Newberg last year, I went as a supporter of the effort to influence the school’s policies towards LGBT people. I went in spite of the group’s Christian motivation for wanting the policies changed. After the show, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen since graduating from Fox 10 years prior. She asked how I’d been, and I explained that I hadn’t been back to campus since 2003, and that faith and I parted ways a long time ago. My friend is a very faithful person. She might be the most Jesus-centric person I know. But her response to hearing of my atheism wasn’t to challenge my conclusion. She simply said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
I didn’t know what to say. At that time in my life, I wasn’t used to being treated like a person who is separate from my ideas. What Kim communicated with those four simple words is that I matter more than my doctrine. What she said was not a logical proof. It wasn’t a Biblical retort or a defense of her Quaker beliefs. She was putting her faith into action, omitting the text of her faith in favor of the love that inspires it. And she didn’t know it, but she crushed the way I viewed religious people.
My view of religious people changed a little more the first time I visited West Hills six months later. After the awkward hymns and sermon with science fiction references in it, Kathy Edge stood up and expressed a very real sense of doubt. I don’t remember the details, but at that time, it was possible that aspects her faith system were useless and wrong. She said it out loud, and she sat down. No rosy platitudes about how everything happens for a reason. And nobody rushed over to make sure her doubts weren’t really all that serious. They were, and that was ok. Because in this place, faith really is faith. And with faith comes the possibility that we’re wrong.
By definition, faith goes beyond what we can prove. By definition, faith is a hope that beyond all the miserable stuff that we can be certain about, there might be something better, and just maybe we’re better off hanging onto that hope than clinging to what little certainty we can justify. Faith is tenuous. It comes and it goes, and it does this without our permission. I hope that those of you who have it can recognize how fortunate that makes you.
When we converse with others, let us speak with curiosity instead of certainty. Let our actions demonstrate that we might be wrong, and we know it. Let us put people before doctrine, and love before creeds. Let us remember that people aren’t changed by challenges to their pyramid of things that are true. People are changed by being shown, not told, that there’s a better way to be. And finally, let us seek the truth together, confident that even if we never find it, the search will have made our lives more fulfilling.
I’d like to open with a quote from the influential evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Mark Driscoll:
“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types want to re-caste Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand, and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper-wearing, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sins as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.”
This kind of statement is fairly representative of what I call dogmatic certainty. I was raised in it. Maybe you were too. For the believer who has certainty, there is truth, and there are lies. There are truth-holders, and there are those who are intentionally trying to squash the truth wherever it’s found. Certainty allows a person to not only proclaim that something is true, it lets them bellow it with conviction, as if the truth of the statement is so obvious that any doubter must be unintelligent. The person of certainty generally doesn’t care about history, tradition, or scholarly research. It is from the bowels of certainty, or perhaps to compensate for uncertainty, that fundamentalism emerged, and with it, the unfortunate doctrine of Biblical infallibility. Biblical infallibilists believe that the entirety of the Bible is true and without contradiction or error. Largely developed by evangelicals in the 1970s, infallibilists spend enormous amounts of time attempting to show that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, verse sequences like the following are completely in harmony with each other:
Proverbs 26:4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.
Proverbs 26:5: Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
1 Corinthians 14:33a: For God is not the author of confusion
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has this to say about the supposed lack of contradictions in the Bible:
“In Matthew, Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” In Mark, he says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Did he say both things? Could he mean both things? How can both be true at once? Or is it possible that one of the gospel writers got things switched around?”
I’ve yet to figure out the purpose of holding a certainty-based doctrine like Biblical inerrancy. If God is both real and alive, is it worth abandoning one’s intellect to try to make 66 books written over a thousand years by mostly unknown authors line up perfectly? Is that the point of Christianity? Are we talking about a faith system or a simple algebraic equation?
Just as religious certainty squashes civil conversation and ruins relationships, so does non-religious certainty. Consider this quote from atheist biologist Richard Dawkins. Consider if you, as a theist, would feel comfortable discussing your beliefs with him:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
I looked up a few of those words. Filicidal means someone who kills their own son or daughter. Pestilential means someone who tends to produce pestilence.
