What Does it Mean to be Spiritual (or Godly)?

I watch another Dateline episode about a pastor behaving badly. It caught my eye for a couple of reasons. For one, it all took place about three islands south of me. Secondly, in the promotions for the episode they showed an interview with a woman who kept saying, “But he was such a spiritual man.”

In case you didn’t see it (and I will put a link to it if you want to watch it with the title of this blog entry) it was about a Christian child prodigy. Apparently when he was a small boy, he either was injured or very sick and his father was rushing him to the hospital. His father prayed, “God if you save my son’s life I will dedicate him to Your service.”

The boy lives (unfortunately . . . I know that sounds cruel but just wait and see the damage he does). From an early age he was destine to be a pastor. I can’t remember his name while I’m typing this so I will just call him “Don.” I will refer to his wife as “Marry.”

Eventually Don became the youth pastor of a fast growing charismatic church. He was well liked. He married a local gal, Mary, who people deeply admired.

Probably the first strange thing that happened was that he started a marriage counseling “ministry.” In that ministry, he eventually started meeting with just the five wives (the husbands were not invited to come back.) He became very close to each of the women.

He started to confine in one of the women (I will call her Doris) that he was loosing interest in his wife because she had gained a few pounds (maybe 5-10). This was bizarre because Don himself was very fat. Then Doris began to prophesize that God was telling her that He was going to take Mary home and then she, Mary, would be with Don.

Mary was okay with that . . . assuming it was God’s will. She even told her parents that God had something big in store for her that would mean her death.

Doris told Don during their next meeting that God said that Mary was going to die on December 14th (I think). That night when his wife was still a live Don called Doris and was crying, “It didn’t happen. Why didn’t God’s will come true?”

Doris answered, “Well, sometimes God wants you to carry out His will.”

On December 27th Don’s house burned down with Mary in it. What a horrible death. (Later he would confess to Doris that he put a plastic bag over her face and killed her before he set her on fire. So maybe he was a spiritual guy, you know doing God’s will with compassion).

Then, within two weeks of his wife’s death, Don was having sex with all five of the women he was counseling. He simply told them that God wanted them to sleep with him to comfort him during his loss. Yes, Doris was one of the women he was sleeping with. I think it was when she found out about the others that she went to the police with the “rest of the story.” By that time, the death had been ruled an accident.

Lastly, when Don’s mother-in-law, that is Mary’s own mother, came to visit, Don persuaded her to sleep with him too. Sick.

Only one of the five ladies volunteered to be extensively interviewed by Dateline (although the mother-in-law did give a few comments). Let’s call this woman “Rose.”

The interviewer looked at Rose and said, “You are a strong Christian woman. You believe in marriage. You believe that adultery is sin. So, how were you so willing to have sex with this pastor?”

She said something to the effect, “He was such a spiritual man. He said that this was God’s will and I believed it.”

Here is my point. So I stand by my view that we Christians have a screwed up view when it comes to “godliness” or spirituality. I say this as someone who was considered “godly” by myself and others. It is a farce. I stand by my statement, “You should never trust a godly person.” Actually we should never trust anybody . . . in a naive way. I agree with Philip Yancy who basically says that there is virtually nothing different between the most godly person and the most evil (in his book, What’s so Amazing about Grace.)

We can respect one another. We can honor one another as tremendously valuable creatures in God’s image. We can even do the both for non-Christians as well as Christians. But when we start trusting someone because they say (or others say) that they are godly . . . then be careful.

A Biblical Sabbath

May be the closest I've ever had to a frankly Biblical sabbath I've ever had. God did make the sabbath for man . . . for our rest.

I had an eye injury last night, woke up at 4 AM in severe pain. Went to the ER and, to make a long story short, had piece of glass in my cornea that they had a hard time digging out. I think today has been the most painful day I've ever experienced (more so than a broken foot I had once). So I came home and have spent most of the day in bed trying not to move.

Probably have more typos than normal with only one eye.

