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Conversations With My Inner Atheist: Chutzpah

I recently took part in a panel discussion entitled “Conversations With My Inner Atheist.”  The stated purpose of the discussion was to “normalize the faith struggle,” During the conversation, a few ideas shone through.  One of them was the idea of “chutzpah.”

Chutzpah
Chutzpah means having the guts to face God and say “I disagree.”  We see it in the book of Job, a few of the Psalms and the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Which is to say, it’s not a frequent thing but it is certainly part of the mix. Chutzpah is part of a healthy practice of faith.

I am not suggesting a life of complaining at every scrape and bruise.  But one in which, when it sincerely hurts or when it really does stop making sense, we carry our complaint to God like an offering; we sit in protest before Him just as we would in reverence. We plead, we cry, we shout and pace. We return over and over until either the mountain has moved or our hearts have changed.

A good friend, currently in a brutal season, said about his prayer life, “It’s mostly about yelling right now.  But that’s still prayer, right?”  Yes…Yes it is.

Job railed against God, calling Him unfair and unjust. In the end, his conceptions of ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ were crushed under the weight of a broader, deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of God. I believe part of the writer’s intent with Job is communicating that we do not come to such knowledge without putting our best argument on the table, especially when we believe we are “right” and God is “wrong.” That’s chutzpah.

Bad Analogies (cuz that’s all I’ve got)
Chutzpah is one path to wisdom, which famously begins with “the fear of God.” This is not a fear in which one cowers timidly, but one of deep awe; one that many of us only come to by fighting God… and losing.  Think of it like the first time we get thrown around by waves at a beach; we learn a bit about the power of the ocean and forever look on it with greater and deeper respect.  Or the first time we challenge a professor in class and find out that she is not only far more knowledgable, far better read and more passionate about the subject but also that she is deeply interested in guiding us to wisdom, not just putting us in our place. Chutzpah leads to a knowledge that moves beyond concept to relationship; a knowledge that cannot be gained in study, but only in engagement. In some cases that engagement can last for years.  But disagreement is still a way to engage; a facet of relationship.  And just as we come to know one another in part by disagreeing, we come to know God.

Wisdom from the West Wing
During the first season of the West Wing, Leo McGarry challenges the White House Staff that “If we’re gonna walk into walls, I want us running into ‘em full speed.”  If they were going to find their limits, they should do so in such a way that they would plainly know. Again, the path to wisdom  begins, in part, by knowing where we end.  I’m convinced that many of us carry deep resentment towards God because we’ve not honestly aired that grievance or pain.  We settle for an untested, unsettled and distant ‘belief’ in a God whose goodness is something we’ve quietly or begrudgingly agreed to, like a math equation, but not something we’ve come to know.  Our perception or interpretation of the events that cause us grief might be wrong (or even right) but we never truly know because we do not carry our complaint to God and speak… we lack courage… we lack chutzpah.

398 days ago /  Tagged: , , , , , 42
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Conversations With My Inner Atheist

This past weekend I took part in a panel discussion entitled “Conversations With My Inner Atheist.”  The stated purpose of the discussion was to “normalize the faith struggle,” by sharing the past and current hangups of a few of us who have been around the block with Jesus a few times.  Our stories ranged from personal to academic, as one might suspect…

**Abusive childhoods leading to questions of God’s sincerity…
**A knowledge of global injustice leading to questions of God’s ‘goodness’…

**Confusion regarding God’s violent character and rhetoric in the Old Testament…

**Difficulty drawing ‘in vs out’ lines between heterosexual and homosexual friends…

The idea was not so much to assuage the doubts associated with these questions but provide whatever sense of normalization might come from hearing older, wiser and fully-engaged christian men and women airing their grievances with God and struggles with faith.

Three ideas came to the forefront during our discussion.  The first I’ll make brief comments about now while the other two I’ll tinker with in posts over the next week or so.

