MysteriousFaith

Bumper Sticker Spirituality - Synopsis

The shape of a book I have been working on takes form in this synopsis. Tentatively called “Bumper Sticker Spirituality” it’s about the challenge of being authentic in my spiritual journey, and hopefully in the process, becoming more authentic myself. The book and the life are both works in process.

What is spirituality? The question is as basic as the ancient Greek’s attempt at defining what reality was. Our sense of spirituality is certainly no less complicated than the ancients’ debate on the nature and essence of reality. What is perhaps more disconcerting than the idea of complexity is the concern that spirituality, a life of authentic faith, seems to be gradually succumbing to a sea of meaninglessness. The pax-Americano our current age is marked by means for many of us a type of physical well-being our ancestors could not have imagined. Jules Verne’s fictional accounts of the future seem almost blasé - yesterday’s fiction is today’s reality. As science has developed, it has rightly challenged superstition and religion. Scientific thought requires the identification of singularities tied to causalities; as a result, its associations are increasingly mechanistic. Even those frontiers that were once seen as being dominated by nebulous organic inter-relationships are being understood more within the framework of mechanisms, or pathways.

In a world so marked by reductionism, the belief that all of life can be reduced to scientific pathways and pathologies, we still seem to struggle with those most basic of human emotions that complicate our world. Even with all of our technology, spirituality resonates within man as the source of meaning to the complex personal and intellectual issues we all struggle with. For most of us, myself included, spirituality beckons predominantly when personal tragedy strikes.

Encountering Mortality

In my mid-twenties I was happily pursuing a career full of promise. I had laid out a set of goals for my next job. It included the amount of money I wanted to make, the type of job, and the responsibilities of the new position. Sure enough, I got exactly what I desperately wanted. I had relocated to a new part of the country, was traveling internationally, and was thoroughly enraptured with the pursuit of my own goals and ambitions. One night, while enjoying a leisurely dinner and after-dinner cigar, I noticed a slight tremor in my hands. For whatever reason, that moment is seared in my mind as the moment when I first felt my body was rebelling against me. I had transcended the moment, and was staring at a new reality. Not naturally the most rational person, I immediately assumed the worst, not without reason: my family has a strong history of Parkinson’s Disease. This was the same time that Michael J. Fox was going public with his own battle with Parkinson’s. Life took on a dimension I was not prepared for. The pursuit of my goals, while still of immediate importance, began to become more and more difficult as I began to pay more attention to the tremors. Instead of dealing with this in a mature way, I began to push harder, work longer hours, and make my goals even more important. What had previously been healthy ambition began to become something truly insidious: I worked like a man possessed. My own self-centered idea of what I had the potential to become came into intimate conflict with the reality of my physical condition. Where once my goals had been part of a healthy drive, contributing to others seeing me as a success, the achievement of these goals was now eating me alive one day at a time. I was on a collision course with full-on disaster.

My job was no longer about success - it was about the meaning of my own life. If I could not generate some completely abnormal success within my career, my life would be meaningless. I tore through books on famous business tycoons and current-day success stories in some frantic hope that I could glean that magical lesson that would propel me into a life of success - no matter how short the enjoyment of this success might prove to be due to my health. Each business trip, memo, proposal and email took on a dimension of what I now recognize were spiritual proportions. I set my marriage on the side and dug deep within my internal reservoir - unwilling to take the opportunity to take stock of my life, my beliefs, and what this situation might require of me.
I would spend tortured moments staring at my hands, holding them in awkward positions, just to see if I could discern some visible change in how my body was disintegrating. What I did not realize, that I now do, was that God used my physical problem to give me the only impetus I probably would have paid attention to - an intimate encounter with my own mortality.

My own personal hell, a pit I willfully dug for myself every day as I surrendered to my own tortured idea of what meaning was, began to be unbearable. I lost any ability to connect to other people unless they could offer me something that would be consistent with my idea of success. I used anyone and everyone, every moment of every day, every experience I could latch onto, simply as a means by which I could achieve success. But I could not keep this up; something had to give. And give it did. I found myself unable to dial a telephone number or type on the computer without fixating on my illness. It was not that the symptoms were getting worse; it was that my fixation on them was drowning out all sense of proportion and rationality.

