July 19, 2011

“So, in my better moments, I want to step down from my puny little pedestal. I want to step aside. I want my heart to open to that 'point or spark which belongs entirely to God'.” So says Christopher Page, quoting Thomas Merton, in his blog response to the issue of fear now dominating the church. What Page says, Merton says, and Cynthia Bourgeault says, in this discussion reflect my own feelings – and let me see a way of hope. The entire post follows.

The Future of Church #5 (with Cynthia Bourgeault)

July 19, 2011

This past spring The Contemplative Society website (http://www.contemplative.org/) posted 12 summary statements about the future of church I gleaned from a Lenten Series I attended, accompanied by a response from Cynthia Bourgeault. With Cynthia’s encouragement, I am reposting the original paragraph, followed by her response, and my response to Cynthia. We hope this may generate some conversation. Cynthia will check in and respond to comments if she feels inspired.

5. The pervasive fear in the church is paralyzing. It inhibits genuine conversation and keeps us fixated on finding solutions, rather than launching into bold new adventures of faith. There is no way to move forward until we come to grips with the reality of fear. Dealing with fear requires deep personal and corporate spiritual practice. Only transformed people will have the ability to be a transformed church.

Cynthia: This is so, so true. If “perfect love casts out fear,” the opposite is sadly but equally true: “perfect fear casts out love.” And it shuts down just about everything else as well.

Fear is always a tip-off that one is living at the egoic level of consciousness (or in the corporate mode, the “we-goic” level): that anxiety-prone hardwiring of the immature human mind that sees everything from its own self-interest and perceives through separation and scarcity.

The only “cure” for fear is spiritual practice, which gradually heals this artificial split in the field of consciousness and restores the direct perception of abundance and connection. All other approaches to fear simply mask the symptoms, generally through reliance on illusory power and control to “fix” the external situation deemed to be broken.

Ironically, this healing of fear is at the very heart of the Jesus message, over which the church claims custodial rights but about which it knows so very little. “Do not be afraid, little flock: it is my Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom,” Jesus assures his followers in those immortal words of Luke 12:32. And throughout his entire ministry, he teaches, models, and ultimately offers himself up in the kenotic (or “letting go”) practice which not only surmounts fear but transforms it.

Imagine what might happen if a whole group of Christians were to simply drop their terrified insistence that the church as we know it must survive and were instead to give themselves to that “deep personal and corporate spiritual practice” that makes it possible to fall through fear into perfect love. What might happen next? Whatever form it might take, it would certainly be REAL: a powerful new unleashing of the Jesus energy, no longer as that “mighty fortress” and “bulwark never ceasing” of times gone by, but as the river itself, ever flowing.

Christopher: We in the church have lived so long in “separation” it is hard to imagine any other way of being.

We have called ourselves “a people set apart,” “resident aliens,” “a peculiar people.” We want to see ourselves as “God’s chosen people,” presumably in distinction from those who are not “chosen.” We take pride in being “in the world, but not of the world.” We want to be special, different, unique. We have built walls around ourselves. Our churches have windows; but they are designed so no one can see in.

We cling to our theological formulations relying upon them to define us as “not them.” We point to the evil ways of the world and declare ourselves separate from the darkness of those who do not follow the One True Light. We suffer from an epidemic of separation, all of which, if we are honest, is driven by our desire to enshrine our superiority and the primacy of our religious practices and beliefs over any other spiritual path. It is a curious kind of humility we model in the church.

To make matters worse; the insistence upon our separation from the vast majority of the world has not worked. Isolating ourselves as God’s specially chosen ones has not given us a robust sense of confidence and conviction in the goodness of life. As much as we have struggled to achieve a sense of abundance by affirming the superiority of our version of the religious way, we have ended up again and again falling back into scarcity mode. And any program or strategy that comes from an innate sense of lack is doomed to end up resorting to, guilt, and abuse – the besetting sins of organizational religion.

How do we move from separation to connectivity? How do we shift from scarcity to abundance?

As you point out Cynthia, the starting point is “letting go.” We must lay down our need to be right. We must surrender our determination to reign supreme. We must let go of our identity as God’s special agents whose job it is to introduce God into foreign territory as if there were places God is absent until we come along to introduce the Divine presence into the dark lost world.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton famously wrote,

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

True change will only flow from this centre.

I want to know how this works. I want to know how to program this connecting, this beautiful flowing of God’s Spirit. But, Merton sadly reminds me “I have no program for this seeing. It is only given.”

