So continuing on... that skepticism, that unwillingness to accept answers that are a bit too easy, is where I've been for the past several months. It's an odd sort of no man's land. I think of it as being in abeyance (I love that word). I have, on the one hand, a set of experiences with spirituality that I can't ignore. I have a number of ideas and opinions, some of which line up with a traditional religious system and some of which don't, that I use to explain those experiences to myself. But sometimes when I hear someone express their own opinions on these topics (as Young does in The Shack), I realize how silly it is to claim with any degree of authority at all that I know what's going on out there in the universe.

And it's part of my problem with The Shack, to be honest. Where does he get the nerve to speak for God? Isn't that really what he's doing, by imagining how God would respond to Mack's questions? How does he have that chutzpah? It partly makes me angry that he would even try; but it also makes me a bit envious. Last year, in my nano novel, my original plan was that the main character, a young woman in her twenties, would have extremely vivid dreams about being a follower of Jesus during his three years of ministry on earth. The narrative would alternate between her normal, everyday life and the dreams that she was having every night. But it completely stalled out because I couldn't do exactly what Young does-- I couldn't speak for Jesus. I could imagine the situation and the plot outline and where I thought it was going, but when it came right down to writing an encounter between the main character and Jesus, I couldn't do it. So whatever chutzpah it takes to do this, I don't have it. And maybe don't want to have it.

and round and round on the spiral of spiritual growth we go.... and I find myself back again at the place where I realize that in honoring one side of my experience (the skepticism and cynicism), I've moved too far toward that pole and neglected the spiritual side. And for that reminder, I am grateful to Mr. Young, as irritating as I found this book at times.

I'm not at all sure that these three posts say what I was trying to say. Usually I spend quite a bit of time polishing them up before I am ready to leave them alone. but it won't happen this time since we're leaving to go out of town in the morning and I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard here. So if anybody reads them between now and the time when I get back and have time to edit them, my apologies for murkiness.

off to frolic in the sun (I hope)

AB

So... although this is a continuation of the previous post, none of this is really in The Shack.  It's just what I've been thinking about since I read it.  The story addresses the classic conundrum of faith, which can be phrased in any number of ways that we've all heard.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  how can a good and loving God allow evil to exist?  There are a number of different ways to say it.  And there are plenty of proposed answers out there.  Books and books have been written on this topic.  Some of the most remarkable and compelling writing out there-- from the dawn of recorded thought practically-- comes out of human beings' attempt to answer questions like these.  

But of course no one really knows.  The Shack takes a very similar tack to the answers I was raised with:  God's love for us is most strongly expressed through God's commitment to allowing us to exercise our free will, our ability to choose to act in whatever way we want.  True love would never force us into acting or believing a certain way (the argument goes).  So, God cannot intervene to protect us from harm without infringing on our (or someone else's) free will; therefore, God lets us screw up.  It's a creative solution, with enough flexibility and complexity to allow for any situation in which people are hurting people.  And it has the benefit, for Christians, of being grounded in the Judaeo-Christian scriptures.  There isn't any direct reference to free will in the Bible, but it is implied right from the start, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden-- whether you read it literally or metaphorically.  God didn't have to allow them access to the forbidden fruit, but God allowed them to choose.  God shows his/her love for creation not by preventing evil from happening, but by redeeming the evil that we've participated in through the act of Jesus on the cross.  I think most of my readers are familiar enough with this that I can get away with that shorthand version of explaining something that is actual a very beautiful and complex theology.

But one of the main problems with this beautiful bit of theology is that it only works when you are inside the belief system.  It takes the raw material of our experience of bad things happening, and the basic tenets of the Christian faith, and comes up with a solution that works.  But if you're not inside the belief system, this set of beliefs looks remarkably like a smoke screen that allows us to continue to believe in God when in fact God may not exist at all.  We've come up with a way to explain away God's lack of action to prevent evil, but wouldn't it be just as easy to look at the evidence before us and come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as God?  don't you have to at least allow for the possibility that the emperor isn't wearing any new clothes at all?

I've heard it said, by yet another creative theologian, that it is part of God's nature not to act in any way that would force humans to believe in him (or her, although that seems slightly unnecessary here since this type of belief usually goes along with seeing God as Father).  In other words, God will never act in such a way as to unequivocally prove that God exists, because doing so would force us to believe in him (/her), and that would be an infringement of our free will.  Another creative explanation, which may be true.  But it also might not. 