It took too long, but I finally went to a doctor. The diagnosis: non-essential tremors. The result in my life at first was relief - my life as I had painfully planned it out could go on. But the situation left me spiritually aroused, as dealing with the question of one’s own mortality tends to. The impact on me was by no means immediate - years after the diagnosis the specter of Parkinsons would remain, my inability to relinquish the fear an obstacle I would trip over constantly. My day-planner had a section in the back where I had typed in big bold letters: “either you have Parkinsons or you don’t, either way, make the most out of the time you have left.”

The diagnosis of non-essential tremors was freeing, but only to a certain extent. As I look back now I must hang my head in shame; after the first several months the diagnosis had only freed me to attack my goals more voraciously. But I had lost my way. What once had been a clear plan of attack was now muddied by my encounter with mortality. No longer did the rush of youth quell every question about the meaning of life. I could not push away every thought about tomorrow. The worries of today became questions about life’s ultimate meaning. And through this all, my hands continued to shake - a subtle reminder that mortality was but a diagnosis away. My worries, generated by a mind that constantly chews through various “what if” scenarios, continued to think up new things to be concerned about.

Years have gone by, and my body continues to remind me of its feebleness. During these passing years, I have come to recognize the hidden blessing the tremors were - without them, my first train of thought on real meaning may never have started. Even now, when I look at my hand with its tremors, I am reminded that my first concrete thoughts of God, of what authentic spirituality had to be, began with physical frailty. I have only begun to realize that not only is suffering a necessary part of the human story, but the suffering we each go through has both a personal and a familial impact. Regardless of how clean and timely society’s technology can make the passing of our final breath, it is still the ultimate physical finality we know of.

Technology’s Torture

Technology holds many promises to the future. A very good friend of mine has shared with me his biggest fear of death is in being unable to see what technologies will develop, or how they will impact the world around us. My own physical frailty may one day be cured by a simple drug regimen, or a straight-forward surgery. Until that day, what technology sees as a stop sign to progress may in fact be a yield sign; the resulting pause being necessary for us to halt and think about the greatest questions life has to offer.

We all look towards a world where science and technology will have made man-made tragedies like famines and wars a thing of history. But even if that were to be the case, would spirituality still not be necessary to deal with the wars we all fight in our own hearts and minds? Whatever future I can envision, whether the murky world of The Matrix or the singularly positive worlds of Star Trek, in neither situation do I find the human condition any less human. For all the good of technology, I can not see a future where the most innate part of the human condition, the effect of fear and greed on the psyche, are eliminated. My computer has certainly changed the format, dictum and frequency of my communication, but it has not quelled my interest in writing a terse email to someone I feel has wronged me. We rightfully look to technology to improve the quality of our lives, but I can not see a future where technology tells us why our lives will matter. Can you imagine a world where technology can give relationship advice? We are just toying with the moral and relational implications to the idea of virtual sex. But while technology may one day emulate the physicality of intercourse, will it be able to replicate the relational component to intimacy? Beyond relational shortcomings, technology shows us nothing in the form of answers to life’s ultimate questions, and so we are still left with our most ethereal “why” questions. Here, history shows us that religion quickly steps up, willing to attempt to answer our questions of human relevance and meaning.

Certainly we are not short of religions, nor are we short of whatever commercial outlet religion is seeking to employ in the interests of gaining new converts. What we seem to be short of is personal faith and personal spirituality that shows itself in meaningful, substantive, life-changing fashions.

Don’t Give Me “That Old Time Religion” - Give Me Authentic Spirituality

Organized religion frustrates me. Whether it is the emphasis on externals or the coined responses with which religion attempts to offer insights into some of life’s more complex issues, it is with some chagrin that I have to admit I find religion less and less a compelling part of my life. This bothers me as I was raised in church. I do not mean that in the sense of most people do who were part of a church going family; no, I was literally raised in church. Six days a week (half the year seven days a week) I was at our church from morning until night. I had the disadvantage of being part of a parochial school system with an almost cultic environment surrounding it. We were not particularly amenable to outside influences, no matter how seemingly innocent they might be. There was no “Santa Clause” in my home; no, we believed this was short for “Satan Clause.” What the evil implications were to a jolly old fart who handed out presents was something I did not understand then, and still do not.
My 18 years of parochial church-school captivity left me with a very bad taste in my mouth when it comes to the idea of church and of religion. I remember distinctly being in the car with friends and responding tersely to a question about what church we were thinking of going to: “I can’t think of ever stepping foot in a church ever again” was my well-thought out response. Now keep in mind, these were the comments of a young man still traumatized by a weekly schedule that included three formal church services, a minimum of two formal chapel services, five weekly group devotionals, about thirty organized group prayers each week, five Bible classes a week, classes like Christian Manhood (where we learned how to wax a car Biblically - keep in mind my high school substituted lessons on how to score bowling games for our senior level math class), and probably at least ten other formal Bible lessons and at least as many formal prayer get-togethers - all in one week!

