Crowdsourcing faith

I’d be fine with merely living a life of faith that honored God, served to give me a stable family life, and heck, if I might be so selfish, some peace and joy while we’re at it. A life in which I fashioned love for neighbor and positive change in my community, as a result of the faith I had in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I’ve got a few guesses as to what that looks like (hint: I’ll probably find it in someone older than me), but I also know that faith is not tidy, mathematically correct or balanced. It’s organic, uneven and oftentimes solemn. And it takes a while to cultivate.

I know I’ve got a heckuva lot better of a picture in my head of faith falling short of what it should be than what it actually is.

A few seminary professors come to mind, maybe a Bible character or two. And Ken Wilson, my pastor during college.

Other than those folks… well, beyond those hills I can’t see much road.

Which is where you, dear friend, come in.

Tell me in the comments below about Christian faith, what it is (or isn’t!), for you, personally.

A caveat or three:

• Please try and refrain from cutting and pasting Hebrews 11 or Ephesians 2. Been there, done that, read the Greek.
• Don’t mention moral heroes-I guarantee I can counter every example of moral rigorism you provide with another example from Christian history who well, is more widely revered than yours and a worse sinner than yours, all at the same time. Besides, a great many morals we fight over weren’t things we believed God cared about a hundred years ago.
• Make it complicated. I wouldn’t be asking if a pat answer would do the trick.

Some things I don’t think are it (at least, not the complete “it”): perfect, right, legally airtight doctrine; familiarity with the most Scripture; deep, inner assurance of heaven awaiting; unwavering, never quivering conviction that God is always in control.

Did I offend anyone yet?

The comments are all yours.

Chew on this

Against all odds, I’ve become a fan of daily devotionals. Don’t get me wrong-I don’t read every day or morning, religiously… For one, I just can’t allow myself to fall into that sort of legalism. Secondly, and much more importantly, I don’t want to rush through something profound every morning and not take the time to ponder its ramifications.

Hence this long quote (the money is in the final four or so lines, italicized for your convenience):

The question of good must not be narrowed to investigating the relation of actions to their motives, or to their consequences, measuring them by a ready-made ethical standard. An ethic of disposition or intention is just as superficial as an ethic of consequences. For what right do we have to stay with inner motivation as the ultimate phenomenon of ethics, ignoring that “good” intentions can grow out of very dark backgrounds in human consciousness and subconsciousness, and that often the worst things happen as a result of “good intentions”? As the question of the motives of action finally disappears in the tangled web of the past, so the question of its consequences gets lost in the mists of the future. There are no clear boundaries on the other side. Nothing justifies us in stopping at any arbitrary point we choose in order to make a definitive judgment. In practice, we ever and again stop to make such an arbitrary determination, whether along the lines of an ethic of motives or an ethic of consequences… Neither has any fundamental advantage over the other, because in both cases the question of good is posed abstractly, severed from reality… Good is reality, reality itself seen and recognized in God. Human beings, with their motives and their works, with their fellow human beings, with the creation that surrounds them, in other words, reality as a whole held in the hands of God-that is what is embraced by the question of God.

I applaud you for making it this far-I tried to figure out how to trim the quote a bit, but I don’t understand it well enough to know what if any violence I might be doing to his intention!

I’m going to refrain from commenting on this, as, quite frankly, I’m still processing this.

However, if the length of the quote above intimidates you, I associate the one below with this same line of thinking (much shorter, too!):

It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the centre, not in weakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness.

Again, I’m not smart enough to unpack all the ramifications of what Bonhoeffer is saying there, but I know this: he’s legit, and what he’s saying sounds opposite to so much of how I see the world and theology that I’d do well to stick with him.

In my devotional, then, it looks like January won’t be done for a while.

(Both of those quotes, by the way, can be found here.)

Faith anemic and the industry of foot washing

During my latter years in seminary the overriding theme that seemed to surface in all trips to Pew Wei, late Friday night theology bull sessions, and football games was the vital necessity of doing our faith in community. (Whether or not one would inherently find it in Syracuse basketball games or we just made it up-what does it matter?)