As an aside and an excuse and an apology, I'll just say here that this isn't turning out to be a linear train of thought, I'm just typing what I've been thinking.  it may not make much sense.

I was not encouraged to ask these kinds of questions when I was growing up, and I don't have the kind of personality that would have forced the issue by persisting in asking them.  I'd much rather get along, smooth things over, and keep everybody happy.  I was more than willing to accept pat answers and go along for the ride.  The problems didn't arrive until many years later when I was deep, deep into a particular religious viewpoint and it no longer explained the things that I wanted explained.  So I am left at this point in my life with a deep suspicion of (and resentment of) ideas and arguments that want me to shut up and stop asking questions.   And that's often how these arguments feel to me.  

have to run.  to be continued.

The Shack

The Shack is a novel by William P. Young that tells the story of a heartbroken father's attempt to come to terms with the murder of his young daughter.  It is also a Christian morality tale.  Mack, the father, receives a handwritten note from "Papa" inviting him to go back to the shack in the woods where his daughter was murdered.  When he gets there, he has an encounter with three Beings who are, well....  God.  A number of interesting conversations take place among the four of them, and Mack returns to his normal life a changed man.  

It's an interesting book.  It brought up for me many of the same visceral reactions I had to Blue Like Jazz, which I reviewed awhile ago.  But many people whom I care very much about have been moved by The Shack, and the person who recommended that I read it is very dear to me.  So I am trying not to see it through the eyes of my cynicism.  It would be easy to rip it apart.  So easy.  But on the other hand, there is a great deal of wisdom in his re-imagining of God, and I don't want to dismiss it lightly.  

There were a number of books published in the eighties, or maybe early nineties, where a Christian author set up a hypothetical debate between various different famous Christian and secular figures, mostly historical.  The historical figures would debate an issue, and of course, the Christian character always ended up trouncing the secular character.  They were entirely irritating to read, because of course it is easy to win an argument when you are setting it up, putting words into the mouths of the people you disagree with, and then skewering them.  I can win an argument like that, too.   But they were very popular among a certain crowd.

The Shack reminded me of this a bit.  It is less irritating than they were, because it is clearly fiction.  Within the story, the author does his best to set it up as being a factual occurrence, but it is marketed as fiction, and labeled as fiction.  No one is trying to say that Mack's weekend at the shack really happened.  And it's a good thing, because that's the only way the story works:  as an author's imagining of what it would be like to be able to confront God with your deepest pain, your most difficult questions.  And then to imagine how God would respond.  Young's vision is compelling in many ways.  He points out, as does the author of the book of Job and many others since, that God is far more vast than our tiny human brains can comprehend, and that what seems painful and difficult to us may be part of something larger that is beyond our comprehension.  But he does it in the context of a story that makes it particularly accessible to someone who has similar questions.  I imagine there are a lot of people who have found a great deal of healing through reading this book.

But the fact remains that of all the multitudes of human beings who have had their hearts broken, not a single one has received a handwritten note from God inviting them to a weekend of direct interaction with the Almighty, much as they might wish, pray and even beg for the opportunity.  And although there's little in the book that I flat out disagree with (since it's fiction, after all-- it's hard to disagree when all the author is saying is "This is what I imagine it would be like to talk directly to God"), there's a great deal that he seems to feel that he has "proven" through this story, when actually he hasn't proven anything at all.  He's just shared his ideas of what such a weekend might be like.  If you read it from that perspective, it's fascinating, and thought-provoking.  I'm glad I read it.  It helped me define somethings for myself, but maybe I will save that for the next post, as this one has gone on long enough.

oh, yes, that would 50,290 words that I just finished writing............. :-)  doing the happy dance around here.

You know, the interesting thing about doing Nano for the third time is how little I care about it this year.  I'm doing way better than I have any other year-- I'm at about 32,000 words with a week to go, and I still have plenty more to write about-- but I just don't care.  I think part of it is my choice of plot.  It's sort of like that movie "Love, Actually" where there are a half dozen plotlines that revolve around people's love lives, which are loosely interwoven (very loosely, in this case).  

