I was there in 1974 when the “Jesus Movement” hit Southern California. I heard about Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel, the first of Frisbee’s two mentors. But by the time I was old enough to venture to Costa Mesa the scene had changed and I was busy learning from the Jesuits and Catholic Charismatics at Loyola Marymount University in West Los Angeles.

Vineyard Long Beach worship team, by Joe Bustillos, circa January 2006

It would be another 30-year, while I was playing with a worship band in Long Beach, when I began to hear the stories about a non-conventional personality who had been there in the beginning. A friend talked about this crazy guy who led huge revival meetings in Long Beach, but then faded from history. I didn’t think much about the stories until I happened across the documentary, Frisbee: The Life And Death Of A Hippie Preacher, on PBS one late night many years later.

My friend was right: Frisbee was one unconventional dude… but then it was the late 60s/70s, a most unconventional time. I’m reminded of the child’s book, The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola, when I think about Frisbee’s story. I can tell you that nothing is as clean or perfect as the church folks would want you to believe. However one might feel about miracles and whether God did miracles through Frisbee, I have no doubts that Chuck Smith or John Wimber (the second pastor to “employ” Frisbee) or Frisbee himself believe that God was using Frisbee to so “something great” through him. That Smith and Wimber made a calculated choice to use Frisbee’s anointing to promote their ministries was also pretty obvious. Alas, unlike The Clown of God, this one is a tragic story, one by which it would seem that God anointed a young man to do something miraculous, but a young man with the one flaw that traditional Christianity and his mentors could not accept. Lonnie Frisbee was gay.

Chuck Smith one time said from the pulpit that maybe God left the fossil record to fool scientists and the like. I rejected that notion because it would make God out to be a deliberate deceiver. That the pride of men can allow for us to be deceived or more often to deceive ourselves is one thing, but for God to deliberately do such a thing kind of goes against the notion that God is the embodiment of Truth. But then given the contradictory elements of this sad take, maybe God is a trickster, like Anansi in the West African tales. I mean, He picked a young man to do great things, but then to confound those who would naturally recognize Frisbee’s anointing He complicated the story by selecting a young man who was physically attracted to other young men. Here was someone who spread the New Testament grace of God’s forgiveness and then, in a very Old Testament manner, was struck down much too young by AIDs. So sad. Even at his funeral, the Trickster might have transpired to show that the mentors didn’t get it, when Chuck Smith spoke and equated Frisbee with the Old Testament story of Samson, lamenting that Frisbee could have done so much more if he had just not given in to his homosexuality. Smith and Wimber and others wanted to be a part of what God seemed to have done through Frisbee but they tired and then dismissed the man when they couldn’t control him.

And then to add insult to injury, Frisbee’s role in the early Calvary Chapel and Vineyard Church movements was either minimized or almost completely missing (In The Radical Middle Frisbee is mentioned by name by the author, but when he quotes Wimber Frisbee is referred to as “the young preacher”). Let’s just say that I attended various Calvary Chapels and Vineyard Churches for over twenty-year but had never heard Frisbee’s story until the mid-2000s from my worship leader/buddy. Not good. So, for all of my prior whining, I’m glad that I wasn’t mentored in that fashion and that I had to make my way in the world, learning what I could without someone’s restrictive and destructive theology limiting my explorations. Lonnie Frisbee, Hippie Preacher, RIP.

Sources:

• Lonnie Frisbee Project, http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/ retrieved on 11/1/4/2011
• Lonnie Frisbee, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Frisbee retrieved 11/14/2011
• video: Frisbee – The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv3O8SseOio retrieved 11/14/2011
• John Wimber, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wimber retrieved 11/14/2011.
• Chuck Smith, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Smith_(pastor) retrieved 11/14/2011.
• image: Vineyard Long Beach worship team, by Joe Bustillos, circa January 2006
• amazon link: The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola
• amazon link: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard by Bill Jackson.