I wish I could say that I look back at these experiences with fondness: I do not. Whatever lessons I have learned from them are still unclear to me. The experience did, in fact, cost me my faith for a period of my life. Through all of these situations, in which I intensely, sincerely and honestly desired God to be real to me, I never once felt genuine. I constantly pushed down deep feelings of fear, resentment and hypocrisy. Was I being a hypocrite to so badly want a relationship with God, yet in the absence of feeling His presence, to make up what others seemed to be saying? Was I being insincere? If so, I wanted someone to explain to me how I could measure sincerity; I needed some gauge by which I could ensure my own personal relationship with God.

In all my tears, this relationship never came. Through all the years, the intimacy never developed. Through all the pain, what I was left with was a set of legalistic rules, trivial externals, silly little nothings that were pedantic mockeries of any sense of authentic spirituality. Understandably, as a result of these experiences I have developed a healthy skepticism of organized religion. I still struggle with the sense that religion trivializes externals, as well as the complexities to living a life of authentic spirituality.

The life of David was a complete mystery to me. We had studied him from the time I was old enough to hold my head up without the assistance of a nursery worker; and yet, I was not able to connect with David at all. Who did this David think he was? In all my days fastidiously following our religion, I never learned the joy that David shares in the Psalms. Frankly, I could never understand David’s anger when he rails against God for hiding Himself during David’s most frightening and moments of aloneness. Where did David learn this joy, this almost cavalier freedom to speak so directly to his God? Where did David build this relationship with his Creator? Freedom is something that caged animals struggle to understand if they have been caged for too long; even the most naturally independent of animals will grow to find his prison bars comforting. David’s freedom was a freedom we did not explore, did not understand, and certainly did not encourage.

Communicating and having a relationship with God is something that I do not fully understand. Where once it was a complete mystery to me, it is less one now. This is perhaps more because I have come to accept its delicate balance. I can intellectually understand why God will always be mysterious to creation, but I still feel a strong desire to have a physical and tangible relationship with Him. I so want to talk to Him and hear His voice speak back to me. I am sure I would never doubt again - if but I could steal that one moment of singular and solitary awe that comes from hearing your Creator. And then I remember that for all the good memories I have of the life my wife and I have built, in a moment of anger or jealousy, how quickly I forget her love. Would that one solitary God-moment be enough? Would it sustain my doubting heart? Would I not selfishly want to seal some part of my life away from Him, hoping He would come yet again and give me cause to relinquish my life fully to Him? An almost passive-aggressive way of ensuring He would see me, touch me, interact with me but one more time?

Breaker-Breaker … That You God?

I have spent a good amount of time in my life around people who say things like “God told me this” or “God laid this on my heart.” When I was young it scared me. When I was a teenager it freaked me out. As a young adult, it scares me again. If I am honest, a part of the reason I do not understand these statements is that I can count on one hand the number of times I have had the impression something was being laid on my heart or being inspired in my mind that was purely the working of God. I am forced to wonder if these people realize that their words trivialize what it means to have God speak to man directly. Does God still talk to us the way Holy Scripture tells us He once did? Did David, in all his cries out to God, ever hear God speak back to him? That is an issue theologians can debate. Whether or not we still have prophets or apostles is not something I am particularly interested in. Scripture shows us thousands of years of recorded history, countless generations of mankind, where within those generations we have recorded a mere handful of situations where God did in fact interact tangibly with man.

