Not The Religious Type

Fatherlessness and John Lennon, Hugh Hefner, Eminem and Others

Evan Nehring, a frequent commenter on this blog, let me know about this fascinating book review in New York Magazine.

The reviewer, Sam Anderson, talks about reading a stack of disparate biographies and starting to draw parallels from them, focusing on biographies of, of all people, Arthur Rimbaud, Hugh Hefner, Emily Post, John Lennon and Eminem. Evan commented that it makes for an interesting portrait of what we call Stage 3 on this blog (see the note on "Stage 4 faith" for background). It most directly comments on the cost of fatherlessness. Here are two paragraphs that particularly grabbed me.

Illustration by Gluekit, Getty Images (Rimbaud); Bettmann Corbis (Post); Kevin Mazur/WireImage (Eminem); Friedhelm V. Estorff/K & K Center of Beat/Retna (Lennon); Patrick McMullan (Hefner))

The pop-psychological common denominator in these five lives seems to be an absent father. (As Eminem puts it, with his signature grace: "It takes a real special kind of asshole to abandon a kid.") Rimbaud's father walked out on his family when Arthur was 6, leaving the boy all alone to systematically outrage his unsmiling, conservative mother… Emily Post's father, a seminal architect during New York's early skyscraper boom, worked such late hours he often slept over at gentlemen's clubs—Emily idolized him from a distance while spending mundane hours with her mother. Hefner's father was a workaholic bookkeeper… Lennon's dad was a luckless merchant seaman who disappeared for long stretches, leaving the boy to bounce between relatives; in probably the most tragic scene in this entire bio-pile, 5-year-old John's parents actually forced him to choose between them. He picked his father, then ran crying after his mother when she turned to go.

All five of these figures warmed their hands around a common fire: the public performance of morality. Fatherlessness seems to have frozen them in a kind of permanent adolescence. They answered adult questions (How should one behave?) prematurely and exaggeratedly, then stubbornly clung to those answers for life. Their careers were built entirely on bad manners—whether excoriating them, glorifying them, or reveling in them. They sacrificed their lives to oversize visions of righteous living. And while they all have their own special failures and triumphs—that's what makes them fit for biography—the saddest figures, to me, for precisely opposite reasons, are Rimbaud and Hefner. The French poet burned through his world-stomping revolutionary phase in less time than it takes most people to finish college. By 19, he was facing a whole second lifetime of pure sad, unheroic frustration: He wound up in Africa, trying unsuccessfully to get rich, and died of very painful cancer at 37. Hefner, on the other hand, still clings to his adolescence. At 82, he brags of being a "babe magnet" and collects young platinum-blonde "girlfriends."

I don't have any deep insight here (except to wish that Sam Anderson had pulled off a whole book out of this material, rather than just a mere review), but it makes me wonder if one of the benefits of the kind of faith we talk about here is some kind of spiritual healing of our own father wounds. Does it require God healing this part of us to be able to walk into the kind of uncertain adventure of faith we have in mind here? Without that healing, are we doomed either to holding onto conventional norms… or to sneering at people who hold onto conventional norms? Have you experienced this?

Thanks everyone!

Many of you just joined me for this online chat at Abunga.com, and I totally appreciate it.

It was a mildly nerve-wracking experience, not least because my building had a power outage mid-chat. But we recovered and had a fun conversation. It was a little technical (hard to avoid those Stage 2/ Stage 4 conversation starters) and a little Christian (chatting about things like sharing faith with atheist friends)… but, hey, that might accurately reflect the state of where this conversation is, so fair enough.

We had good participation. There were maybe 25 questions left unanswered by the end, and the number of folks online matched those last week online with William P. Young, author of The Shack, so that seems like a good thing.

All to say, thanks so much to those of you who took part. Transcripts of the chat will be posted tomorrow, I'm told, at www.abunga.com.

Amy Grant and You

And who better to comment on Martin Buber than Amy Grant? Who, I ask you?

