Fundamentalism | Questioning the Answers

Talking Serpents, Flaming Chariots

June 11, 2014 By admin Leave a Comment

A little over a week ago, I found myself pushing the couches together in response to a last-minute request from my kids for “the boat,” a term that originally referred to the formation of the couches themselves, but that has since taken on its own meaning as a complete overnight experience with dad, the kids, and the dog. We climbed in and had a blast being silly, eating lots of caramel corn, and watching Finding Nemo.

The film had us all in stitches. It had been many years since I’d seen it and, although I remembered the humor, I was struck by some of its themes: namely the need to trust, surrender, and stop living in the safety of our constructed worlds for fear of what lies on the outside.

These things were far more relevant than when I’d previously seen the movie and they resonated deeply as I reflected on the recent years of my life. Never once did I minimize the power of the messages because Nemo, Dory, and Marlin are characters in a fictional story.

It got me reflecting on a conversation I had a few years ago. I was wrestling with some things in my spiritual life and the “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” bumper-sticker approach to a life of faith had long ceased making sense to me.

I was discussing some of the odd stories in the Bible with an extremely well-educated and successful man and he made a peculiar comment. He said “If there wasn’t an actual talking snake in an actual garden, we may as well throw the whole Bible out the window, because what good is it?”

Really? Okay, I realize to consider that any given story in the Bible didn’t really happen may bring about some serious uncertainty, but come on. Throw the whole Bible out the window if the snake didn’t actually talk? At the time, I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just didn’t say anything.

This man’s attitude reflects a fairly common theme that I’ve been all too familiar with in the evangelical Christian community. It’s as though somehow the quest to know God and to experience spirituality must be tied to approaching the scriptures as “literal” representations of things that really happened. But do we ever stop to ask why that is?

Why does the truth of the Adam and Eve story hinge on the fact that there was a talking snake or a flaming sword suspended in the sky?

Does the thought-provoking narrative of Job lose its power if it turns out that God didn’t really give Satan permission to go unleash holy terror on Job’s peaceful existence?

And if Jonah didn’t actually spend three days in the belly of a fish, does that somehow cheapen the author’s message that God’s love and acceptance extend beyond the boundaries of tribal thinking? Beyond the mindset of “We’re in and they’re out”?

Stories have incredible power to touch, shape, teach, and even transform us, whether or not they ever “actually happened.” It’s the case for us today – as I witnessed while lounging in the boat watching as Dory implored Marlin to let go and fall into the scary, unknown depths of the whale’s throat – and I’m sure it was equally the case for the ancients, if not more so.

Myths and fanciful tales were how ancient people probed big questions, explained circumstances, and pondered the meaning of things. That’s simply how it was. A casual glance at the ancient creation and flood stories that pre-date the biblical accounts – which unfortunately many Christians don’t even know exist – make it pretty clear that those authors weren’t attempting to document literal history.

And before we write those stories off because they’re not “scripture,” we should acknowledge that the similarities with the later biblical stories make it clear that the biblical authors incorporated elements from these tales. In other words, the authors of the creation and flood accounts found in Genesis took established stories from surrounding cultures and molded them as they saw fit.

The poetic 7-day creation account wasn’t meant to offer scientific explanations or teach dogma to a nation of people. In part, it was to provide these ancients with an understanding of God that was different from what they had been exposed to. “Creation wasn’t the result of their deities warring in the heavens like that other story says; it was the result of our God speaking it into existence.” That kind of thing. God being said to rest on the seventh day doesn’t mean God got tired and needed a nap; it was a symbolic way of legitimating the nation’s existing Sabbath-day practices.

The idea that stories in the Bible are intentionally symbolic or rooted in myth doesn’t have to be scandalous, nor does it have to wage war against our faith. It actually stands to reason. It would be irresponsible to assume the biblical authors wrote in a manner inconsistent with what was common at the time. We may expect modern biographies, history books, and news sources to report “just the facts” – even though we acknowledge that they often don’t – but we shouldn’t approach ancient writings this way, because such expectations would’ve been simply foreign to the people of the day.