It's sort of like writing a soap opera.  It's a great choice for Nano because I always have something to write about, and the words seem to flow (at least sometimes!).  As opposed to the past two years, when I was trying to write something that felt "significant" and nothing was happening.  But on the other hand, since it just feels like fluff, it's hard to care.  What difference does it make if I write it or not?  And of course, it doesn't make a difference to anyone but me. It never has.   I know from experience that I will never let anyone read it.  Not even my spouse has read my Nano novels.  It makes no difference to anyone but me.  This year I'm determined to get to 50,000 just so I've done it.  And then I don't think I'll ever do it again.  

I haven't written much about what I've been up to this fall.  Since I still couldn't find a job, I decided to go back to school.  I wanted a challenge, so I signed on for the first semester of Chinese and a programming class.  I've been having a ball being a student again, although it hasn't kept me from whining about having to study.  I was a really good student back in my "real" student days; you might say it's the only thing I've ever been really good at (which is a bit depressing, don't you think?)  And I still am a pretty damn good student.  What I've lost in terms of mental quickness I've more than made up for in experience, in understanding what the teacher is talking about and having experiences that give me a context for what's going on.  (I'm the only person in either class that's over 20.  Besides the teachers, of course, both of whom I'm older than.  Was that correct grammar?)

That long aside just so I can say:  it is really really obvious how much more I enjoy programming than I do writing.  I love getting a new programming project and having to figure out how to solve it, writing the code, debugging it, and getting it to work.  Makes me wish I lived somewhere where I could do it for pay (do I sound bitter?)(no, not me).  And in direct contrast this month has been trying to write this damn novel, which has barely held my attention at all in comparison.  I always thought I wanted to be a writer, but you know I have to say based on this experience that maybe I was wrong.  Maybe what I've wanted all these years is to give readers the same happiness that I've received from reading-- the wish that I could do for others what my favorite authors have done for me.  I'm discovering that I just don't like to write, at least not fiction.  It's a good thing to know.  Nano has been an interesting experience, one I'm grateful for, all three years of it.  But I don't think I'll be doing it again.

the view from here

You know, I've kept a blog for almost five years now.  Up until last spring, with a few short-lived exceptions, I've never had any problem coming up with things to write about.  Even if I wasn't posting very often, I was always mentally working on posts-- most of which never made it online.  I'd drive around town running errands or doing whatever while typing away in my head.  Sometimes it even reached the point of being a compulsion-- I couldn't sleep or concentrate on anything else until I sat and typed out what I was thinking about.  But I have to say since last April, I've had NO desire to write in this blog.  I've had to force myself to type out the few posts that have made it online.  It's kind of strange.  

Actually, I guess it was the compulsion that was strange.  Since most people don't feel compelled to post their thoughts online, maybe I'm finally hitting normal here.  Whoa.  Scary thought.  A couple of weeks ago I even thought about deleting Aunt BeaN's blog, since at the moment I can't imagine that I'll be writing in it much anymore.  But, NaNoWriMo started on Saturday (National Novel Writing Month, click here for the website), and for the past two years, posting here about what I'm writing there has been pretty helpful.  So maybe I'll post a bit more this month.  (not that anyone really wants to read about my forays into the world of writing fiction, but I'll probably post them anyway).  

So, that's what's up with me.  The first year I did NaNoWriMo, it was a young adult novel.  Last year I tried to write literary fiction, and it bored me to tears.  So this year I'm taking the low road and writing genre fiction, although it won't be anything nearly as steamy as the books I mentioned in my previous post.  I get to the point where they're kissing, and I'm already embarrassed.  But although it would probably be classified as "romance" if anything, the love story is secondary to a lot of the other things that are going on.  (Since this hasn't been written yet, maybe I should say "a lot of other things that I hope will go on...")  And both of the lead characters are older, sort of ummm... plump, and, well... normal, as opposed to the main characters in romance novels, who are always devastatingly handsome/gorgeous, well-built, slender, and amazing in every way.  So we'll see how it goes.  But I've already, in three days, written more words than I did in almost the first week last year, so I think this will go better.  It's certainly more fun.

H&K,

AB

I used to regularly post reviews of the books I'd read. But last spring I realized that my taste in books was going further and further downhill, and that my book reviews probably weren't particularly interesting anymore. And it's only gotten worse since. To prove my point: I spent the last half of the summer reading trashy romance novels. And you know what? I'm not even sorry. I loved it. I hadn't read one in more than twenty years,* and -- while I wouldn't exactly recommend any of them-- I have to say that they are light-years better than they used to be. It was fun. But now my conscience is telling me that summer is over and I should stop with the brain candy and start reading stuff that I don't have to be embarrassed to be seen with.

Well, OK. Just as soon as I finish Three Nights of Sin. (no, I'm not kidding, there really is a novel with that name-- but I haven't read it. Yet.)

Anyway, just to further show you how low I've slunk, I'll tell you the story of my reading list for this summer. Those of you who've been around for awhile will remember that about once a year, I assign myself a reading project-- several books that are related in some way-- and push myself to read through the whole list. One year, I read Reading Lolita in Tehran, plus most of the books her class studies. Another year, I read a collection of the letters of Maxwell Perkins and novels by his three most famous authors--Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe. Then there were Merton, O'Connor, Walker Percy and Dorothy Day another year. (full disclosure: I've never actually managed to read every book on any of my reading project lists. But I give it a pretty good shot, anyway.)

So this year, at the beginning of the summer, I decided that I was going to read Chaucer and Spenser. I'm dead serious. I really thought I was going to spend the summer sitting out at the lake with the Faerie Queene in my lap. Oh, 'tis galling the things we must admit to online. I got online and ordered a modernized Chaucer to go with the original version I still have from college, and also got the recommended edition of FQ.

As you can probably guess, I made it through the Prologue and the Wife of Bath's tale before my attention wandered. I think it's actually a little impressive that I made it that far. Although at the moment I can't remember what the segue was, for some reason I went from that to reading the Satanic Verses, the famous book that sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for (seven? eight?) years. It is brilliant, and beautifully written-- if I remember, I'll put a paragraph or two in the comments to this post-- but it doesn't exactly move quickly. Sections of it are very absorbing, but then there are long sections that are.... well, maybe not boring, but slow.

So enter my daughter with Twilight in hand. I'm blaming the whole romance novel obsession on her. In case you've been locked away in a closet for the past six months, Twilight is the first book in a series about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. It's written and marketed for teenagers, but once you know the characters' names, you'll overhear a surprising number of competent-looking adults gossiping away about Edward and Bella as if they lived down the street. There is very little plot or characterization outside the two main characters' obsessive love for each other, but you know-- you just can't put them down. I'm snobbish enough that I have to say that I didn't really read them, I just skimmed through them. But I did, in the space of about two weeks, get through all four books, each of them well over 500 pages. After spending over a month getting through Satanic Verses.

Why am I admitting this publicly?? Oh, the shame.

But it gets worse. So then, realizing that it had been a very long time since I'd read a good bodice ripper-- at least twenty years, and probably more like twenty-five*-- I started combing through used books and picking them up. I bet I've read twenty since mid-August. Not kidding. Last week I decided I would let myself keep going until October 1st, which would be tomorrow. I've got one more to finish tonight and them I'm quitting cold turkey. Promise. Higher quality reading suggestions welcome, reply here.

AB

* I'm making a distinction here between just regular old romance novels (hard to write a good story without someone falling in love, imo) and trashy romance novels, aka bodice rippers, which have such steamy love scenes that they should carry ratings on the cover. Oh, my. .... After re-reading this, to be fair I should say that the Twilight series is not explicit, but it has enough of the conventions of a trashy romance novel that I was reminded of them.

Two weeks ago, we were in Seattle to move our daughter into her dorm room for her freshman year of college.  It surprised me how emotional I was about it, even though plenty of people had warned me I would be.  I knew I would miss her (and I do-- a lot) but I also knew that it was time for her to go.  She was/is ready, and very excited about it, too.  We'd known practically since she was born that she would be going to college; we want her to be there, and-- well, you know, you don't raise them to stay home.  You raise them to go off and do their thing in the world.  It was time.

So given all that advance notice, you'd think I'd be prepared and the transition would be smooth sailing.  But of course actually going through something is different than preparing for it, no matter how much you prepare.  And it's been hard.  The first week, almost every day some little thing would set me off.  Not that I would totally lose it or become incapacitated by crying or anything like that.  I'd just suddenly be overwhelmed by a wave of sadness and grief that would disappear almost as quickly as it arrived.  This week has been better, but I've still had a couple of those moments.  It's not so much that I miss having her here (though I do) as the ending of an era.  She will never be under our care in the same way she was up until two weeks ago.  We have a number of friends whose older kids require plenty of parenting, so I know we're not done, but it won't be the same as it was having her home and under 18.

So enough going on and on.  I hope this doesn't sound like whining, because she's having a blast and I'm happy for her, and I get to go visit her in a couple of months.  It's just what I've been thinking about the past couple of weeks.

AB

I think it says a lot about me that it's easier and a whole lot more interesting for me to write about questions and than it is to write about resolutions. Whenever I sit down to try to write out some of the things I've been learning this summer, it just sounds so corny. Like the final chapter of a bad self-help book.  And on top of that, as soon as I learn something new, something that feels like a revelation, it seems immediately obvious, as if it had been staring me in the face all along.  Everyone on the planet must know this stuff except clue-less me.  But here is some, mainly because otherwise I don't have anything to write about.  

I have trust issues.  I don't trust much of anyone, and I certainly don't trust that the world is a safe place to be.  I could go into a therapy-style litany of all the reasons why that is true, all the bad things that happened to me when I was a child and along the way, but I'm not sure that's any excuse.  Plenty of people who trust just fine have difficult issues in their past.  I think it just has to do with the way I'm wired.  

But I've been working very hard on the Buddhist idea of keeping an open heart, which involves letting yourself be vulnerable, which means trusting.  It has become important to me for purely selfish reasons-- because when I manage it, when for a few minutes or hours I can drop all my defenses and just be there, it feels so amazingly good.  It's so much better than being hard and cynical and closed up tight like a fist.  But it isn't easy.  It is impossible for me to ignore that anyone can hurt you, even when they have the best of intentions.  Maybe even especially if they have good intentions.  And bad things can happen at any moment.  (Remember the Northern Exposure episode where Maggie's boyfriend was killed by a satellite that fell out of the sky?)  How do you manage this?  How do you stay open and spacious, without feeling like you're leaving yourself exposed to every little awful thing that can happen?  

I have no definitive answers, but some things have helped.  First of all, staying closed up tight doesn't solve the problem.  It might make you slightly more prepared defensively for bad things that might happen, but for the most part, it doesn't stop them from happening.  And you miss out on so much by always being on your guard.  But more important than that, it's occurred to me that the key to trust isn't trusting others, or trusting the universe, or at least not for me.  The key is learning to trust myself.  Yes, this person might hurt me, but I'll be OK.  I can handle this.  Something bad might be around the corner, but I know from past experience that I can get through it.  I'll be all right no matter what.

Ack.  My scared-self is already kicking in again.  It seems so arrogant to say that, like I'm asking to be tested.  There are so many things that could happen that I would not be all right about, that I could never recover from.  most of them involving my children's health and safety.  But the point still stands.  I'm working on it.

Since someone asked me about this the other day, I'll say it here for the record.  You can, if you read this blog, tell anyone you like about it (of course).  It's out in cyberspace, anyone that finds it can read it.  I can hardly claim that I want to keep it private since I'm posting it publicly.  And honestly, I wish I had more readers, and that there could be more discussion.  But, as I've said before, I'm a bit shy about telling people about it-- partly because I don't know how they'll respond, but mainly because it requires an assumption on my part that they'll be interested in reading it, which is difficult for me to imagine.  That may sound disingenuous, but there it is.  The only thing I ask is that if you live here in our town--as many of you do-- be careful who you tell, as some of this stuff would be a bit controversial around here. But if you live here, you already know that. 

I was going to go back and go on and on about "resolutions."  But in the meantime, my cynical side has kicked in and I just don't have that much more to say.  how can you honor and respect the beliefs of your childhood when technically speaking you don't actually believe them anymore?  there are lots of days when that is where I am, and today is one of them.  Days when I think, I can't keep going to church, this is ludicrous.  But:  I would miss it if I didn't go.  I love our church.  It's complicated.  If this were all about logic and figuring things out rationally, it would be so simple.  I'd just leave.

But honestly, as I get older, I'm finding that cynicism is less and less helpful to me.  And no matter how little it makes sense to my cynical self, the mix of belief and unbelief, of meaning and lack thereof, is actually the way I live.  It's what is real for me at the moment.  But subject to change at any moment.

AB

resolutions

A little over a year ago, I decided that it was time to delve back into the religion of my youth and think through my experiences-- much of which has shown up in this blog.  In April, I reached the crux of it, at least as far as my own experiences are concerned, and nearly sent myself round the bend trying to resolve some intellectual conflicts that are not resolvable.  At that point, I resolved to let them be un-resolved. I felt like I had finally come to terms with the opposing forces, if you will, and made a truce.  Not a truce between the issues, but a truce between myself and the conflict.  Is this making any sense?  The conflict is out there, I don't know the answer, and I have to keep living with that.

