The Bible: It's Not About How It All Ends

"Some people think that the Bible has to do with the terrors of the apocalypse, and that the apocalypse is 'the end of the world'. The end, they believe, will see the divine 'final solution' of all the unsolved problems in personal life, in world history, and in the cosmos. Apocalyptic fantasy has always painted God's great final Judgment on the Last Day with flaming passion: the good people will go to heaven, the wicked will go to hell, and the world will be annihilated in a storm of fire. We are all familiar, too, with images of the final struggle between God and Satan, Christ and the Antichrist, Good and Evil in the valley of Armageddon--images which can be employed so usefully in political friend-enemy thinking. These images are apocalyptic, but are they also Christian? No, they are not; for Christian expectation of the future has nothing whatsoever to do with the end, whether it be the end of this life, the end of history, or the end of the world. Christian expectation is about the beginning: the beginning of true life, the beginning of God's kingdom, and the beginning of the new creation of all things into their enduring form. The ancient wisdom of hope says: 'The last things are as the first.' So God's great promise in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, is: 'Behold, I make all things new' (Rev. 21:5). In the light of this ultimate horizon we read the Bible as the book of God's promises and the hopes of men and women--indeed the hopes of everything created; from the remembrances of their futures we find energies for the new beginning." -Jürgen Moltmann, from the forward of his book, In The End The Beginning.

'Christian expectation is about the beginning.' I'm not sure about you but that wasn't my experience in the Baptist church I grew up in near Bob Jones University in Simpsonville, South Carolina. From the age of 5, I remember hearing stories about heaven. No more tears. No more pain. No more stealing pencils from Jennifer's utensil box. It would all be over. Done. Finished.

The ending would be the happiest place on earth (if it were on earth, which it isn't--Mrs. Hyde had apparently been there).

I know that the main purpose in telling us kindergartners this was to share the gospel, and inform us of the fact that our souls would go to heaven in the end when we died if we believed in Jesus but, but, but...there could've been a better way of going about this. They could've also told us how every day (from sleeping hours to waking mornings) is a reflection of this reality. And it's not all bad. Endings aren't to be feared, agonized over, casting teams over who's in and who's out. Endings, as in stories, are about people becoming better, people learning something new, something fresh, something to help carry them from this ending to their next beginning.

This is one of my criticisms with mainline (evangelical Protestant) Christianity, today. I don't think we're doing a good job of educating and empowering people to live as 'Christian beginners' (the hopeful perspective); all too often, there's just a whole-heck-of-a-lot-of 'Christan enders' (the fearful perspective). And that's not a good end to be on, if you catch my drift. That's the end of the playing field where people (sometimes) are bullied, harassed, and slaughtered because of difference. Because they're an 'other.' Not just an 'other' in dress or lifestyle, but in belief, in their view on how life's going to end (if they believe there's an ending at all).

It's a travesty so many people boast and bicker over how it's all going to end. I wonder what would happen if instead, these 'Christian enders' lived life, humbly, as 'Christian beginners'. Beginners, like most children, are open to life, open to change, open to new experiences. Their mind is a race, running after knowledge and pleasures and excitement. Each day is a wonder. The future is full, wide, open (similar to how heaven is described as--which is upsetting because we're told we won't get there or experience anything like this until we're dead). Beginners are rarely proud because they don't know enough of something to be so prideful. They're in a perpetual state of learning, forming, growing. Wouldn't it be nice to be known (as Christians) for this? To be seen as someone who lives each day fully, each day faithfully, each day truthfully? To be someone who doesn't waste any new beginning with talk and talk and talk over (how they think) it's all going to end?

I wonder how much better it would have been for my K-5 Sunday School teachers--instead of sharing with us all about 'the end'-- to have shared with us on how to live life (in all its preciousness), beginning with today. To have shared how to get along with those who believe differently from us (and not be told they're going to hell or that we should tell them they're going to hell). I wonder what America--and the world would look like now--if we were taught (from the impressionable age of 5) to love the 'others' we come across each and every day, and to pray for others' happiness and well-being more than we pray for our own.