Then the years began to slip by and the world continued, such as it was, some years not so great and other years pretty good. I know that Chuck Smith and others continued to talk about these being the Last Days, but we started growing up and having families and setting different priorities than our own personal salvation. It wasn’t that the world had change as much as that my relationship to it and to life had changed. I began to see each year as a gift and my friends as connections, instead of as sinners in need of salvation. Salvation was what we did with each day, accepting the challenges and set-backs and looking for the best in ourselves and bring it out in our neighbors. I didn’t know any better as a teenager and young person, to not know that the world is a pretty big place and that living in fear of Divine judgment or the anxious expectation of Divine intervention wasn’t a very constructive way to live one’s life. It sadden’s me that an 89-year-old former engineer hasn’t figure that out.

Worse than that Harold Camping, president of Family Radio and chief proponent of the May 21st Rapture Date, is changing the course of many, many lives with his numerological nonsense. There’s the couple, Adrienne & Joel Martinez, quoted in the NPR article, saying that they quit their jobs and moved here to Orlando to spend the last days handing out pamphlets, reading their bible and spending time with their two-year-old. And they say that they have just enough money to get to May 21st and none should there be a next day for them. Oh and Adrienne is pregnant with a little one that’s set to arrive in June. Camping has lived his life and when May 22nd comes he’ll come up with another reason why his calculations were off (he previously predicted the Rapture for September 6, 1994). The Martinez family and possibly hundreds of others will probably have a bigger problem to deal with.

Imagine how different the world would be if all of this energy spent on ripping families apart, moving to different cities and days spent on the streets harassing strangers with a false gospel of fear and foolishness; what if that energy was spent on getting to know our neighbors and listening to them when they are lonely or sharing a meal with them when they are hungry, how different would the world be. Too bad Camping hasn’t used his numerology and wealth to feed the hungry, clothe the needy and visit those in dire straits. Maybe, instead of counting the years in books that know nothing of the Gregorian calendar, he should have read what was in the books, the stories about compassion and mercy and love. Engineers [sigh]. I’ve heard whispers on Twitter from some jokesters who are planning on Saturday to leave articles of clothing all over their cities for the laughs. This isn’t funny. That people would buy this stuff and leave their jobs, homes and families, speaks to level of their needs to be loved and heard. This is, in fact, something that we all need. Jesus was all about meeting people at that level. Too bad nobody listened to him until he was killed. Too bad these troubled seekers aren’t listening to him right now (in that he said quite plainly that no one knows the day or the hour of his return). We could all use with strong dose of compassion and connection right about now. May 21st be damned, the only day that counts is the one you are living right now.

Sources:
Is The End Nigh? We’ll Know Soon Enough by BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, http://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136053462/is-the-end-nigh-well-know-soon-enough?ps=cprs, retrieved May 19th, 2011.

Believers Sound The Alarm: Judgment Day Is May 21, NPR Talk of the Nation,
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136432488/believers-sound-the-alarm-judgment-day-is-may-21, retrieved May 19th, 2011.

I’ve noted in my eclectic twitter and facebook feeds a slight trend that I first noticed this past week, before Easter, during which someone commented that they are tired of being, or that they shouldn’t be ashamed of their faith and wanted to shout it out. Then, of course, someone quoted the verses where Jesus said, if you are ashamed to acknowledge me in this life then I won’t acknowledge you in the next life. That was a bit of a buzz-kill, but I still saw a few “He Lives!” that seemed to come from this initial thought that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our Faith. Is this the Christian version of the “I love you, man” that guys say to each other after watching a good football game and a few round of beer?

In Bad Faith, Part 9: He Lives … In the example of Your Day-to-Day Lives

My Jesus-Freak high school self

I poke fun because I’m that guy in high school who, with my dear Christian friends, decided one beautiful, sunny lunch break, probably around Easter time, that we needed to not be ashamed of our faith and confronted our non-believing fellow students and got all verbal with them about the gospel. I’m so thankful (and hopeful) that my fellow students might remember said incidents as just another silly adolescent not-thought-out moment. I mean, I forgive them for wanting to and/or throwing stuff at our little group after those incidents. I’ve never been particularly fond of Confrontational Christianity since then. Of course, mom would remind me that words are cheap and that actions speak louder than words. Thanks mom. Love mom’s obviousness.

Our culture is so weird where politicians feel the need to prove how qualified they are for the job by parading their family and faith out to the public, where we’re either over-sensitive or oblivious to whether we should talk about our beliefs with our neighbors, but doing anything about the disenfranchised all around us isn’t even on the agenda. I mean, part of the reason some of us go to church is to not be part of the disenfranchised and unconsciously we make such people uncomfortable to walk in the door and stink up our plush pews. We’re not mean. We just prefer an impersonal way of “dealing with those people,” through our tithes… assuming that any of that money goes any further than the pastor’s latest building project or salary. I don’t mean to be mean. I’m writing mostly to myself, in that I was a serious tither, giving my 10 percent (after taxes) from the time I first started working many many decades ago and wonder whether that money really did anyone any good. And why is god always running out of money?

I love my brother’s approach:

Too many glasses of wine, feeling love for all mankind. I know we don’t deserve this, we are all so flawed, but that is the real message of Easter. That we are lovable despite all of all of our problems. Have a wonderful Easter. Jesus is Risen, now go hide some eggs.

And as my mom would probably say, it really is all about how we treat one another, not during the special moments, but in the day-to-day moments. Now go out and hug someone who needs a hug today.

“When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?” And the King shall answer and say unto them, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25: 38-40 KJV

In Bad Faith, part 8: The Case for God – Not What You Think

I think that Armstrong did such a great job summarizing the book in her NPR/Fresh Air interview that the book feels a bit ponderous. What I mean is that this is a book that one really needs to pay attention to and no play as background music (ack, stupid multitasking lifestyle). Armstrong takes the reader from the very beginning evidences of “god thoughts” found in the pre-historic caves of Lascaux, to the new-atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, spending a goodly bit of time going through the Greek, Asian, and post-medieval schools of thought that may not be familiar to the reader.

So, as a former Loyola Marymount religious studies major with a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Biola University and several quarters of study at Fuller Seminary toward an MA in Theology and a piss-pour background in the Greek and Latin Classics (no ones fault but my own), I greatly appreciated Armstrong’s academic, non-polemic, recitation of pre-history and history of religion on this planet. Yeah, that’s the scope of this book. I’m very interested in her other books on Islam and Buddhism to see how deep she dives into these religions where I’m greatly lacking in my own understanding.

Thoughts that struck me as I listened to the book, mainly how every generation and every great thinker felt compelled to re-interpret God based on their own recent history, cultural and personal, and their own cultural problems. For example, how different would modern Christianity be if Augustine had not had such a problem with his pre-conversion sexual appetites, how would the relationship between God and man be cast differently if Augustine hadn’t promoted the idea of Original Sin and demonized sexuality in general, making it a sin except for the purpose of conception? What would have happened if Emperor Constantine had not chosen to use Christianity as a unify force in his divided empire, thus forcing provincial Christianity to agree on which books belonged in the scriptures, the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and what would be orthodox and what would be heretical? How differently would history have been had Christianity remained a Jewish sect instead of a world political power? And every time there was a political or natural disaster there seemed to be gigantic shifts in thought with conservatives abandoning the silent God and liberal’s looking for a literal simplistic God to find comfort from.

The greatest error in our search for the Divine seems to be that all of us, skeptic and believer, have made the mistake of assuming that our understanding of religion and the Divine has always been the way we presently see things. Biblical inerrancy, literal divine intervention, God as a Being, the idea of One Truth, religion as belief system instead of daily practice, the after-life, rationalism versus belief: these are all tenets of faith that many of us hold onto believing that changing any one of them invalidates the whole idea of Faith. And yet, many of these ideas have a date in history when they caught on, thus showing that there was a time when people did not, for example, hold to the idea that there was only one truth or that the scriptures had to be perfect in every word and teaching. It might be surprising to some that there have been faithful Christians who do not believe that Jesus was God incarnate. I know, shock. In fact, not at all like the superstitious primitives who saw gods in every stone and stick, it may surprise some that some ancients understood that one could not reduce God to Person because God doesn’t make sense as someone like themselves only bigger.

So, are you tired of the literalistic infantile religion that you find on the TV day and night? Are you unconvinced that it’s NOT all DNA and chemical reactions? Are you tired of the petty divisive warring between small minded sects with guns? Well, then maybe it’s time, in the words of Neo, to free ones mind from narrow assumptions of ones cultural and personal past and entertain thoughts that it’s a much bigger universe than one can even understand, but that one is a part of this much bigger existence.

Also, it should go without saying that it’s long past time for fat self-absorbed Christians to get over themselves and express their beliefs beginning by welcoming a Muslim into their home and giving a good portion of their wealth away to the poor and shut the hell up until they’ve done the first things that their Messiah told them to do. Additionally, It’s past time for the faithful from all beliefs to stop letting the Fundamentalists misrepresent what the Founders of their Faith intended. Rest assured, when you kill, hate or persecute in the name of God, you aren’t speaking or acting for any god beyond your own personal sickness. And that goes for those of you who hate someone who doesn’t agree with your politics or, horror of horrors, doesn’t agree with your sexuality (or lack thereof). To use a phrase popular with a few friends, if the founders could, they’d bitch-slap these presumptive crazies. Oh wait, that’d just lend credence toward their belief in rewarding violence for violence. Oh what the hell, slap away!

god help us! Getting back to Armstrong’s book; Meaning and data, mythos and logos, it’s not a mistake that every culture has examples of this phenomenon. Funny, thinking of previous readings, it’s a bit like the left and right hemispheres of the human brain, we don’t do particularly well when only one hemisphere is “in charge.” The same would seem to be true of human cultures that advocate only one way of understanding reality, religion or secularism. As with the human mind, the two parts must communicate and influence each other or the whole will suffer and fail. Interesting. This business of God and religion is not at all what i would have at first thought.

Karen Armstrong at TED: The Golden Rule

Sources:
image: Karen Armstrong. http://shelleyadelle.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/belief-to-love-to-prize-to-hold-dear/ retrieved on 3/11/2010

image: Padre.jpg microsoft clipart

TED video: Karen Armstrong: Let’s revive the Golden Rule. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/karen_armstrong_let_s_revive_the_golden_rule.html retrieved on 3/11/2010

It shouldn’t be too surprising that in an era and place of unbridled abundance and wealth (that is the US in the 1970s and following) that these verses would be seen as part of the claim that we deserve good things and God has to give us what we want. Of the many mistakes I’ve made in my walk of faith, having a sense of entitlement, that God owes me something, was no small source of confusion and probably one of the worst ways that I could have envisioned a relationship with the Divine. Funny that I seem to get mostly what I needed, but almost never what I wanted.

In Bad Faith, Part 7: Entitlement

The stark finger of God by altemark

It might be interesting to see the tel-evangelist and the religious huckster try to preach this gospel of entitlement to villagers in a developing spot in the world where their village is routinely wiped out every year by monsoons and flooding. Or in some South American desert community where there’s no electricity or indoor plumbing, how would they spin their message there? How does this gospel of entitlement translate in parts of the world where children catch the measles and die or where they don’t have enough food to feed them and have to watch them slowly starve to death. Conversely, how about hard-working folk who are laid-off or fired because the CEO needs to cut the budget so that he can still get his quarter-million dollar. The CEO got what he wanted, but the thousands and possibly millions who are dependent on that paycheck for their daily bread certainly didn’t. Does God only listen to the prayers of CEOs, or rich Americans?

I’m currently listening to Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, and it seems pretty clear that one mistake I made was to assume a quid pro quo relationship with the Divine and second to that was an assumption that I could have a relationship with the Divine that was a kind of mystical parallel to having a relationship with a really powerful, important buddy. I thought I had VIP access to all the good that there was to offer because God and Jesus were my buddies. “No really, check again, my name is on the VIP list. My buddy, Jesus, said he put it there,” I say to the heavenly bouncer. Imagine my disappointment and embarrassment as I’m forced to leave the line while the bouncer lets all the hot chicks in first. Damn. Story of my life…

I know that it was confusing to my mom, a devout Catholic, that I had this expectation that not only did God hear my prayers, but that He had to give me what I wanted and also that He was in control of every aspect of my life, right down to the long hairs on my shaggy head. I’d had this “experience” as a 15-year-old and blam! I was ushered into the inner sanctum and I was privy to a level of understanding that the stupid ol’ theologians couldn’t begin to imagine. Well, 15-year-olds are always over-estimating their importance and understanding, and I wasn’t any different in that department. Sad thing was that as I grew up and began to understand that I did NOT know the mysteries of the universe, that I was unable to integrate this in a meaningful way when it came to understanding my relationship with God and the Bible. In a sense Dawkins was right, while I understood more and more of the complexity of life, my relationship with God was mostly undeveloped beyond the moment of recognition and wonder.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. (1st Corinthians 13:11-12 ASV)

Well, it’s probably an overstatement to say that it went undeveloped because from that moment forward I struggled with my growing rational understanding of the world and this moment that changed my life. Like the Episcopal priest that my brother spoke to in my last entry, I couldn’t fully reconcile the two and instead just alternated between the two worlds and not always very gracefully. While Dawkins might say that my struggle was an irrational residual of my upbringing, Armstrong might say that my problem was that my definition of God was just too narrow and too primitive.

I’d seen a glimpse of it at Loyola Marymount when I read The Idea of the Holy, but never really moved too far beyond the “buddy in the sky” motif when I did my B.A. in Biblical Studies at Biola University. Then when I started an M.A. in Theology at Fuller Seminary it was an interesting blend between the rational and religious, but it all got cut short when I got divorced. It didn’t help that I was already too academic for my Calvary Chapel heritage, getting divorced completely knocked the wheels off of my vision for myself and ministry. And thus I abandoned all of it and except for occasionally listening to some Mark Heard or Sam Phillips I never opened my Bible or went back to church for fifteen years following the divorce.

During my fifteen year Agnostic phase I attempted to find a balance between these unmet expectations, my sense of my own responsibility for the way things turned out and trying to figure out who I was. I’d love to say that I figured it out, but that would be even more delusional than any of the foolish things I’d done as a Christian. Something was missing. A lot of time past. I had my work but… I don’t know. There was something more.

Then through an unexplainable series of events I found myself back at church, back to reading my bible and back to trying to figure everything out with my old buddy Jesus. Simply put, I’d fallen in love and there wasn’t a single damn thing about it that was right and when it all came crashing down on my head (over a Valentine’s Day weekend) I had a moment of transcendence and understanding. God was in control again and I didn’t care how anything turned out because I understood that nothing happened by chance. And I really did go through a number of “self-renovation” projects. The previous 15-years felt like I’d been standing still or asleep the whole time. I knew I had to be my best self. I knew I had to be my best self because… well, that was the problem. There was something, or actually someone who, I wanted in my life and it wasn’t happening. Christian friends repeated the verses like the ones above about how God knew my heart and wanted to give me… good things. Great, I was all for that. I knew what that meant to me, but things got a lot darker and unlike any other time in my life I learned what it meant to be completely vulnerable, to the point where a sunset would make me cry because I couldn’t be with the one I’d fallen in love with. This went on for years.

Friends and enemies around me were falling in love and getting married (and getting divorced) and I was still trying to figure out why it wasn’t happening for me. I kept the thought close to my heart that God knew what I wanted. And time continued to pass on by. It was beginning to feel like those bad old days when I began to believe that I must be doing something wrong or that there was something wrong with me. I didn’t really expect it all to be handed to me on a silver platter, but Jesus, after five years… Clearly, I’d misjudged more than a few things. Clearly I was still seeing things through a glass, darkly… So, for the second time, I closed the Book and walked away.

I know a lot of people who feel like they were rescued from horrible lives because they found God. For them life would be completely meaningless and cruelly random if it weren’t for God making everything right and loving them. I respect that. I miss that sense of knowing. I miss that sense of being connected. I don’t want to live what’s left of my life like I did during my 15-year of random wandering. I’ve learned so much, it’d be a shame for it all to be lost because it’s gone unshared and unremembered. There’s still something left undone.

Maybe the verses aren’t about some quid pro quo relationship with the Divine expressed with gifts of fishes or stones. Maybe the verses aren’t about a big buddy in the sky who wants to spoil you. Maybe it’s all meant to be an allegory about being loved and being connected to something greater than ones self. Maybe it was enough that I was loved and that in those moments I saw into Eternity, that I’m one of these weirdos who can take simple human contact and see something bigger, something that makes thoughts of entitlement feel like immature children complaining about fish and stones.

Sources:
image: Dollar sign, Microsoft.com/clipart

image: The stark finger of God by altemark. http://www.flickr.com/photos/altemark/46732233/ retrieved on 3/5/2010.

image: heart candle by joe bustillos. http://joebustillos.com/images/heartcandle.jpg retrieved on 3/5/2010

YouTube video: Sheryl Crow – Letter To God – Live. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2dwWHCc2Ak retrieved on 3/5/2010

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.

In the midst of all of the shouting about what’s wrong with this and that and who’s to blame, in the midst of all the technological changes, it’s good to be reminded of holding onto the mindful moment in the midst of the most mundane and unimportant things in life. Thanks Seann for the reminder and link.

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

Please, don’t do this again…. but that said, Kevin nailed it when he talked about the hypocrisy of people doing whatever the hell they want to do all week and then going to church on Sunday to “clean up” for all the shit they did the previous six days, and pretending like there’s nothing wrong with that. All the other bullshit aside about heaven being whatever you want it to be or about being Christina but “cool,” there was some real truth to Kevin’s observation. But then maybe this is only something that you can see when you are not living in it, that is, the unlivable cycle of holding to a belief about how one should live that no one CAN live. When our religion is reduced to a nostalgic Hallmark moment forwarded in an email by one’s older sister but has nothing to do with the conduct of one’s daily life, or one holds to an eating or drinking ritual but clearly ignores an awareness to the Holy in the here and now, what’s the point? How sad and confused to live a life that aspires to some belief or is said to be lived in honor of the One but there’s no trace of that belief in the conversation or actions one expresses to the world from moment to moment. Eleven things my ass, who cares if what you say you believe in is completely invisible by the conduct of your daily life? Out of the mouths of babes, or in this case, the clueless.

source:
article: 11 Things The Bible Bans, But You Do Anyway, http://digg.com/d1uYZz retrieved 8/7/2009
video: What Would Kevin And Alex Do? Diggnation/Revision3, http://revision3.com/diggnation/faith retrieved 8/7/2009

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

I try not to allow Zander’s conceptualism bother me–it goads me like a poker when he says “language is replete with a variety of ‘things’ that have no existence in time and space but seem as real to us as anything we own–’justice’ for instance….” … If everyone has their own personal framework of possibility, I fear we’ll lose the intimacy of sharing a common framework. Take the Hubble photograph above. The beauty of the Pleiades Cluster is not a construct of my mind–its beauty is there to be discovered by any who would attend to it. The community of astronomers who photograph it share a common beauty between them–something bigger than any one’s construct. Isn’t this what makes possibility appealing? What possibilities are worth seeking and having in my life? R. Swindoll

My response: Wonderful observations and pondering questions. I find it interesting that you comment about trying to not let Zanders conceptualizations bother you and then you spend the rest of the post wrestling with them. You are touching on the universal question between perception and empirical reality. Without going too much into what seems like a “dancing on the head of a pin” question, I believe that it’s foolish to think that there is no external reality. Thus the miracle is that we do seem to share in a common framework of understanding despite the fact that our consciousness is trapped in the “black box” of our individual skulls dependent on imperfect sensory organs to perceive and communicate with this seemingly infinite external universe.

And perhaps the universe was indeed laughing at me, that I would attempt to answer the student’s pondering because, after I had drafted what I thought was a perfectly crafted comment I inadvertently clicked a button on the screen and sent all of those wonderful words straight to hexadecimal oblivion. No small about of screaming or laughing at the absurdity would bring those perfectly positioned words back. Thus the above rendition is the best that I could bring back from a brain that wasn’t very happy with it’s fingers. Imperfect sensory organs indeed.

Music: Goodbye by Kevin Shields from the Lost In Translation – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

“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