“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott
“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott
This post will end the True and Real series. I have wandered the landscape a bit but hopefully the discussion has raised an awareness of the possibility of faith that is true but not real.
My premise being that secularism’s disenchantment and rejection of transcendence, creates faith that is a mirage, true but not real. The essence of disenchantment is the absence of transcendence, most apparent in the absence of God. Without the divine, life loses its meaning and purpose. The only remaining option for meaning and purpose in a secular age comes from within, each individual becomes their own god. As transcendence is diminished, my religion becomes a commodity in a quest for meaning and purpose.
I am increasingly convinced the current upheaval in evangelical Christianity is directly related to faith that is nothing more than a mirage. Faced with a pandemic and other realities, our faith has been tested and found wanting. Timothy Keller gives credence to this proposition in his recent Atlantic article entitled “Growing Faith in the Face of Death”. Excerpts below reflect his struggle with his belief in the face of death. His term is abstraction, an apt synonym for mirage.
…our beliefs about God and an afterlife, if we have them, are often abstractions…. If we don’t accept the reality of death, we don’t need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents. A feigned battle in a play or a movie requires only stage props. But as death, the last enemy, became real to my heart, I realized that my beliefs would have to become just as real to my heart, or I wouldn’t be able to get through the day. Theoretical ideas about God’s love and the future resurrection had to become life-gripping truths, or be discarded as useless.
When I got my cancer diagnosis, I had to look not only at my professed beliefs, which align with historical Protestant orthodoxy, but also at my actual understanding of God. Had it been shaped by my culture? Had I been slipping unconsciously into the supposition that God lived for me rather than I for him, that life should go well for me, that I knew better than God does how things should go? The answer was yes—to some degree.
American philosopher Jonathan Edwards argued, it is one thing to believe with certainty that honey is sweet, perhaps through the universal testimony of trusted people, but it is another to actually taste the sweetness of honey. The sense of the honey’s sweetness on the tongue brings a fuller knowledge of honey than any rational deduction. In the same way, it is one thing to believe in a God who has attributes such as love, power, and wisdom; it is another to sense the reality of that God in your heart.
Timothy Keller
It is comforting that I, like Keller, struggle “to bridge the gap between an abstract belief and one that touches the imagination”. The antidote and ultimate vaccine for secularism is unseen reality. My spiritual quest is to seek and engage unseen reality. To put it in Christian vernacular… “Come to know God.” it is there we find meaning and purpose.
Past Week: New Cases 382,662 Record high: 1,721,973 Jan 3–Jan 9, 2021
New Deaths 8,552 Record high: 23,726 Jan 10–Jan 16, 2021 per John Hopkins
Peter Kuzmic, a noted theologian from Croatia, is believed to have said, “Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is having the courage to dance to it today.” via JD Walt
Criticism firmly believe that institutions and individuals are more responsive to internal critique than external criticism, no matter how thoughtful or eloquent.
Or, to put it another way, while thoughtful external criticism has its uses, at the end of the day, only the church can reform the church, only the right can reform the right, and only the left can reform the left. In fact, in a hyperpolarized time, critique of the right from the left (or the left from the right) often only serves to empower its targets. David French
Mockery When you start mocking instead of persuading, you signal that you now view someone as an enemy to be defeated, rather than a person to be persuaded…the key to all sin against another is to first dehumanize them…then label them…you have to convince yourself that the other no longer possesses the image of God and God wants them gone as well…we’re all getting too good at this… Phoenix Preacher
It is all about winning At this point, at least in the United States, it appears that our cultural meaning has pretty much shrunk down to this: It is all about winning. Then, once we win, it becomes all about consuming. I can discern no other underlying philosophy in the practical order of American life today. Of itself, such a worldview cannot feed the soul very well or very long, much less provide meaning and encouragement, or engender love or community. Richard Rohr
Tribal Despite all the contrary rhetoric, contemporary Americans are not highly individualized: we are tribal, in the extreme. It is the group, however constructed, that gives identity, for the identity that is sought is one that covers us, that hides our vulnerability and gives us the safety of those who agree. A tell-tale sign of this dynamic is found in our culture’s anger. Anger is largely driven by shame and we can affirm our tribal protection only by shouting at the outsider. Everything outside the group threatens to unmask us. To an increasing extent, the group to which we belong is that set of people who share our anger. Fr Stephen Freeman
