the mask of oz

remembering how at bible school, one prof was notorious for tearing apart the presuppositions that these prairie kids fresh out of youth group and high school ISCF groups brought with them to their study of the scriptures...

by the end of the first term, there were always fewer Christians on campus! ha ha.

although at the time i found this incredibly challenging, i came to understand, over the years that followed, what this guy was doing... he was trying to coax us out of our warm, cozy caccoons where the inside walls were lovingly papered with old sunday-school papers from the 70's and pages from the comic-book version of the bible published by david c. cook in 1973. outside of that happy place was the real world. a place where real people had real questions arising from troubling everyday experiences- a place where a theological bumper-sticker bandaid just wouldn't stop the bleeding.

however, the thing that i still wrestle with today, just like then, is balance. on the one hand, i subscribe to a faith that, because all of the facts are not yet in, does not need to completely reason and qualify all ideas in order to exist; yet on the other hand, i cannot let myself become so accomodating that pretty much anything goes. steve taylor, a singer in the 80's described it well when he said 'you're so open-minded that your brain leaked out.'

i know that i'm not qualified to speak of higher criticism except as an observer. i work hard to qualify the things i teach, sure, but i recognize that this is simply my responsibility as a preacher... it has not been my life'swork. On any theologian's bookshelf there are whole books written by people who can read the ancient languages, who are well-versed in the ancient traditions, and have sat under the teaching of people who have entire wings in seminaries named after them. me? i have books written by people who have read books written by people who attended those seminaries. i understand this.

however, from my acknowledged place as an interactive observer, i have also seen how higher criticism has done much to strip the Bible of its authority among common people and scholars alike... it bothers me that we are so good at talking ourselves out of belief; so ready to be cynical; so eager to take the side of the sceptic rather than the mystic.

why is that? i have an opinion- but it's probably wrong because it oversimplifies things. here goes: i think that most of us are just not interested enough to actively pursue God's truth. it takes too much time and effort. too much reading. too much listening. too much praying. pick any spiritual discipline and you will probably find that it requires too much of us who are kinda comfortable where we are.

so 'when the weight of this world crashes down on you' (mark heard, circa '82) we are ill-equipped to face the barrage- defaulting instead to the sceptic's view, sitting with our face in our drink concluding 'there is no truth.'

actually, there is. the problem is that we are so unfamiliar with his revelation due to our lack of discipline that it is easier to speak of the mask of oz than to seek the face of God.
***

i realize that this post is incomplete-
but that is, after all, the freedom of a whole nother blog...

finding neo

Bigbro said:
Fundamentalism is about 'not needing an explanation.'

Oh, sure, there are those weekly explanations of a particular scripture that is pretty much explained the same way it was explained the last time the subject came up, but that's merely repetitiveness. Rote helps one not forget a lesson so as that lesson never changes regardless of the century in progress.

It all comes down to not needing an explanation. Not having to muddle about with explanations makes it all that much easier for everyone involved. Kind of like going to a Halloween party where no one wears masks

well, i'm afraid that i have to beg to differ with a couple different things here. i don't think that fundamentalism is as much about not needing an explanation as it is about presuming that a literal interpretation of scripture is the only explanation worth considering. this is probably why there is this whole problem with the weekly 'explanations' being all the same. it would be hard to take anything non-literal to fundamentalist masses without someone crying 'foul!'

i also disagree with the idea that not having to muddle about with explanations makes it all that much easier for everyone involved. it is the ethnocentric presumption that no one has to explain anything or be somehow intellectually and spiritually accountable to anyone or anything else that results in so much really bad theology. people make wild logical leaps from idea to idea, like neo in the matrix- as if denying the fact that there is gravity and believing that it has no hold upon him will, in fact, release him from its causal grip. arguing that spirituality need not be in any way connected to the physical world causes me to ask 'why do we have to bother with physical existence then?'

the 'merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream' approach to the interrelation of our spiritual and physical existences is probably only easy on those who subscribe to it. it drives a lot of other people crazy on both sides of the line drawn by Jesus in the sand. it is as much a source of frustration to those who, although holding to a faith in the same means of approaching God, differ from its spin on conclusive evidence, as it is to those who do not hold to this faith at all.

nobody likes being judged, or having their faith relationship (or non-relationship for that matter) with God through Christ presumed about, and a hardline of faith against a really fuzzy line of logic or reason can blur many things that are worth talking about in favour of details that become huge arguments for general disbelief. since we discovered in the garden, figuratively or literally, that to truly understand the difference between good and evil we simply needed to experience a little bit of evil first hand (and thus seperate ourselves from the holy realm, driving a necessary chasm between the temporal physical and the eternal spiritual forever) and then deal with the consequences of our decision-making, we've wrestled with the apparent disparity between our intellectual capacity for reason and the whole of existence which appears to be not only very very big but, at times, very unreasonable as well.

where it goes all wrong for me is when there are rectifiable differences that are stubbornly ignored. you find a neo in the most surprising places, often wearing some very familiar faces.

a bunch of us were all grappling with an entirely different issue the other day when a dear friend of mine surprised me by launching some SCUD missile logic into an otherwise really engaging round-the-table discussion. he said 'i have trouble with people who say that they believe the bible as long as it agrees with science... i believe science as long as it agrees with the bible, no further.' from here he shared his belief that the whole carbon-dating process is an atheist conspirator's distraction and that the earth is only six thousand years old and so on.

now, this guy is awesome and i love him dearly, but because i knew that we'd just get into an argument that would go round and round and take over the meeting from there on, i left it alone in spite of the fact that i vehemently disagreed with his position. what made me uncomfortable was the feeling in me that, because i was silent, those around the table would think i agreed. easier for everyone else? maybe, but that collective ease came at the price of my own personal peace.

