In Bad Faith, Part 6: Is Your God a Tribal Strawman?

Had I been raised in a different community on a different spot on the globe than the language of my experiences, how I would have interpreted my experiences, would have been different. Had I not had my first experiences during the “Jesus People Movement” in Southern California in the mid-1970s then the direction of my life might have been entirely different. Instead of being a Religious Studies major at Loyola Marymount and then getting a BA in Biblical Studies at Biola University, I might have joined a monastery in Europe or Asia or entered into training to become a Mullah or Rabbi in the Middle East. I wonder, if I had taken those other paths, would those traditions have allowed me to examine their early tribal heritage and eventually find fault with systems of interpretation that don’t hold up to modern scrutiny. I guess I’ll never know. But what I do know is that, experiences not withstanding, I cannot faithfully recite any of the creeds I’ve known without massive mental re-editing. So it would seem that once I moved from “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” to interpretation or human understanding something or perhaps everything got lost in translation.

One of the beauties of Faith is that it tends to wrap all of the difficulties of life into one little package and say that all you have to do is “X” and all of these things will go away. When I was a teenager that was a life-saving moment because nothing made sense and everything I wanted to do was inconsistent with the beliefs I’d been raised with. And then, thirty-years later, when my heart was being completely broken, this divine love seemed to break through and offered me meaning and purpose. Those were difficult, life changing days. But as soon as I went from experience to interpretation it was back to nothing but difficulty, complications and failure. It was as if someone had said to me, “The good news is that Jesus loves you and has a plan for your life, the bad news is that you are still you.” Thanks. So I tussle between my thirst for understanding and rationalism and my experiences of oneness and connection.

Some time ago my brother and his late-wife were socializing with their Episcopalian priest when the priest commented to my brother, something about the difficulty of bridging the gap between modern life and Faith. My brother quipped, isn’t that the sign of greater intelligence and faith, to be able to live with the ambiguity of unanswered questions? My brother has lived a somewhat similar circuitous life of faith and rationalism. I love my brother dearly, and I’m sure that he can balance the ambiguity between the faith we were raised with and the modern contradictions we run into daily, but I’ve already spent 15-years going around saying “I don’t know” when it comes to issues of Faith. More to the point, and perhaps in spirit of his response, maybe the problem is that there are no simple answers. Or maybe there’s only a problem if one insists on a vision of God who plays favorites and orders one tribal community to commit genocide against another tribe, a God who would have a father kill his son to prove his faithfulness, a God who would require the murder of an innocent man to fulfill his need for justice. Or, like Bart Erhman‘s professor at Princeton remarked, maybe the biblical writer(s) got it (all) wrong.

When I heard religious scholar, Karen Armstrong, say in her NPR interview, that it’s a shame in our modern era that our theology is stuck in the dark ages, I had to hear more. During the interview she quipped that Dawkins’ attack on “old man in the sky” notions of God was a bit unfair, in that not all religious people hold to that view of God. But she admits that the discussion needs to be taken to a higher level where the central issues of compassion, connectedness and transcendence are not only emphasized but acted upon. If this former-nun can bring together Jews, Muslims and for god’s sake Anglicans, then maybe there’s still hope for this disenfranchised former-Jesus-freak.

NPR Fresh Air interview of Karen Armstrong Builds A “Case for God”

Sources:

flickr image: IMG_4743 by beggs. http://www.flickr.com/photos/beggs/88809549/ retrieved on 2/13/2010

YouTube video: Fallen by Sarah McLachlan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqps9ZdMxs0 retrieved on 2/13/2010

NPR/Fresh Air Interview of Karen Armstrong. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112968197 retrieved on 2/13/2010

The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto. Available at Amazon.com

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong. Available at Amazon.com

Conversely, I love that, for the fundamental or conservative Christian, the answer to every problem faced by us is to “give it up to Jesus.” Lost your job? Give it up to Jesus! Stuck in a rotten marriage? Give it up to Jesus! Need a new car? Give it up to Jesus! It’s a powerful message, especially if you’re a teenager or a drug addict looking to leave that lifestyle. But, for all of us in between, there still seems to be something missing.

In Bad Faith, Part 5: What’s Missing?

Ironically, one of the mistakes that I made as a young Christian adult was to close off my emotions and try to be more logical because my faith told me that one can’t trust emotions. Yeah, that approach didn’t work so well for Mr. Spoke, I don’t know why I thought it’d turn out any better for moi. I tried to be logical and I wasn’t any fun to live with. Just ask my ex-wife. Now, I know that Dawkins isn’t advocating a logic-only/emotionless lifestyle, but there’s a kind of delusion to entertain the idea that human beings are going to be “logical” and “scientific” when it comes to the bigger issues in life or even in ones day to day existence. I think the fictional character, Geordi, in ST: TNG, said it best when he said that we humans go with our “gut” so much because we almost never have enough data to make the decisions that we need to make.

While it’s probably a bad sign when one is taking life-advice from fictional characters, It’s worse to pursue a lifestyle that forces one to have a binary either/or approach where one restricts oneself to either logic or emotionalism. I have to say that I’ve been turned off by the hubris I’ve seen in some skeptics when they act as if they do have all of the answers. Granted this malady is certainly not limited to skeptics, but anyone who confesses to have a scientific approach to living must begin by acknowledging that what one “knows” is a very small fragment of what can be known. Thus one should have a humble appreciation and sympathy for those who have chosen to “know” our existence using a different set of assumptions.

I find it interesting that the Christian begins with an assumption about the meaning behind existence and then interprets everything accordingly, while the skeptic begins with an assumption about the method of understanding existence and then fills in the gaps from there. I feel like the Christian has to be willing, on some level, to question the system when the evidence proves contrary and the Skeptic has to refrain from assuming that they have all of the relevant data. We all have to begin by understanding that we do not have the complete picture and that we may never have the complete picture. And so, there has to be room for differing views.

In Bad Faith, Part 4: The Evil Media

What both the Left and Right seem to forget is that the Media, especially in the form of the movie industry, is a form of banking, and it will do whatever it thinks will make money for it’s investors. Period. It rarely leads and often plays both sides of the issues because it needs to draw attention to itself, not to change things but to make money. The Media is not a perfect reflection of our culture, remember it’s first responsibility is not to reflect Reality, but to make money. And this “bottom line” mentality is not limited to the movie industry but, sadly, has become a big part of the News Industry too. Journalism has felt the pressure to sell it’s wares. We may think of Journalism as a service, but it’s a business. This is not to say that Journalism has abandoned the principles of Objectivity, but it’s more of an ideal, like how Americans try to live up to our Constitution, Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance. Journalism believes in Objectivity, in part, because it’s business model requires a certain level of trust. No trust, no sales. So, at it’s core the News & Media industries are neither Left or Right. They can’t afford to be. They will follow the interests of their audiences, Left or Right, but the commitment isn’t to the politics but to the business of making money. The Media decision-makers are not pushing any position except the one that keeps them viable and better yet, more than viable.

