When I Was a Child, I Spake as a Child….

God is an elusive construct.  Simply stated, this is because he is no “thing” and thus cannot be constructed.  Here, I am about to venture into a territory verboten in the faith tradition I was born into, philosophy.  And, I remember so vividly how higher learning in general, and especially philosophy, was totally dismissed. And, I understand that philosophy can be off-putting as it appears to have no end…and technically it doesn’t.  But the word philosophy merely means the love of knowledge and those who scoff at the subject usually do so because they “love” the little puddle of knowledge they live in and are not willing to broaden its parameters a bit.  Philosophy intrinsically “broadens” the parameters of knowledge, though it does not have to be endless.

God is just a word and we first heard it in the context of the “little puddle” that we lived in.  It was just a sound, “G-o-d” which initially was a simple part of the verbal cacophony we were discovering and trying to make sense of.  In time this word was distinguished from that medley and found to have meaning that in my case was very significant.  And it took me decades to realize and appreciate the degree to which “the little puddle” that I was born into shaped the meaning that had accrued to that simple sound, “g-o-d.”

But as an adult I have acquired some ability to discern the subtleties of this term…or at least the presence of these subtleties.  This corresponds with the ongoing maturity process which has allowed me to discover the myriad subtleties that constitute my own heart, a realization without which I would be unable to recognize subtleties in others, including in the term, “g-o-d.”

God is now an adventure as He is no longer an abstraction to me, but some “thing” (which is no “thing”) that is woven into my very being.  The exploration of the notion of God now involves the exploration of my heart, including those dimensions long hidden beneath the ideological constructions that I’ve had of Him…and of myself.

Remember Donovan, a 1960’s rock star?  One line from a ditty of his was, “First there is mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”  Indulge this cryptic and obscure point, but, “First there was a god, then there was no god, then (now) there is.”  I had to lose “god” to find Him just as I had to lose myself to find myself.  This loss of ego, actually an ongoing process, allows me to approach God…and the whole of life…with more humility than I had when I was ensconced in that “little puddle.”

God and the Unconscious

God is beyond the grasp of our conscious mind.  But Christianity, especially since the Protestant Reformation, thinks otherwise.  I emphasize “thinking” because when it comes to faith, it is relevant to the observation that James Baldwin made about race, dismissing Caucasians as, “People who think they are white.”  Baldwin was making a profound observation about thought, implicitly noting there is nothing wrong with being white but that the problem arises with thinking.  Whiteness exists before a child learns the concept of “white” but when he does learn it, and it becomes a thought, he then is able to use it to distinguish it and even himself from others.  The child has entered the ego’s domain of hierarchy and like all ego’s it gears up toward mastery, superiority, and control.  He quickly realizes that the white skin pigment is special. But the same problem is present in a culture in which one’s religion is excessively “thinking” oriented as it can become so rational that the dimension of “being” a Christian is unknown.  One has the thoughts…and they are often very noble thoughts…but often they miss the experience, his faith being merely cognitive in that he relies only on memory, the whole of his Christian life being one of rote recall from his memory bank.  The notion of “being” is completely beyond the pale.  And this approach to faith allows smooth functioning in our culture which has no idea of what in hell one is talking about with the notion of “being.”  This facilitates an “enculturated faith”, one that is mostly or even wholly bound by the whims and fancies of the prevailing culture.  This faith cannot fulfill the prophetic function that is an essential dimension of religion.

I want to share here a very profound poem by Ranier Rilke which conveys the presence of something that is beyond the grasp of our conscious mind.  This “thing” is deeply buried in the depths of t he heart, very much related to the unconsciousness, and wants to find expression.  It is the essence of the life impulse, very much related to what Christians call the Holy Spirit:

 

No one lives his life.

Disguised since childhood,

haphazardly assembled from voices and fears and little pleasures,

we come of age as masks. Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses where all these lives are laid away

like suits of armour or old carriages

or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

 

Maybe all the paths lead there to the repository of unlived things.