It is too hard to trust the giving. It is too hard to rely on grace. I want to know what the strategy is. What are the steps forward? I want to be able to contain God, trap God, control God. I want to be in charge.

But, I know, it will be a small poor church if I am in charge. So, in my better moments, I want to step down from my puny little pedestal. I want to step aside. I want my heart to open to that “point or spark which belongs entirely to God.” I want to trust that God’s Spirit is at work, not just in my little life, or my little understanding, or my little church, but “in everybody” and every where.

Church exists to “see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” This is the business for which Jesus calls us together. This is a mission to which it is worth giving our lives.

http://inaspaciousplace.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/the-future-of-church-5-with-cynthia-bourgeault/

A challenge due serious consideration

For the past 50 years the Christian community (or communities) has sought to bring transformation to the culture by a strategy that is “almost wholly mistaken.” The “common view” is that “the way to change the world is to change the thinking of individuals. Then, when enough people with the right thinking, the correct worldview, act strongly enough, culture will be changed.” This view has motivated and directed the styles and actions of Christian churches and groups, of all persuasions, for multiple generations. And this approach has not fulfilled its mission because it fails to work with the forces that do bring change in cultures. This argument is made, persuasively I believe, by James Davison Hunter in To Change the World. The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). In his several books, Hunter, LaBrossse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia, looks at modern American culture and the influence of Christians in it.

Even more strongly, Hunter argues that the strategies used by the majority of Christians and Christian organizations have contributed to the demise of Christian values in the culture. He asks why, if the Common View is valid, have not the strong values and dedication to propagating these of modern Christianity moved the American culture toward its values. The reality is movement in the opposite direction. He points out that “in America today, 86 to 88 percent of the people adhere to some faith commitments (survey results referenced). And yet our culture – business culture, law and government, the academic world, popular entertainment – is intensely materialistic and secular. … If culture is the accumulation of values and the choices made by individuals on the basis of these values, then how is it that American public culture today is so profoundly secular in its character?”

And this is not just the product of rampant secularism which the Christian community resists. “But there is another way in which Christians in America have assimilated the dominant political culture. As I argue in Chapter 2 of this essay, contemporary political culture in America is marked by a ressentiment manifested by a narrative of injury and, in turn, a discourse of negation toward all those they perceive to be to blame. Through each expresses this ressentiment differently, in different degrees and to different ends, it is present in all of these factions (Christian Right, Christian Left; Neo-Anabaptist). It is especially prominent, of course, among Christian conservatives, which may be why they have been so effective over the years in mobilizing their rank and file to political action. Ressentiment is also centrally present among Christian progressives and it is clearly a major source of their new solidarity and the motive behind their recent assertiveness in Democratic party policies. Both the Right and the Left ground their positions in biblical authority and they both appeal to democratic ideals and practices to justify their actions. But the ressentiment that marks the way they operate makes it clear that a crucial part of what motivates them is a will to dominate. The neo-Anabaptists are different in this regard. It is true that they too participate fully in the discourse of negation but domination is not their intent.” (p. 168-'69)

[ressentiment: Fr. resentment, plus anger, envy, hate, rage, and revenge as a motive]

Developing a theory of how cultures change, Hunter proposes, “that cultures are profoundly resistant to intentional change – period. They are certainly resistant to the mere exertion of individual will by ordinary individuals or by a well-organized movement of individuals. … The most profound changes in culture can be seen first as they penetrate into the linguistic and mythic fabric of a social order. …. In this light, we can see that evangelism, politics, social reform, and the creation of artifacts – if effective – all bring about good ends: changed hearts and minds, changed laws, changed social behaviors. But they don't directly influence the moral fabric that makes these changes sustainable over the long term, sustainable precisely because they are implicit and as implicit, they form the presuppositional base of social life.” The forces that influence change in culture are at the centers, and for over 50 years Christians in America have been almost totally absent from these centers. “... the main reason why Christian believers today (from various communities) have not had the influence in the culture to which they have aspired is not that they don't believe enough or try hard enough, or care enough, or think Christianly enough, or have the right worldview, but rather because they have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in the culture is exerted.

The posture that has been taken by most Christian organizations is to seek change in the culture through political influence and action. Hunter argues that the trend since the 1960s in America is to politicize everything. And Christian movements have joined the trend and act as if political action is the only way to achieve their goals. In this way Christians have accepted the present political culture, have tried to influence and use it and have, in turn, been used by it. And we have failed. More, we have precipitated a backlash so that “Christian” is a label little respected in the culture and an object of disdain by many, many who are trying to bring change to the culture, change for the good, at least in their eyes.

In a chapter devoted to explaining contemporary political theory and the importance of distinguishing between democracy and the state, the latter holding the more power (read the chapter to follow this), Hunter concludes, “ there are no political solutions to the problems most people care about. …. What the state cannot do is provide fully satisfactory solutions to the problems of values in our society.”

“The irony, of course, is that no group in American society has done more to politicize values over the last half century, and therefore undermine their renewal, than Christians – both on the Right (since the early 1980s) and on the Left (during the 1960s and 1970s). Both sides are implicated and remain implicated today. And he provocatively suggests, “... it would be salutary for the church and its leadership to remain silent for a season until it learns how to engage politics and even talk politics in ways that are non-Nietzschean.” [Christians Nietzschean?!]

Does Hunter have an alternative? Of course, that is why he wrote the book. In place of (exclusively) political action and a hope-against-hope that “ when enough people with the right thinking, the correct worldview, act strongly enough, culture will be changed,” he proposes “faithful presence within.” Faithful presence is to live the incarnation, taking our model from Jesus who in his incarnation became present in the world, to us, to all, being the revelation of God who engages us, as we are. “In respect to God's presence: “we are the 'other'. Though we are irreducibly different from him and , in our sin, irreducibly estranged from him, he does not regard us as either 'danger' or 'darkness'. We neither threaten him nor diminish him in any way. The second point is that though he is all powerful, he pursues us, identifies with us, and offers us life through his sacrifice not because he needs us to do something for him but simply because he loves us and desires intimacy with all his creation. In other words, he does not use his power instrumentally in ways that force us against our will.” In other words, Jesus engages in no politics and uses no force in pursuing change in us and in culture.

The hope for Christian influence in culture is not through doing anything to change culture but by being a changed culture. “Let me finally stress that any good that is generated by Christians is only the net effect of caring for something more than the good created. If there are benevolent consequences of our engagement with the world, in other words, it is precisely because it is not rooted in a desire to change the world for the better but rather because it is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness and beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God ,and a fulfillment of God's command to love our neighbor.”

I'm in!

Reading note: Two other books assisted me in these reflections, both by Rodney Stark: The Rise of Christianity, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996, and The Victory of Reason. How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success, New York: Random House, 2005.

Quo Vadis?

I haven't read the book, and I haven't seen the movie, but when I read the legend, Quo Vadis?, I was moved. Especially in light of two recent “prophetic” messages telling Christians they/we are about to escape the world's troubles or to flee a coming earthquake on the West Coast. The world is deeply troubled, by natural disasters and by human caused calamities. What is the response of followers of Jesus the Christ? To escape? To proclaim judgment? To offer a way out? Or, to enter the world, as Jesus did, love it, serve it, and take whatever comes? I will stay, and each day I try to turn my attention to loving all I meet and to offering whatever service I am able. Usually it is not much, and never (yet) has it brought death.

Here is the legend, taken from The Acts of Peter, "The Apocryphal New Testament" M.R. James-Translation and Notes Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.

XXXV. And as they considered these things, Xanthippe took knowledge of the counsel of her husband with Agrippa, and sent and showed Peter, that he might depart from Rome. And the rest of the brethren, together with Marcellus, besought him to depart. But Peter said unto them: Shall we be runaways, brethren and they said to him: Nay, but that thou mayest yet be able to serve the Lord. And he obeyed the brethren's voice and went forth alone, saying: Let none of you come forth with me, but I will go forth alone, having changed the fashion of mine apparel.

And as he went forth of the city, he saw the Lord entering into Rome. And when he saw him, he said: Lord, whither goest thou thus (or here) And the Lord said unto him: I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him: Lord, art thou (being) crucified again He said unto him: Yea, Peter, I am (being) crucified again. And Peter came to himself: and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said: I am being crucified: the which was about to befall Peter.

XXXVI. He went up therefore again unto the brethren, and told them that which had been seen by him: and they lamented in soul, weeping and saying: We beseech thee, Peter, take thought for us that are young. And Peter said unto them: If it be the Lord's will, it cometh to pass, even if we will it not; but for you, the Lord is able to stablish you in his faith, and will found you therein and make you spread abroad, whom he himself hath planted, that ye also may plant others through him. But I, so long as the Lord will that I be in the flesh, resist not; and again if he take me to him I rejoice and am glad.

And while Peter thus spake, and all the brethren wept, behold four soldiers took him and led him unto Agrippa. And he in his madness commanded him to be crucified on an accusation of godlessness.

