Can Online Religion Be Real?

Can internet religion be real? I was, for thirty-some years, a university professor of Christian studies (and philosophy); then I retired. From classroom teaching, that is. Thanks to a friend who asked me to move my philosophy classroom from the university to his blog, I continue to teach philosophy. Then I established a few blogs in my own name and continue to teach Christian studies. I must present a caveat: years ago I quit calling myself a teacher, for to be a teacher means there are learners. You can be a professor or instructor without learning taking place, but if no one is learning, teaching is not being done. I am not sure when and where the learning takes place, so, rather than teacher, I choose to call myself one who attempts to set up conditions that facilitate learning. The question remains: can real Christianity be studied by computer mediated communication? Does it not require face to face, eyeball to eyeball, connection? Connection of the kind where tone of voice, facial expression, gesture, and perhaps even a pat on the back are possible. Religion is personal. Can it be electronic and remain authentic? In the School of Christian Studies at the university from which I retired last year, I am told the answer is, “No.” I understand and appreciate where they are coming from. I also believe that Christianity at its best, at its fullest, is something lived out in the flesh rather than in cyberspace. In spite of my appreciation for Karl Rahner’s idea of the “anonymous Christian,” the follower of Jesus can neither remain anonymous nor confine their commitment to the realm of virtual reality. At some point it must enter the world of flesh and blood, the world of physical space and actual rather than merely virtual community. Yet, I must affirm that if Christian studies can, to a certain degree, be conducted in a university or seminary classroom it can be conducted on the web. If it can be done by means of words written on paper–Bible, theologies, pamphlets, etc.–it can be done, to a certain degree, electronically. Eventually, it must get out of the classroom, out of the books, and out of cyberspace, but it can start there. Or it can be educated there. And cultivated there. These have their place. And in the 21st Century, computer mediated Christianity has an incredibly large place, a place in which the School of Christian Studies at my beloved university, should establish a presence. I much prefer teaching in a physical classroom, with less than twenty–preferably only ten or twelve--students. This provides a wide range of conditions that make for better teaching. On the other hand, it touches a quite limited number, which is why the school always insisted on larger numbers in the classroom, classes of as many as forty or forty-five (larger universities hold classes with hundreds in the same auditorium). If we insist of “ideal” conditions for learning, we will cut out most of those who have the need to learn and the interest in doing so. I am aware that I have not yet learned how best to do it online, but I do have, from all over the world, potential students looking in on my virtual classroom. Some of them decide to attend regularly. Some of them study and think. So far their numbers are small, and they come from only ten different countries, but that is far more inclusive than the few who can afford the time and money, and travel the distance to attend university classes. Yes, online religion can be real, as many Christian institutions are aware. I hope it will not be long before my old school realizes they are being “left behind.” It is not too late to play catch-up. Not only can online religion be real, it remains true that religion at the corner church house can be real. From time to time, here and there, I have actually seen it. Old-fashioned “organized religion,” “institutional religion” is not always hypocritical, nor is it always dead. “With God, all things are possible.”

