Chasing the Ball
Like a flock of birds, the cluster of children in the image above darts across the grass, pursuing the ball as it careens toward the distant goal. For the parents and other adults standing on the sidelines, the sight awakens memories of their own childhood, when all that mattered was the excitement of the chase, when abandoning oneself to the joy of pursuit was the norm.
But for the young athletes above, the abandonment is still all there is. There is no sense of the need to step back from the moment, to subdue emotion and discipline the impulses, to rein in the sheer delight of action, to slow down and think. These lessons will come later.
So too with life in the larger world, as we mature and leave behind the playing field, and find ourselves in the more serious arenas of adult life. Most of us are able to exercise self-control, to be less driven by impulse, not perhaps in every area of life, but certainly in those areas we deem practical.
But once we enter the world of ideas, especially those grand schemees that promise to heal the world, we often lose our discipline and self-control. We may find one idea that draws us close, that strikes us in the heart with force. Is this idea to be our North Star, promising to heal deep injustice, or perhaps to protect us from that which we fear? Our eyes and mind fixed on our distant goal, we abandon the discipline of thought and self-control, giving in to the wildest hopes as if pursuing a dream. Like the children above chasing the ball, we run pell-mell after the promising idea as it skips and dances in front of us, leading us on, we hope to Paradise – or at least to a much better world.
People caught in the grip of an idea often say “I will do anything for the cause” – be it the latest call for social justice or some other political or social movement. That word ”anything” can range from ringing doorbells and sending emails to ending the career of someone we disagree with. Taken literally, it can run all the way to murder and mayhem.
Of course, most of us, when speaking this way, are not being literal. Yet when we find this phrase – “I will do anything for the cause” – echoing in our mind, it is a sign that we have surrendered our autonomy, our independence, to something outside ourselves. We are in the grip of an idea that might have served us and others well, had we only reined it in a bit, but that has instead become our tyrannical master. As psychologist Carl Jung said, “We don’t have ideas. Instead, ideas have us.”
When powerful emotions are harnessed to such a magnetic idea, we can find ourselves driven blindly forward, our eyes fixed on the distant goal. At such times, few tasks are more difficult than finding moderation, subduing emotion and disciplining the impulses – in short, to slow down and think.
Severing the blink-of-an-eye connection between the sighting of a worthy goal and the mad rush down the field creates a space in which we can practice the discipline of thought and reflection. Here the classical virtue of prudence, with its counsel of caution and care, offers help. This virtue teaches us to make wise decisions, to carefully examine an idea from all angles, not just the perspective we are driven to by emotion or by the limits of our own vision. In short, to remember that neither strength of feelings nor certainty of vision can ensure a good end.
Just The Stories Please
My initial encounter with the heavy theological questions of Christianity came early in a college theology program. I was given the task of exploring the relationship between salvation and sanctification and clarifying their connection to the true self. I found a whiteboard and markers and as was my habit after years of working in information technology, began to sketch the problem on the board.
One box for salvation, then sanctification gets one, finally this strange concept called the true self in a third box. Question – is there such a thing as the false self, and does it need its own box? Ahead of me lie three areas of exploration. First, the basics of my two theological terms. Then, some sense of what the true self is. And finally, I need the lines connecting the boxes – the relationships among all these big ideas. Now is when the digging begins.
I had returned to the church a few years earlier after a decades-long absence so a great deal of what I might have learned earlier was gone. I ran to the bookcase where I had a few books that might help, then to the internet, and after that the local library. Finally, hours spent at Barnes & Noble, digging through a book too costly to buy, glancing over my shoulder, nervous that I’d get caught scribbling in my notebook.
And so I made progress. I fleshed out my understanding of salvation, the act by which God saves us sinners. But sanctification seemed more complicated. It’s not a thing or a single event; instead it’s a process that begins at the moment of conversion and continues through the rest of life. Today, many Christians use the word transformation to describe this process of continuous growth.
But after two weeks of searching through several books on theology, scouring half a dozen websites, and annotating and rearranging my boxes and lines on the whiteboard, I was stumped. I had made progress, but something was wrong – something was missing. It was all so …. well, abstract – so remote from life. Diagrams on a whiteboard by their nature have nothing of life in them. There is nothing concrete; they are not anchored to the real world. I would have to find a new way to think about these great theological ideas.
There’s something big and grand about words like salvation and sanctification and their cousins redemption, grace, incarnation, and so on. They stand like mountains above a valley floor, marching along the horizon, drawing – even commanding – our attention. Like the mountains ringing the valley in which I live, mountains on which I gaze every day, my eyes are often drawn upward to the highest peaks..
No one lives on any of these high peaks, although occasionally hardy and venturesome souls visit for a few hours before heading back down to the valley. Still, many people explore the lower slopes – they take a family drive on roads winding through dark green forests, they hike a favorite trail with a friend, they cut firewood, they throw up a tent and camp, they hunt in the fall. Others find their livelihood in the hills- they haul logs down to the mill in the valley, they fight fires in the summer, they thin out and salvage trees burnt by fire or thrown to the ground by windstorms.
But even when we’re in the valley below, we often feel our eyes drawn upward to the heights. In early morning, on the way to work, we glance at the mountain hulking to the east as it slowly emerges in the morning light. And as the sky dims at day’s end, we wonder what lies beyond the long ridge, darkening now, that borders the valley to the west.
There’s no escaping these mountains. They form the physical landscape in which we live. And it’s in this landscape that the stories of our lives unfold, day by day, and year by year.
So too with the spiritual landscape that we inhabit, where the great themes of theology stand on the horizon. Few of us will climb to the summits but many are drawn into the foothills and beyond by careful study, prayer and reflection. Even those of us who live mostly in the valley, with only an occasional foray into the foothills, cannot escape the presence of these grand ideas.
The high-sounding words of theology only come to life when they are embodied in everyday lives, lived out as most people struggle day to day. The history of these struggles to find faith, to hold fast to hope, is found throughout what theologian and church historian Jerry Sittser calls Big Story Little Story; the big revealed in the grand narrative of the Bible, the little found in each of the hundreds of stories found in the long arc from Genesis to Revelation. Although the Bible is ancient, little stories continue to unfold in the lives of believers today as we reach for the best in ourselves, struggle with our many lapses, wrestle with our fears and anxieties, and offer our prayers for help and comfort in times of pain and grief. All of this as we struggle forward, seeking to live a better life tomorrow than we did today, hoping for the eternal life that has been promised.
This is how we come to understand the big themes of our faith. Not in the airy domain of abstraction, but in the concrete thoughts, words, and deeds that make up our daily lives.
In other words, in our stories.
The Fortress On The Plain
You travel across an unbroken plain, flat as a tabletop. In the distance, against an empty sky, stands a squat box-like structure, sitting in isolation. The walls, perhaps made of heavy stone block, are the color of slate, much like the walls of the castle depicted above. As you travel on, turreted towers become visible at each corner. Closer still, you notice that between the tooth-like projections that run along the tops of the walls, stand human shapes and silhouettes, peering out at you. Some of these barely visible figures are armed.
Clearly meant to defend, this is obviously a fortress.
Of the many kinds of structures that humans have erected, none is more hostile, more unfriendly, than the fortress. There is no warm inviting air here, like what we might find at a roadside inn or a small farm holding or any of the other buildings scattered across the kingdom at the time the castle, pictured above, was built.
Instead, the intent of the fortress is to protect from a danger that lies outside the walls, perhaps from the hostile army of a neighboring baron, or a marauding band afire with hopes of easy pillage and plunder.
Hundreds of years later in America fortresses are still with us, but today these protective structures exist in the mind and heart, not in the physical world. Our enemies are no longer the armies of alien powers, or bands of wild and reckless souls searching the world for easy prey. Today, the enemy carries the banner for a political party we oppose, serves a cause that we fear, or believes in a religion we hate. Many of us have responded to these dangers by fleeing behind metaphorical walls of stone.
It’s no surprise that the phrase “fortress-like mentality” is used to describe thinking driven primarily by hostility and fear.
