Searching for an Authentic Godliness

What I'm about to post is a continuation, although tangentially, of my previous one on the gift and perils of culture and conformity.

What does it really  mean to be godly? Being so was the objective of my life for at least 15, if not 20 years.  I, like all my associates, were consumed with being godly.  Yet, I think we seriously contaminated the concept through our evangelical culture.

We considered the simple definition as being like God, or being the way that God wanted us to be.  But we defined the particulars of godliness as some of the following:

a) Not sinning as defined by the Bible as sin, adultery, drunkenness, stealing and others.

b) On top of the obvious sins, we including not using curse words (a list of words that the evangelical culture had determined to be ungodly and you know what those are), not drinking alcohol at all, not thinking about sex and not having "bad attitudes."  These bad attitudes were feelings of hurt, anger, sadness, frustration . . . you know, all emotions besides happiness.

But besides this list of things we couldn't do and still be godly, were a long unspoken (but well known) list of positive behaviors such as, to borrow a line from Monty Python, "Always looking on the bright side of life."

But speaking in epistemological terms, to be godly, also meant that we sought "truth."  But this is the pivotal point, which I want to make (and to mesh it with my previous post) and that is to define this truth godly people must seek.

For 25 years, at least, I was taught and believed that truth and doctrine were synonymous. So, if the news reported there was more evidence that the universe was about 13 billion years old, we would oppose the thought out of our godliness. But our doctrines also included views about the role of women, homosexuality, the "truth" that you ought to go to church every Sunday and Jesus was coming back soon.

So our "truth" was to real, philosophical (or what Francis Schaeffer called "true-truth") truth as "wood grain" contact paper (in cause you don't know is a printed image of using ink in plastic) is to real wood.  The two are unrelated.

Now I will pause and look at scripture about truth.  This is from the beginning of Titus and it is coming from Paul, who probably was educated in traditional Socratesian logic. So, try to remove your cultural bias as you read this:

1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— ² in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, ³ and which now at his appointed season he has brought to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,

 

So listen to the above verses and think about it philosophically. Paul states that the knowledge of truth leads to godliness.  He didn't say the knowledge of doctrine or a particular complex social behavior of a particular subculture . . . but simply truth.

 

So I will redefine truth as I think it relates to godliness. Imagine that truth is simply that which is real. So, if I look up and don't see a cloud in the sky, as I'm now doing, I can say it is truth that, according to the metrological definition of the word "fair," the skies are presently fair.

 

But apply this thought to everything.  So seeking truth about the universe isn't promoting a particular doctrine about the age of the universe, but honestly, and humbling seeking the real number of how old the universe really is.  Now apply this thinking to the more personal parts of life such as psychological truth.  Rather than disguising the psychological source of behaviors as spiritual, we seek the honest and true motivations, warts and all.

 

So, I think a better sense of godliness is the act of seeking truth at all cost.  I mean real, deep down honest truth.  Many of us are so use to pretending and following the cultural leads that we forget what truth really is.

 

I can remember so many times when I was an evangelical that I would get a glimpse of the true truth, far below the surface, and just think to myself, "if God wants us to pretend, what does that imply about God?"  But, to fit into our Christian subculture we had to pretend all the time.

 

I knew why the full time Christian worker guy loved to give pretty girls with large bosoms, firm, frontal hugs . . . and say, "I love your sister."  I knew why my co-disciple lied to the leader about how many hours he had spent in Bible study and lied by not mentioning the reason he didn't finish his Bible study because he talked for hours on the phone to the "worldly," but pretty, girl who wanted him to sleep with her.  He didn't mention it so he would get the praise of the spiritual leader and possibly get promoted himself. We all crave praise from our spiritual leaders  . . actually from everyone we know, but especially our spiritual leaders.

 

But before long, you and your entire world are living below the rabbit hole.

 

But true godliness is the unadulterated pursuit of truth  . .  . at all cost.  It means being brutally honest about ourselves, our motives and even the motives of others (as far as we can guess what they really are).

