On Faith...

Get Religion highlights a beautiful story that ran on the front page of the Washington Post Sunday edition. Read it here.

Existential Christian (and a bit more on rabbits)

The other day I was chatting with a girlfriend about faith, and I was sharing with her that although I am very active in my church, and for many practical appearances may seem to be very 'religious', I still don't identify myself as a 'religious' sort of person. She asked me why, and as we talked it through I realised it's because for me, 'religious' still seems to focus more on the doctrines and rituals involved in faith, rather than a living experience of the reality of God, and trying to live one's life--however imperfectly--in awareness of that reality. Ah, she said. I get it. You're an existential Christian. I laughed. Yes, that's it, I thought, I suppose I'm an existential Christian.

Yesterday I happened to read Greg Boyd's latest blog post where he is beginning to wrestle with some of the apparent contradictions in God's nature as viewed in the Old Testament when contrasted to the nature of God as revealed through Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He starts the process by asking us what is at stake when we start to investigate the infallibility of the Bible. Rather than me going into it, I suggest you pop over to his site and read what he wrote, but I found it profoundly important to me because he touches (much more eloquently) on what I was trying to get at in my discussion with my friend.

I first came into a church about eight years ago in a Pentecostal setting, rather fundamentalist, and it scared the daylights out of me. I was 'born again' but fled after about two months--heartily hoping that no lasting damage had been done.

I rejected everything about that experience and everything about their theology. But oddly enough, something still had changed. I found that I could no longer watch those Easter movies where they show the crucifixion without tearing up. At odd moments, I heard the word 'Jesus' escape my lips, as a prayer rather than a curse. Occasionally, I would stop by a church, and I still thought about God a lot. I didn't pray. I didn't much read the Bible. I didn't seek to alter my life or behavior in any way. It didn't really occur to me that I should (or could). But still, some little seed had been planted that refused to go away. Some little crack of light came shining through into the darkness and I would turn to it when things were at their worst.

Then about three years ago, yet after another series of failed attempts to find happiness/satisfaction/meaning/belonging etc. in the right relationship/career/city etc. I decided to move home for a while. I started hanging out at the church a bit more often, and got involved with a small group of sorts. I was vehement in proclaiming myself as NOT a Christian for the simple reason that I had pretty much come to accept that there probably was a God, although I had no idea what that meant, but I was very very far from accepting that Jesus could be anything other than a prophet or wise man. It simply didn't make sense. At some level, I even found the suggestion that he be otherwise mildly offensive. In particular I found it offensive to my intellect--something I otherwise found to be my most reliable attribute. (How little I knew!) So I continued in my ways, turbulent as they were, seeking God increasingly but never allotting Jesus much thought.

Then one day, as happens, the bottom fell out. Personal circumstances converged, and I found myself on the brink of despair. My heart was losing hope, and while I'm not much one for talking about the devil too much, that little voice we all know and hate was beginning to gain ground. 'You are not worth anything' it stated. 'You will never have the things you hope for'. I protested. I tried to find something with which to counter that, but my heart had been broken and I knew it. That voice went for a touch down. 'That's because your heart is not worth anything'. I almost couldn't take it and in desperation I turned to God and asked, or more likely begged, 'God, isn't my heart worth anything to you?' And this I will never forget. Clear as a bell, I heard the words 'I died for your heart'.

I was appalled. Amazed, but appalled at the same time. Amazed, because in that instant I knew the extent to which I was loved, the extent to which I had been intentionally created to have the heart that I have. But I also knew that the only manifestation of God that could speak those words was Jesus. The words themselves claimed oneness with God, and yet the content of the words implied the incarnation.

Clearly I had to make a choice. I could continue to deny Jesus, but then I would also have to deny the immediate healing I had experienced (and total silencing of that nasty little voice). Or I could embrace the healing, but then I would have to be open to this 'Jesus person', whoever He might really have been.

That's when I started to really read the Bible. I started to seek out my own experience and longing in the Epistles, and found it reflected back at me over and over again. I started to read what Jesus had said, and found in there a truth so profound, so undeniable that I was amazed I hadn't seen it before. And yet that truth challenged so many of my assumptions, my ways of living and perceiving the world, my righteous reactions to the world, that it is also no wonder I had to be on my knees before I would listen to it.

And then I started to learn about this thing called 'theology'. I became, and still am, fascinated by how 'good' theology can point one toward this source of life and transformation (but can not replace it). And I also came to see just how much certain beliefs ('bad' theology) can take one away from this source of life, even though perhaps all the while talking a great deal about it.