But seriously, I think this is how the sabbath was meant to be experienced . . . save the pain.

Bootstrap Spirituality

Another key issue that seems to be a line in the sand is this concept of spiritual self-reliance or "victory" over sin.

This one issue seems to be what separates Democrats from Republicans, social conservatives from liberals and etc. I think it too is a dividing line between evangelicals and Christian non (or post) evangelicals. But first I must give some background.

Most of my posts have their roots deeply planted in conversations I have with one of my evangelical friends. After all, I am a post-evangelical struggling to live in an evangelical world.

A friend of mine was describing a testimony he heard from one of the guys who attend the motorcycle church that meets in our church building. I can’t remember the details of this man’s life but it was rough. I think he grew up with a drug addicted mom and no father in a tough L.A. neighborhood. It seems like he was raped by some of his mother’s boyfriends when he was really young. Then he got involved with drugs and gangs. I think he became a gang leader and maybe even killed some people.

But some how, like Paul’s road to Damascus experience, he became a Christian. Immediately he left his old drug and gang life and became a new man. Now he is either a pastor or an assistant pastor, living a very “godly” life.

My friend, who was telling the story, remarked that this man is proof that you can recover from anything with God’s help. Therefore, he didn’t buy the “excuses” of PTSD.

I of course don’t agree. But it got me thinking about this. Like I said, I don’t have certainty in any of my positions so when I hear something that seems to challenge my presuppositions, I meditate on it for a few days to see if I am wrong (but I’m not a wishy-washy Olive).

When it comes to personality, weaknesses, addictions and mental illness, I’ve said before that the cause tends to be a mixture of nature and nurture. For some people (say severe schizophrenia) it is mostly nature. For PTSD, it is mostly nurture. Both of them can be the results of old sin (genetic flaws through the fall of Adam or abuse at a young age by the hands and sin of another). Of course our own choices (sin) can magnify them (choosing to use drugs etc.) However, I’ve stood my ground that for most people, who suffer from significant mental health problems, to be totally healed in this life-time would take a Biblical-grade miracle. Something along the lines of a life-long, cripple suddenly jumping up and walking or a blind person seeing. Not just a “card-trick” type of miracle that you hear in a typical Sunday morning sermon (landing a plane on the Hudson, grandma having cataract surgery and now she can see 80% better).

So my point, while mental health problems are treatable, rarely (especially if they are serious) can they go completely away.

My position is based on hundreds of patients whom I’ve worked with over the years . . . and my own brush with mental illness. My mental illness (which I’ve disclosed before) is not severe but significant. It is a generalized anxiety disorder. It has waivered up and down over the years. I knew I had it by age 5-6. I’m not sure how much of mine was nature vs nurture and it really doesn’t matter. I do know that I’ve fought this plague with every ounce of strength that I have for my entire life. When I was an evangelical, I jumped through every spiritual hoop that you can imagine. I can guarantee that I exceeded any spiritual trick that anyone could think of. I mean, I’ve fasted for days and I’ve fasted once a week for weeks or months. I’ve memorized hundreds of verses. I have attended enough discipleship programs to render me brain dead . . . and I have not been delivered. I’ve had charismatics laying hands on me including those who have all kinds of gifts of healing. The only time I was “delivered” was when I considered myself a “godly man” and I buried my terror so deeply so that no one else would notice. Then I could claim I was “healed.” The only thing I have not done is taken a lot of medications. I probably would be better off if I had.

It is hard for us (and I really think the majority of people make up the broken “us” that I’m speaking of) to have worked sooooooo hard on something, then to have a spiritual evangelical come up and immediately tell you how it is your fault that you suffer so much and that there is an easy fix, just like they’ve fixed all of their problems. PLEEEEEEEASE! This is either someone who has never, ever suffered from your problem, or they live way up on the 60th floor (away from reality on the ground floor) that they, like I’ve done before, pretend they are perfect.

But the question has to be begged—who are these people (like the motorcycle pastor mentioned) who do seem to recover fully? I mean, besides the ex-gang born again saints, I think of those great people who survived the holocaust. I can’t think of anything more horrible (psychologically) that living through that. But I don’t hear of many (of course they are old now and not as many left) holocaust survivors suffering from mental illnesses as a result. Maybe it was a huge problem and wasn’t mentioned.

I think it is an important issue. If we really can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and over come completely these issues, then the Church must choose. Either it becomes the Grand Theater, where we all pretend . . . or it becomes a safe place. A safe place where we can talk about what ails us and we support each other but we don’t expect each other to ever reach that level of “victory.”

But still I wonder about that pastor. If he was raped over and over as a child, beaten, abused, drugged up, abused others . . . how does he live Godly now without the hang ups that I still carry? Is there still a balm hidden in some Christian self-help book that I haven’t done? Or,( as I am often tempted to think), am I just an inferior person . . . disgusting in God’s eyes for failing? I think that latter way often . . . but I really don’t believe it. I think it comes from the great accuser.

Michael Spencer has Left This World

Our friend Michael Spencer left this world yesterday. You can read more on his blog.

Ecclesiastes Three says that for everything, there is a season and :

⁴ "a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,"

The loss of Michael is real. The sadness acute. This is the season for weeping and mourning. He will be greatly missed.

The Line in the Sand . . . and Olive Oyle

I digressed a bit on Popeye yesterday. I will try and finish my thought on this topic.

I was sitting in the large Presbyterian church yesterday and felt a kind of comfort or ease that I often don’t feel in my normal evangelical world. You know how it is, sometimes the reason for a particular feeling is ambiguous and it is hard to get a linguistic handle on it. I meditated on it during my drive Seattle and come up with one answer at least. And this answer is what reminded me of Popeye.

The pastor made a comment yesterday that I don’t think could ever be made from the pulpit in my own church. She alluded to a point that no one in the church had certainty in their beliefs. The way it came about was when she was introducing the teens who were finishing their confirmation class. She said one of the girls, Kate, came to her earlier in the week and said, “I can’t be confirmed. I don’t have total faith. I have sometimes have doubts.”

The pastor looked over the congregation of about 400 and said to us, “I hope that you don’t mind but I spoke for you. I told Kate, if you are required to have total faith, with no doubts, then we would have no members at all.” There was a soft chuckle that moved across the congregation.

But a statement like this would not be considered appropriate in my home church or even in my evangelical world. Within this world, faith equals certainty. This, I think is the crux of the matter and how I now feel more comfortable outside of evangelicalism. This “crux” might, (forgive the blending of metaphors), the line in the sand that separates the evangelicals from the true believers but who are non-evangelicals.

The problem with this faith equals certainty is twofold. First, I believe that our sense of reason is fallen, just like the rest of us. Therefore a fallen reason can never reach certainty. But this doesn’t lead to despair, as some philosophers have suggested. You can know truth and know it often . . . just that you can not know it with complete certainty.

The second problem is that the evangelicals have placed such a high respect for total faith, (and a misunderstanding of faith) that they have applied the same standards of belief far beyond the essentials. If you hang out in the evangelical world, you not only have to be 100% confident that God is there, the Bible is true, that Jesus is divine, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins (okay, just paste in the Apostle’s creed here) but you become certain in many non-essentials. For example, you have certainty that the earth was created 6,000 years ago, the Republicans are God’s party, that all American wars are justified, that Jesus’ return is eminent, that God does not want states to have Gay marriage laws, that life begins at conception, that dispensation is how God works in history, that tattoos are signs of the devil . . . and I could go on and on.

I personal don’t have certainty in anything, but certainly not those non-essentials.

Now, I will look at the issue of faith and doubt (and to get back to Popeye). Os Guinness did an excellent lecture series on doubt. I used it as the foundation of a Sunday school class, which I taught. The most important thing that he did was to define doubt and difference between the forms of doubt. When the Bible speaks negatively about doubt, it is speaking mostly of a doubt that means an act of unbelief. This is a willingness to go against God’s command, because we choose not to believe what He has said.

