MysteriousFaith

Never Now, But Always Then

Now, people do not speak in tongues, hear from God, prophesy, or experience miracles. Then, people quite literally walked and talked with God, spoke in tongues and experienced miracles. Now, people’s spiritual journey is marked by ambiguity, a life spent searching for any tangible representation of God being a real, formative force in their lives. Then, people had fleece made wet, pillars of fire, voices from the sky, ground that swallowed up the disobedient, water changed to wine, axe heads floating in water, and angels to wrestle with. These specific moments, always in the past where distance and time negate the David Koresh quality of these experiences, are simply yet fully not experienced by modern man.

Never Now, But Always Then

Criticisms of religion range from the angry personal experiences of people who have been traumatized by a corrupt church to people who point to the past excesses of religious institutions as proof that religion does not accomplish that which it says it cares about most: changing the heart. Alister McGrath has recently completed a book on the demise of atheism (The Twilight of Atheism) that people of faith are lauding as a manifesto on the diminishing role atheism has in the world. McGrath’s book comes on the heels of Sam Harris’ explosive new book The End of Faith, a book that would suggest McGrath’s argument that atheism is dead needs to be rethought and discarded; perhaps most importantly, McGrath’s argument needs to be seen as what it primarily is - woefully short sighted in its attempt to argue that what is now socially expeditious and popular is that which is moral and right.

To the extent this rightly captures a portion of McGrath’s argument (see how much of his writing focuses on how atheism does not have as charismatic leadership when contrasted to Christianity as evidence of this), he as much as admits that his own mindset is fully wrapped up within the evangelical sub-culture of the day. Much more problematic for McGrath is the fundamental religious reality of the European culture he lives in. During a trip to London last March, I watched with interest the BBC series on “What the World Thinks of God”. To take at face value the low percentages of people who are willing to say they believe in God as evidenced in this study, is to suggest that McGrath’s point about the death of atheism and the exploration of religion needs to be more fully flushed out. Were he to be stop waxing philosophical and begin being anecdotal, he would be forced to admit that God has been dead in spirit and in study for quite some time in Europe. McGrath is not all wrong; he is right to say that people turn to atheism for a number of reasons and (as Voltaire argued) many do so in direct proportion to their bad experience with organized religion. McGrath is also right in his general observation that humanity is exploring a new “postmodern sense of spirituality”; whether this is good (real reformation of the heart for its followers) or bad (a dualism between reason and faith evidenced best by the global growth of fundamentalism more than general evangelicalism) is a question he seems to explore inadequately. What I do not believe McGrath takes seriously are two dimensions to people’s secularism: the first that people no longer believe in the Bible as being, in any sense, Divine in origins (for reasons that range from historical to moral to archeological) and second, that people are tired of pretending they can live with the world and the sense of reality religion requires, when their own spiritual experiences simply never match the experience of the faithful. The resistance to religious thought across the world is not predicated just the historical excesses of the organized church, it is based on the realization that what man experiences now is never consistent with what the Bible portrays as spiritual experience; simply put, these things never happen or make sense now, but they always did then.

Now, politics corrupts religion. Then, politics played no role in the formation or content of religious dogma. If we explore the creedal development of the early church, an exploration that has much to do with claims of the historicity of the resurrection, the full Divinity of Christ and the associated concept of the Trinity, we have to make our way through events like that of the Council of Nicea. This Council, convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine for reasons that had a deliberate political dimension, did not approach matters of theology with any more pure of a heart than would a similarly contrived council of today. This is not, and it is important to hear this point clearly or else my writing will be misunderstood, evidence that Jesus was not divine or was not resurrected (to address those points we would have to engage further historical study of the events themselves). But what are people like myself to make of the chasm that exists between what Christianity claims (that Constantine’s politics and the political dimension to the controversies between Arius, Eusebius and Athanasius had no affect on the theological discussion) and what modern scholarship argues (again, not that Jesus was not Divine, only that politics played a role in the Council). This seems patently ridiculous when modern man can not wrestle with the issue of stem cell research without brining Holy Scripture to bear in a politically charged environment. Now we would be suspicious about the motives of a political forum wrestling with religious issues; then it is how our most cherished of doctrines were formalized and finalized.