By stating his opinion with so much bile, Dawkins eliminates himself as a conversation partner, hurting the listener, and his own cause in the process. Maybe atheism is true. Plenty of smart people lean that direction. But to exhibit so much certainty about a position that is at least a simple lack of belief, and at most an aggressive reliance on an unproven negative, is to place conviction above evidence, and superiority above a relationship.
Very recently an evangelical pastor staged a conference whose goal was to announce that members of the charismatic traditions of Christianity are going to hell because they violate the Bible’s oh-so-clear admonishing that speaking in tongues is the work of the devil, and blasphemes the holy spirit. Ironically, it was Mark Driscoll, lover of the sword-swinging Jesus, who showed up to conference intending to pull the charismatics out of hell.
So if we shouldn’t display our beliefs with dogmatic certainty, what should we do? After all, for many people, their faith is their most cherished possession. I’d ask you to consider the times in your life when someone has impacted your life by a display of their faith. Did they persuade you with logic or reason? Did they dismantle your doctrine detail by detail, and replace it with their own? I’m guessing that’s not what happened. For me personally, my opinions on theology haven’t changed in years. What has changed is my attitude towards people of faith, and towards certainty.
When OneGeorgeFox hosted a lesbian Christian singer in Newberg last year, I went as a supporter of the effort to influence the school’s policies towards LGBT people. I went in spite of the group’s Christian motivation for wanting the policies changed. After the show, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen since graduating from Fox 10 years prior. She asked how I’d been, and I explained that I hadn’t been back to campus since 2003, and that faith and I parted ways a long time ago. My friend is a very faithful person. She might be the most Jesus-centric person I know. But her response to hearing of my atheism wasn’t to challenge my conclusion. She simply said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
I didn’t know what to say. At that time in my life, I wasn’t used to being treated like a person who is separate from my ideas. What Kim communicated with those four simple words is that I matter more than my doctrine. What she said was not a logical proof. It wasn’t a Biblical retort or a defense of her Quaker beliefs. She was putting her faith into action, omitting the text of her faith in favor of the love that inspires it. And she didn’t know it, but she crushed the way I viewed religious people.
My view of religious people changed a little more the first time I visited West Hills six months later. After the awkward hymns and sermon with science fiction references in it, Kathy Edge stood up and expressed a very real sense of doubt. I don’t remember the details, but at that time, it was possible that aspects her faith system were useless and wrong. She said it out loud, and she sat down. No rosy platitudes about how everything happens for a reason. And nobody rushed over to make sure her doubts weren’t really all that serious. They were, and that was ok. Because in this place, faith really is faith. And with faith comes the possibility that we’re wrong.
By definition, faith goes beyond what we can prove. By definition, faith is a hope that beyond all the miserable stuff that we can be certain about, there might be something better, and just maybe we’re better off hanging onto that hope than clinging to what little certainty we can justify. Faith is tenuous. It comes and it goes, and it does this without our permission. I hope that those of you who have it can recognize how fortunate that makes you.
When we converse with others, let us speak with curiosity instead of certainty. Let our actions demonstrate that we might be wrong, and we know it. Let us put people before doctrine, and love before creeds. Let us remember that people aren’t changed by challenges to their pyramid of things that are true. People are changed by being shown, not told, that there’s a better way to be. And finally, let us seek the truth together, confident that even if we never find it, the search will have made our lives more fulfilling.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
She is my Light
Originally submitted as an entry to Minding The Light, issue 15, which can be found here:
I cried in the car recently. As everyone knows, cars have a
no-crying-allowed rule.
My daughter has an ongoing tantrum problem, and we've been at wit's end
trying to figure out how to stop them, or at least shorten them. So when
Taylor told me she found something that helps her calm down, I was thrilled!
She turned on the Ipad, and played an Alicia Keys song called "Never Felt
This Way". The song is about someone she loves, and how all she needs is
that person in her life. Taylor told me the song reminds her that all she
needs are her parents, and that keeps her calm.
I told her that I have a song that reminds me of her as well. I had the CD
in the car at the time, so I played it for her. I figured she'd like the
song, but I didn't expect her to ask me to explain why it reminds me of her.
I told her I wasn't sure I could tell her without crying, but I'd give it a
try:
"Taylor, for most people who believe in God, like you do, there are lots of
reasons to have hope. People who believe in God usually believe that God is
with them all the time, and that someday, after they die, they'll get to
meet God, and talk to God, and ask any kind of question they want to ask.
People like me, we don't have that kind of hope, as nice as it sounds. And
sometimes, it's hard to find reasons to stay happy about what's going on in
life. If we're sad about something, we don't have that magical idea to hold
onto, that someday it will all be ok. For me, when I really need it, the
happiest idea I can turn to is you. You give me more hope, love, and
encouragement than anyone or anything else in my life."
I Will Not Let Go, by David Bazan
When you get this message
I'll be high above the Earth
Thinking 'bout the promises that I keep
When I touch down in Texas
Land in Dallas/Fort Worth
I will call you up, and wake you from your sleep.
I will not let go of you
Who or what controls the fates of men
I cannot say
But I keep arriving safely home to you
And I humbly acknowledge
That I won't always get my way
But darling, death will have to pry my fingers loose
I cried in the car recently. As everyone knows, cars have a
no-crying-allowed rule.
My daughter has an ongoing tantrum problem, and we've been at wit's end
trying to figure out how to stop them, or at least shorten them. So when
Taylor told me she found something that helps her calm down, I was thrilled!
She turned on the Ipad, and played an Alicia Keys song called "Never Felt
This Way". The song is about someone she loves, and how all she needs is
that person in her life. Taylor told me the song reminds her that all she
needs are her parents, and that keeps her calm.
I told her that I have a song that reminds me of her as well. I had the CD
in the car at the time, so I played it for her. I figured she'd like the
song, but I didn't expect her to ask me to explain why it reminds me of her.
I told her I wasn't sure I could tell her without crying, but I'd give it a
try:
"Taylor, for most people who believe in God, like you do, there are lots of
reasons to have hope. People who believe in God usually believe that God is
with them all the time, and that someday, after they die, they'll get to
meet God, and talk to God, and ask any kind of question they want to ask.
People like me, we don't have that kind of hope, as nice as it sounds. And
sometimes, it's hard to find reasons to stay happy about what's going on in
life. If we're sad about something, we don't have that magical idea to hold
onto, that someday it will all be ok. For me, when I really need it, the
happiest idea I can turn to is you. You give me more hope, love, and
encouragement than anyone or anything else in my life."
I Will Not Let Go, by David Bazan
When you get this message
I'll be high above the Earth
Thinking 'bout the promises that I keep
When I touch down in Texas
Land in Dallas/Fort Worth
I will call you up, and wake you from your sleep.
I will not let go of you
Who or what controls the fates of men
I cannot say
But I keep arriving safely home to you
And I humbly acknowledge
That I won't always get my way
But darling, death will have to pry my fingers loose
Monday, October 28, 2013
All Fallen Leaves Should Curse Their Branches
There are few sights more disturbing than videos of the Westboro Baptist church kids singing songs about how much God hates fags. We don’t blame the kids, of course. They’re parroting what their parents have taught them. And kids, as all parents are well aware, will believe whatever we tell them to believe.
This is a huge responsibility, and we should take it seriously.
I’ve become increasingly bothered by posts and videos my friends and acquaintances have put up recently in which their children are either repeating the things they’ve been indoctrinated to believe, or are using some very basic logic to reach conclusions based on what they’ve been taught. The parents seem shocked to discover that when they teach their 10 year old about sin and forgiveness, their child learns to internalize sin in a way that is entirely inappropriate for a child of that age.
If you grew up evangelical, as I did, perhaps you remember the entirely made-up notion that children eventually reach an age of accountability, after which time they are fully responsible for the sins they commit. Before that age, God can be counted on not to eternally punish them for stealing their sister’s candy bar, because obviously the punishment wouldn‘t fit the crime. But after the age of accountability, any violation of any part of God’s commands are in such a violation of God’s nature that he will eternally punish them for those violations. The exception (because Bible) is if that child comes up with the correct series of thoughts. Get your beliefs lined up correctly, and you’re forgiven.
The notion that a five-year old is capable of making a decision that impacts the next 5 years of her life would be ridiculous. But in Christianity, those same kids are assumed capable of deciding their eternal destination. It’s no wonder parents are so eager to indoctrinate them. Eternal hellfire is at stake. When we believe radical things, we are capable of radical actions. See Syria, or Afghanistan, or Westboro, or Jesus Camp. Kids will believe what we tell them to believe, and do what we tell them to do.