Authors who put our social and cultural lives under the microscope, like Robert Talisse, argue that there is more to this than the rising levels of hostility between groups and factions we have all observed. In his book, Overdoing Democracy, he documents how the enmity and suspicion between groups has penetrated beyond the surface, beyond the domain of politics, and worked its way deeply into our society.
We are divided by where we live, what church we go to, indeed whether we go to church at all. Where do we buy groceries – Whole Foods or a big chain? Do we get our coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks? Do we favor a hybrid or a pickup? Do we bicyle to work or do we see this as something only for lefties? Who do we hang out with? Do we ever talk calmly about what divides us, not with our allies, but instead with people on the other side? Or do we get 9ur back up at the mere thought of an opposing belief?
In short, more and more of what used to be our common life is being drawn back behind fortress walls. For those who retreat into this shelter, the world outside is no longer seen as inviting, as a world to explore, a space in which to learn, but instead has become the stalking ground of the dreaded enemy. The open ground, the place where we used to mix and mingle with one another, is becoming increasingly empty.
The greatest tragedy of living in the fortress is that it not only keeps the enemy out, but that it also keeps us locked inside. We’re not made for this kind of life, cowering behind walls of stone, lobbing volleys of hate at our enemies. Aren’t we meant instead to lead a freer existence, to walk among people of many beliefs?
Three questions for us all.
How do we ensure that we aren’t cowering behind fortress walls? If we suspect we have, then how do we break free? And finally, how do those of us still venturing into the wide world, coax those in hiding to break down the barriers that imprison them, and to step out into the open once again?
Suggested Reading
How To Know a Person by David Brooks
Overdoing Democracy by Robert Talisse
Lifespans
It’s a truism that as we get older, time picks up speed. The year that stretches out forever in fifth grade has a much different feel when we are in our twenties. By the time we’ve lived six or seven decades, that single year goes by disturbingly fast. But this accelerating speed through life isn’t the only surprise that the shifting sense of time’s flow offers us.
Every instant we spend in this world we are living on time’s leading edge, throwing up behind us a virtual mountain of events that make up the past. Most of this detritus is quickly forgotten; a small amount ends up stored in archives and databases, recorded on video, and increasingly today stuffed away somewhere on the internet.
Most of us, when we do cast an eye backwards at the ever-mounting pile of data left behind by humanity, are often overwhelmed. “How do I make sense of all this?,” we may ask. “What does any of it have to do with my life?” And so we move on, barely looking over our shoulder as we rush on through the days and the years.
.
Historians, on the other hand, burrow into this mountain of names and dates, places, and events, seeking patterns that reveal who we are and how we got to this point in history. Perhaps they can offer lessons for how to live going forward. They chop up time into historical eras, not arbitrarily of course, but with an eye for extracting the most meaning. Often they frame their studies by theme and subject matter. Other times by country or region.
But as we get older, whether our interest in the past is serious, casual, or even non-existent, life offers us our own way to structure the past. There is only one question. How long have you lived? And from the answer to that question flows another. How does the length of your life – your lifespan – alter your sense of history?
Stretches of time, say a century, that seem impossibly long to a teen or a young adult, have shrunk when we are much older. Look back even further and events that once seemed ancient are not nearly so distant.
This insight first struck me, forcefully, when I turned thirty-three. I sensed something special about my new age when I realized that it would take only three of my lifetimes to span a century. I imagined a row of doll-like figures, paper cut-outs, all of them holding hands, strung out one after the other like you might see in a magazine of children’s games and puzzles.
What if I was one of those three figures, standing in the middle, my hands locked tightly in the grasp of my two companions? Three people in a row holding hands isn’t that many; neither are three lifetimes strung together, stretching back into the past.
I had lived thirty-three years. Suddenly, a century didn’t seem like that much time.
My sense of the past, of the passage of time itself, and of the long arc of history, had changed in just a few seconds. The impact was so startling that to this day, I remember exactly where I was when the insight struck.
Today, several decades later, the effect is even stronger. Now, three lifetimes take me back to the early decades of the 19th century, when slavery still ruled the South, and the nation was drawing closer to the storm of the Civil War.
A growing child stands against a wall in the family home, a wall marked off in feet and inches, to measure how fast he is growing, his body surging upward into new life. I, on the other hand, looking back on a lifetime of growth and experience, measure myself against the long yardstick of history. It is in this inner world of time, memory, and reflection on the past, not the outer world of feet and inches, that I find my measure of growth.
This telescoping of time is purely personal and is of little use to the historian. It won’t give us a meaningful way to divvy up the past so that we can better understand the Great Depression or untangle the causes of the Crimean War.
What it can do instead is teach us that the recorded history of humanity that formerly seemed infinitely long, so vast that the very idea of measurement seemed impossible, is really quite brief. The true vastness of time lies in the millions of years before humans existed on earth and, if you are of a religious turn of mind, in the eternity in which God dwells.
A Fly Trapped in Amber
The fly above, trapped in amber, was caught on the trunk of a tree in an outflow of sap. The image carries with it a sense of disaster; an insect alights safely, finds in a few seconds that several of its legs are immobilized, then fights briefly to pull away until the sap completely encloses its delicate body. The fly is somehow preserved, only to be found millions of years later, encased in a beautifully colored but deadly casket of amber.
A living being becomes a statue, fixed and immobile.
This condition resembles nothing as closely as it does the psychological state traditionally known as catatonia. Most of us, upon hearing this term, will think first of a patient in a mental hospital, frozen and immobile in a rigid posture, someone whose response to the world, to other people, and to events has shut down to almost nothing. They appear dead to the world.
Yet there is a less literal sense in which the fly trapped in amber can tell us about the human condition. Imagine a person who lives an outwardly normal life, yet internally has reached an impasse, a point in life where there is no longer any forward momentum. In every sense but the external, they are at a standstill.
It’s tempting to ask, “Can’t a person in this state have a good life? Perhaps they’ve achieved a life of success and have merely stopped moving forward. Maybe they’re just resting in place.”
Yet the metaphor of the fly immobilized, when we apply it to the human realm, suggests a broken and even failing life, the life of a person unable to live fully, prevented from the flourishing that is their due. Perhaps they have surrendered to the forces that are dragging them to a standstill. They may have come into the grip of depression, a depression that has destroyed all motivation.
A person in this state often feels hopeless, trapped, and helpless. As they go about the everyday affairs of life they may appear fairly normal, except to those who know something of their inner life. On the other hand, we may find them among the homeless and all the others who wander through the world but struggle to fit in, to conform to the lifestyle and customs of society.
Perhaps this state of being without flourishing has become for the sufferer a survivable state of existence. Yet it is a life that, from the inside, often holds no hope of escape.
Observers often grow frustrated and impatient with people in this plight. We may wonder why they don’t get moving. Why don’t they get a job? Why don’t they break out of the funk that not only holds them down, but can drag down the people close to them?
Perhaps they long to do just that, but don’t know how to get from where they are to where they want to be. Even worse, they may have lost any hope that such change is possible.
Those of us looking from the outside must balance our impatience with the virtues of compassion and patience. And of course thankfulness, that such a fate has not befallen us.
Suggested Reading
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
This book (and the movie by the same name) tell the story of neurologist Sacks’ pioneering work with patients trapped in the outward state of catatonia, the state of physical immobility. This is not the inner state of entrapment discussed above, but still, it brings the metaphor life.
Barriers
One summer morning a number of years ago I sat in a large room, filled with nearly a hundred people. They were all strangers, so I had picked an isolated seat in the back row. After some words and music, a man stood in front of us and began to speak, his hands gesturing, his arms sometimes angling outward in a gesture of embrace. His face was lit with a smile, then a look of puzzlement, followed by all the other expressions that might cross the face of a pastor on a Sunday morning. He was preaching, and while I heard his words, they didn’t resonate in my body or work their way into my heart.
Halfway through his sermon, I got up and walked out. There was nothing here for me.
