| i read this while out on the lake... see what you think. as usual, it's long, but worth the time. "what turned out to be one of the best exchanges i had in all my years as an english teacher at a christian school came in a general discussion over my love for the likes of kafka, nietzsche & camus. every time i expressed unqualified enthusiasm for these thinkers my students deemed "non believers" the same wall kept coming up. is it ok to use to like these people? i insisted it was more than ok. as readers of good books, they were all compelled i argued, to let these particular writers lurked beyond the boundary of what they took to be "christian" truth. nevertheless, i kept meeting resistance, so i tried a different tactic. i asked my students to define the word "agnostic". "someone who doesn't want to believe," one keen student responded. the "doesn't want to" part really threw me off a bit. "why the judgement call?" i asked. i wasn't sure what to say. i told them to try again. "someone who chooses not to believe," hazarded another. i was beginning to sense a pattern. i couldn't call it unexpected. "no, really, no," i said. "and i'm giving you a really big hint when i say, "no". "someone who doesn't know!" came a shout of mock enthusiasm. and we were on our way. "that's right. agnostics don't know. they might believe all kinds of things. and it can get to feeling like a crying shame sometimes., this lack of absolute knowledge, but they just don't' know. not much to be done for it really, this not knowing business. incidentally, guess who's agnostic." "you are," dared an especially avid, young presbyterian. "right you are. and please understand that i believe as much as the next believer, i can hardly tell you how much i strongly believe it. i believe, i believe, i believe. i confess i find it hard to believe a lot of things sometimes. i'm riddled with uncertainties. but i see your smiling, approving faces, and i believe once more. now i'm a believer. i believe again, as if for the first time. belief, it's what i do. guess who else i believe to be agnostic." i had to wait this one out & gape at them goofily a little bit. one of them finally chirped in with one eye squinted, "we are?" "yeah. but i think you think you have to pretend to know in order to not go to hell. and i want to tell you, in Jesus' Name, that isn't the case." i hope it's clear that i wasn't invoking the name of Jesus lightly. i meant- and i mean- to challenge the version of christianity that says we're called, above all, to play it safe, only letting in the thoughts and ideas that fit easily into our supposedly christian belief grid, as if there are certain confessions of honest confusion of doubt our faith cannot afford. this version of christianity is the one which insists (or at least strongly implies) that fear is the heart of love, to borrow ben gibbard's phrase. and it is this version i see critiqued most radically in the life & teachings of Jesus. against the psychics oppression of a christianity that would keep us dishonest & afraid. i want to announce the good bit of news that the God who exists, the God in Whom i believe, never calls anyone to play-act or pretend or to silence their own concerns about what's true. i want to chase off the spirits that render us incapable of seeing truthfully for fear that we might let in the wrong information, as if God might be made angry & insecure by an archeological dig, a scientific discovery, an ancient manuscript, a Christ-like atheist, or a good film about homosexual cowboys. if we think we have ourselves from anything that might call it into question-as if God is counting on us to keep ourselves stupid, closed off to the complexity of the world we're in-I'd like to argue that we don't have faith in God at all. we have faith in our own faith rather than the God who transcends it, faith in a faith that will somehow save us. not faith in God, but faith in a false god of our own conceptions, a god too afraid to entertain a question or a doubt. if we think our certainty is what drives success and, in the end, the very faith (so-called) that saves us, our honest confusion will become a source of shame and a sign of weakness. we keep our honest doubts hidden. as i understand it, the is precisely where the biblical witness urges what i'm tempted to call a mandatory agnosticism. this is where we're called to confession, not self-congratulation. while we're often rewarded in life for playing at absolute confidence, the pretense required and the mind-game involved is corrosive to the possibility of community, friendship & redeeming love. because playing at certainty is often the unwritten rule of our culture, backing down from it and assuming the mantle of a mere human might be our most radical, poetic-prophetic way of relating. imagine if we could let the psychic burden of certainty go. we might become capable of questioning ourselves out loud and open-endedly. we might let a little air in. as i see it, the Bible isn't a catalog of all the things one has to believe (of pretend to believe) in order to not go to hell, but is rather a broad, multifaceted collection of people crying out to God-and a collection of close encounters with the God WHo is present, somehow, in those very cries. far from being an anthology of greeting card material, these accounts of joy, anger, lamentation and hope are all bound up, as it were, in the most formidable array of social criticism ever assembled in one volume. and far from being a tradition in which doubts & questions are suppressed in favor of uncritical, blind faith, christianity is a robust culture in which anything can be asked & everything can be said. the call to worship is a call to complete candor & radical questioning. questioning the way things are, the way we are & wondering about the way things ought to be. most paradoxically, as g.k. chesterton observed, the new testament portrays a God who, by being wholly present in the dying cry of Jesus of Nazareth, even doubted & questioned Himself. the summons to sacred questioning- like the call to honesty, like a call to prayer, is a call to be true and to let the chips fall where they may. like the call to authenticity, it is deeper than the call to sign off on a checklist of a particular tenets of beliefs. it is also more difficult. the proper call to worshipfulness is a call to employ (or allow to be employed) the whole of my imagination and, therefore, the whole of what i'm doing with my life. this call is a summons to mindfulness in all i say or do, a mindfulness that requires an engagement, a questioning of everything, a call to bring my wits to bear on the whole of life without compartmentalization-be it "politics", "spirituality", "business", or that especially tricky compartment, "religion". such categories play into our unawareness of the other calls to worship coming at us through advertisements (billboards, commercial breaks, brand projections), pundits, politicians &(let's be honest) preachers. we're called to engage these calls with a lively doubt & redemptive skepticism, not because nothing's worth believing, but because critical thinking is required of anyone who mean to resist the "insert soul here" that lurks underneath all of these appeals to our lives, these systems of meaning that thrive upon our consent. being true, in this atmosphere, is a work that's never done. this is where i always urged-and urge- my students to hold off on finding a story, a thinker or a song safe because they think it's christian, or unsafe because it's not. instead, i believe we should come to such engagements with the question (always open) of whether or not the voice to which we are paying heed is truthful. and james douglass' work, resistance & contemplation, is especially helpful here: "truth is not a slab of concrete to rest my life upon, but a luminous force in which i stand and which i discover is sparked into more dazzling light by the conflict of challenge and response." to hold true to the truth, amid our doubts, can never exactly be a point of pride, because being true is never a done deal of a mission accomplished. being true (or trying to be true) is an occasion for keeping a vigil, striving towards vigilance when to comes to our own prone-to-lying tongues, paying heed & paying attention to-it's out there- the truth. and the christianly agnostic will not know that they do not have it (or know it) even as they live in the hope and the occasional confidence that the God of truth has them. w.h. auden puts the matter most modestly: "christianity is a way, not a state, and a christian is never something one is, only something one can pray to become." this might not be as solidly assuring, from an advertising perspective, as claims of absolute confidence and satisfaction guaranteed. but it is probably more biblical, more sobering, and, for my money, more human and more honest. perhaps this is all we're called to be. -david dark, from the july/august issue of relevant magazine... (My responses are in bold, last paragraph is mine too, but it's not in bold b/c it's not a response. ;o) ) i want to announce the good bit of news that the God who exists, the God in Whom i believe, never calls anyone to play-act or pretend or to silence their own concerns about what's true. i want to chase off the spirits that render us incapable of seeing truthfully for fear that we might let in the wrong information, as if God might be made angry & insecure by an archeological dig, a scientific discovery, an ancient manuscript, a Christ-like atheist, or a good film about homosexual cowboys. I agree, God doesn’t call anyone to play-act. He calls for real love – which requires real action. “They will know we are Christians by our love…” “as if God might be made angry & insecure by an archeological dig, a scientific discovery, an ancient manuscript, a Christ-like atheist, or a good film about homosexual cowboys.” No, those are welcome. My faith can handle the truth, whatever discoveries are made. The more that are made, however, they just tend to prove the Bible right. Scientific principles being accurately discussed thousands of years before they are discovered, names and landmarks being talked about that aren’t found till the 1900s, etc. However, it doesn’t matter how “Christ-like” an atheist is, he is still separated from God. ALL have sinned and fall short, regardless of how “good” they may seem to be. We have salvation through Christ and Christ alone. I’ll even step out on a limb in disagreement with many in Christian and non-Christian circles that saying a “good film about homosexual cowboys” shows that the author has accepted actions God has deemed “abominable” as acceptable. But if he’s not sure that God is there, has any power in our lives, or has laid down rules for us to live by, then what’s it matter if the bestselling book ever says that it’s wrong? So what? “if we think we have ourselves from anything that might call it into question-as if God is counting on us to keep ourselves stupid, closed off to the complexity of the world we're in-I'd like to argue that we don't have faith in God at all. we have faith in our own faith rather than the God who transcends it, faith in a faith that will somehow save us. not faith in God, but faith in a false god of our own conceptions, a god too afraid to entertain a question or a doubt.” This is a good point. Many who call themselves Christians have absolutely no idea as to the basic tenets of the faith they try to cover themselves with without really understanding what it’s about or how dramatically it can affect their life. We are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but that doesn’t mean that we save ourselves, but that we are supposed to be able to back up what we believe. Regardless of what you believe, can you? Our own “holy book” tells us to be able to back up what we believe, but the simple road is to just go with the flow. Tell that to persecuted Christians around the world who give up their lives for this faith that so many don’t even care to understand why they claim it. Think China, North Korea, and any Islamic country. Why do these people believe? Why are they willing to go to prison and face death for something that has nothing to offer? But the difference between that and religions that focus on conversion or death is that Christianity is about the love God has for us. to hold true to the truth, amid our doubts, can never exactly be a point of pride, because being true is never a done deal of a mission accomplished. being true (or trying to be true) is an occasion for keeping a vigil, striving towards vigilance when to comes to our own prone-to-lying tongues, paying heed & paying attention to-it's out there- the truth. Truth can stand on its own; it’s us who cave in to pressure and doubt. w.h. auden puts the matter most modestly: "christianity is a way, not a state, and a christian is never something one is, only something one can pray to become." I don’t claim to have the literary knowledge or breadth to be able to debate with a very influential writer like Auden, but Romans 10:9-10 says “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” That sounds to me that I can be pretty confident that I can become a Christian (if you believe the Bible…. I do.). (insert soapbox) Some of the church’s responsibility is to take care of the poor, hungry, orphaned, and widowed, etc. When “Christians” only bear that name as a cloak rather than actually living a life for Christ, why would anybody have any interest in actually knowing the Christ we claim to serve? We should be known for our love, not for our protests/picketing. The abortion industry is a shining example of this. If we care so much about stopping abortion, why aren’t we working harder to develop viable alternatives for those in need? Why aren’t churches stepping up to help these (mostly) young girls? Because that requires the love of Christ, it takes sacrifice, and it’s hard……. What meaning will Christ have in your life TODAY?
JF |