But it gets a bit tricky. On the one hand, we have no problem acknowledging the fictional elements in other ancient stories. Heck, often times, we shamelessly point them out and scoff in the process. Yet when it comes to the Bible, things are different. We’re more protective. It becomes oddly uncomfortable – perhaps even scary or threatening – to consider that the story of Jonah didn’t really happen. Because the natural question is where do we draw the line?

If a flaming chariot didn’t descend from the heavens to whisk Elijah away, or the sun didn’t really stand still in the sky until Joshua’s army was done decimating its enemies, does that open the door to the possibility that Jesus wasn’t actually born of a virgin? Of course it does. We don’t have to automatically make that leap, but there is a slippery slope that needs to be navigated.

And since most of us prefer the certainty of a sure footing, we try desperately to avoid the slope altogether (I’ve been there).

This is probably why some Christians believe that the devil planted fossils in order to trick us into believing evolution. Because for some people, if the earth is more than 6,000 years old, they’ve suddenly been shoved out onto the slippery slope. And if Adam and Eve weren’t two historical people who started the entire human race, what does that do to our worldview?

And so we become bent on proving the Bible is true (meaning that it all really happened). Or proving the Bible isn’t true, as some do. But people on both sides are barking up the wrong tree.

I’ve come to believe that “Did it really happen?” is simply the wrong question. Approaching the Bible in such a way is the wrong approach. And trying to prove or disprove it is futile and misses the point.

There’s much more to be said about all of this and I’ll explore it more later, but I’m pretty sure the original audience of the Adam and Eve story would never have considered throwing the scroll out the window if there wasn’t really a talking snake.

After all, if there wasn’t a talking snake – in fact, if none of the aforementioned stories actually happened – would God cease to be God?

And if so, perhaps the more pressing question is what kind of God are we talking about?

People Are Dying

May 27, 2014 By admin Leave a Comment

A while back, I was reading an online article and the author was going off on a Christian anti-gay tirade. It wasn’t a “God hates fags” tirade, but a tirade nonetheless, laced with plenty of insistence on the Bible’s clear teaching.

I’m not sure what about this particular article on this particular day brought me to this point, but I got pretty worked up, thinking to myself “People are dying! Gay people are dying! They’re turning to drugs and alcohol and they’re committing suicide, often because the Christian community is telling them in one form or another that their sexual orientation isn’t okay. And they’re dying!”

I was surprised by how intense my reaction was. And after settling down from what felt like my own tirade, I started to wonder if I was just overreacting and blowing it completely out of proportion.

And I thought about my own church and how delicately and maturely I think it has handled the issue of homosexuality, not trying to push anything as controversial as reparative therapy and not labeling gay people or making them feel inferior. Not promising that if you just pray hard enough God will change your sexual orientation. And always coming from a standpoint of “this doesn’t define you and it doesn’t affect how God feels about you.”

Sure, there are exceptions. People sometimes make insensitive comments. People can make absolutely asinine comparisons, saying things like “Well it may be in my nature to be prideful, but that doesn’t make it okay” (insert eye-rolling emoticon here). And I actually had to get up and walk out of a sermon once when a great-hearted, amazing young man asserted with great zeal that God says it’s detestable for two men to lie together. (Note to self: don’t get sidetracked here by talking about how God also says it’s detestable to eat shrimp.)

So yes, there are exceptions. But, by and large, the issue is handled with grace and tact and love and compassion.

Of course, it’s still treated as a sin, so people with same-sex attractions need to be okay with a lifetime of celibacy if they’re not interested in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. After all, my church has never been one to compromise when it comes to the clear teaching of the Bible (it’s that “ultimate truth” thing I talked about previously). And for most of my Christian life, I never understood how a church could possibly be accepting of any form of homosexual relationships.

In fact, when I was a young, overly zealous Christian, I was in Chicago on a business trip with about eight others who had come from different cities. One of the men was gay and he was a Christian. Of course, in my mind, he couldn’t have been a true Christian. And I was stunned to hear that his church’s congregation consisted predominantly of gay and lesbian people. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. (Yes, I was young and somewhat naive, but keep in mind this was also a long time ago and homosexuality was much more taboo at the time than it is now.)

Needless to say, he and I had some intense and heated exchanges. They were totally civil and there were never any personal attacks, but they were heated nonetheless. At least on my end they were. In retrospect, he was strangely calm and at peace and he didn’t seem at all bent on changing my point of view.

We waded through several scriptures in an engaging debate of sorts. Some of his explanations were fairly well backed up, but others seemed entirely spurious to me at the time. Finally, I pointed out that all those passages didn’t really matter, because the apostle Paul clearly says that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. Issue settled. Case closed.

His response? “We believe that we will.”

I’m pretty sure my blood pressure went through the roof after such a ridiculous comment. In my mind, I was screaming “Who cares what you believe?!?! That’s not what the Bible says!”

My intentions were genuine. And so was my zeal. But time, experience, and reflection all have a way of changing our understanding and perspective – if we’re receptive. If we’ll consider the fact that God may actually be trying to move us in a new direction.

I think about the intentions and zeal of those who are currently upholding the church’s traditional stance on homosexuality – at least when it’s done with love and compassion and doesn’t involve people carrying around “God hates fags” signs. And I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that people are genuine. They desire to do what they believe is right in the eyes of God and to uphold the clear teaching of the Bible.

But I’ve gotten to a point where I think phrases like “clear teaching of the Bible” can be hugely problematic, for many reasons.

For example, I really think it would behoove us all to consider that hundreds of years ago when Galileo put forth that the earth was not the center of a three-tiered universe, the well-meaning church tried him for going against the authority of the scriptures and twisting them to fit his own agenda. The church then deemed him a heretic and would’ve had him put to death if he hadn’t recanted. Even after he did recant, he still had to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.

Can you even imagine? And all because he wanted to tell people that the sun didn’t revolve around the earth? What difference does that make, anyway?

The problem is, this Galileo example is so patently absurd to us that people will say “But homosexuality is different.” I have a couple things to say about that.

First, Galileo’s unfortunate situation was anything but absurd at the time. It was a thing. And clearly a very big thing. Because it brought into question the very understanding of truth as thought to be defined by the scriptures. And that can feel scary and dangerous.

Where I come from, we warn of the dangers of twisting the scriptures to fit one’s own agenda. And that’s precisely what the church thought Galileo was doing. He was charged with “glozing the said scriptures according to (his) own meaning,” and thus putting forth a teaching that was “contrary to the Holy Scriptures.”

Secondly, yes, the issue of homosexuality is different than our planet’s location in the universe. When we say it’s different, though, we mean it’s more serious. We say things like “It’s a salvation issue.” The implication is that we’re playing around with eternity in hell and so it’s not to be taken lightly. I get it.

But I also think we make a lot of assumptions around that view and base it largely on Paul’s assertion that homosexuals won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Personally, I’ve come to believe that what Paul and many of his contemporaries defined as the kingdom of God was far different than what a lot of Christians today think the kingdom is. And with all due respect for one of the greatest contributors to the New Testament, Paul didn’t always know what he was talking about (I realize such a comment might be controversial, so I’ll discuss it in another post).

Meanwhile, I’ll put forth that the church likely did see the situation with Galileo as a salvation issue. It’s certainly not out of the question, given the intense reaction and the claim that his teachings were “contrary to the true sense and authority of the Holy Scriptures.”

Typically, when I’ve considered issues throughout history where the church and many Bible believers were ultimately shown to be wrong in their use of the scriptures – the Galileo debacle is merely one of many – my tendency has been to assume that if I’d been around at the time, I would’ve had the proper understanding of the Bible. Sure, the church as an institution may have been jacked up and clearly “majoring in the minors,” but I wouldn’t have been. I would’ve been on the side that, over time, came out on the right side of the issue. In other words, I would’ve been standing up for Galileo all along. Or the slaves. Or the Jewish people. Or the African Americans. Or…

After all, who doesn’t like to be right, right?

Well, I’m no longer going to assume I wouldn’t have been holding dogmatically to a “biblically based” position that would ultimately fall by the wayside as time marched on and people evolved in their understanding of what was right or true. I now realize that such an assumption would require an embarrassing level of arrogance on my part. And this is partly why I no longer think that what I’ve historically believed to be true about homosexuality “in God’s eyes” is actually right.

As far as it being a salvation issue – the implication being that anyone in a homosexual relationship is at risk of spending eternity in hell – maybe we should consider the hell that’s being created here and now for the affected people.