Another negative kind of doubt is what Os defined as “being in two minds.” The Greek word was very close to schizophrenia (meaning split mind). In the psychological definition, “schizophrenia” obviously means a split between the mind and reality. But in the meaning associated with doubt, the meaning has to do with a mind that wants to go in two different directions at the same time. Another term that might relate is “wishy-washy.” I’ve heard radio pastors speak of doubt being “like a ship on a stormy sea, tossed one direction and then the other.”

When my thoughts went there, I immediately thought of Olive. In the video I posted last time Olive is singing about Brutus’ accolades (I guess I should say “accolade” has he has only one . . . being large) and how he is a good catch for a husband. But at the same time, notice, she is packing her bag to run away from him. That is this kind of doubt. In a later scene, she is so confused that she literally tries to walk in opposite directions. Her big, brown, booted, clumsy, right foot pointed in one direction and her left foot pointed in the opposite. She spun around and actually fell down.

But this is the kind of doubt that the evangelicals bestow on you if you express anything less than certainty. I remember that any time I expressed doubts when I was a Nav (doubts ranging from God’s existence to doubts about orders, which I had received from my local Navigator leader) that I was told that it was a sign of spiritual immaturity. I was accused of being an Olive.

The problem with a church or Christian society that believes in certainty is that such a lofty goal is not obtainable. When what you believe does not mesh with reality, then you must choose to live dishonestly . . . or change your views. Anytime you build a paradigm based on an untrue, the whole social structure becomes a farce and true communication stops. I can’t discuss the pros and cons of the age of the earth with my evangelical peers. I have no certainty in what I believe but they do. So they are not interested in the cons to a 6000 year old earth. Psychologically they can’t accept any possibility of another way of looking at it. They have a fear of being an Olive! The opposite then, is to be certain.

So that’s the bottom line. The line in the sand between the two groups comes down to the willingness to doubt and to doubt in the right way.

Easter in the High Church and a Line in the Sand - Between Shelly and Certainity

Maybe this says something about me, but one of my top five favorite movies of all time was Popeye, staring Robin Williams and Shelly Duvall. Why that makes me odd is that it was a total box-office flop and I've seen it on lists of the worse movies ever made.

I thought I was really strange until I saw an interview with Robin Williams' mother. When she was asked, "What is your favorite movie that Robin has made?" She—without reservation—said, "Popeye." That surprised her interviewer very much . . . but made me feel a lot better.

I have to say that Robin is one of the most gifted actors of the past century. It is painful watching his talents wasted on cheap, poorly written movies of late (like RV).

I think one of the reasons the movie appealed to me so much that when I was six years old, the cartoon Popeye was my favorite show. There was a reason for that. Popeye was my savior-type.

Like Popeye, I lived in a world of cruel bullies (like Brutus). Inside my house was my brother, seven years older than me. He had some mental health problems. One of which was that he was extremely jealous of me, the "baby of the family." He tortured me for most of my young life.

Then outside, next door, was Les. He was about 4 years older than me, and looked very much like Brutus. As a six year old I could not tell the difference between Les in the real world and the animated Brutus. I don't know how tall Les was but he eventually played center for the high school basketball team. He was also fat. He, additionally, was emotionally disturbed. I don't know what made him that way, but he was the kind of kid that would put lighter fluid on a cat and set in on fire for the humor effect. Evan at age 10 he was hyper-sexual and—at least attempted—to molest every kid on the street, whether they were male or female.

Once, I came into our kitchen and mom was unloading a bag of Tupperware stuff she had bought from my aunt (this was my narcissistic aunt). Aunt Mary drove a “Tupperware car” which she had won for selling so much stuff. Usually she used extreme guilt manipulation to get all her relatives to buy much more than what they would ever need.