Bedrock Beliefs

I used to carry my own coffee mug to Starbucks. I got a dime discount. More importantly, I prefer to drink coffee from porcelain or stoneware than from paper (or–horribly–from Styrofoam). Nevertheless, long ago I quit taking my own mug. A Starbucks “tall” container holds more coffee than my mug. I don’t drink a lot of coffee. I am not one of the coffee-drinking elite, so I can save about two-thirds of a “tall” for the next day, and often the last third for a third day. Using their container is more economical, at least for the way I drink coffee. The other reason for turning to their “cups” is that I like to read the quotations printed on them. Most are inane, but occasionally I run across one that is quite good. Recently I read the judgment of Rick Ridgeway, World Class Mountain and Rock-climber, explorer. He said: “Most of our bedrock beliefs are established by the time we are young adults–the ones we use to make our choices, and therefore direct our lives.” For more than forty years I have made it a point to review my “bedrock beliefs.” I know what I believe, and why, but I had never considered when those beliefs were established. So, I went back to those early years to see what of my “bedrock beliefs” were established by the time I was a young adult. I list them pretty well in the order they developed. • Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” • Church is the place. • I am a social misfit. • The status quo is somewhere off-center, not to be accepted uncritically. • Carol is my “one.” • Reading is my best way of socializing. • Nature restores me. • Life is bittersweet. I appreciate Ridgeway for helping me see myself more clearly. These are, in fact, the beliefs that direct my life. • My understanding of Jesus is, far too much, culturally conditioned. Knowing him is beyond my grasp, but knowing that I am known by him, knowing that I can–and do–trust him keeps me moving the right direction, and gives his assuring presence and strength to keep moving on ahead and on up. • For near about forty years I have been engaged in a lover’s quarrel with the church. Good ones are not easy to find. Many of them stink. I find that, inside the church building, anger often visits me and is slow to leave. Nevertheless, the church is my home. There my soul is restored. God always meets me there. In this world where all the lights seem to be going out, the church is the only place any hint and hope of The Light of the World can be found. • In social situations, such as parties, dinners, Sunday School classes, and conventions, I wish I were more comfortable, and that I was accepted as a living, active member of the group, but I always remain an outsider, even if I am the honored guest or featured speaker. It was long years before I came to accept my differentness and stopped trying to round off the corners of my square peg and fit into the social circle. Three factors seem responsible for my otherness. When tested by the Myers-Briggs Personality Profile, I was classified as an INFP, a category that comprises somewhere from 1-8% of the population–most sources speak of 1%. I have a life-long condition called dysthymia, which affects only 3-6% of us–again, most authorities speak of 3%. On top of these two personality features that separate me from the vast majority of society, I was moved through the second and third grades in one school year, making me always the youngest in my class, thus a year behind my peers in social and psychological development. Thus, one of my bedrock beliefs is that I am not and will not come to be an insider in the larger society. • As early as I can remember, the status quo, in all realms of life, seemed amiss in my eyes and mind. This was a vague, indefinable perception that the years have brought into clearer and more definite focus. • By the time I reached middle-age, I realized there were only two things I’d never had a single doubt about: that I married the right woman, and that, through Homer White, God had called me to teach (this call came long after early adulthood). I was only sixteen when I realized that Carol was my “one.” That was well over a half-century ago. • Books have accepted and affirmed me just as I am, beginning back when just as I am was a lonely little boy. Through books I have been everywhere, learned something about almost everything, and befriended some the wisest and most interesting, first-rate, quality people who have ever lived. Often I am reading ten or more books at the same time, and on at least a half-dozen subjects. Whether like Poe I have “sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow,” or to visit with a friend, or to satisfy my curiosities, books have always been there. • The out-of-doors, fresh air, God’s good creation is like a restoring tonic. Always. Immediately my spirit is lifted, whether by a wisp of grass coming through a crack in the concrete, a lizard at attention, the prairies, the desert, a swamp or the clouds of the sky. A refuge. • Finally, before I left childhood, the bedrock conviction had come to me that life is bittersweet, a never-ceasing dialectical conflict in which the sweetness of life runs, always, ahead of the bitterness. Some of us taste much more of one than the other, but life is always both. ___________________ All of this from a French-pressed cup of Starbucks Italian Roast. I never realized that, although my eighteen-year-old self would not recognize its septuagenarian fruit, my bedrock beliefs were in place by the time I was eighteen. What about you? What foundations did you lay in those tender years? Do you know? It might be worth exploring.

Why I Read

I was asked once, why I read so much. This is the answer I gave. It remains true. ______________ I read because I'm hungry, because I need nourishment, because I want to grow. I choose a very wide range of books to provide a well-balanced diet, to feed all dimensions of my soul. I read every kind of literature, except junk; there is a lot out there. Sometimes I read because it's easier to read than to do; sometimes I find it's easier to do because I have read. Unquestionably, I know myself more completely, understand the gospel more profoundly, and appreciate you more fully because I read. I love God more, enjoy life more, and love you more because I read. Reading expands my world and enriches my life.

Taipei 1995

Summer, 1995

World Vision of Taiwan assembled us, Jirka from Prague, Job from Singapore, me from Texas, and highschool graduates from fifty nations. Jerry Chang assembled us, charged us to seek Universal Life Values and ways to promote them. For two months in Taiwan I led workshops, Jirka rehearsed them for the concert stage, and Job kept it all together. For another month we toured Southeast Asia, dialoguing and singing values, and forming a new, worldwide community.

I remember that summer. I was sixty-one, and had never traveled

Four months in the Far East surprised me.

1.

I remember I fell in love with the Chinese people.

I felt at home, comfortable,

walked city streets and alleys alone

before daylight and long after dark, unafraid.

I remember they were so ordinary--

mothers taking children to school,

Yuppies rushing to work,

old men in unwashed tee-shirts.

No inscrutable mystery,

mere human beings of different tone and culture.

I remember the variety of the Chinese.

Young lady in Taipei,

clearly Chinese, but taller than I

she strode by, wearing faded blue overalls.

I found faces varied as Americans,

and distinguished a dozen shades of black hair.

I remember they dressed

with more diversity

than Dallas does.

High fashion and hippie,

Asian and American,

school uniforms,

all on same sidewalk.

I remember the colors they wore,

muted hues.

Beige, mauve, taupe, tinted grays,

and everywhere pale grayed jade.

I remember the food.

Asia deports bad cooks.

I=m sure of it.

Unexceptional variety and excellence

followed me all the days of summer.

2.

I remember--before they came--

we stayed at the Empress Hotel.

The China Post under the door by 6:00 a.m.

I ordered Chinese breakfast,

almost every day.

Fish soup, steamed turnips, strange bits of pickles,

egg over easy, rice,

a plate of crispy little fishes

the size of a kitchen match--

one big eye shining--

chopsticks, and Oolong tea.

I remember we stayed three weeks in the Academia Sinica,

east edge of Taipei,

earthquake the first hour,

5.1 they said.

Small Chinese farms outside my fourth-floor window,

roosters before daylight,

a later earthquake

shook me from sleep

middle of the night.

I remember two weeks at the New Jade Valley

Resort and Convention Center.

Cook=s pride, his breads.

He made deliberate leftovers,

snacks for sixty all day long.

From our rooms

to lecture and rehearsal hall

one hundred steps

up and down

steep mountainside.

I remember in Manila

the Gilarmi Apartments.

Much older, darker,

with hint of dirt.

Guards at the entryway

held shotguns at ready,

smiled and greeted us always.

Thailand=s boast:

Athe land of smiles,@

but Bangkok revealed the rudest

people of the summer.

Manila was the city of smiles,

even from armed guards.

I remember that clearly.

I remember the Arcadia Hotel in Indonesia.

Fire extinguisher message,

in English, directed us:

AIn case of fire, light the extinguisher.@

I remember I was the only one

provided a private room wherever we went.

Asia honors old teachers.

3.

I remember we filled two buses

with hours of laughter, stories, and sleep.

We lived on the bus.

I remember with tight schedules

we often ate on the bus,

fast food--exotic Asia.

Macdonald=s, the staple food of Asia?

I remember Bangkok, world=s worst traffic,

we rode to a school at 5:00 a.m.

in an easy thirty minutes.

The 3:00 p.m. return took four hours.

Creep forty yards, then stop ten minutes.

Plenty of time to savor the city

and afternoon street life.

I remember the night in Manila,

On the buss after concert, Georges

commandeered microphone, and

impersonated the staff.

We laughed, Piedad uncontrollably.

He began to imitate me, but not long.

Later I learned someone pointed to the front, and whispered,

AHe=s on this bus.@

I remember the night Nahed,

sixteen year-old Palestinian

girl, sat with me as we crossed Seoul

on Hyundai bus.

She was our youngest, yet

mature, intelligent, and intense,

but so uneasy.

APlain, ordinary little Palestinian girl,@ she cried.

ANo, Nahed, not at all.

You think, care, and speak with head and heart.

You one day will lead@

I remember we rode from Bangkok south

three hours to the Burma border,

returned later in the day.

I lay in the back seat, both trips, flat on my back,

sick, Adon=t move,@ eyes covered, nausea.

I remember that ride.

4.

I remember we went to the largest church

in the world--

seven or eight hundred thousand members--

Seoul, Korea.

Six cellos in the orchestra,

at least six choices of language

to select on the headphones, .

They fed hundreds a good meal.

That=s my main memory.

I remember the next Sunday,

little Baptist church

I attended alone,

entire service in Chinese,

God=s love warmly shared.

I remember Fram Jihanger introduced me

in huge warehouse auditorium in Jakarta

where a charismatic group expanded.

Crudely groomed young American pastor,

offensive style--

and the Spirit spoke

to me, clearly,

in a known tongue.

I remember often we held our own services.

I found contemporary Christian music

universal among the young.

5.

I remember drinking java in Jakarta one evening.

Live music, three Chinese cowboys wailed,

ABlue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining.@

Exotic Java.

I remember on the Burma border

our project in small Thai village.

The colonel who commanded the Thai Border Patrol

listened to our songs,

smiled, clapped,

and asked permission to sing

ADanny Boy.@

Exotic Thailand.

I remember Hong Kong, our whole group singing,

AI can=t help falling in love with you.@

Shalom caught my eye,

crossed the room, and took my hands.

Others evaporated while old man

and Zimbabwean granddaughter sang,

ATake my heart,

take my whole life through, but I can=t help . . . .@

I remember that.

I remember haunting mezzo-soprano,

acapella, singing,

AGo and leave me if you wish to.@

Deirdre, County Limerick,

left us four days later.

An Irish mother in critical condition

needed a daughter.

And she sang as she walked away.

The lady had class.

I remember Tshepo Ntsala--bass--

so slowly intoning, APraise, praise,

praise the Lord.

Praise God=s holy name, hallelujah,@

while Lindirabe, Shalom, Marlene,

and Ndondo danced.

Alfred, Baffoe, Sebilu, and Isaya joined them.

Tempo picked up,

high-pitched African warbles punctuated Tshepo=s praise,

overtook it, and suddenly introduced

ecstasy to the entire assembly.

I remember two weeks at the Taipei Fortuna Hotel.

Piano player in lobby late at night

played Aour@ song--

mine and Carol=s from forty-five years ago--

AThey tried to tell us we=re too young.@

I remember Mitcy and Felipe arrived two days late,

as we rehearsed APraise, praise, . . . .@

When they entered our practice hall, the forty-eight

began a march, encircling them,

continuing to smile and sing,

APraise God=s holy name, hallelujah.@

Although late arrivals,

they felt our love and acceptance.

I remember we flew Singapore Airlines

serenaded passengers and crew with,

ASingapura, oh Singapura, pretty island set in the sea.@

I remember we sang all summer--

on concert stage, in buses,

hotel hallways, hospitals,

and in prison:

ALove in any language,

straight from the heart.@

Our signature.

6.

I remember time alone, not often.

Alone in seven of

the world=s most densely populated cities.

I remember one evening, alone in a restaurant,

I wanted fish,

So I took pencil and paper,

and drew its picture--

best fish ever I tasted.

I remember one night in China,

in a Burmese restaurant,

I chose Vietnamese rice.

I remember in Hong Kong mall,

I looked down and read the label

on my can of geranium tea,

looked up

and the group was gone.

Alone in a sea of Chinese figures,

I was lost, near panic

for two minutes of eternity,

and then I saw Jules.

