Advent One: Post-Truth?

On November 8 the Oxford Dictionary announced the word of the year: 

post-truth - an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

The announcement quoted Independent columnist Matthew Norman: 

The truth has become so devalued that what was once the gold standard of political debate is a worthless currency. 

What happens to a culture that has lost interest in truth?

This election season highlighted our disordered values and the underlying cracks in our ways of knowing.

We elected a president whose candidacy was built on contradictory promises and easily discredited lies. 

Is something true because we prefer it?

Is evidence dismissed because it doesn’t fit our cognitive framework?

If a story is repeated enough times in enough places does that automatically make it so?

We are living in a tangled space, unsure who to believe, no longer certain about what’s right, or true, or good.

Not even sure those words have meaning.

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 leads me back to the foundation of that inquiry, as the narrative of a baby born two thousand years ago collides with the narratives of power and profit playing out in the stress and strain of an American December.

So I’ll start here: why would anyone listen to the story of a provincial baby, nobody child of nobody, born in a stinking animal stall in a dusty village in an occupied Middle Eastern country?

What halfway intelligent modern person would believe, for even a millisecond, that that distant brown 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 a group of migrant shepherds?

Approach this as a scientist and the narrative crumbles quickly.  Two thousand years later, who could “prove” the facts of an immaculate conception? What evidence would it take to support the stories of angel visitations?

The birth 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 proven, 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.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft speaks of “the radical insufficiency of what is finite and limited”, the “cramped and constricted horizon” encountered when we “see the material universe as self-sufficient and uncaused.”

I like that phrasing: radical insufficiency.

If this material universe is self-sufficient and uncaused, then perhaps Donald J. Trump is right, as were predecessors to whom he’s been compared. If this cramped, constricted horizon is really all there is, then objections to exploitation and manipulation have limited moral standing.

Yet most of us want something more: some basis for kindness. Some rationale for recognition of our shared humanity.

Advent is a reminder that we all, whatever we profess to believe, find ourselves constrained by the limited horizon of "what is."

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.

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

I’ve been reading again 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: 

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. 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.

Reading the text this time I’m struck by the length of the angel’s speech: detail about what to call the baby, how to parent him.

In the past I’ve identified 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?

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, including CS Lewis’ book titled “Miracles” and chapter seven of Tim Keller’s Reasons for God. Two interesting websites, Christians in Science in the UK, and American Scientific Affiliation in the US, offer extensive resources on the compatibility of  science and faith. Biologos, founded by Human Genome Project geneticist and physician Francis Collins, offers a helpful mix of articles about miracles and science.

But in many ways the questions this advent aren't about faith and science, but about the place of truth - any truth - in a cynically post-truth world. 

I'm part of that world. 

I’ve been noting how easy it is - for me -  to dismiss those who start from different assumptions than my own, who embrace different ideas, who trust authorities I believe are flawed.

I’ve been noting how easy it is for those around me to assume they are wiser, smarter, more informed than those who disagree with them.

We are all, in a way, like Zechariah, going about our business, unwilling to have our daily routine broken, determined to ignore any reality that threatens our tightly held beliefs.

What warning, what message of hope, what offers of love do we miss?

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.

"We Gorge on But and If and How"

Half Light and Silence,
C. Robin Janning, 2007

The tree of knowledge was the tree 

of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled 

to a fine powder
for use a pinch at a time, 

a condiment.
God had probably planned 

to tell us later
about this new pleasure.
We stuffed our mouths

full of it,
gorged on but and if and how 

and again
but, knowing no better.
It's toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads and around us
to form a dense cloud that hardened 

to steel,
a wall between us and God, 

Who was Paradise.
Not that God is unreasonable – 

but reason
in such excess was tyranny
and locked us into its own limits, 

a polished cell
reflecting our own faces. God lives
on the other side of that mirror,
but through the slit where the barrier doesn't
quite touch ground, manages still
to squeeze in – as filtered light,
splinters of fire, a strain of music heard
then lost, then heard again. 

   (Contraband, Denise Levertov, 1992)

We are smart people, reasonable, educated.

Masters of pro and con, of assembled evidence, of closing arguments.

Our reason has yielded unexpected treasures: Penicillin. Telephones. Atom bombs. Agent Orange. 

If we can think it, it must be right.

If we can make it, it must be worth making.

As Denise Levertov said, “we gorge on but and if and how,” confident we know enough to tame the darkness, master weather, turn back the tides of time that carry us toward eternity.

We believe what we see. And as telescopes, microscopes, atom smashers, ultrasounds expand the bounds of the visible, we believe those things too. When it serves our purpose. When it fits our sovereign narrative.

