"Vincible Ignorance," Irresistible Kindness

In thinking last week about acorns, new beginnings, and the way faith can grow and bear fruit, I also found myself thinking about the way the process is sometimes thwarted, or reversed: acorns rot underground, are swept away by spring rains. Young trees are nibbled down by hungry animals, or are planted in so much shade they fail to thrive.

The same is true with faith: young faith sometimes disappears. Lives started in one direction shift and move in another. Even adults who have been active in a life of faith can find themselves walking away.

A friend who has encouraged me much in this blog sent me a link a few weeks ago: “Based on your recent blog posts, I thought you might like this:”

 I was drawn in immediately: 

I've shaken my fist in anger at stalled cars, storm clouds, and incompetent meterologists. I've even, on one terrible day that included a dead alternator, a blaring tornado-warning siren, and a horrifically wrong weather forecast, cursed all three at once. I've fumed at furniture, cussed at crossing guards, and held a grudge against Gun Barrel City, Texas. I've been mad at just about anything you can imagine.

Except unicorns. I've never been angry at unicorns.

Joe Carter, online editor for First Things and contributor to the Gospel Coalition, explores the anger atheists and agnostics sometimes express towards God:

As C.S. Lewis once testified, "I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world." Lewis' experience is not uncommon among atheists. Many claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, they tend to be the people most angry at him.

Carter’s discussion is well worth reading, wherever you fall on the belief/disbelief spectrum. He offers some interesting statistical studies, digs into the implications:

I've argued elsewhere that, according to the Christian tradition, atheism is a form of self-imposed intellectual dysfunction, a lack of epistemic virtue, or — to borrow a term from the Catholic tradition — a case of vincible ignorance.

Vincible ignorance is intentional suppression of knowledge that is within an individual's control and for which he is responsible before God. In Romans, Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."

I'm a little uneasy at the accusation of "self-imposed intellectual dysfunction," or "lack of epistemic virtue," yet I’m intrigued by the idea of vincible ignorance, and certain I've seen it at work.

In a recent conversation, I listened as friends who have had strong experience of God’s grace argued against their own belief. Part of their discussion focused on ways they feel God has let them down.

Part focused on their frustration that faithful reading of scripture offers clear opposition to lifestyle directions they’ve chosen to embrace.

As they swirled into illogical justifications and accusations, it was helpful to have a term that describes what I’ve seen so often.

A dictionary from Catholic Culture.org offers an expanded definition for “vincible ignorance": 

Lack of knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence. One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known; guilt then depends on one's lack of effort to clear up the ignorance. That person is crassly ignorant when the lack of knowledge is not directly willed but rather due to neglect or laziness; as a result the guilt is somewhat lessened, but in grave matters a person would still be gravely responsible. A person has affected ignorance when one deliberately fosters it in order not to be inhibited in what one wants to do; such ignorance is gravely wrong when it concerns serious matters.

This definition reminds me of Wendell Berry’s exploration of ignorance in his valuable essay “The Way of Ignorance,” what I termed “the taxonomy of ignorance” in an earlier blog post.

As I said then, and am even more sure now, we all have areas of ignorance, and work hard to maintain our ignorance for a wide range of reasons. Atheists and agnostics have no exclusive claim to illogic. Neither do Christians.

Carter concludes:

I'm beginning to suspect that emotional atheism is far more common than many Christians realize. We need a new apologetic approach that takes into account that the ordinary pain and sufferings of life leads more people away from God than a library full of anti-theist books.

I believe Carter is right about “emotional atheism.” When I think and pray about friends who have walked away from the Christian faith, the reasons are unequivocally personal: an ugly divorce that shook their foundations, hypocrisy and lack of compassion on the part of Christian elders, inner dissonance when desire and discipline came sharply into conflict, unexplained suffering, unresolved pain.

I’m not sure, though, that he’s right about “a new apologetic approach.”

There is a point where words no longer work, where all words, any words, just fuel more anger, make the walls thicker, prompt a deeper withdrawal.

I’ve been reading in Romans (with Scripture Union’s Encounter with God: I highly recommend it).

Romans 2 says:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

As usual with any passage in Romans, there’s so much going on in that it would take pages to explicate, but there are two things I feel sure of:

First, it’s not up to me to judge. We all have times of struggle and defeat, and the obstacles to my own faith and growth may not be the same as yours. So it’s not my job to hound you into agreeing with my theology, or to demand you explain why you think what you think, or to point out the illogic of your anger with God. I'm happy to talk if that's helpful, but no one owes me an explanation, and I have no need to prove I'm "right."

Mother Teresa: Be the living expression of God's kindness."