So let's say, as our commenters from yesterday's post seem to agree, we want to be in actual relationships with people and with God. That we'd prefer not interacting with people or God as "its"—as objects to be acted upon—but as people with whom we have real and helpful and connection-producing give and take. What does that, as some of you rightly asked, have to do with things like, say, salvation? We do, after all, have a mission from God (viz., to point to obvious passages, Matthew 28 and the so-called Great Commission).

Two comments come to mind:

Thanks Peter for your question about how this might apply to children. I'm still a fan of how the four stages (note the tab, above, on 'Stage 4 faith' if this is jargon to you) help here. Kids are either in Stage 1 or 2. They're absolutely helped, in my experience, by something like praying a prayer of salvation, as is anyone in those stages. My wife, Grace, is a big proponent of continually offering kids chances to pray in just that way. She herself found a lasting and meaningful connection with God at age 5 in just that way.

But this sort of clear-cut picture of how to help people spiritually is what seems to separate us from people as we get older. Now, viz. Buber (I'm loving "viz." today), this forces us to see most of humanity as an object to be manipulated and that, to some people, gets a little tiresome as the years of this sort of relating pile up. 

Here's where I think back to the early Amy Grant, when she came across as this open-hearted, very Christian teenager singing love songs to God. Her song "In a Little While" (about wanting to get to heaven) answers the profound question of what the point of living is in a very unguarded way: "We're just here to learn to love Him." Let's run with Amy's thought for a moment. If learning to love God is my daily task, what if I can rope all humanity into that task with me? Does this help us in our Buber conversation? What if every interaction I ever have, with people of faith or with people of no faith, has the prospect of them helping me and me helping them on just this point? What if my sensors can always be up all the time for this?

Some folks have asked me if, given this sort of point of view, that means I never "witness" to non-churchgoing folks. I think it's far the reverse. I have very few conversations with anyone where faith doesn't find its way in. It's just too central to what I'm interested in, and I'm too lame at normal, functional, adult chit chat to go far without broaching what I'm most interested in—as it were, "learning to love Him." But does it help us at all to regard each of those interactions both as a learning opportunity and a sharing opportunity?

Martin Buber and You

I was reminded this weekend of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber's most famous point, from his book I and Thou.  Buber, like pretty much everyone, is way too deep for me.  But if I'm understanding him, among his concerns was our powerful temptation to reduce all relationships to what he calls "I/it" relationships.  We aren't in real give and take in those relationships.  They're objects to us.  It takes an actual transaction with God to empower us to really relate, with people or with God.

In a few posts last week, we were bandying around the question of how we might talk about faith with folks outside our faith traditions and Buber seems relevant here.  It can often seem hard in these conversations to feel any objective apart from persuading our conversation partners to adopt our point of view--which, on the one hand, seems fair enough if we're persuaded that we have something so valuable to offer. 

But the longstanding problem many people report on this point goes right back to Buber.  Suddenly all such relationships are "I/it."  WE have something THEY need.  Might they have something WE need?  Hard to picture in any meaningful way.  We're talking about a connection with the God of the universe.  They're offering us... what?... a recipe they've liked recently?  In any meaningful way, we're stuck with I/it relationships.

Many of you have heard this theory of centered-set faith that we sometimes chat about.  It's trying to encourage us to see faith less as something we and others are either in or out of and more as something we're either orienting ourselves towards or not.  In this view, something is at the center of everything--Jesus, for the purposes of our conversation here.  Whether we're near to or far from this center, all of us have the same task of orienting ourselves on a trajectory towards this center.  We have an "arrow" that's pointed somewhere, and we're trying to help folks (and be helped) to point our arrow Jesus's way.