I had spent many years before this Sunday morning in a state of disbelief. Every day during that time, I had walked or driven past one church or another, past these steepled buildings that reminded me of my younger years growing up in the world of religion. But I had left my childhood and adolescence behind and had come to believe I no longer needed the beliefs, rituals, and community offered by religion.
So what exactly was drawing me back to a worship service on that particular Sunday morning? Was I seeking the piety of my childhood; the piety that quickly melted away when I entered the harsher world of adolescence? Or was I trying to recapture the sense of belonging that had survived into my twenties – friendships, familiar faces and voices every Sunday, the gathering together of a community.
Whatever I was after, here I was on that summer Sunday morning, trying hard to listen, to find a way in, and failing completely.
The Bible tells us that if we knock, the door will be opened.
I was knocking.
So why did the door remain shut?
Writing teacher Peter Elbow says that the best writing in the world cannot be received unless we open our mind to the words. Surely the same is true of the spoken words of a sermon. So the question is, “Why wasn’t my mind open and receptive?” In other words, what barriers kept the preacher’s words out?
A quick look around our modern culture shows how easy it is to find such barriers. Plain unwillingness to believe in anything beyond the material reality which we see around us leaves some with no sense of spirituality at all.
Others, who are not willing to embrace atheism, who long for more than a merely material existence, find certain points of religious doctrine unacceptable. Some are put off by the patriarchal aspects of traditional faith.
And then there is the past. Glance back over history and you find a litany of sins committed in the name of God. Although in the long run of history the good done day to day may balance out and even greatly outweigh the bad, these kindly and beneficial acts are often lost in the shadows cast by religious war, by the misuse of power by religious institutions, and by the many flaws of ordinary believers.
But the failures of the past weren’t a real barrier for me. Why should the abuse of religion and the shortcomings of believers ages ago be a barrier to religious fulfillment today?
No. My barriers were much closer to home; they were to be found in my own life. I needed to examine my own history, not study the church’s. My answer for years to questions of God and faith had been, “How can I possibly know?” This response marked me as an agnostic, not an atheist.
But my stance as one who can’t know concealed something deeper, covering over deep disappointment, even bitterness, at certain of life’s outcomes. I had lost the understanding, or perhaps never possessed it in the first place, that religion can be strongest when we suffer loss, when some of life’s hopes and desires just don’t work out.
It was after years of living this life that I ended up walking into a worship service on that summer Sunday morning years ago. Even though I later walked out, it should be clear by now that my failure to respond to the sermon was in no way the fault of the pastor.
In fact, he is my pastor today, and I am glad to receive his ministry and care and to hear his words. A year and a half passed between the day I walked out in the middle of his sermon and the day that I eagerly returned. The day when the door remained closed and the day it swung open. What happened in between?
During the months before I returned for good, in my wanderings through the internet, I found a writer who frequently declared, “People today have nothing to believe in.” These words caught in my mind so that I often found myself echoing this phrase.
It took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t lamenting the fate of others. Instead I was mourning my own lack of belief. I was confronting the emptiness inside. An emptiness that could no longer be concealed by the busyness of day to day, by the glittering distractions that modern culture throws in our eyes.
It was sometime later that I felt a powerful urge to return to worship.
This time, when I knocked, the door opened.
Now that I have been a believer again for quite a few years, I wonder if there aren’t other people like I was years ago, wandering around the edges of faith, trying to find their way inside, into a world they sense is special, even essential. But the way is blocked.
Are you out there, searching? Have you knocked but received no answer?
Is the door still shut?
Don’t give up. You may be closer than you think.
The Solitary Voyager
Imagine, in the emptiness of space depicted above, a small craft carrying a solitary human streaking on a journey, traveling among planets, asteroids and even distant stars. Each of these heavenly bodies exerts the force of gravity, pulling the hurtling ship first one way, then the other. Sometimes these forces are faint and subtle, other times great.
Yet the lonely space craft, carrying its single passenger, manages to avoid being captured by any of these huge objects. To be captured, to fall into the orbit of any, would constitute failure. Instead, the voyager hurtles onward, heading who knows where, intent on never becoming a captive of any of these overpowering objects, all of which threaten the traveler’s independence.
We all travel, as we journey from birth to whatever end awaits us, through a world filled with beliefs of all kinds – religions, ideologies, political movements, social causes. Each seeks to draw us into its orbit, each evangelizes for its own view of the world and of life. “Come and join us,” its followers say, gesturing to all the people who have embraced their particular belief, hoping that we too will join.
Yet for some autonomy is a great prize. They may feel the pull of a distant faith, of a nearby ideology, and even recognize its virtues. Yet they refuse to surrender. They resist the entreaties of those who proclaim, “You have to believe in something,” or “You’ve got to have a cause.”
“But what of the dangers?” the solitary voyager asks, knowing that beliefs, even the best-intentioned, can be the occasion for terrible events. Combined with humanity’s native intolerance, with our frequent hostility toward the outsider, any idea that gains a following can at times produce a toxic mix of prejudice, fanaticism, and occasionally even violence.
It is a form of skepticism, this desire to remain uncommitted, to live independently of the many ideas that surround us in our journey through life. The philosopher Friederich Nietzsche, one of humanity’s most famous solitary voyagers, laid out the choice he believed we all face. “If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire”.
Few choose Nietzsche’s lonely path of inquiry where truth is elusive. Most of us settle into orbit around an idea already established, a truth already revealed, one that offers community and peace of soul. For those who follow Jesus, that way has been set out by Augustine in his Confessions. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
Body And Soul
Lately, I’ve been attending to fitness more often than in the past. On days when I bring my less than perfect physique to the gym, I am surrounded by many specimens of humanity, quite a few displaying bodily forms closer to the ideal of fitness than mine. Occasionally I note with regret how much catching up I have to do, and even feel a pang of guilt over my neglect of bodily needs.
But lately I’ve found a better frame of mind, one more suitable for any effort at self-improvement – the past is behind me and I am starting anew. Most importantly, I am here to compete with myself and myself alone.
Fortified by this sensible attitude, I quickly scan the long rows of ellipticals and stationary bikes, weight machines and treadmills, looking for an open spot. After finding an empty machine I clamber aboard, settle into place, and start off, joining the gathered assembly as we pedal, pump, and perspire, all of us struggling, as one, toward the pinnacle of bodily perfection.
We are not alone in this aspiration. Taking care of the body has long been a preoccupation, perhaps even an obsession, for many people in our culture. Any gym, and there are countless thousands to choose from, offers not only fitness machines and fitness classes, but also fitness experts who offer counsel and guidance as we struggle to stay on the straight and narrow in our quest for bodily self-improvement.
Regular attendance at a gym is a great way to tend to our physical selves – to the outer shell, so to speak – but what about the inner self? How much care do we lavish on the soul, the spirit?
It’s tempting to picture nurture of the soul as an other-worldly counterpart to nurture of the body. Each endeavor seems to take us on a separate path, each using its own set of techniques, one bodily, the other spiritual. Aren’t the followers of both engaged in serious efforts at self-improvement, just to different aspects of the self?
Soon after I returned to Christianity a number of years ago and began to explore the spiritual dimension of my new faith, I learned how misleading this notion is.
I had joined a group in my church that was gathering weekly to discuss the subject and found that the book used was ideal for a beginner like me – Richard Foster’s classic Celebration of Discipline. Foster discusses twelve spiritual practices. Several, like prayer, worship, and study of scripture, are familiar to anyone who has dipped their toe into Christianity or even observed it from the outside. Others, like solitude, simplicity, and service to others, may be less familiar.
Even a cursory reading of Foster’s deliberations on the disciplines will make clear the first of three ways in which Christian spiritual growth differs from physical exercise. Each practice must arise out of a core of belief and commitment. These beliefs and practices bring us into deep connection – with one another, with the meaning of scripture, and ultimately with God.
Second, the disciplines should not be seen as isolated techniques. Church historian Jerry Sittser warns that in our modern culture we tend to believe that with the right method we can master anything – even the inner self. In the introduction to his history of Christian spirituality, Water From a Deep Well, he advises that the disciplines must be embedded in a deeper and broader spiritual effort – to seek, know, and experience God.