you see, recently i posted a bit on 'five things i don't get.' this was one that almost made my top 5 list:
why people see creation theories and evolution theories as diametrically opposed and in all ways contradictory. a theory can't prove or disprove God. it can only strengthen your faith in its hypothesis.

but here's where the "darwin/TRUTH" picture above comes in. i very strongly agree with this image, but not in the way my friend thinks, judging from my silence that day. you see, i think truth is a way bigger fish than any one theory, and that, if we are to cut open the TRUTH fish, we'll probably find the partially digested remains of the darwin fish inside its entrails. some of the theory will have made truth stronger, and some of it will have already become deep-sea excrement.

once again, the challenge for me is to be able to tell the difference, being careful to clean the fish thoroughly before i throw it onto my barBQ wrapped in foil to be cooked and served to my friends as a the maincourse of a well-balanced meal.
***

disclaimer: i know that it sounds like i'm doing a lot of judging of my own here... please forgive me for this. i have not yet found a way to articulate objections objectively.

planet of the zen apes

an old debate heated up again in a recent mbleslie blog
(www.mbleslie.com/blog/2005/03/evolution-debate-rolls-on.php)

matthew blogged:
But even if we knew for 100% fact - which is never the case or there wouldn't be a need for faith - that God did make the universe, the 'separation of church and state' would prevent it being taught in school! How can the truth ever be pursued when one possibility is shunned and rejected automatically based on some deep-seated resentment for anything supernatural?

Another interesting case. Say Joe Christian believes that God somehow acted along with evolution to bring everything to the way it is today. When pressed, Joe admits that he doesn't want God taught alongside evolution in schools. What we can conclude is that Joe either doesn't really believe in the God of Christianity, or that he doesn't mind children being taught what he believes to be a lie - which in turn casts serious doubt on his beliefs. Moreover, Joe appears as a man with no conviction.

and davekugler said:
...Not teaching religion in public settings is of respect for those whose religious backgrounds differ from our own – it protects diversity of thought and belief, while placing responsibility on the teaching of religion on the family. Private schools have offered an alternative for decades for people who don’t want to face the responsibility on their own.

so Icarus said:
Davekugler's comment reminds me of certain Christians I have seen on campus who were shocked and appalled when a travelling minister said that anyone who doesn't believe in Christ is going to Hell. They were so indoctrinated with "tolerance" and "diverstiy" that they didn't even believe what they believed! In the world of gray and relativism, no one is wrong and everyone gets to be right, in their own way, of course.

and finally jollybeggar said:
wow.

although i've never actually given myself that name, i'll step out here and say that you can call me joe. at least, one version of joe. i'm in a quirky spot on this one because i am a 'bi-vocational pastor' (which basically means that i do the church thing and when i'm not doing that i am doing my other job) who teaches public school. not average joe, but an interested joe nonetheless.

however, when i'm pressed, i can't say that i don't want God taught alongside evolution in school- i really do because they address different aspects of who we are and what we need in this place and time.

belief in God and acceptance of the evolution theory are not necessarily contradictory ideas. the notion that they are is old scripting- it is a modern matrix being applied to something holistic. the thing that both of them have in common is that they are both really critically difficult to nail down...(i like what matthew said about faith- in a sort of douglas adams' "hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy" kinda way) ie: you can't put God in a box for examination and you can't really prove evolution- you can only disprove it.

a few years ago while i was learning through an internship how to be a teacher, we had the big creation-evolution debate in an eighth grade public school class. parents were sent notes to sign saying that they were fine with this and yada yada yada. one side debated evolution from an anthropological standpoint, the other debated creationism from a christian standpoint.

the christians learned a lot that day about what lions will eat and what they will spit out.

although the 'scientists' had charts and diagrams and quotes from everyone from darwin to vonnegut, the christians had only the bible. their logic was flawed in that they used the one source, upon which their theory is based, to prove that their theoretical interpretation of that source was correct and therefore everyone else is wrong. sound familiar?

when was the last time you won a bet that way?

well, we had two authorities come to speak to the kids following the dramatic student debate. on two successive days, a minister from a local church and an anthropologist from the university were slated to speak to the students- sadly, we still felt the need to keep science and spirituality apart in a public school setting.

the first day the minister came. “i understand that you are engaged in a debate for science class over theories of our origin, and are discussing God and creation. firstly, you need to know that this book (the bible) is not a textbook. it wasn’t written that way and it wasn’t meant to be read that way. the bible doesn’t tell you what happened, the bible tells you about who did it…” and so on.

well, i thought ‘great, sounds nice, but the anthropologist from the university is gonna wipe him out tomorrow…’

the next day we waited patiently for our friendly neighbourhood anthropologist, who eventually arrived, albeit late, ready to speak. “i understand that you are engaged in a debate for science class over cosmology theories and are seeking the best explanation of how everything began: creation versus evolution. firstly, let me say that science and the bible speak to different things: if your car happens to break down on a day like today in frigid, sub-zero temperatures, no amount of praying will probably get the thing going again. (here he was being autobiographical, i found out later) however, if you are looking for the meaning of life on a day like today, science has nothing to say.”

the kids were confused and, in a zen sense, that’s when their enlightenment began, I think.

well, except that i think that science does in fact qualify the meanings we take from life by allowing us to more carefully consider the observables, i agree with both men... not in spite of the fact that they seemed to meet right in the middle of the controversy, offering no tidy conclusions, but probably because of it.

i believe what i believe (although i often have a terrible time articulating it) but i don't feel that it is relativist to choose to breathe the free air instead of suffocating with one's head buried so deeply in theological sand that choking, oxygen-starved hallucinations form his spin on 'life, the universe and everything.'

(and, by the way, i too concur with arzhang that evolution is really about continuations, not beginnings...)