A friend recently challenged me on this view in a provocative way.  He argued that we're all complex people with lots of arrows, not just one.  So what if, say, he's talking with an atheist friend, and his atheist friend, oh, convinces him to take the environment more seriously--start recycling, maybe compost, change the light bulbs in his house, whatever.  And what if, just for argument's sake, that's actually something Jesus is really into.  In this scenario, my friend's atheist friend has actually helped turn one of my friend's arrows towards Jesus.  The believer is helped become more like Jesus by the non-believer.

This doesn't, of course, address big questions about things like salvation.  And it's just a small example of one moment in a relationship.  But I wonder if it does take us closer to Buber's dream of I/thou relationships.  Can people of faith actually be in real, give-and-take relationships with all people, or are they destined to be one way?

Invitation to Chat with Me via Abunga.com

We'll get back to our usual meaty content next week, but I wanted to alert you to something you might enjoy.

I'm doing an online chat next Wednesday from 2 to 3, EST. It's with this Amazon.com alternative called Abunga.com (note the button on this on the left side of this page). They're a "family friendly" online book site and they promote authors in this chat each week. And there are some big names. Last week it was William P. Young, who wrote the 2-million-selling The Shack (and who, God bless him, has read my book and liked it enough to give me a call). I'm replacing Kay Warren (Rick Warren's wife) this upcoming Wednesday, who had to postpone until the new year. In any case, good company!

In fact, it's SUCH good company that I'm a little afraid no one will actually come to MY chat. So—friends! Fellow Stage 4-ers!—won't you join me next Wednesday from 2 to 3? You can, if you want, submit questions in advance (clicking the link over to the left will get you to the place where you can do that). We'll be talking about my journey from atheism, but also about this Stage 4 stuff.

Thus endeth my public service announcement (…and, just to check in, you ARE going to join me, right?). Back to the meaty stuff next week, and here's to the bestest weekend ever for you.

Yet Again, I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About

Okay, you all are forcing me to dig down to what I really say—or believe. No more of this shallow chatter I usually throw out there.

So it hits me that our conversation about "Jesus rather than Christianity" actually doesn't quite capture anything I'd ever say. Come to think of it, I wonder if I've ever brought up Jesus in (at least the start of) an opening conversation about faith. (I've certainly never brought up Christianity either, but that seems like a given here.)

I do find myself telling stories that have been encouraging to me and, if things are going well, I'll bring up the role it seems to me that God has played in those things, and what's my conversation-partner's take on God? If the conversation goes swimmingly, we might get to my take on Jesus. All to say, maybe, for all our conversation, the "Jesus rather than Christianity" topic is, now that I think of it, almost entirely moot for me in any conversation with a non-churchgoer. (And, maybe of note: our church advertises a bit. Some years back, we ran a campaign with the tagline: "Is Jesus Good?" It was a fun campaign. We got parodied on the cover of a local magazine [who stole our artwork for a story they called, satirically, "Is Bush good?"]. And it had pretty much the worst response to anything we've ever tried. I can't explain why, but my guess is that, in our neck of the woods, using "Jesus" in conversation is regarded as fundamentalist.)

So I suppose the only real usefulness that "Jesus rather than Christianity" has offered me is that it's freed me up from feeling honor-bound to giving too much thought to defending Christendom to anyone, or even feeling much need to reconcile myself to Christendom. Perhaps that goes back to the point I make in my book about religion often having such a large overlap with culture. Given that my culture was secular rather than Christian, this seems to free me from needing to become "Christian"—to, say, see America as a Christian nation that needs to return to its Christian roots, or to feel loyalty-bound to prefer Christian music or fiction. My interest is Jesus, not Christendom. I've got nothing against Christendom, from this perspective. It's just not my culture.

And this seems to me to in no way foster division among different types of Christians. As per my paragraph above, far from it. It does, granted, relativize all types of Christians ("You grew up Catholic? Tell me about that.") rather than to argue for one type over/against another.

Knowing you all as I do, I'm sure I don't even need to say: And what do you think?

How Much of Faith is a Tactic?