Proud of America A false narrative popular today states that Republicans are extremely proud of America and don’t see any faults, while Democrats are embarrassed by America and only see faults. Surveys show this is a gross overstatement. A majority of Democrats are still proud to be American, and majorities in both parties say that some things about America make them ashamed. By and large, Democrats and Republicans are proud to be Americans, yet they are not blind to the country’s faults. Allsides Blog. https://www.allsides.com/blog/surveys-show-democrats-not-just-republicans-are-proud-be-american
Love is a paradox It often involves making a clear decision; but at its heart, it is not a matter of mind or willpower but a flow of energy willingly allowed and exchanged, without requiring payment in return. Divine love is, of course, the template and model for such human love, and yet human love is the necessary school for any encounter with divine love. If we’ve never experienced human love—to the point of sacrifice and forgiveness and generosity—it will be very hard for us to access, imagine, or even experience God’s kind of love. Conversely, if we have never let God love us in the deep and subtle ways that God does, we will not know how to love another human in the deepest ways of which we are capable. Richard Rohr
Til death do us part… I have had the pleasure of presiding at many weddings over the years. Three different times, as I prepared the couple to exchange their vows, the groom actually fainted and fell to the ground. But I have never seen the bride faint. To the well-protected and boundaried male ego, there are few greater threats than the words “till death do us part.” Richard Rohr
Lean in to painful honesty We’ve all been in that situation where we want to say something that’s important but there’s also a good chance that we’ll upset someone if we say it. There’s that uncomfortable tension inside us as we go back and forth on whether we should say it or not. Create a new rule for yourself: if there’s something uncomfortable that you believe is important to say, just say it. Don’t think about it. Just trust that in the long run, more times than not, you’ll be happy that you said it. In fact, chances are, in the long run, other people will be glad you said it. Mark Manson
Nice Teachers Some new research looks at how friendly teachers were with their students and compared that to the students’ academic performance in later years. What’s important to note here is that the researchers didn’t look at academic performance in the teacher’s class itself because—surprise, surprise—friendly teachers tend to give higher grades for shittier work. Instead, the researchers focused on how the students did the following academic years. Allow me to spoil the pool party and say that, basically, the nicer the teachers, the worse off the students were in the following years. Now, I’m not suggesting that we bring back corporal punishment or hire drill sergeants to teach multiplication tables. But once again, we find that the most important things in life (in this case, being highly educated and understanding a subject) require some unpleasant experiences. Mark Manson
The spirit of the age The spirit of the age declares that if you get the “big” things correct (your political ideology, your complementarian or egalitarian theology) then cruelty and self-righteousness in the pursuit of those goals are either minor flaws (“bad manners”) or outright virtues (after all, didn’t Jesus drive the money-changers from the temple with a whip?) David French
Listening to vinyl …listening to music on vinyl is more like sitting down to a nice relaxed meal and listening to music using a streaming service is like fast food in your car while your driving somewhere you don’t really want to go. Matt Redmond
View from the front porch Enjoying my return to the front porch, some pondering peaked my curiosity. I am greatly encouraged about the pandemic. Vaccines are having a positive effect on infections and deaths and restrictions are being reduced. Hoping to get my second vaccination next week. From my perspective, one of the most positive things that could be done to end the pandemic is to encourage people to be vaccinated. Thinking about that, I am disappointed and curious that churches have been mostly silent about encouraging members to get vaccinated. Churches are anxious to return to normal gatherings, why wouldn’t they push hard for vaccinations? Hmmmm? Just asking for a friend.
LISTEN FOR THE WEEK
Still working on my funeral playlist. Not sure the crowd can be replicated at the funeral but…
It’s been more than a month since my last “What is True and Real?” . This post continues the series. Richard Rohr’s latest post entitled “The Gospel Lens” is the basis for this post. Excerpts from Rohr’s post set a framework for some thoughts on worldview and continued discussion on “What is True and Real?”
The problem is …. Any time someone interjects with “The problem is…” I am immediately reminded “seldom is the presented problem the real problem” . The point being not to reject but always probe deeper. It is with the expectation that you will probe deeper, I say …“the problem is extremism”extreme : something situated at or marking one end or the other of a range
Everybody looks at the world through their own lens, a matrix of culturally inherited qualities, family influences, and other life experiences. This lens, or worldview, truly determines what we bring to every discussion. When Americans identify money as “the bottom line,” they are revealing more about their real worldview than they realize.