If we’re lucky, our kids will grow old enough to let us know what they think of what we made them believe. Will they appreciate that we respected them enough to leave their minds well enough alone, so they could sample the choices available to them without bias? Or will they resent us for instilling division and certainty into their minds, forcing them to transform their entire worldview to escape those things? (<---- autobiographical).
David Bazan sums up the tragedy of parental indoctrination in this song:
Finally, this movie is scarier to me than any horror movie. If it’s not scary to you, I’d ask you to consider if you’d feel the same way if it were called Allah Camp.
This is a huge responsibility, and we should take it seriously.
I’ve become increasingly bothered by posts and videos my friends and acquaintances have put up recently in which their children are either repeating the things they’ve been indoctrinated to believe, or are using some very basic logic to reach conclusions based on what they’ve been taught. The parents seem shocked to discover that when they teach their 10 year old about sin and forgiveness, their child learns to internalize sin in a way that is entirely inappropriate for a child of that age.
If you grew up evangelical, as I did, perhaps you remember the entirely made-up notion that children eventually reach an age of accountability, after which time they are fully responsible for the sins they commit. Before that age, God can be counted on not to eternally punish them for stealing their sister’s candy bar, because obviously the punishment wouldn‘t fit the crime. But after the age of accountability, any violation of any part of God’s commands are in such a violation of God’s nature that he will eternally punish them for those violations. The exception (because Bible) is if that child comes up with the correct series of thoughts. Get your beliefs lined up correctly, and you’re forgiven.
The notion that a five-year old is capable of making a decision that impacts the next 5 years of her life would be ridiculous. But in Christianity, those same kids are assumed capable of deciding their eternal destination. It’s no wonder parents are so eager to indoctrinate them. Eternal hellfire is at stake. When we believe radical things, we are capable of radical actions. See Syria, or Afghanistan, or Westboro, or Jesus Camp. Kids will believe what we tell them to believe, and do what we tell them to do.
If we’re lucky, our kids will grow old enough to let us know what they think of what we made them believe. Will they appreciate that we respected them enough to leave their minds well enough alone, so they could sample the choices available to them without bias? Or will they resent us for instilling division and certainty into their minds, forcing them to transform their entire worldview to escape those things? (<---- autobiographical).
David Bazan sums up the tragedy of parental indoctrination in this song:
Richard Dawkins is a jerk, but on this point, he's spot on:
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Stairs
I’ve been sitting on these stairs
Watching the door sit cruelly closed
Waiting for you
A smiling friend came by
Showed me trees and kids and sunrise
“Are you sure he ever left?”
A stranger yelled through the door
Slipped a book through the mail slot
“He wrote this for you”
A breeze came through the window
Said if I look at mystery deep enough
I’ll find you there
When you left
You weren’t a sunrise, book, or mystery
You just were
I wonder if I dreamed you
But so many seem to get their turn
And what an amazing dream
So dream of mine
If you’re alive, and I’m alive
Let’s speak again like old times
I’m a little older
A little sadder
But I haven’t left those stairs
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Philosophies of Prayer
Philosophies of Prayer
My life is full of people who pray. And when they pray, the things they pray for
tend to vary, as does the response when what they’re praying for either happens
or doesn’t happen. There doesn’t seem to
be a consistent philosophy of what prayer is, who it’s for, and the expectation
from the recipient. These are a few of
the philosophies of prayer that I can deduct from various people in my
life. I’d love to hear your philosophy
of prayer in the comments. (To be clear –
my questions about prayer are because I’m genuinely curious about these ideas,
not because I’m mocking the idea of prayer)
The most common philosophy of prayer that I deduct from
people is that God is able to intervene in human lives, and depending on what
is said during the prayer, or how many people pray for it, God will choose to
intervene or not to intervene. People
with this philosophy express urgency about prayer, often forwarding messages
through prayer chains, or taking comfort if they know a whole bunch of people
are praying at the same time. “God,
please heal Samantha, as she has cancer.
Let the doctors do a good job, and help her family to be comforted.” This philosophy seems to assume that the
outcome of Samantha’s cancer is undetermined, and God, as prayer recipient,
will give an answer in the form of Samantha’s life or death, the success or
failure of the doctors, and the emotional well-being of the family. To those with this view, I ask: In your
opinion, is God inside or outside of time?