 

And yet, though you and I struggle against this deathly clutch of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?

 

Is it the things themselves, or something waiting inside them, like an unplayed melody in a flute?

 

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it the flowers interweaving their fragrances or streets, as they wind through time?

 

Is it the animals, moving, or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

 

Who lives it then?

God, are you the one who is living life?

 

The Hypocrisy in Pro-Life Culture

I’m really angry at those in my country who have put Trump in the position where he can pose such an imminent threat to our welfare, not to mention the entire world.  He continues to demonstrate his mental instability; but, the more he does so the greater the intensity of his support base.  They are completely enthralled by him; they are powerless. Another source of my frustration and anger is watching him court the evangelicals, knowing that he can toss “red meat” to them and many of them will continue to grovel before him.  For example, the abortion issue has been the issue which led many of them to pledge their loyalty to him, their argument being that “protecting the unborn” was so important that they would overlook Trump’s moral failures..

I would like to explore the abortion issue this morning from my personal experience.  I vividly recall a Saturday morning when I was 20 years of age, participating in a pro-life march down the main street of Albany, Oregon.  I was the youth pastor in a small Southern Baptist church in that city and basically had no idea in the hell who I was.  Being caught up in a culture that gave me some pretense of an identity, I dutifully participated in this march feeling very self-conscious each step of the way.  Something about this experience made me uncomfortable though at that time I did not know what it was.

Now I do.   I was an “enculturated” fundamentalist Christian at the time and was “dutifully” complying with the guilt-ridden dictates of the moment.  But I was at the threshold of breaking through the bonds of guilt, or at least beginning the process; the “process” is ongoing four decades later.  When one is guilt-ridden, fear is at the root of everything he thinks, does, and says.  He is not capable of “thinking through” what is going on in his heart and life as he is driven by needs, hungers, and fears that he has not found the courage to address.  At that moment, walking down that street with an ignoble noble cause in my mind, something redemptive was stirring in the depths of my soul.

The guilt/fear amalgam compels one to glom onto ideas and behaviors which thwart the underlying emotional/spiritual conflagration that is raging.  For example, just a couple of years earlier than this march in Albany, Oregon I remember conducting an informal poll in my high school in Arkansas about who “cheats” on tests.  I was full of righteous indignation as I knew that cheating was common place.  BUT, I now realize my primary concern with this self-indulgent polling was to announce that I did not cheat.  And I didn’t!  No, I did not cheat, nor did I “smoke, drink, chew, or go with the girls that do.”  I had to have a bunch of things that I “didn’t do” to assure me that I was okay, assuaging the deep-seated, unconscious awareness that I was not okay.  The irony of this was that I purported to belief in Jesus who was supposed to have left me free of this stifling guilt!

The abortion issue is important.  AND, I am passionately not “pro” abortion; there are other options.  But I am pro-wisdom and human wisdom can understand that even with abortion there are times it is the prudent choice to make.   But it has become a “Cause” that some people have allowed it to take on such importance they are doing grave harm to the entire country, and potentially the world.  The irony of their intense stance on the abortion issue is that now Trump is about to have the war he needs to win re-election and can they not realize that many lives will be lost…and that will include women who are carrying unborn babies???

I often, when pursuing a vein of thought as I am doing here, come to the bumper sticker wisdom, “Don’t believe everything you think.”  Being opposed to abortion is a valid sentiment to hold.  But, perhaps thinking about the matter a bit further could bring “the pauser reason” to the table and one could realize that there is always a bigger picture than needs to be given attention.  And yes, even the meta-cognition which I have in scads needs that same attention…and does get it!

Furthermore, this “pauser reason” might lead one to consider the possibility that Trump is merely taking advantage of them.

“Hypocrites For Jesus Unite!”

I like to have fun and I’m gonna do so today on this blog.  Given my thoughts shared yesterday, let me imagine starting a campaign calling for “Hypocrites for Jesus” to come out, joining others…, well, ahem, ahem…for some purpose which I presently cannot imagine!  I guess I’m aware of how much “joining” and the pleasure of “belonging to other joiners” appeals to me as much as it appalls me.

But there is a serious dimension to this vein of thought which I shared yesterday. We are all actors, though “imperfect actors on this stage of life,” per Shakespeare, yet our ego wants to delude us into thinking our faith is the “real thing.”  Nevertheless, as long as we are human, we will not have or be the “real thing” in any respect; and who would want to be anything but “human”?  To answer my question, “the ego would” as the ego is a dimension of our human-ness that seeks to lead us into non-human dimensions of life, leading toward “inhumane” attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.  This ego is what the Apostle Paul called “the flesh” and led him to admit on one occasion, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.” Without this “self” awareness that the Spirit of God wishes to give us, we will be incapable of this Pauline wisdom and find ourselves making choices that have nothing to do with God and everything to do with the ego.  Oh yes, we will likely declare loudly and boisterously that “God is leading me” but that does not mean He is .  In fact, listen to what Shakespeare had to say about the “loud and boisterous” displays of faith:

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.

But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,

Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.

And I oughta know about this hyperbolic displaying of faith! I have spent most of my life “like horses hot at hand” in my faith because deep in my heart I yearned for a faith which I’m only now able to tippy-toe into, a faith requiring the humility to entertain doubt, insecurity, weakness, and fear. Though I’m being facetious here, my “plea” for Christians to acknowledge their hypocrisy has a degree of seriousness to it.  We never escape being human and it is okay to be an “actor” in faith; realizing this and admitting it allows us to be less so.

The “Father of Lies” is Subtle

The Gospel of John described Satan as, “the Father of Lies” and is incapable of telling the truth and has his origin in existentially primeval times.  Listen to what theologian Paul J. Griffiths wrote about human nature and the mortal tendency of lying:

The avoidance of the lie can only be realized when we are overwhelmed by the gift of God’s grace, because we have to recognize that we are habitual liars and can only cease to be so when we let go of the “ownership” of our speech and surrender to the language of confession, testimony to the beauty of God.

We are all “liars” in a sense as we see the world through a skewed vision which resists any revision.  Consequently, any information or feedback we receive from the world is filtered through our “skewing” apparatus and we interpret things in a way to suit our needs of maintaining existential equilibrium, even if that means holding onto ideas and notions that are inherently self-destructive and destructive of others.  This “skewing” does not mean we are bad people.  It just means we are human and echoes the observation o the Apostle Paul, that we “see through a glass darkly.”  And, to call this “lying” is a bit of an over statement I admit but it is human subterfuge than can lead to lying in most egregious sense.

But there is a tendency in my Christian tradition to accept a juicy morsel from the “Father of Lies” and assume that the Holy Spirit is guiding us so that all of our whims, our interpretations of the scripture….are absolutely true….”because God is leading me.”  This naive mind set overlooks historical events such as the Crusades when “the Lord” was leading Christians to convert others at the point of sword and even the German soldiers in World War 2 carried an inscription on their belt, “God is with us.”  It is naive to believe, “Oh, they were evil and we are not evil.  For God is leading us.”  But God can be “with us”…and I think he always is…and the presence of “the flesh” can still dictate how we utilize our faith and can lead us to believe, espouse, and do horrible things.

It takes a lot of work and spiritual toil over the year to grasp the wisdom of the Apostle Paul,  that, “I will to do good but evil is present with me” and that “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”  Our faith is always susceptible to being guided by the whims of our ego though we will always be inclined to piously announce, “God is leading me.”  It would never do any harm when we feel “God is leading me” to introduce a dollop of the Shakespearean “pauser reason” and ask ourselves, “Oh.  Is that so?  Could I be merely satisfying some ego craving to be right and pious?”

 

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THE FOLLOWING IS A RELEVANT POST FROM ANOTHER OF MY BLOGS.