Add to all of this, one of the dangers of our Internet era is that, just as much as we have the possibility to get our news and information from world-wide and culturally diverse sources, it’s just as likely that we will choose only sources that we agree with, creating a kind of echo chamber of information. This is the unintended result of the combination user-selected news/media feeds with user-created journalism. What does this have to do with God and Faith? Well, today it is possible to completely blanket oneself 24/7 with whatever message one wants to hear and completely blank out anything that one doesn’t agree with. For many there’s no problem with this picture except for the part where one might want or need to interact with someone not from ones own media bubble. For Christians we call that the Great Commission. For the Secularist, there is a curiosity to understand our fellow-person (especially if they don’t agree or understand us). So, how do you do that if the other person is not from your media bubble? Is there even a common media language left that you can use to reach this other person?

So, the Media is neither Left or Right. It’s a business that wants to stay in business so it’s going to be careful not to offend what it perceives to be its audience. You don’t like what’s on the air you now have at least three choices: change the channel/stream, turn the thing off, or make your own news/media organization. By the way, according to the film’s official website the film opened in limited release this past Friday, January 22, 2010. At the bottom of this entry I’ve embedded the film’s trailer and an NPR/Fresh Air interview of the Randal Keynes, the author of the book  the film is based on.

NPR Fresh Air Interview: Randal Keynes: When Darwin Is In Your Family Tree:

Sources:
* Movie poster: Creation: The True Story of Charles Darwin. http://www.creationthemovie.com/ retrieved on 1/26/2010

* Charles Darwin film ‘too controversial for religious America’ by By Anita Singh. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html retrieved on 1/25/2010

* Image: Freedom of the Press poster by Publish! Magazine (nd).

* YouTube: ‘Creation’ Trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BREvUKpZTeU retrieved on 1/26/2010.

* Randal Keynes: When Darwin Is In Your Family Tree. Fresh Air from WHYY. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122778363 retrieved on 1/25/2010

In Bad Faith, Part 3: Franky Schaeffer, Son of “Slippery Slide” Comes Clean

One of my favorite Fuller Seminary professors, Colin Brown, commented once that he didn’t think that Francis Scheaffer (Sr) read any of Kierkegaard in the original languages. Academic put-down! The Schaeffers represented a huge line in the sand between True Biblical Christianity and the various forces of liberalism, academia and secularism. After reading one of Franky’s books in the 80s I recognized that I wasn’t on the “right” side of the divide. I was too much of a rationalist, situational-ethicist and intellectual. I loved the Bible but I also recognized the cultural-historical place it came from (hint: it wasn’t Heaven). Slippery slope, indeed.

So all these decades later it turns out that all the rhetoric was mostly a sham promoted by the Christian Right, to the point that even Franky eventually couldn’t tolerate and left. What I really loved about the interview was that this was a story about Idealism, human foibles, bending the “Truth.” The forces the Schaeffers represented created a conflict that I’ve spent a lifetime contending with. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one scarred by the experience. I love the comment Franky makes during the interview when he’s asked why he hasn’t gone all the way to Atheist. He says that the patterns of his life are such that the first thing he’d do would be to pray to God to help him be a better Atheist. So human.

Sources:
Pro-Life — And In Favor Of Keeping Abortion Legal by Frank Schaeffer - NPR Fresh Air Interview. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97998654 retrieved 1/9/2010.

In Bad Faith, Part 2: Born this Way? or This is Your Brain on God

I don’t think that I ever shared these thoughts with my fellow-believers. I just assumed that those in the midst of the experience probably didn’t analyze the phenomenon beyond a few Bible passages and whether the practice was accepted or rejected by their church. Then many years later I saw a documentary TV program where scientists were mapping the brain, using scans that looked for elevated brain activity. They found that persons in deep meditation or prayer showed elevated activity in the Temporal lobe. From what I remember, the pattern of activity was similar to those who reported stories of alien abduction. They were able to induce the “Alien” experiences in some test subjects by transmitting the pattern instead of recording it. Then one scientist, an atheist, thought that he might “see” what the religious participants in the experiment had experienced if he also used the recording harness to transmit the “religious” patterns to his brain. The scientist saw and felt nothing. I wasn’t too surprised, but it wasn’t because of any “God” thing. It might have been that his brain was just not wired to understand the “language” of religious experience that had been recorded in the experiment. According to a recent article in Ars Technica, it might indeed be something lost in translation that’s individual to everyone’s brains.

Previous studies were looking to see if there were particular areas in the brain related to religious experiences. According to the Ars article, more recent studies, conducted by Dimitrios Kapogiannis from the National Institute on Aging, didn’t find “God” areas of the brain but did find neural pathways associated to social cognitive processing that were not unique to religion. So what does this mean for the Faithful, or for the Skeptics? According to Ars Technica, it means that religion and religious experience could be experimentally addressed and studied. Thus, one of Dawkin’s demands from his book, The God Delusion, seems closer to realization: that religion can no longer claim to be entirely outside the realm of scientific inquiry. Whatever rational systems of thinking that we apply to weather, biology, physics, etc., can and should now be applied to religious experience.

The Ars article goes on to discuss how some scientists are looking at the possible connection between the emergence of language and the development of religion. Additionally, scientists are looking at the capacity that some have for intimate relationships and how this might be related to how some feel “close to God.” Conversely, they are also looking into how some individuals’ inability to form close relationships may be related to how some have no sense of there being an “Other” out there.

Taken to its logical conclusions, it might be determined that having no sense of the Divine is no different than being red/green blind. Or for the skeptics, having a sense of the divine is just like having Phantom Limb Syndrome. Thus, while science will be able to determine if an individual’s experience is “real,” two things have not been determined. One is causality: do some people have these neural pathways because they are born that way, or were these pathways developed because of their early experiences? The other thing is that brain evidence that one feels close to God neither confirms nor denies that God is, in fact, communing with the one wearing the scanning harness.

Geovanny Verdezoto can't handle his success Heartbroken young man on floor by hyperscholar

So, where does this leave us? We can see that something “real” is happening in the brains of those having religious experiences and that opens the door for Science to investigate Religion. Note that on a purely scientific level there are still a number of limits to what Science can determine if one sticks to the scientific data. There are some parallels here between this course of study and when higher critical theory was applied to Biblical Studies. The “devotional” was striped away and strenuous literary, historical and cultural research was (and still is) conducted. Unfortunately, in the long run the Faithful abandoned higher Biblical criticism to the “liberals” and academics and only the academics cared about advances being made in literary Biblical criticism (except when Erhman publishes a popular culture friendly book pointing out the blazing holes in Biblical Innerancy).

Again, where does this leave us? Well, one can’t “prove” delusion, so the skeptics need to dial it back a bit. Science that’s interested in measurable data can only say when someone is sincere about their experiences, period (I’d love to see a “sincerity readout” on the tel-evangelists, though I’m sure part of their “art” is convincing themselves about their own importance and relationship with the Divine). Second, on the other side, the faithful aren’t interested in anything that doesn’t “prove” already established beliefs, so there’s little room for real dialog here. Finally, ones receptivity toward awareness of the “Other” doesn’t seem to be universal which should change the idea that the gospel is open to everyone. At the same time this receptivity does seem to exist, whether via early experiences or “wiring” for some of us. So….

by Gastev”]

bios [bible

To be continued…

Sources:

Finding the fear and love of God inside the brain by Jeremy Jacquot for Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/10/finding-the-fear-and-love-of-god-inside-the-brain.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss retrieved 1/9/2010

image: 2008_nidcd-brain. NIH. http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/images/2008photos/2008_nidcd_brain_hi.jpg retrieved 1/9/2010.

image: Geovanny Verdezoto can’t handle his success Heartbroken young man on floor by hyperscholar http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypertypos/3164306380/ retrieved 1/9/2010.

image: bios [bible] by Gastev. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gastev/2174504149/ retrieved on 1/9/2010.

