Pacifists, Environmentalists, and Profeminists Oh My!

I tend to veer towards radical thought.  Don't ask me why.  Or do.  It doesn't matter.  Either way I can only say that I don't know.  The truth is just that I do.  I like the label radical.  Holding to beliefs that might make most of the people I know squeal is appealing to me.  While that can lead to all kinds of problems, what I'm finding is that I have good reason to believe what I believe.  Take for instance my being a pacifist, which I will admit is something I refer to almost too often.  My being a pacifist, if it were only for the sake of being a pacifist, would be, frankly, stupid.  But I am a pacifist as an extension of my view of the redemption of human kind by Jesus on the cross.  God's method of choice was non-violent, and I believe that is how She wants us to live.  So I am a pacifist, because I can not reconcile violent means with the call to love my enemies, and to not resist evil by force.  You make disagree with me, but I dare say you can't say I don't at least have a valid, thought out reason.  The same can be said about the fact that I have decided to become a vegetarian, on theological grounds no less.  (I'm still working through these beliefs)  Or my being profeminist (an area of theology that I am especially interested in reading more about at the moment).  

However.  At the same time, I have to admit that what attracts me to these beliefs is the fact that for each of them, I can, and have to, say and believe things that will make people around me uncomfortable and maybe angry.  For instance, you might have squirmed when earlier in this blog I referred to God as She.  I don't apologize for that.  For me it is at the least a way of balancing and baptizing the patriarchal elements of my context:  as a white male, and as a westerner/American.  But I also know that I want to refer to God as She because it will make people upset.  And if they are upset, then they might have to think about their own beliefs a bit.  That is important to me.  I grew up in a denomination that cares not too much for thinking.  It is a constant struggle to combat the conditioning that occurred during the many many hours I sat hearing preaching, and was taught to see the world in a way that I can not accept any longer.  I think that my tendency toward radicalism is an extension of my struggle with my past.  But at the same time, I also think it's a load of fun.  I can only ask God that She will help me to be mature about it, and to use my words and life for Her glory.

The Writer Takes a Guess

If some day I write a novel, or more than one, I think that what I write will be something similar to the writing of Flannery O'Connor.  As a non-violent, I am intrigued with writing that contains violent elements.  How better to show the evils of violence than to let them play themselves out in your writing?  Besides O'Connor I am also intrigued by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club and the recent Rant.  I don't agree with his ideology, which is, as far as I can tell, a mix of existential post-modern angst, littered with bits of Freud and Sartre.  On some level I do see eye-to-eye with Palahniuk.  I believe that he sees himself as a realist, and in a way I will grant him that.  What is important is that we acknowledge the presupposition that he brings to his work:  there is no God, or if there is, He might hate us.  It's a sort of immature anarchism, which I will admit is what originally drew me to him (how many years ago was it that I first read him).  This is not what will drive my writing.  Instead it will be a different presupposition.  What will inform my writing will be a world-view that sees the cross as a statement of how we are to live.  In seeing God as the Lord of history, I believe that through the cross he showed the futility of methods of violence which seek to create their own solutions for the problem of history.  My writing will play with the dance of violence and non-violence.  At least as far as I can guess.  What is important to me is the implications of a live that is lived non-violently.  For instance, I consider myself a pacifist.  But what good is pacifism for pacifism's sake.  In that case it is little more than a political ideology that can be seen to shy away from the real problem of violence in the world.  You could say that it is convenient to be a pacifist in time of war.  It makes you a voice that stands out.  Instead of considering myself foremost a pacifist, it is important for me to say that I am a pacifist because I believe in living non-violently, and not the other way around.  Otherwise, my pacifist beliefs hold no theological weight, but are just a lofty idea that sets myself over and against the violent war-mongering culture that I live in.  So again, the implications of what it means to be non-violent are important to me.  And I can imagine that my creative writing will delve into the issues that arise from my beliefs.  I can't see how my writing would be very honest otherwise.  

This Pilgrim's Progress

God carries us.  Any "god" we can carry is . . . an idol.  That which we can carry is subject to our control. . . . But in trying to carry the living God of Mount Sinai, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we insult him and we destroy ourselves. 