In the pile of plastic containers were two small round ones with semi-transparent lids that grabbed my attention. When I placed the lids on them, it became clear that they were salt and pepper shakers. The main lid had the holes in it. A second lid, connected by hinged plastic piece could cover the holes.

Since mom bought far more Tupperware than she could ever use, I turned many of the items into toys. I found the little shaker containers most appealing in this shipment, mostly because I too was little. But then I discovered the most amazing thing. With the lids on, I could squeeze the containers in my hand and the lids would pop off. It was just like Popeye squeezing a can of spinach and the lid popping open. This gave me a wonderful idea.

I had already tried eating spinach, to see if it would give me the strength to resist Les. It didn’t. But then I decided to put spinach in the Tupperware shaker and put it down my shirt. I had to tuck in the tail to keep it from falling out. The next time that Les messed with me, I planned on pulling it out, squeezing it until the top popped off, eating it in one gulp and then beat the hell out of him.

I loaded up the container and went to look for Les and the rest of the kids (all years older than me) which lived on our street. They were two houses up, at Garnets.

Sure enough, as soon as I showed up Les started to pick on me. Who knows what he was doing this time. But as soon as he hurt me, I pulled the shaker out of my shirt (now dripping with spinach juice) and popped the top and ate it.

The kids all looked stunned. “What are you doing you little freak?” asked one of them. I told them. They didn’t look scared. But like a typical group of adolescents, they began to belly laugh.

I flexed my muscles and put up my fists like a prize fighter from the 1800s. Then Les grabbed me and did something horrible. I can’t remember what he did that time . . . who knows, maybe he tried to force me to eat a dried dog turd. Anyway, my acute use of spinach didn’t work.

What does all of this have to do with Easter? Okay, I’m getting to that.

Easter weekend was a bit of confusing time for me. Denise asked me to go to a big ecumenical service on Good Friday. I had mixed feelings about it. I don’t enjoy a lot of religious pageantry. I posted about those feelings when I was in the middle of them . . . but then deleted it because I sounded like a crab again. I did decide to go, but could never connect with Denise and she went without me before I got home from work.

I was certainly planning on going to Easter brunch and service at my normal Evangelical church this morning. Then something came up. I won’t go into it here because it is too complicated (and this posting is already too long) but I had a very important meeting come up today at noon in Seattle. I wasn’t sure what to do. There was no way I could go to my church’s service at 10 AM and then make Seattle by noon. So, I asked my son if he would go with me to the large Presbyterian church’s early morning service then go with me to Seattle. He agreed.

We went to the service in the brick cathedral (I mean this positively; it is a beautiful church with a large pipe organ). This is the same church I’ve visited before and the one that my normal pastor, and many of the leaders of my church, consider as “liberal.” After all, the pastor is a woman. The church was totally packed with folding chairs around the old, oak pews.

But the thing I noticed, once again, was a great feeling of comfort. It is on a sub-conscious level that this feeling comes.

I spent some time meditating on this whole experience, trying to put into words what it is I feel. Well, it finally came to me. I will continue on with this story in part II. I will relate it (although loosely) to that video clip from Popeye.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar

My son Ramsey gave me this book for Christmas, actually in 2008, and I'm just getting around to reading it . . . and will finish it this morning. I can't sing it's praises enough. It doesn't matter if you are an expert in philosophy or a novice. If I ever teach high school course in philosophy this would be my text.

On the issue of "moral relativity" the book touches on the relativity of time. Each chapter is accented with humor. Here is one of the jokes from this section that hit my funny bone:

A man is praying to God. "Lord," he prays, "I would like to ask you a question."

The Lord responds, "No problem. Go ahead."

"Lord, is it true that a million years to you is but a second?"

"Yes, that is true."

"Well, then, what is a million dollars to you?"

"A million dollars to me is but a penny."

"Ah, then, Lord," says the man, "may I have a penny?"

"Sure," says the Lord. "Just a second."

Another joke reflecting the relativity of speed.

A snail was mugged by two turtles. When the police asked him, what happened, he said, "I don't know. It all happened so fast."