Sources:
youtube video: “Christian Side Hug” by 1337ven0m07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91J37qcRfI retrieved on 12/13/2009

In Bad Faith, Part 1: It’s the Accent, Isn’t It?

My brother warned me against reading this book unless I was serious about examining my faith. I can only imagine how confusing my circuitous route into and out of and then back into and later out of Faith must appear to my sibling(s). I mean, given that I went against my parents’ wishes and switched from Catholic Loyola Marymount University to Fundamentalist Protestant Biola University, and instead of getting something practical like a B.A. in Engineering I got one in Biblical Studies. This was definitely something more important going on here than a passing adolescent fad. But having gone from highly academic Loyola to wanting-to-be-more-academic Biola (in the early 80s) I learned to approach my Faith and the Bible from a more scientific/academic approach than just a devotional approach. Two of my favorite books from this era were Robert Alter’s The Art Of Biblical Narrative and Robert Mapes Anderson’s Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. So there was always some danger that I was susceptible to things a little beyond the safe confines of devotional reading.

Fast forward twenty-eight years, divorced twenty-five years, failed MA in Theology from Fuller Seminary. second BA in communications/journalism, teaching credential, MA in Educational Technology, failed Ed.D in Educational Technology, re-located from Southern California to Central Florida, I decided against jumping back into the church thing. I needed to find some balance between my experiences of faith and the academic/scientific part of my personality. That’s when I decided to listen to Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion. Well, actually I watched the TED video first and came away with the sense that this quiet-spoken Englishman could probably get away with almost anything because of our American stereotype that causes us to assume that anyone with said accent is obviously more intelligent than we are. Damn.

The most memorable part of the beginning of the book is the idea/quote, “we didn’t know we had a choice,” and Dawkins wanting to make the case that not believing in God isn’t something to be endured in silence. What follows is a tour de force with side trips to Einstein’s God and whether Science can say anything about Religion. The big idea of the book is that Religion is a vestigial personal/cultural remnant that’s related to the childhood belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Whereas we gave up on the belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy when we grew up from childhood, we persist in our adult years in a belief in an “Old Man” in Heaven who knows our every thoughts and has a plan for our lives. This isn’t to equate Religion with belief in Santa, it’s just that they seem to serve the same purpose and come from the same part of the human psyche, according to Dawkins.

Dawkins also wrote about his wonderful relationship with his Anglican pastor/headmaster and how that helped him feel free to explore his belief in Science and not see a lack of faith in God as if he was missing something. I have to note that there is a real cultural divide between this educated Brit’s take on Religion and my experience with American Christianity. This fact was brought home to me in a recent conversation with a coworker who was raised in the UK when the coworker commented about how he felt like the reading of Genesis by the Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968 was some kind of put on. He couldn’t see how these astronauts/scientists could seriously be reading from the Bible without a sneer on their faces or in their hearts. To which I have to say that one should not underestimate how deep the religious feelings are among Americans and, contrary to one of Dawkin’s claims, this phenomenon is no respecter of intelligence. There’s most definitely a political efficacy to the practice of Religion in the U.S. (note that there are no self-proclaimed Atheists in the U.S. Senate), but scratch under the surface and one is reminded that this continent was settled by religious refugees.

Thus, Dawkins’ solution, that we refrain from indoctrinating our children with Religion, is just plain silly to an American audience who may fully disregard their religious tenets eight-days a week, but will fully and sometimes violently defend their right to pass on their belief system to the next generation. In fact I’ve seen more than my fair share of marginal Christians reclaim their faith with the arrival of children. One might wonder if they’re not doing this because that’s how they were raised, but that’s kind of how humans do most things and is not limited to religious indoctrination.

So, Dawkins’ take is that given how out of step most religious foundations are with modern life, practitioners must be ignoring the obvious contradictions in order to maintain their belief in the wise old man in the sky. In a word, they are deluding themselves. Alas, to the faithful his words, should one bother to read all the way through this tome, won’t hit home. The skeptic/atheist will feel reaffirmed. But what about the fence-sitter, the person trying to balance a religious upbringing with life in our modern world?

I appreciate Dawkins’ experiences and thought processes. I don’t think that he has a real understanding on my particular journey. He might be right that it was my upbringing that influenced me to interpret the narrative of my life to include god. But given the enduring strength of this vestigial delusion, maybe this is more than a cultural hold-over, more than a relic mistake handed off from father to son. Maybe it’s something that we’re born with.

To Be Continued…

Then a couple of weeks ago I got a comment on my old blog, Jacob’s Ladder (which is why the writer makes the understandable mistake that my name is Jacob. oops):

Jacob, I’m not really skilled at computer codes, etc.,so I’ll try to get on the site using anonymous. I’m Don Kimrey My blog is Scripturestudent.wordpress.com. I came upon your site thru the “Ooze” posting and your comment there. Sounds like we have some things in common. I read right many of your posts and found them interesting and, more importantly perhaps, honest. Sounds like we traveled some of the same roads, and I discovered that a disappointed idealist makes the worst kind of cynic. But I also have come to believe God’s love is constant, even when ours falters and we’re not sure which way is up. Hang in there. You seem to be quite intelligent, and I sense that you’re on an honest quest. Let’s pray for each other. Don Kimrey

Thanks Don. The best I can promise is good thoughts about you and your journey. I’d forgotten all about the Ooze article. I wish I could find the article and my comment. Damn. Oh yeah, and today I got a letter from a local Baptist church inviting me to participate. Sounds interesting, but I think I’m better off finding misfits who appreciate Faith… just from a reasonable distance.

It’s a weird world we live in, it’s funny every day,
half the world prays like the preacher, other half don’t even pray.
So no one understands you if you pray in your own way.

Now I’m stuck here in the middle, everything is in a jam,
stuck right in the middle, doors on both sides seem to slam,
no one seem to want me, only God would take me like I am.

Well my brothers criticize me, say I’m just too strange to believe,
and the others just avoid me, say my faith is so naive,
I’m too sacred for the sinners and the saints wish I would leave – Mark Heard

Sources:
* Image: free child walking on white round spheres by D Sharon Pruitt, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/233228813/ retrieved on 11/04/2009.

* Stuck in the Middle by Mark Heard from the Stop The Dominoes CD

Kevin is a very committed believer and has shared the connection he feels between his beliefs and his actions. There’s something amazingly simple and powerful in this. And in his video he illustrates it so well with the example, if you really believe that the world is beautiful than you should be doing something about it, like picking up the trash and recycling. So simple and so powerful.

