Evolution

I think that atheism and fundamentalist religion as we know them will last barely a geological eye-blink just a few hundred or a few thousand years more. Then we will begin to understand that we are spiritual beings and animals; that the universe is impersonal and love preceded it; that we believe and we doubt; that a particle may be in one place and in another place at the same time; and that love is a chemical reaction and a revelation. Above all, I hope that we will someday understand that apophatic paradox is the blessed, creative, and freeing nature of reality, not a "problem."...

I believe that someday the celebration of the spiritual/material paradox will break down what now seems to be a "Berlin Wall" between secularism and religion in a way that transcends the boundaries of the world's monastic communities and science labs and explodes into the realm of general knowledge, just as the once far-fetched idea of a round earth revolving around the sun exploded from the theory of one or two scientists, eventually to become general knowledge.

Meanwhile, speaking as a father, I know that my concern for my children was not what they believed about me, but how they behaved and how they treated their mother, their siblings, their home, and their schools. My concern was not whether my children believed the right things about school but whether they did their homework. My concern was not whether they believed the correct things about families, but whether they were polite to their mother.

-Frank Schaeffer, Patience With God, pgs. 180-181

(For more information on apophatic theology, click here. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it - or at least it does to me.)

Those that still see the world in black and white, "us vs. them" terms will no doubt regard the above statement as nonsense at best, and dangerous heresy to be stamped out at worst. For those who have progressed beyond a Stage Three faith, the above will likely elicit a fervent prayer of agreement that humanity can one day outgrow its pettiness (and survive long enough to see that day).

That's not to say that all Stage Five individuals would agree about what that future will look like or how we can get there, but with the understanding that there is no "them" comes the realization that even major differences of opinion need not be settled violently. I'm enough of a realist (or cynic, if you prefer) to doubt whether human nature is improvable, but I cling to hope - and to my celebration of paradox - all the same.

Life Soundtrack 20

Shinedown, Second Chance

An autobiographical piece about the songwriter's decision to leave his hometown to pursue his dreams, against the wishes of his parents. It's a story anyone who's walked away from a fundamentalistic background will relate to, at least to some extent. I consider myself fortunate that I was able to do so without damaging any family relationships, but it's still felt at times like leaving home in other ways...

Hearing

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love for God begins with listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that he not only gives us his Word, but also lends us his ear. So it is his work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think that they must always contribute something, when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service that they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They will not find it among Christians because these Christians are talking when they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be listening no longer to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattling in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to be spent keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and his own follies.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Weighty Matters

A few thoughtful and pertinent links:

1. Ted Olson's conservative case for same-sex marriage. Most likely everyone who reads this blog has already seen it elsewhere, but it's an encouraging enough sign to be worth repeating again.

2. On a different note, I was recently steered toward this analysis of Europe's changing demographics. Nobody really knows what the world will look like in 50 years (or even 20), but it's encouraging to note that the alarmists predicting a Muslim-dominated Europe are, in fact, alarmists. There's still room for concern, as witnessed by the riots in France a couple of years ago, but such matters are better addressed from a clear-headed perspective.

3. The tragedy in Haiti is at the forefront of the news this week, as well it should be. Donald Miller has written a thoughtful (and grace-filled) response to Pat Robertson's atrocious comments.

It's worth noting, though, that Robertson's view of the earthquake in Haiti as divine judgment is a logical extension of the belief expressed by many fundamentalists that God will destroy America if gays are given equal rights. His words don't represent an inevitable leap by any means, but the progression is logical nonetheless. And while James Dobson and most of his allies are intelligent enough to distance themselves from Pat on this one, they're really not that far apart in their conception of a God of endless anger and violence.

4. In light of the above items (and the Uganda situation and the many other negative things going on around the world), Karen Armstrong's call for the revival of the Golden Rule by people of every (and no) faith is as timely as ever. No crusade on behalf of theological or ideological purity has ever made the world a better place, but a little more compassion (genuine compassion, not another "I must save you from hell" bludgeoning) might just make a difference...

Quotable

"If marriage is a sacred institution, why do you want the government to be involved in it?"

-Tony Campolo, speaking at the GCN conference this weekend

Links to Ponder

A few articles of interest...