Finally, the spiritual disciplines are not a means of self-improvement. We do not make ourselves spiritually fit. Rather it is the hand of God that shapes us, in the same way that a sculptor shapes a block of stone. The disciplines are the means by which we make ourselves available to God so that He can shape and guide us toward the ideal of the Christian life.
This never-ending spiritual seeking is what has allowed Christianity along with the other major religions to stand for so long. Like great trees, they tower above the more mundane affairs of life, offering inspiration and shelter to their believers.
Can a spirituality cut off from rich sources of understanding like these sustain us? Without deep roots like those offered by the traditional faiths, isn’t there a risk of wandering aimlessly, untethered from any coherent set of beliefs?
Won’t we end up adrift, lost in the wilderness without map and compass, unable to find our way home?
Suggested Reading
Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
Water From a Deep Well – A History of Christian Spirituality by Jerry Sittse
Just Enough Money
The most original request for a handout I’ve ever heard came from an elderly street dweller in Toronto. Confronting a well-dressed, attractive couple about to enter a theater, he extended his palm and growled in a surly voice, tinged with disdain, “Come on. What do you need all that money for?”
The theater-goer who was the target of this case of panhandling with attitude had been reluctant to give anything. But now he broke into a smile and handed over a quantity of money. I can’t even estimate how much he gave. I was too busy smiling, along with everyone nearby, at the wit, boldness, and success of the panhandler’s barb.
It’s easy to see this anecdote as an object lesson in greed. The poor but wise street-dweller confronts the wealthy theater-going couple and teaches them a lesson. But to be fair, the donor and his companion may not have been guilty of greed.
There’s nothing wrong with the worldly success that can lead to fine clothes and a night at the theater. All of us cherish spending our earnings on such pleasures. Yet the elderly panhandler asked a question that flies like an arrow to the heart of the Christian message – just how much do we need?
“How much of what?”, one might ask, since money isn’t the only object of our desire. But our other appetites – physical hunger or shop-till-you-drop consumerism among them – have limits. Eat too much, and before too long, our belly aches. Buy too many consumer electronics and we end up discarding the old; stuff too many summer outfits into our closet and we struggle to choose what to wear.
Even the titans of material excess have limits. The former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, who became infamous in the eighties for, among other things, her massive collection of shoes, stopped when she had only 3,000 pairs. Even among the superstars of consumption there is eventually a stopping point.
But when we surrender to greed, when we hunger after money itself, there seems to be no limit to our desire for more. Money unlocks the world’s treasures. Do we love money for its own sake or because of the treasures it can buy us? How often do we say, “If only I had a bit more – just this much.”
But is it even possible, when in the grip of the greed and avarice that so often beset us, to have enough? Is there ever such a thing as just enough money? The writer John Steinbeck answers with a resounding “No!” In his novel Winter of Our Discontent, he says there are only two measures of money, “No Money and Not Enough Money.”
The question of how much to hold and how much to give has long beset humanity. The book of Proverbs warns us that if we ignore the cries of the poor, then someday our own cries will be ignored. Such warnings may spur us to give more, but we are better off if we deepen our character and practice the virtue of generosity.
Jesus tells us how an elderly widow, impoverished, gives a small coin in offering. In doing this, her generosity exceeds all those who, having much more, still give a much smaller portion of what they have. Such generosity from the poorest is meant to inspire a more generous spirit in all of us.
But concern for the marginalized has not been the only motive for posing the question – “How much do I need?” In the first few centuries of the early church, the so-called “desert fathers” sought to emulate the life of Jesus by living a solitary life of denial and poverty in the deserts of Egypt and Syria.
A thousand years later, St Francis of Assissi gave away his abundant wealth, lived a life of poverty, and founded a religious order. He and his followers sought the treasure in heaven promised by Jesus to those who would sell all they owned, give to the poor, and follow him.
Both the desert fathers and the followers of St. Francis saw “too much” as a hindrance to a better life. They had all asked the same question – how much do I need – and they had found an answer.
Today in the modern west, where a better life means more of everything, how often do we even ask the question? Whether we hunger for the things money can buy, or just for money itself, we are often inflamed to a state of perpetual acquisition. Like a car whose gas tank is constantly running near empty, we always need a fill-up. A life of voluntary poverty, modeled on the desert fathers or inspired by St. Francis, may be far beyond the reach of most of us.
What we can do, as we cruise the mall and surf the internet, wallet at the ready, is to keep in mind the twin figures of the panhandler with his bold and probing question and the widow holding out her small coin.
How much do I need? And how much will I give?
Suggested Reading
The Widow’s Offering – Luke 21:1-4
On The Outside Looking In
Our oldest and deepest affiliations with others may lie in our religious traditions. When we become a follower of a religion, and we can follow only one, we find ourselves in a community which shares beliefs and spiritual practices. We look at the world from the vantage of our own faith, and gaze out upon a world peopled by believers in all the religious traditions apart from ours. We are on the inside of our faith, looking out.
Just how much of another faith tradition can we really understand? Beliefs are not just propositions to be memorized and studied in a classroom. Rituals and spiritual disciplines are not just physical practices to be rehearsed like exercises at the gym. Is the border between beliefs a perpetual barrier to understanding one another? Are we forever on the outside of other religions, looking in?
Years ago I made a new acquaintance. Kerry was outdoorsy and adventurous and had traveled much of the world, especially the Far East. During his journeys to Australia and southeast Asia he had become a follower of Buddhism.
When it came to my new friend’s religion, I was definitely an outsider. I had no strong convictions on religious matters. I had been raised a Christian, but no longer practiced and barely believed in my faith of origin. Buddhism, along with the rest of the world’s major religions, was for me an object of curiosity and mild interest, but no more.
But for Kerry Buddhism was a matter of commitment. I soon learned how deeply his conviction ran in one of our conversations, when I found myself holding forth, in a friendly manner, on what I saw as the peculiarities of Buddhism. After hearing me out for a minute or so, Kerry smiled and said, “Well, you’re certainly looking at Buddhism from the outside.”
My new friend had found a polite way to let me know that, at least when it came to his religion, I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Now I had a rank amateur’s knowledge of Buddhism. My curiosity had led me to read a book or two on Zen Buddhism, but otherwise I had studiously avoided any serious learning on the subject. However, if I had been a proper student, there were plenty of resources that I could’ve turned to.
The internet barely existed at this time, so my best option would have been the religious studies program at the local university where courses on Buddhism were offered. These were classes about Buddhism, not courses on how to be a Buddhist. The goal was to describe the religion, not win converts.
The student in a class on Buddhism may learn of the Four Noble Truths and the Cycle of Rebirth. They may read some of the sutras, the collection of written discourses by the Buddha and his disciples. And they will find that traditional texts are chanted, offerings are made, and pilgrimages undertaken as part of Buddhist practice.
A student more intrigued by Christianity might take a course on the theology of the trinity, or perhaps medieval mysticism. They might study several of the epistles of the Apostle Paul, or dip into the Hebrew Bible to examine the religion of the ancient Jews out of which Christianity emerged.
This kind of knowledge can teach us much about any religion, about its beliefs, rituals, and practices. And this knowledge can give us some degree of understanding. But all this information about a particular faith still leaves us outside, gazing at something that remains alien to us.
It wasn’t until I embraced Christianity again many years later, that I understood the full meaning of my friend Kerry’s words. Looking from the outside in is no way to understand religious belief.
Stepping into the world of a particular religion, so that we are no longer on the outside looking in, radically changes our life. Looking back, it seems that we have stepped from mere existence into the heart of life itself. The religion – be it Buddhist or Christian or whatever – is no longer something abstract and alien. Instead it springs to life around us, fills our heart, and guides our thoughts so that the world and life itself are transformed.