I think I know what Kevin means, if we believe in something it should effect how we act and how we live our lives. A frustration that I have, that Kevin may or may not share with me, is the obvious gap between what I consider the prime-directive left by Jesus to his followers and how his followers seem to live with one another:

“”A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34-35 NIV)

Having moved from Southern California to Central Florida, where there seems to be one church for every city block, and sometime two, I’m not sure that I’ve seen much in the way that would convince me that I’m now living among His followers. Perhaps that’s not very fair. Let’s put it this way, I haven’t seen much of a difference between those who have shared their faith with me and the rest as far as quality of life, compassion, you know “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” kind of stuff.

Now there’s a possibility that this region, this place is so saturated with religion and basic Christian principles that the guy in the bar and the guy in the pew are both looking for the same things in life and going about it pretty much the same way, except for one guy sleeps in on Sunday morning and the other doesn’t (and don’t assume which one is which). I don’t know. If someone is trying to persuade me that their faith has something to offer, than I have an expectation that I’m going to see a difference in their life that I wouldn’t see in someone who doesn’t share that belief. I think Kevin was talkin’ about more than just trash when he hummed, “If what you learn doesn’t change what you do, then why you learnin’ it?”

Sources:
YouTube: Change is good by Kevin Hayes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Jma04y40I retrieved on October 16, 2009.
Bible Quote: John 12:34-35, http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13%3A34-35&version=NIV retrieved on October 16, 2009

Having attended four private Christian universities my impression has been that there are very smart people on both side of the discussion. In fact, in the movie, Maher expressed frustration when addressing the “Truckers for Jesus” gathering that they appear to be intelligent gentlemen, but he couldn’t reconcile that with how they could believe in a literal talking snake from the Expulsion from Eden narrative in the book of Genesis. Looking for a different take on this possible conflict between rationalism and religion, I explored a book titled, “Did The Greeks Believe In Their Myths,” by Paul Veyne (1988), professor of Roman history at the University of France.

When I began this exploration I assumed a basic Western point of view, being that before the Renaissance and the following Age of Reason and Science, that the centers for learning, philosophy, government and culture were interpreted through religion and faith. Given this general understanding one might also be led to assume that the Ancients were somehow less intelligent than modern men. Stone and bronze tools versus lasers and computer-precision tools, astrology versus astrophysics, mythology versus historical critical analysis, one might see some credence to this sense of “less intelligent.” Of course all of this comes crashing down when one considers the surviving record left behind by Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Galen the physician and the obvious brilliance of the whole chorus of ancient voices. So how did these brilliant thinkers deal with the religion and mythology of their day? For some reason the lyrics, “Same as it ever was” runs through my mind. Same as it ever was indeed, but Veyne would point out some noted exceptions.

In the opening chapters of his book Veyne (1988) noted several factors that need to be taken into consideration when attempting to consult with the Ancients. The first concept that may seem foreign to modern historians and academicians was that before the modern era, ancient historians and writers felt that it undermined their credibility if they cited sources for their stories. Veyne noted, as late as 1560 C.E., French scholar, Estienne Pasquier, was criticized for including footnotes in his writings (p. 5):

“… For the ancient Greeks, historical truth was a vulgate authenticated by consensus over the ages. This consensus sanctioned the truth as it sanctioned the reputation of those writers held to be classical or even, I imagine, the tradition of the Church. Far from having to establish the truth by means of references, Pasquier should have waited to be recognized as an authentic text himself. By putting his notes at the bottom of the page, by furnishing proofs as the jurists do, he indiscreetly sought to force the consensus of posterity concerning his work.” (p. 6)

So Pasquier’s use of footnotes ran contrary to the idea that he should have waited for his work to be accepted because he himself would be proven over time to be a valid source. Veyne compared this with the modern practice of trusting journalists without requiring them to reveal their informants. The idea of citing sources, according to Veyne, didn’t come from ancient historians but from judicial practice where trial proceedings would be cited or from theological controversies where the Scriptures were referenced. But in the case of the writings of ancient historians, which were often just the collections of local folklore gathered during the writers’ travels, Veyne quipped, “It would be futile to include the list of informants. Who would check them?” (p. 9)

Another practice that may run contrary to modern thinking was that these ancient stories were always connected with real place-names and recognizable historical figures. Mount Olympus was a real place and the locations of the graves or shrines of legendary persons were universal across the ancient world. In fact there seemed to have been an imperative that there be a story or legend behind the founding of any community generally ascribed to some legendary persons for whom the town, city or region was named.

“Indeed, what was strange in this local historiography was that is was reduced to question of origins. It did not tell of the life of the city, its collective memories or great moments. It was enough to know when and how the city had been founded. Once created, the city had only to live its life, which could be presumed to be comparable to what city life can be and which would be what it could be. It was not important. Once the historian had narrated its foundations, the city was fixed in space and time; it had its identity card.” p. 77

Thus, ascertaining the “where” of a story was completely disconnected from a judgment of “truth.” The historian Heroditus, wrote, “My business is to record what people say; but I am by no means bound to believe it” (p. 12). Where this trips up modern historians is that it’s a bit of a two-edge sword. Modern historians are used to starting with the place and date to begin the investigation. But if the tale seems to clearly be “mythical” the tendency has been to throw out the whole thing: the date, place and event. For example, historians had long dismissed the Trojan War as described by Homer, and generally threw out the place and the tale. But all of this was thrown into confusion when Heinrich Schliemann declared that he’d found the ancient city of Troy in the 1870s. So, the connection with a specific place was never part of the determination of “truth,” it’s just the way stories were told. Question then becomes whether the writers of the biblical narrative, who were contemporaries, would have operated with the same understanding of place-names. We’ll pick this thread up a bit further in this essay. Suffice it so say that unlike modern historians, establishing a story with a very real place-name was never used as a validating factor. Now as to the use of the question of “When” which generally followed the “Where” question, well, that’s another place where modern historians differ from ancient writers.

When modern readers see the words, “Once upon a time,” they automatically think, “fable, myth, fiction, not-true.” Journalists begin their investigations with the five W’s: who, what, where, when and why and if the “when” cannot be reasonably determined then the whole story is thrown out. Ancient writers, however, understood that by definition these stories took place in a time before the current “mundane” time. Again, the Ancients disconnected “when” from any verification of “truth.” And to them it seemed perfectly logical and rational to accept this “non-time” for the same reasons that modern historians would reject the entire story.

Veyne noted,

“These legendary worlds were accepted as true in the sense that they were not doubted, but they were not accepted the way that everyday reality is. For the faithful, the lives of the martyrs were filled with marvels situated in an ageless past, defined only in that it was earlier, outside of, and different from the present. It was the “time of the pagans.” (p. 17-18)

This reminds me of the phrase, “In those days,” used in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis and frequently in the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Old Testament. Using this idea of “otherness” used by contemporary ancient writers, one can guess that the idea is not only meant to designate things that happened a long time ago, but things that happened in a time that was foreign to this time. Veyne paraphrased Epicurus as writing that “men of olden times, more vigorous than those of today, had eyes good enough to see the gods in broad daylight, while now we can manage to capture only the emissions of their atoms through the channel of dreams.” (p. 99)