1. Timothy Kincaid's call for a more nuanced approach to addressing religious leaders. The point is not to whitewash the prejudice that still pervades much of Christendom when it comes to GLBT individuals, it's to keep in mind that most people don't recognize their own prejudices, and shouting "bigot" at them only pushes them further away and sabotages any opportunities we might have had to educate them.

2. Classically Liberal's analysis of the alleged top ten anti-Christian incidents of 2009. There are Christians in many parts of the world who genuinely suffer for their faith, but the United States isn't one of those parts, as evidenced by the fact that not one of these ten items holds up to any kind of scrutiny. Once again, the persecution complex that many conservative evangelicals cling to is doing more harm to the church in this country than any external force.

3. Andrew Sullivan's note of the growth in non-denominational churches with a political agenda. I add this one with a grain of salt, since some of the churches his reader mentions could well be part of the emergent church movement rather than the religious right - but it's also possible that things are different in the Bible Belt than they are in the northern and western parts of the US.

Prioritizing

I've been thinking for some time about commenting on the Manhattan Declaration, the religious right's latest political manifesto masquerading as the Infallible Writ of God Almighty. Six years ago I would have had few if any issues with such a document; when one lives inside the echo chamber of the evangelical subculture, there are a great many things one is conditioned to take for granted. Today I see so many problems with it that it's hard to know where to even begin.

Numerous others have already responded to the declaration, so there's little need for me to go into detail about many of the document's more glaring absurdities: the persecution complex that causes conservative evangelicals to view every disagreement as a sign that concentration camps lurk just around the next bend; the narcissistic self-comparisons to great historical leaders who really did face persecution; the assumption that no good Christian could possibly disagree with any of their dogmatic claims; the conspiracy theories that thinly mask their animosity toward any gay person audacious enough to demand to be treated as an equal; the thoroughly unbiblical notion that the church's role in society is to rule over nonbelievers for their own good.

Theologically the declaration is a highly questionable work. Readers who haven't studied the Bible for themselves would be forgiven for coming away with the impression that "traditional" marriage and the nuclear family are the Bible's (and, by extension, God's) single most important emphasis, trumping all other concerns. Indeed, the brief lip service that the declaration pays to the existence of other Christian concerns has the effect of trivializing them as matters of minimal importance.

Yet the notion that marriage and family represent the centerpiece of biblical Christianity requires a highly selective reading of the Bible, one that regards Genesis 1-2 as its most important passage and a lens through which all others (including the Gospels) must be interpreted. And even then, it requires picking out scattered verses (disregarding their contexts when necessary) and cobbling them together in piecemeal fashion.

Such an emphasis also places the church at odds with Jesus, who called on his followers to leave family and familial obligations behind to follow him, and who warned that families would divide over him. And it does little better by the Apostle Paul, an unmarried man who described marriage as a concession to those too weak to handle celibacy, and who declared that there was no male or female in the Kingdom of God.

It is true that the Bible contains commands related to how spouses, parents and children treat each other; indeed, it would be odd for any religion to overlook matters so elementary to the human experience. Those commands, however, constitute a smaller percentage of the biblical text than most people have been led to believe.

Likewise, the biblical authors demonstrate a concern for sexual ethics: adultery, promiscuity and pagan fertility rites are all strongly condemned, and divorce is discouraged. It's more debatable how the passages that refer to specific types of homosexual activity should be applied to modern contexts, but either way it's clear that our sexual relationships matter to God (as do all our relationships). Even so, sexuality is not the number one concern of the biblical authors (however much the church may make it seem like it is), and arguably doesn't even qualify as a top tier issue.

I am leery of declaring that I have God pinned down so well that I can speak on his behalf. But it would be logical to assume that, if the Bible is a reliable source of information on God, that one could get a sense of his priorities based on the amount of space that the biblical authors devote to different topics. Based on that assumption, the following priorities would seem to be at or close to the top of the list.

(I am omitting the concept of holiness from this list, since that term has become conflated with sexual purity and heterosexuality, even though holiness, at its root, is simply about being "set apart" - a concept that goes far beyond the sin avoidance that consumes the attention of most evangelicals. I would also argue that holiness cannot be properly understood without taking into account all of the biblical priorities I list below.)

