Wrestling with Calvin

UPI Column

Recent conversations on this topic got me writing and thinking and rethinking. Thanks to all who contributed in the various by-ways of my Internet wanderings. You know who you are. (And I love each of you.)

Chapter One: Justice Part Two

I'd like to address a couple of the comments in two posts below: The Dogma Ate My Faith and Chapter One: Putting Things to Rights.

Dave said:

As to the relevance/value/significance of whether we retain the label "Christian" (or not) as a self-identifier, of course there are big implications to that. People will react in a lot of ways, but in any case, I don't think your decision is essentially "neutral." Do you agree with that or disagree? Is publicly saying "I'm simply not a Christian" a form of side-stepping or is it a repudiation (the latter choice IMO being more dramatic or conclusive)?

I'd say it's neither. What occurred to me (the postmodernist thinker that I should be by now) is that I do know the assumptions of my primary social context. It is naive of me to continue to expect them to make the adjustments to include me in their definition of Christianity when I don't line up with those definitions. I changed. They didn't.

By being more straight-forward, I hope to respect that difference (to honor it) rather than to be in the role of repudiator or correcter. In other words, I see that I put some of my friends on the defensive unnecessarily by expecting them to accept my definition of Christian. What if we start with theirs?

I'd like to see what happens. I agree that it is not a neutral decision.

What's prevented me in the past from giving up the name is two-fold: First, I do feel Christian and that my life is an expression of Christian faith. Second, my children in particular live in a decidedly Christian sub-culture for whom admission to the club is monitored by the declaration that one is, in fact, a Christian.

What's happened recently, though, is that by letting go of the label, I can explain or nuance who I am rather than attempting to forge a blend between who I am expected to be and who I am. That's created some static I'd rather get beyond.

Another question... Is there some other "label" that is worth adopting? The admittedly clunky-sounding "Jesus follower" (or variations thereof) is where some people are going.

I like the idea of being label-less for a bit. Grad student of theology is working currently. :)

Patrick said:

If our notion of justice doesn't come from an outside source, and if this notion at its best causes us to act in non-self-interested ways, where does it come from?

I think the need to definitively explain our inclination toward justice as being sourced in God is not because it is so, but because it's one explanation that we have come to accept due to the connection being made for us. And let me go on record as saying I don't mind that connection being made, necessarily. I don't think, however, that it accounts for all of humanity, therefore is not an exhaustive explanation.

Justice, in a western democracy, is not the same notion as justice in a Middle Eastern context, for instance. As one Muslim Professor put it, the west doesn't understand at all how deeply Muslims are committed to the value of "respect." They see their primary obligation to others as being the guardians of the sacred through ensuring respect, which may include violence. That's their version of justice. In Asia, the dominant inclination is to preserve face (to prevent shame). Historically, Japanese samurai killed themselves to protect a reputation. Is that justice? Is that inclination God-given?

I don't believe that if I experience it, it must be universally true or God-endowed. On the other hand, I'm perfectly fine suggesting that the drive for justice that I have is valuable and can be found in the trajectory set forth in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is one reason I continue to be fascinated by and drawn to it.

Why does Jesus resonate so much with you? To what does his self-sacrificing life appeal? Why do you follow him rather than Donald Trump? Just your own preferences?

What else? There are many for whom Donald Trump really is the man worthy of emulation. Is capitalist success God-endowed since so many find that aim a worthy use of their lives (more than the pursuit of justice)?

Jesus resonates with me because his stories have catalyzed the most introspection and satisfying work. I'm challenged by his Sermon on the Mount and the way he embraced those outside the status quo. As long as I can remember, that vision of living has inspired me.

Lastly, you mention the cross putting things to rights. This is one aspect of Wright's book I'd like to explore in another post. If you want the first shot at it though (or anyone else), please take it. How does the cross actually put things to rights when we see that the world is not substantially more or less just than it was at the time of Jesus' death and resurrection?

Even when he's beatable, he's unbeatable

So read one headline referring to Tiger Woods' play-off World Championship triumph yesterday, marking the fourth-in-a-row win for Woods, on the tenth anniversary of his entry into professional golf. Uncanny.

Heart-stopping round, really, and yet he figures out how to come out on top... again.

ESPN has a nice week long tribute to Tiger here that recaps his ten years as a pro.