So, Time is useless as a measure of validity, just as determining “Where” these stories took place was treated as part of the places’ “history” in an origin-story fashion, neither confirming nor denying the validity of these stories. It’s this kind of circular reasoning that prompted Maher, In the movie Religulous, to express frustration when speaking with Francis Collins, a scientist, evangelical Christian and former director of the Human Genome Project. Collins quipped to Maher that his problem was that Maher was asking the Bible to hold to a level of historical veracity that no book from that era could stand up to. One might think that Maher might have understood some of this when he interviewed Father George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory, during which Coyne pointed out (with a great chart) that religion and the Bible, more specifically, spoke for the era from roughly 2,000 B.C.E. to approximately 400 C.E. and that science has held rein over the past 400 to 500 years. I’m not entirely sure why Coyne felt that religion lost hold so early, but it might have had something to do with the formalizing of the Canon of Scripture at the Council of Nicea. But the point seemed clear that there was a wide gulf between the era of religion and the era of science and that the only conflict seemed to be when people tried to force one to speak on the other. In essence, the writers of the Bible knew nothing about the scientific method and used the conventions of storytelling of the time and that this reflected the origins of these stories beginning as an oral history. Equally, there are limits to Science if one is strict in holding to the scientific method and observational query. Just as the Ancients’ use of time and place, Maher should have understood that just because Dr. Andrew Newberg, research neuroscientist from the University of Pennsylvania, can make map and measure brain activity of people in various religious states including Glossolalia, this neither validates nor invalidates the participants’ experiences or interpretation of said experiences.

Toward the end of my Bachelor’s degree program in Biblical Studies at Biola University in 1981 I vaguely remember a few students and professors talking about something called a Midrash, that doesn’t seem to follow the definition I found in Wikipedia. What I remember was this had something to do with the kind of storytelling Jesus used in his parables where the message or emotional impact of the story held precedence over the “historical” elements of the story. Not that the storyteller would “lie” about the facts of the story, but that everyone understood that the point of the story was all that really mattered. Were there four fish and two loaves of bread or seven loaves and no fish? Who cares, the point is that the whole crowd got fed. This is hardly a scientific approach, but then it shouldn’t be, given that the scientific method won’t hold sway for more than a thousand years from the closing of Scripture and formalization of the canon of Scripture around the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. So, should it be surprising at all that the writers of the Old and New Testament used storytelling methods that were completely consistent with storytelling around the Mediterranean Sea during that era?

While conducting research for this essay I happened upon a 2006 History Channel documentary by Jewish Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and the producer/director James Cameron, called “Exodus Decoded.” Over the course of the 90-minute documentary, heavy in computer-generated visualizations, Jacobovici strings together the biblical story of the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt and connects the ten plagues described in the narrative with the destruction of Minoan island of Thera (now called Satorini) around 1,500 B.C.E. An undated inscription of the word “El” in an Egyptian mine, grave stones marking wealthy tombs and an ornament found in Mycenae are employed as scientific evidence that the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt was really about the Exodus narrative depicted in the Old Testament. The presentation is powerful and the production values are epic right down to animating the Mycenae stele to depict Egyptian chariots chasing the Hebrews and then getting over-turned during the Red Sea crossing. Too bad scholars connected with the Minoan exhibition say that the stones depict a lion hunt and that the first stone is not included or “edited” in the CG animation to show Jacobovici’s hypothesis. After reading an extensive review of the documentary by Pepperdine professor of Religion, Chris Heard on his website, Haggaion, one has to wonder at what point did Jacobovici decide to depart from the scientific method in favor of producing a slick documentary. For those who are serious about the message of the Exodus on a spiritual and academic level, how much more damage is done by a well-crafted documentary that doesn’t follow it’s own claim to be evidence based? This is not to say that science can’t be used to establish an historical basis for Old and New Testament narratives. But like Dr. Newberg’s flashing lights or energy-spikes in the neural readings, proving that there was a Moses or David or giant named Goliath doesn’t validate (or invalidate) the messages of these narratives.

So what did Veyne’s intellectual Greeks do about their own myths? Well, they did what today’s intellectual religious conservatives do: they did all kinds of mental gymnastics depending on the venue and problem they were addressing. The physician Galen, when speaking as a scholar, discounted things that could not be proven writing, “if the theorem is unrealizable, in the manner of the following statement, The centaur’s bile relieves apoplexy, it is useless because it escapes our apperception.” But when trying to win over new followers and disciples he’s willing to speak the language of the believers writing that the origin of Greek medicine was taught by Apollo to his son Asclepius. (p. 55) They understood the power of Myth in terms of social and political conventions that needed to be maintained for society to function (p. 80). They might hold to the allegorical/point-of-the-story (“Midrash”?) aspect of the stories. They might even entertain a nostalgic attitude for a Golden Age that doesn’t intersect their own non-mythical existence. But for the most part belief in the magical/mythical parts of the stories was also like today’s attitude that it’s okay for little children to believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but anyone with any intelligence knows that these stories just aren’t true. Stories about a warrior making the sun stand still, or conquering people with a magic box, people living to be nine-hundred-years-old would have probably gotten the same “only for kids” label.

Come to think of it, perhaps the genesis of this conflict between belief and intellectualism took hold with those who insisted that the old stories, the old miracles were not something only for that time before now but are part of the Now. An expectation changed from faith and religion being a social construction or convention to being a personal relationship with the divine (which was still a social construction/convention). And because we humans are so good at pattern recognition and invention we can easily see the invisible hand of the power of everything at work in small and great ways in our lives. Of course it does help that by definition this invisible hand works in ways that are entirely beyond our capacity to fathom, there’s no real need to explain or understand anything that might appear to be inconsistent with our dearly held convictions.

On the other extreme, I’m amazed when I encounter the arrogance of some intellectuals who believe that they have a superior understanding of reality while at the same time every academic field, from medicine to astronomy to cosmology to genetics to history are all going through unprecedented revolutions where last year’s textbook and theories are having to be continually thrown out due to new discoveries. My thoughts are that in between what is understood and what is not understood there might be room for an intelligence that, just like Epicurus opined, operates just beyond our limited field of vision and visits us in our dreams. Just don’t expect me to believe in talking snakes or cheap miracle workers who seem to always be in need of donations.

References
* clipart from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx
* Heard, Chris (2007). Exodus Decoded. Higgaion. Retrieved 04/20/2009 from http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?cat=86
* Maher, Bill (2008). Religulous. Thousand Words. Retireved 04/20/2009 from http://www.religulousmovie.net/
* Veyne, Paul (1988). Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths: An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination. Paula Wissing, translator. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Exodus Decoded. Wikipedia. Retireved 04/20/2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Decoded
* Religulous. Wikipedia. Retireved 04/20/2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religulous

jj jurado & i jam circa 1980 - love the perm!