If God is inside of time, what does that say about God’s
omniscience? If God is outside of time,
is it consistent to believe that your prayers matter, as the outcome is
presumably occurring simultaneously with the sickness? Should the patient die, should it really be
believed that God’s will includes senseless things like cancer, or dead
children, or war? What does it say about
God that your prayers may or may not change God’s mind? What does it say about God if the quantity of
prayers make a difference in the outcome?
A different theory I heard preached recently is that God
cannot intervene in human events, but can provide comfort and express empathy
to people as they go through their experiences.
In this philosophy, because of human free will, people determine the outcome
of human events, with God present as a handcuffed companion. God is there to mourn with you, but she can’t
intervene the way one might hope. To
those with this view, I ask: If God wants to do something (say, prevent a
terrible crime), but can’t because of human free will, what does this say about
God’s omnipotence? Is asking for comfort
also asking for God to intervene, which this philosophy says can’t be
done? How does the philosophy of a
non-intervening God related to a potential afterlife? (I'm assuming that this person believes in human free will because it allows people to choose salvation in some way).
The last philosophy of prayer says that prayer is for the
human, not for God. Life is either
pre-written (because God knows everything that will happen), or if you’re a
deist, God isn’t involved with humanity at all now that life has been put in
motion. For these people, the expression
of prayer helps them on an emotional level, without the expectation that anyone
is coming to help them. For these
people, I ask: what is the difference between prayer and meditation? What is different about praying compared to a
conversation with a close friend?
What’s your philosophy of prayer?
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Death Alludes, At Least For Now
“You’re not dying,” he said. “But I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”
At the beginning of May, I quit a 20-year, 2-liter per day Diet Dr. Pepper habit. I’d gotten a nasty cold, and while staring at the 2-liter bottle, I had an epiphany of sorts. I’d known, of course, that the chemicals and preservatives in soda couldn’t be doing good things to my insides, but for some reason, on that day, I was able to decide I didn’t need it, so I quit.
Two weeks later, I began to notice on involuntarily twitch in my left index finger. It didn’t hurt, but it was noticeable; The finger would gently oscillate side to side, causing anything I was holding to jiggle slightly. Figuring it was like the occasional eyelid twitch everyone gets once in awhile, I didn’t think much of it until it had been happening for two weeks. The company insurance had finally kicked in, so I went for a check-up, and asked the doctor if she had any ideas. She asked about my caffeine consumption. I told her that I increased my coffee intake from about 2 cups in the morning to 3, but I couldn’t imagine it could be caffeine, since I’d just quit drinking 2 daily liters of caffeinated soda. She asked me to quit drinking any caffeine for a few weeks to see what happened. The results were mixed. The frequency of the tremors dropped significantly, but not completely. At one point I went 2 days with no tremors, but the third day they were back with the usual frequency. Caffeine seemed to exaggerate the symptom, but it wasn’t the cause.
Sometime in June, my left thumb began to spasm, with a much more noticeable movement. It only happened a few times, and stopped after the second day, but it was weird enough to get me to start Googling. The results were not what I wanted to see. Nearly every possible cause of the tremors was either fatal or degeneratively crippling. Parkinsons. Brain Tumors. Cancer. Even some of the best case scenarios, like permanent benign essential tremor, meant this was never going to go away. The doctor scheduled a neurology consult. That appointment was today.
It’s hard to know how to properly panic when you don’t have enough information to know if you should panic at all. Intellectually, I woke up this morning knowing I might receive a terminal diagnosis. I knew that could happen, but I didn’t feel like it would happen. My reaction has been mostly cerebral - I have a pretty good idea of the possibilities, most of them bad, but my mind is apparently an eternal optimist. It hadn’t sunk in what I’m facing.
The neurologist was running 45 minutes late. I feel like if you’re in a business where you tell people they’re dying on a regular basis, punctuality should probably be a priority. As I watched the receptionist take phone call after phone call, life seemed like a formality for a little while. I thought about how in a hospital, yes, people live and die, but people are also coming to work and going home from work. To the patient, it’s life and death, but to the staff, it’s a job. If I tell a good joke, maybe a nurse will mention me over dinner when he goes home, but probably not. My death, within the context of that building, would be nothing more than a new claim would mean to me at my office. On some level, I think I had a brief conversation with the universe, acknowledging its futility, but appreciating the chance to be involved for awhile.