Scott M. Peck in 1983 wrote a book entitled, “People of the Lie” a description of evil gleaned from decades of clinical work.  He described how that some people are so captive to their reptilian brain that “lying” in socially acceptable fashion will not suffice for their heart’s machination and they become so consumed with dishonesty that evil consumes them, bringing great harm to others, including those who they purport to love the most.

The socially necessary “dishonesty” required to function in daily life in these instances has metastasized to the point they are no longer capable of being honest with themselves and therefore cannot be honest with those around them.  This phenomenon is illustrated with the witty often used, “How do you know he is lying? Answer, “Anytime he opens his mouth.”  These people are sociopathic and in many instances will commit such grievances to the social body that the only limit available is imprisonment where their characterological malady can be restrained.

But, this metastasized dishonesty can be socially tenable…or at least permissible…in cultic phenomena where a group of people will find a leader who offers an embodiment of their own penchant for dishonesty.  They will then create an organization or group in which their “group lie” cannot be questioned, and anyone who does question them or their leader is immediately dismissed with the cry of, “Fake news!  These people have created for themselves an insular world in which their premises will never be daunted by what others are saying to them or about them.  People in such an insular world are  existentially vulnerable to the point that the “house of cards” which is the core of their identity cannot withstand scrutiny.  When the drive of this insularity gets too intense all of the complexities and ambivalences that are permitted in an “open society” will have been so repressed and denied that a melt down is likely.  (See Rene Girard, “The Sacrificial Crisis.”  This internal “melt down” is often avoided by finding an enemy out there among the “them” and all of the flaws they hide within will be blamed on “them.”  In primitive societies this crescendoing pressure is often abated with a sacrificial victim, usually some wayfaring member of a nearby tribe will be apprehend and executed because of some contrived offense.  (The actual offense in this case is being an “other”, someone different than they are; for “otherness” is terrifying to any insular group.)  This “otherness” must be eliminated, or at least have a wall built to keep it out.

To summarize, the “lie” when it metastasizes to the point of creating a “People of the Lie” or even a “person of the lie” (aka,”pathological liar”) can bring great harm to everyone.  The only hope is that when those who have succumbed to obvious anti-social speech and deeds have firm limits set with them by the world in which they live.

 

Where is the Evangelical Council to the President These Days????

Where is the Evangelical Council to the President?  We used to hear from them, or about them, quite frequently.  But they have suddenly gone strangely silent.  I’ve googled for wisdom and support of Trump from luminaries like Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, and Robert Jeffress and cannot find even a peep from them.  What’s up?

I strongly suspect they realize they have dug themselves into a deep pit, a veritable black hole, and cannot escape without humbly admitting, “We made a mistake.”  But they have bitten of the same poison pill that Trump swallowed early in his life and cannot humbly admit, “I was wrong.”  For they have a tremendous ego investment in their persona as a “Purveyor of the Truth of Jesus,” but are not able to realize they can be that and simultaneously be egregiously full of an ego that demands aggrandizement just as much as does Trump.  AND, I speak from experience, as I started out on a path of seeking a similarly specious identity but was miraculously rescued by the Grace of God which leaves me now but a mere “small clod of cholesterol in the mainstream of life.”  And, I’m humbly “proud” of this lowly station. It takes all the pressure off.

I must emphasize that these men…and women…do as I do, echo the words of the Psalmist, “My soul followeth hard after Thee, O Lord.”  And I do not doubt their sincerity, nor do I doubt the efficacy of their faith in Jesus Christ.  But I do challenge them on something I’ve had to wrestle with, this “passion” for “Thee, O Lord” can easily be an ego endeavor as it will afford one an opportunity to ensconce himself in a position of power in Christian culture.  But this immediately flies in the face of a fundamental teaching of Jesus—that power is found in powerlessness and the appeal to the power of ego-gratification is intoxicating as, ahem, “hell.”