Fast forward then to these days.

I’m mostly cut off from Christian community and certainly devoid of such theological giants as Eric/Radha, Lindsey, Aaron/Gretch and Ryan.

My Christian faith, I am finding, feels rather insignificant and small.

Probably the most tangible way that my faith in the Son of God has manifest in the past six weeks or so has been in keeping my cool with women I’m courting who blow me off. It is a conscious, deliberate, and…

… pretty lame thing to call the apex of my faith’s bubbling to the surface.

So here’s the point.

I’m living a diet, of sorts; I don’t have to wrestle much with thorny relationship issues, vexing spousal Gordian knots, or on-the-job drama. Mom is cool to live with, I’ve nothing even remotely approximating a spouse, and the job… well, yeah. I mean, no. I mean…

When you’re on a diet, there’s less for your body, the mechanics within, to interact with, to digest, to do.

So my faith, my growth unto the image of the Son, has little against which to test itself.

Sure, I get angry when Hulu flummoxes my Colbert feed, or when I realize yet again that I’m too broke to even buy a cuppa joe, or the library does not have the book I want.

See, none of that stuff mattters.

Don’t the Scriptures say that ‘what counts… is faith manifesting itself through love’?

If you were to make weekly summary of the times at which I’d been challenged to manifest my faith through love, said list wouldn’t take very long to make.

Hence my faith feeling rather quite anemic.

It hasn’t had much to do.

Somewhere in one of my boxes o’ books I’ve got a tattered copy of Tolstoy’s Confession. I feel a bit disingenuous suggesting you snag a copy of it, as I don’t remember all that much of it, yet I can share this in good faith:

In it, he shared that authentic faith happened and could be observed amongst folks living their everyday lives. Don’t worry, I seem to remember him saying, with the academics arguing over minutiae of it all, or the critics, or the skeptics.

Wanna see faith in action?

How about teachers, firefighters, cops, you know, anyone else who has to think on their feet about God at work in the world?

How about well, anyone doing life every day as best they know how, negotiating all the bumps, pot holes and detours that friction betwixt this world and Something Better tends to engender?

Why not take a look at people in Haiti at this very moment?

See, I’m not dealing with much of that these days. I live the idyllic, dotcom millionaire life.

And it sucks.

As dear old Farthing, back at Hendrix so many years ago asked about monks in seclusion, hiding from the dirt of the world in order to remain ‘holy’: ‘whose feet will they wash’?

A visual

Perhaps the tough faith decisions we have to  make are those that entail whose feet, when, how, and especially if, we wash.

Ergo, my faith feels quite, well, dead.

Nothing to say, really

You know, as I’ve had this prolonged time of, well, lack of any daily commitments whatsoever inactivity I’ve been spending a lot of time online. So, since I’ve been spending all of that time online, I thought it a good idea to post to ThisSpace with, well, whatever thoughts might materialize. (Insert obligatory ‘I enjoy other blogs that do such things’ comment here.)

I’ve been doing the usual amount of news reading, paying due diligence to Google Reader, and the like. But I’d have to say that greatest piece of that pie would be represented by my time spent on…

… dating websites.

Among the myriad few “connections” I’ve made in this vast netherworld of (dis)connection, one conversation with one girl in particular stands out.

I was finding myself rather depressed and anxious in recent days, and I was beginning to tie that to my relative social anemia so far since I’ve moved to Memphis. This girl seems quite intelligent and godly, so I thought I would ask her if she felt the whole online dating thing was rather soul-draining and well, painful at times, as I sort of have come to appraise it.

Well, she said that she did not, and we proceeded to have a bit of a conversation about that (however brief) before one of us had to rush off.

Different strokes for different folks, I’ve always heard. So I’m not discounting what she said, but I know that I’ve read and talked with others on more than one occasion about the whole ‘disconnected’ nature of all of these online ‘connections’ so many people today are making. Thus, my thinking about this carries on.