- Kosuke Koyama

I fear at times that my skepticism will keep me from really experiencing God, from really growing in relationship with Him.  I'm reading an old Russian tale called "The Way of the Pilgrim" (thanks John), a story about a pilgrim who is concerned with learning to pray without ceasing.  He is torn because he cannot figure out how to do it, yet he believes that the Bible tells him he is supposed to.  An elder, a priest in the church gives him the Philokalia, a book that teaches him how to pray like he believes he is supposed to.  While traveling around several "miraculous" things happen; moments of divine providence if you will.  As I was reading I realized how skeptical I am of "spiritualizing", of seeing God in the things that happen to us.  I am like a clerk he meets.  "You hypocrites always see miracles!" he says when the pilgrim tells him a story.  He would rather see events as simply natural, which is so much like me.  Part of my skepticism, of course, comes from wanting to be careful.  It is easy to see things that are not there.  To bleed spiritualism into everything.  While that is not how I want to live, I do want to be sensitive to God's work in the moments of my life.

Too often in my life I try to carry God.  I've been reading a lot of theology texts lately and I fear that a very real reason for this is that I want to grasp God.  It's not that I simply want to learn about Him, or experience Him.  I want to get a hold of him, so that I can say that I have acquired God, that I have come to an understanding and that I KNOW God.  Who He is, what he does, how he works.  All of the above.  I want to read and read until I have picked God up and put Him on my shoulders so that I can carry Him.  No longer would I need faith.  No longer would I have doubt or fear of the mystery of God.  I would have Him under my control.  

Tonight I finished a survey on classical theology, "The Doctrine of God" by Veli-Matti Karkkainen.  The last several chapters of the book deal with non-Western theological perspecives.  Asian, African, and Latin American theologies are discussed.  What really struck me was the contextualization of our theologies.  Everything about our lives informs our beliefs.  We are slaves to our presuppositions, whether they are natural or learned.  I am a white male, and so what that means for me is telling in my theology.  Who you are is telling of your beliefs.  I don't mean this in a deterministic sense, where we have no choices in our beliefs.  But really we tend to move in the direction of the streams of life in which we swim.  It's hard to do otherwise without revelation of some sort.  Impossible?  I don't know.  The point is that I realized while reading about theological perspectives that were different from my Western perspective, that my beliefs are as contextualized as theirs.  It was easy for me to be immediately skeptical of their treatment of theology.  But I learned a lesson about humility.  I learned that I don't know all that much.  I also came to the conclusion that I want to be carried rather than try to carry God.  If I am going to be any kind of theologian (not professional, please God!) I don't want to make an idol of my beliefs.  I don't want to insult God, whether by thinking I can carry Him or by being skeptical of ways he can work in my life.  On this journey, I want to be a pilgrim, and I want to be an individual that is not so wrapped up in himself, that all he believes comes to mean nothing, as it is but an idol and not the real living Trinity, the God who carries.

A Little Something or Other

It's been a little while since I wrote my first entry on this blog.  A lot has changed in me since then, as if my heart that had become so hard has become softer, pliable.  I feel at times like I can cry, which is something that for a while I had wondered if I'd be able to do again.  When you think there might be nothing, you might try to do what Sartre did, you make yourself a god.  Meaning that you fortify your defenses against the hard parts of life.  That's what I was doing for a long time.  My failed marriage was a reflection of my failure to be the kind of person that I wanted to be.  I reacted to my failure by acting as though I was soaring above it.  Two people over there named Sarah and Patrick were breaking up and I as an outsider looking at them, which made me able to react unemotionally.  Sure there were moments of emotion, especially during the time that I was realizing that I couldn't lure her back in.  But when I came to the conclusion that it was over I was solid.  I was unaffected and better than all those whose marriages were failing yet were floundering in their emotions.  I was my own strong tower, I ran into myself, and wouldn't you know it, salvation was not there.  That's a struggle that I have all the time.  I thrive on the fact that I can be emotionally strong when others are not.  In reality my emotional mechanisms are all out of whack.  But that's something I'm just going to have to work on.  As a being-in-becoming, as someone who is finally, after a long time, allowing God to transform him, that's the way things are going to be.  Anyway, this is not where I expected to go with this blog.  I just wanted to point out that I am on a trajectory that is quite different than just over a month ago.  Things seem to be falling in to place.  Not that I have many answers, or that my life is all smooth sailing, but still.  I'm not one to get all fluffy about God, but I look at how things are going and I don't know how I've gotten to where I am right now, writing this blog, if it is not for God involving Himself in my life the very moment I needed him (I always need Him, this I know).  Deep was calling to deep.  And the God who is there was there.  He is still.  You don't know how much I need to say that.