Brian O. had his usual super-thoughtful response to my last post, regarding the fun and challenging perspectives on faith from Carl Medearis.

Carl's idea of being a fan of Jesus rather than of Christianity has had a huge impact on my life. So, I'm already sold.

However, I find it's not always an easy sell to my friends, particularly those who are not themselves part of a spiritual community. This is the comment which comes up: "It seems like what you are doing by drawing a Jesus vs. Christianity distinction is removing parts of your religion which you dislike and keeping parts that you do like. This selectivity is something which all religious people engage in, either to make their faith more attractive to others or more pleasant for themselves. Making distinctions of Jesus vs. Christianity or Spirituality vs. Religion is just a sophisticated way of indulging in this normal religious behavior."

I do have a few responses, but I'm not sure they are completely satisfactory. For instance, if I say that the only thing I care about is for people to interact with the real Jesus, I do seem to have some guidelines for what I think this should look like. These are drawn largely from the Bible, but then I notice that the Biblical sampling is selective. I have reasons to be selective...but it is not completely easy to claim Not Guilty to my friends' comment above.

I wonder what you think about Brian's thoughts?

I think my starting point to his friends' objections would be along the lines of, "Bummer! Oh well, who are you pulling for in the World Series?"

My experience has been that I have a horrible track record at persuading anyone about anything, much less about something as important as an approach to faith. The folks with whom I have had productive conversations weren't all that hostile up front. We end up in a great conversation about life that turns to faith. I throw in my two cents. They resonate and throw in their two cents. And then we're off to the races.

In that sense, I take Carl's "Jesus not Christianity" approach primarily as a gift to me, rather than as a conversational gambit (a point that Brian also makes in his first paragraph). It seems to free me from a kind of loyalty to a vast and conflicting body of thought and into a kind of loyalty to a person. That, of course, can be glib. We all, by definition, believe something about God which puts us into a camp, however much we'd like to pull ourselves out of one.

But at least as an approach, I'm helped by doing my best to keep my eye on that ball. Jesus claims not only to be a person, but to be a living person. Somehow keeping my focus directed that way has proven to be a real encouragement to me. If it can help any of my skeptical friends, that's awesome.

Thoughts?

Muslims, Christians and Jesus

Can I plug a book to you all?

Carl Medearis has been one of our closest philosophical partners over the year, and his take on Jesus rather than Christianity has been really helpful in clarifying what we're up to.  Those of you at the Center City Summit heard him, and he's one of the most popular speakers we ever bring in.

Carl has, happily, finally gotten some of his thoughts out there in book form, focusing on how his approach came into play as he lived in Beirut for a dozen years. Muslims, Christians and Jesus: Gaining Understanding and Building Relationships will both give you a taste of that approach and give you more insight about Islam, the Muslim world, and a Jesus-based approach to both than, it seems to me, you'll find anywhere else.  If I can be so direct, you should be familiar with Carl and with his book.  (The hyperlink at Carl's name, above, will take you to his website.)

If any of you are familiar with Carl, his book, or his thoughts, I'd love your comments on any of the above.

Mysticism at a Distance

Always looking to serve you better, I'm currently enjoying a 30+ session class on Mysticism in the Western Tradition (meaning among Jews, Christians and Muslims). 

My hope has been to better understand the many ways people have tried to directly encounter God which, as you'll know if you've followed this blog, is a major concern of many of us.

Only nine sessions in, here's been my biggest surprise so far: Most mysticism, even among the most famous practitioners, does not get you an encounter with God.  It might get you a profoundly spiritual experience or a deep insight.  But God is still too far distant.

So I've learned a tiny bit about Kabbalah and about how popular certain numbering systems have been (much like this bestseller of a few years back called The Bible Code in which the Bible was interpreted not on the basis of what its authors were trying to say but by way of esoteric numbering systems which treated the words of the Bible as a code which needed to be broken).  I've learned about the idea of seven heavens.  (Coming from the use of the plural "heavens" in passages like "the heavens display your handiwork.")  Each heaven, evidently, takes 500 years to achieve, so it will be 3,500 years of effort before you get to the one closest to God.

If nothing else, this teaches me that people will work very hard to get even a small sense of closeness to God.  What are you hoping for on those lines?  Do you have a sense that there's a greater connection to God out there than you've yet experienced?  Do you think about that very often?  What about the mystical life appeals to you?

It's Crucial! In a Tiny-Part-of-a-Bigger-Picture Kind of Way.

Watching the vice presidential debate with Grace, I asked her for any thoughts she had about what either candidate had to say. 

She shook her head and said, "I don't know if I can comment.  Maybe I'm just so blinded by my preferences at this point that everything the opposition candidate said struck me as ridiculous and everything my candidate said struck me as reasonable.  I've lost any objectivity or perspective."  While I'd been prepared to offer a long list of dazzling observations about what I'd seen, Grace had trumped me, because all of my observations fit into her grid.

I appreciate all of your comments about the "Idolatry on the Campaign Trail" post.  With many of you, it does seem to me that what I'm calling idolatry has come mostly from one candidate.  Yet I'm not sold that I have it in me to see it even were my candidate to do similar things.  I'm too blinded. 

And can I propose that the kind of faith we're pitching here would regard the electoral process as just a small part of a much bigger picture?  It's not that it's not important--again, I'm as into this election as anyone.  It's just that there's a kind of complexity and mystery and vastness to what will really help our world move forward that I can fear that a myopic fixation on things like this election, or even this economy, can take over our field of view to the point that you and I quit throwing ourselves into what, in fact, really iS on-topic. 

My plan at the moment is to drop the election conversation at least for the moment with the next post in the hope of talking a bit more about that complex, mysterious and vast thing that really is the bottom line.

But, before we go there, can I ask how you pull off the tension of having a "horse in this race" politically while still keeping focus on the larger world?

Idolatry on the Campaign Trail

A big sin in the Old Testament is called "idolatry."  It seems, largely, to mean literally worshiping the statues of rival gods.  But it also gets tied into trusting powerful, enemy nations instead of trusting God. 

Early in my pilgrimage with God, my spiritual teachers were very into this view of the world.  Our goal was to move beyond idolatry which, since we were college students, now is seeming to me to be equated to "wanting to do well in college."  "Academic idolatry" was the enemy; giving time to the activities and interests of the campus Christian group was the way to go.

I'm not making any particular comment on this.  It was powerful at the time.  It's just that idolatry as a concept is beginning to fray for me.  I've heard about "relational idolatry" (wanting a happy, long-term romantic relationship), "work idolatry" (wanting to succeed at one's job), "sports idolatry" (living and dying with the success of the local team) and others.  It's all getting a little hard to get my fingers around.

Until, happily, our current political campaigns have helped me, God bless them.  So there was the story in yesterday's papers about the candidate whose rallies were so filling his supporters with vitriol against his adversary that the secret service asked the candidate to tone it down, since it was getting hard to adequately address the spike in death threats against the adversary.  (Evidently chants of "Kill (the adversary)!" were increasingly common at the candidate's rallies.)  (The candidate, to his credit, does seem to be trying to calm things down at his rallies.  And one reason I'm not naming the candidate--though I do include a link, so that's a feeble gesture at best--is because I'm by no means claiming this sort of thing only happens on one side.)

A conservative Christian magazine has jumped right in in a similar vein, headlining their presidential endorsement thusly: "Life as We Know It Will End if xxx is Elected." 

My confusion on idolatry is at least temporarily slipping away.  This, unless I'm missing something, is idolatry. 

Most of my friends, like me, very much do feel the stakes of this election.  People trying to whip me into a fervor over the last two elections presented them each as "the most significant election of our lifetime."  That seemed like hyperbole to me in each case... but I'm pretty much on board with that thought now.  Most of us feel that the stakes with the world economic meltdown and the geopolitical landscape are about as grave as you could imagine.  And we have the starkness of the consequences of the current administration to reflect upon (whether or not Al Gore would have been a good president is clearly debatable... but it does seem clear that he would have been a different president).  So I'm on board.  There are big stakes.

But it seems to me that the God of the Bible wants to present himself as more powerful even than the U.S. president, as able to bring good from bad.  Psalm 146:3 seems pretty direct on this point ("Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.")

And in the end, I can wonder if the current political idolatry sheds light on idolatry in general.  Is idolatry the conviction that the only way our lives can work out well is if "x" happens?  If "x" happens, great, but if NOT... well, then we've entered the world of the unthinkable.  "X" HAS to happen!  We HAVE to succeed at that job, HAVE to win that guy/ girl, HAVE to get those A grades or... well, we just won't go into what "or" might mean.

I do think certain approaches to faith are more likely than others to encourage this sort of idolatry, at least in the political realm.  Thoughts on any of this?

Faith and Economic Uncertainty

As the Dow fell another 500+ points earlier this week, despite the various government maneuvers to stop the slide, I found myself wondering how faith as we're talking about it addresses things like potentially severe economic downturns.

And the best I could come up with was that it all boils down, as so many things do, to the conversational relationship with God that we spend so much time discussing.  Does God have any encouragement for you and me as we read the newspapers each day or consider our 401(k) or kids' college funds? 

In my case, you'll be happy, I'm sure, to know, he has.  Some years back when Grace and I were living well below the poverty line and were hoping to start a family but unsure how that could be possible financially, I took a long walk to pray about it.  God seemed to chill me out on my financial worries, saying something like, "Dave, if you just do the simple things the Bible discusses about money, I'll always give you all the money you need.  And, if your church does the same, I'll give it all the money it needs too."

I went home that day armed only with that encouragement.  We were pregnant--and nervous--within the month.  About a month after that, we had a substantial surprise windfall.  And we--and our church--have been well-provided for since, against some substantive odds (to my mind), if with the occasional this-could-get-tense moment.

As the Dow dropped 750 points last week, I went back to God on a similar note.  Should I be concerned?  And my sense was that God was not about to tell me what to think about the country's short-term economic future.  But as to the immediate question of would my family and our church get through this, God seemed to call me back to that prayer time those many years back.  "Have I let you down on what I promised then?" he seemed to ask.  And clearly, no, he hadn't.  Things had gone astoundingly well since then.  "Well then, why don't we assume the deal's still in place."  And, what do you know, that comforted me and I haven't thought about it since.

All to say, that's been my approach.  But have you faced any economic anxieties in this latest downturn?  How have you addressed them?  How has your faith factored into whatever you've done?  Does the Stage 4 distinction help you at all?

Remember Rule #6!

This past weekend I was a part of a retreat led by a local nun who's a spiritual director.

Among the many delightful aspects of the weekend was her showing us a short documentary called Leadership: An Art of Possiblity by Katalina Groh, which profiles Boston Philharmonic Conductor Benjamin Zander and his life coach wife, Rosamund. (As delightful as the DVD was, you're not going to buy it.  They sell it for just under a thousand dollars per, which one would think limits their market.)  Zander comes across as someone who'd fit into a "my most inspirational teacher" feature in Reader's Digest, or who would have a Mr. Holland's Opus-like movie made about him.  He's phenomenally active and encouraging and regards his work as drawing the best out of everyone he teaches--as opposed to dominating them or demanding things of them.  He starts out some of his classes by giving everyone an A up front so, with that out of the way, they can focus on realizing what's possible for them.  And again, to reiterate the word of the day, he's a delight.

He tells one story-joke that has stuck with me along the lines of things we discuss.  At an international meeting, Britain's prime minister is chatting with another leader.  Another world leader rushes into the room in a lather about a crisis.  The prime minister interrupts by forcefully saying, "Remember Rule #6!"  The distraught leader immediately calms down, thanks him, and leaves.  As the prime minister continues his conversation, it happens again, with the same result, and then a third time.  Finally his guest comments on this with incredulity.  "These people all came in with major crises and they were completey distraught.  And all you said was, 'Remember Rule #6' and that immediately calmed them down.  What on earth IS Rule #6?"  The prime minster replied, "Rule #6 is: Don't take yourself so damned seriously!"  Pondering that, his companion asked, "And what are Rules 1 through 5?"  The prime minister replied, "There are no rules 1 through 5." 

Zander clearly lives out rule #6--it's central to the joyfulness and playfulness we see of his method.  And it struck me how contrary that is to so much of faith.  Calvinism, just to pick on one stream, tends towards the stern.  Aren't we supposed, say, to take our sin seriously?  Or what about hard questions about our future?   And yet I can wonder if there's a kind of faith we're encouraged to pursue which is quite robust and real, and yet which is utterly and consistently captivated by Rule #6.  What do you think?

Being impossible to Argue With

A friend passed onto me this article from Lisa Miller's "Belief Watch" feature in Newsweek. I've edited it down just a skosh, but the whole article is at the link, above.

Arguing Against the Atheists

Hitchens was cruising for a fight. Over and over, the priest expressed his sympathy and agreement.

Sometimes I argue in my mind against the new generation of professional atheists, and the arguments go something like this. First, if 90-odd percent of Americans say they believe in God, it's unhelpful to dismiss them as silly. Second, when they check that "believe in God" box, a great many people are not talking about the God the atheists rail against... It is impossible to measure what people do mean when they talk about God—to tease their individual experiences of transcendence apart from what culture and catechism teaches them... The problem with religion is not belief itself, which even in the most orthodox believers is inconsistent, but the (violent or oppressive) enforcing of one truth over another...

It struck me the other day, while watching Hitchens attempt to eviscerate yet another believer at a Templeton Foundation luncheon (moderated, in part, by NEWSWEEK), that the battle between faith and reason can make enemies out of friends.

Submitting faith to proof is absurd. Reason defines one kind of reality (what we know); faith defines another (what we don't know). Reasonable believers can live with both at once. Watching representatives of the two camps duke it out has become an intellectual blood sport with no winner. Hitchens's latest opponent was Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, a Roman Catholic priest and physicist who spoke movingly of the importance of both science and faith in his life and declined to say much beyond that. "Faith," he said, "is like trying to explain to your uncomprehending family why you have fallen in love with so-and-so. They have all the arguments, and you can understand what they're saying, but you can't help it, you're in love." Hitchens, cruising for a fight, evoked barbaric religious practices, evil done in the name of God, immorality disguised as theology. Over and over, the priest expressed his sympathy and agreement. He reminded me a little bit of Ferdinand the bull, the children's book character who refuses to gore the matador, in spite of all provocation. Albacete's God is not the one Hitchens objects to, and that, he seemed to say, is that.

Back to Dave:

This, to me, seems absolutely on-topic of our conversation here.  Have you seen this play out in your neck of the woods?  How do you feel about the merits of, as Francis of Assisi talked about, being impossible to argue with?

When Do Stage 4 People Take Stands?

Great thoughts, those of you who responded to Friday's post and could get past the Olympic footage of me that Dan inexplicably found (through bribing NBC executives, I theorize).

We talked there about how what we're calling Stage 4 doesn't quickly crusade, but shoots for dialogue or nuance.  And yet surely there's a place for crusading?  After all, Jesus crusaded just a little bit.  But how can we sort out good crusading from bad crusading?

I was struck by what many of you said, but let's take a moment to look at what David Borycz said:

I don't know that I can make a cogent argument for where each approach is most appropriate, but I definitely think there is a place for taking a stand in stage 4. Jesus didn't seem to have a problem rebuking the pharisees or throwing the money-lenders from the temple, and I can definitely see the necessity in stage 4 for taking a stand within our churches against people mistreating others in the name of God.

I wonder if David is circling something important.  Jesus took a stand against the Pharisees and the money lenders.  We don't, unless I'm forgetting something, hear that Jesus took a stand against the Romans, the secular power of the day who clearly did lots of bad stuff.  Should we infer anything from that?

Might we say that Jesus "crusaded" against people who claimed to speak for God, but spoke a message that directly excluded people from experiencing God?  (The moneychangers famously took over "the court of the Gentiles" in the temple.  This was the place where space was made for non-Jews to worship God in the temple, and now it was appropriated for a religious, money-making purpose.  The Pharisees, Jesus tells us, put onerous rules on peoples' backs like yokes, which directed them more towards hell than heaven.) 

On this thinking, we'd be well-directed to take stands against religious people who, as we see it, exclude people from the hope of experiencing God.  But perhaps we'd be less well-directed to crusade against the evils of a secular society.  Thoughts?

Now, just to note, I'm hoping your thoughts will tell me what to make of Bonhoeffer (executed for trying to kill Hitler, despite his earlier, powerful writings about the Christian need for absolute pacifism) and Martin Luther King Jr.  Do they fit this way of looking at things?

Mysticism and "The High-Income Wage Slave"

On the endorsement of a friend, I recently read Tim Ferris' The 4-Hour Workweek.  I liked it fine.  Ferris likes to shock us, and that's both fun and maybe just a little tedious after awhile.  (When I told my friend I'd read it, he was horrified.  "You did?!  But the book's completely idolatrous and wounded!"  Which it is.  Forget I mentioned it to you.)

But one concept he starts with stuck with me so profoundly that I may have taken it a step or two beyond where Ferris himself went with it.  He argues that so-called "good" colleges have one basic product to churn out: what Ferris calls "high-income wage slaves."  If you go to a good college, your hope customarily is that doing well there will set you for life.  You'll get into some interesting profession, they'll pay you really good money for someone just leaving college, and there's great potential to earn REALLY good money if you stick with it.  The only downside is that those sorts of jobs require pretty much your whole life--fifty, sixty hours a week.  But you'll make great money, and someday--way, way down the road--you'll retire and get to put all that money to use doing what you really want to do.

Of course, by then you might no longer even want to do whatever it is that you want to do now.  And if you're the driving type of personality that lasts until retirement in that sort of job, you may well be utterly bored with and restless towards retirement within a week of trying it.

So it's worth asking up front--is this where I want my life to go?  (And this, of course, is BEST-case scenario.  For many of us, all we can respond is, "Would ONLY that I could be a high-income wage slave!") 

This scenario sums up what led me to consider faith--and then Jesus--at all.  Within two months of showing up at my "good" university, the absurdity of it all struck me.  On the one hand, I was having some initial academic problems, so perhaps that would derail my wage slave hopes.  But, even if those problems didn't derail anything, where was all this headed?  I'd probably be a lawyer, because it was one of the few professions that was even thinkable for me.  If I kept my grades up and did well in law school, I could make very good money very young.  The only downside: I had no interest in being a lawyer, and I was well-aware that it would require my whole life.  But, hey, someday I could probably retire with some good cash on hand!

My theory at the moment is that the only way out of the high-income wage slave life is a mystical life, is what we've called here a Stage 4 life.  The only way into something richer and better than this bondage is by way of a living guide into a different sort of world altogether.  But this will always feel risky and always court rejection and disapproval from family members and others.  By definition, they can't have categories for people who follow Jesus in ways that threaten the high-income wage slave world.  What other world IS there?  A LOW-income wage slave world?  Following the living Jesus under these terms will always lead us into a kind of tension that's very hard to resolve.

But it does seem, to me, to be the only way out of the kind of slavery that Ferris talks about, for all its risks.  What do you think?