The neurology exam didn’t show any symptoms besides the tremor. Medically speaking, it’s possible I have extremely early signs of Parkinsons. At this stage, there’s no way to know for sure. It’s also possible the tremors will stop just as inexplicably as they started, with the cause forever being mysterious. He had me take a blood test for Wilson’s disease, gave me some dietary experiments to try, and told me to come back in six months. Maybe next time I’ll have more stuff wrong with me so he can tell me how scared I should be. Or maybe I’ll have this damn tremor for the rest of my life. Clock in, clock out.
A year ago, death was something I dwelled on. I feared it deeply, and was desperate for a way not to. I don’t know exactly how, but over the past year, I’ve managed to change my approach from fear to curiosity. Most likely, we die, and then we’re dead. But maybe that’s not the end. Maybe. It’s that maybe that has made the difference. And perhaps the difference between being afraid and not being afraid is recognizing you don’t have enough information to justify the fear that comes with being certain of the worst case scenario.
*UPDATE* I wrote this last night (Thursday). This morning, the lab called to say my blood test for copper levels was low, and more follow up testing will be done. Copper levels are tested when Wilson's Disease is suspected. Should know more in a few weeks.
At the beginning of May, I quit a 20-year, 2-liter per day Diet Dr. Pepper habit. I’d gotten a nasty cold, and while staring at the 2-liter bottle, I had an epiphany of sorts. I’d known, of course, that the chemicals and preservatives in soda couldn’t be doing good things to my insides, but for some reason, on that day, I was able to decide I didn’t need it, so I quit.
Two weeks later, I began to notice on involuntarily twitch in my left index finger. It didn’t hurt, but it was noticeable; The finger would gently oscillate side to side, causing anything I was holding to jiggle slightly. Figuring it was like the occasional eyelid twitch everyone gets once in awhile, I didn’t think much of it until it had been happening for two weeks. The company insurance had finally kicked in, so I went for a check-up, and asked the doctor if she had any ideas. She asked about my caffeine consumption. I told her that I increased my coffee intake from about 2 cups in the morning to 3, but I couldn’t imagine it could be caffeine, since I’d just quit drinking 2 daily liters of caffeinated soda. She asked me to quit drinking any caffeine for a few weeks to see what happened. The results were mixed. The frequency of the tremors dropped significantly, but not completely. At one point I went 2 days with no tremors, but the third day they were back with the usual frequency. Caffeine seemed to exaggerate the symptom, but it wasn’t the cause.
Sometime in June, my left thumb began to spasm, with a much more noticeable movement. It only happened a few times, and stopped after the second day, but it was weird enough to get me to start Googling. The results were not what I wanted to see. Nearly every possible cause of the tremors was either fatal or degeneratively crippling. Parkinsons. Brain Tumors. Cancer. Even some of the best case scenarios, like permanent benign essential tremor, meant this was never going to go away. The doctor scheduled a neurology consult. That appointment was today.
It’s hard to know how to properly panic when you don’t have enough information to know if you should panic at all. Intellectually, I woke up this morning knowing I might receive a terminal diagnosis. I knew that could happen, but I didn’t feel like it would happen. My reaction has been mostly cerebral - I have a pretty good idea of the possibilities, most of them bad, but my mind is apparently an eternal optimist. It hadn’t sunk in what I’m facing.
The neurologist was running 45 minutes late. I feel like if you’re in a business where you tell people they’re dying on a regular basis, punctuality should probably be a priority. As I watched the receptionist take phone call after phone call, life seemed like a formality for a little while. I thought about how in a hospital, yes, people live and die, but people are also coming to work and going home from work. To the patient, it’s life and death, but to the staff, it’s a job. If I tell a good joke, maybe a nurse will mention me over dinner when he goes home, but probably not. My death, within the context of that building, would be nothing more than a new claim would mean to me at my office. On some level, I think I had a brief conversation with the universe, acknowledging its futility, but appreciating the chance to be involved for awhile.
The neurology exam didn’t show any symptoms besides the tremor. Medically speaking, it’s possible I have extremely early signs of Parkinsons. At this stage, there’s no way to know for sure. It’s also possible the tremors will stop just as inexplicably as they started, with the cause forever being mysterious. He had me take a blood test for Wilson’s disease, gave me some dietary experiments to try, and told me to come back in six months. Maybe next time I’ll have more stuff wrong with me so he can tell me how scared I should be. Or maybe I’ll have this damn tremor for the rest of my life. Clock in, clock out.