Second, it’s kindness, not logic, that leads us to repentance. It’s kindness more than philosophy, or reason, or archeological evidence, or grand cognitive structures, that has nourished my own fragile growth, protected me from predation, opened avenues of sunlight that gave me space to grow. 

It's God’s kindness that has persuaded me, sometimes miraculous and personal, but far more often mediated through human kindness. People who accepted me as I was, offered hospitality beyond reason, prayed for me, encouraged me, modeled a life of grace and mercy when I was gagging on judgment, anger, and pain.

As the ranks of “once I was a Christian, now I’m definitely not” appears to grow, I find myself wondering:

Whose hardness of heart will God be judging? 

Those who turn to disbelief as a response to unaddressed pain?

Or those who respond with argument and accusation, rather than greater kindness and mercy?

A Jungle Gym Epiphany

Someone told me not too long ago, “There are people who believe, and people who don’t.”

Maybe.

I’ve certainly heard from people who consider religion unnecessary, object strongly to the Christian faith, or are offended at the very thought of God.

Or who believe firmly that anything outside the limits of everyday experience is superstition, myth, or fraud.

Balaam and His Ass, Rembrandt van Rjin,
Amsterdam, 1626  

Epiphany, as in moment of insight, is fine.

Epiphany, as in “manifestation of God among us” (celebrated last Sunday), is nonsense.

Yet, from what I’ve seen, we all believe in something.

In love, or goodness.

In reason, or science.

In family, or nature.

In beauty, or power.

In matter.

Or money.

We pretend we have logical reasons for our own grid of assumptions, but from what I can tell, what we believe is more often shaped by experiences – some we acknowledge, some we don’t.

A church that treated us badly.

A parent that loved rigid doctrine more than us.

A community that made us feel welcome.

A failure escaped by turning away from the whole social construct surrounding it.

Looking at the epiphany story I wrote of last week, I find myself wondering: why do some dismiss, without pause, the story of Balaam’s donkey, or the work of angels, or the Magis’ star?

Or, maybe a better question: why do I embrace them?

Yes, I’ve heard that anyone who believes in miracles is ignorant, uneducated, naive, misguided, foolish . . . The list goes on.

I have a PhD from an ivy league grad school (Penn) where those who embraced the Christian faith were sometimes treated as mentally deficient, mentally unwell, or, most likely, both.

But I realized then, as I’ve seen often enough before and since: assumption of superiority does not in itself constitute a convincing rationale.

And many of the most gifted scholars, authors, artists, philosophers I’ve followed have been deeply persuaded of the truth of the Christian faith.

Convincing apologetics aren’t hard to find if you have any interest in finding them.

Yet even as a kid, I knew that a pro or con list would most likely be shaped more by the inner predisposition of the person making the list than by demands of logic or reason.

The moment of turning, for those who come to faith later in life, is far more often a sudden awareness of God’s intervention than result of careful study or logical argument.

So back to my question: why do I believe in miracles?

I’m fairly sure there are many answers, none sufficient in themselves.

But I go back to an episode when I was nine or ten.

I was at our school playground – several blocks from my home – playing with friends with no adults nearby.

I was climbing on the metal jungle gym – a square grid of pipes, set in a concrete floor.

At the highest point, I hung upside down, feet in the air, head down, hands holding the highest pipe. Dangling upside down, I lost my grip, plummeting head first toward solid concrete.

And landed on my feet.

I remember standing there, heart pounding, looking up through the grid of metal.

Eight feet?

Ten?

Somehow I had turned completely, in a two foot square of pipes, without hitting metal.

Without landing on my head.

With no harm at all.

It’s not really possible.

By rights, I should have had a cracked skull. Or broken neck. At least a severe concussion.

So choose:

It didn’t happen.

I’m a gymnastic wonder and righted myself without knowing it.

Or – God intervened.

That jungle gym is long gone, but while it stood, while I still lived nearby, I sometimes went and stood inside it – in the place where I landed – and tried to reason it out.

I can still picture myself hanging, feel my sweaty, not-so-strong hands slipping. 

I can still feel myself landing, sneakers slamming hard on hard concrete.

And there’s still no explanation except one:

I’m not alone in this world.

There’s a God who knows and loves me.

There’s more going on around me than I’ll ever fully know.

I could offer lots more stories like that.

Accidents that didn’t happen.

Or that happened and loved ones emerged unscathed.

Strange encounters that completely changed my direction.

Words of direction spoken when I least expected to hear them.

Unexpected, unexplainable gifts of insight, or patience, or strength, or skill.

Reassurance in times of staggering need.

If you believe it’s all coincidence, hallucination, wishful thinking, then hold fast to that belief, and see where it leads you.

You can sweep any story away with a shrug, a strategically raised eyebrow.

And yet -

We all believe something.

We all see what we choose to or are able to see.