The ecumenical spirit that has helped religions to better understand one another and to work together on common concerns has certainly brought different traditions closer together. But to actually penetrate to the heart of another faith may require a fresh commitment, a willingness to shed some of our own convictions and to embrace what have until now been alien beliefs.… Read the rest
Young and Old
Once in a while I’m frustrated talking to a young adult, newly hatched from years in a classroom and taking their first steps into the world of career and family. I slip the name of a celebrity into the conversation, perhaps I recall a famous slogan from a political campaign or even refer to a cultural happening from a few years back.
In return, I receive a blank and puzzled stare.
Many of my memories are of events that happened before these young adults were even born. We are both looking back at the years we have seen, but my gaze reaches much further than theirs.
These days my backward gaze often occurs in generational leaps of twenty or twenty-five years. Two hops back and I’m a young adult myself, barely out of college, settling into a world where almost everyone else is older than me. When that barely twenty year old me, observing the world from the vantage of youth, saw the aged, did he understand that one day he too would be sporting gray, even white hair? Or was this realization pushed aside as he said to himself, “I’ll never be one of them.”
And did he realize that one day many years in the future, he would sit across a table from a person in their mid-twenties and wonder, “Where did all the years go?”
I have been at both ends of adulthood, young and now old. As I look back I find myself adding and subtracting in blocks of 25, doing my sums as I did when I was a child in school, but now with big chunks of my life instead of meaningless numbers scratched in chalk on a classroom blackboard.
Playing this game of generational arithmetic can lead to sobering reflection on our existence, about how long it has lasted, and about the fact that we are now on the downhill side of our time here on earth. All of this strikes deeply into our sense of who we are, of who we have been, and of what we have made of ourselves in the long stretch of years we have lived.
Inevitably an awareness, perhaps even a fear, of our own mortality rises to the surface of our mind.
My first moment of fear, even terror, came eight or nine years ago one night as I lay in bed, my eyes shut, hoping I would soon drift into sleep. Suddenly I felt myself racing straight downhill on skis, at an ever-accelerating speed. This was not a dream or even a vision. Instead it was a whole body experience, with all my senses sharpened as I hurtled madly down the steep mountain. What was I flying toward? What lay at the bottom of that steep slope? After a second or two I was once again lying in bed, the fear and terror gone, never to return.
Is it mere psychology that has kept the terror at bay? Is it only our human habit of averting our eyes from the fears lurking in the darkness around us? No, there is more. My later embrace of Christianity and its promise of eternal life can only have strengthened my defenses. Although thoughts of mortality have visited me since, nothing as terrifying as that downhill race has made it through again.
The young, most of them at least, know nothing of these fears and anxieties. They stand on the threshold of adulthood, gazing ahead at … what? When I try to remember what it was like at that age, looking toward the future, I find myself standing on the edge of a precipice and seeing before me a great void. In the years since, that void has been filled not only with the events of my own life, but with the events that have shaped the world I live in.
Today the future stands before the young, waiting for them to step forward into the yawning emptiness, to receive whatever hope, faith, luck, belief, and effort will deliver to them. In a couple decades, past the sell-by date for the world I have known, the world they are building will have taken form, shaped by their experiences, beliefs, and values.
This struggle between the young, shaping the world anew, and the old, holding onto the world they have known, is always with us. Like two teams engaged in an athletic contest, each generation occupies one end of the field. The old bring their years of experience to the contest, while the young bring their greater energy, their hope for the future and a conviction that they have all the time in the world.
But there is one other difference. The young have yet to learn what the old already know – that eventually everyone gets to play at both ends of the field
Reading As A Whole Body Experience
The writer and literary critic Dorothy Parker, who was famous for her wit, once wrote of a book she was reviewing, “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. Instead, it deserves to be thrown with great force.” * I had a similar reaction to a famous book of theology many years ago. The work was Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Parker’s remark on what may have been her least favorite book is obviously a touch hyperbolic. So is my comment on Ethics. I was not compelled to throw the book aside, but I did feel like casting it down. There were one or two sections of Ethics that I found brilliant. But as I turned, somewhat randomly, from one essay to another, I was repelled. I felt suffocated by the prose, as if I were being smothered in a blanket of religious piety. My reaction was swift and visceral. I tossed the book aside – it actually landed snugly on my bookshelf – and didn’t open it again for over ten years.
Today I find Ethics to be rich and wonderful, as I do everything I’ve read by Bonhoeffer. Much happened in the years between my initial revulsion and my later delight. Most importantly, I am no longer an agnostic. Instead I have returned to the Christianity in which I was raised, to once again inhabit the same religious universe as Bonhoeffer. Many of his ideas and assumptions about life and the world are familiar to me. In short, Bonhoeffer’s language is my own, and so his words are alive to me.
When I say that his words are alive, I don’t just mean that they pique my curiosity; my response actually runs much deeper. I mean that the words enter me and seem to resonate throughout my body. This welcoming response I feel is radically different from my reaction years ago. The words are the same – the difference lies in me.
Now, when I read Bonhoeffer’s words, my body responds like a musical instrument, with all the strings pulled taut and vibrating. Reading Bonhoeffer has become a whole body experience.
It’s a truism among writers that to read their work is to know them personally. This is especially true when the writer’s skill with language makes their words dance and even sing with meaning and emotion. Finding such a writer is the beginning of a new relationship that will hopefully grow and flourish. In time, reading will take on the quality of music and we will become an instrument in the hands of the writer.
But this musical experience of reading doesn’t only depend on the writer’s skill. We, the reader, have work to do as well. We must be willing and able to listen to the writer’s words.
In his book Power in Writing, Peter Elbow notes that when reading even the best writing, we must first give the writer access to our mind before the words can have any impact. Heart, soul, and body lie behind this mental doorway, and if that door remains shut, we will never resonate to the words that the writer offers us.
My initial encounter with Bonhoeffer, over a decade ago, illustrates how quick we sometimes are to deny to ourselves this rich and engaging experience. My task, as a reader, was to open the door and give Bonhoeffer access to my mind and to what lies beyond. My failure to do so shows how easy it is to keep that door shut.
Such failure is widespread in our deeply polarized society. When we have lost the will, perhaps even the ability, to open our minds to opposing voices, to resonate within to their words, then any hope of building relationships across our many political and cultural divides fades. Allan Jacobs, in his book How To Think, explores the roots of this crisis and counsels us on how to restore human connection to this broken landscape we inhabit.
His excellent book, alas, was published too late for my first encounter with Bonhoeffer. But if many years ago I could’ve magically read How To Think, I would’ve found the perfect antidote for my anger at Bonhoeffer’s words.
“Give it five minutes,” Jacobs says in his final chapter, telling us what to do when we are provoked to anger by words. Go off and weed the garden, take a walk, let your body’s rhythm capture your mind. All of this, he concludes, will help us to think – really think – about the words we’ve just read.
And the act of thinking is of course the key. Once we’ve thought about the words, then our mind has been opened, and the words can enter – into the heart, the soul, and the body. Will we immediately find the rich musical experience of reading? Probably not. But we have made first contact with the writer, and with time and patience, we can grow and nourish this new relationship into the rich and meaningful experience of reading – reading as a whole body experience.
Suggested Reading
How To Think ; A Survival Guide for a World at Odds – Allan Jacobs
Religion and The Religious
It’s common today to hear critics of Christianity, or indeed of religion in general, assail the religious for their many faults. Perhaps they complain about their neighbor who faithfully attends worship every Sunday but is often ill-tempered at home. They may remember the believing friend of many years ago, who, though prosperous, shared none of his wealth with the poor. Perhaps their son works for a Christian willing to receive God’s grace and mercy, yet who never seems to pass that same grace and mercy on to his employees.
We Christians often nod our heads, agreeing with the criticisms. We squirm when we hear remarks like these because when they are accurate, and they often are, they reveal our flaws. Or if not our personal flaws then the failings of other believers. Yet all these barbs, aimed at individual wrongs, are important since they tell us believers where we have gone astray.