First, while the pastoral impulse in me was (and generally is) to fix and heal whatever wounds of history, spirit and mind were aired during the session, there was something close to magical in the simple act of sharing our humanity for a while.  As one of the panel participants put it, “these two words can take you a long way in life and in ministry:

‘Me, too.’ ” .. shared humanity

As I thought of the many scenarios in my history that have led to serious questions about the reality or goodness of God and of Life, I remembered that ‘answers’ never did my soul much good.. Instead it was the presence of others who had shared or were currently sharing my grief or my struggle that saved me.

A further step in this thought process led me to the very Story we hold in question when our certainty wanes. It is, oddly enough, a story in which Jesus himself has reservations about “The Plan.” (http://bible.cc/matthew/26-39.htm)  It is a story in which the pivotal moment is when God, the One who sets the very stage where all our comedies and tragedies take place, says two words that go a very long way in life and in ministry…

“‘Me, too.” … shared humanity.

Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting thoughts about the other two ‘ideas’ that shone during our discussion. Namely..

…that “chutzpa” is a necessary and responsible religious posture. Chutzpa, in the religious sense, means having the guts to face God and say “I disagree.”

And lastly, that certainty is not the aim of faith. That, in fact, making certainty a goal in any area of life can be, and often is a recipe for existential paralysis.

 

402 days ago /  Tagged: , , , , , 6
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Waiting On A Promise

(A few weeks ago, I taught on King David and particularly the way his identity defined his life’s work. This is a reflection from that teaching.  Below is a short audio excerpt from the sermon)

I sincerely believe God makes promises.  Those promises can be awfully confusing in light of our circumstances.

Just before the prophet Samuel anointed David King of Israel he had installed Saul as King of Israel. What this meant for David was that he had to wait. Having been given this promise of identity, David then had to live for a time under circumstances that did not at all reflect that promise. In fact, during that time of waiting David has to serve and obey the man who “stood in the way” of his promised destiny.

Maybe you were promised something. Or maybe there is something you have always known about yourself but your life’s circumstances have dictated something different.  Do you trust the things you were promised or do your circumstances dictate your understanding of yourself?

I’m not referring to the the scenario in which someone of my build laments his “shoulda-been” days as an NFL linebacker.  This can obviously be abused and misunderstood…

…but after a series of failed relationships, should you buy the idea that you’ll always have to settle for a man whose love and consideration are fleeting at best?

…or after years of toiling away at jobs that suck the life out of you, should you buy the idea that you’ll never have fulfilling work doing something you’re good at; work that adds beauty to the world?

…and then there is this general “promise” many of us have some strange inkling of that some “good” is to come of all this.

I sincerely believe God makes promises. Some of them are quite personal and some are general.  I want those promises to shape my hopes and expectations for my life and the lives of those I love rather than bow to the circumstances I often find myself in which say “those good things cannot be.”

Waiting On A Promise (2min Sermon Clip)

405 days ago /  Tagged: , , , , , 4
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Compassion for the Compassionless

One of the potential pitfalls of advocacy is a deepening sense of animosity towards one’s audience.  An advocate (let’s take me, for example) can become so engrossed in the ‘project’ of getting kids sponsored, wells built, people housed, clinics staffed etc.. that listeners who do not act, are in the way; they become an obstacle to “the Kingdom’s progress.”

I was in a particularly immobilized audience recently and noted the frustration building in me as I heard grumbles of resistance among my fellow listeners at the call to action.  Speaking with the presenter afterward, she said “I really hope they have something else or find something else that makes their hearts beat.”  She was concerned for the hearts of those she was speaking to as well as those she was asking them to care for.

Just as there is compassion for those who live in dire circumstances, there is compassion for those who are unmoved by the dire circumstances of others. Coldness of heart is a dire circumstance of it’s own.

As an advocate, if I am driven by the accomplishment of “the task,” then the people I am speaking to can very easily become only instruments in a different kind of machinery; they become only a way something important gets done.  In so thinking, I can make them less than human.

I’ve written elsewhere, “It is never the case that the strong rescue the weak out of their strength. Instead, we are drawn to one another by our weaknesses and both saved.”  Much of my soul has been “saved” in my engagement with the poor and oppressed.  Truth is, I am moved to do the work of justice and compassion as much for my own sake as for the sake of those who (God willing) benefit from my work. I want to be motivated by a compassion for those I am speaking to as well as those I am advocating for. I want to call men and women to a life-work that rescues poor people from the dire circumstances associated with their poverty, but also rescues us from ours.


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414 days ago /  Tagged: , , 4
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The Problems You Have Now

On the third night after we brought my son home, I was worn out.  Amy had labored for thirty five hours and eventually given birth via c-section.  I worked to stay awake and with her most of that time and then wake with her every 2-hrs or so to feed and change Asa after he was born.  Once home, Amy spent the first week mostly in bed and due to complications with the pain meds (a story unto itself).  I was “on duty” a lot and as a new dad, spent much of that time trying to remember what I’d read or had been told about babies.

My son would only sleep while either I held him or rested him on my chest.  This meant that I could not sleep for fear of dropping the little bean.  Exhausted, I called my mother… at 3am (something I hadn’t done since high school).  I said “I’m toast and could use some help.”  By the time I had finished the word “help,” she was at the door.

I handed my son over (who immediately stopped crying and went to sleep because grandmas are made of fairy dust and white magic) and started to head downstairs to crash.  Then my mother said this:

“You’ll miss this, you know. He won’t always want to fall asleep on you.”

That changed everything for me. I realized that the problems I was dealing with were attached to circumstances I would dearly miss when they had passed.  This goes beyond knowing that “nothing worth doing is easy to do.” It was more like realizing that embracing the goodness of a gift means not just “dealing” with the problems that come with it but even accepting those problems as part of the gift.

419 days ago /  Tagged: , , , 9
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Significance and The Lost Years of Jesus

I  taught recently on the baptism of Jesus at my church. The passage I was given is from the book of Matthew, chapter three. This is the second brief reflection from my study.

There has been a truckload of speculation about “The Lost Years” of Jesus. (The gap between the second and third chapters of Matthew, for instance.) The popularity of these conjectures waxes and wanes from season to season.  Some suggest he traveled to Asia. Some suggest he travelled to India. Some suggest He was separated from his family at the Great Barrier Reef, caught up by a fishing boat and then ended up in a dentist’s office (*). It’s all very interesting but I see this kind of thinking as reflective of something much sadder than creative history-making..

I believe the deceptive and short-sighed speculations about Jesus’ mystic journey during the “lost years” are rooted in an elitist spiritual mindset in which ‘common’ people are incapable of significant lives; a mindset in which only “trained personnel” can enter the back-room where the real work is done.

“But,” you might say, “Jesus wasn’t a ‘common’ person. He claimed to be the Messiah. He said He was God.”

An excellent point. Thank you for bringing it up.

I, too believe that Jesus was ‘uncommon’ in that He was exactly who He claimed to be.  Yet, before he began teaching and healing, Jesus lived a life for years that nobody thought was significant enough to record.

He worked with his hands as a carpenter. 
He lived as a son and a brother in a particular family.
He lived as a neighbor in a particular neighborhood.

It is as if God took sincere interest in the ‘common’ life… which might mean we need to change the way we understand ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ things. Perhaps nothing is ‘common’ in the way we often mean it.

Thinking of my community, here are some particular examples of what I think Jesus’ years as an ‘ordinary’ person say to us..

Being a mother is significant. It is, in fact, sacred work.
Being a neighbor is significant, It is, in fact, sacred work.
Being a business owner is significant. It is, in fact, sacred work.
Being a public educator is significant. It is, in fact, sacred work.

For the sake of clarity, I’m not saying that being any of these works is sacred because it gives us a platform to “talk about Jesus” or “lead people to faith.” The work itself is sacred work insofar as it is the work we were given to do by God and so long as treat it that way.