We all marshal our explanations, dismiss things that don’t quite fit.

CS Lewis, professor and scholar who narrated his journey from agnosticism to strong belief in the Christian faith, found himself musing on this in The Abolition of Man: 

The kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on `explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through” things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through’ all things is the same as not to see. (p.91)

To "see through" all things is the same as not to see.

I choose to see, even when what I see is hard to understand, doesn't quite add up, is way beyond my own control.

I’m not saying my Christian faith is based on some unexplained stunt on a long-gone climber half a century ago.

I’m saying that incident shook me, and taught me to watch for signs I otherwise might have missed.

Signs of love surrounding me.

Moments of grace embracing me.

Light shining in all around me.

Magi and Star, anonymous etching, 1885

Does Prayer "Work"?

After reviewing Cross Examined, a novel challenging “the popular intellectual arguments for Christianity”, I’ve found myself circling back to some of the questions raised, wanting to respond.

This one cuts close to home and seems appropriate, given the National Day of Prayer this past Thursday, May 2:

Does prayer “work”?

Here’s part of the discussion: 

“’A woman was just released from the hospital, and here she says ‘The doctors told my husband that I probably wouldn’t make it. But he prayed and prayed. And his prayers were answered – it was a miracle.’ . . . So, according to this, prayer works. But I must wonder if I understand the meaning of the word ‘works.’ Imagine if the utilities that we use so often – electricity, clean water, trains, mail delivery, and so on – worked no more reliably than prayer.’” 

The assumption is that prayer is a means of implementing program: we pray for safety, health, success. If it happens, reliably, we can conclude that prayer “works.” If not, why bother?

Thought of in that way, prayer is more like a form of sorcery, or magic: say the words, click your heels and presto, all is well.

And certainly, anyone who prays falls into wishing for such easy solutions.

Yes, I pray for the easy way out: the quick relief, the sudden resolution. I woke one morning last week with my face blazing – afraid my encounter with poison ivy the day before would hijack my plans and send my weekend into splinters. And yes, I prayed the swelling would go down, the burning subside, that all would be healed with no effort on my part.

Squinting at my puffy eyes in the mirror, I reminded myself that poison ivy is dangerous. That I don’t take it seriously enough. And that if I didn’t get to the doctor – fast – I’d be very, very sorry.

Prednisone, I’m happy to say, “works,” for me, for poison ivy.

Prayer is something different. Not a magic pill – but an invitation, an opportunity, an avenue into something deeper.

Meditation?

Here’s how the argument continues: 

“Many spiritual traditions across the world use meditation to clarify the mind or relax. Christian prayer can have these same benefits. A mature view acknowledges what you can’t control and can be an important part of facing a problem, but to imagine an all-powerful benefactor helping you out of a jam is simply to ignore reality. None of prayer’s benefits demand a supernatural explanation, and to imagine that prayer shows that God exists is simply to delude yourself. The voice on the other end of the telephone line is your own.” 

So, feel free to lie in the hammock, listen to birds, mellow out, loosen your grip on the burdens of the day. Call it prayer if you want –but be clear: it’s an attitude adjustment, nothing more.

I wonder, though: what kind of arrogance pronounces millions of thoughtful believers “deluded”?

And what if there’s a voice to be heard – but not enough humility, patience, or wisdom to listen?

David, the shepherd boy who became king, man after God’s heart, author of many of the psalms and masterful model of the life of prayer, spoke often of listening, waiting, seeking.

  ^"My heart says of you, 'Seek his face!'    Your face, Lord, I will seek."

At the same time, he asked, again and again, to be heard:

"Hear my voice when I call, Lord;    be merciful to me and answer me."
“Hear my prayer, Lord, listen to my cry for help." 

And for every request to be heard, there was a corresponding assertion, a rekindling of confidence:

"Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice."""
"But God has surely listened and has heard my prayer." 

We can think of prayer as purely transactional: an interchange like ordering pizza. I dial the number, ask for pepperoni and mushroom, sit by the door and wait for delivery. When the pizza doesn’t show, then I’m drawn to the conclusion: “The voice on the other end of the telephone line is your own.”

Or we can think of prayer as completely non-transactional: no claims, no assumptions, no hope of intervention.

But what if prayer is more like the mornings I spend with my granddaughter?

She tells me her latest adventures, shows me her recent bruises, asks for new bandaids.

She suggests a plan for the morning: Pickering Feed Store? Our favorite library? The local nature center? Mac and cheese on the patio?

I agree with her plan, or suggest alternatives. Remind her of our schedule, help her get ready for the kindergarten bus.

Some days it’s pure agreement.

Some days I pull rank.

I have things I want to show her, ways I’d like to see her grow.