A year ago, death was something I dwelled on. I feared it deeply, and was desperate for a way not to. I don’t know exactly how, but over the past year, I’ve managed to change my approach from fear to curiosity. Most likely, we die, and then we’re dead. But maybe that’s not the end. Maybe. It’s that maybe that has made the difference. And perhaps the difference between being afraid and not being afraid is recognizing you don’t have enough information to justify the fear that comes with being certain of the worst case scenario.
*UPDATE* I wrote this last night (Thursday). This morning, the lab called to say my blood test for copper levels was low, and more follow up testing will be done. Copper levels are tested when Wilson's Disease is suspected. Should know more in a few weeks.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Why We Became Atheists (and why we didn't)
In recent years, the Christian church has been doing a lot
of soul-searching regarding why the younger generations are leaving the church
in such large numbers. It’s been a
fascinating topic to follow. It’s a bit
like hiding behind the couch at Thanksgiving, listening to your extended family
talk about you while they think you’re running an errand. The theories are interesting; Some are
thoughtful, some are well-intentioned but wrong, most are ridiculous. My purpose in addressing this is
two-fold. First, I think churches still
have an important role to play in society, and I feel like constructive
criticism might be helpful. Second,
there are still areas in life where people like me face discrimination simply
for the thoughts we have. These areas of discrimination can only be changed if the discriminators realize they're wrong for being that way.
To begin, I'd like to ask you to agree with me on a few basic ideas. First, as intelligent people, we get to explain our beliefs to others. Others don't get to tell us what we believe. For example, if I trusted what my youth group leaders taught me about Mormons, not only would I be factually mistaken, I'd have a whole lot fewer friends. Likewise, if many of you really believed what your pastors teach about atheists, you and I probably wouldn't be friends right now. So, if you tell me what you believe, I'm going to believe you. I only ask for the same courtesy. Second, let's do our best to engage each other with charity. What I mean by charity is that if something is unclear, or can be interpreted two different ways, let's choose to interpret it in the way that is most charitable (or kind) to the speaker. So many disagreements occur because the reader assumes things about the author that probably were not intended. So let's do our best to assume that we're not trying to offend each other.
The topic of apostasy is complicated - statistical studies aren't always clear in their terms, and often focus more on why people stop going to church, than why people lose their faith entirely. Certainly, the former group includes a lot more people than the latter. In Rachel Held Evans' article on the subject, she focuses on why millennials are leaving the church, and concludes a number of things that I agree with:
* We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.
* We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.
* We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers
* We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities
She also concludes a number of things I don't agree with, including the final conclusion:
*We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.
Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.
Rachel is a fantastic ambassador for Christianity. In fact, if the majority of Christendom believed and spoke the way she does, I suspect most of the religious culture war would be over, and the vitriolic atheist response to Christianity would subside significantly. That said, even she seems to agree with perhaps the biggest obstacle to interfaith relationships: the possibility that she's wrong about Jesus doesn't seem to be on the table.
We've all been wrong before, some of us more than others. What makes the search for truth so amazing is how great it feels to discover something new that we've been missing. Sometimes that feeling comes during a change within a religious framework, sometimes it comes from leaving faith entirely. But if truth is what we're committed to, it must at least be fathomable that everything we've come to believe in is absolutely false. Science, supposedly a fierce rival of religion, operates in exactly this way. Science constantly tries to prove itself right or wrong. And when it discovers it's wrong, all the better, for truth has replaced falsity. Faith systems tend to not only be immune to self-reflection, they often seek to avoid it. This is not only unhealthy, it's adverse to truth-seeking.
Last year I attended an interfaith conversation between Paul Metzger, a professor at Multnomah Seminary, and a Buddhist monk. The monk explained that when conversing with Evangelicals, he understands that at the core of everything they're talking about is a giant pillar of faith that's never going to move. So, he has to talk around it in hopes of improving these interfaith relationships. I submit that this should not be so. If any part of our worldview isn't up for debate, are we really searching for what's true, or are we searching to confirm our biases?