Our operative worldview is formed by three images that are inside every one of us. They are not something from outside; they have already taken shape within us. All we can do is become aware of them, which is to awaken them. The three images to be awakened and transformed are our image of self, our image of God, and our image of the world.
We would do well to get in touch with our own operative worldview. It is there anyway, so we might as well know what this highly influential window on reality is. It’s what really motivates us. Our de facto worldview determines what catches our attention and what we don’t notice at all. It’s largely unconscious and yet it drives us to do this and not that. It is surely important to become conscious of such a primary lens or we will never know what we don’t see and why we see other things out of all perspective.
Richard Rohr
Refrains like : “I just don’t know what to believe anymore.” or “I don’t believe anyone.” are clear indications of cognitive dissonance that prevails in our culture. I believe Rohr is correct in his assertion that our worldview “truly determines what we bring to every discussion” The third of Rohr’s three images in us that forms our operative worldview is our image of the world. The other two images … image of self… image of God…will be the subject of later posts. It is …our image of the world..I want to consider.
The refrains cited above and reasonable assessment of our culture testify to a culture defined by mistrust and doubt. Conversations quickly reveal distrust of governments, religious and educational institutions, corporations , media, science, experts of any ilk. Sadly, friends and family are often included as untrustworthy. Much like a friend quipped, decades ago, “I’m pretty sure you and I are the only ones right about this, and I’m not so sure about you.”
It should be no surprise in this secular age many believe there is only one reliable source for what is true and real … themselves. That would be troubling in and of itself, but the conversations I’m having are with Christians. Secularism is polar opposite of Christianity. It appears cultural warriors have been out flanked. Christians, as Rohr suggests, …would do well to get in touch with our own operative worldview“.
Our de facto worldview determines what catches our attention and what we don’t notice at all. It’s largely unconscious and yet it drives us to do this and not that.
We have a de facto worldview shaped by the secular age. I’ve written about that previously. Our operative worldview, primarily expressed in distrust, is being shaped by extremism.
Mistrust, skepticism, of the entities mentioned earlier is not new. Such is the nature of human interactions. We we are all well aware of human potential for evil. It is healthy to be skeptical but unmitigated distrust is toxic.
Distrust sows distrust. It produces the spiritual state that Emile Durkheim called anomie, a feeling of being disconnected from society, a feeling that the whole game is illegitimate, that you are invisible and not valued, a feeling that the only person you can really trust is yourself. Distrustful people try to make themselves invulnerable, armor themselves up in a sour attempt to feel safe. Distrust and spiritual isolation lead people to flee intimacy and try to replace it with stimulation. Distrust, anxiety, and anomie are at the root of the 73 percent increase in depression among Americans aged 18 to 25 from 2007 to 2018, and of the shocking rise in suicide. “When we have no one to trust, our brains can self-destruct,” Ulrich Boser writes in his book on the science of trust, The Leap.
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Our biggest problem is not sin; it’s our broken ability to trust. That’s why we sinned in the first place. We didn’t trust in the goodness of God. The healing we most need is the healing of our broken capacity to trust. That’s the problem behind all of our problems.
J D Walt
The prevailing operative worldview is shaped by by a view of the world seen in the extreme. Facilitated by media and technology we see the world magnified to the extreme, an equivalent of bacterial bed buddies.
Bacterial Bed Buddies
Dead skin cells, sweat, saliva, and more can turn your comfy bed into a petri dish for germs to grow. For instance, lab tests found that swabs from pillowcases unwashed for a week harbored 17,000 times more colonies of bacteria than samples taken from a toilet seat.
Information that is true, when viewed in the extreme is unreal. Unreal in the sense that it does not reflect reality. It is true but not real. Reality is the sum of all parts. Bacterial bed buddies are true but they do not reflect reality. They are one minuscule part of a vast reality, which when understood in proper perspective will produce healthy outcomes… enjoying freshly washed bed linens and sleeping soundly. Magnified out of proportion they produce anxiety, fear and disproportionate responses.
Rohr puts it this way: People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is really real in the world. They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They’ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they’re afraid it is, or what they’re angry about. They’ll see everything through their aggressiveness, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won’t see it at all.