She has things she wants from me. Things she needs. Things she hasn’t thought of.

That’s a place to start in considering prayer.

But I’m a limited person: trapped in my perspective, bound by time and space. I want her good, but I’m also caught in my own agendas, my own inattention, my own impatience.

And I can prompt change in her from outside, but not from within.

I can’t open her eyes wider than they already are.

I can’t fill her hands with skills that mine don’t have. 

Jesus framed prayer for us when he said:

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. . .  I no longer call you servants, because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15)

Prayer fresco, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, ca 250AD

Prayer is that place of spending time: abiding, listening, seeking, waiting. It’s that process of becoming friends with God himself, trying to understand the larger plan, learning to see through very different eyes.

And prayer is the response that wells up inside us: help me, teach me, lead me, show me.

We pray for safety, comfort, convenience.

What if God’s purpose is to teach us courage, compassion, a longing for justice that puts our own convenience last?

We pray for health, happiness, success.

What if pain is an avenue toward growth, sorrow an avenue toward mercy, failure the surest road to real humility?

I’m drawn back to the story in Acts 4. 

Beaten, imprisoned, threatened, Peter and John gather with other believers and in prayer, realign themselves with the greater purpose: 

“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:“‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up  and the rulers band together against the Lord  and against his anointed one.

"Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.  Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

They could have prayed for safety, revenge, an easy way out. And concluded their prayer didn't "work." But prayer led them to a deeper place of alignment, a deeper understanding of what to ask, a willingness to embrace the task ahead, longing for the courage and grace to be faithful to the calling. 

That prayer was answered powerfully.

There have always been voices asserting prayer is delusion.

Just as there have been men and women willing to listen, wait, share their fears, and align their hearts with God’s.

There have been stories – thousands and thousands, across thousands of years – of God’s intervention in healing, rescue, provision, wisdom.

And lives changed, from the inside out, in visible ways, for those who care to look.

We can set ourselves as the judges of prayer: evaluating, testing, asserting, refuting.

Or we can start somewhere different: acknowledging how selfish our longings, how small our vision, how far from understanding.

And then we can ask for change, insight, humility, wisdom, and wait for the sweetness that comes as we grow in friendship with God himself, wanting nothing more than to be faithful partners in his plan.

Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

    (Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1849)

Other posts on Cross Examined and arguments for and against faith:

• Cross Examined: A Speakeasy Review
• The Measure of our Minds

Other posts on prayer:

• Aching Visionaries, Insistent Hope
• Advent Three: Questions. Fruit.
• Words Half Heard: Why Kneel?

Please join the conversation. What's your experience of prayer? Does it "work"? 

Cross Examined: A Speakeasy Review

How do you know what you know?

What would it take to change your mind?

What if what you believe turns out to be wrong?

Those questions surfaced with last week’s Synchroblog topic, exploring some "what ifs" about Christianity and scripture.

It emerged again in a novel I signed on to review for an on-line book review community called Speakeasy.

The book, Cross Examined, by Bob Seidensticker, is descrbed as “an unconventional spiritual journey,” one which “challenges the popular intellectual arguments for Christianity and invites the reader to shore them up . . . or discard them.”

The phrase “popular intellectual arguments for Christianity” suggests an intriguing oxymoron, which may be why I signed on to receive and review the book. I’ve read, taught, discussed arguments for Christianity, but never found them "popular". Individuals complacent in their faith are generally bored, annoyed, or offended by forays into apologetics, while those shaken by doubt are rarely comforted or persuaded by intellectual argument.

From what I’ve seen, doubt is rarely the result of deep intellectual inquiry. More often, it’s the byproduct of tragedy, loss, abandonment, betrayal.

The characters of Cross Examined are no different in that respect. The story begins in 1906 with a prophecy of the coming San Francisco earthquake, and follows two young adults through the aftermath of that tragedy.

The plot is structured around two formal debates, the first between Reverend Samuel Hargrove, formidable pastor of The First Church of God in L.A., and bookish, forgettable, Professor Putnam. The second debate, late in the book, is between Reverend Hargrove and his protégé, Paul Winston, the central character of the book.

Between those debates, the novel follows Paul Winston’s encounter and growing friendship with a reclusive atheist, Jim. Jim’s chessboard serves as a central image in the novel: an ongoing contest between Jim and an unseen, unidentified adversary, with directives arriving from afar, and chess pieces moving slowly across a span of seasons.

There’s also a fiancé, Athena, thought dead in the earthquake and subsequent fires, nursed back from a badly broken leg in a distant Buddhist monastery.

The narrative offers conventions of plot: a half-hearted love story, uncertain identity, mounting tension between rival mentors, a young man facing traumatic past and uncertain future.