That said, let's look at some reasons why some Christians seem to think people leave the church, or become atheists:
According to some guy at askacatholic.com, people become atheists because of a bad relationship with their father.
According to Josiah Concept Ministries, people become atheists because they don't want accountability to God.
According to creation.com, atheists hate God
Regarding church attendance, this reverend suggests young people quit attending church because churches are no longer intellectually challenging, churches are no longer leaders in ethical and moral decision making, and churches are no longer visionary - focusing on soul-saving instead of community building. I really enjoyed this article.
The issue of why people leave church seems a lot more simple to me. Rachel Held Evans, and the reverend cited above, have a lot of good input on that idea. But leaving church over politics or social buffoonery is quite different from losing faith entirely. Many non-church goers still believe in all or part of the faith tenants held by the church they've left. Likewise, many church-goers don't believe in God at all. According to one study (referenced here), 18% of Unitarian Universalists are atheists. Buddhism, depending on the strain, is an atheistic religion. Atheists can be found as active members of many religious communities, including Judaism, Mormonism, Quakerism, and many others. But why do people lose faith in the first place?
My own story on that question is here and here. But speaking in generalities, if you ask us why/how we lost our faith, most of the answers will look something like this:
1 - Faith is not supported by evidence. Certainly there are very smart people who spend a whole lot of time trying to appeal to God's existence via science and philosophy. But as technology has allowed new generations of people to access information and arguments that used to be hidden by religious parents, if they acknowledge it existed at all, more and more people are comparing their faith to the supporting documentation, and finding little to nothing is there to hold up the faith structure. This isn't a matter of saying, "I don't want to obey God." It's saying, "I have believed in God by faith, but if faith as all there is, I'll pass." To then say that the person who arrives at this conclusion "hates" God is like saying a person "hates" Krishna or Baal. Silly on its face, isn't it? As Hemant Mehta correctly states:
Moreover, blogs and websites espousing non-religious viewpoints and criticizing Christianity draw tons of Internet traffic these days. For every Christian apologist's argument, it seems, there's an equal and opposite rebuttal to be found online. I call that "Hitchens' Third Law.”
Christians can no longer hide in a bubble, sheltered from opposing perspectives, and church leaders can't protect young people from finding information that contradicts traditional beliefs.
2 - Mean-spirited politics allow the initial doubt, leading back to #1. The younger generations have spoken clearly on many issues that are not in unity with our parents. We don't think gays are an abomination. We don't think marriage is only for straight people. We don't think men are superior to women. When we hear these things being preached at church, it's so obviously wrong to us that we allow the possibility that the whole thing is a sham to enter our minds. Some of us then conclude #1.
3 - One or more traumatic experiences rule out a loving God. Millions of dollars have been made by Christians writing books trying to get around the problem of evil, both human and natural. Some are convinced that free will solves the problem. Many others are not. While I personally don't think conclusions about the supernatural should be based on individual experiences, for many people, their experiences are insurmountable. For them, either there is no God, or God is not all-loving.
4 - The Hell doctrine. I don't think much explanation is needed. For many people, hell allows the whole system to be doubted, and from there, #1.
With these things in mind, let's continue a dialogue about God. But let's do it fairly, and let's listen to each other. Christians and atheists aren't so different. We often share the same values, the same morals, and have the same goals for society. Let's find those things and focus on them together.
I asked a group of my fellow atheists to briefly sum up how/why they became atheists. Here are their responses"
* "The concept of Hell got in the way of the concept of a loving God that created us. Also, seeing the all powerful God through clear eyes so as to comprehend that He is a creation of all the worst traits of humanity."
* " I was tired of pretending to be god so I stopped being a Christian"
* " My personal rejection of faith came from finally asking all the questions that had been repressed inside of me by fundamentalist christianity. We were told that reason, and doubt, was the voice of satan. The day came when I could no longer suppress the questions. As I started to ask them, the answers that I received gradually lead me down the path to atheism.
* "Eventually I realized that the whole threat of eternal torment is actually the psychological hook that when implanted at a young age, or at a point in one’s life when they are the most vulnerable, can produce an almost impenetrable motivational framework that is extremely difficult to break away from." More here.
To close, here's an amazing video from a really ballsy church, recognizing International Interview an Atheist in Church Day:
For the best part, here's a shorter version:
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