Churchianity

On Suffering, Evolution, and Humanity

September 5, 2012 — 2 Comments

Contrary to the calendar, summer has officially ended. I am all finished road-tripping across the country, my children started school this week, and I now have predictable slots of time to work on this blog.

This week, I want to share with you this On Being interview with Xavier Le Pichon, “Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity.” I listened to the podcast last week, and was touched and challenged by many of Le Pichon’s ideas, as well as the depth of his thoughtfulness and compassion.

While many people, myself included, have pointed to the problem of suffering as a major roadblock to faith in God, Le Pichon sees it as a touchstone for entering into the deep mysteries of life, and a catalyst for further advances in human evolution.

“Our humanity is not an attribute that we have received once and forever with our conception. It is a potentiality that we have to discover within us and progressively develop or destroy through our confrontation with the different experiences of suffering that will meet us throughout our life,” writes Le Pichon in his paper “Ecce Homo,” on which much of the interview is based.

For a recovering Christian fundamentalist like myself, it does my heart (and mind) big-time good to hear someone so obviously committed to his faith intelligently discuss this issue of human suffering in the context of biological evolution.

Whenever I dredge up the problem of “suffering and God” in thought or conversation, a tiny thought recurs in the back of my brain: “what do you really know of suffering?” This interview amplified that thought. Beyond philosophy and reason, there is love and presence with “the other” – and if I am not willing to truly search out these aspects of my humanity, what do I really know after all?

Against My Will

August 16, 2012 — 3 Comments

Every day I get an email with a list of e-books that are free for my Kindle that day. One of these books I recently downloaded is Becoming a Vegetarian Against Your Will by Tiffany Dow.

Tiffany grew up in Texas, eating meat and loving it. One day, as an adult, she picked up a box of fried chicken at a drive-up window. When she opened the box, there was a whole chicken feather still attached to the breast. She couldn’t eat it. “I felt disgusted,” she says. “Yes, I know where fried chicken comes from, but for some reason having it flutter right there in my meal box churned my stomach . . . At that moment I didn’t realize I was a vegetarian. I just knew I wasn’t finishing THAT feathery chicken meal.”

She wrote her book for those people who have chosen vegetarianism for one reason or another but who aren’t black-and-white fundamentalists about it:

I hate reading vegetarian guides where everyone is all smiles and hugs and boasting about all the good you’ll be doing for your body and the planet.

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that you will grieve the loss of meat – unless it’s never been a big part of your life in the first place.

Dow describes being “visibly annoyed” seeing other people eating juicy burgers. “[T]hey’d say, ‘What’s wrong?’ and snicker at me (because they knew). I’d tell them, ‘I wish I could eat a burger.’ And then they’d say something that always made me want to smack them: ‘You can.’ That’s what they didn’t understand. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

I could identify a bit with her journey towards vegetarianism. I too have settled into a vegetarian lifestyle, I who used to stop off for a Quarter Pounder just for a snack now and then.

But in reading her book, I was struck with how familiar this all sounds to me as I open up about my doubts in my faith journey.

I grew up eating dogma. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner – if dogma wasn’t on the plate, it wasn’t a real meal. Our largest family and community celebrations placed dogma at the very center of the table, on a huge platter for all to enjoy.

But in recent years, it’s been getting harder for me to swallow dogma. So much so that at this point, I have cut it out of my diet entirely. It’s okay, though – at any given meal, even in social settings, I can usually find enough other food to nourish me; and I’m not offended when other people chow down on the food I can’t eat.

At first it really was hard to be there at the table and watch others eat what I could no longer stomach but still craved. Even though I couldn’t swallow it, I missed it. It was nostalgic for me. It was a connection to my childhood, to people and times in my life that were meaningful to me – and I could no longer access that connection.