Yet the plot, and the characters themselves, are little more than a framework for the interplay of ideas. Between the opening and closing debate, Jim shuttles between pastor and recluse, rebutting arguments from one, gathering ammunition from the other, an almost featureless pawn in the battle of belief.

The story suffers, but the ideas suffer as well. Arguments, both for and against belief, are flattened, misrepresented, treated as little more than markers in a competitive game that resembles poker more than chess: “I’ll meet your ontological arguments and raise you one Pascal’s wager.”

Comparative religion, arguments of design, anthropological understanding of oral tradition, all appear in a distorted, simplified format. As Reverend Hargrove becomes more and more visibly a bombastic bully, his arguments are more easily dismissed. As Jim takes on the role of benefactor and confidant, Paul aligns himself with the new arguments Jim offers, as simplified as those he abandons.

Jim, portrayed as the constant voice of reason, at one point suggests, “Rationalization starts with God’s existence: given Christianity, how can I square it with the facts? Reason starts with the facts and follows them where they lead.”

To comment well on those two sentences alone would take chapters, maybe volumes. What is reason? Where does it come from? What is its basis? Why should we trust it?

And who decides the “facts”? Don’t we all start from our own points of understanding, and rationalize “facts” to fit the framework of our assumptions?

Don’t we all, atheists and believers alike, see and interpret “facts” from our own small windows on the world around us?

Yes, there are arguments for and against the existence of God, the truth of scripture, the possibility of miracles. There are different ideas about how to weigh the validity of historic texts, about how to date ancient documents, about how to interpret manuscripts from cultures distant from our own.

Cross Examined introduces some of those complexities, but in a way that seems heavily weighted toward the author's own assumptions.  The novel does little to acknowledge the rich history of philosophical inquiry surrounding the questions raised, and, set as it is in 1906, it ignores the past century of careful research on matters like reliability of manuscripts, strength of oral tradition, archaeological evidence for scriptural accounts.

Jim tells Paul “faith is immune to facts. . . And that’s the biggest clue that Christianity is false: it’s built on faith. Believing something because it’s reasonable and rational requires no faith at all.” In the intellectual chess game Seidensticker has constructed, facts and logic are the highest values, sweeping all opposition from their path.  

At the same time, there’s an odd undercurrent to the novel’s slight narrative.

Jim, reclusive atheist, lives in such a place of distrust he is unable to leave his home, and has, by his own testimony, been trapped in one place since he left the church two decades before. As he invites Paul deeper into his logical agnosticism, he also invites Paul into a place of isolation and paralysis.

In the end, Paul seems required to choose between reasoned loneliness or an irrational acceptance of a  more productive and emotionally healthy community. 

Despite the hundreds of pages of formal and informal debate between the main characters of the novel, two side characters seem to offer the final word.

One, Virgil, friend from Paul’s old life on the seamier side of town, urges Paul to continue on with the church: “seems to me that using logic to take care of your spiritual needs is like slicing bread with a hammer.”

Compassionate widow Mrs. O’Brien offers similar advice: “the church is much more than arguments and debate – it’s community and heaven and forgiveness. All these years of Samuel’s debates have changed my mind not a jot either way. Even if I were to accept all those fancy arguments against religion, my faith would remain. That’s why it’s called ‘faith’.”

The unsatisfying, unexpected conclusion does little to explain any of the characters’ motivations, just as the flurry of arguments back and forth does little to build a deeper understanding of the interaction between faith and reason.

As I set the book down, I find myself thankful for writers and thinkers whose books have illuminated key questions in deep and satisfying ways.

And I find my distaste for apologetics as intellectual contest has deepened.

I’m reminded that humility is an important basis for real wisdom and understanding.

And I’m convinced, yet again, that when intellectual discourse is approached as a game of chess, everybody loses.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

Advent One: How Do I Know?

This is the season when our secular script calls us to account. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday: consumer capitalism is taking attendance and counting the collection. Get your money in motion. It’s your patriotic duty.

I find myself agnostic on free market fundamentalism, and non-compliant on the call to dutiful consumption. I don’t believe our future depends on ever-increasing production. Instead, I’m intrigued by thinkers like EF Shumacher, Herman Daly, Gar Alperovitz, Marjorie Kelly, and their exploration of a commons-based economy less dependent on measures like market shares and GDP and more open to alternative systems of value.

Every year, as Advent collides with our annual consumer celebrations, I find myself thinking about belief systems, identity issues, where we put our hope for the future. Am I of value because I spend? Is my contribution dependent on the size of my paycheck? Is my hope for the future tied to the health of my pension? If I question our economic model, will I be tried for heresy?

We all have beliefs we hold firmly, creeds we confess. Some of those are so deeply embedded we no longer see them for what they are, some so foundational to who we are we’re surprised when someone calls them into question. We hold narratives we assume are normative: Treat the world well. Watch out for your own. Go to a good school, get a good job, make as much as you can.