The fact that Woods managed to make a hole in one in his professional debut established early an aspect of Woods that remains to this day: He has the ability to be the news even when he is not the news. In that regard, he is on that short list of athletes who can succeed even in failure, a list that includes Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.

Gotta love his young face.

Chapter One: Putting the World to Rights

Chapter one by N.T. Wright of Simply Christian highlights our inner drive for justice. Wright calls it an echo of a voice... a voice that whispered to us to expect or at minimum, to hope for justice, or a world put to rights.

The basic thrust of this opening is that all of us hunger for a world where tears are wiped away and joy comes in the morning. We long to see injustice ammended and wrong doing eradicated. Why do we so long? Because, according to Wright,

...we find ourselves asking: Isn't it odd that it should be like that? Isn't it strange that we should all want things to be put to rights but can't seem to do it? And isn't it the oddest thing of all the fact that I, myself, know what I ought to do but often don't do it?

He continues:

...the reason we have these dreams, the reason we have a sense of a memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our ear—someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves, and who has made us and the world for a purpose which will indeed involve justice, things being put to rights, ourselves being put to rights, the world being rescued at last.

Do you agree?

Do we have an in-born hunger for justice?

What is the evidence that God shares that longing? If God, if GOD, then why the whispers and echoes? Where is the loud voice or the evidence of God's interest in putting things to rights?

Has God limited godself to human activity in dispensing justice? If so, do we have any reason to believe that justice will ever be done? If not, what is God waiting for?

The appeal to our subjective feelings of wanting justice as evidence of God's longing for justice is problematic for me. But before I express why, I thought I'd throw these questions out to you and see what you all think.

Simply Not

(Tiger Update: Did you hear? Back on top of the leaderboard with a 9- under. He would have been 10- under par had he not hit his golf ball with a nine iron OVER the clubhouse roof!! Even Tiger laughed about it. Today is day three of the tourney.)

The journey inward is illuminating.

Bilbo said in the comments on the post below:

I continue to call myself a christian because, I think I am, and I refuse to allow myself to be defined by others.

This is the line I've taken for the last seven years of deconstruction. I appreciate what he means here. It is frustrating to feel that others can define you and that you must justify your self-definition against theirs. In that sense, I do still feel Christian (not so much a Christian). In other words, how can I escape the powerful influence of 25 years of faith and community derived from Christianity? The values, stories, ideas, images, and hopes all created the person I am today and won't stop exerting influence just because I changed my name.

Reminds me of a friend. His given name was Christy. He's a guy. His entire life, he has received junk mail for women, was assumed to be a female student in all of his classes, was addressed as a woman in phone interviews, wasn't taken seriously when people asked his name and he told them honestly... people thought he was joking.

Why did his parents name him Christy? Because someone they admired had that name and they wanted to honor that man's memory in their child's name.

But by his thirties, "Christy" was sick of it. He felt like his name required one long explanation about what it really was, why he was named it, whether or not it bothered him, followed by discussions of whether or not his parents realized what a mistake that name would be!

So at 35 years old, he changed it... to Josiah. (Okay, I wouldn't have picked Josiah either...)

Now he could begin relationships based on who he was, not what his name meant.

I feel a bit like that. Whenever someone asks me if I'm a Christian, I've felt like I'm only revealing a half-truth. I know what they mean. I know what that question implies. So when I say "yes," I'm now creating an idea in their imaginations that is not congruent with what I know to be true about me. That means that I'm now required to tread even more carefully around these friends or online acquaintances because they think they know me. If I act or behave or speak in a way that violates that image, they are now puzzled at minimum or they feel betrayed at worst.

So this is what I imagine now:

"Are you a Christian?"

"No, but I'm very interested in Christianity. I've spent most of my life studying it, living it, and continue to be inspired by it. In fact, I love it."

"Really? And you aren't a Christian? What do you mean?"

Now I have the chance to say... something.

And that's what I feel like working on now. What is it about Christianity that keeps me interested, that keeps me related to it? That seems like a much better starting point for conversation and reflection than attempting to justify why my version of faith belongs in the same category as the rest of the Christians in my life.

The Dogma Ate My Faith

Tiger update: -3 for the first round (shot a 67 on a par 70). Adam Scott -7 for the day! (I looked up Scott's scorecard: he birdied 9 times... bogied twice. But come on! 9 birdies on that course? That's pretty great.)