Society’s (our) gross misbehavior, comes from viewing a world distorted by extremism. Ever present media depicts what is true, but seldom real. We are lost in the desert desperately pursuing a mirage, living in panic, fighting bacterial bed buddies.
I have no optimism that secular society will embrace what is true and real. My hope lies in the transcendent reality of the Kingdom of God, where what is true and real dwells.
To that end, my prayer remains, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
I am encouraged regarding the pandemic. We have gotten our first vaccine shot and are anticipating a gradual return to normal activities. Thankfully our return from Florida as been met with good weather. Hello Spring!
The eccentric kingdom of God Richard Beck says, “The eccentric Kingdom doesn’t claim territory over against the world. The eccentric Kingdom doesn’t erect walls to create a gated community… The eccentric Kingdom is the embedded, pilgrim, landless, possessionless, homeless, sojourning, itinerant missionary community called and commissioned to live lives of radical service and availability to the world.”
The church “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.” Martin Luther King, Jr
Pretty My mom and dad both had terrible singing voices, but I would give anything to stand beside them in church and hear them again. We are a culture fixated on “pretty” which is fleeting and plastic and slick and fades with the seasonal fads. We miss what is beautiful because we have been conditioned to “pretty.” And we need to be aware of this and that is why I Love Bob Dylan. His voice is not pretty but man is it beautiful when he sings, I was born here and I’ll die here against my will I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there Matt Redmond
Good things When we turn good things into ultimate things, when we make them our greatest consolations and loves, they will necessarily disappoint us bitterly. “Thou hast made us for thyself,” Augustine said in his most famous sentence, “and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” The 18th-century hymn writer John Newton depicted God as saying to the human soul, “These inward trials I employ from pride and self to set thee free, and break thy schemes of earthly joy that thou would find thine all in me.” Timothy Keller The above quote from Keller is from his article “Growing My Faith in the Face of Death. It is a worthy read.
Hot Take Simon Maloy of The New Republic offers one definition of a hot take as “a piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralizing.” That’s not bad, but I think there are other forms of hot takes, and myriad other forms of takes more broadly. By a “hot take,” I don’t simply mean an unconventional or surprising opinion. Rather, I mean a style of commentary that parasitically feeds off someone else’s argument or work almost instantly. Jonah Goldberg
Dependence We need to embrace our dependence. We are creatures and not gods. And yet we cannot depend upon each other, not fully or completely. We are too needy to be sturdy platforms. Too prone to using each other for our own purposes and projects. Dependence is only safe with God, in the gift that requires no return. Grace is our only path toward sanity and joy. Richard Beck
The Gospel For the gospel is a a two-edged sword. Where it is proclaimed and heard, and not believed, it is a savor of death. It destroys the words by which men seek to make their leap into darkness tolerable. If what it gives in their place is rejected, man has nothing. Western civilization is the civilization which has heard and not believed–and now faces nothingness. Robert Jensen
Idolatry Is Always Polytheism Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. –Pope Francis
Calculating a tragedy – Josef Stalin once observed that, “The death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.” While dark and cynical, Stalin’s observation about human nature is fundamentally true. We attach meaning to narratives. The more people involved, the more abstract and difficult to relate to that narrative becomes, thus inviting doubt, disbelief, and a strange indifference. Stalin would use this quirk of human nature to his advantage during his reign of terror. Today, it just kind of explains why people lose their collective minds over a public shooting or a terrorist attack that kills a few, but their eyes glaze over and hit the back button when confronted with statistics of hundreds of thousands (or millions) killed by an invisible virus. Mark Manson
Emotivism …because there is no shared moral framework in these national conversations, they end up not being conversations at all, with pros and cons evaluated based on a shared moral framework. Rather, they end up as staged shouting matches where we just yell at one another. [Aladastar] MacIntrye called this descent of ethics into shouting in the twenty-first century Western world “emotivism.” He described emotivism as the point you reach when “all morals are nothing but expressions of [personal] preference” or “expressions of attitudes or feelings.” via Timothy Tennant
Conspiracy Mindset The conspiracy theory is often the symptom of an underlying disease—a disease of hate or fear that robs a person of joy. The fierce anger and furious purpose of the conspiracy mindset is a hollow replacement for the peace and faith found not just in truth, but in truth communicated by a loving and empathetic family and friends. David French
Do we care enough about our angry relatives that we’re willing to love them back to spiritual health? David French
View from the Front Porch The front porch is now open. Looking forward to friends and conversation. Drop by any time.