Somehow we believe our own constructs are the right ones, while simultaneously endorsing the idea that all faiths are equal and your truth is as good as mine.  If everything is equal, then Romney’s version of reality is equivalent to Obama’s, Rush Limbaugh’s rants as reasonable as Jon Stewart’s sly reflections. Are some things true, and others false? Are some valuations right, and others wrong?

Here’s a simple one: do you believe that what we see is what we get? That the material world is the measure of value, that life proceeds according to easily duplicated models, that there are natural laws that nothing can change?

Or are there realities beyond the physical realm? Does my value rest in something you can’t count? Are there times when natural laws are set aside by forces we can’t see?

Maybe not so simple.

Ideas have premises as well as consequences, and each plank in our platforms, each item of our creeds, rests on others, some explicitly affirmed, some studiously suppressed. For most of us, if we make the effort to clarify, we find contradictions, confusions, items of faith held in unacknowledged tension.

My goal in this blog has been to dig around in what I believe, to examine premises as well as consequences, to try to hear the half-heard words that form and inform who I am, what I do.

Advent lands me back at the foundation of that, as the narrative of a baby born two thousand years ago collides with the narrative of power, profit, personal value playing out in the stress and strain of an American December.

So I’ll start here: why would anyone care about the story of that provincial baby, nobody child of nobody, born in an occupied country, in a dusty nowhere town, in a stinking animal stall?

And what halfway intelligent modern person would believe, for even a millisecond, that that baby was the product of a deity’s word, spoken to an unmarried teenage girl, or that mythical creatures no one can document showed up in force to sing to some smelly shepherds?

Approach this as a scientist, and the narrative crumbles quickly.  No one can “prove” the facts of an individual’s conception, immaculate or otherwise, and what scientific evidence would support the songs of angels: undoctored photographs? Phonograph recordings?

The story of Jesus, like many stories of scripture, sits outside the realm of science, which is not to say that scientists can’t be Christians; many are.  But for those who insist on scientific naturalism, on a reality that conforms, is explained, can be proved, by the laws of science, the Christmas narrative is a fairy tale, a silly myth, of no more weight, and maybe less interest, than Seuss’s Grinch, or Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin.

But if science is the measure of meaning – we live in a very flat world indeed.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft speaks of “the radical insufficiency of what is finite and limited”, the “cramped and constricted horizon” encountered when “our best and most honest reflection on the nature of things led us to see the material universe as self-sufficient and uncaused; to see its form as the result of random motions, devoid of any plan or purpose.”

Advent is a reminder that we all, whatever we profess to believe, find ourselves constrained by the constricted horizon of "what is." Surrounded by broken systems, broken institutions, broken people, we surrender to the self-protective stance so deeply encouraged by an impatient, uncaring world. Even those of us who say we believe in an active God surrender to the finite, limited vision of reality, measuring our worth in taxable dollars. We fall into compliance with superficial valuations. We become complicit in the competitive enterprise. Our voices are silenced. Our hope for change is dulled.

At first, (as young adults, or willful dreamers) we rebel at the “radical insufficiency” of the current regime: we try to be generous, even though generosity looks foolish. We try to be honest, even when honesty is rarely rewarded. But slowly we cave. We blend. We realize that those ideals we held have no place in a material world.

Then God grabs our world and shakes it – like a child shaking a snow globe – and the scenery changes.

Yesterday I started rereading the gospel of Luke. Luke, the only Gentile writer represented in the Bible, was also one of the most educated: an upper-class Greek doctor, Paul’s “beloved physician”, and a careful historian.

He starts his account of Christ’s life with a promise to share only what he's researched himself and is convinced is true:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us . .  With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account . . .  so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

After his quick introduction, Luke plunges headlong into the story of Zechariah, John the Baptist's father: names, dates, simple history. But in verse eleven, the narrative takes a turn: "Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear."

I love the detail. Not just an angel, but “standing on the right side of the altar.”

The angel explains what is about to happen:  Zechariah’s aging wife will become pregnant with a longed for baby. The child, a son, will be part of God’s plan of intervention for his people, and the world.

I identify deeply with Zechariah’s response: “How do I know this is true?” Religious leader though he is, he's asking for proof: Will you give me some kind of unassailable documentation? Will you come tell my neighbors, so they know I’m not crazy? Could you make this announcement in church next Sunday? So everyone else hears you too?

How do I know?

I love the angel’s response. Polite, but sharp. Let me paraphrase: “Seriously? You’re a priest, here we are in the inner sanctum of the temple, I’m standing here in front of you, straight from God’s throne, me, Gabriel, still God's messenger, the same one who spoke to Daniel, centuries ago. I'm here telling you what God has planned, and you’re wondering if you can believe me, even while you're shaking with fear. You still need proof? Really?”