Do we set ourselves up for failure when we lay every thought, every inspiration, and every idea at the feet of divine inspiration instead of the natural by-product of the minds God gave us? Is it any less spiritual to recognize the gift of the mind, the gift of creativity, the gift of creative inception? Certainly we would all agree these are gifts that demand a majestic Creator! Is that somehow less spiritually authentic than claiming a particular idea was revealed to you directly by God? I do not know how to test these people who talk as if they have a one-way CB radio to God. I do not know how to qualify their statements. It is here that one of my fine delineations between trivial externals and authentic spirituality must be made: I do not believe that God interacts with us in a tangible and concrete way in this world. I would agree that God can do whatever He so wills, however He so wishes, whenever and wherever He so desires. But having said that, I believe we can look at Holy Scripture and see within the epoch of the human race those very limited number of times when God tangibly interacted with man. Are not some of the understandable elements in spiritual cynicism the number of times throughout history when religious men have claimed divine inspiration only to make themselves richer or to accumulate more power? The tainted history of religion abusing its supposedly God-given power is enough for me to want to speak with profound caution any time I feel God has spoken to me!

My cynicism is sincere; I have shed tears as a child through my young adult years, pleading with God to descend and give me some sort of distinctly God moment. I have yearned for a vision, a dream, a moment of ethereal transcendence where I could finally lay aside all my doubts at the feet of a tangible experience. But to no avail; God remains aloof. He remains untouchable, He remains intangible. And so my mind must wrestle with the complexities of my conviction that He exists, but the reality that His existence may not be physically compatible with my own. Where He goes, I may not follow. It is not that I could not grasp or be sustained in His reality, it is that He exists out of reality. He is not reality, any more than I am the bookshelves I built in my office. While one may gain an idea of my carpentry skills (or lack thereof) by glancing at them, no one will know my personage by simply studying them. And here again we find ourselves: desiring that personal connection, a stolen conversation with the Almighty.

When I am angry and alone I cry out to Him, “where are you?” When I am frightened and feel that my world is coming down around me, I plead with Him, “why this, why now?” When I feel pain so intense that I can not discover any salve to sooth it, I beg with Him, “Please, comfort me now. Find me in this moment of stark aloneness. I need you, I need you now!” And still silence beckons; a taunt to my belief that He exists. But, like David thousands of years before; in my crying out I find solace. Perhaps it is the simple release of the emotions, or perhaps it is the outworking of a God who transcends my reality, touching my own spark of divinity with His, and comforting me quietly, beautifully. In the moment of release as I cry out to Him I find the safety and security I so desperately wanted, but could not obtain for myself.

His comfort becomes nothing more tangible than the similar knowledge of my wife’s love. Can I produce evidence at that moment for her feelings? Certainly not. But I know it none the less. I am drawn in an instant to the character of Dr. Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan’s “Contact.” Her scientific mind, that beautiful amalgamation of science and wonder, when asked to prove her father’s love for her realizes profoundly that a similar proof is how others view the ultimate question of meaning for the cosmos; that ultimate cry in the dark to their Creator.

As a child, crying out to God was anathema. It was simply not a part of how we worked through our own collective or individual faith. I see now that all of the training I received was focused less on teaching me the principles to living an authentic life, but more on complying with religious systems. These religious boxes had value for certain types of people. In their rigor and legalism, they provided systems for reasoning, judging and making decisions in complex situations. But religious systems are not unified and so spirituality begins to inevitably weaken as seekers of truth explore why such disunity must exist. Over 20,000 Christian denominations exist world wide. Is it because doctrine and theological issues are indeed so divisive, or is it because spirituality is non-tangible whereas dogma is tangible? In this world, what is tangible is king.

Is Religion Necessary? Getting to God without the Overhead

It is inappropriate to hearken to a time in our past when the issue of spirituality was not complex, or when our sense of spirituality was unified: spirituality has always been complex and it has never been truly unified. Perhaps what modern man is facing is more difficult than a mere struggle with a shared and inspired view of spirituality: perhaps man is facing the ultimate question of whether or not spirituality is real, is it even necessary? Can it offer anything valuable in this scientifically driven world? Is the uber-man that Nietzsche described soon to exist, absent any need for spirituality? Able to proclaim that “God is dead” less out of a need to be incendiary to the world’s religions, and more out of a simple observation of revealed truth? Will the proclamation “God is dead” be less a cry of the wandering man, and more the statement of an established and reasoned uber-man?

Where religion has failed, spirituality must suffer. This is not a fair burden for the world of religion to bear. Spirituality is ultimately about the connection human beings seek to establish with their God and the life that stems from this search. But as history painfully shows us, human effort to connect to the divine is ripe for exploit, hypocrisy and self-righteousness. And here is where too many seekers of authentic spirituality stop: on the weaknesses of institutionalized religion.