I've learned a few new things since then that I thought I'd pass on.  One occurred to me on a long driving trip.  It occurred to me that just because the issues can't be resolved intellectually doesn't mean that they can't be resolved in my life.  I can value the meaning behind many of the beliefs of my childhood, feel enormously proud of and loyal to my heritage, and yet still live in a way that honors my own experience.  In effect, the way I live my life becomes the resolution.  

check back, this is unfinished.

It's been so long since I've posted that it feels like I should wait until I have something really significant to say. But then again, maybe I should just plunge back in. We had a great vacation-- two weeks, for the first time in a long time. Part of it was spent with my spouse's family on the East coast, part of it was spent at home. During the last bit, my spouse and kids took off on a church youth group trip while I stayed home. I got to spend several days at our favorite lake, relaxing and reading and watching the breeze move the leaves on the trees. It was great.

In the afternoons, it would get quite warm in the un-air conditioned cabin where I was staying. So after dinner the dog and I would walk down to the lake for a swim. The reason this is my favorite lake is because the water is so clear and cold and deeply blue-green that you can see straight down to the bottom even at fifteen feet. It's not the kind of lake where you swim all afternoon.  No one stays in for long, it's way too cold, even in July. In fact, I don't get in at all unless it's really hot. But it was quite warm last week, and I swam every day.

I think it says a lot about one's personality how you do this-- do you plunge in off the end of the dock? start at the shore and wade in? run in and dive? My own approach is the wimpiest of them all, which is to slowly descend the ladder at the end of the dock, letting each body part get used to it before the next one gets wet. But there is still a moment where you have to push away from the dock and plunge all the way in, and every time I do it, I cringe. I hate that bit. But then you're in, and the water is so .... invigorating, bracing, refreshing-- pick your term. You feel all the heat and dust and sweat dissolving away, and you just chill (giving new meaning to the term, yes?). I paddle around and try to find something, some place within myself that matches that deep, clear, blue-green stillness. It's worth the hated cringe moment, well worth it.

Great metaphor, that. I have several things coming up that I don't want to do, but I need to do, so it's a life lesson all wrapped up with a bow. Just cringe and get the worst part over with. Like posting for the first time in three months.

AB

I really did write a post yesterday, but I was worried it might be a breach of confidentiality, so I deleted it this morning. But I will start posting again when we get back from vacation.

Last fall I made a moderately big deal about taking a break from blogging for six weeks.  Now it's been six weeks since I last posted and I've hardly even noticed.  Plenty is happening, just not much worth writing about.  

I don't really have a whole lot more to say on this topic, but I've had a number of very interesting conversations about it offline, and I thought I would pass along a few things. (to the people who said these things: I'm not specifying who said what because I'm not sure if you'd want your name here, but I'll certainly credit you if you let me know you don't mind.) Some are from e-mails, some are paraphrases.

"God is just way too large to be contained by any doctrine or any so-called set of facts. He/She transcends it all, but chose to create us as unique individuals which I think is a signal we are also 'allowed' to be unique in our expression of faith."

"Right answers become a new form
of works--righteousness
excluding grace"

It was pointed out to me that on my list of interpretations of the resurrection, I left out the one where God the Father loves us so much that he is willing to sacrifice his only Son in order to save us. "thinking of the resurrection literally allows us a tool for conceiving of what a truly loving god would be."

And also. I set up for myself an "either/or" truly worthy of a fundamentalist: either the literalist interpretation is correct, or the metaphorical interpretation is correct. And of course, after having a few days to ponder that one, there are many options in between, including my own idea from several months ago: take it seriously, but not literally. But here's another idea.

I listened to a lecture series on the Apostle Paul last fall that was excellent. It was done by a professor from a major university, who may want nothing to do with this blog so I'll leave his name off. I thought he did a terrific job of running the gauntlet between secular literary criticism and faithful consideration-- a great role model for what I want do myself. He pointed out, as most thoughtful scholars of the scriptures do, that the traditional interpretations of conservative Christians sometimes don't have much support in the text itself-- rarely are things as clear-cut as the literalists would like you to believe.