I’ve never had an encounter with Gabriel, but I’ve seen God intervene in my life. And in the lives of others. I’ve seen the intervention that brings forgiveness, freedom, joy, healing, laughter in the place of pain, a deep sense of belonging for those who felt abandoned.

And still, five minutes later, or five weeks later, five years later, we ask: “How do I know that was true?” “Why should I believe in miracles?” "Where's the proof?"

There are some great discussions of miracles available: a quick overview by Peter Kreeft, CS Lewis’ book “Miracles,” chapter seven of Tim Keller’s Reasons for God, Two interesting websites, Christians in Science in the UK, and American Science Affiliation in the US, offer extensive resources on the compatability of  science and faith. The Biologos Foundation, founded by Human Genome Project geneticist and physician Francis Collins, offers a helpful mix of articles about miracles and science, and a new book by Collins and Karl Giberson, The Language of Science and Faith.

But, for most of us, questions of miracles aren't really the point. We have other things on our minds. We have our own un-examined premises, and that's good enough for now.

In those dark days of the Roman occupation, some of God’s people, like Simeon and Anna in the temple, waited for God’s intervention, and celebrated at the first hint of his appearance. Some, like Zechariah, went about the motions of religion, no longer convinced that God might show up.

My guess is that then, like now, most didn't give it much thought. Life is far too busy. There are Christmas presents to buy.

Earlier Advent posts:

Advent Two: John the Baptist,  Dec. 12, 2010 

Marys' Song,  Dec. 19, 2010 

Christmas Hope,  Dec. 24, 2010 

Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011 

Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011 

Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011 

The Christmas Miracle, Dec. 24, 2011

Risen Indeed? The Hermaneutic Community

Easter morning worship is the high point of the Christian year. I look toward it through the reflections of Lent, the fasting of Good Friday, the inner stillness of silent Saturday, with a sense of  anticipation.

Orthodox icon: Resurrection

Annie Dillard, writing of church attendance, asked:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? . . . It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." (Teaching a Stone to Talk)

I feel that most strongly on Resurrection morning. We gather to celebrate God’s power breaking through, the proclamation of life in a world of death, the promise of all-things-new in a world where we have been held captive far too long by the burdens and the boundaries of the old.

As a child, I attended a small, somewhat somber church. Our organist appeared to meditate before each change of chord. Our hymns echoed in a space too large for our meager few. But Easter morning we took part in a sunrise service with other congregations in a nearby park. I loved the trumpets, often off-key, and the exuberant songs sung together in the early-morning chill:

 Up from the grave he arose;  with a mighty triumph o'er his foes;  he arose a victor from the dark domain,  and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.  He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Watching adults I’d come to know and respect, I could see: they believed it. They sang with rare energy and conviction.

When my own children were small, we attended a much larger church where the rector (our lead pastor) encouraged everyone to bring bells and tambourines to the Easter service. At every proclamation of  “Christ is risen” we were to ring the bells, shake our tambourines or car keys. Our rector himself set the example, with exuberant banging of his tambourine, and our most staid and proper parishioners joined in the buoyant clamour. “Christ is risen!”  “The Lord is risen indeed!”

The Empty Tomb, Bertrand Bahuet, France

At my current church, sharing of space between two services led to the practice of renting a large tent for our contemporary Easter service. The worship community gathered to roll out carpet, arrange potted flowers, hang banners, truck in a large stone to remind us of the open tomb. As we gathered for the service it was with a sense of joyful awe: the community itself was a gift, those gathered were a gift, and we were there because we had seen, lived, experienced together the resurrection power we were there to celebrate.

Our worship itself can be an avenue to encountering God, and we have many in our church family who sat uncomfortably in the back row until God spoke to them in worship, until the resurrection power drew them further into the center of our celebration.

One Easter, as part of our worship, we prepared a visual way of sharing some of our stories. It still makes me cry to watch, as I reflect on the power of the resurrection in the lives of those I know and love.

I regret the few Easter mornings, a guest in other churches, where I’ve found myself listening to talk of “the ‘Easter story,” a weary myth passed down as part of a time-worn liturgy, metaphor for spring, occasion to speak of cocoons and butterflies.

“Go home,” I’ve felt like saying. If it’s just about spring, let’s go outside and pick tulips. I grieve that in far too many churches of my own Episcopal denomination, Easter will be celebrated with pomp, lovely music, and scant awareness of the power invoked and far too often ignored.