UPDATE: UPI column Now posted.

You can't believe what's happened to my soul in the last 19 hours. And I have Sir Tom Wright to thank.

Somehow reading Simply Christian has put everything into perspective. It's more like giving birth than being born again, though. I find myself wavering between throwing up on the book before hurling it against the wall or shredding it with my fanged teeth. Either one is about the measure of how I feel during transition (I should know - been there, done it five times) and that's where I've been living spiritually for seven, yes, the biblical number SEVEN, years.

THAT'S A FREAKING LONG TIME TO BE IN TRANSITION! (Which may be why I have been eating more chocolate of late, come to think of it.)

I realized late last night as I paced the halls, that if what Wright describes is "simply Christian," then I'm "simply not."

Once I said it outloud to myself, I instantly felt like I'd given the final push. It's painful to say it outloud, but not nearly as tough as fighting over it with other people, with the history in my head, with the entire world!

So there you have it.

I'm not a Christian. The keepers of the definition (whoever they are - fight amongst yourselves) win.

Now I can get back to reading the Bible, learning about Jesus and living the Kingdom. I'd rather work on being a decent human being who follows Jesus and who makes a difference wherever she goes than waste any more time justifying a label.

Simply Christian

by N.T. Wright

I'm reading it.

I admit to skepticism right out of the gates. So many of my friends who were struggling with some of the stuff I've read, suddenly felt relieved, vindicated, able to return to old beliefs after reading Wright. Why that bugs me, I'm still sorting out. I think it's that I feel shushed or swept back to the fold with their ringing endorsements and confidently nodding heads. Sometimes their very vocal repudiations of the books/works that have been meaningful to me make me want to put hands on my hips and stick out my tongue, oh so maturely.

My little bruised ego.

Back when I was struggling hard with what seemed illogical to me in Christianity, there were plenty of people who took offense at my questions (especially my formulation of those questions) and felt that their cherished beliefs were being trampled under my high heeled feet. I admit that I was not always aware that I was being so direct and had to learn how to ask my questions without being incredulous of others.

But it's been years since I felt I could express what I really think, fully. In fact, truth be known, most of the people in my life have a misimpression of what I actually believe because they think they already know.

I try to express my truth here on this blog and in my column, but even then, I tread pretty lightly. I don't think I feel the same freedom to effuse about my journey that I did once. I'm tired of being misunderstood or judged or pitied.

What would I really like? I want my friends to think I'm sane, not that I've somehow become a "deceived one," or that I'm on that slippery slope to debauchery or flabby thinking (a much greater sin than your average alcoholism or crack addiction). I want them to think that my journey is not one they have to validate or criticize. I simply want to be known.

So when I think of Simply Christian, I have to fight a tendency in myself to find fault with Tom Wright's arguments, because my inner blackbelt wants to stand up for me in the face of those who'd haul me back to where I cannot go.

My goal is to read this book, to experience it, to let Wright speak to me (without me shouting him down).

I'm slowly crafting (in my head) an explanation for how my way of deconstructing makes sense to me. I need to do this because I get seriously annoyed (like the feeling I get when someone keeps bumping the table while I'm typing on the laptop... STOP IT!) when people feel they can save me with this one better way of reading X. Spare me. Know me.

All that said, I know experience, personal reasoning and limited access to great thinking can all make me stupid and so I'm willing to rethink... continually... much to the detriment of my sex life, I assure you.

So for now, I will read this book and stay quiet about it...

And thanks to one friend whose refreshing lack of agenda gives me someone off of whom I can bounce Wright's ideas without being misunderstood or shuttled back to orthodoxy like a good girl.

Tiger!!!

Sorry, can't resist. I have to post while he's playing a perfect round of golf. Four ahead of the competition now.

Did you see the 8th hole putt? Come on. He's inhuman.

Detroying the field. :) Makes me happy.

UPDATE: And he wins. :)




12 for 12 wins in the majors when he is tied for or has the outright lead on the last day.

Only four three bogeys for the whole week.

18 under par and 5 under second place.

12th major win (on the road to demolishing Jack Nicklaus' 18 major wins).

And the most loved athlete of our time. It's so nice to have an athletic hero we can admire without shame.