These personal failings, no matter how minor or how severe, can tell us much about the individual Christians we often meet, but they tell us nothing about the religion itself. Yet many people who encounter the errant Christian are quick to reject – or at least to criticize – Christianity itself.
As if the faults of the believer count as points against the belief, so that the value of the faith rises and falls with the character of the faithful. But why? We don’t blame the car when the driver loses control and hits a pedestrian. So why do we blame the religion when a believer runs off the road?
Yet the analogy of car and driver falls short. Religion is a way of life, not a machine that we operate. Christianity is meant to inform and guide our mind, heart, and body, not to serve as a vehicle that transports us to a desired destination. Finally, faith must be a lasting commitment, not a convenience that we trade in for a newer model every few years.
The Christian has willingly embraced these truths, so it’s fine for outsiders to expect more of us. We are not an arbitrary group of people, like all the owners of Toyotas, or the suburbanites who happen to share the same zip code. We’ve made a serious commitment and therefore should be judged, as believers, by how true we stay to that commitment.
But it is in the nature of things that all believers will fall short of the ideals given in religious doctrine; for a Christian, these ideals are embodied in the life of Jesus. Some of us, sadly, will fall far short. Criticism of these failings is legitimate, and much needed, but it is a criticism of human nature, not of religion in general, or of Christianity in particular.
Critics are simply wrong when they turn away from religion because of the personal failings of believers.
This misguided practice of judging the religion by the religious arises because the critic is looking at the religion from the outside.
But if the critic could magically cross the threshold and enter the world of Christian belief, they would be surprised. The beliefs they formerly thought strange will spring to life around them. They will find hope and assurance for a better life, and comfort and community when they suffer.
They will follow the disciplines like prayer, worship, and service to others – practices which will implant their beliefs more deeply into their bodies and into their daily lives. And as they sometimes struggle to live out their faith, they will see the disparity between their own life and that of Christ. Inevitably, like all believers, they too will fall short. Even so, they will know that they are loved and valued in spite of this.
Surely one of the reasons that humans respond to the call of the divine must be our sense that we are weak and alone. Arising from that reality grows a hope that seeking help and comfort from the divine can help us to live better lives. After all, if it was easy to be perfect and pure, then we wouldn’t need religion in the first place.
As a Christian friend of mine once observed – in the end, we’re all just a bunch of sinners.
Neighbors
Now that autumn is only a few weeks away and the days have cooled off, I’ve resumed an old habit – a daily walk through my neighborhood.
Today, I set out, heading toward the corner. Once I get past the half dozen families crowded close on my side of the street, the families I know, I’m among strangers. When I reach the corner, I turn, heading south, making my way into unknown territory.
On especially beautiful days the mountain to the east hangs suspended against a sky of limpid blue. Today though, the sky is pale and washed out. Several miles to the west a long ridge walls off the other side of the valley floor.
I walk for half an hour and encounter only two people. A woman walking her dog, a hundred or so feet behind me, and a man who disappears through his front door as I pass. On other walks, I might see an old man, kneeling as he tends to his garden, or two young men piling tools into the back of a pickup. Sometimes two neighbors stand between their houses, talking about who knows what. I might nod and offer a casual greeting, but usually I say nothing. On each stroll, I see different people, but never more than a few, and often no one at all.
I pass nearly a hundred dwellings, of all varieties, all of them silent, but not empty. Each is home to a family and that means that life of some kind is going on.
Who are all these people, most of whom I’ve never even seen, let alone talked to?
They are my neighbors, and I am told that I should love them.
But how can I love someone I don’t even know?
Jesus’ commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” occupies second place in Christian teaching after the most important, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Although non-believers may be put off by the command to love God, even a hard-core atheist should be willing to love their neighbor.
When people puzzle out what this commandment means, the talk is often about caring for the poor and marginalized, those who are in mourning, those in remote parts of the world who suffer, the homeless in our own community, along with others who suffer and are in need.
A friend who is concerned about climate change asks, “Aren’t future generations our neighbors too? They live adjacent to us, not in space, but in time. Shouldn’t we be worried about the world we leave behind, for their sake?”
I am to think of the distant stranger as if they live just down the block, and offer them the love for all humanity, near and far, that is called agape in ancient Greek. But while I can care for all these far away people, keep them in my thoughts, and do what I can for them, I can’t actually know them.
But I can know the person living across the street or just a block or two away.
So why don’t I?
Years ago, there was a hostage incident just a couple blocks from where I lived. As I stood behind a police barrier, I glanced around at the crowd and realized I didn’t know anyone. I turned to the person next to me and said, half-jokingly, “The only time I ever see my neighbors is during a hostage crisis.” He responded with a nod and a rueful grin.
Will we ever tire of imprisoning ourselves behind closed doors, nodding and chatting briefly to each other as we go out to the car, or take out the trash. Is it our addiction to TV or video games that leads us to live as shut-ins? Or perhaps our introverted nature? Maybe we just have too much to do in our busy lives to bother much with our neighbors.
Even the neighbors we do know are often largely strangers. My neighbor of many years, Gary, is an example. His passing away earlier this year has brought much of this to my mind.
Over the years we had many casual chats, but they were always brief. I had never entered his house until the last year or so when his health was declining, perhaps to take him his mail, or to help him with a chore.
At his memorial service, I learned much that I didn’t know about my old neighbor. The question that has been nagging at me since is, “Why didn’t I know all of this already, before he passed away?” More to the point, “Why didn’t I actually know him as the fully living human being he was?”
Think what I missed out on.
Perhaps it’s time on my daily walks to do more than just pass by the neighbors I encounter, exchanging a few idle words. Instead, maybe I should stop, face them squarely, look them in the eye, and take the first step toward the love I am told to offer, by actually getting to know them.
Where Is Up?
In the valley where I live, mountains, hills and heavens rise upward in every direction. People who live here often wander up off the valley floor, sometimes hiking mountain trails, or driving the roads that loop and wind ribbon-like through deep-green forests, occasionally even climbing on foot towards one of the commanding summits above.
Most of the time though, we just live down in the valley. But even then, all the verticality that surrounds us constantly draws our eyes upwards, from the grassy slopes and hillsides that hem the valley floor, to ridges draped thickly in green, to bare peaks against blue sky, and to whatever lies beyond.
Haven’t people who live in the presence of mountains always done what we do? Haven’t they always gazed upward from the valley below?
In ancient Israel, before the people had only one God, and before the Temple in Jerusalem became the only legitimate site of worship, the people raised altars on mountain summits and on hilltops. Psalm 121 says “I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?”
Hills, mountains, and heavens play a sacred role in the Christian story as well. The harsh and rugged Judean wilderness where Jesus was tempted by Satan, the hilltop from where He delivered his great Sermon on the Mount, the summit on which the miracle of the Transfiguration took place – all draw believers closer to the heights above.
But with the Ascension, the final event in Jesus’ time on earth, our minds are drawn even higher. Jesus has been crucified and resurrected, and after spending time with his disciples, he prepares to depart from them. At the end of the gospel of Luke, his disciples witness him rising upwards into the sky, to join his Father in heaven.
But a rather obvious question nags at any modern person who thinks seriously about this scene. Just where is Jesus going when he ascends? In other words, where exactly is up?
To the people living hundreds of years ago, say at the height of the Middle Ages, the very question would’ve seemed silly. They lived on an earth that was at the center of a cosmos – a richly ordered creation, in which the earth was surrounded by concentric spheres. The stars and planets were lights embedded in these spheres. And the higher you went, the better things got. So they knew exactly where up was, and it would be natural to imagine Jesus ascending to a higher and better place – upwards to heaven to sit at his Father’s right hand.
But today we live in a much different world. Medieval theology no longer governs our view of the cosmos. The earth has been driven from the center of all that exists and has become instead a tiny speck in a vast emptiness. Here there are no concentric spheres. The stars are pinpricks of fire in the vacuum of space. When the first astronauts returned to earth decades ago they told us, “in outer space, there is no up or down.”
So, for us there is no easy answer to the question “Where is up?”, or more to the point, “Where is heaven?”