Without the resurrection, Christianity is just one more religion: a tattered set of rules, a philosophical construct patched together to shield us from our fear. As the apostle Paul said emphatically to the doubting Corinthians,

“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God . . . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . .If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Over the years I’ve come to value thoughtful affirmations of the logical, historical evidence for a resurrected Christ. C.S. Lewis’ classic Mere Christianity was helpful early on. More recently, Tim Keller has done good work in defending the resurrection in an accessible way, while N. T. Wright takes a more scholarly approach in the Anglican tradition.  (Both have written books on this, but summary articles and video are available online: Keller in Relevant Magazine, and Wright in a summary video.) For a wider view, Telford Work of Westmont University offers a helpful summary of approaches, with some useful links.

Christ Resurrected, Anna Kocher, 2006

For me, though, the proof of the resurrection goes far beyond logic and historical record. The resurrection is visible in human lives across continents, across centuries. Dig back through the stories of Augustine, Jerome, or Patrick, any of those early saints whose lives were upended by the voice of the risen Christ, calling them to lives of forgiveness, compassion and bold witness of the resurrection.

Or listen to the stories of  Brother Yun of China, who came to know Christ through the miraculous healing of his father and the subsequent discovery of a Bible long hidden in rural China after the Cultural Revolution had done its best to suppress all knowledge of the Christian faith.

Spend time with Christians from other places and stories surface: men and women who met Christ in dreams or visions; teens dramatically transformed by an encounter with the Father who will never leave them; healings on sidewalks in London, under trees in Africa, on hillsides in Bolivia: resurrection power still pouring out, sometimes through human hands and voices, sometimes through the voice of God alone.

Leslie Newbigin, missionary in India from  1936 to 1974, returned to the UK to find a skeptical culture dismissive of the Christian faith. Wrestling with the question of apologetics, he asked:

"How can this strange story of God made man, of a crucified saviour, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that question, only one real hermeneutic of the gospel: a congregation which believes it. Does that sound too simplistic? I don't believe it is."

Continuing in his discussion of Evangelism in the City, he noted:

“The hope of which the church is called to be the bearer in the midst of a famine of hope is a radically other-worldly hope. Knowing that Jesus is king and that he will come to reign, it fashions its life and invites the whole community to fashion its life in the light of this reality, because every other way of living is based on illusion. It thus creates signs, parables, foretastes, appetizers of the kingdom in the midst of the hopelessness of the world. It makes it possible to act both hopefully and realistically in a world without hope, a world which trades in illusions. If this radically other-worldly dimension of the church's witness is missing, then all its efforts in the life of the community are merely a series of minor eddies in a current which sweeps relentlessly in the opposite direction.”  

Over the years I’ve watched many people come to faith, and many fall away. Those who see their faith as a list of rules to follow or services to attend, who have seen the church as an arbiter of dogma or shared "values" more than community of grace, are not likely to remain.

The Risen Christ, He Qi, China

Those who have seen, experienced, become part of a living community convinced of resurrection power begin to live that power in their own lives, to share it with others, in ways that build hope, and faith, and deepen love. As walls fall down between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, racially and ethnically divided, as God’s people demonstrate the freedom that comes from full forgiveness and the compassion that springs up from the knowledge that all that’s needed is provided, as gifts are affirmed in women, children, the marginalized, the previously ignored, resurrection becomes visible, inescapable.

If the truth of the resurrection is held in doubt, it’s not our apologetics that needs attention, but our lives together as visible community of love. 

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about. . . . Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”  ( N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church )

This is the first in a series considering what it means to be “Resurrection People.”

For others:

The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People

Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection

Resurrection Responsibilities: Feed My Sheep

It’s also part of the April Synchroblog examining the truth of the resurrection. Here's a list of bloggers who contributed to this month’s Synchroblog.

• Marta – On Faith Seeking Understanding, Truth, and Theology
• Tim Nichols – How Would Life be Different if Jesus did not Rise?
• Glenn – Kingdom Come or Kingdom Now?
• Sonja Andrews – The Resurrection and the Life
• Josh Morgan – The Role of the Resurrection
• Abbie Watters – What if the Resurrection were a lie?
• Minnow – Resurrection Impact
• Leah – Resurrection – Or Not!
• Hey Sonnie – The Resurrection Hoax
• Liz Dyer – The Resurrection I Firmly Believe In
• Ellen Haroutunian – Is There a Christianity Without the Resurrection?
• Jeannette Altes – What if…
• Christine Sine – If the Resurrection did not happen, how would the world be different?
• KW Leslie – Supposing Jesus is Dead
• Travis Mamone – If the Resurrection was a Hoax
• Kathy Escobar – Jenga Faith
• Jeremy Myers – What if Jesus Did not Rise?

And for poetry and more resurrection art, visit Resurrection.

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!



As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the   __ comments link below to post.