Thankfully, even when I was a child, dogma wasn’t my only experience with my faith tradition. It was never the only thing on the table. However marginalized as side dishes they may have been, things like love, hope, encouragement, thoughtfulness and joy were there too. And they are still there. In my own life, I’m trying to learn how to do more with those things, and I’m finding they provide me with enough nourishment for my health.

In short, while I have stopped eating dogma, I haven’t quit eating. I haven’t even quit eating with other dogma-eaters. We all need to eat, and while we may make different choices about what to eat, we can usually figure out a way to eat together peacefully.

Some people stop eating dogma because they think it is the only right choice. I am not one of those people. I’ve come to recognize that there are complex traditions, experiences, thoughts and feelings that influence each person differently; and the best we can do is honestly and courageously walk the path set before us; patiently, graciously loving both our neighbors and ourselves.

The Rain

June 10, 2011 — 6 Comments

The rain, the rain, the rain on the roof. Her seven-year-old questions, large and painful as my 35-year-old ones. My quavering replies – it’s okay to not know . . . I don’t know for sure if we’ll live again . . . there’s so much that no one really understands . . .

I talk about Jesus. I say that we have stories from people who knew him that after he died he lived again, that he said we can too. She asks, what if they were lying? How do we know the stories are true?

She asks, what if I never see you again? What if after one of us dies we never see each other again? She is crying. What if? she insists. I attempt no more words. I am crying too, and we face one another in love through tears. The rain, the rain, the rain in the room.

I tell her that I do know for sure that I love her. I do know there is much goodness and beauty in the world, that life itself is mysterious in ways that comfort me, that I am trying my best to believe and hope that all will turn out well.

But what if it’s all a lie? she persists. And then she thinks some more. She talks about the trees, the kitty (who has climbed up the bunkbed ladder and nuzzled in next to her), the planets, the sun. Nobody could make that stuff up, she notes. That makes me think there must be a God, she says.

I agree, and I tell her there are people throughout history who have spoken of their experiences with God. I tell her I think God did bring forth life and does care about us.

It’s the best I can do. Into the silence creeps the echo of the words she prayed a few minutes ago, entreating God to help our friends feel better, our friends who last week held their newborn baby girls as they died in their arms. I wonder if she hears it too.

She asks if she can tell Jesus she’s sorry for all the bad things she’s done and then go to Heaven when she dies. I say she can always tell Jesus she is sorry for doing bad things. I have more to say about my hope in neverending life bigger than the Sunday School notions of Heaven she’s heard. But she speaks again.

Why would people just invent Heaven if it’s not really true? she asks. If I find out it’s not true, I’m going to be so mad, she rages, and she cries some more.

I was seven once. I had questions like these. But I didn’t ask them; at least, not for long. My parents and my Sunday School teachers had a ready answer for everything, in the form of a Bible verse or a doctrinal statement, and I went to sleep knowing I was saved and on my way to Heaven.

Tonight I failed to give my daughter the same thing. She handed me her painful questions and I didn’t make them go away like my parents did – at least for the short term. My questions never did go away; they just burrowed deeper and lay dormant, only to blossom forth in a withering sort of spring in my thirties.

Maybe I’m doing alright by my seven-year-old, letting her keep her questions closer to the surface, closer to the nourishing light of the everyday. She was crying tears of pain, even darkness and fear. But I hope they are cleansing tears, and I believe it is better to openly express the pain and darkness and fear than to feel ashamed of it, to believe it is incorrect, a sign of disobedience, and let it fester in a deep hole where it can do serious internal damage.

David the psalmist wasn’t afraid to express these things. He said, “Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. Surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; they heap up and do not know who will gather.

“And now, O Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool. I am silent; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it. Remove your stroke from me; I am worn down by the blows of your hand.

“You chastise mortals in punishment for sin, consuming like a moth what is dear to them; surely everyone is a mere breath.

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears. Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.” (Psalm 39)

Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again! Ironically, when I had no more words for Luthien, I sang her the “Barocha” blessing – “the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you, and give you peace forever . . . the Lord be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you, and give you peace forever.”

