Faith and doubt

Is That Me On Your Universe’s Big Screen?

January 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

Experienced creators know that they are not fully in control of their creations. The general consensus I hear from novelists is that their characters are real, and the writer’s job is to tell a true story, in which the characters act consistently with their own personalities.

I know something about this from the work of writing songs. My best work has directed me in its own making – drawing me forward to the place where it already exists (David Wilcox talked like this at a house concert I attended once, and I knew precisely what he meant . . . uh, more or less).

As I was falling asleep the other night, I dreamily wondered if I am a character in the story that is the cosmos in which I exist; and if whatever we call God is the creator of this story.

Ideas are the center of reality, says Jim Holt in Radiolab’s recent podcast “Solid as a Rock.” My romantic religious heart swells to this notion.

In my little mind, art and science and religion gracefully fuse in the postulation of string theory – a place where multiple dimensions, even multiple universes, are accepted as highly plausible. I envision a universe where the Doctor really is flying around in his TARDIS, simply because people from my universe have created him. And of course I speculate about the artists who have created my world. Am I a character in another universe’s movie?

Don’t fret about my addled brain. I’m currently reading Lee Smolin’s book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. I’ve only just begun Smolin’s book, but it promises to be a push-back against the academic community’s enthusiasm over string theory. Perhaps he will bring balance to the force.

(Although it is sad to think that there may not actually be any Skywalkers out there, anywhere . . .)

I Don’t Wanna Talk About it Now*

January 7, 2013 — 8 Comments

Why are the best church sermons often lessons to help us unlearn previous church sermons? Why is the most compelling religious talk usually a refutation of previous religious talk?

Maybe we’ve all said way too much about God.

I’ve found that as I admit my doubts and open up to questions, I’m not as interested in hashing them out as I was interested in hashing out other people’s doubts and questions when I had all the answers.

As a very young child, I learned that God loved me. I was taught to love God and neighbor, and that “neighbor” was everybody everywhere. I learned “God is love” (1 John 4:16) as a Bible memory verse.

As I grew older, I was taught qualifications upon qualifications to help me unlearn this initial lesson. Yes, God loved me, so much so that he sent his son to die for me, and all I needed to do was to accept the free gift of that executed son. (Otherwise, in spite of God’s love, I would burn forever yet never die.)

I should love others, yes, but some people needed tough love – especially anyone different from me and my kind. Tough love doesn’t allow a sinner to wallow in their sin. Tough love is preferable to “sloppy agape” (testify, sisters and brothers, if you grew up with this phrase too!). And although the Bible says that God is love,  songs like “All You Need is Love” or “What the World Needs Now is Love” were clearly examples of the liberal or communist or humanist agenda.

Grown-up theologians know that the simple “God is love, and we should love one another” religious teaching given to three-year-olds is a good way to teach toddlers not to hit one another, but hardly enough to base a religion (or a war, a political agenda, a bestseller, or any other money-making scheme) upon.

So naturally, much religion is about unlearning – or at least qualifying – the simple instruction to love.

Some religious people who have been schooled in unlearning love are then further challenged and moved when they encounter religious think-tanks who skillfully dismantle the love-unlearning paradigms of much religious thought.

In other words, when a religious leader says that it’s okay to love my neighbor as myself (even if my neighbor is gay or a Muslim), and whips out some fancy theological explanation for this countercultural idea, I call his or her ideas “progressive.”

I’m with John Lennon these days. Worn out on God-talk. Imagining a world where we all live in love and peace. I’m with Jesus too, because I think he also imagined and tried to live out the reality of a world like that.

Progressive religious people call this re-imagined world “the kingdom of God” or sometimes less-patriarchal renderings of the same idea. Okay. I just want to submit that God – aka Love – maybe is just as (or more?) interested in our working towards that new world order than in all the words we have to say about it.

 *“I Don’t Wanna Talk About it Now” is a song from Emmylou Harris’s amazing album Red Dirt Girl. The song itself bears no connection to the content of this blog post, but the title is a perfect fit. And you should definitely check out the album.