Now, those who shape religious doctrine are religious zealots whose interest seems to be much more about gaining and dispensing truth for the sake of power than motives of the heart. Then, religious doctrine was shaped by men whose motives were based purely on truth (a search made all that much more clearly when you hear from God’s mouth directly). Is Jerry Falwell a unique personality to the late 20th century church, or has the past search for religious truth been similarly overwhelmed by vitriolic, bombastic champions like him whose motives are as much sociological and political as they are spiritual? No, Falwell is not a unique personality to our times. His voice, and even the more moderate voice of someone like James McArthur whose stress is on doctrinal purity over grace or objective truth, finds many parallels across time. Just as these men now intentionally stand in the way of progress in medicine, science and morality, men like these always have. A marked difference between contemporary secularists and religious thinkers is not only over ideas of God, it is also about the means by which men have developed these ideas. Modern man believes that what motivates and forms religiously political activists like McArthur, Falwell and Dobson now, also motivated Augustine and Athanasius then. It is not escapable that modern man would similarly at the very least, ask to wrestle with the past formation of religious doctrine in the interests of defining whether or not certain dimensions to its development were political or sociological instead of truth-based.

Now, people do not speak in tongues, hear from God, prophesy, or experience miracles. Then, people quite literally walked and talked with God, spoke in tongues and experienced miracles. Now, people’s spiritual journey is marked by ambiguity, a life spent searching for any tangible representation of God being a real, formative force in their lives. Then, people had fleece made wet, pillars of fire, voices from the sky, ground that swallowed up the disobedient, water changed to wine, axe heads floating in water, and angels to wrestle with. These specific moments, always in the past where distance and time negate the David Koresh quality of these experiences, are simply yet fully not experienced by modern man.

My own spiritual journey has recently taken a significant step in the further development of my idea about God (as evidenced in this article): the world, to me, makes little sense without the idea of God. But the world also makes just as little sense with the idea of a personal God. He is not personal. He is not with me. He does not walk with me. He does not talk to me. Whatever means by which He involves Himself in our world, it is detached. Aristotle’s distant God makes much more sense to me than the personal God of Christianity. Why? Because He has not been personal nor has He revealed Himself to me; and neither has He to you in any way that you would call personal by any relational standard by which you experience others. I have seen in my own life the deep pain created by an attempt to make someone in my life into something they are not. My idea of them, what I want from them, is something they simply can not live up to. Better I acknowledge this shortcoming and the implications of this to my experience, than continue trying to make this person into something they are not. Similarly so with my idea of God. I am better off if I accept that which God is not, without divesting me of that which God is and can be. Just as I am open to this person in my life changing, so I want to be open to God revealing Himself to me; however, I am more emotionally vulnerable when I try and make something into what it is not; I am tired of pretending about the nature of my relationship with this person in my life and with God. Does modern man divest the Christian idea of God just because he wants to live life by his own standards, without the implications of the idea of God? Perhaps for some, but not for most. Most are willing to live with moral obligations to others; but most are tired of pretending that these obligations come from a being that never bothers to be involved in our lives.