Recalling old controversies

Recalling old controversies

Remember the alarm in the 60's and 70's that any change in how we understand or interpret the Bible would cause acceptance of its authority to collapse and corrupt believers? And did you see this rise again 4 years ago when the publisher of the New International Version had the audacity to change the language to reflect more inclusivity and be less masculine? Well, the charge isn't new. Consider this remark:

“if one point in the [ ] were in error the entire authority of Holy Scripture would collapse, love and faith would be extinguished, heresies and schisms would abound, blasphemy would be committed against the Holy Spirit, the authority of theologians would be shaken, and indeed the church would be shaken from the foundations.”

About changing some critical doctrine in the Scriptures? About questioning the interpretation of the church? No. This charge was made against Erasmus' plan to translate the New Testament of the Vulgate, the accepted Latin version of the day, into Greek, going back to original sources whenever possible. This was in 1516. Not only do “things not change,” even the arguments don't.

You will notice that I am currently reading a biography of Erasmus, contemporary of Martin Luther, Thomas More and Henry VIII.

SERIOUS QUESTIONS

Controversies in the church over worship styles (oh the battles over hymns versus praise songs), how persons best connect with God (the zeal of Charismatics challenging the quiet confidence of those who live by liturgy), alignment with social-political causes (“moral values” competing with compassion for the needy), and other issues that stirred debate in the past half century in the western Christian world are all mild compared to the controversy coming out now. This is over the very essence of Christianity and it involves debates about fundamental doctrines of the church. A leading voice stirring this debate is Brian McLaren, and the book which most forces the issue is A New Kind of Christianity. Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith (HarperOne, 2010). The questions asked in the recent past are about what the church should look like. The questions McLaren and others are asking are about the nature of Christianity, about what believing means. The challenge these folks engage is to the root of the way we think about Christianity. They want to move “from 'right belief to believing in the right way'” (Peter Rollins, in How (Not) to Speak of God, referenced by McLaren), and they are willing to question every established position in the church in order to discover a “new quest, … a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christianity,” (McLaren, p.18).

Do we need a new kind of Christianity? Not just new kinds of churches, not just new strategies for building churches and doing missions, not just renewal of commitment (meaning working harder at old practices), but a new understanding of the faith we hold? In the present massive upheaval of the social-religious landscape is it the responsibility of pastors and church leaders to beckon or pressure people back into a set of beliefs – and so disconnect them more with life outside the church building – or to engage this social reality as a move of the Spirit of God? Is this a moment like transition moments in the history of the church when social realities brought substantive change at the core of its way of believing and acting? Like the shift to accept “Gentiles” on the same basis as Jews, eventually shifting both location and ethnicity of church leadership? Like the shift from a persecuted minority to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. with its attendant sources of power? Like the shift of social structures in the Middle Ages that brought into being a middle class, a primary factor in the Reformation?

The questions posed by McLaren, Rollins and others are controversial and are drawing strong attack from established church leaders, but I sense that these questions reflect what is really going in the minds of people in the pews and chairs of churches. These questions may reflect what church goers actually believe, or question, more than church leaders will admit. Do most Christians really believe that hell is a place of eternal torment for those who do not recognize Jesus? Are they doing their own pick-and-chose way of believing the Bible (thus applying a different “doctrine” of authority)? Do they really hold to the family model of one father, one mother and biological children as the final and full image of God-in-society? Is the imminent return of Christ the great hope on which they set their future? Does the presence of such “unbeliefs” among Christians represent a falling away or, possibly, the emergence of “a new kind of Christianity”?

The strength of McLaren's book, for me, is that he is not discarding the doctrines of the church nor tossing over the values of the faith. Nor is he trying to reinterpret forms or language into something “relevant.”He is calling for a different way of thinking about these issues while holding to the importance of fundamentals. He is looking for a truly Christian faith, a Christ-centered faith, and sets the questions on this foundation. On what basis can we see the violent portrayal of God in the Old Testament differently? On what basis can we take the interpretation and authority of the Bible differently? On what basis can we consider a different understanding of the return of Christ? All the doctrines questioned in McLaren's book have been questioned in the past – and usually tossed out by the questioners – but McLaren gives directions toward answers that remain authentic to the God of the Bible and the historic Christian faith. He says, “I do not say our quest is for new things to believe, in contrast to old things, but rather new ways to believe.” This is a quest that ignites enthusiasm and hope in me that we can see, can be, a Christianity that is meaningful in the world, the world that is.