This isn’t meant to be a verdict on anyone or any way of life; I am just reporting what I am growing to conceive of as reality so far, which is this: woe be to the ‘connected’ people of the (dis)connected generation.

Put less pompously, your life really sucks if your main ‘connections’ are on Facebook, some dating website, or however many people might be clicking on your blog.

Probably the most difficult part of this online ecosystem that so many of us inhabit and largely rely on for our entire social framework is that it is a one way street, i.e., so much of it is ‘production of content/initiation of contact’ and…

… nothing.

Now, to non-lonely, non-jobless, non-broke people, this is no big deal; I doubt seriously that my wonderful friends Amanda or Ryan struggle with such things.

Me though?

Well, that is a different story.

I get sort of miffed when folks don’t respond to emails/phone calls, but, if I know them well, I trend toward forgiveness.

But the strangers on these dating websites? Or folks to whom I’ve sent job applications? Or people I hope read and interact with the stuff I put on ThisSpace?

You see, in one way or the other, I care about what any of those people have to say about whatever I’ve initiated in their direction. Right or wrong, stable or un, I just can’t help but just take it personally when folks don’t respond in some way.

Do you ‘get’ how unrealistic that is? Yet how many more people are there in the world just like me, if not far worse, on this front?

Oddly enough, I seldom have such problems when dealing with someone face-to-face!

What do we do with all of this, then?

I’m not sure.

I feel like I’ve connected with a quality female or two in my time of online dating junkiness.

But at what cost to my soul, the gladness, the sadness, the up-and-down moods it seems to provoke deep within?

Well, the Lord seemed concerned enough with soul care to have us weigh the value of the soul against the weight of the world, so, knowing all of this, perhaps I should guard mine a bit more.

Of course, I’d be genuinely interested in any of your comments or thoughts on this… but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

Update or something

It looks cold outside. Something about the sky. (Or maybe the intermittent snowflakes-who knows?)

So I thought I’d drop an update of sorts.

I guess I do that once a year or so.

This time, at least, no fervent promise to update more regularly, although I’m still ever quite taken with folks’ blogs who do indulge in that. I don’t know, I guess maybe I’m just too paranoid about this becoming something unhealthy for me, such that I don’t want to get in the habit of posting the minutiae and trivia of my life.

What if no one commented?

What if no one read it?

What if no one cared?

See?

So anyway, here’s the scoop on me.

I’m living just outside of Memphis, Tennessee with my mom. Things didn’t really work out post-DTS, post-teaching, and I realized I needed to move back here. (There really wasn’t much more to it than that, honestly.)

I don’t have a job, although a number of prospects are on the horizon. (Two of the best, oddly enough, are for teaching positions… which would start in… wait for it… August.)

Anyway, my deep thought of late (surely you like such things if you’re a regular reader of ThisSpace) has been something about drowning in plenty.

For instance, I have ample, dare I say, free time these days.

I am sitting at a public library with thousands of books, as we speak (not to mention one on the way, one I’m reading now, and one sitting on my floor to read after that).

I have a cell phone that can call virtually anyone on the planet, any time of day.

I have unfailing access to the internet, any time of any day.

I have a car which would take me anywhere I wanted to go.

I live in literal easy walking distance from a fitness center that I could use for free.

My mom and I have a pantry (as well as a refrigerator) chock full of food.

I have nearly 40 gigs of music on my computer, not to mention a well-honed and active Pandora account.

Yet I’m still lonely.

Yet I still want more music.

Yet I’m still hungry dissatisfied with what Mom’s got in the kitchen.

Yet I still want more books.

Yet I still don’t exercise.

Yet I still want.

Yet I’m still not satisfied.

With deliberate slowness I am reading this book by N.T. Wright and one thing I guess applies to this discussion is Wright’s assertion that Jesus, according to Col. 1, has overcome ‘powers’ that make this dying world go ’round.

‘Powers’ like those which just make us toss up our hands and say, ‘oh, that’s just how things are’.

Crooked politicians.

Hypocritical religious leaders.

Unfaithful spouses.