You Can't Make It On Your Own

"Listen to me now/I need to let you know/You don't have to go it alone.../Sometimes you can't make it on your own." -U2

When going on any kind of journey the question to ask is "What do I take with me?"  How do you answer that question when thinking eschatologically?  My guess is that list will include things that are both temporal and eternal.  While things temporal may be somewhat important, the essential needs should be the primary focus.  And the only thing that I can think of, at least in a Christian context, that is both temporary and eternal is relationships.  Your relationship with God, others, and yourself.  It is these relationships which are necessary for embarking, traveling, and finishing the journey.  And it is also these relationships that when developed and intensified (improved), that make the journey at all doable.  The journey of living eschatologically is a journey of relationships.  It is important here to note that eschatology for the Christian is both future and present-forward.  As we grow in our relationships, as we travel together, we are demonstrating the looking-forward-to kingdom now.  We are living the kingdom, not sitting around waiting for Left Behind to happen so we can be free of the world.  

If the journey each Christian is on is thought of eschatologically, we realize that we not only can journey together, but we must.  Missing a relational element means missing one or more of the necessary essentials of the journey.  So while U2 is on the right track, they are not quite to the point.  "Sometimes you can't make it on your own" for the Christian becomes simply, "You can't make it on your own."  And indeed we can't.  Our attempts at going on the journey alone are futile, because like Pilgrim, in Pilgrim's Progress, we will be confronted on the road by men who are greater than we are by ourselves.  It is only when we recognize that we are on the journey together, and that the journey means growing in relationship with each other, that we can truly journey at all.  When we do recognize the reality of this is when the we begin to see the Church being the Church.  For all the problems that the Church faces, the lie of individual freedom is perhaps one of the greatest.  But if we can get beyond the lure of that freedom, we can begin to live in relationship, and we can begin to journey eschatologically.

In Which The Hero Journeys Toward The Rising Sun

It wasn't long ago that I had reached a precipice.  I found myself standing at the edge of an infinitely immense chasm.   As far as I could see was nothing but futility and darkness.  The path of my life the past year and a half or so had led me to this place.  At times I stuck a foot out, testing the emptiness, taking in its lack of substance.  I would wiggle my foot, imagining what it would be like to force myself forward, to step onto the plane of nothing that lay before me.  In a way it was as if the invisible before me was more real that the ground I was standing on.  I felt compelled to make the move and see what happened.  Would the fall hurt?  Was the ground below closer or farther than I could imagine?  In the quiet I stood there with my thoughts.

When I was younger, I never doubted the truth of my Christian beliefs.  They were a given.  There is a God, I believe in Him, and so I believe in Christianity.  That was the way I thought.  The struggle for me was in relating that to the world around me.  My biggest question was why so many people believed differently.  Why were they so blind to the truth?  Years later I would find myself with a whole new set of questions.  The childish naivete of my beliefs was subsiding and the simple acceptance of all I had grown to hold as true wasn't good enough any more.  I was coming to the end of my journey, to the edge of belief where doubt and disbelief create a shelf of blankness.  And I was becoming convinced that what lay past the edge was where reality began.

To put it bluntly:  a month ago I was close to abandoning belief in God, throwing in the towel on any hope of Christianity being true, rejecting things I had once thought unrejectable.  I was ready to give up and take a step forward, letting the plunge lead me where it would.

I hesitate moving forward here, explaining what happened to change things.  Besides it being somewhat of a blur, I feel inadequate to describe what occurred.  I will only say one thing about it:  I have embarked on a new journey, which is really just a fresh start on a path that I have intersected with in the past.  The questions I was once asking, I am finding to be the wrong questions.  And so many of the things I was once thinking, I am finding that others think as well.  

On this journey of being-in-becoming, I am going in a new direction.  It's kind of like going east or west when the only options you ever had before were north or south.  And while I'm not completely sure where this path will lead me, I know that it is a direction which will lead me where the sun rises and sets, which is so much better that the direction that was leading me to one of two poles, both of which are as cold as Dante's center of hell.