Significance and the Lost Years of Jesus (4min Sermon Clip)


421 days ago /  Tagged: , , , , 6
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Critique From Within: Reflection on Jesus’ Baptism

I’m teaching on the baptism of Jesus at my church. The passage I was given is from the book of Matthew, chapter three. This is one brief reflection from my study. There will be others… take that as either a warning or a promise.

Jesus submitted to the baptism of John. Part of what that means to me is that Jesus accepted being part of the tradition he would be known for criticizing.

Critique from within has power.
Critique from without is most often just noise.

If I stand at a distance from your life or community and point out at what is wrong, you should honestly care very little what I think.** But If I am committed to your life or community for the long haul, my criticism is then worth listening to.  Critique from within carries with it the weight of responsibility; the responsibility to help make right what you’ve seen is wrong.

Critique from without often smacks of judgement and casual inconvenience which is why it is commonly and rightfully met by the challenge “who are you to to tell me…?”

It is easy enough to find wrong in our traditions or institutions; religious, public or otherwise. What is of greater difficulty and greater importance is to take enough ownership of our place within our institutions to make our criticism count for something.

(**There are, of course, exceptions to this. They are rare. But the do exist.)

425 days ago /  Tagged: , , , , 2
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The Cost of Belonging

Belonging to one another comes at a cost. This is part of why I love the way the Communion meal lies at the heart of christian community; it is symbolic of the sacrifice that makes family actually work.

I sat in a service recently that was not at all my cup of tea.  Between the style and execution of music, the topic and conclusions of the sermon and the general demographic of the congregation I felt about as out of place as I have ever felt in a church.  These were not at all ‘my people’ and more to the point, I am certainly not one of theirs.

But as I sat there settling comfortably into my “otherness” I remembered a scene from CS Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters” in which the tormenting demon was bid tempt his charge to examine his fellow church-goers and see their lowliness and otherness;” to conclude that he could not belong to “those people” for many of the same reasons I was mentally disassociating myself from the christians I was sitting with that morning.

When the band struck up again, I still noticed and disliked the song selection and even moreso the horrible electric-drum-kit sound.  But I opened my mouth and joined the congregation in song, moving to the aisle with the others in my row. I walked down to towards the stage behind a woman who was wearing a perfume that must have been named “Wild Berry Menthol Mist.” She turned and smiled after having taken the bread and wine that was now being offered to me.

“The body of Christ, broken for you.”  I took it and ate
“The blood of Christ, shed for you.”  I took it and drank.. and realized it was juice rather than wine.. but whatever..

And walking back to my seat I stood a bit closer to the pudgy, middle-aged man next to me who couldn’t stay in the same singing key for more than a phrase or two.. and sang with him.

One of the great challenges of the christian life is actually belonging to people you don’t like, don’t understand or with whom you do not fully agree.*  We spend much of our social energy trying to surround ourselves with a tribe of people more fully reflective of ourselves. Then, in christian teaching, we are asked to do something quite dramatic: to dissolve those expectations and receive into our lives anyone God gives us to.

This costs us.

It costs our levels comfort. It can cost us in our other relationships to be associated with someone who is politically or theologically outside the lines for the rest of our immediate tribe. It surely costs us to belong to people whose lives implode repeatedly due to their own foolish decision making. On and on.. Belonging to someone else, much less a community comes at a cost.  We call that cost “sacrifice” and it lies at the heart of healthy relationships.

And so the communion meal stands at the center of christian community, reminding us that being family means sacrifice. Real sacrifice.  A shade of the sacrifice that makes our community possible in the first place.

Belonging to One Another (3:43 Sermon Clip)

* (It’s a fallacy that christians are, on the whole, entirely like-minded. I’d argue that the range of sociological, political and religious thought within christian culture is at least as diverse as almost any other identifiable people group around.)


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