“My Soul Followeth Hard After Thee” to A Sad Extreme

My heart goes out to John Allen Chao, the young man who lost his life trying to bring Jesus to the Sentinalese Islanders a few days ago.  He had the passion that I had at his age…and still have today, in some way…captured with the Psalmist who declared, “My soul followeth hard after Thee, O Lord.”  And that is a noble passion which I am glad I have today, though now with the wisdom of four additional decades.

Humankind carries a Divine spark.  And that “spark” is more intense with some men and women exemplified such as Mr. Chao. But that spark needs to be couched in and guided by a spiritual structure which will give it wisdom which would have prevented this tragedy.  Young men and women who are driven by the very noble goal of “winning souls to Jesus” need to be guided by wise men and women who can direct that spiritual passion to realistic, immediate, and personal concerns very much related to the admonishment of the Apostle Paul to, “work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling.”

This young man had the “Spirit of the Lord upon him,” but had not lived long enough to acquire the wisdom to realize that the Grace of God covers us all, even those who are so primitive and “crude” as to not see the world as we do and will respond with violence to those who dare to intrude upon their isolation.  I blame this tragedy upon the structure of some dimensions of the Christian faith who do not have this wisdom, who see their faith…steeped in cognition, i.e. “the letter of the law,…as “factual” rather than spiritual and entitles them to overrule the personal space of those who view the world differently.  People with this kind of missionary zeal are so cognitively oriented that they feel mere reason will be effective in convincing others to see the world as they do, immediately integrating these new teachings into a new perspective of their world.  They see Jesus as a “thing”, that is a mere “idea”, who by means of “ideas” can reach into the heart of others, even those who have never heard of Him.

I’m so sorry for this young man.  But, he can say, as did Martin Luther King, “Free at last.  Free at last.  Praise God, I’m free at last.”  For, he is back where he came from, in the “bosom of Abraham,” in his Source and free of the duress of the Shakespearean, “mortal coil.”

The following is a list of my other blogs.

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https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

 

“Purity and Danger” by anthropologist Mary Douglas explores tribal culture’s and their hyper emphasis of purity and its relationship to “perceived” danger.  The “danger” is usually the fear of contamination  by new ideas from beyond the pale of their culture but also from within the culture as deviance from within is always present within any culture that has any dynamic quality.

The hyper emphasis of purity always belies profound insecurity of the tribe, the fear that its values could not withstand any necessary adjustment from the introduction of the “new” or novel.  When this threat is on the horizon it is common practice to emphasize strongly the importance of the status quo and to demonize any deviance. This was evidenced in our country about a decade ago when the Tea Party sought to “purify” the Republican Party and began to label as RINA (Republican in Name Only) to anyone who took a view deemed to be inconsistent with the party line.

But today my focus is on the “purity and danger” phenomena is in fundamentalist Christianity, expressed in its inordinate emphasis of protecting the virginity of their young girls.  This often includes a ceremony in which the girls father places a purity ring on her finger as she takes a vow of chastity until her marriage.  (This makes me think of a quip by H.L. Mencken, “The problem with chastity is its over emphasis of sex.”) However, victims of this abuse are now beginning to report the trauma they experienced and the suffering they experienced as they began to mature beyond the reaches of their conservative faith and explore their sexuality.  (See the following link for one report:  http://www.foxnews. pcom/lifestyle/2018/09/15/woman-recalls-how-broke-free-evangelical-purity-movement.html) I not here advocating sexual promiscuity or debauchery for anyone, certainly not children.  I am bringing to attention the fear of sexuality that is often present in religion and the gross tragedy  that often results from having denied that dimension of human experience.  Furthermore, my concern with the Christian tradition which provided my spiritual roots is the very much related denial of the whole of the body and its impulses, the fear of losing control as W. H. Auden described in the poem with which I will conclude.

There is “danger” when we fear our body’s impulses and become obsessive with a desire for purity.  This cannot help but create impurity which will find expression somewhere whether it be in our own acting out or “rubbing elbows” with the impurity we fear under the ruse of ministering to them.  Decades ago there was a fundamentalist evangelist who preached loud and hard about immorality and even set up his office on Bourbon Street in New Orleans where he could preach to the prostitutes and strippers.  Eventually he was caught in an alley being serviced by a prostitute.