Now, moral issues like slavery, genocide and the stoning of rebellious children are patently immoral. Then, slaves were expected to be owned, genocide was God-ordained, and children who did not know their place were to be stoned by the community. Then, what we acknowledge now as immoral was not only moral, but was divinely commanded. Here we see the inadequacy of McGrath’s arguments against atheism. A large part of my rejection of orthodox Christianity has nothing to do with a desire to have my own way in everything, and more to do with the woefully inadequate responses I have found in talking to other Christians and seeking answers within orthodoxy for these basic questions of morality. If I could catch a toe-hold on questions of slavery, genocide or antiquated moral standards that would keep me in the fold of evangelical orthodoxy, then I would be happy to do so (and have made every effort to seek out this position). But thus far, I have been unable to find intellectual support for the positions people like Bruggemann, McLaren, Wright and Campolo advocate. While they speak to my heart, and will continue to be embraced because of this, they leave my intellect unfulfilled. My challenge to the intellectual community that cares about spirituality is to give people something they can live with: let people have and explore a shared community of spiritual experience with deliberate discussion and enforcement of morality, but do so within the confines of what we now know about religious excess. Set aside those things religion has done wrong and plug humanity into those parts that it has done well.

Now, a man who told us God spoke to him and commanded that his only child be sacrificed (Abraham and Isaac) would be locked away, and society would consider itself the better for having done so (both for the act of saving the child’s life and for the protection of society from a person who thinks God is talking to him directly). Then, a man who was prepared to go through the final act of child sacrifice is held up as a shining example of the life of faith. I am saddened by religious moderates’ attempts at explaining this away (fundamentalists do not try, to their credit, to water this down: it was right because Abraham heard from God and when God talks to you face-to-face you do not question Him). Moderates wrap this around an allegory and refuse to acknowledge its immorality or the fact that it only makes sense within a culture that accommodated and expected child sacrifice (causing problems as to why a story of faith, when transcribed from God’s mouth to our ears, would need to be folded into such a hateful cultural conception). Even if the story approach made sense to me, I think we might ask ourselves what the story is from Isaac’s perspective and not from Abraham’s! Our suspicion now of people who claim to hear from God carries too little weight backwards into history, a commentary more about the affect of the elapsing of time on the pursuit of objective truth than anything else. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, we see the cost of simply believing: if we do not establish as a baseline to our beliefs, the shared sense of morality we all have, then how do we determine what is truth and what is false? If truth is not cross-cultural and trans-historical, then what is and how do we find truth? Why is Achem’s Razor (the simplest answer tends to be the correct answer) useful in every dimension to personal reality, but not so in religious thought? Modern man would reject, in every sense of the word and in every dimension of reality, a contemporary Abraham. But modern religious man revels in the spiritual lessons taught by then-Abraham. This dualism has consequences.

Now, mankind has a choice. Either believe that what characterizes our temporal, spiritual, and religious experiences today has always characterized them, or believe that ultimate reality is that which none of us experience as real. There are consequences to this type of dualistic belief, implications to what binds us together as a species. Better religion admit its own inadequacies than in its brittle unwillingness to do so, overreach, leaving modern man to limit religion’s role in life by conscious decision. Humanity has advanced for many reasons through many avenues. Contemporary society owes much too religious reformers like those within the Reformation and the abolition movement; but society owes just as much - if not more - to secularism, whose dedication to rational thinking has allowed us to improve our quality of life more than any prayer or theology ever has. I am not an advocate of pure secular humanism, but I am an advocate for a healthy balance between secularism and spirituality, a tension born of skepticism but willing to believe with proof.

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• March 20, 2005

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8 Responses to “Never Now, But Always Then”

1. Dave Horine Says:
   March 23rd, 2005 at 2:14 pm

   A lot of deep thought put into this article. Definitely a lot to think about, but it is incredibly sad to see what organized religion has done to your thinking about who God is and what He has obviously done in lives, including mine. There are definite problems with organized religion, and those who have taken the Word of God and used it to benefit themselves and deepen their pockets. A world of damage has been done to society’s thinking by those who want to force their own thinking down other’s throats, by those who seek some gain for themselves in making others follow them.

   The truth is found in God’s Word. This is a book that cannot be in any way, shape, or form disproven, though it can be debated over. This book has stood firm for thousands of years, and when taken at face value contains all that we need for our spiritual lives. The problem is all of the adding and subtracting that organized religion has done to this book leaving those without a solid foundation floundering.