I remember brisk autumnal drizzle as

I walked Korean park.

Japanese Red Maples turning color.

I relaxed.

Rare opportunity

I sat and wrote in journal..

And I remembered Carol,

and I remembered I had a return ticket to Texas.

I boarded China Airlines

and came home.

Vulnerable Vases

For years I have been amazed that people watch television. I don’t know where they find the time. I must have an overabundance of interests and ambitions, because I have been unable to organize my life well enough to have time for them all, and I’m not ready to abandon my impossible dreams. I certainly can’t find time to watch, on tv, someone else live their virtual life. Thus, most of the things I have projected and begun, are seriously neglected. Julie Morgenstern’s Four D method of dealing with the overwhelming has been helpful, but I don’t want to delete, I have already delayed so much that I am continually finding the forgotten, decayed, and disintegrated. I do delegate more and still more, yet in the overall picture, I delegate only a small portion of my life. My life is mine. I don’t want to delegate it to someone else. The fourth D, I’ve made my peace with. I have lowered my expectations and diminished my visions to fit reality. Almost. With this introduction, now I get specific. A year or two ago, my yard, I was told, reminded everyone of Sanford and Son (I used to watch a little TV). I was gathering material and preparing ground for a total remake of my conventional lawn into a Native Plant Landscape. I know where I am headed with it, and am making real progress in the front yard. But to some of my neighbors, I suppose it still looks like Jed Clamped and all his kin have moved into this nice neighborhood. The backyard, however, looks more like Pa Kettle’s place. This evening as I was locking gates and shutting my little flock of banties into their coop, the thought struck me: “What if I were to drop dead before I get it all uncluttered, landscaped, and planted? Would the family attempt to restore social order, or would they throw up their hands and hire someone to come in, haul it all off, level the ground, and sod it afresh with St. Augustine grass and socially correct shrubbery?” I realized that it would be completely unfair for me to die, leaving it all in this condition for them to deal with. And, although I am in excellent health, I am at an age where human bodies fall apart unexpectedly. It is happening to more and more of my friends. I am aware I am not exempt. I will not be the exception. In 1975 I took up pottery, traditional pottery, hand-thrown on the potter’s wheel, fired in a flaming kiln. I enjoyed every aspect of it, from digging and mixing my own clay, my own glazes, forming it on the wheel, firing it long hours in the kiln, then, after admiring some and throwing out my disappointments, I sold a little and gave away 99% of the best I made. I’ve often regretted I didn’t keep more, but I am glad it is in the hands of people who can enjoy it. I’ve kept and enjoyed a vase that I made in 1976. With recent renovation in my retreat, I set it on a shelf on the back porch. Apart from breakage, pottery has an incredible life expectancy: at least thousands of years. Apart from breakage, yes, but that has always been the fate of most pottery. Pottery is brittle; it is fragile. With my eyes on the inexcusable chaos of the back yard and thoughts of the unfairness of a sudden death on my part, I opened the back door to come in for the night. As I opened the door, I bumped something that was mislocated–like almost everything else in that area–and heard things begin falling. I turned and looked down. The thirty-one-year-old vase lay in shattered disarray. That easily, that suddenly and unexpectedly, it was gone. Immediately I became even more keenly aware of the fragility of human life. It could happen to me. I try to live by Naomi Shihab Nye’s advice: Walk around feeling like a leaf Know you could tumble any second Then decide what to do with your time I made pottery for only about ten years before it was diminished in my schedule and delayed until I now keep thinking I will just delete that joyous element of my world. The pot tonight was one of the last I made with my own hands and thought. I understand that Paul of Tarsus, responding to challenges from a dysfunctional church in Corinth, was talking about something different when he said, “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” but his words also apply to the precious treasure of human life. Life is another treasure in earthen vessels. Some of us already are cracked pots, but we all will go the way my thirty-one-year-old vase did this evening. Evening is coming; for some of us it is already dusk. Know you could tumble like a leaf any second, then consider whether you have time for that addictive electronic, brain-numbing, time-stealing tube over there in front of the couch.

Correction

In the recent blog, "Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?" I named Chloe as a deacon. Should have written Phoebe. Chloe was another woman who apparently was a leader of some magnitude in the church at Corinth, but is not identified as a deacon. Check Romans 16:1, and 1 Corinthians 1:11.