UPDATE: My favorite sports writer pays tribute to Tiger.

Moral Relativism and Harry Potter

I am taking up where Scott (from Left of the Dial) left off in one of his posts on Harry Potter. He takes the line that the HP series is a ripping good yarn, but that Harry and Co. so regularly violate basic principles of integrity (lying, cheating, stealing) without any evidence of an afflicted conscience to go with it, that these books describe a moral relativism that we can't respect and that this kind of literature marketed to kids is troubling at least on that level (though he's read the books with his kids).

His very bright wife, Lissa, has her own blog and also writes children's literature. Together, they made a robust case for their perspective which you can read all about and the 39 comments that go with the original post here.

That said, I got to thinking about the idea that most readers of HP are not troubled by these character flaws or the evidence of a morally relativistic world. Why aren't we? (I confess, I am one of those who is not... not troubled, I mean.)

I posted the following [excerpted] comment and have added some thoughts at the end:

Lissa said: As Scott has pointed out, it really makes [Harry] an anti-hero (an established literary identity), and that's very unusual to see in a series aimed at children--and the fact that many otherwise bright people seem not to notice the moral relativism at play in these books suggests that moral relativism (or situational ethics) has become something of a cultural norm. Which is disturbing, don't you think?

What has been intriguing to me is to think about why more of us aren't easily swayed by "the mountain of evidence" that the two of you (Lissa and Scott) are so capable of producing for your perspective. (Reminds me a bit of the failed OJ trial wherein jurors disregarded Marsha Clark's case and found him innocent... but, but, how could they do that?)

You ask if perhaps the cultural climate is moral relativism and I think actually you've pegged it. It isn't that moral relativism has somehow snuck up on us or that it is so clearly wrong or dangerous either (hold on for a minute while I develop this point). It's that we are confronted with it every day in layers upon layers.

Who any more leads an integrous, unblemished life? What we look at are the big swatches of what a person achieves over time more than their daily decisions or habits. Think of the obsession with reality TV where we really do see moral relativity at work all the time and have to decide who to root for. We actually have to make decisions about how much lying or cheating we'll tolerate in our own willingness to back someone.

We do it with politicians (current administration or the last one - take your pick of moral relativists leading our nation), with celebrities (Bono or Mel Gibson?), with our churches (will you align with a church known for avarice and womanizing or one known for pedophilia), or sports stars (Kobe or OJ), or causes (PETA or Operation Rescue)?

We have been bombarded (in recent times) with complex, morally disappointing leaders, stars and what we wanted to believe were vanguards of integrity and have become adept at sorting through the "superficial" errors they make or even the intentional bad-choices-that-we-don't-approve-of-but-will-tolerate while judging the larger picture of what that person or group of people is about and overlooking the things that really don't detract (for us) from that larger picture.

So when we read HP, we already have developed the skills to say what we think is worth being offended by and what is not. We really aren't trying to determine whether Harry is moral, has a conscience or not. We are trying to discover whether on the whole, this boy's life's trajectory is one we admire and root for. We have been training for this moment since the dawn of postmodernism...

We earthlings seem to feel we've been left on our own to outwit, outplay and outlast the bad stuff that wants to come for us.

So what do you think? Is moral relativism a problem? Does media exposure ruin our heroes so that we can no longer imagine them as full of integrity? Do we overlook basic human decency (whatever we deem that to be) in favor of a larger picture accomplishment (whether it is in politics, great acting, NGOs, or athletic skill)? Are we justified in doing that?

Do we believe any more that anyone lives a meaningful, important life without moral failing? Do we expect moral ambiguity and failure? Are we bored by integrity?

Would the Harry Potter books be as entertaining without the lying, cheating and stealing? Are we entertained by the outwitting the system that lying, cheating and stealing imply? (Think of the Reality TV Series Survivor.)

Is it possible, in fact, that we've created a heirarchy of morality in this postmodern context wherein some previously obvious wrongs are now optional, depending on the perception of the participants and the spectators?

These are some of my questions on this quiet Saturday evening...

Mel's Year of Living Dangerously

This week's UPI Column features a compare and contrast between fallen Christian celebrity Mel Gibson and Rock Star "we all want him to be our kind of Christian" Bono.

Enjoy.