In an interview with Larry King, Bill Maher was asked by a caller about his views on God and religion, specifically about the caller’s sense that Bill had something against both. Bill’s answer was intelligent and provocative: “You asked me about [God and Religion]. Those are not the same thing. I believe in God.” At that point, Larry King interrupted Bill, confused at an insight into Bill that Larry himself did not know: “So you believe in God?” asked Larry. Bill responded quickly, seemingly surprised, “Yes.” Almost incredulously, Larry interrupted Bill again asking, “…you believe in an all-powerful, Creator God?” Again, Bill responded, “Yes.” He went on to say, “I just don’t believe in the overhead religion says I have to use to get to God.”

Bill is articulating, in his usually insightful fashion, what many of us feel, that God and religion are inappropriately synonymous for too many. What should be synonymous is God and spirituality. What a life of authentic spirituality calls us to is a life centered on essentials that draw us closer to God, closer to what must characterize us in a world of confusion, anger, and pain. For too many, the life of religion is not a life that allows wounds to heal; rather, it is a life that opens new wounds and creates an environment of hyper-sensitivity to trivial wrongs. Is spirituality dead? As long as spirituality is so intertwined with religion, I fear any effort at depth will be lost in a sea of cultural nothingness. Religion has failed too many to be seen as the means by which man can connect to his God, his Creator.

This desire for a personal and intimate connection is certainly not new to the human condition. What is new is the historical apex this desire for connection is reaching. As man has become freer to seek after God and some meaningful sense of spirituality, these questions are only growing in intensity and urgency. It has been only during a few handful of times in history that mankind has known prosperity too such an extent that a preponderance of artisans, theologians, academics and lay-students can pursue these spiritual thoughts. The relative wealth and prosperity that has come with our day and time is unheralded in the annals of history. But what is the price for this prosperity, this access to knowledge? We find ourselves drowning in a sea of information. One afternoon scouring the internet has the potential to rob me forever of my sense of truth. What one scholar lays hold to as firm fact, another disputes as corrupt and senseless. Our affluence and technology has created a wealth of information - not all of it good, accurate, or worth internalizing. As man has become freer to explore and reason, he has been empowered to think less of the family unit, the city-state, the country, the religion - and more of himself. Questions like “why am I here” resonate more today than they have for centuries. How odd it seems to modern day man to wonder why the ancients troubled themselves to only worry about the group! Was it not the meaning of life to find fulfillment for me, the individual?

It was only the fourth century, at the advent of Augustine’s Confessions, that mankind employed the use of the word “I” in a true autobiographical sense. Prior to Augustine’s writing, the majority of men who put pen to paper were content to discuss philosophy, religion and spirituality within the context of “man,” not “I.” The increasing personalization of spirituality has reached unprecedented heights as today the human race begs for connection to something beyond this world, something we all sense is ethereal and spiritual. Philip Yancey’s book Reaching for the Invisible God captures in its title alone the quagmire mankind finds itself in: spirituality must reconcile how man can reach towards the unreachable. For too long religion has made this question trivial, instead focusing on the rules by which man must live, in some convoluted theology that supports the view that lifestyle will engender us to God, and will allow for a spiritual connection to be established.

From time past, society’s struggle to survive has meant religion played a role in organizing people, and as a necessary result of this, to organizing political agendas. Where man now stands is a world where religion has lost its right to interject itself into man’s lives. If religion is to reconnect, it must be on the basis of authentic spirituality - a living faith that creates within its believers meaningful changes that clearly differentiate based on lives changed, wounds healed and externals trivialized. It must be a religion where externals are almost irrelevant, because the heart of authentic spirituality has so changed individuals that love guides and drives our every thought and action. Is religion capable of creating or sustaining such a change?

For most of history, religion has attempted to establish three things: rules by which God calls us to live, a systematic viewpoint of who God is and why He does what He so wills, and a means of joining God in the afterlife. But to most of us, religion is still more about the rules than the insights that should come from a life of faith. We gravitate to rules because they provide a very tangible means by which our faith can be articulated (I don’t do this, I do-do this); but more importantly, because rules can provide a means by which we gauge our position in the world relative to others. Woe is the person who meets a religious person with whom they disagree: the religious person will be ready with polished argument and Holy Scripture to bludgeon you with why they are right and you are wrong. Half way into most of these mental spars, it becomes obvious the issue is not an insight into spirituality, but rather a way of showing superior knowledge or superior lifestyle choices.