   Is God personal? That is not a hard question for me to answer in direct opposition to you because I have experienced that He is. If you have not experienced His love personally then your answer will be that He is not. I’m glad to see you wrestling these ideas. It is an excersize in my faith to read these articles. Seek on.

2. Ben Shobert Says:
   March 23rd, 2005 at 6:54 pm

   Dave - GREETINGS!!! What a voice from the past! Thank you for your gracious words. I think it is important to see two dimensions to this essay. The first is that, in response to your point that my thinking about God has been damaged by organized religion, you are right that religion plays a role in the healing from this damage. But the much, much more profound dimension to this story is familial and personal (what I believe can be rightly called my spiritual journey). I hope, if I have walked this path honorably, that I am doing more than viscerally responding to a bad experience. Yes, that bad experience is a part of my story, but so are elements that are equally real and equally at play in what is real and true. What I fear is missed in your comment is the sense that I have not struggled “enough” with what is truth and found answers that give me much more peace than anything I found in years of work. I have danced that dance; I have cried myself to sleep over ideas of eternal security and other such things. I can not function in life with unknowable concepts comprising a central part of what I say I believe and base my life on.

   I need you to flush out more details about truth and God’s word. Without being disrespectful, that response does not carry much weight with me or with those who think as I do. Yes, the Bible has held its place in culture for millenia for reasons that have much to do with organized religion and as much with those parts of it that drive us to real spiritual renewal. But not “in any way, shape, or form disproven”? Dave, I know where you are coming from and I know why that statement has to be a pillar around which truth statements are built; but the underpinnings of society, truth, peace, love, graciousness and hope are not built on ideas unique to Christianity (again, not a statement intended to negate the value of Christianity, only to suggest that not all within it is wholly unique - better said as Calvin did “all truth is God’s truth). I myself have said similar things only to have a moment of deep insight that forced me to be honest about questions I had. This honesty led me to embrace sincere but probative questioning. It is the harder dimension to seeking truth, and for some I know, it is not necessary. We do not have the right to make such carte-blanche statements unless we have wrestled to the ground the two opposing dimensions to a story. The Bible should be no different.

   Another question, and feel free to answer this question personally (i.e. via email): what have your personal experiences with God been like? It is a sincere question asked by someone who wants to share in this most profound and personal of experiences.