LISTEN FOR THE WEEK
Still working on my funeral playlist. I like this one but I’m not it sure it will make the cut.
the bifurcation of attention “the bifurcation of attention.” It goes like this. The 30-minute sitcom television show is dying. Meanwhile, 45-second Instagram videos and seven seasons of Game of Thrones are thriving. The classic dramatic film is dying. Meanwhile, Youtube videos and the eighteen thousand sequels of the Marvel Universe are thriving. Classic magazines and newspapers are dying. Meanwhile, Twitter and non-fiction books are thriving. Taylor Pearson
There is a vast gulf between believing in good things and doing good things. One is easy. The other is really, really hard. David French
Converted Life The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I “know” God, that is, once I experience God’s love as the love in which all my human experiences are anchored, I can desire only one thing: to be in that love. Henri Nouwen
Persuasion …the necessary posture of persuasion is one of deep humility. We can take little credit for our virtues. We’re often imprisoned by vices we can barely comprehend. True persuasion is much more challenging than winning a debate. Sweeping away a falsehood is of little use unless you can replace the lie with a meaningful and empowering truth. You cannot yank a person from their community and then leave them homeless. Do not pretend we can replace something—no matter how malignant—with nothing. David French
The PhD Suppose a superstar of knowledge moves into your house as a boarder. With three PhDs after his name, he sits at your supper table each evening dispensing information about nuclear physics, cyberspace, and psychoneuroimmunology, giving ultimate answers to every question you ask. He doesn’t lead you through his thinking process, however, or even involve you in it; he simply states the conclusions he has reached. We might find his conclusions interesting and even helpful, but the way he relates to us will not set us free, empower us, or make us feel good about ourselves. His wisdom will not liberate us, it will not invite us to growth and life; indeed, it will in the end make us feel inferior and dependent. That’s exactly how we have treated Jesus. We have treated him like a person with three PhDs coming to tell us his conclusions. Richard Rohr
True joy know that true joy comes from letting God love me the way God wants, whether it is through illness or health, failure or success, poverty or wealth, rejection or praise. It is hard for me to say, “I shall gratefully accept everything, Lord, that pleases you. Let your will be done.” But I know that when I truly believe my Father is pure love, it will become increasingly possible to say these words from the heart. Henri Nowen
Being a truth teller If your role in another person’s life is (as you see it) the “teller of hard truths,” then you’re at an immense disadvantage when contending for a family member’s heart with the people who share the same lie, but also love them, accept them, and give them a sense of shared purpose. You? You just make them feel bad.
“When everyone around us is right, we deserve little credit for conforming. When everyone around us is wrong, we’re also likely to fail.” David French
Epitaph for Modernity: I came, I shopped, I died. Fr Stephen Freeman
Social Media & Polarization Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell’s 2019 article that presented various reasons social media leads to polarization. They identified a Pew study showing Facebook posts with “indignant disagreement” received twice as much engagement as other kinds of posts. They specifically pointed out the dangers of Facebook’s algorithm based on engagement, which can keep any kind of post near the top of the News Feed regardless of its divisiveness or truthfulness.
A Christian culture that puts all the stress on belief, which cannot be seen, and has very little expectation of change in Christ-likeness this side of heaven, will inevitably create lots of Ravi Zachariases. Matt Redmond
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. Mary Oliver
The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away whatever may block our awareness of that which is God in us. . . . Howard Thurman
View from the lanai Most likely this will be my last post before we return to Wilmore. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to enjoy Florida in the winter. This is the 18th year we have spent extended time in Florida during January and February. The severe winter at home this year has made it even more of a blessing. We are scheduled to receive our covid vaccination next Thursday. Hopefully, that will begin a move toward more personal interactions. We will proceed with caution. I am looking forward to getting home and opening the front porch. I expect 2021 to be a year of renewal and adventure.
Listen of the Week I am putting together a playlist for my funeral. (Not expecting it to be needed soon, just thinking ahead.) Of course, the list is headed up with “Sweet Home Alabama” and, at this point, this song is next up:
