There are many idols prowling around our consciousness' these days, and an even easier one to spot than belief is the truth. I know this sounds extreme and I will undoubtably get lampooned by some friends on this one, but the truth is not Jesus.
But wait, Jesus said that he was the truth (Jn. 14).
He did indeed. But here is the problem with what I've just said:
In formal logic, there is a fallacy called "Affirming the Consequent." Affirming the Consequent means that because A causes B, and B is happening, therefore A must also be happening. The standard example given is "If it's raining, the streets will be wet; the streets are wet, therefore it's raining." This is a fallacy because there are many reasons for the street to be wet. It may have been raining earlier and the streets have not dried yet. A fire hydrant may have burst. Some kid could be playing with the garden hose. It might not be raining.
If we think about Jesus' words in Jn. 14 in this way, we must realize this: Jesus is the truth, but the truth is not Jesus. All truth is not actually God's truth.
Here's why.
Truth, as we conceive of it, is not a Christian concept, because Christianity doesn't trade in concepts. Ever since the Enlightenment unshackled truth from its "religious" moorings it has been floating around the ether like a specter waiting to be returned. The problem with saying that all truth is God's truth is that there are many things that are true that are not of God. The holocaust is true, but was evil, through and through. It is true that many people do unspeakable things in the name of God, but that too is utterly evil. Now, unless we are prepared to say that evil is God, we need to rethink our claims about truth.
But this is only half of the issue. If we make Jesus into the truth then we have turned him into a concept, not a person. The second person, actually. Anyway, this leads us to proceed like this: from truth -> Jesus. Pursue the truth, and you will find Jesus. Ever heard anyone say that? I have. But starting there assumes a real entity of truth that exists beyond the person of Jesus. It takes truth as the starting point. But truth isn't the starting point, because it exists in our minds as something other than Jesus. We have an idea called "truth" that we defend as if it were God because we have affirmed the consequent of Jesus' claim to be the truth. He is that, but there are other things that are true besides him, nevermind our inability to distinguish truth from fiction!
The problem is that we confuse our own version of conceptual truth with the truth that stood before Pilate as he asked what truth was. Philosophy actually affirms Jesus' claim in a weird way, in that if I get far enough into it what I think of as truth turns out only to be my own imagination. But we've made what we think truth to be into a godlike entity that needs to be defended in order for Jesus to be the truth. But it doesn't, because your imagination is not Jesus. Jesus' truth is not your version of it.
P.S. I am on vacation and will be taking a short break from the blogging world. I will return with more thoughts and provocations April 15th. Until then, seek Jesus, not what you think the truth is.
Radical Openness to What?
I ended my last post by suggesting that faith is a radical openness to what God is doing. I want to expand and elaborate on this point because it can be taken in any number of unhelpful directions. I want to take it in this one:
Radical openness is not conceptual; it is not openness to anything that may cross your path. This is one way that faith is not a concept but a life; faith is not about ideas. That there are ideas about faith is not up for debate. But an idea is only an idea until a decision is made about the idea. Once a decision has been made, an action will follow. But faith is not the idea, nor the decision, nor the action. Faith is a continuance of all of those things. But we are still talking conceptually about faith, and faith is not a concept. Additionally, the faith of the bible is particular; it is not some universal principle.
Faith starts with being for others. "Let each of you look out not only for your own interests, but for the interests of others" (Phi. 2:4). Faith as the radical openness to what God is doing demands an attitude of others focused living. This means working for the betterment of those who are less well off than you are. It means advocating for the rights of those on the margins. It means demonstrating concern for the helpless and the vulnerable. We call this love.
Faith is, at its core, loving others. My fundamentalist origin recoils at this statement, accusing myself that love is misunderstood, for love requires truth. But truth does not supersede love in the bible. In fact, the bible is little concerned with truth, except to say that Jesus is truth. Yet loving others still has a jagged edge to it, and we by our allegiance to a doctrine of sin are still obliged to love by judging. And this convicts us for our own inadequacy.
This is the second aspect of faith; the conviction of the self. When we are for others we see how we are not for others. We see our complicancy in the sin of our society. We see that we are guilty for what has happened to the victims, and what is more we see that we are them. Jesus' parable in Luke 10 of the good Samaritan answers the lawyer's question most surprisingly- "you are the neighbor." It is not who is my neighbor, but rather that you are theirs.
Faith then is not rooted in some abstraction of being. It is rooted in the flesh and blood reality of Jesus Emmanuel; God with us. That he is no longer present in his earthly body does nothing to negate the presence of his spirit, nor to negate the concrete reality of his being evidenced by the physical presence of his church. But the church is not the the church because it says it is. It is the church because it does what Jesus says; it is for what Jesus is for. But it is here. It is present. It is physical. It is not ethereal, it is not mystical. That's the thing. Faith is a life lived in obedience to Christ, not the service of our beliefs about him. If you think that what I am saying is self refuting, you are still thinking in terms of the superiority of belief.
Radical openness is not conceptual; it is not openness to anything that may cross your path. This is one way that faith is not a concept but a life; faith is not about ideas. That there are ideas about faith is not up for debate. But an idea is only an idea until a decision is made about the idea. Once a decision has been made, an action will follow. But faith is not the idea, nor the decision, nor the action. Faith is a continuance of all of those things. But we are still talking conceptually about faith, and faith is not a concept. Additionally, the faith of the bible is particular; it is not some universal principle.
Faith starts with being for others. "Let each of you look out not only for your own interests, but for the interests of others" (Phi. 2:4). Faith as the radical openness to what God is doing demands an attitude of others focused living. This means working for the betterment of those who are less well off than you are. It means advocating for the rights of those on the margins. It means demonstrating concern for the helpless and the vulnerable. We call this love.
Faith is, at its core, loving others. My fundamentalist origin recoils at this statement, accusing myself that love is misunderstood, for love requires truth. But truth does not supersede love in the bible. In fact, the bible is little concerned with truth, except to say that Jesus is truth. Yet loving others still has a jagged edge to it, and we by our allegiance to a doctrine of sin are still obliged to love by judging. And this convicts us for our own inadequacy.
This is the second aspect of faith; the conviction of the self. When we are for others we see how we are not for others. We see our complicancy in the sin of our society. We see that we are guilty for what has happened to the victims, and what is more we see that we are them. Jesus' parable in Luke 10 of the good Samaritan answers the lawyer's question most surprisingly- "you are the neighbor." It is not who is my neighbor, but rather that you are theirs.
Faith then is not rooted in some abstraction of being. It is rooted in the flesh and blood reality of Jesus Emmanuel; God with us. That he is no longer present in his earthly body does nothing to negate the presence of his spirit, nor to negate the concrete reality of his being evidenced by the physical presence of his church. But the church is not the the church because it says it is. It is the church because it does what Jesus says; it is for what Jesus is for. But it is here. It is present. It is physical. It is not ethereal, it is not mystical. That's the thing. Faith is a life lived in obedience to Christ, not the service of our beliefs about him. If you think that what I am saying is self refuting, you are still thinking in terms of the superiority of belief.
The Creation of Idols
"Concepts create idols; only wonder grasps anything" - St. Gregory of Nyssa
The difficulty in distinguishing faith from belief is immense. This is primarily so because of our post-Enlightenment penchant for conceptualization and rationality within the framework those concepts create. Yet for the present I will attempt to distinguish the concepts of faith from the concepts of belief with an eye towards how biblical faith is not a concept, but a life.
Conceptually, beliefs are the mechanism we use to make sense of the world; they are the ideological boundaries we impose on our experiences in order to make sense of them. In order for me to maintain a firm grip on reality I must be able to assign some sort of category or label to my experiences. These categories can be quite broad, such as "bad" or "good," or they can be nuanced such as "progressive" or "creative."
Faith, as we conceive of it, is the assurance that our experiences will fit into the categorical structures of our beliefs; the confidence that our understanding of reality is right. In this way, our faith is subsumed beneath the heading of belief and relegated to the subservient role of confirming our beliefs.
And so in a conceptual sense, we have indeed created an idol of belief for ourselves. Our faith is to be in God, not in our beliefs. But when our beliefs are given primacy over faith, they are unconsciously given the authority to construct the framework for who God is.
It would be nice and pleasant if at this point I could saying "Instead, the bible says..." and rattle of some perfectly obvious scripture. But that option is unavailable to me, because the bible does not conceptualize faith and belief in this way. In fact, it does not conceptualize at all; that is part of the problem with how we read the bible period - conceptually. When we function within the conceptual structure of beliefs that I have just outlined, we read Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the confidence in what we hope for, the assurance of what we cannot see," to assure us of the reality of our structures of belief. But then we go on and continue reading chapters 11 and 12, and we get confused because this is not how the bible talks about faith. When Abraham's faith obeyed God by leaving his home and going where he did not know, we stumble, because faith led Abraham into uncertainty; into experiences that his beliefs could not contain.
This is the crucial turn: faith leads us into experiences that our beliefs cannot contain. They are mysterious. They are mysterious even years after they occur. I think that what St. Gregory was getting at in the quote above was that our concepts of things (St. Gregory was a Platonist, meaning he considered ideas to be real entities, nouns if you will) cannot take the place of radical openness to what God is doing. God will always offend our sensibilities and personal sense of righteousness. God is constantly offending and upsetting my beliefs. And faith in God will always lead us out of certainty and into the assurance of what we cannot comprehend.
NEXT WEEK: Beyond the concept of faith and into the realm of living.
The Bible Is Not About Believing.
I left you all dangling a bit with the end of that post; so much so in fact that my mom emailed me to confirm that I still thought there was a God! Having assured her of that reality, I will offer up another initially offensive proposition:
The bible never, not once, tells us that we need to believe.
Of course, if you've ever read the bible you know that statement to be false. But it is false only on a literal linguistic level, but not on the level of meaning. Here's what I'm getting at:
The words "faith" and "belief" in English mean two different things. Look them up in a dictionary. While there can be some overlap in the definitions, what the words signify are two different ideas and postures. They are not interchangeable.
The bible never uses the word "belief."
It's not in there. Instead, the bible uses the word "pistis/faith." "Faith" and "belief" are nouns, meaning that they denote an entity or thing. But we do not have a verb form of "faith" in English; instead, we have "believe." "Believe" connects etymologically to "belief," as in to practice belief. But the word that we translate "believe" is not connected to "belief" in the bible, but to "faith:" pisteuo, the verb of faith. Literally to believe biblically is to do faith.
Unfortunately, the way that "believe" connects to "belief" for English speakers causes a conflation between what we intuitively know to be belief and what we know to be faith. Faith has a much bigger meaning than belief, and when we encounter this kind of compounded meaning we tend to gravitate towards the smaller of the two; the lowest common denominator. This is born out by the way we talk about what it is to follow Jesus. When we say that it starts with belief, we are saying something other than what the bible says.
Let me say that again so that it sticks. When we say that following Jesus starts with belief we are saying something other than what the bible says.
Of course, we are now left with the task of figuring out what the bible means when it says to do faith. That will, of course, be the subject of coming blog posts.
The bible never, not once, tells us that we need to believe.
Of course, if you've ever read the bible you know that statement to be false. But it is false only on a literal linguistic level, but not on the level of meaning. Here's what I'm getting at:
The words "faith" and "belief" in English mean two different things. Look them up in a dictionary. While there can be some overlap in the definitions, what the words signify are two different ideas and postures. They are not interchangeable.
The bible never uses the word "belief."
It's not in there. Instead, the bible uses the word "pistis/faith." "Faith" and "belief" are nouns, meaning that they denote an entity or thing. But we do not have a verb form of "faith" in English; instead, we have "believe." "Believe" connects etymologically to "belief," as in to practice belief. But the word that we translate "believe" is not connected to "belief" in the bible, but to "faith:" pisteuo, the verb of faith. Literally to believe biblically is to do faith.
Unfortunately, the way that "believe" connects to "belief" for English speakers causes a conflation between what we intuitively know to be belief and what we know to be faith. Faith has a much bigger meaning than belief, and when we encounter this kind of compounded meaning we tend to gravitate towards the smaller of the two; the lowest common denominator. This is born out by the way we talk about what it is to follow Jesus. When we say that it starts with belief, we are saying something other than what the bible says.
Let me say that again so that it sticks. When we say that following Jesus starts with belief we are saying something other than what the bible says.
Of course, we are now left with the task of figuring out what the bible means when it says to do faith. That will, of course, be the subject of coming blog posts.
The Saturday evening Post About Beer: Red Trolley Ale
Ever since I was introduced to this delicious amber ale it has been a constant source of desire for my beer drinking palate. Unfortunately, it is expensive ($10 a six pack on sale) and so I am constrained by my frugality from acquiring it more often.
However, that did not stop me last week, when a friend from out of town and I slipped on down to the local Von's and purchased six of the little devils.
The aroma of ale is pleasant with a touch of sweet. The malt comes through in a nice, rounded and middling fashion.
The color is true to form: Amber. Perhaps a little deeper than others.
The initial taste is hoppy, then transitioning into the malty savor I expect from an Amber Ale. The aftertaste is roasted hoppy without the bit of an IPA. Which I like.
There are some Amber's that can be enjoyed straight from the bottle (such as Fat Tire). This is not one of them. Get yourself an ale glass to enjoy this one properly.
Currently one of my favorite Ambers on the market
****
Does God Care?
I ended my last post by wondering whether or not God cares about what we think of God. That question is important for me as I reflect on the theological training I've had and on the experiences my life has given me. It seems that so much unspeakable evil has been done in the service or name of God, both in my presence and in the presence of history, that somehow God must be concerned about how God is being represented.
But I also wonder at what else is transpiring within the self of the people whose unspeakable acts are performed using the attributed authority of "God." What do they think God is? This leads to another question: Who is God?
That question has taunted and tempted thinkers from time immortal, and while I wish to avoid adding my name to the register of the attempted, it is such a crucial question for me as one who wishes to know God.
Before I launch into something of a theological/biblical expose of the question, I want to explore something philosophical that I think informs and underwrites what we think of as theological. I want to say that first and foremost what we think of as "God" is really a construction of our beliefs.
For centuries Christians have been taught to believe. In fact, when I was a younger man, believing was how one became a Christian.
But this reveals a problem, because our beliefs are the limit of what we consider possible, and even moreso are the signposts by which we determine who we are. They are the markers of our identity. I am my beliefs. BUT if I am my beliefs and my beliefs make me a Christian then I make myself a Christian. This progression eliminates any need or opportunity for God to be anything beyond myself, and thus the God I believe in is none other than me. I may call God "God" and mean that I am not God, but within the depths of the human psyche I am really only believing in myself, and I have named that part of myself "God."
So then, back to my original question: Does God care about how God is represented? IThat depends on which "god" we are referencing. The trouble is that we think that in order to have a relationship with god we have to believe in God, that is, we have to have belief in God. But that relationship is only with ourselves.
So what then do we make of passages like Acts 16:31- "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved?" I will deal with this question in more detail in upcoming posts, but for now I will say that "believe" in Acts does not mean "believe" in English, because believe connects ideologically to belief for us, but it has no such connection in the bible.
But I also wonder at what else is transpiring within the self of the people whose unspeakable acts are performed using the attributed authority of "God." What do they think God is? This leads to another question: Who is God?
That question has taunted and tempted thinkers from time immortal, and while I wish to avoid adding my name to the register of the attempted, it is such a crucial question for me as one who wishes to know God.
Before I launch into something of a theological/biblical expose of the question, I want to explore something philosophical that I think informs and underwrites what we think of as theological. I want to say that first and foremost what we think of as "God" is really a construction of our beliefs.
For centuries Christians have been taught to believe. In fact, when I was a younger man, believing was how one became a Christian.
But this reveals a problem, because our beliefs are the limit of what we consider possible, and even moreso are the signposts by which we determine who we are. They are the markers of our identity. I am my beliefs. BUT if I am my beliefs and my beliefs make me a Christian then I make myself a Christian. This progression eliminates any need or opportunity for God to be anything beyond myself, and thus the God I believe in is none other than me. I may call God "God" and mean that I am not God, but within the depths of the human psyche I am really only believing in myself, and I have named that part of myself "God."
So then, back to my original question: Does God care about how God is represented? IThat depends on which "god" we are referencing. The trouble is that we think that in order to have a relationship with god we have to believe in God, that is, we have to have belief in God. But that relationship is only with ourselves.
So what then do we make of passages like Acts 16:31- "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved?" I will deal with this question in more detail in upcoming posts, but for now I will say that "believe" in Acts does not mean "believe" in English, because believe connects ideologically to belief for us, but it has no such connection in the bible.
Lumps of Clay and the Bottom
The longer I live the more I am amazed at the myriad ways of people finding God, peace, hope, faith. And I am even further amazed at the myriad ways of people losing God, peace, hope, faith. If I'm honest, it all creates a deep sadness that rests in the center of my chest, like a ball of clay finding the lowest point on an uneven table.
That ball rolls around, moving back and forth as my experiences shake my table, and I find myself thinking, nay, hoping that each new unsettling might actually be the lowest point; might actually be the truth. That when the ball rolls to that side higher up might be where life is its most wonderful.
But inevitably the ball returns to the bottom, and I am back to wondering if there is anything at all beyond the perpetual search for that thing. We can't all be right about God, so does that mean we're all wrong?
There are certainly times that I want to squish that clay ball; make it flat so that it rests somewhere other than the bottom. That would be a sense of certainty, and indeed I have flattened it at various times. But I do so with the deep knowing that I am only producing for myself a false bottom. And inevitably I rework the clay so that it gives me a reading of the table that is congruent with reality.
I find myself wishing that damn ball would flatten itself so that I could at least enjoy my illusions.
But it won't.
Because a round ball shows me where the bottom is, and convinces me that being right doesn't matter at all to God.
-
It's been a trying month since Ford was born. I've been utterly amazed at my capacity for selfishness, and have realized just how much sacrifice a baby requires. And if I'm entirely honest I wonder if we did the right thing by deciding to have a baby. It'd be nice to fall back on the adage that "God has a plan," but I don't think that adage applies well to the situation. I know that the trials will make me more "Christlike" but I was happy how I was! Well, happier, anyway.
The truth is that my frustration with caring for a newborn is only the superficial issue; maybe it's even the result of the issue. I've just heard too many people speaking in confidence about God and who God is and what God does, and anytime I hear someone speak about God with that kind of confidence I think they're full of shit. I've very little confidence that I know anything about God, or that the way I read the bible is at all faithful, and when someone speaks as if they have "arrived" in that respect I tune them out. It may be that I am deeply, deeply selfish in thinking that my experience must be that of all others, but I still can't get that clay ball of the bottom. I am who I am, a person in need of daily redemption and renewal. And it has been a long time since I've felt renewed by the god I try to follow.
But I can't tell the difference between God, other people, and myself. Maybe God is speaking, and it just sounds like arrogant people who don't actually care about other people. But if that's the way God speaks, or if those are God's priorities, then I'm not sure I want to follow that god. And so I determine, faithfully, that voice is not God's. But even in that faithful determination I have made of myself and my own voice a god.
Maybe there is no God. But I doubt it. Then again, doubting might be the right approach to beliefs about God. So does God not care about how God is being represented? Even about how I represent God to myself? Maybe not. Maybe God could care less about what we think of God. I don't really spend a lot of time worrying about what that dog in the next house thinks about me. Maybe God's got other things to worry about. But I hope not.
That ball rolls around, moving back and forth as my experiences shake my table, and I find myself thinking, nay, hoping that each new unsettling might actually be the lowest point; might actually be the truth. That when the ball rolls to that side higher up might be where life is its most wonderful.
But inevitably the ball returns to the bottom, and I am back to wondering if there is anything at all beyond the perpetual search for that thing. We can't all be right about God, so does that mean we're all wrong?
There are certainly times that I want to squish that clay ball; make it flat so that it rests somewhere other than the bottom. That would be a sense of certainty, and indeed I have flattened it at various times. But I do so with the deep knowing that I am only producing for myself a false bottom. And inevitably I rework the clay so that it gives me a reading of the table that is congruent with reality.
I find myself wishing that damn ball would flatten itself so that I could at least enjoy my illusions.
But it won't.
Because a round ball shows me where the bottom is, and convinces me that being right doesn't matter at all to God.
-
It's been a trying month since Ford was born. I've been utterly amazed at my capacity for selfishness, and have realized just how much sacrifice a baby requires. And if I'm entirely honest I wonder if we did the right thing by deciding to have a baby. It'd be nice to fall back on the adage that "God has a plan," but I don't think that adage applies well to the situation. I know that the trials will make me more "Christlike" but I was happy how I was! Well, happier, anyway.
The truth is that my frustration with caring for a newborn is only the superficial issue; maybe it's even the result of the issue. I've just heard too many people speaking in confidence about God and who God is and what God does, and anytime I hear someone speak about God with that kind of confidence I think they're full of shit. I've very little confidence that I know anything about God, or that the way I read the bible is at all faithful, and when someone speaks as if they have "arrived" in that respect I tune them out. It may be that I am deeply, deeply selfish in thinking that my experience must be that of all others, but I still can't get that clay ball of the bottom. I am who I am, a person in need of daily redemption and renewal. And it has been a long time since I've felt renewed by the god I try to follow.
But I can't tell the difference between God, other people, and myself. Maybe God is speaking, and it just sounds like arrogant people who don't actually care about other people. But if that's the way God speaks, or if those are God's priorities, then I'm not sure I want to follow that god. And so I determine, faithfully, that voice is not God's. But even in that faithful determination I have made of myself and my own voice a god.
Maybe there is no God. But I doubt it. Then again, doubting might be the right approach to beliefs about God. So does God not care about how God is being represented? Even about how I represent God to myself? Maybe not. Maybe God could care less about what we think of God. I don't really spend a lot of time worrying about what that dog in the next house thinks about me. Maybe God's got other things to worry about. But I hope not.
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