Snot

The only person, the only face, the only name I can remember from my first two years in school was a second-grader I often walked to school with, a hare-lipped boy we all knew only as “Snotnose.” Sadly, the name always fit. Of course we all at times have suffered from that condition, but with him it was a constant. One of my own snotty discoveries came after I began working: plowing, mowing or raking hay, mixing feed by the ton, unloading semi-truck loads of porously sacked blood meal, and other tasks that filled the air with dusty pollutants. Blowing and cleaning out my nose at the end of the day, It took only a few of those experiences before I came to see the function of snot. That black stuff that emerged educated me. Snot is not an obscene topic. It is merely mucus. Think of them as synonyms, which they are. Snot simply refers to the stuff in the snout. Check a dictionary; check an etymological dictionary. In polite society we find one term–snot--objectionable; if we study human physiology, we find the stuff itself–mucus--indispensable. In its pure state, this slime, in cooperation with the hairs in our nose, functions as a filtering vacuum cleaner to provide our lungs with clean inspiration. As we inhale, mucus traps and hold in the vacuum bag–the nose–much of the pollution that contaminates the air in every breath we take: dust, pollen, airborne germs, and other assorted detritus that drifts full-time through the atmosphere. When we exhale, the vacuum bag tends to empty its dirty accumulation. If the buildup begins to clog the system, we typically turn the power up a few notches for a more vigorous exhalation to blow the now contaminated snot out. Thus our lungs are protected and our health body maintains its homeostasis. What would we do without snot? This structure, the nose, stands guard over the lungs (and by implication, the body; by further implication our very self), but the guardhouse is not 100% effective. Sometimes the airborne invaders overwhelm it and infections of varied types attack the system--perhaps the most common intruder is the common cold. From the battleground on which the invaders and our immune system combat each other, many of the wounded and dead wind up overloading the limited storage space the guardhouse provides. On top of the miseries we already suffer from infection, we find ourselves with breathing problems. The intonation of our speech changes. If in public, we are embarrassed as people see us shift our breathing to a makeshift vacuum cleaner, the mouth–sans hairs, equipped rather with teeth, thus not as effective in trapping whatever foul invaders may take the occasion to advance their attack. With the nose overloaded with used up snot, we take action and blow the garbage out so the good mucus can get back on the job full-time. And, we move more closely into our comfort zone. I am writing such an essay because it is an exercise suggested by Bonni Goldberg in her book, Room to Write. This exercise was designed to facilitate a less inhibited approach to writing. I suspect that, for me, it will work. To use T. B. Maston’s applicable phrase, are there any “abidingly relevant principles” that emerge from this brief essay on bodily slime? I think there are. If time and purpose allowed, we might note the other many assorted elements with which the body protects itself, and the half-dozen or so systems with which the body rids itself of used up, useless matter, or substances that threaten our health. Moreover, we might find it adventurous to study the ubiquity and function of mucus in places beyond the nose. I am interested just now, however, in what analogies we might adapt from the foregoing essay. We live in a social atmosphere in which monstrous pollution, garbage, filth, and toxicity is unavoidable. Television is high on the list, but the list is long. We need guard towers, we need protective filters (soul mucus), or we will be–we are being–destroyed. But even with the best of protection, at times our complex of defenses is inevitably overwhelmed. Our soul becomes a battleground. Not only do we need a strong and effective immune system to rally and defeat the intruders, we similarly must develop and maintain an active and efficient elimination system or systems. Day and night, week by week, if we are alert, we become aware that our mind, heart, spirit–whatever–is stopped up or is becoming clogged up with stuff that has been used up and no longer of value, stuff that was useless to begin with, stuff that threatens our entire being with its toxicity. Part of a psychic guard station/vacuum cleaning/filtering system by learning where pollution is severe and intentionally avoiding these danger zones, to the degree that is possible. Take lessons from Thoreau’s, Walden, Scott and Helen Nearing’s, Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Listen to the Psalmist, “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.” Embed things into our character that automatically screen out pollution because they are part of who we have become. Such character traits will, like the mucus and hairs in our nose work without any need of conscious effort on our part. This only begins to suggest ways to filter out the garbage that our society systematically offers us as food. Each will have to develop systems that are appropriate to who they are, but develop them we must, or multiple infections will destroy us; our life will stumble down a degenerative hill. A second step toward spiritual, mental health is to excrete all of this stuff that jams up the plumbing of our spiritual anatomy. Sometimes, like the blowing of the nose, it requires forceful, even violent expulsion. If our spirit is healthy, much of this will be done unconsciously, much as the body secretes wastes through sweat. But we also need to maintain the sensitive awareness of the daily alien intrusions and develop habits of regular daily elimination of all the junk that obstructs or threatens our well-being. Otherwise, mental and spiritual constipation will provide a perfect setup for misery. A few methods of excretion occur to me immediately; I’m sure will come to me later. Talk with someone–trusted friend, professional counselor, God–about the trash that is clogging up your life flow. That can make a beginning, at least, of getting it out of your system. Somewhere years ago I heard the idea of “the expulsive power of a new affection.” Can something be found that is interesting enough and powerful enough to take over the space and thus expel the enemy agents that have gained a beachhead in your mind? One lesson learned from snot is that at times there are things that must be eliminated from our life or it can become mighty miserable. What has our scrutiny of snot attained? It has established that we need to learn more about the mental and spiritual defensive structures that can filter out the pollutants that fill our individual and social environment. If these structures are to do their job, regular and careful maintenance is necessary. We need to identify and become more aware of the importance of our several systems of elimination. We must understand how they work so we can regularly rid ourselves of all the crap that inescapably accumulates in our lives. Thinking about snot is not a waste of time.