But anyway, he points out that the New Testament writings were written when the new religion was still very young. It is clear that the writers expected Jesus to return any minute. It is clear that their emphasis was on spreading the news about Jesus as far as possible during the brief time they thought they had before Jesus' return. We don't know how those particular writers would respond if they knew that 2,000 years later Jesus would not have returned. Not to mention that in the meantime, the letters and accounts they wrote would have been used for both good and nefarious purposes. But it isn't difficult to imagine that they might have reconsidered certain points and moved on to different emphases.

It occurs to me that the writers themselves would be surprised that we were even talking about this. The New Testament writers, especially Paul, were Jews with considerable knowledge of the Jewish law. They had had to completely re-interpret what they knew about God's law based on what their new experiences were as followers of Jesus. I think it's entirely possible that they would be the first ones to argue that God's law is always interpreted in light of your own experience, your own times, and that this interpretation must be carefully and consciously undertaken. Rather than operating under the assumption that the way you were taught is the only way. Honestly, sometimes people who are strict literalists sound exactly like the Phraisees, who after all, could cite chapter and verse to back up their arguments with Jesus (just like the literalists can today).

AB

so here's one of the things that happened. A couple of days after I deleted those posts, I woke up at about 6 a.m. with this question ringing in my head, as if someone had just spoken it: "Are you willing to go to hell if you're wrong?" I spent the morning turning that question over and having several somewhat visceral reactions. It took me until noon to realize that the question itself was fundamentalist and not necessarily legitimate. All the underlying assumptions-- that there is a hell, that people go there based on whether or not their theology is correct, that you could be punished for eternity for honestly asking questions-- all of that comes from the way I internalized the religion of my childhood. It was such an enormous feeling of relief to just let it go. But then over the next few days, it came back. It's still hanging around back there in my brain somewhere. I guess you never entirely get over this stuff.

Well, you will be able to tell that this topic struck a real chord with me. I edited and edited the previous posts, then ended up deleting them. They stayed deleted for almost a week. But I've decided to put them back in, because I think they make a good point about recovering from fundamentalism. I guess I'm sort of setting myself up as a sociology experiment here (although if it was sociology, would it have to be a group of us? maybe it's a psychology experiment). I realize that if you don't come from a religious background, I've made myself ridiculous with all this dithering back and forth, but it is ridiculous, so I will let that stand. I did edit them (again). And I have a bit more to say, too.

AB

previous post, revisited

You know, if I were writing a book, I'd go through the process of thinking all this out and you, my gentle readers, would only get the final product. And wow, would it be amazing. (just kidding.) But since this is a blog, I'm still thinking this out, and I have reactions to the things I've written and posted that sometimes surprise me. So I have to confess that the post about Easter has crossed some sort of internal line for me. I'm really uncomfortable with it. The day after I wrote it, I came back online to delete it. But then I re-read it, and it seemed OK, so I left it (although I did edit it a bit). But it felt like an act of bravery to leave it. Then yesterday, still thinking about it, I went back and added the postscript. But I still feel off-kilter about it, and I don't really know another way to describe it.

The problem, I think, is that the two different ways of interpreting scripture-- the literalist view that sees the Bible as the inerrant (without error) Word of God vs. the more nuanced way of reading the Bible to discern its wisdom, how it applies to our lives today -- are so different that bringing them together in the same post makes me really uncomfortable. When I am standing firmly in my new way of thinking, whether or not the miracles of Jesus "really" happened or the resurrection "really" occurred is irrelevant. It's not that I don't believe they happened; in fact, I would be disappointed if someone was able to prove that they didn't. It's just that it doesn't matter whether or not they happened in order for me to read and learn from the text.

But if you're still in the other way of thinking, that is just so wrong. If you say it doesn't matter, it's the same as saying it didn't happen. And if it didn't happen, then what the heck is it that we believe? (someone in that tradition would say.) If it didn't happen then Jesus was a charlatan, a liar, or nuts. This is an old argument. We've all heard it before. But the fact that someone who was still in that mindset could come along and read the previous post and think that I was arguing that the resurrection didn't occur is very uncomfortable for me. Uncomfortable to the point of wanting to delete the evidence. Sometimes this is just so hard.