The dissatisfaction a bum like me feels in the land of plenty.

According to Wright, Christ is Lord over those things-and eternally exists, throwing a wrench into the machinations of those ‘powers’.

Whatever makes those politicians do such crooked things-Christ is bigger than that.

Whatever drives those religious leaders’ hypocrisy-Christ is bigger than that.

Whatever motivates a cheating spouse-Christ is bigger than that.

My infernal search for Whatever will ultimately please me-Christ is bigger than that.

I don’t know, I haven’t given this all that much mulling over; perhaps I’m murdering Wright’s intention there.

Either way, I know this about myself (and it’s probably true about you, as well): it isn’t for lack of resources that my life isn’t better. And it isn’t for lack of a savior that I am not saved from myself.

Just because it’s there doesn’t mean we’ll reach out and grab it.

My Favorite New (old) Law

Not much to say here, but the apex of my spiritual thought over about the past week or so has been something I came across in McGrath’s newest that I’d yet to come across otherwise in my travels through Christian history.

I’ll spare you the oh-so-pretentious-sounding Latin* and tell you that it roughly translates to “the law of prayer [is] the law of belief”.

Where McGrath took it, and the locale of my meditation as well, has been to reduce it to this: how you pray is how you believe.

Notice, it didn’t say the guilt-engendering “how much you pray is how you believe” or anything like that; that point may be there to be made, but I refuse to help bring in that baggage for you. Tote it yourself.

Now I’m gonna wave the flag as high as I can right here and say that I’ve studied nothing whatsoever of the context, further employ, or heck, even the Latin grammar of it; I know there is a Wikipedia page about it, and I’ve not even perused that. So perhaps I’m going rogue here as a proudly ignorant propagator of something I admittedly have read nothing about, but even still, it seemed to have a particular gravity and resonance to it.

I guess you could legitimately say that the way someone prays is truly how they actually believe (ever listened to fresh-to-the-faith people or middle schoolers pray?). I don’t know; my thinking is still fresh on this.

The history of Christianity virtually overflows with nuggets such as this one, and the make up of my spirituality is increasingly characterized by a reverence for the wisdom of those who’ve gone so valiantly before us-with less and less thanks for the hip, the cool, or the paradigm-shifters that populate the local book megaplex. The ancients picked up on the fact that much of the ‘trailblazing’ stuff, doctrinally at least, often ended up at false belief.

With those who’ve stood firm in the tracks of those humble giants of the faith who’ve gone before us in mind, then, here’s to a wonderful, joyous, ponderous Thanksgiving holiday.

*Unless you’re into such things, like Amanda G. no doubt is… It is lex orandi, lex credendi.

Forbidden Math

I’ve taken to staring at walls a great deal.

Two lyrics from Jackson Browne’s immortal “These Days” once again describe every thing about me well, these days.

Well I’ve been out walkin’

I don’t do that much talkin’

These days

(…)

These days I seem to think a lot

About the things

That I forgot to do

This morning I stare across the trenches at monumental changes in my life (don’t worry-these changes still be largely the stuff of secret; if we share friendship you will be privy soon enough). These days, I’m not doing that much talking, and I’m giving a lot of thought to all that I’ve never gotten around to doing.

While I do not consider ThisSpace a journal, I do find it funny how my personal journaling tends to inspire me to share with the scattered dozen whose eyes land here. Allow me to try and polish it for public consumption by way of a question.

Anyone know how to untangle personal faith from an ideal, from an institution, from a (perhaps) ill-founded dream?

I think the content of my atrophied soul’s wonderings has been to ponder how faith (mine, actually; not that on some impotent chalkboard) stands apart from well, everything else.

Let me make it tangible.

I don’t go to church these days, mainly due to my work schedule (but also due to laziness).

How well does (or should) I expect my faith to stand, to grow, to nourish itself?

I don’t work at a Christian institution any more, by (sometimes lamented) choice.

How should my faith function in places where it is a sorta quirky “lifestyle choice” to everyone else, not necessarily a decision I make every day about the star around which my personal galaxy orbits?