To put it plainly, what would've happened if we children were raised as 'hopeful beginners' rather than 'fearful enders'? How much different would we be today? Or more important, how much better?

Atheism for Lent: The Day Before the First Day

In the preface to his book, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism, Merold Westphal writes that he's writing to the church. To the pastors. To the laity. To all Christians who've grown complacent, swirling and circling in a faith that serves the self more than it serves others. Wesphal ends with a hope that his book will prove to be "edifyingly disturbing" to its readers.

I like that concept: to edify by/through disturbing. In light of this, a small group of Fuller friends and I are embarking on what many people our age are thinking about, thanks to a gentle prodding from Peter Rollins, and that is "Atheism for Lent."

Now, some of you may be wondering: 'I thought Lent was about giving something up? About sacrifice?' And you'd be write. But here, Rollins explains how atheism for Lent is an act of giving something up that in turn, can deepen and mature one all the more. He also suggests 'atheism' is part of Christian belief, Christian faith, and in fact, lies at the very heart of Christianity.

Rollins claims, "Every concrete theism creates its negative, its atheism. There are as many atheisms as there are theisms. All affirmations create their negations. Whenever a concrete religion is faced with its own negation, one of two things generally happens: either the church rejects those who reject it, pushes those who question it and who deny it outside the fold, pushing them away; or they listen to those who question, they listen to what they have to say, they consider it and they attempt to use it in a way to deepen their faith. However, there's a third position and it's where one attempts to integrate the negation into the very affirmation, itself. In other words, one takes the critique and sees it as an integrate part of faith. This is something we bear witness to at the very heart of Christianity itself. For in the cross, when Christ cries out, 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?', we see that the absence of God, the felt absence of the Divine, is brought into the very heart of the faith. Instead of seeing it as some kind of test that we have to endure, or the result of our sin and our finitude, what we see is God experiencing the absence of God. Therefore the absence of God is seen to be apart of the life of faith. If a Christian is to participate in the crucifixion, to stand with Christ, then part of the Christian experience is that absence, itself. In a similar way, when we are confronted by the atheism that is generated by Christianity, perhaps we should not see it as an enemy that we need to fight, or as a stranger that we need to listen to, but rather we should view it as a friend and a comrade, that we must embrace and welcome as our own."

So with the help of Merold Westphal, myself and four other friends will be embarking on a friendly existential journey into the minds of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, daily, for the next 46 days. Hopefully, we'll come to a place close to where Kelly James Clark came to, after reading through Westphal's book. In the forward she writes:

"Their [Marx, Nietzsche, Freud] deep insights startle us, find us out, shame us, catch us up short, claim our assent, and damn our pretension. We realize, to our benefit, that we are not as good, faithful, just, and humble as we thought before we started this book."

Here's to 'damning our pretensions' and letting the absence of God make room for the possibility of God, and the gift of suspicion and faith.

Hurt

It's hard to feel thankful when you're hurting. When you're grieving, it's even more difficult. Growing up in the church, I often heard people talk about 'giving thanks in all circumstances.' It's in the Bible, yes, it's the way many Christians say we're supposed to feel, supposed to act, supposed to supposed to supposed to.

Do you ever feel tired of living in the 'supposed to' world?

In screenwriting, everything moves because of conflict. Without it, no one would go to the movies. Yet, so many of us avoid conflict, dodge it, suppress it (within others, within ourselves) because we think it will make our life better. But what if the opposite was true? Not 'what if we just made people's lives hell'. Certainly not. But what if we didn't avoid conflict. What if we faced it. They say in movies, audiences are attracted to characters who do the things they only think of doing. For example, if someone cuts you off, gives you the finger in traffic, your inner self may scream out loud and imagine following this person to the nearest Whole Foods to confront them and tell them how 'unacceptable that was.' But who does this? Really? Who has the guts to put into action the thoughts of millions of scared little broken people?

People in the movies.

This is (partly) why we care so much about cinema, about story, about characters. This is why conflict isn't so bad after all.

In Nine Inch Nails' brutal, cut-to-the-core-of-humanity song, "Hurt", Trent Reznor sings: "I hurt myself today / To see if I still feel / I focus on the pain / The only thing that's real." Conversely, there's a line pictured at the end of the film Into The Wild wonderfully summarizing Christopher McCandles' self-realization at his journey's end: "Happiness only real when shared." This was McCandles final entry into his diary before he died.

Two things are posited here as being real: pain and happiness. Like life, both cannot happen alone, in a vacuum. Pain often happens because of others, because of conflict, because of interactions and confrontations with the world. Happiness, according to McCandles, happens only with others. It means nothing to be happy if you're all alone. So why do so many of us avoid pain and believe happiness can happen when we do what we want to do, on our own terms, for the good of ourselves, for the good of what society, parents, friends say we're 'supposed to' do? So many people live lives married to the hope of pleasing others, of not letting our parents down, of being (in a deeply inner sense) found out. We don't want others to know how hurt we are or how much we need them. Of course, there's some good to this. I'm not expecting people walk around all day expressing their deepest hearts' desires to people with whom they don't have a relationship with. Yet, at the same time, it'd be nice to encounter a few more risk takers out there (myself, included). It'd be nice, just once in a very long while, to talk to a person who doesn't let what they're 'supposed to do' dictate what they really should be doing.

I think this is what the writer of that famous (overused) New Testament phrase 'give thanks in all circumstances' was getting at. Giving thanks the for hurt. Why? Because it's real. And because, happiness cannot be felt without it. Friedrich Nietszhe' words first pointed me to this truth, but I don't think I was ready to receive it then. No, I think before you can receive something like this (and when I say receive, I don't mean possess for I'll probably forget this truth in a few years and have to rediscover it in some other place, in some other person and learn it all, over and over again) you have to surrender to the hurt, to the pain, to the suffering inside your own head. It's similar to what John Carroll argued in The Existential Jesus. Like Christ, we all must face the pain of our own mortality, or own deserted, desperate (and painfully lonely) isolation, at times. If we don't, we will break.

Someday.

We will lose it. We can't fight it. We must surrender and accept, not run away and hide. For we won't be able to live with the power of denial and the refusal to see pain and suffering for what it is: real.

This is the water I'm treading in right now (and I have been for the past several months, I think). At times, it's exhausting. At night in bed, it can turn into a kind of all-consuming fear, a morbid sense of detached lifelessness. And then, there are moments (brief glimmers, really) where Joshua Radin's song lyrics struggle to the surface. Where I trust and hope and believe that one day (even though it's not today nor anytime in the foreseeable distance) "everything'll be alright." Where hurt morphs--in a surprise spark of illumination and transcendence--into happiness.

This is 'giving thanks in all circumstances'. When hurt is not marginalized and happiness is not exalted, but both--in all their mystery--are held together, closely. A kind of glorious song and dance of emotional conflict.

Some call this being crazy. I think it's just being.

A (Christian) Reality Check

"It is far easier to ask forgiveness of a god we can't see than from a person we can see." -Philip Gulley, If The Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus

I'm just finishing up Philip Gulley's new book, If The Church Were Christian, and it's been a breath (blast, at times) of fresh air. Sure, I disagree with some of what Gulley puts forth as 'the values of Jesus,' but for the most part, he's dead on. His latest book might make Matthew and Luke raise their eyebrows (I imagine Mark and John would be smiling all the way through, though). Why? Because this book has a Rabbinic flare to it, in that, it addresses what the Church has too often neglected: today's world, today's people, today's hurting souls. All too often, Christian orthodoxy focuses on future eschatology while leaving John's understanding of realized eschatology far, far behind. It's almost ironic the Left Behind series are called that; for that is exactly what they have done to millions of people. They've left behind an understanding of Jesus, an understanding of living life today, now, here, present in hopes of gaining some personal (eternal) security.

Years ago, I had a thought: "Doesn't heaven sound like the most selfish thing a Christian could ask for? Wouldn't the most sacrificial, love-act be (if love really is laying down one's life for a friend) to lay down one's afterlife, then, as well?" It seems counter-Christian to be so consumed with eternity, yet, this is the way of most church folk.

But that's getting me off track (this is the last chapter of the book, so perhaps that's why I jumped to talking about it because I just finished reading it). In essence, this book is a wake-up call for Christians who want to be real, who want to do good, who want to take life seriously, who want to not check their brain at the door in order to follow Jesus. Some people will tremble and go a little mad after reading some of what Gulley is questioning but this is to be expected. Throughout history, any re-imagining of what Christian Orthodoxy entails has always been met with a firm fist (and sometimes a sword). But Christians need to let go and let loose a bit, and stop thinking that the world rests on their mind's doctrinal stances.

One thing I really loved about the book? It reiterated (within me), why the topic of 'women in ministry' is so important (and still, so behind-the-Jesus-times in so many growing churches). Are we really still telling people that women can't lead--in those most high places--of churches? Are we really still saying their gender has to take a back seat as far as leadership ability goes when it comes to churches? If we are, shame on us. For if we can be so selective of what we will modify (and not modify) within scripture, God help us for what else we are capable of reading (or not reading) into. This book reminded me of the amazing nuances of scripture and how easily we brush over them in hopes of constructing a manageable, livable faith life. How sad it is when people say they're 'living by the good book,' while making slight changes and modifications to their interpretations along the way (and yet, still thinking in their mind what they've done is "absolutely scriptural").

Newsflash: it isn't. So please, don't kid yourself by telling yourself 'this is living like Jesus.' We could all use a lot more humanity, a lot more humility when following Christ. This is the way of Jesus. Additionally, as the book so refreshingly suggests, we need more people willing to follow Jesus and less people who simply want to 'worship him on a Sunday morning.' True discipleship is worship. Maybe that's what the Church has been lacking for so long.

Nature

"Nature is never constrained to change, and that which is once formed cannot simply will to reverse itself wrongly, since desire is not nature. Desire can alter the character of something already formed, but it cannot remake its nature." -John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

One of the most fascinating things about people is their capacity for adaptability. In the film Boogie Nights, director P.T. Anderson explored this and the extent to which one would alter and adapt him/herself to fleshy abuse in order to gain a sense of belonging, a sense of being accepted. I wonder how much this is true for the history of homosexuality and the Church (or rather, churches). How often have we marginalized, compromised, or idolized the very nature of the self the Church declares is imago dei? In what areas (besides homosexuality) can we see people mistakenly seeing nature as being synonymous with desire? All too often, it seems the discussion of nature--as it relates to our violent propensities--quickly moves into carnal desire-talk territory because of how we assume that it's in our nature. But what if it wasn't in our true nature? What if that was only mere desire?

As the Church continues to dialogue, debate and argue over the issues of nature with respect to homosexuality, I wish we'd also spend similar energy toward healthy conversation over our views of war and violence, and how this relates to our true nature. It seems, to use Boswell's analogy, we've spent far too many centuries trying to remake nature through our desires (and presupposed ideas of who a person is and what is their purpose) rather than critically looking at the varied nature (and natures) of the human species, and separating what is mere desire (what can be slightly altered) and what is fixed (what cannot be altered). The latter, I think, is the most difficult to articulate and accept because behind our desire (in this) is a growing need to be autonomous and self-sustaining rather than limited and interdependent. The former is our desire, the latter is our nature. Or at least, that's the way I see it.