Justice. Justice is a broad concept that can be applied both to legal matters and personal situations, but at its most basic one can understand what is just through application of the Golden Rule (a concept most commonly attributed to the teachings of Christ, though many of its truest adherents follow other belief systems). If you would not want to be treated the way you are treating another person, then you are acting unjustly.

Unfortunately fundamentalistic thought has twisted application of the Golden Rule, since individuals driven by a fear of being cast into hell by an easily offended god logically consider any action taken (no matter how abusive) to save another person from eternal damnation to be loving and just. And indeed, the authors of the Manhattan Declaration no doubt consider themselves striving to save souls when they lobby to politically and socially oppress gays and other sexual minorities. In reality, though, if some future majority were to persecute them in similar ways "for their own good," not one of the declaration's signers would consider it just.

Humility. This is another concept that must be rescued from fundamentalistic thinking. To the fundamentalist, being humble is all about obedience, as understood by their own interpretation of the Bible. Since, by this definition, anyone who disagrees with their interpretation is not humble, it becomes entirely appropriate for them to look down on (and even persecute) such dissenters. That the resulting superiority complex is the very antithesis of humility never even occurs to them.

Likewise, the authors of the Manhattan Declaration are quite proud of their own self-proclaimed humility. From the opening of the document they waste no time establishing themselves as the sole brave defenders of Western Civilization and every single thing that is good in the world, and pile on the self-comparisons to leaders representing nearly every great social movement in history. Again, the irony is completely lost on them.

Compassion/Charity/Hospitality. Numerous actions fall under this category, including helping the poor, providing for widows and orphans, welcoming strangers, tending to the sick, showing mercy, etc. One would have to discard most of the Gospels - and much of the Prophets and Epistles - to avoid the commands related to this concept. Throughout church history, countless Christian endeavors have been launched toward these ends over the centuries, and such selfless charity was one of the qualities that drew early converts to the faith.

Such concerns seem to be secondary to the authors of the Manhattan Declaration, however. Throughout their manifesto, charity gets attention only through the lens of the nuclear family, and even then seems more to be a byproduct of marital procreation than a mandate that captured more of Jesus' attention than any other subject. Certainly no compassion can be spared for those the declaration views as enemies of God and destroyers of civilization, except within the same hell-centric paradigm through which its authors redefine justice.

Idolatry. If I were to single out one theme as the most important of all, it would be idolatry. No other subject receives as much attention in the Bible, and many other concerns intertwine with it. Anything that a person gives priority over God constitutes an idol. Even an otherwise good thing can become an idol when too much value is placed upon it. The doctrine of inerrancy is a perfect example of this, as it elevates the Bible to the status of a comprehensive rulebook free of even the slightest error (a claim never found in the Bible itself - God alone merits being described as perfect), and the only source through which God can reliably communicate with his people. With an inerrant Bible in hand, a believer need never wrestle with the doubts that drive us to press further into relationship with God.

The pedestal on which many evangelicals have placed marriage and family is another example. By elevating an institution that validates their feelings and brings them personal happiness above priorities that receive far more attention in the Bible (and this from inerrantists, no less), the authors and signers of the Manhattan Declaration conflate their own will with God's, thereby completing the very usurpation of divine authority that they accuse their "liberal" brothers and sisters of.

It would be easy to give into the notion that one could do some good by pointing these things out to the declaration's supporters, but few of them are ever likely to see the false god they have created for what it is, steeped as they are in the all-too-human notion that the infinite Creator of the universe and the Author of unfathomable wonders is small enough to be contained in a book and petty enough to share all of their likes and dislikes. Such is the tragedy of the fundamentalist mindset. And such is the legacy that created the Manhattan Declaration.

Life Soundtrack 19

Because of You, by Kelly Clarkson

Much of what Kelly Clarkson expresses about growing up in a broken home also resonates with the experience of growing up in a heavily legalistic church. The net result of a childhood steeped in fear of hell, obsession over sin and a need to always paste on a happy face is a considerable amount of emotional and relational dysfunction, which is frequently passed down to the next generation as well...