I graduated seminary some six months ago.

How should my faith function, both in private and in vocation, given the richness of the theological education I’ve undergone?

Subtract those three things and… what do you make of my faith in Christ?

What does such a faith look like?

A crooked stick? An empty jar? Filthy rags?

Can you subtract all of the things that make you a Person of Faith and just retain well, that faith?

Are you supposed to do that?

Permit me to drop a bit of historical analogy on you, one that doesn’t quite fit but makes the point as best I can contrive at the moment.

It became the uber-hip, in vogue thing in the 19th century to subtract all that stuff that well, we’d prefer weren’t in the gospels and the rest of the New Testament and reduce all of Christianity down to just Jesus as Love Guru and Omnidirectional Revolutionary Force for Hire or something. (See guys from Crossan to Spong to Chopra for such ‘making of Jesus in an image of our own choosing’ today.) That was then and always has been the default answer to the ‘what do we do with this Jesus?’ question.

Well, I wonder if I have not done something similar, by subtracting most all of Jesus except for whatever I can get going on with Him by myself.

The stuff I don’t like about Jesus, like his expectation that I make church, or make effort to grow in the knowledge of him, or negotiate tough teachings about him, or deal with the unpalpable things others in my tradition may do with him, or, whatever… I guess I’ve sort of subtracted all that I don’t like about the Lord and stuck with what I can would rather hold onto.

By myself.

Alone.

For the Christian, the forbidden math is that which leads to one.

Alone.

The God you can taste

Okay, we all fall in ‘ruts,’ so to speak, and This Guy deserves as much condemnation as the rest.

I find myself in a sort of ‘theological rut’. Kind of like Walter in “The Big Lebowski,” everything always seems to circle back ’round to one particular area of theology, specifically, one idea.

The record I think stands easily which judges this one of the most well-trod ones in the history of our dear tradition. I think I’m safe in asserting that the amount of traffic it has gotten proves its relevance to the core of the Christian message.

Theologians, historians, and everyone else important refer to this concept as dualism.

A Greek idea originally, it holds esoteric, “spiritual” stuff as better than (if not wholly superior, in every sense of the word, to) fleshly, this world stuff. Some forms of it actually hold the universe (including, but not limited to, God, Satan, and all aspects of creation) to be at war with itself, the “spiritual” stuff vs. the “fleshly” stuff.

Pop quiz: Don’t think, just answer. Choose any two.

Which honors God more, praying alongside the latest Chris Tomlin hits or loving your spouse well?

Which would God prefer you cultivate, your prayer endurance or whether you work as though unto Him?

Which does God like more, those Chris Tomlin hits or Beethoven’s 5th?

Remember, don’t think, just answer. I’m wanting honest answers here, not the “right” ones. Besides, I’m not waiting around on you. Feel free to email your results.

So this morning during Communion, for the first time ever, as best I can recall, it really did hit me as I was eating the cracker that something truly profound, truly otherworldly happens during that sacred meal.

I know of no way I can get you there to that pew from earlier in the day, but the power of Communion, throughout the history of Christianity, has manifested in one particularly powerful way:

It reminds us that God is not ashamed of these bodies of flesh and this dirty, unclean, unpretty physical world made up of stuff that doesn’t always behave itself.

See, Christianity has stumbled time and time again in its history, guided by some charismatic leader who whipped some group into a frenzy over how deeply, fundamentally ashamed they ought to be at their weaknesses (like needing to go to sleep), their temptations (like being attracted to the opposite sex), and their attractions (like enjoying beautiful art).

Communion reminds us of the God unashamed of what His creation says about Him.

Communion reminds us of the Incarnation (as well as Christ’s Passion).

Communion reminds us of the God so real to us we can taste Him.

For all of our weaknesses, failures, nastiness, unfaithfulness and outright defeats… God is right there with us.

Whom, or What, have we been admonished to remember when we come to that table?

Jesus.

“God with us”.

Maybe that’s what that cracker tasted like this morning… God with us.

I should get some more of that.