Like most things, I started writing songs because I didn’t know any better. Teenage angst is like that. Fortunately for me it was a hell of a lot less destructive than all the other things that I could have been doing with my frustrations and energy. I also started writing because that’s what my best-friend, Jimmy, was doing. He wrote the happy tunes and I wrote the not-so-happy stuff. Anyway, being self-taught meant that pretty much all the things I wrote came from stumbling upon things that sounded good to me. But I felt like I was working from a pretty limited pallet and eventually what I wanted to write about just wouldn’t fit into a three minute three chord song. So I stopped writing songs. Lately I’ve been carefully listening to artists like Neva and Peter Himmelman and it dawned me that I might have made a mistake stopping. I thought everyone else was better than I’d ever become. I never realized the power of playing within ones strengths, to play within oneself.

peter himmelman

What I mean is that I felt I’d gotten as far as I could with my limited skills. In the years since I’ve thought about the little tricks (like a band?) I could have used to make up for what I thought I lacked. It goes without saying that most folks can do things with a band that are hard to pull off with just a guitar, a mic and blind faith. But then I listen to folks like my buddy Neva who have that right combination of soul wanting to get out in their music and the talent to pull it off with a couple of wooden spoons and a fry pan. I know that no amount of tricks can make up for the lack of talent, if it’s missing. See, you won’t find a bigger group of folks completely insecure about their talents than musicians (well, except for supermodels, which is part of the reason they hilariously end up together). It was so easy to fall into the trap, as a guitarist, to feel like I was shit because I couldn’t play like Jimmy Page, Jimmie Hendrix, or for my group, Phil Keaggy.Because I could never imagine getting my fingers to fly across the fretboard fast enough I failed to recognize the miracle that I could get some good tunes out of said fingers in the first place. I’d forgotten that I started playing and writing in the first place not because I wanted to be a rockstar or play the fastest leads. The simple truth was that I started because I couldn’t find any music that expressed what I was feeling or experiencing so, not knowing any better, my buddy and I started writing about it.

Fortunately, most of the 60 plus songs I penned when I was a kid have been completely lost over the past 30 years. But they served their purpose at the time. Like I said, my friend Jimmie wrote the happy tunes and I wrote the other tunes. But more than just a difference in disposition, my friend tended toward the simple chords while I experimented with different kinds of tuning and the like. I spent countless afternoons and evenings with my buddy really just learning how to play. And when I started playing for others, I was still spending a lot of time learning from those who were better than I was. Getting together all the time really spurned the creativity, I could hardly wait to share my new stuff with my jam buddies. It makes sense that all of this would change after college when I had far less disposable time to work with. I guess I never realized how wonderful it was to have such great jamming partners when I was in high school and then in college. That was such a long time ago, a lifetime ago, it seems.

Vineyard Long Beach Worship Team (guitar band) circa 2006

And all of this might have completely passed away into rarely remembered memories had I not found myself re-examining everything in my life and again looking for the voice inside of me wanting to communicate what I was going through. This most recent time around I found a whole host of artists expressing what I was exploring in my life so I didn’t even bother taking up the writing and spent countless hours learning all of the music I’d missed over the intervening 15-years I’d been “away.” Alas, the power in my life that compelled me to take up my guitar again was also more than a little contradictory as far as playing music at church, so I made myself available to help out with the proviso that there was a giant hole in my “personal life.” I was pretty straight forward in the four different worship groups I worked with and to their credit they accepted me in my fully-flawed state. Funniest thing was that the most challenging element in all of this that I had to deal with was that the second worship band I worked withdemanded that I play electric lead guitar and NOT sing. I learned a lot during my brief tenure at that post. But then that worship leader stepped down and I didn’t quite work out with the new guy who was piano-centric and had no time to mentor a not-quite-ready-for-primetime lead-guitarist. One thing I did learn playing electric and lead was that less-is-more and that it was never about seeing how fast one can play, but just having something to play during those breaks. I never quite got there, but it was a good lesson learned.

So now I’m in a very different place from my high school/college days, or the last five years of dragging my guitar around. It feels a bit weird listening to my own music from over the years. Back when I was writing music so much of it was full of that adolescent preachy-ness that can be pretty embarrassing given how things have turned out so far. I guess what I want to remember is the passion. It’s still a part of me, but it doesn’t seem to fit in all of the little categories that I preached as a budding musician. And this last time around it was very much about the passion and giving voice to the longing i felt in my heart. But that didn’t quite turn out either. Listening to Peter Himmelman play on Leo Laporte’s podcast reminded me that I’m not done yet. His playing reminded me of where I left off back when I was writing. It reminded me that I started this thing because there was something in my soul that needed to get out in my music. So, should it be so surprising that I still find myself, in my middle years, pulling out my guitar, playing some of the old stuff and still frustrated that I’m still not finding the tunes that tell my story? Damn.

love tattoo by Jenn_Jenn (cc)

The ideal of love is it’s unconditional nature. The closest we usually come to that kind of love is the love between a parent and her child. But even that love has it’s limits, it’s conditions. I know that I’ve come up against my own limitations with a love that I thought was permanent and eternal. I thought I saw the face of God with this love and poured all that I had into it. But I was wrong. Time and trust were broken and I had to walk away. So much for the face of God.

I’m looking for a hard headed woman,
One who’ll take me for myself
And if I find my hard headed woman
I won’t need nobody else, no no no.
- “Hard Headed Woman” by Cat Stevens

I found a level of intimacy that I had never dreamed existed. The face of God. I was inspired to be my best self, not wanting to hide any part of myself but to bring all of it into full expression and creativity. Wherever I thought I lacked I set about to push through to be better, to be the best me because I was renewed by this powerful connection and boundless intimacy. Fearless, complete, committed, doubt-free, a self that I hadn’t seen in over a decade came into existence. A love of my music that had lain silent and had been a forgotten memory rose in me. I saw, I felt, I touched, I tasted, I couldn’t get enough. I became part of something much bigger than myself. The face of God. My world changed. I changed. Then I waited. And waited some more. I waited longer than I ever imagined I was capable of waiting.

He came from somewhere in her long ago,
the sentimental fool don’t see,
tryin’ hard to re-create what had yet to be created
once in her life.
She musters a smile for his nostalgic tale,
never coming near what he wanted to say,
only to realize it never really was.
- “What a Fool Believes” by Michael McDonald

Yeah, I knew better. I understood the circumstances. It all made sense. Clearly it wasn’t what I thought it was. It had been our special secret for so long but in the light of day it was something she’d rather no one else ever knew about. I wanted to shout about it from the mountain tops and she was pained to even acknowledge that i had been a college friend. How could something so powerful be so much the creation of my own head, a delusion that I never asked for? And if that were true, then did I really see the face of God or was that all wishful thinking too?

Hello. How are you?
Have you been alright, through all those lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely nights
That’s what I’d say. I’d tell you everything
If you’d pick up that telephone yeah
Hey. How you feelin?
Are you still the same?
Don’t you realize the things we did, we did, were all for real, not a dream?
I just can’t believe
They’ve all faded out of view yeah yeah
- “Telephone Line” by ELO

I wonder. I never expected for it to happen when it did. Does this mean that if some lovely with a dainty cross necklace smiles at me that I can go back to believing in the Man behind the curtain? Somehow that seems twisted. But there I was a few mornings ago, looking through the profile of one lovely e-harmonette, and the thought struck me that if this were “the one” than would I again become best friends with the Man behind the curtain? I mean, we stopped talking because for all of those years that I spent waiting I was hearing that He knows what I want before I do and wants to give that to me and the fact that it wasn’t happening must mean that A) I’m doing something wrong, B) she’s not “the one, C) Not now, or D) Any combination of A, B, or C. Eventually I began to wonder that it might be: E) there is no Man behind the Curtain.