Hearing God While Reading the Bible

Today during Ed’s funeral, we learned that the greatest single word of assurance for him came from John 14:1-3, specifically: “I go to prepare a place for you. . . .” When God spoke directly, personally to Ed as long ago he read those words, he heard God saying: "I go to prepare a place for you.” Ed had felt alone in the world prior to that life-changing moment; there was no place where he felt that he fit. But when the risen Jesus spoke clearly to him of “ a place for you,” he knew that there was a place already prepared for him, just him, a place waiting that no one else could occupy. After that word from God, any time he felt a question about his standing with God, he went back to that personal word from God. But we know the setting in which these words were spoken by the historical Jesus. Knowing that he was facing death, knowing that his close disciples felt as if they were about to be abandoned, Jesus assured them that they should not be disturbed, because although he was about to die, he was going to prepare a place for them, so that at the appropriate time they could join him in a prepared place. These words were addressed directly to the few special disciples. They were not addressed to the multitudes. These words weren’t given as a generic message of comfort and hope. How can we appropriate these words, believing that God speaks them personally to an individual in the 21st Century? Can biblical hermeneutics answer out question? Hermeneutics is all about interpretation: methods, principles, practice. It intends to help us understand the true meaning of a written passage. At the heart of hermeneutics is the concept of exegesis, which is the effort to extract from the text only what is in the text. Exegesis is to be contrasted with eisegesis, which is the practice of reading our own ideas into the text. Careful use of the principles of exegesis give us an objective, we might even say scientific, understanding of what a text is saying in truth. Eisegesis is a subjective reading that can read almost anything into a text; it has no objective constraints. Standard practice in schools of theological training stresses exegesis as the only dependable pathway to biblical truth. Eisegesis is frowned on. For long years I lived under the control of these ideas. However, I’ve come to realize that exegesis alone is not sufficient, perhaps not even necessary to hear God speak through the written holy script. Exegesis, in all its dimensions, de-finites meaning only in the literal sense of definition, that is, it sets the boundaries of meaning, and that is all it can do. It indicates where the fences are. A fence, a wall, a border, knows not the content, intent, or portent of what it confines. Sometimes exegesis cannot completely fence in meaning. Sometimes meaning jumps fences, breaks them down, slips through the border guards. Sometimes the borders are permeable or semipermeable. At other times the fences have gates, built-in gates through which meaning finds or achieves greater freedom. “The letter kills; the spirit frees.” Nor do any principles of interpretation dictate or clearly delineate meaning. Certainly hermeneutical principles cannot provide objective, indisputable, comprehensive understanding, much less insight or direct communication. Hermeneutics exists only as a faithful servant to be called only occasionally, as needed. None of this is to denigrate exegetical, hermeneutical principles and methods. However, occasionally the need arises to remind servants of their station, to put them back in their place. Servants are not masters. Consciously or not, deliberately or not, one theme of history is that servants tend to forget who they are, or reject their status and usurp the authority of their mistress or master (Mark 12:1-12). Principles of interpretation, the work of exegesis, the learning of the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic languages and perhaps other Semitic languages are all of value. To repeat, the vocabulary, etymology, grammar, and syntax of a language guard against subjectivism, but the guard–like the servant–is not the Lord. I cannot overemphasize the respect I have for all these objective tools, but they must be kept firmly in their place. I remember the manager of a nationally prominent Angus Cattle Farm in Tulsa, Oklahoma back in the 1950s. He had brought his prize cattle to show–and win–in the International Livestock Show in Chicago. After getting the cattle and hired help (read, “servants”) settled in, he checked into a nice downtown hotel. The manager, Earl, was inconsiderate, wrong, and extremely rude to the bellhop who carried his luggage for him to his room. The bellhop, expecting a tip, extended his hand, palm up. Earl dismissed him abruptly with a curt: “I don’t shake hands with the help,” then turned to the task of unpacking and settling into his room. In recounting this occasion, I have not intended that we should adopt and project Earl’s attitude toward the “help.” I reviewed this scene as one way to emphasize that the “help,” the “servant,” always holds a place subordinate to a superior, and must maintain always the subservient place. Formal hermeneutics is subservient to the living Spirit who first inspired these words and would now speak to our own living spirit. I have great respect and appreciation for formal hermeneutics. It has been a needed guard and servant for me, a close companion for most of the past fifty years. Because of my training in a “modern” and conservative theological seminary. I too often allowed it to be the director–even the dictator–of my reading of the Bible. (Clearly, it would rule that Ed did not hear God speak to him in the words of John 14; those words were directed to Jesus’ apostles.) I refer to my “modern” theological training, for although pre-modern–patristic and scholastic–interpreters were not at all hermeneutically unsophisticated, their way of reading the text was quite different from the modern. In the late 20th Century, a postmodern generation also refuses to be fenced in by “formal” rules and boundaries. Postmodern searchers for a scriptural word from God search intently within and without the gate. They are realizing the limits of the exegetical limits on meaning and truth. This diatribe came about as in the wee hours of the morning I drank coffee, ate toast and eggs (from my little silver-laced bantam pullet). As I ate and wrote a letter to one of our daughters, I had The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, open to the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah. At about three o'clock I took a sip of coffee, looked over at the text of the message, and read: “‘There’s hope for your children.’ God’s decree.” I know the occasion of these words, to whom they were addressed, and know that God’s word is not in any one line, or one verse, but lies, rather, in the whole story of the Hebrew Exile. However. . . . When I read, “There’s hope for your children,” this troubled father of sometimes troubled daughters, grandchildren, and great-grand children heard the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God’s powerful presence, speaking words of comfort to my own aching heart. To me, for me, in that moment, the Holy One of God’s covenant community spoke, saying: “There’s hope for your children,” and I gratefully acknowledged and praised God. A few years ago, the Benedictine oblate, Kathleen Norris acquainted me with the ancient idea of lectio divina, which is defined as: An ancient form of meditation on scripture where one reads "very slowly through a text until a word or phrase 'lights' up and attracts the reader. The text is then laid aside and the phrase is repeated in the heart...without analysis." It is: Reading or more exactly, listening to the book we believe to be divinely inspired. In this way we hear the word of God in the scriptures. It is the most ancient method of developing friendship with Christ by using scripture texts as topics of conversation with him. God spoke to his people in Exile, Jesus to his fearful disciples; Jesus to my friend, Ed; and the other morning, to me. Not, the Bible said, or the Bible means, or “we may understand this as God’s word to us.” No, God’s word, that is, God speaking directly, through the written word, Spirit to spirit, divine love to human cry. Lectio divina: words on a page suddenly light up and it is not just a book, not just an inspired text, rather, in that moment we are inspired–in-spirited by the Comforter Jesus promised.