Jesus said “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Of all the beatitudes, this may be the most difficult for modern Western men and women, schooled on  materialism, objective realism, "the tyranny of reason."

See God? Really?

“Pure,” to us, is a relative term. Nothing is pure. Not food, not water, not gold, not air. We have tests to identify and measure contaminants, lists of acceptable levels. Whole industries are constructed around processes to approximate purity, but never quite get there.

“Purity,” if applied to humans, conjures up images of parochial school nuns, talks about chastity. Paintings of virgin saints.

“Pure in heart”?

“Heart” itself suggests something old-fashioned, something to do with not-to-be-trusted emotion, feeling, belief. The heart itself is a muscular organ, pumping blood. Nothing more. Soul? Will? Character? The Greek word “kardia” points to the inner self. But what is that self? Who sees it? Does it have any reality beyond genetic codes or external forces that determine who we’ll be, what we’ll believe?

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” 

Puzzling over this beatitude, I came across thoughts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor and founding member of the Confessing Church that opposed Hitler, denounced genocide, and spoke out against the establishment church’s accommodation of the Nazi regime. In his Cost ofDiscipleship, he wrote:

“Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil--and by their own virtues too. The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus. . . The pure in heart . . . are not distracted by conflicting desires and intentions.” (112)

Our hearts – intentions, wills, however you want to translate that – are ruled by a muddy mix of motives and opinions. We insist on reason, claim we know best, but our vision is always skewed, our motives rarely “pure.”

As a teen encouraged to make a pro/con list regarding a major decision, I was troubled at how easily my reason could be managed. I could adjust the length of either list, find more reasons for, create reasons against. Sitting there staring at my half-hearted lists, I realized I could argue for anything, explain away anything.

What I wanted was something beyond my own brain. In prayer, I asked God to lead me and had my first glimpse of that light Levertov describes, that “strain of music heard, then lost, then heard again.”

Our divided hearts are on constant display. We want to be good people, live in comfort, go where we want the minute we want, eat whatever we think of any day of the year. Love our neighbors without spending time with them, or bothering to know their names. Breathe clean air without regulation, or thought of our own wasteful consumption. Know we’re right – on any issue – without thought, without work, without questions from those who dare to doubt us.

How often are we willing to say “I don’t know”? To admit “this question is beyond me”?

How often do we come, like children, and set our tangled messes at God’s feet, and ask his wisdom, help, and guidance?

One of my favorite Old Testament stories is of King Jehosophat of Judah. Threatened with attack from a vast, approaching army, he gathered his people to join him in prayer. As the enemy gathered, he affirmed God’s faithfulness in past times of crisis, explained the dire threat on its way, then concluded: “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20).

As he and his people waited, God spoke through someone standing in the assembly, just a face in the crowd:  

“This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them. They will be climbing up by the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the Desert of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.” 

The next morning, Jehoshophat and his people went out singing praise, head worshipers leading the way. Standing far above the field of battle, they watched the approaching armies turn on each other, and waited in awe for an unearned victory.

I've shared that story many times, in situations where my ministry team felt inadequate, in times when others looked to me for wisdom and I had none to offer. I've come to believe purity of heart is single-minded determination to do things God's way, even when that ways seems strange, unlikely, even dangerous.

Love neighbors – even scary ones. Trust God's provision, even when the cupboard is bare and money seems in short supply. Expect needed abilities to emerge – in others, and in me. In those places of childlike trust, I've seen God tear down that wall of disbelief; I've seen the light of his goodness shining through. I've heard his music, a refrain of joy I've come to know and love.  

1Lent2 Diane Walker, 2012

We live in a troubled time, only dimly aware of the challenges confronting the church, the country, the globe. We eat food that doesn't nourish us. Spend vast amounts of money on weapons that can't keep us safe. Our clean water is disappearing. Our weather is changing, in ways we can't reverse.

We argue details, list our enemies, gather our reasons. We assume we know the answers, when in fact the questions are so complex, so interwoven, so beyond our skill and knowledge that those most informed are forced to admit: “We don’t know what to do.”

In this Lenten season, I find myself fasting, praying, turning to the only one who understands the scope of our difficulty, the depth of our folly. I ask for purity of heart, a desire for God’s way, not my own, not anyone’s own, as I listen, study, think.

And I invite others to join me, helpless before the vastness of our challenges: “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”


This is the sixth in a series on Lent and the Beatitudes:

 
    An  Alternative Narrative: February 10
    Seeking Blessing in a Fracture Land: February 17

    The Poor in Spirit and Those Who Mourn: February 24

    Hungering Far Past "Rightness": March 3

    Guns, God, Mercy: March 10

Lenten Reflections from 2012:

     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō     
     Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan