Pinterest Faith or Rebellion

I confess I have been known upon rare occasions to "pin" something. I have a pinterest account and I have used recipes which I have found there. While I mildly enjoy perusing pinterest, I have been disappointed in the experience overall. I signed up for pinterest because I thought I might be able to find some new blogs or exciting information on the emerging church movement. Instead when I venture onto my account I am overcome by a wave of delectable desserts, fancy decorating and pretty pictures. It is almost as though we have bought into the Martha Stewart ideal. Its all about making things pretty. I wonder if the church on the whole has bought into a "pinterest" kind of faith. We go to church looking for tidbits we can post on our "words of comfort" board. We look for a different kind of comfort by pinning other tidbits on our "guilt" board. After all, our faith must not be shallow or we wouldn't feel this satisfyingly guilty and inadequate. We balance that guilt with our "acts of kindness" board. It is a pretty kind of faith that fits well in a church shaped box. I don't mean to sound so grumpy. There are marvelous people of deep faith to be found in church. That is why I still go. Part of my inspiration for writing this was reading this article http://www.churchleaders.com/mobile/pastors/pastor-articles/155219-sarah-bessey-why-women-s-ministry-needs-jesus.html (Thanks again, Charlene). From reading the comments that follow I know that this topic will raise some defenses. I beg of you, please, for the love of all that is holy, set aside the defensiveness and hear me: there are people, some in the church and some outside of it, who are longing, thirsting, and gasping for something more. There are people who hear the story of Jesus and hear a rebellious, earth shaking, story so astounding and upsetting that it lead to a crucifixion. There is a portion of the upcoming generation who hear the call to be rabble rousers like Jesus. There are people throughout all the generations yearning to participate in the world transforming, cage rattling, work for justice, peace, and healing to which the life and death of Jesus calls us. Please don't tell us to quit making excuses for not attending church as though Jesus cares mostly about our attendance record. Please don't throw another bucket full of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" faith over us hoping to wash off all that rebelliousness. Our dissatisfaction is a gift to the church, not a threat to it. Join hands with us and rise up to cast off the ways of the world which say value and power are determined by wealth. Help us to wrestle into focus a faith that looks less like a pinterest account and more like a wild dance, our individuality and creativity joining in a collective mass to move the world.

Praying for Pentecost to come again

One evening last week, while the rest of the family was at baseball practice, my daughter and I spent some time sprawled on the living room floor, building a car village with wooden blocks. I had to chuckle to myself a little, this is how a girl with an older brother plays house. We built a bridge, a couple of garages and an elaborate apartment. And then we played house with four little matchbox cars. The cars played games together, went on a picnic, enjoyed some yummy unleaded fuel and a car battery dessert with spark plugs on the side. Becca also seemed to take peculiar delight in having her cars knock blocks off the bridge I built! Which quickly led to the best part of our play time, bulldozing our block creations. There’s something very satisfying about knocking over block towers. It was chaos. Pieces of the apartment lay next to remnants of the bridge. Furniture was scattered. Cars were overturned. And because I don’t do chaos well, this destruction was immediately followed by a super fast cleanup as we got blocks and cars back into their respective boxes.

Of course my story, while true, also serves as a good metaphor. Jesus, during his very short ministry, seemed to take perverse delight in toppling blocks off the very sacred structure of the Jewish religion. And he did it so effortlessly, revealing, in the process, that religion is very much a human construct and therefore impermanent. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, his followers seemed mostly in awe of Jesus’ ability to push over these blocks with the tips of his fingers, cornerstones which they had always assumed were cemented, riveted and anchored for all time. Jesus tried to assure them that they too could do the seemingly miraculous. But they resisted, content to observe Jesus in action. That is, until Jesus threatened to push the whole block temple over and in short order wound up on a cross.

But before his death, Jesus talked about a Holy Spirit that would come after him. And sure enough, not long after his death, Jesus’ followers realized his Spirit, the spirit of God lived on……in them! Now just an aside, I have to wonder if Jesus offered a little bit of a Dumbo’s feather here? Interesting how the gospel passage of John defines the Holy Spirit. In John 15:26 Jesus says, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.” And again in John 16:13 Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” So another word for the Holy Spirit is, “the Spirit of truth”. Personally, I believe Jesus was the embodiment of the Holy Spirit dwelling fully within a person. And just as I would say in God is the fullness of time, so also would I say that the Holy Spirit has always been and always will be. But Jesus reframed things a little and presented this Holy Spirit as something new that would guide them once he was gone. And sure enough, after his death, resurrection and ascension, his followers grabbed onto that feather, the one that had always lived there within them and through them……and they flew!

This is what I see happening in the Pentecost passage from Acts (2:1-13). Because they finally believe that God is working with and within them, the Holy Spirit surges into their midst and these Jesus followers begin to go a little crazy, flying around and crashing down all sorts of religious blocks. It is chaotic. It is a mess. It is…..beautiful. All those divisions that human nature, dressed up as religion, had erected over generations…..bull dozed down. No more east or west, no more south or north, no more male and female, no more slave and freed. Diversity abounds, but divisions cease. They are all speaking with voices everyone can hear and understand. Best of all, God is no longer boxed in, defined by the strict confines of one religion. God is free to be mysterious, to be unpredictable, to be greater than their imaginations can stretch. This is the context for the birth of the early church described in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts. As I read through these chapters, I imagine the air crackling with the Spirit’s electricity. These Jesus followers believe anything is possible and their lives attest to their convictions. The church they build is yet free from religion and is a living testimony to Jesus’ teachings and life. But there are still more blocks left to topple.

In Acts 10, the Holy Spirit descends upon Gentiles. Another division collapses. And this final barrier might have been the tallest block tower of all, because shortly after this divide comes crashing down, many good church people become uncomfortably aware of these blocks strewn everywhere. It’s more difficult to see the beauty when you focus on the mess. And so much to Paul’s dismay, the early church struggles to come to terms with this new dismantling of ancient prejudice. But to their credit, they do learn to live with yet more scattered blocks and they move on and the church keeps growing.

Well, you have to know that at some point, someone is going to feel compelled to gather up all these broken divisions scattered all over the place and get everything back into boxes again. This was the gist of my blog post a few weeks ago (If this is Christianity, am I a Christian?) when I talked about the era of Constantine - that time in history when the new church became institutionalized as the state religion. Old divisions got rebuilt in short order along with a number of new ones to throw into the mix - elaborate block walls between men and women, rich and poor, right belief and heresy were erected. And Jesus? Well, Jesus got boxed up as religious and state leaders opted instead to construct a soaring tower with Christ perched on top.

I just got done reading a brand new book called, Christianity After Religion by Diana Butler Bass. Bass has a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and has served on the faculty at a couple of universities and a seminary. In this book, Bass points out the fact that religious awakenings are scattered across the history of religion. These awakenings are like Pentecost movements in that the Holy Spirit sweeps through and topples many of the religious institution’s sacred block structures. The most well-known example would be the Reformation with the Radical Reformation following on its heels.

As far as I can tell, most theologians seem to agree we are in the midst of another awakening period. Though there might be wide-spread disagreement about whether this is a good thing or not, the fact that it’s happening seems pretty widely acknowledged. There is little consensus though about how all-encompassing this awakening is in relation to history. Bass illustrates the uncertainty by pointing out a few differing opinions. Harvey Cox, a well-known and long time religion professor at Harvard Divinity School believes we are currently moving out of a 1,500 year period in Christianity called the “Age of Belief”. Phyllis Tickle, another premier American theologian, suggests we are going through a 500 year change-over cycle. Many others would more humbly put forth a 300 year cycle. Bass never indicates where she falls on the spectrum, instead asserting that at the least, our country is in the midst of the Fourth great awakening.

Bass writes, “Historians of American religion generally recognize three significant awakenings in the United States and Canada: the First Great Awakening, 1730-60; the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1830; and the Third Great Awakening, 1890-1920. During each period, old patterns or religious life gave way to new ones and, eventually, spawned new forms of organizations and institutions that interwove with social, economic, and political change and revitalized national life.”

This Fourth Awakening most likely began in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I’m too young to really remember what things were like at that point in history, but from what I’ve read and been told, it was a time of great social upheaval. People sensed the very structure of society, even civilization, was changing. Of course, change always brings with it fear. So while many, many people were embracing, celebrating and working for change, many others were cowering from it, even fighting it. And in every awakening there are changes to celebrate as well as changes to be wary of.

Bass points out that every awakening is also accompanied by a backlash movement. The greater the awakening, the greater the backlash. It’s almost difficult, in modern history, to imagine a greater social and religious backlash than that which occurred between the 1970’s and 1980’s. In the realm of religion, we saw the rise of the Religious Right. Their promise was a return to 1950’s values and people, unnerved by increasing moral relativity and a greater openness to diversity, came flocking to this movement. And so the evangelical movement took off and it did so in the media spotlight. While this movement plateaued and began to slump in the 1990’s, increasingly this version of Christianity became the public face of American Christianity. Whereas in the 1960’s and 1970’s, new generations began to leave the church because church seemed more and more out of touch with their lives, beginning in the late 1990’s and up to today, we also have many people leaving the church because they are offended, repelled, angered by the conservative, evangelical face of Christianity which is assumed to be the norm. At the same time, people continue to exit mainline denominations as well due to an undiminished sense that church no longer addresses their lives in a meaningful way.
　
And so this Fourth Awakening, which took a 20 year break in the 1980’s and 1990’s, came back with a vengeance as the 21^st century opened. But this awakening has changed shape somewhat since the 60’s and 70’s as we encounter greater religious pluralism and as technology continues to shape modern civilization.
What this Fourth Awakening will produce in concrete terms is still very sketchy. However, I am really excited and encouraged by the descriptors that keep emerging. To me, it sounds like blocks are flying as a new generation of believers gets to work dismantling age old divisions. Bass writes, “the current awakening is marked by its insistence on connection, networks, relationship, imagination, and story instead of dualism, individualism, autonomy, techniques, and rules.” The Occupy Movement embodies these newly emerging values and priorities.

While fear is an understandable reaction to change, perhaps what is most needed at this point in time is honesty. The movement of the Holy Spirit is always a little scary because no person can control this wild wind. It blows where it will. And yet, without it’s life-giving energy, the landscape of religion all too quickly gets littered with towering block institutions in need of a good bull dozer. And maybe this time we'll sit with the beauty for a little longer before our attention inevitably turns to the mess.  Whatever the case, it is time for divisions to come crashing. It is time for age old prejudices to get overturned. It is time for power-hungry religious structures to be toppled. Come, Holy Spirit, come.  It is time.

Calling for Logic in our Politics

The children are home for the summer.  Therefore, I am now spending a good portion of each day acting as a referee.  The arguments are heated, illogical and perpetual.  

So, I am daily experiencing a microcosm of American politics and American religion.  Lucky me.  What have I learned from this experience?  If I yell loudly enough I will get a few moments of peace before the next argument begins.  Hopefully, I will find a better strategy before the summer is over.  

It seems like the leaders of our country, political and religious, have not learned better strategies.  Or perhaps they have just found that lousy strategies work, so why bother with anything better.  The name calling, illogical arguments, generalizations, etc. have taken over our public debates.  Consequently we hear a lot these days about “civil discourse.” However, I think there is a general misunderstanding about what this call for “civil discourse” is about.  It is not just about being nice, being polite and not calling names.  It is about debating things in a way that encourages greater understanding and hopefully even moves us toward solutions.  It is not about being civil while we continue to focus on triumphing over the other side.  It is about changing the purpose of the conversations, learning to better understand each other, to better understand the problems we face, and better understand the pros and cons of possible solutions.  

A while back someone dear to me shared a podcast of a Jefferson Hour broadcast which discussed logical fallacies.  A logical fallacy is simply an error in reasoning but there are formal categories of logical fallacies.  In previous days these were taught in school as tools for learning.  This peaked my interest so I did some further reading.  www.logicalfallacies.info describes the importance of recognizing logical fallacies in this way, “Fallacious reasoning keeps us from knowing the truth, and the inability to think critically makes us vulnerable to manipulation by those skilled in the art of rhetoric.”    

We, the American people, are vulnerable.  As I read through the list of logical fallacies on the above mentioned website, I could think of examples of many of them in our political and religious discussions.  Ad Hominem (Personal Attack), Slippery Slope, and Bandwagon are just the more obvious of the many fallacies committed in our political debates.  Our leaders would not use these methods if they did not work.  We need to hold our leaders to a higher standard.  I would love to see a political debate in which educated monitors would draw attention to it whenever politicians engaged in a logical fallacy.  I am not sure they would have anything left to say.  

All of this renews my commitment to teaching my children logic, not necessarily in a formal way, but rather by treating them logically and helping them to use logic to work things out.  I will have some opportunities to do such teaching this summer.  For example, I will try to calmly teach my children it is not logical to call your sister a liar when she makes a mistake and singing “liar, liar, pants on fire” is an Ad Hominem  logical fallacy.  I may not use those words precisely.  There may be some yelling.  But I will try to avoid committing my own Ad Hominem moments.  The little twerps.