 

 

Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson

December 10, 2012 — 1 Comment

On the occasion of Emily Dickinson’s birthday, let’s have a poem I find fitting for this blog:

This World Is Not Conclusion

by Emily Dickinson

this world is not conclusion
a species stands beyond –
invisible, as music –
but positive as sound –

it beckons, and it baffles
philosophy – don’t know –
and through a riddle, at the last –
sagacity must go –

to guess it, puzzles scholars –
to gain it, men have borne
contempt of generations
and crucifixion, shown –

faith slips – and laughs, and rallies –
blushes, if any see –
plucks at a twig of evidence –
and asks a vane, the way –

much gesture, from the pulpit –
strong hallelujahs roll –
narcotics cannot still the tooth
that nibbles at the soul –

 

This Just In: Atheism Trumps Agnosticism

November 13, 2012 — 16 Comments

Brian McLaren posted the following quotes on Facebook today. I think it’s time to get my 70-cent Life of Pi thrift store find down off the shelf and give it a read, especially before (and in case) I see the movie. Has anyone else read this book? And whether you have or not, what do you think of these ideas?

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap” (Life of Pi, 35).

“It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation” (Life of Pi, 36).

Of Soldiers and Soul-Winning

October 29, 2012 — 15 Comments

Shouting soldiers have never interrupted any church service I’ve attended. According to the preachers of my childhood, we can thank other soldiers throughout our nation’s history for obtaining this religious freedom for us.

I remember imagining the hypothetical scene a preacher painted one Sunday – heavily armed soldiers breaking through the doors at the back of the auditorium and demanding that we denounce God, or face imprisonment or death.

This was a powerful base for a little girl’s daydream – and just like children dream and play about their parents dying, themselves getting terribly injured or sick, and other tasty tragedies, I dreamed of the soldiers coming while the preacher droned on week in, week out.

I’m reminded of all this because I’m currently puzzling over religious freedom. The self-identified “fighting fundamentalists” of my childhood held religious freedom as a treasure for which countless people had fought and died. And yet, I’m not sure they would have been – or were – so supportive of freedom for those holding different (or no) religious views.

In a few days, my state of Minnesota will be voting on a proposed amendment to our state constitution that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. I wrote here that I see this as a civil rights issue, and that religious beliefs about sexual behavior shouldn’t dictate our state laws.

But as I talk with people about this topic, I have really only heard one pro-amendment argument – variations on the theme that God opposes homosexuality.

It seems impossible for these people to set aside their religious perspective and see this as a civil rights issue – or even a religious freedom issue. Some explain that God is judging our nation because of homosexuality. Others say that God designed the family to be one man and one woman and their children, and we need to uphold this design because it is best for everyone, especially children. In their minds (as I understand it) this isn’t simply a religious issue. It is also a civic duty. They are trying to save society from God’s judgment, or at least, nudge society toward God’s perfect design.

In my religious upbringing, I learned that it was essential to integrate my faith with every other aspect of my life – that I shouldn’t live one way on Sunday and another way the rest of the week. The values and beliefs we learned in church were not just for church; they were the ultimate truth for all of life.

Since then, my personal faith has shifted from a list of doctrines to a posture of humility, vulnerability, open-hearted love and open-ended questions. I no longer see God as a supreme moralist with a checklist. So it’s pretty easy for me to tout all this religious freedom stuff and still feel like my faith is well-integrated in my life.

But I want to respect and uphold the freedom of all people – religious fundamentalists, pagans, mystics, atheists, whoever – to conduct their lives in a manner consistent with their beliefs, as long as they pose no harm to others. And I’m wondering, for people whose faith (or anti-faith) systems insist on converting the entire world to their set of beliefs (soul-winning, it was called in my faith tradition), if religious freedom for all is really even desirable.

I want – and try – to appreciate the well-meaning place where many conservative religious people are coming from. They truly believe that their idea of “God’s best” for them is also God’s best for the whole world, and that a society that doesn’t honor their version of God is only heaping trouble on its head.

This, fundamentally, is the same place where militant atheists are coming from. They hold that religion is on the whole destructive and humanity will continue to suffer until we walk away from religion entirely.

So help me consider this question – can fervent religious and anti-religious people conscionably uphold religious freedom at all?