Maybe we should consider that our current Bible – in most Christian denominations, anyway – consists of 66 books, composed over the course of nearly a thousand years and yet, when taken as a whole, there are very few references to what we call eternity, let alone our typical, modern understanding of salvation, heaven, and hell. (I’ve become fascinated lately with the evolution of Christianity and how it seems that it was only over time that a primary focus on the afterlife emerged).

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So was I overreacting to the anti-gay tirade I mentioned earlier? I don’t think so. People are dying. And many more are experiencing extreme pain, suffering, and turmoil because of dogmatic beliefs – either their own or those of others – that in the grand scheme of things could very well be as irrelevant as the understanding of our planet’s location in the universe.

We may be tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the Galileo misfortune, but I’m pretty sure no one was laughing back then.

Maybe there’s something we can learn by looking at the mistakes that have been made throughout the history of Christianity and humbly considering that we likely would’ve been on the wrong side of those issues as well, all the while quoting our Bibles to prove our position.

Cognitive Dissonance, Anyone?

May 21, 2014 By admin 1 Comment

Over the last few years, I’ve been amazed at some of the things I’ve learned about how our brains work. The incredible abilities they have to process and sort and prioritize and filter. The instrumental role they play in our health and the power they have to help us heal.

In and of themselves, these things aren’t earth shattering or entirely new concepts to me. But it’s been particularly interesting to consider some of the things through spiritual lenses; namely through the lenses of Christianity.

Two things in particular have stood out to me. The first has to do with the documented evidence about the benefits of meditation. Things like how it reduces stress and increases our ability to focus. It allows us to deal with challenging situations and can help modify our behavior for the better. And the time we “sacrifice” to spend in meditation is gained back exponentially because of how much more focused, healthy, effective, and at peace we are.

What’s been particularly striking to me, though, is the fact that studies have shown that meditation actually activates the part of our brain that’s tied to compassion. And to take it a step further, studies also show that compassion is linked to happiness, contentment, and fulfillment. So if we make meditation a regular part of our lives, we’re more likely to help others and be happier.

The reason I find this so interesting is because it shows us that good actually lies at the very core of who we are and who we were designed to be. Sure, we may struggle to tap into it, but it’s there. That may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but it is to me. And that’s because I’ve spent most of my life living within a Christian story that in many ways says the exact opposite. It’s a story that emphasizes a fall. And with this fall, sin came into the world and effectively ruined everything.

Now I don’t think many people would deny that we invite all kinds of garbage into our lives and make destructive decisions that ultimately cut us off from experiencing the fullness of our humanity. But what we hear quite commonly within Christianity is that God had to go to extreme measures to deal with the sin problem. To pay the price for our shortcomings. We hear that without the sacrifice of Jesus, we’re not worthy to enter God’s presence.

Indeed, in the Christian story, we are often told that the only reason God can look at us at all is because he sees the blood of Jesus rather than seeing the stained, sinful people that we truly are at our very core. I’ve lost count of the number of times over the years I’ve heard that, without Jesus, we’re actually enemies of God. This is a disturbingly familiar theme, one that’s partly due to the NIV’s thoughtful mistranslation of the Greek text from Romans 5.

So in this story, we somehow went from being given the breath of life and pronounced “good” to being objects of God’s wrath. To reinforce this idea, we have occasional stories throughout the scriptures where God is shown to strike people dead for various reasons. We have priests taking extreme measures in the Old Testament to ensure they weren’t struck dead due to their “unholiness” when they entered the temple.

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And for a bit of extra color, we throw in stories about how a rope would get tied around the priest’s waist so if God did strike him dead the others could pull the dead body out from a safe distance without risking their own lives. Sure, the rope story is likely an urban legend, but it shows the ideas of God that have permeated Christianity for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

What does all of this say about God? Or perhaps more importantly, what does it say about us?

All of this leads into the second thing that stood out to me, which involves how our brains get wired. It goes something like this. As our brains get exposed to something over and over, they establish neural pathways. In other words, they get hardwired.