3. Shane Fuller Says:
   April 7th, 2005 at 12:41 pm

   Ben, you know that I love you and am for you and am thrilled with your honesty and willingness to be sincere. I deeply appreciate the fact that you are not willing to go along with what Christianity believes about the personal relationship with God if that has not been truly your experience. The issue that I most struggle with is your very modern ability to take your experience (or lack thereof) and allow it to trump the experience of millions of people all from differnt times and cultures and walks of life and act as if they are not legitimate. It almost sounds as if the last 2,000 years have just been one big conspiracy theory where Christians are just all in on the big joke of making the rest of the world feel like they are missing out on all the personal experience with the Almighty. It seems as though you are working with the same premise as many religious pluralist; they have found the one objective viewpoint in which to critique all other systems. Please don’t make your experience become the plausible structure by which everything and everyone else must stand beneath. Could your lack of experience come from your background in all of its lack of love and this very same background schooled you in relating to the Divine in negative and unattractive ways? To use a crude illustration: what if when you were in High School you learned how to relate to girls from other male chauvanist, pubescent 16 year olds and so all of your life you have trouble meeting girls and finding appropriate ways to relate with them. So finally you just give up and forever live a lonely life free of any deep connection with a person of the opposite sex. What if it does not have to be this way? What if you just have to learn new ways of interaction? It would be sad to learn later in life that there were all kind of females interested in you that you could have spent your life knowing and relating to but because you gave up the journey at such a juvenile stage you missed out on a great relationship that could have changed you and your persepctives forever. What if all of your struggles with personal experience with the Divine stem from the very background you loathe? What if you were taught poor ways of relating to God and even though you are purging much of the old baggage of belief some of it is still clinging to you? So just as you are streching your mind - so ways of practice and living must be renewed as well. Maybe the time has come to stop pointing the fingers at everything that is wrong with religion and be the revolution that you so long for. How much of what you believe at this point have you actually incorporated into your own life? It seems that you are after all the right answers and once you get your mind around the right way of thinking, then you will act on it. Until you incorprate practice, everything is theory, not something you really know or have participated in. So much of what you learned in the early years was just traditionalism and religion and beliefs coming from a particular group of people and all this had no pratical input in their lives. So now could we just say that we are learning to love and starting with ethics and pratice and as we do these things then we can truly reflect on doctrine and grasping issues with our minds? As far as your question about “what have your personal experiences with God been like?” - for me, unlike anything else. I have experienced the amazing love of God invade my soul and life and continues to call me to new levels and to be greater than I ever could on my own. I have expereinced the Holy Spirit convict me of sin and prod me to intervene in other’s problems in which I belived I helped and yet was enriched myself. It has cause me to do less damage on myself, my relationships, society around me and even the world. It has helped me become part of the solution instead of participating in the problem. On this journey, I grow in my knowledge of Him as well as how to listen and better relate. Just like you have been blessed and encouraged and challenged by your experience with your wife (which is sometimes is hard to put into words and yet it is a real connection)so a relationship with Christ has challeneged me and provoked me to love and good works and caused me to see life in a whole new angle. My challenege to you is this: I am very sorry for the ways religion abused you as a young man (remember many of us have some of the same stories)and for the lack of expereince and relationship that it taught you. It seemed to be more about believing the right doctrine and doing certain things than it did about love or daily practice. But put away all the hatred and bitterness towards this way of thinking and redirect all the fuel and energy to doing good in the world as you continue to reflect and think. My prayer for you is that you will become who you were made to be as you continue to lose yourself in the life of Christ and love. It is only at this point that will ever find your true self. I appreciate you dearly - Shane

4. Ben Shobert Says:
   April 7th, 2005 at 5:34 pm

   Shane - First, I do know you love me - the one way you prove that is to push back where you think I’ve gone astray or aren’t thinking properly; that’s also why you’re good @ your job … Let me address one core critical issue within your response: through all of this searching (actually as I was thinking about this yesterday on a bike ride), I am becoming more aware that people are responding to something real - I do believe it is ambiguous for the most part, but it is real and it results in real reformation of their heart, souls and resulting actions. The challenge to me is rightly said when you ask if I’m trying to get things “just right” before I act. I think a little bit of fairness to me is in order as you know decisions I’ve made and am making to serve others at personal cost; I would hope that suggests this isn’t all empty philosphy - it means something important to me - namely can I trust Christianity to be “true”? But the point that action matters most does hit home and it’s a matter of pondering for me at the moment.

   Second, I’m sorry but I’m going to stand firm on my question of rationality in large part because I think what you’re basically offering is “just because you haven’t seen / experienced X doesn’t mean it isn’t real.” OK, I will grant you that. But it is an equally effective apologetic against that which you are attempting to prove - namely, that it is no proof that it did / had to happen. I don’t feel like you’re responding at all to my questions about Abraham or the Canaanite genocide and morality - these are real questions for me and not something I’m using to fend of God having a place in my life. I (and you know we’ve wrestled with this over lunch more than once!) need help here - the only things that make sense to me certainly aren’t folded within orthodoxy. Building on that, I also don’t understand how to take your comments and interject a mode of interpretation for how modern day man can ascertain what is right or wrong as our Sacred texts point to things we now hold as being immoral that were then God-ordained! Again, if someone says God told him to kill his child, why would it be wrong now? We hold it up within Christianity as a model of faith in action - that is certainly one of the points of the story, but why can’t we see it as a non-literal event set within a culture that accepted child sacrifice (both for religious and population control purposes) designed to talk about faith. It certainly isn’t a lesson about the supreme moral good … Isaac was quite literally a sacrifical lamb - an idea we hold as untenable today. That matters to me!