The best proof of love is trust by dopesmuglar

And as much as I’ve spent the past year living like it’s option E, there is this part of me that needs for there to be someone there to talk to in the darkness of my own soul. At the same time, even if I were to be blessed with the mate of my dreams, how do I trust someone who stood by while my heart was slowly broken and brought to this place of doubt? I’m willing to acknowledge that I got it all wrong but where do I find the place of trust again? Needless to say, none of this is going to be attractive to anyone looking for a Christ-led home and looking for someone to love them like Christ loved the Church. Yeah. I understand the analogy but I’m not even going to pretend to live up to that expectation. I have the hair and the beard, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. Funny thing is, someone who hasn’t gone through this “intimate faith” experience or doesn’t believe in anything doesn’t seem particularly attractive to me either. Alas, I seem to have conditions piled on conditions piled on conditions in my pursuit of unconditional love. Lord help us.

So long, I’ve been looking too hard, I’ve been waiting too long
Sometimes I don’t know what I will find, I only know it’s a matter of time
When you love someone, when you love someone
It feels so right, so warm and true, I need to know if you feel it too

Maybe I’m wrong, won’t you tell me if I’m coming on too strong
This heart of mine has been hurt before, this time I wanna be sure

I’ve been waiting for a girl like you to come into my life
I’ve been waiting for a girl like you, your loving will survive
I’ve been waiting for someone new to make me feel alive
Yeah, waiting for a girl like you to come into my life
- “Waiting for a Girl like You” by Foreigner

“One Vote” – ValueVotersUSA.com (official)

Beautiful video with a somewhat overly dramatic soundtrack, then I started paying attention to words floating up on the screen. Very moving words about very moving ideas, just one problem, did the producers of this video seriously think that the Democratic candidate was going to take away the rights and beliefs expressed in the video? Except for being Pro-Choice, which is more than enough for most conservative Christians, one would be hard pressed to reject Obama’s credentials as a Christian.

This is something that I never quite understood about the Republican Right somehow claiming conservative Christianity as their own territory. The “down home” kind of Faith of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton seemed much more genuine than the more “religion of political expediency” of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Senior. G.W.’s faith was certainly “genuine” but I’m not sure whether that was an asset or problem for the Right. Really, once we gets past the rhetoric and to each man’s genuine Faith, who could one look at this video and not say that both candidates were committed to the American values we all hold sacred?

The video mentions several times about how divided America has become. Perhaps they should examine the notes from their own strategy meetings to find the source of this fear-mongering and divisiveness. And while they’re looking, let’s think about whether we really hold that every life from conception is precious while we continue to kill hundreds of people in foreign lands. Aren’t their lives precious too? It’s easy to float powerful, emotional words across a screen. What’s more important are the actions of a man with regards to his beliefs and the actions of the nation amongst the other nations. Everything else is bankrupt and meaningless noise.

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. James 2:14-18

I can’t imagine what this means. Why would I bother installing this program? As much as it represents hundreds of dollars, I’ve certainly spent at least as much over the years just on beer (though that would be a hell of a lot of beer…). It’s not about the money. I mean, I’m 2,500 miles from everything I previously knew and I’m completely free to conduct my life however I choose. So at first I chose to not associate myself with any church or fellowship. Yet after five months I find that I cannot seem to ignore my previous spiritual experiences nor play the role of a real skeptical atheist. So what should I do about this? If anything, I’m feeling the need to “be real” and not spend another 15 years in the spiritual wilderness as I felt I had done from the time of my divorce until five years ago.

But at the same time I can’t see myself professing the Apostles’ Creed without editing it down to meaninglessness. Equally I can’t ignore the “Otherness” that I sense in my own thoughts with vague memories of a kind of spiritual intimacy that was perfectly at peace with ignoring all dogma and the entirely compromised lifestyle that I was living that was complete contradictory toward my faith’s traditions. I miss that, not the compromised part. I love the community that I’ve found with my coworkers, but there are even deeper places that I’ve shared with complete strangers I used to go to church with and I can’t seem to shake that drive in my life. And this pesky bible software reminds me of this part of my life.

Maybe this is something that will come into better clarity when I’ve found someone to intimately share the journey with. But even as I write these words I know that the tendency is to go in the opposite direction and devote less time and energy to finding center and more about managing life with the other. Damn. That was a nice thought, to share the journey with someone. Alas, my experience has been that one’s partner is either completely disinterested in spiritual things or is completely invested in one particular interpretation of dogma and would see my unwillingness to “sign up” with her interpretation as a weakness. Yeah, I don’t need that shit in my life. I guess with or without a partner this is my journey to embark on.

Thus, just as I am restoring data and deciding on what to include and what to exclude on this laptop, I’m also trying to determine what to include and exclude from my spiritual understanding. As long as it’s been taking me to do software re-install, it’s a hell of a lot easier to deal with than this spiritual quandary I seem to find myself in. But i’m just silly enough to believe that i will get a handle on it… and then do the next thing. jbb

Music: “I Wish I Was a Girl” by Counting Crows on the This Desert Life CD

In the past I’ve been accused of writing things in my blog that seemed to show no regard as to whether what I wrote might be hurtful to others and in some cases writing things with the intension to hurt. Truthfully I might have written things in my blog that I was so passionate about or overwhelmed over that I didn’t or couldn’t look too far beyond my angst to realize how some might take my venting. So, it seems odd to me, in my old age, that I’m so hesitant to work out my “faith issues” here in my blog…

On one level I don’t want my dad or my old church friends to visit these pages and be left with a head-shaking “that’s too bad” feeling about me. I don’t want them to think that I was anything less than completely sincere or genuine with my expressions of faith. At the same time, I’m not like some I’ve known who couldn’t reconcile their private and public lives and so lived in fear of being “discovered.” I guess the best that I can do is to be honest and continue to work through my issues and trust that those who genuinely have my best interests will give me room to explore my life’s path even when it heads in directions that they’d rather I didn’t follow. Anyway, besides being my usual busy self, this hesitancy is why I haven’t written as much in this category of my blog as I’ve wanted to. Having now covered this part of the conversation, I guess I can move on to the other stuff like musings on the wiring of my home network or whether I should buy an Amazon Kindle. Just kidding… kind’a. jbb

Music: Mr. Blue Sky by ELO from the All Over the World: The Very Best of ELO CD

Music: Jet Airliner from the album “Greatest Hits 1974-1978″ by Steve Miller Band

Technorati Tags: california, community, faith, friends, longbeach, love

And if I haven’t pissed you off with that last one, here’s another one from CNNN about “Holy Homosexuals”:

I love that the reporter asks if Leviticus 18′s condemnation of homosexuality is followed why not Leviticus 35 where it says that those who work on the Sabbath should be put to death and Leviticus 21 where those with defective sight (glasses?) cannot serve in the ministry! And now for a more mainstream media (Fox?) perspective we have Buchanan asking if there is a “God Gene”:

Maybe this comes from working with group-conscious pre-teens and teens, but I was pretty embarrassed by my mistaken assumption and felt the last few remaining links to my current expression of faith being severely weakened. Relationship woes had already taken it’s toll on connecting with God’s promises, but this made me feel like an outcast among those usually considered outcasts themselves. I really felt like there really isn’t anyone who would understand me.