Christians have been struggling with this question, in one form or another, since scientific materialism has come to dominate our culture over the last few centuries. The answers offered by theologians have ranged from a ringing affirmation of all the miraculous events in the Biblical narrative, including the Ascension, to efforts to forge a Christianity that is more compatible with the modern worldview.
The modern materialist will criticize all of these efforts for assuming that God and his unseen realm actually exist, even though they cannot be detected by any of the five senses. Where, they will demand, is the evidence for these supernatural happenings that Christians believe in? And of course, the materialist is right – there is and can be no such evidence, at least not physical evidence, the only kind the materialist will accept. Christians, they will say, assume the existence of things unseen.
But the materialist assumes as well. They assume that nothing exists unseen by our senses. In their world, there is no heaven, no source of the divine. This assumption cannot be proven with absolute certainty; our most fundamental assumptions never can be. But such an assumption can establish itself in the mind until it becomes a habit – a habit that is rarely if ever questioned.
For many people in the modern west, the materialist habit of mind has become the default. Traditional believers are often seen as out of touch with the real world, as people who lack the courage to accept what to the materialist is a fact – that looking upward to find the divine and transcendent is a meaningless and futile act.
Yet those of us who believe, who are open and receptive to things unseen and unmeasured, continue to look upward. We follow Paul in the book of Hebrews. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
As my pastor observed in his sermon on Easter Sunday, the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ, “Some things need to be believed, before you can see.”
Verses, Verses Everywhere
Apart from my recollection of singing in children’s choir in church, I have only two vivid memories of taking part in a religious performance at that tender age. The first came as a solo accompaniment to worship as I half-slid, half-shot out of a well-oiled pew and crashed onto the sanctuary floor.
The other occurred when I and a chorus of children my age sat on tiny chairs in an equally-tiny church classroom, each of us nervously awaiting our turn to recite a Bible verse.
The first performance only occurred once. But the second was repeated every Sunday morning for several years and served as my introduction to the fixation with memorizing Bible verses in Christian childhood education.
I have no intention of mocking the practice. I have frequently heard that committing Biblical passages to memory is a good practice. Perhaps one of the Psalms, or maybe a cluster of three to five verses that carry a critical message. I’ve done this a number of times myself. But this is too much for children to take on, so getting them started one verse at a time may be a good plan.
The problem arises when the one-verse-at-a-time practice continues past childhood. The New Testament holds almost 8,000 verses and the Old Testament nearly three times that many. Looking at the vastness of scripture one verse at a time is like gazing at the heavens through an extremely powerful telescope. We miss the broader picture, and the broader meaning that both the heavens and the Bible offer us.
Biblical scholars, for whom understanding scripture is a high calling, emphasize that capturing the full meaning of a verse requires that we examine the enclosing passage, whatever type of literature that passage may be. To isolate the verse from its neighbors is to do an injustice, not only to the larger passage, but also to the verse itself.
Theologian Leonard Sweet has coined the term “versitis” to describe our tendency to focus on scriptural minutiae, on a verse here and a verse there. Sweet believes versitis damages Christian understanding of the many stories in the Bible.
In his book, Tablet to Table, he argues that our understanding of the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus suffers greatly because we focus relentlessly on one verse, John 3:16, probably the best known and best memorized verse in scripture.
This verse, which begins, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”, is actually a small part of a 21 verse scene in which Jesus tell Nicodemus what it means to be born of the spirit, chides Nicodemus for not understanding this better given his role as a teacher of his people, and goes on to explain why He was sent by God.
When we land on a single verse, after sailing by the rest of its surrounding passage, we lose much of the meaning.
Versitis was not a problem when the Bible first took written form simply because there were no verses. Even chapters didn’t exist until the 13th century; verses appeared in the 15th, just in time for the great increase in literacy that came with the invention of the printing press.
These additions have made it easier for readers, be they believers in worship and devotional study, or scholars in debate and analysis, to locate specific passages.
However, these wonderful innovations have one great drawback – they make it easy to treat the Bible primarily as a collection of verses. This is a serious error. The Bible is actually a gathering together of writings of many types – long historical narratives, shorter stories that tell of the struggles within families, dialogues, letters, poetry, prophetic oracles, and advice for everyday life.
Whatever literary category they fall into, it is these passages – whether they are the poetic prayers found in the Psalms, the creation accounts of Genesis, the stories of the kings of ancient Israel, the oracles of Isaiah and the other prophets, the teachings, sermons, and parables of Jesus and the letters of the Apostle Paul – that are the fundamental building blocks of the Bible.
The biblical story is like a great building that has been fashioned from these blocks – not from individual verses – and we cheat ourselves when we forget this.… Read the rest
Be Quick To Observe And Slow To Judge
Fans of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings will surely remember the Ents, those tree-like creatures who apply the word “hasty” to anything that isn’t happily rooted in one spot. The Ents embody a conservative disposition – not one that resists change so much as it resists action. Doing anything but standing still is frowned upon.
Most of us have learned, much of the time, to avoid hasty, impulsive action; when we do, we emulate the Ents, standing rooted in one spot, mulling over our options, before we march off in a particular direction. But often, in more stressful situations when we are prone to panic, we need the advice of an expert in the practice of slow and deliberate judgement.
A number of years ago when my IRA was rapidly losing value, my financial adviser told me to resist the temptation to sell. He had learned, after years spent watching the markets, that my investment would (almost certainly) regain its lost value and eventually climb much higher. He was telling me to curb my hasty impulse to sell; instead I should rely on his judgement, seasoned by many years spent observing the markets.
Ignoring such advice in our personal lives can be costly. But haste and recklessness in decision-making can have consequences that reach far beyond the life of one person or even one family.
I first heard the phrase that serves as the title of this essay, “Be quick to observe and slow to judge”, from an historian. He offered his students these words as an important lesson learned during his years spent studying the achievements and failures of humanity. A crowd acting in haste becomes a mob, capable of mayhem, disorder, and great damage. When an entire people act in haste, when a nation or its leaders fail to move with caution, the harm done can be far greater.
Counsels of caution before acting have a long history, ranging from modern truisms like “Look before you leap” all the way back to the Bible where James advises us to “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” James goes on to say that ignoring this warning will prevent us from finding God’s righteousness. But even an atheist will recognize the wisdom in James’ advice.
Modern psychology is now weighing in with insight into the origins of our impulse to judge and act hastily, insight that fleshes out the sound advice of Biblical wisdom and folk aphorisms. Psychologists tell us that our haste in judgement is sometimes justified, even necessary. We are often in difficult, even perilous situations where rapid judgement is needed.
But even in the mundane activities of ordinary life where there is no danger, we make hundreds of judgements every day without being aware that we are doing so. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this unconscious, intuitive kind of judgement Thinking Fast. It is our instinctive way to live and allows us to function without conscious thought in most situations.
In his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman tells us that Thinking Fast allows us to perform many everyday tasks. At its most comprehensive, Thinking Fast constantly gives us a narrative, a picture, that explains what is going on around us. Most of the time this picture is close enough to reality, but not always.
And so we sometimes go astray and make bad judgements– we may be overconfident in our decisions or we may reject a political argument without careful consideration because it doesn’t fit in with our pre-existing beliefs.
It is when Thinking Fast misleads us that it is time to switch to the practice of Thinking Slow, to fire up the conscious mind, to stand and deliberate like the Ents. In short, to be quick to observe and slow to judge. Thinking Slow provides self-control and we know it is in charge when we are aware of an “I” that is doing the thinking.
Unfortunately, Kahneman tells us that we can’t control the switch from fast to slow. The mind switches to Thinking Slow in situations where the impulses that arise from Thinking Fast are inadequate. Unlike shifting gears in a car, the transition is automatic and hidden.
So how do we avoid the errors that arise when we are stuck Thinking Fast. Kahneman gives two pieces of advice. Learn to recognize error-prone situations and secondly, learn from the mistakes of others.