I admit, I'm not entirely sure as to why I am sharing this all today. Something about Greg's post caused me to remember parts of my own journey, and to feel the urgency of discussing faith in God as something that is very very real. Of coming to know that God is very very real. So real that it can be frightening. And yet NOT confusing that reality with doctrinal proclamations which I believe were originally meant to have described a reality, but never meant to have replaced it. I am in no way trying to dismiss their value, nor to challenge anybody else's understanding. I just felt moved to share my own meandering journey, perhaps somewhat in gratitude for Greg being willing to 'go there' with the hard questions. I find it much easier to self-identify with a set of beliefs than I do to live in constant awareness of the reality of God. But what if the latter is what we were actually created for? What if so many people are disgusted with 'organized religion' precisely they feel it is about a set of beliefs that they can not subscribe to (intellectually anyway), rather than a reality that can, and will, meet them in their very life experiences if they let it?

When I look back on my own journey, I can see that the pivotal points were all about experience, and not really about belief. Belief helped, supported, buttressed, yes, and of course it could also hinder, but in and of itself, it was not the transforming agent. And yet in our world, in our society, we put more faith in belief, in mental assent, than we do in experience (after all, that is subjective and therefore not reliable in scientific inquiry). But I can not back down from the conviction that faith is, almost above all, transformative. And that the God who created every part of humankind, is the God who is relevant to every part of our lives--not just intellectually, not just individually, not just communally, but our life in it's entirety. And that that is the life He wants to transform into one of abundance.

As often, CS Lewis has already gone there. So I end with this quote of his from his essay 'Man or Rabbit' from God in the Dock: Essays On Theology and Ethics.

"Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear—the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy."

Strong at the Broken Places

During some discussion of the last post, I found myself reminded of a sermon that I read a while back. At the time, I was struggling with a sense of doing what I thought was 'right' vs accepting my own true feelings about a situation. I was struggling with how I was as oppposed to how I ought to be. I was also struggling--more than I knew--with a sense that not even God can take care of some of the issues I really care about, and which really frighten me. At some level, of course, I still struggle with these things. I suspect that is not an uncommon situation!

So I was reminded of this sermon, which not only spoke to my heart but also speaks powerfully to a malaise in society and religion at large. Here is an excerpt:

"We are bored with God, believers sometimes as much or more as non-believers. Why? Because God is not real for us.

Deep down, we know, if God is not real for us, nothing else in heaven or earth will save us.

And sometimes we know how much we long for God.

Yet God is not real for us.

If God is not real for us, we will die in our sins, an earlier generation would have said. How would we say it today?

If God is not real for us, we will die of boredom, of indifference; we will die of trivia. Some of us are trivializing ourselves to death. Some of us may die having lived lives that amounted to little more than working hard for the money to keep ourselves entertained...until we die. We are becoming unreal.

We run the risk of dying no longer capable of being ashamed--ashamed that we don't seen, much of the time, to feel anything excpet our worries about our work and our compulsive need to be entertained. We run the risk of no longer even being ashamed that we don't seem to care enough to change anything, to resist anything, to do anything--but go with the flow, laughingly or silently as circumstances require.

The mercy of God is finally deliverance from shame. But be thankful for stabs of shame along the way. They are not enough--but they are glimmers of light and life.

We long for God, everyone one of us. But God is not real for us.

God is not real for us because we will not go to that 'certain place' in the night where the ladder is raised and a way to the light is opened--and a way from the light to us is opened. We do not accept that we are people who lie or sit in darkness.

God is not real for us because we turn away from the darkness of our time in which men and women like ourselves have need for us--and need for what we can do to help. God is not real for us because we deny that darkness in our own souls. We flee from it at first glimpse.

God won't have anything to do with anything--except what is real. God won't have anything to do with anything--except what is real.

God will not deal with you in the unreal places of your life or deal with me in the unreal places of mine. Neither will God be with us when we flee from the reality of the challenges of our personal lives and flee from the challenges of our times. God simply remains with those realities--and waits for us.

There's a line in an Arthus Miller play, 'Good God, why are the grievances the only truths that stick?' Our grievances are at least real. And God will be there--with whatever truths in your life really "stick". God will transform those truths, and perhaps take those truths away from you in a sense and make different meaning for them than you are trying so hard to mean. But if you will begin to listen and trust only just a little, God will begin to transform that matters that are real for you.

...God is there--in the darkness of the matters that are real for you..."

(Strong at the Broken Places, from Our Hearts Are Restless Till They Find Their Rest in Thee, Selected Sermons to the Colgate University Church 1974-1989, by Coleman B. Brown)