If…like your father before you, come
Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,
Believe your pain: praise the scorching rocks
For their desiccation of your lust,
Thank the bitter treatment of the tide
For its dissolution of your pride,
That the whirlwind may arrange your will
And the deluge release it to find
The spring in the desert, the fruitful
Island in the sea, where flesh and mind
Are delivered from mistrust.
(W. H. Auden “The Sea and the Mirror)

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Jeff Sessions and His “Religious Liberty Task Force.”

Attorney Jeff Sessions has proposed a, “religious liberty task force.” This makes me think of the war on Christmas, the annual non-sense that some Christians trot out to enhance their sense of piety and alienation. Many evangelical Christians fail to have the self-reflection necessary to realize that they are the source of the, “war on Christmas,” that they are the ones who need to be the focus of any, “religious liberty task force.”  But they are so obsessed with their piety that self-reflectiveness would be a catastrophe, as it would create a, “splinter in the brain” that Emily Dickinson referred to.

I write here in a confessional mode, from personal experience.  I was mired in this “mindless” piety and not willing to initiate the process of, “working out my own salvation with fear and trembling” that the Apostle Paul recommended.  This “fear and trembling” is very much akin to the aforementioned, “splinter in the brain” which is necessary for life to break through the encrusted hypocrisy of an unexamined life.  Fortunately, the good Lord was merciful to me and has meted out this “splintering” over the course of four decades as He knew I could not handle it otherwise.  He knew, graciously, that my hypocrisy was a necessary evil with which I could cover my fragile ego (i.e. “ass”) long enough to muster up enough ego integrity to handle the sting of all those splinters.,

It is painful to wallow in disillusionment.  Someone said that, “Reality is a veil that we spin to hide the void,” and when that veil begins to be pierced by the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir too,” disillusionment is inevitable.  Then we lament with T.S. Eliot, “Oh the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things ill done, and done to others harm which once we took for exercise of virtue.”  This always brings to my mind King Lear on the heath of his former kingdom, “pelted by this pitiless storm,” bereft of his family and political power, finding himself naked, noting re roving animals nearby:

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

Lear was naked, buck naked, stripped of the superficies of his existence and understanding that in essence he had never been anything more than these, “poor, bare forked creatures.”  Religion is a fine cover-up for this nakedness but according to spiritual teachers, such as Jesus, it is only in this nakedness that we can find redemption.

Religion Can Facilitate Meaning in a Meaningless World.

Religion has historically offered solace to the duress of life’s fragility, offering hope and comfort when there appears to be none.  The word “religion” means “to bind together,” reflecting humankind’s awareness that the psyche is divided and some unification of this schism is needed for the resulting anxiety to be handled effectively.  But acknowledging this duress is challenging to the human ego, which offers us a steady diet of pabulum and diversion with which to amuse ourselves rather than boldly opening one’s heart to the existential tumult that is always simmering beneath the surface of “civilized’ life.  (“Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”  Henry David Thoreau)

This escapism can be fatal to religion.  This insight is what led Nietzsche to declare in the 19^th century that, “God is dead,” as he saw that human culture was creating an alienation that could eventually be catastrophic to life.  The alienation that meaninglessness can produce often creates an existential crisis world that religion could help and alleviate were it not encapsulated by the culture and thus disallowing it to fulfill its function of directing the soul toward the numinous. It in the domain of the numinous that the heart can explore the mystery which is intrinsic to life, though it was very disconcerting to a world that was increasingly rationalistic.  This mystery can facilitate an integration of body and soul that will allow humans to live meaningfully in a world that that would otherwise be bewildering or baffling.

Religion, however, is not the only antidote to this problem of meaninglessness.  The metaphor present in meaningful religion also finds expression in the artistic and literary worlds, artists and writers being capable of using their respective mediums to put humankind in touch with imagery that can facilitate an experience of this numinous.