The Need to Change

No matter how good their evidence, the doctors don’t always know. Doctors from three major hospitals told us that Bea had only three to six months to live, so we borrowed a credit card and with three hundred dollars friends had given us, we set out for California for a last visit with Carol’s sister. That was forty-some years ago. Bea died last year (not of cancer). The doctors don’t always know. On the other hand, the doctors usually prove to be right. I had been their pastor only a week or so when I was told that I should visit a very sick young mother who lived on a farm seven miles north of town. I was new and I was young and it seemed to me that Mae more endured than appreciated the pastoral visit. A few weeks later she was in the hospital forty miles away. When I arrived, the lady at the desk directed me to Room 312. A doctor was leaving 312 as I walked down the hall. I asked Mae how she was doing and received the bitter response, “How would you feel? What would you do if the doctor had just told you that you had cancer and only six months left to live, and you had a son who is only six-years-old?” These unexpected words hit me like a slap in the face, but I realized that the doctor’s words had been a far greater blow to her. It was early afternoon when the doctor came to her room and told her. She was alone. Friends and family were home and about their business, and the doctor had not been expecting that I would be arriving. He merely had told her the devastating facts and left her alone, without any available support expected. I was glad I had showed up. We were virtual strangers, but at least I was another human presence, someone she could absorb some of the shock. I had a six-year-old at home myself, and found myself replying to her “What would you do?” question with: “I don’t know, but I think I would spend that six months putting into that son all of myself that I could.” Within a few weeks I conducted her funeral. Whether my word were of any value or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that now, more than forty years later, I still think that would be my most honest answer as to what I would attempt to do. With Bea, the doctors were wrong and our visit of 1963 was not our predicted last time together. We had many good visits in the years that followed. With Mae, the story was different. Her time was up. I was not allowed to become anything other than a stranger. Someone else raised her son: his father, and then later on, a stepmother. Yet another story, more recent, speaks of a different kind of opportunity. Recognizing that she has come to a fork in life’s road, which will she take before death takes her? Will she choose, or merely drift? Again, a young child is involved. For long years the mother has been careless about her own health, to the point that she now realizes her life is at risk. Her fear of death seems to be like that of Mae’s: “What if I were to die and leave this precious child behind?” More to the point, “How selfish and inconsiderate of me if I were to die because I refused to change my way of living, and thus deprived my child of her mother?” In this situation, I responded, as I often do, with the words of an old Russian proverb: “No matter how long you have been traveling the wrong path, turn around.” Bad eating habits, lack of exercise, failure to follow doctor’s instructions, or even to see the doctor as often as needed–no matter how long these have done their damage they all can be turned around. As Carlyle Marney often said, “You don’t have to go on living like you have.” I remember reading somewhere: “Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it.” Most of us have the essential life skills. Many of us, if we stop to think, know what should be done next. Most of our failure most of the time lies in our not doing what we know we should, and what we know how. There is still time for this mother to turn around and move toward a more promising future for mother and child. Most of us realize the need to turn major elements of our life in a new direction. But will we do it?

I Don't Know

For thirty-some years they came into the university ethics class that I taught, most of them twenty to twenty-two-years-old, honors students mostly. On classroom day one, I always announced as a major objective of mine that they leave the course knowing less than they did at the start. They knew right from wrong. I effectively undermined that knowledge, or as I stated it in class, as another objective, I intentionally muddied what they thought were clear waters. This is one of our larger major problems as citizens of the “developed” world: we know too much. Worse yet, we know that we know it all. We don’t live plagued by uncertainties and doubts. That is very scary. There just is not that much in this world that we can know with certainty. There is not. W. T. Conner was perhaps the greatest Baptist theologian of the 20th Century, at least west of the Mississippi. One of his students related that one day in class, a student asked him for his answer to a particularly difficult and controversial point of theology. Dr. Conner responded, “I don’t know.” Whereupon, the young student began to give a full and clear answer to the class and Dr. Conner. The professor interrupted him with, “Mr. ___, I didn’t say, ‘You don’t know the answer,’ I don’t know the answer.” In her 1994 acceptance speech on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wislawa Szymborska spoke of why she valued that little phrase ‘I don’t know’ so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us and the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself, ‘I don’t know’ the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones, and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself, ‘I don’t know,’ she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some . . . highschool. . . . I’ve been in church all my life, am an ordained minister, hold three advanced degrees in theology, and have taught theology for thirty-some years, yet I don’t know–about, for instance, “demons,” “evil spirits,” or whatever. I’ve read and heard just about everything others think or know or think they know, and I understand their reasoning. But I don’t know what they are all about. I do know that whatever they are, in the gospel stories, they were the cause of suffering unspeakable. Those possessed by demons did not live a life of comfort and ease. In a core sense of the word, they were dis-eased. What I do know about them is that Jesus had power over them, and had the power and compassion to heal those under the bondage to these dis-eases of the spirit. That only touches the surface of what I don’t know biblically or theologically–my Christian agnosticism.

Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

I don’t know how we get things so mixed up (so confused, is just another way of saying the same thing). “Fuse” simply means “to blend together into one,” and the prefix, “con,” (a variant of “com”) has as one of its major meanings: “together.” Thus, confuse has come to mean: “ to blend together into one, things that don’t properly fit together.” Why and how is it that we so commonly mix together things that don’t belong together? Again, I don’t know the answer. All I know is that we do it. Just now, I’m talking about the ways we confuse things in the Bible, which, when we do, inevitably makes an unholy mess of our religion: both our thoughts about it and our practice of it. More particularly, just now, I’m considering our confusion of women and the Christian ministry, and later, the confusion of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. First, some terms can stand clarification. What is a preacher, what an apostle, and what a deacon? One of the two primary words from Greek New Testament that we use to translate as preacher literally means, “One who carries a message of good news, one who announces good news.” “Apostle” literally means, “one commissioned and sent to carry an official message.” The Greek word we translate–actually transliterate–as deacon means, ”servant.” Now, to the specific confusions. According to the Bible, Mary of Magdala was the first to see, as well as the first to speak to Jesus after his death, burial and subsequent live appearance. Jesus told her (commissioned) to go (sent) and tell The Eleven (no longer the Twelve, Judas having been lost) that he had been raised and would meet with them. By clear word meaning, this makes Mary Magdalene one of Jesus’ apostles, even though the word itself is not used in the text. She also is, by clear word meaning, a preacher, in fact, the first preacher of the good news of the resurrection of Jesus. She is, as some early Christian writers acknowledged, “the apostle to the apostles,” and, under the direct order (ordination?) of Jesus, she is a Christian preacher. Perhaps Christian women should be holding meetings to consider whether men should be ordained to Christian ministry. After all, the men had run away, defeated, discouraged, and ready to revert to their old life. When Mary related to them the gospel of the resurrection, they were unbelievers; they paid her no mind. Except for subsequent cultural developments, there is no reason that women should not be included in, and ordained to the Christian ministry. Now to deacons. The woman, Phoebe, is identified by Paul as a “deacon.” The Greek words used to identify Phoebe is, in the New Testament, always translated, “deacon.” Except when they refer to her! Although the original text of the Bible calls her deacon, the translators almost universally use “servant” in the Phoebe passage, with no word of explanation for the word change. Clearly, the word does mean servant, but when it refers to men, the translators uniformly transliterate rather than translate the Greek, diakonos, as deacon. Again, cultural developments after the 1st Century seem to have caused Phoebe to be re-designated. Several more reasons could be adduced for routinely including women in Christian ministry, and perhaps on another occasion I will relate those. My more direct interest in this blog is to clear up the long-standing con-fusion of Mary the Magdalene and “prostitute.” Again, for cultural reasons and from an early date, Mary was identified as a converted prostitute. I suggest the best way for you to clear this mix-up is to read each of the New Testament passages that refer to Mary Magdalene by name. Other, unnamed, women often have been identified, by mere assumption, as “Mag” (I play loosely with her name only because I have an aunt named Magdalene, and the family usually calls her, “Mag”). There is no evidence at all that any of these unnamed women actually were Mary.

Me Again Once More

I’ve been retired for eleven months. Major life transition. I had no idea how much “catch-up” there was to be done after decades of more or less benign neglect. I retired May 12, 2006 and was certain I would have everything caught up and organized by July 15. Then I could devote serious time to writing. After July 15, I realized it might take as much as six months. When December came, I was on the verge of despair, but pulled back from that destructive mood. I now realized that I could not define the time required to bring a new order into my life, so I relaxed, decided to “go with the flow.” “Don’t worry, be happy.” However, the eight-ten weeks lapse in blogging nagged at my happiness. Now, neither completely caught up, nor solidly restructured, I do believe I have cleared a path wide enough and smooth enough that I can renew serious blogging. By my retirement anniversary, May 12, I have good reason to believe that I will have successfully made the transition from university professor to professor emeritorious. The continuity between these two parts of the book of my life is that I continue to be “He who provokes thought, who challenges the status quo.” That is about all that I am good for, except maintaining a faithful and richly satisfying relationship with Carol, a love that has been running now ever since the summer of 1950. If you want a challenge, an adventure, try to match that. It is more than worth all the effort.