And so these - lifestyle issues, trivial externals - are where most of us get hung up. For some, we demand a long list of essentials that characterize those who are walking a spiritual life. Too often, this list includes things that are visceral - skin deep externals that say little, if anything, about the heart. And so some, like me, rebel against a religion that says it provides connection to a higher being when this connection comes in the form of trivializations. On the other side are those who view the focus on externals as something more insidious - a weak substitute for authenticity. Some cynics would claim that the concept of sin and certain laws exist because of the need to have something tangible to latch on to in a world where religion can not ultimately connect you tangibly to your God. Where religion must face the unavoidable problem of an untouchable God, it offers its followers instead a hollow substitute - rules and regulations that give something tangible by which you can set your sights.
If God is real, then He exists on a dimension of reality that is fully outside of my ability to grasp His presence. What Christians hail as signs of His glory and handy work are just that, they are signs. Regardless of what some religions try and convey, God does not speak directly to you or me as unique individuals. He does not speak to us in a language of symbols we can decipher, but instead in majestic generalizations that tell all of humanity the essentials of knowing God. Creation reeks of the handiwork of a Creator; but the sight of the Creator is too often lost by the lens of religion. Religion asks us to star gaze with blinders; telling us to only look in a certain direction, at a certain time, in a certain way. Unfortunately, for too many seekers of spirituality, the question “why” is never explored either.

Tracking a wild animal while on the hunt tasks one’s physical senses, but it is not until the moment of physical contact that we can fully appreciate what we have been hunting. In a similar vein, while in the absence of my wife I may find things that remind me of her, these reminders will grow stale and cease to sooth my angst as time passes. In fact, as time passes I will come to miss her more and desire her company to an even greater extent. Is it not so with God? Are we not so challenged in living a life of authentic faith with a God who has, at best, left behind signs of His existence? Like C.S. Lewis I can understand the logical conundrum that physically interacting with God within creation would be akin to an architect who not only designs the house, but remains behind as a functioning stair himself. That having been said, I like the stairs in my house and many times dearly wish that God would be more tangible, more tactile, more responsive. How do we find that authentic spirituality that allows us to connect to our Creator? I am wary of those who talk as if they have the voice of God whispering in their ear. Like Donahue, I would concur that “when people talk to God it is OK. It is when God talks back that problems begin.” It is here, the desire to connect and communicate, that religion has been content to focus and to educate.

The Christian Sub-Culture

Religion has been rightfully accused of much of what is wrong with this world. I have often wondered about those who would have us go back to the “old days” in some effort to ground ourselves in a time when the culture was more to their liking. Those who ask this of us are often those who view religion, their specific brand of religion, as the solution to what ills us today. Would they be willing to trade the pasts’ absence of women’s rights for today’s violation of sexual morays? There was good in yesterday’s sense of religion and of faith. But yesterday is a memory and the day before is arcing towards history: what is needed now is a spirituality that begs its followers to actualize their beliefs in a way that matters, not based on rules, but based on the renovation of hearts focused on knowing God.

I sense a certain degree of fear in fellow-Christians I speak to regarding how they see the world and where they see spirituality in the world today. I do not share their pessimism. Perhaps this is because I find much to celebrate and much of value in our culture, in the questions we are asking, in the stories we are telling, and in the ways in which we still can engage one another when we set aside the prejudices that seem to innately come as we develop our own systematic way of viewing life.

Some may label this work as being post-modern. It is not a label being sought after, nor one that I think fully, accurately, and reasonably characterizes what is being said. I am less interested in a pendulum swing to the opposite extreme of fundamentalism, and more interested in the pendulum stopping, centered over truth and the heart of authentic spirituality.

Perhaps the single most profound thought I have had in the last eighteen months is the realization that too much of what wrongly colors human history, as well as the history of organized religion, is an unwillingness to make ourselves comfortable with “both/and” versus our inherent creature-comfort that is derived from takings positions more along the lines of “either/or.”

I struggle in listening to theologians debate heady issues like the battle between Calvinism and Armenianism, questions about “can man really have free will if God knows the future?” or “why do good things happen to bad people?” And then I read the book of Job and am strangely comforted. Because here, in what most believe is the oldest book of the Bible, I see recorded for ancient man the first story God apparently wanted communicated to man-kind. Yes, it dealt with suffering. But it also ended with Job having a very distinctly God-moment where God railed against Job for thinking he had a right to question why God did what He did. It is in this conversation I find solace, because it is here that I come to understand my own frailty in the universe, in my mind, in my culture. To want all the answers is no-doubt intuitive and very human of me, but it is not possible on this side of eternity’s veiled curtain. Here, in this life, I must content myself with a certain tension in my theology, in my understanding of how God moves and works. So here I land in much of what I have written about: I do not find myself drawn away from something just because a part of the experience, the friendship, the story, the conversation, the music, or the movie is bad. I recognize that like me, as in any line of thought, it has limitations and weaknesses and must never become primary to the message of the Gospel.

Being Willing to Be Mysterious

I am convinced that the most authentic of all Christian faith reveals itself in a well-balanced life; in a life comfortable with tension in theology and uncomfortable with everything being wrapped up in a nice, handy-dandy systematic theology. I find the idea of systematic theology almost heretical: theology literally means “the study of God.” Theologians are “the ones who study God.” So what we end up with in a study of systematic theology is a system (or doctrines) that effectively and efficiently summarize God. Now forgive me for saying this, but I just do not believe that such a tidy summation is possible.

I do not see the Bible as a textbook for how to get to Heaven - getting to Heaven is a by-product of a life based on a love for your Creator and for your fellow-man. Since I do not see the Bible as a textbook, I tend to be uncomfortable with systematic theology. I can not grasp how arrogant a man must be to think that he can understand God. But that gets us back to our conversation about Job now does it not? Where I am willing to accept that some truth and certain elements of knowledge will be hidden from me, others bristle. To them, accepting such limitations is inviting doubt. Even more insidiously, it is admitting we do not have all the answers. Guess what: we do not!

Even Paul calls us to be shepherds of “the mysteries of Christ.” It is in those words I find comfort - I can see in the tension between doctrines, theological perspectives, dogmas, and lifestyle concerns, the need to remind ourselves constantly that we are the creatures and He is the Creator. I, for one, am willing to accept my role as the creature and move into a world-view that is comfortable with tension, comfortable with discord, not because I am unwilling to employ my intellect, but because my intellect recognizes my place in the cosmos and in eternity.

I am still on my own journey, and so perhaps this is a bit like the blind leading the blind. In my past religious experiences I have seen the latent racism, the prejudice, the inability to connect to one-another, the blind emphasis on mass evangelism versus connected discipleship, the mindset that God must be a Republican, the Christianity that struggles to remake its followers through the renewing of their minds versus a visceral and cosmetic revamping of the externals. We said we wanted to live a life of principles, but we could not find a way to do that without making life a prison.

For me, the Christian sub-culture of the last 50 years is not compelling. I was a functioning atheist for a part of my life because, in part, I could not reconcile my Christian experience with what I felt constituted authentic spirituality. I now look back at my time as an atheist as a vacation from spirituality. I turned that part of my being off to the extent that I could. I lived with the questions, the nagging doubts, and the unanswered sense of more. But one day, my frailty reminded me that it was time to take these questions more seriously. My life in church captivity would no longer suffice as a reason for not developing my beliefs.

We still have a culture in America where being Christian is more about what you don’t do, what you don’t believe in, and what you don’t agree with, than what you do believe in, what you do get excited about, and what you do enjoy about your culture and your country. To listen to some evangelicals is to get the idea that they have spent the last 30 years in a Soviet Gulag in Kolyma, Siberia. Western Christianity bears the burden of an un-necessary persecution complex. In a world of Christian music, movies, television, media outlets, merchandising and publishing, Christians still bemoan their position in the culture. Such an outlandish posture begs the question of whether or not such people need the “us versus them” mentality. Recognizing prominence within a culture means having to take responsibility for fixing problems, righting wrongs and acting within the scope of everyone’s input. This is a recognition that Christianity seems to struggle with currently.

We have an intertwining of politics and religion to such an extent that we are creating sub-sub-sub cultures where movements like theonomy and Reconstructionism can take root. These movements are attempting to Christianize everything they can get their hands on in a cheap effort to hijack history and rewrite it so that all that is good can be seen as being God-ordained, and all that is bad is the result of drifting from God’s textbook. We have a sub-culture centered on end-times apocalyptic fiction that is a cheap substitute for good stories, good fiction and good entertainment. We have so commercialized the conversion experience that becoming Christian is now much easier since you can accessorize your wardrobe and PDA at the local Christian retailer. And we have so marginalized doctrine that we have introduced the prosperity Gospel to a new generation of non-believers who will forever believe that being Christian means believing Jesus really did have the nicest chariot in his day - and he wants you to have one as well!