Perhaps there is a third piece of counsel. Augment the verbal advice Kahneman offers with an image. Plant the words – “be quick to observe and slow to judge” – deeply into ourselves and into our lives, like an Ent rooting itself deeply into the soil of Middle Earth.
Suggested Reading
Thing Fast and Thinking Slow – Daniel Kahneman… Read the rest
A Humble Ambition
When I first read the phrase, “selfish ambition”, I asked myself, “Is there any other kind?” I found this phrase in chapter three of the Epistle of James, one of the most popular books of the New Testament among Christians. His letter lacks the theologically rich and sometimes dense language of Paul’s letters, and instead offers everyday advice on how to live well and avoid the dangers that life offers to us.
Selfish ambition is one of the perils that James warns us to avoid.
Although we often admire ambition in the modern world, the word is trailed by a dark shadow, strongly suggested by phrases like “naked ambition” and “ruthless ambition.” Our ambivalence deepens when we place this character trait alongside the Christian values of love, gentleness, and kindness.
So it is no surprise that James condemns ambition. Yet his use of the modifier “selfish” suggests that there is a kind of ambition that is “unselfish” and that may be in harmony with Christian ideals. We must look to the apostle Paul for clarification.
Paul praises ambition of the right kind in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 when he tells us “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” This is ambition, ambition to cast off sin and live by the commands of God, and it is definitely not selfish ambition.
Perhaps the greatest danger is that a worthwhile ambition will be corrupted by selfishness. Examples abound. Some are highly visible and public, but many occur within the orbit of our personal lives.
One example from my own life occurred a number of years ago as I began to study theology at a nearby University. I had enrolled with good motives, but by the time I walked into my first day of class, my fine intentions were succumbing to an ugly pride. I was convinced I was going to kick theological butt, and I all but strutted into the classroom. I was guilty of what the medieval church called the sin of vainglory – I was seeking the applause of the world instead of the approval of God.
Less than an hour into that first class, the cocky and arrogant attitude I carried inside was crumbling. Discussion was increasingly seasoned with theological terms that were new to me. My discomfort grew as a pair of students on either side of the classroom began hurling verses of scripture back and forth in friendly debate – I no longer remember what the scripture passages were, but clearly, they knew the Bible far better than I did.
I felt like a spectator, watching two skilled tennis players deliver volley after volley across the net, while I could barely swing my racket. I sunk deep into my chair and didn’t say a word during the rest of the class. I was deeply shaken – shaken to the core. That night I lay awake and wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?”
What I was suffering was painful – my false confidence was shattered – but I didn’t feel humiliated. Humiliation is something we do to each other and in that first day of class no one had done anything to me.
Instead I had been humbled – deeply humbled – as my empty pride had been stripped away, as I learned how much I still had to learn. People humiliate us, but only experience can humble us. Something happens that shocks us, that shakes us, that changes our relationship to the world and to life itself. Life will never be the same again.
Being humbled is painful, but not destructive. It puts us in our place so that if we are wise, we will be lifted and made better. When I returned to class the next day, I was ready to resume my journey as a student of theology, but in a much different frame of mind. James says that we “show our understanding by the wisdom that comes from humility.” I had found some of that humility, and perhaps a little bit of that wisdom.
James tells us that humility is the key that allows us to control our selfish ambitions. Yet no pair of human qualities seem more contradictory than humility and ambition, even ambition that is not selfish.
For a Christian this contrast between humility and ambition finds its focus in Jesus. Paul tells us to be ambitious in striving to follow Christ, yet Christ Himself is humility personified. He humbled Himself to become human and then humbled Himself even further by accepting death on the cross, the most humiliating death in the Roman world.
How do we live out this apparent contradiction; to be ambitious and humble at the same time; to be humble in our ambition to be like Jesus; to be ambitious in our pursuit of humility?
The philosopher Walter Kaufman offers an answer to this puzzle. In his book The Faith of a Heretic, he writes of the struggles we face as we strive for excellence. He wonders how we can avoid arrogance as we pursue a worthy ambition.
He coins a new word – “humbition” – ambition restrained by humility, and offers it, along with love, courage, and honesty, as one of his cardinal virtues. Actually, he offers a more poetic definition for his newly-minted term, in words that can guide us to match our means to our ends, to marry our state of mind to our highest aspirations.
He tells us to live with “humility winged by ambition.”
Suggested Reading
Epistle of James, Chapter Thre
Where Have All The Questions Gone?
It is only during our early lives that we are routinely amazed at the world before our eyes. In infancy we are at exactly the right age to be bewildered as we gaze at the blur of shape and color before our eyes, as we peer with curiosity at what DH Lawrence calls the buzzing, blooming confusion of life.
Before too long we will be reaching out to grasp at the shiny objects dangling before us. In a few more years, when we add words to our toolkit, we will barrage our parents with questions born of our insatiable curiosity – a curiosity that, like the sun, illuminates our world.
But as we age, the world no longer shines in our eyes like a bright new thing; instead it fades, and becomes our familiar home, full of useful objects that no longer excite wonder. Familiarity may not breed contempt, but it certainly breeds indifference.
The fires of first curiosity have gone out.
For many though, these fires are rekindled, drawing us to examine the deeper realities of the physical world, to explore the mysteries of our inner selves, to turn to the past and untangle its long story. Wherever we venture, we are abuzz with questions. The answers we have found have given us our modern lives, our longer lifespan and our material comforts.
But today it is our troubled dealings with one another that stand most in need of curiosity and the questions it inspires. Not our relationships with friend and family, neighbor and colleague, but instead with those who live at a greater distance, with the strangers who occupy the many groups into which we sort our fellow beings.
When one of these groups becomes the object of our hatred, then its members are no longer merely strangers. Instead, they have become enemies. The bright light cast by curiosity has gone out, our questioning spirit has fled, and we are plunged into darkness.
Our current political and cultural wars are often fought in this darkened world. It is here that we must ask, “Where have all the questions gone?”
Alan Jacobs, in his book How To Think, observes that identity and belief work together to clump us into our various groups. First, shared belief connects us to other like-minded people with whom we form an identity. Afterward, identity and belief work together to maintain their grip on us. Once bound to such a group, it is very hard to leave.
The result, in a world deeply divided over politics and culture, where the social norms that normally restrain us from demonizing and wishing harm toward those with whom we disagree, have all but disappeared, is the world we inhabit today, a world where hatred often knows no bounds.
Jacobs offers advice for overcoming this blind, and blinding, hatred. Seek out a representative of the hated group who can express in a sensible and clear manner the ideas that we so despise. By asking what they believe, and why, then listening to their response, we begin to overcome the isolation of one faction from another that is splitting apart our society.
And when we do hear the voice of the enemy, we must avoid the trap of assuming from the outset that the opponent must be wrong. Instead, figure out for ourself if, in fact, they are in error. We might find that, at least on some matters, our opponent may have words worth listening to.
We may even discover that the person who holds what we deem a monstrous idea, isn’t actually a monster themselves.
Jacob’s advice can be reframed as a call to reawaken our slumbering curiosity; to let our questioning spirit bring light to the world. Not with questions laced with malice, questions intended to trick and trap our adversary, but instead with questions born of a genuine desire to know and understand one more of the infinite variety of beliefs held by humans.
Of course, there is need for debate – we live in a world full of disagreement over many subjects. And in the sunlit parts of the world, where disagreement isn’t so toxic, these disputes are fine, even essential. But in the darkness which envelops so much of our culture, only the bright light of curiosity can save us.
Have things today gone so far that all we can do is lament the loss of the world we once knew? Will the sun ever shine again in a world where so many places have turned dark?
In the sixties a popular song, sung by the Fifth Dimension, asked us in its chorus to “Let the sunshine in.” Like much of the popular music of the time, another age in which society was divided, this song, titled “Aquarius”, was a call to peace.
Can we hope for a world in which curiosity is reawakened, in which we ask simple and honest questions of one another? A world where the sun shines through, to once again light up the landscape in which we live.
Suggested Reading
How To Think: A Survival Guide For a World At Odds by Alan Jacobs… Read the rest