“It’s a weird world we live in, it’s funny every day
half the world prays like a preacher, other half don’t even pray
So no one understands you if you pray in your own way…

“Now I’m stuck here in the middle, everything is in a jam
I’m stuck right in the middle, doors on both sides seem to slam,
No one seems to want me, only God would take me like I am…

“Well, my brothers criticize me, say I’m too strange to believe
and the others just avoid me, say my faith is so naive
I’m too ‘sacred’ for the sinners, and saints wish I would leave.”

Stuck In The Middle from the album “Stop the Dominoes” by Mark Heard

I remember when this journey began, I opened my Bible for the first time in 15-years and I found endless examples of how God wanted us to experience faith in the supportive cocoon of community. It was an amazing revelation to me. Being in love meant being with that other, which somehow led me to want spiritual intimacy in my life and that meant “God,” and somehow that meant hanging out with Christians (not logical, but that’s how my mind works). Western individualistic West-Coast culture being the way it is, I could experience this at my own comfort levels without having to own up to the contradictions of being in love with a married woman or any of my other non-Christian appetites. Conservative legalists would no doubt point to that as being the source of my failure. I said that I valued the community aspects of Faith but I still lived largely like a unattached rogue.

Many a time I pondered with Juls on why it was that I never went to church with those close to me when I was at Biola. Before going away to college I resorted to going to Biblestudies with my friends secretly because my parents disapproved me hanging out with “Jesus freaks.” Maybe that started a pattern in my life of overly compartmentalizing things in my life. Funny thing is that as long as I can remember, even during the pre- and post-divorce days, I said that I wanted to unify all the areas of my life (one reason why I didn’t want to stay at the phone company as my career… again, not really logical…). I don’t know. But somehow, having learned and believed in the importance of community connection and having spiritual intimacy with ones significant other, I have neither one and the best option that I seem to have is to just leave.

So when I think about this move to Florida (yeah, there I go again, thinking) I wonder about whether my five-year Christian experiment will make the journey with me to the other end of the continent. What I mean is that I seem to be at a loss at expressing what my faith has meant to me and this is not compatible with my drive to try to use my gifts to make a difference. That is, I’m not sure but that I should just be Joe the computer/media educator when I relocate to Florida and let the whole music ministry/teaching ministry thing become another past chapter in my life. I really am stuck in the middle, even as I find myself moving into a life on the other side of the world. Damn, if I haven’t carved out an impossible complicated path for myself… once again.

I do wish that I could just settle down and be that mellow comfortable Christian dude, but life just seems to shit all over the little cookie-cutter boxes and I’m tired of trying to make it all fit. It is what it is and I’m going to move forward with the opportunity set in front and pray that I don’t fuck it up or ruin it for anyone else. But I’m done with moaning that it didn’t work out the way I had hoped. I did what I could do, gave what I could give, probably over-stayed my welcome by at least two-years. Sorry about that, those whom I’ve inconvenienced and unintentionally annoyed with my persistence with what i had wanted here. My bad. I’ll just take my computers and guitars and go. jbb

“Well, my brothers criticize me, say I’m too strange to believe
and the others just avoid me, say my faith is so naive
I’m too ‘sacred’ for the sinners, and saints wish I would leave.”
Mark Heard (1951-1992)

So I bared my soul and recieved resounding… silence. I confessed that my faith was being wounded because I have a hard time experiencing the love of God when I have been feeling so unloved in the here and now. Reading through Matthew’s gospel Jesus said that if we fallible human know how to give good gifts to our kids, how much more does God know how to give us what we need. Well, having discovered that I was “meant” to live a life-shared and my former rogue existence had been a lie. I have a hard time with God’s promise in view of my persistent failure to have a fully functional relationship with the person I have loved. And before I go any further with this, I’m not saying that any of this is her fault: it’s just the way things are. But this unmet need digs into my ability to trust and give back.

Before, when faced with this hope-yet-unrealized, I would examine my own life to try to figure out what lesson I needed to learn, trying to find what thing I yet lacked before I would fully enjoy this desired love. No one ever told me to do this. That was my natural response every time I was separated from her. What yet do I lack? It probably helped that it seemed like she had little choice in her circumstances, but in the time following her divorce that line of reasoning has been more difficult to maintain. I mean, it was funny how perfectly I could see areas in my life that needed “renovation,” just when some set-back would happened, And I would soldier on. Yeah, that got old and I eventually reconciled with myself that this lesson learned, the lesson that I’m not supposed to be alone, wasn’t dependent on her or her responsibility and so I did the e-Harmony thing. Well, in that I’m writing these words, e-Harmony or more directly, meeting people at church hasn’t worked out too well. And going through the upcoming holidays is going to be a bitch.

So, it’s become harder and harder for me to maintain my vigil, It’s getting to the point where this stupid little thing is getting in the way of my expression or experience of Faith. I mean, he promised it and I endeavored to maintain my end of it. I know we can be legalistic about it and find all the areas where my stupid human nature gives Him an escape clause, but that would be the way a shitty father would treat his kid, “Yeah, I was going to give you a PS3 for Christmas, but remember that one time when I told you to take out the trash eight-years ago? Well, you didn’t or at least didn’t until your mom nagged you to death. So that’s why there’s no PS3 under the Christmas tree.” Nah. That won’t fly. What yet do I lack?

My friends are really looking forward to 2008 and I’m afraid that it’ll be a year filled with the same emptiness and excuses. JBB

Music: Skepticality #043 – Skeptic’s Caltech Lecture Series: Sam Harris

Part of me was distressed that, once again, it seemed that the disciples at the moment of the savior’s great need were not able so much as just stay awake with him while he prayed. Who knows whether they had any appreciation for what had just happened, the Last Supper, or the events that were about to transpire. If there’s a doubt about the historicity of these passages, one would think that the gospel writers would make the apostles at least a bit more heroic instead of portraying them so completely human, so unable to grasp what was happening all around them and with whom they were dealing with.
Peter had confessed who Jesus was (Matt. 16:16) and they had left their lives to spend three years with him. But I get the impression that they felt like they were following a great teacher, albeit not one respected by the religious or community leaders. A great teacher and miracle-worker, blessed by God. In the context of the time, I don’t doubt that they had all heard stories of others who had come before who had claimed to be The Annointed of God (Matt 24:24), so I’m not surprised that they underestimate who Jesus really is and what he is about to accomplish.

I don’t see Peter’s proclamation that he’d never deny Jesus as empty bravado, but just that gap between the good we want to do when called upon and our lack of really understanding what’s going on around us. We assess the situation in our limited scope and when the odds seem to turn against us, we flee. Peter intended to defend his teacher to the point of cutting off the ear of one of the soldiers, but quietly standing beside his master as they took him away was not within him or the other disciples and they all fled into the night. So I’m left to see two things. Jesus knows us through and through, apparently better than we know ourselves. The second is that, even in the moment when foretold of their failure, he dsaid that he would meet them again after his resurrection and join them in Galilee. He extended the hand of forgiveness and hope, in that He would be waiting for them when He finished doing what he came for. Even within their small world, their small grasp of what He was going to accomplish, He offered them a small window into their reunion in Galilee (John 21:1-23). In the darkest of hours, when we completely fail, there is always hope and One who will never leave us or abandon us, even when we fail him. JBB

Music: I Am Your Child from the album “VC 56 Sweetly Broken” by Jude Del Hiero