to be continued, but not today.
AB

Easter, a little late

In the process of trying to re-imagine my Christian heritage, Easter has become a tough holiday. It wasn't always that way. When I was considerably younger, I leaped straight out of conservative Christianity into a liberal Episcopal church where it would have been considered a bit naive to actually believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. And that suited me just fine. I find the resurrection, as a symbol of the triumph of good over evil, love over hatred, and life over death, to be an inspiring and worthwhile story with endless layers of meaning that have little to do with whether or not it actually happened. You have the underdog, itinerant preacher with no political power who manages to outlast by many centuries the power structures that destroyed him. You have the man who simply, with great love and little fanfare, lays down his life for his friends, and is met (during the hours before his death) with hatred, cruelty, and torture-- and yet the love is stronger than the hate and consumes it. You have the symbolism of spring, the rebirth of life after the long winter, that resonates with the rolling away of the stone and the empty tomb--the endless cycle of life after death. It's an archetypal story with endless interpretations that really don’t depend on whether or not Jesus's three-days-dead body actually got up out of the tomb and walked away.

But as I've delved back into my past and tried to understand my background better, I've realized I missed some steps in there, some steps in the process of moving from a literal interpretation of Jesus' resurrection to the more symbolic. Because if you read the accounts of the resurrection carefully, you can't escape it. It is abundantly clear that the writers of the New Testament believed that Jesus reappeared to his disciples after his death.

Of course there are whole books on this topic. There are all kinds of ways to explain it away. Jesus wasn't really dead and he revived in the tomb. Jesus' body was stolen, and when the disciples found his empty tomb, they erroneously concluded that he had risen, and subsequent stories of Jesus sightings are just like Elvis sightings today. And then there are books by people who tried to explain it away and couldn't and ended up being converted (such as, famously, Josh McDowell in Evidence that Demands a Verdict).

But even if you accept that Jesus did die and was resurrected, the story is not nearly as clear cut as I believed when I was growing up. In the New Testament accounts, no one actually witnessed the resurrection. In the Gospel of Mark, the earliest account, a few of Jesus' disciples arrive at the tomb to find a man in a white robe sitting there, who tells them that Jesus has risen and gone ahead of them into Galilee. The resurrection has already happened. And that's where the earliest manuscripts end (check this out in Mark 16-- every modern translation includes a footnote that says the most reliable manuscripts end at verse 8). The sightings of Jesus after his resurrection and the interactions of the resurrected Jesus with his followers were added later, possibly decades later, and are therefore considered by some to be less reliable.

If you read it from this perspective, it makes a kind of sense. The kinds of interactions that are described are exactly the kinds of things that you would say if you were trying to convince someone that the resurrection happened—lots of people saw him; he was seen eating food; people touched him; my friend Thomas who is a terrible skeptic was even convinced. It’s the way rumors get started, and it still happens today. It's not hard to imagine that someone who passionately believed that Jesus had been resurrected might years afterward add a series of events that would prove the point, with no deception intended. They are just verifying what they are sure is true.

And, anyway, what exactly would it mean if Jesus was resurrected? Did the body in the tomb re-animate and get up and walk out? (Growing up, that’s what I always assumed.) Or did he rise again with a "resurrection body," a body that was physical, but different in some way from the body he had before he died? Or did he rise again in spirit only, without a literal physical body? If you choose your verses carefully, you can argue each of those interpretations of the resurrection fairly convincingly. But whichever interpretation you choose, if you're going to take the New Testament accounts seriously, you can't deny that the authors themselves believed most sincerely that Jesus came back to life after he died, however it was accomplished. And furthermore, they felt the resurrection-- not the teachings of Christ, not the symbolism of what he did-- was what made their new religion possible. Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians, "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." Hard to get much clearer than that.

In a way, it's my whole dilemma in a nutshell. I want to move on to a different kind of faith (and honestly, I already have-- there's no going back at this point), but the parameters of my former religion as spelled out in its founding documents don't allow for a this. I haven't been able to reason my way from literalism to a more nuanced understanding, because the writings themselves want to be taken literally. What I've done is decide that it was important for them, in their time and their situation, to be literal, but literalism is not possible for me (as I've explained ad nauseum in other posts). The way I read the Bible now involves some give and take with the text, some flexibility, some interpretation. and of course that is sacrilege to anyone who still believes it, not to mention the sacrilege of questioning the resurrection.

AB
p.s. just for the record, I would like to point out that the point of this post is not whether or not the resurrection occurred—I think I managed to avoid stating an opinion on that. It's just the most in-your-face obvious example of the difficulties involved in moving away from the fundamentalist mindset.