It bothers me terribly that developing countries get their first broad exposure to Christianity through the modern-day televangelists. I am not sure even organized religion wants to claim these bozos. During a trip in Eastern Europe I overhead someone talking about having seen a broadcast of a supposed healing service in the Ukraine. The revival was on and God was moving in the Ukrainian church. But was revival, a reawakening of the soul to its sense of place in the cosmos, what these simple folk were chasing? Or was it the glitz and glamour, the polish and perfection of the suave televangelist? Was it not the polished perfection that these Ukrainian believers were chasing? Probably. While we all crave bodily healing, most of us would put up with physical pain if we could gain an insight into this world’s success.

The Gospel is not one of healing, nor is it one of prosperity. It is a book that shows us that suffering has a purpose and must be expected in this life. But the televangelists do not have time for this fine of a distinction. Where they can, the message of prosperity is being proclaimed far and wide. Amongst the impoverished countries, this message resonates clearly. The idea that America’s economic success must have, at some level, this teaching as its cause, results in a wide-spread fervor over the message. My humor at reading this section of Eric Schlosser’s gastronomically disquieting and socially insightful book “Fast Food Nation” changed from humor to sadness as I recognized in his words the obvious hypocrisy of too many religious people:
“The meek shall no longer inherit the earth; the go-getters will get it and everything that goes with it. The Christ who went among the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, among lepers and prostitutes, clearly had no marketing savvy. He has been transfigured into a latter-day entrepreneur, the greatest superstar salesperson of all time, who built a multinational outfit from scratch.”

In the midst of religious fervor I wonder: if we only export the religion of prosperity, missing out on relationship driven spirituality, what will be the price we will all pay? What better seeds of discourse could ever be sown than a religion that promises affluence only to deliver dashed dreams, vanished trust in vapid preachers looking to guild the lily but one more time in Jesus’ name? Is it not possible that tomorrow’s evil may know its roots in part in seeds sown by a religious message that never bore fruit? Will this religion become a stark reason for these people not to believe?

What we need today is less a violent reformation like in Luther’s day, and more a reasoned response to the mistakes of the past. To endlessly beat ourselves up over the past serves no one. But a question remains: do today’s Christians understand forgiveness, mercy and grace well enough in their own lives that they can make amends for past mistakes, past over-emphasis on trivial matters? I hope so, because in those admissions have lain for me the roots of my own reawakened faith, a faith I am proud to have been able to receive and a faith I have had to work hard to make my own. And so perhaps you will join me in this spiritual journey. Even though you would willingly take on the label “Christian” and all that such a label obliges, you still question the role of religion. You sense something greater is outside the grasp of today’s religions, and so you, like those who choose not to believe, are in your own way still a seeker.

Has your faith been shattered? Do you see too many reasons not to believe? Reasons related to a church that has failed you, a church that has protected those who violated sacred oaths? An institution dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the soul that seems to suck the soul from its followers? Or have you been guilty personally of some hypocrisy, as I have, that provides others with reasons not to believe? In each of these situations lay one common theme: the failure of humanity to live a consistent and authentic spirituality. Perhaps you are like I once was, and have now a shattered faith - unsure of any grandiose idea as to God, as to the Universe, as to Meaning, or as to Truth. I ask you to extend your hand to me in a simple act of faith. Share with me this one thing in common, and allow our journey to begin: let us agree that God exists, that He has a plan, but that His plan will only be visible to His creatures as He allows His motives and His outworking to be known to us, His creatures. I would ask one more thing from you: to believe that He created us out of love, that He sustains us in love, and that His motives are always based on what is in our true, cosmic and eternal best wishes.

Brother Lawrence, a humble monk in the year 1666, confided to a friend that “the foundation of the spiritual life in him had been a high notion and esteem of God in faith.” As Brother Lawrence was able to do, let us now begin our journey together, resting in a belief that true spirituality is something we can find, a gift from our Creator, and while true spirituality may be a clouded visage to many, it is clouded not because of its divine nature, but because of its human practitioners.

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• September 1, 2004

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