Tolstoy again

I finally read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. After my post, Read Tolstoy, a friend encouraged me with the thought that I would like it. I did. While the development of characters is not as thorough as in War and Peace, the beauty and delicacy in his descriptions of events and locations is unsurpassed. One passage on sensing the sublime is a precious insight.

Tolstoy on sensing the sublime: Levin during Kitty's birthing labor.

“All he knew and felt was that what was happening was similar to what had happened the year before in the hotel of the provincial town, on his brother Nicholas's deathbed. But that had been grief – this was joy. But both that grief and this joy alike were outside all the usual circumstances of life; in this ordinary life they were like an opening through which something sublime could be seen. And now as then what was being accomplished came harshly, in agony, and just as incomprehensibly the soul soared aloft in the contemplation of this sublimity to a height it had never even understood before, where reason could no longer keep up with it.”

Hearing the Bible

We are missing something in our reading of the Bible, something basic and beautiful: the literary style of the original. So says Robert Alter in his provocative essay, “The Bible in English and the Heresy of Explanation,” in the introduction to his translation and commentary of Genesis (Norton, 1996), also included in his more recent translation of The Five Books of Moses (Norton, 2008). Poetry is more evident in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament, in Christian terminology) than English translations allow and the prose narratives are more lively than usually portrayed. There is intrigue in the scriptures that our versions fail to show and nuances of meaning that they deny to us because, says Alter, “The unacknowledged heresy underlying most modern English versions of the Bible is the use of translation as a vehicle for explaining the Bible instead of representing it in another language, and in the most egregious instances this amounts to explaining away the Bible.”

Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that by underplaying the marvelous literary qualities of the Bible and treating it as a textbook for study English, translators have removed fundamental dimensions for discovering meanings in the texts. He says, “modern English versions – especially in their treatment of Hebrew narrative prose – have placed readers at a grotesque distance from the distinctive literary experience of the Bible in its original language.” Considering that the original was meant to be heard more than to be read, the elimination of rhythms in lines, the elaboration of sentences which find their punch in brevity, the attempt to add variety by using synonyms instead of allowing the repetitions which helped original hearers get the point, have the unintended effect of hiding meanings which the authors desired to convey through various literary devices. “Modern translators, in their zeal to uncover the meaning of the biblical text for the instruction of a modern readership, frequently lose sight of how the text intimates its meanings – the distinctive, artfully deployed features of ancient Hebrew prose and poetry that are the instruments for the articulation of all meaning, message, insight, and vision.”

Modern translations have, in the name of clarity with the intent to help readers understand the text, removed some of the literary artist's techniques for communicating meaning and, particularly in scripture. allowing ambiguity. “Literature in general, and the narrative prose of the Hebrew Bible in particular, cultivates certain profound and haunting enigmas, delights in leaving its audiences guessing about motives and connections, and, above all, loves to set ambiguities of word choice and image against one another in an endless interplay that resists neat resolution.”

The literature of the Bible is story, it is poetry, it is music, not an instruction manual. The messages, and there are always multiple messages in scripture, come through more in hearing it as an enthralling story or reading it in a reflective mode than in a studious examination of details. “Finally, the mesmerizing effect of these ancient stories will scarcely be conveyed if they are not rendered in cadenced English prose that at least in some ways corresponds to the powerful cadences of the Hebrew. … The most pervasive aspect of the magic of biblical style that has been neglected by English translators is its beautiful rhythms. An important reason for the magnetic appeal of these stories when you read them in the Hebrew is the rhythmic power of the words that convey the story.”

Some of us love our study Bibles and devote many hours to reading text and notes. Some of us have found in paraphrases rich insights that traditional translation seemed to hide. Some of us welcome the versions prepared “for public reading” because of the smoothness of the language. Yet, in all of these we are missing something integral to the Bible itself: its original voice. I do not mean that we all must learn Hebrew to understand the scriptures, but I join Prof. Alter in acknowledging that the versions we use deny to us something we would do well, very well, to discover. It is in the poetry and music, the un-clarity of the text, that we will hear a message that reading “accurate translations” will not yield. I recommend reading Alter's translations (available for the first five books of the Old Testament and for the Wisdom Books), but even more I recommend hearing the Bible. And, I believe that hearing it in community, in a small group where you can share your responses to the sound and flow of the text (not just your interpretation of it) will open new senses for knowing it.

These comments are about the Old Testament. Kenneth Bailey's commentaries on the Gospels offer similar keys for discovering riches in New Testament texts that are missed by English translations, translations that cannot speak with a Middle Eastern voice.