But she did lie down in peace, soft kitty cuddled close, soft raindrops on the roof.

Heaven, Hell, and Rachel Held (Evans)

March 1, 2011 — 18 Comments

I haven’t been posting much lately. First, February always gets me down. It is the most melancholy of months for me. But it’s March first now, and I’ve emerged from yet another February, though I’m sure I bear extra wrinkles and gray hairs as evidence of the struggle.

Another reason for less postings, I suppose, is more typical of blogging – I said a lot of what I’d been storing up for years.

Another, is that the *even* more I learn these days, the things I have to say often seem repetitive or only halfway-thought-out. Songwriting continues to be my first love, I think because it’s easier for me to express myself through poetic language and music than through reasoned (or un-reasoned!) essays.

Anyhoo, I came here to post a link to someone else’s blog post. Here it is.

The faith question continues to spin in me, and personally, I have a difficult time even believing in an afterlife of any sort these days. But I try to hold on to hope even when belief fails. And I am refreshed to hear evangelical Christians stirring the pot about this whole eternal damnation thing.

Here’s to honest people and their courageous questions.

 

Please Believe

November 30, 2010 — 14 Comments

This past week, my seven-year-old daughter asked me if I believed in Santa Claus. Not one of those parents too concerned about scarring my children for life, I told her, “no.”

“But, Mom, [neighbor girl’s name here] said that she got a present last year with a card that was in handwriting that was not her mom’s! Do you believe now?”

“Well, no.”

My four-year-old son chimed in. “[Preschool classmate’s name here] said that Santa came to her house last year, but he was very quiet. Do you believe now?”

“Sorry, no.”

Daughter whispering to son, something like, “if Mom and Dad don’t believe, Santa won’t come to our house!”

Then, aloud in ragged unison, “Please, Mom and Dad, believe in Santa Claus! Please!”

In his book Losing My Religion, William Lobdell says that Pascal’s wager just doesn’t work for him, because he can’t will himself to believe something he simply doesn’t believe. Lobdell says, “it seems to me that to indulge in Pascal’s Wager, you actually have to believe in Christ. The Lord would know if you were faking. I could no longer fake it. It was time to be honest about where I was in my faith.”

Christian apologetics seems to function from two underlying convictions – nonbelievers are either:

a) ignorant, and therefore needing to learn more information, or

b) rebellious, and therefore needing to repent.

There are other ideas, too, like the one I most easily gravitate towards. I can identify with wounded ex-believers, and think that the only thing holding them back from belief is healing and an introduction to the real God, the right God, i.e., my current understanding of God.

A truly difficult thing for believers to do is to simply believe nonbelievers’ explanations of their personal faith stories. When Lobdell, and others like John Marks (Reasons to Believe), tell us that they tried, they really tried, to hold on to their faith in Jesus, even their faith in God, and lost it in spite of their knowledge, their desire, and all – it is often incredibly difficult for believers to take that simple explanation and let it be.

It’s ironic that people who treasure a belief in the unseen can have such a difficult time believing what is plainly spoken to them. I know from personal experience that with enough practice believing “impossible” things, it becomes easier to discount obvious things, including the weight of doubt and unbelief going on inside one’s own self.

What good is a faith that feels compelled to ignore or explain away the disbelief it encounters in others and oneself? I think that sort of faith is rightly called blind faith. What I’m after is a wide-eyed, open-eared, expectant sort of belief that takes for granted that the world is bigger than me, that other people have wisdom I don’t, that if I feel my belief system is threatened by someone telling me the truth, then it’s time to do some reworking with that belief system.

Which reminds me of another post I promised recently and have not yet delivered – thoughts from The Myth of Certainty. That would be a counterbalance of sorts to this post. Belief systems are never complete, are always needing reworking, and yet – to gain some traction, one must take a point of view from time to time.

My point of view at this moment is that I have written enough and I need not bother with a tidy conclusion. Feel free to write your own conclusion as a comment!