And once that happens, an auto filter process kicks in. The brain welcomes anything that lines up with the ideas or beliefs that are already in place as part of the hard wiring. But anything that conflicts with the established wiring merely gets discarded. It just goes out the window. And it’s all done automatically, requiring no conscious effort on our part. This is precisely why it’s so hard to teach an old dog new tricks, so to speak.

Here’s what’s fascinating to me about all of this. It means that it’s entirely possible for the disturbing elements of the Christian story to get so deeply embedded into our subconscious minds that the elements of the story that are supposed to breathe life into us get auto filtered and subsequently tossed out the window. And we don’t even realize it.

We can hear “God is a loving, merciful God,” but if our brains have a neural pathway that says “God kills people for lying,” then our brains open the window and toss “God is loving” right outside. At a subconscious level, it’s as though we never even heard “God is a loving, merciful God.” Think about that for a minute.

We can hear “You are valuable to God,” but if the brain is hard wired with “…but only because Jesus died on the cross to keep God from having to unleash his wrath against you,” well… you get the point.

Now I realize these examples might seem a little extreme. And I fully acknowledge that many – if not most – Christians probably have healthy Christian-related neural pathways in their brains (I certainly hope they do). But what about the people who don’t? There’s no denying that we all process and internalize things differently. And much of that has to do with our backgrounds, experiences, and personalities.

Two people can sit through a sermon about the crucifixion of Jesus and one can leave feeling energized, loved, hopeful, and ready to go tell everyone this amazing story, while the other feels completely defeated and just wants to go crawl into a cave. Same story. Two vastly different effects. And it’s not just as simple as the latter person needing to “get over it.” It’s much deeper and more complex than that, especially when you consider that people may not even be aware of the factors at play in their own experience.

I think about the number of Christians I’ve known over the years who just seem to be stuck in one way or another. Who feel like they’ll never measure up to God’s expectations or like they’re continually falling short somewhere. Sometimes there’s guilt. There’s often shame. Maybe there’s a sense that God isn’t really all that interested.

And then I ponder my own life, with my guilty nature and my tendencies toward legalism and wanting things to be black and white. And I think about how long I’ve been doing this Christian thing and yet the promises that we proclaim – or at least some of them – can often seem so elusive in my own life. And it leaves me thinking “What the heck?!”

But then I consider the hard wiring of my brain and things begin to make a bit of sense. I start to realize that, for whatever reason, some of the unhealthy messages are like very large, fast-moving, well-established rivers. And some of the encouraging, healthy messages are like little streams trying desperately to establish their own routes but they can’t. They just don’t have the power to fight against the raging rivers.

Now this idea is well understood and well accepted throughout psychology. I don’t think anyone is going to argue against the notion that our thoughts are extremely powerful and that if we can harness and control them – and in the process, train our brains – we’re capable of amazing things. And that if we don’t take control of our thoughts, we can be in big trouble.

But many people just aren’t aware of all this. We’re not aware of what our brains are doing. We’re not aware that unhealthy thought patterns or beliefs have been hard wired and are so prevalent and powerful that they’re preventing anything else from getting in. And we’re not aware of the effect these thought patterns have on our daily lives. To some extent, it really is true that our thoughts – whether we’re consciously aware of them or not – create our realities.

With all this in mind, it’s no wonder I’ve known so many Christians over the years – myself included – who can tend to feel empty or mundane or maybe even somehow hopeless but can’t put a finger on why, especially if they’re doing all the “right things.”

The truth is, if we’ve internalized any aspect of the story in an unhealthy way – even if it’s subconsciously – we can be doomed. And chances are we won’t even realize what’s happening. Which begs the question “How is that fair?” Do we really believe God is behind elements of a story that get internalized by some in a way that wreaks emotional havoc? That can actually hinder people from experiencing the fullness and goodness that we often insist God wants for everyone?

This is one thing that got me thinking that maybe there’s something wrong with how we’ve been interpreting and telling the story.

Maybe there’s something wrong with how we approach biblical stories about God turning people into pillars of salt, commanding genocide, hardening a ruler’s heart in order to inflict dire consequences on a nation, or striking a couple dead for being deceitful about a financial transaction.

Maybe there’s something wrong with how we’ve understood God.

And as a result, maybe there’s something wrong with how we’ve understood ourselves.