   Lastly, I think the point I’m getting to in my life is that God is real, but He is ambiguous and He isn’t the God of much of Christianity. I’m comfortable saying that. I just can’t continue trying to make Him something He isn’t. Shane, I’ve cried, screamed, begged, fasted, walked prayer trails, meditated, done the Brother Lawrence thing, prayed, prayed and prayed … are you going to tell me just to keep doing this with no results? What kind of God is this to leave me hanging? He reminds me of someone I know real well, and I’m not interested in an eternity with either of them if that’s the case. Is this the vicious cycle I have to keep submitting myself to? I’m tired of it. I have walked this path honorably. I have been sincere. I have been genuine. I have been authentic. If that isn’t enough, then nothing is.

   It is absolutely critical to hear me just as clearly when I say that yes, something quiet and still stirs within me and calls me to something more, but that stirring is never the reality that I hear Christianity speak and teach about. More to your point about pluralism, I do believe that is the same stirring and results in the same reformation at my best moments that I see in others who certainly aren’t within the realm of Christendom (unless we wish to call them all Mark Heim’s “anonymous Christians”). I’m open to suggestions as to new disciplines, but I can’t keep pretending something is there that isn’t - that’s wounded me very deeply in more than just religion. I’m content to make my life about serving the poor, about standing up for justice over those who would angrily attack those who disagree with them (regardless of who that is on either side). I believe that when I die, that will be what proves what I knew and believed - not a statement of faith. The challenge to me, that I hear clearly and rightly in your response, is to make this life of action real. I’m on that path (as you know!).

5. AYM Says:
   April 15th, 2005 at 9:41 am

   A genuine question - why do you call your website Mysterious faith if you think you should be able to have an answer for all of your questions? Or is God only real if He responds to this world according to your terms?

6. Ben Shobert Says:
   April 15th, 2005 at 9:03 pm

   I appreciate some people view God as being so far above us as to not need to answer to man; however, is that how we would treat a child? Would we not welcome them questioning us, perhaps even rebelling against us, if they are wrestling honestly and honorably? Why the name MysteriousFaith - because it captures the tension in my own journey - not because it is some great hidden truth in and of itself.

   How can I know anything other than questioning? If we can come to knowledge only by someone or something telling us it is truth, without the obligation that this truth make sense in a moral or rational sense, are we not open to obvious distortions? It seems to me that nothing of genuine truth or real sincerity loses anything by being questioned. On the other hand, that which exists for the purposes of holding or disseminating power has much to lose by answering questions.

7. Shane Fuller Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 5:16 pm

   One more comment as I re-read this article: (partly because I love your brutal honesty and partly because I think Christians need to hear what you are saying and wrestle and deal with this and offer better answers)I do understand to a degree what you are saying about finding common ground in spirituality and morality, but it doesn’t alter the fact that to reduce religion to pyschology and ethics is to denature it. As Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles asked, “Are moderns really better off with the theories of psychology than with the hard thoughts of Jeremiah or Jesus”? “Religion must include the summons to the upright life, but its eyes are not fixed primaily on that summons. Faith’s focal attention is on a vision of reality that sets morality in motion, as a byproduct almost.” Just food for thought! - Shane

8. Ben Shobert Says:
   October 2nd, 2005 at 4:52 pm

   Why does that denature it? You haven’t argued your case, just put forward a proposition and then restated the proposition with a statement allegorizing it. If religion’s survival isn’t about ethics and spiritual experience then it’s about theology; and theology will never unite, it will always divide. At best, Coles’ statement is an argument for pragmatism - the idea that what is right is that which sets morality in motion - and that, while something to be valued and centrally important, is in no way unique to Christianity. More to the point, it could be argued persuasively that moral motion is best created outside of the ethics and God-stories enshrined in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament.

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