 

With godliness defined in this way, I would say that some of the most godly people I've every known are some of the humble, but hungry for truth, scientists that I've had the privileged to know.  Many of the scientists I've know want to know the truth at all cost and they don't care where that truth leads them. Now, I'm not going as far to say they are Christians, especially those who totally reject Christianity.  But I am saying they are doing God's work by seeking truth and are reflecting God's own passion for truth.  If God is there, which I think He is, then by definition He is engrossed in truth . . . true truth not doctrinal truth.

 

By the same thought, some of the most ungodly people I've ever known are the evangelicals who have no desire for true truth but promoting their doctrine without question or any thinking at all. Likewise some of the most ungodly are the scientists who have no desire for truth either, because these scientists are just as bad. They seek truth as defined by their personal doctrines or belief system and, like the evangelicals, substitute doctrine for truth. In many of those cases, their belief system starts with the premise that there is no God.  Any good scientist would be consumed with the curiosity about whether God is there or not.

 

I'm being told that I'm taking too much time to write on my blog so I must go once again without proof-reading.  I hope some day I have the time to write what I want and to write with care and not haste.  But life is so busy these days that I hardly have time to think at all.

 

  

 

Culture Part II

I said, "No thanks. I don't want to be an elder."

The silence was deafening . . . or was the disappointment shown towards me just my imagination?  Certainly it could have been.

But in the evangelical world I was living in, you would almost never say the truth . . . "I don't want to." That would typical unleash all kinds of negative reinforcement towards you.  That disappointment would be expressed in spiritual lingo, "I don't know why you don't want to . . . I consider it a privilege to serve my savior."  I won't even attempt to deconstruct that here.

I know that I may not be making a lot of sense. I do want to add that the straight jacket is beautiful.  I mean, all art is a product of culture.  But the mores can be stifling.

When I read the New Testament I see Christians being exalted to be nonconformists.  After all nonconformity got Jesus killed.  But Christians became like the proverbial frog jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.  They resisted conformity to the Judo-Roman world but eventually created their old culture with a conformity ruled by an iron fist.  Think about it, the inquisition was about conformity.

So now, Christians are the most conformed. They are terrified to make waves, to look bad, but to live up to some ideal of American, good-citizen, righteous person . . .which no one can really ascribe to.

So, ask any evangelical in town who knows me and they will speak of me being odd, strange, queer (in the pre-1960 definition).

But we know the script. We know what we suppose to say.  I will drop this thought here before it becomes even more tangential.  But I will say that non-conformity is a great virtue, although it produces lonely people.

Culture . . . The Beautiful Straight Jacket Part I

You can no more divorce culture from humans than you can remove all traces of DNA where humans have been.  Even if a human was alone on the proverbial deserted island . . . culture would grow up around them. As an individual, it would simply be expressed as personal habits. That person would choose to wake up a certain time every morning, have a ritual about eating habits. For example they may eat coconuts for breakfast and fish or crabs later in the day.  It could be based on some superstition or maybe a previous cultural experience. On the other hand, if they were Scandinavian they might feel very comfortable eating fish for breakfast. But when humans are in families, tribes, villages, cities, countries and religions, the cultural rules, or what I would call mores, become much more profound, complex and inflexible.

So, besides saying that culture is unavoidable, even if we could avoid it . . . would we want to?  I don't think so. Because culture creates for us these "shortcut icons" which makes life simple and livable. For example, if you could completely erase your culture at the end of the day, (while we are using computer metaphors call it formatting your cultural hard drive),  then the next morning, EVERYTHING, would take a tremendous amount of thought.  What time should I get up?  How much should I sleep? What should I wear . . . but more than that . . . should I wear clothes at all?  Each decision would be like re-inventing the essentials of life and that would take a huge amount of energy.

The way it is, with culture in place, my choices of what to wear are quite limited. Maybe there is a bell-cure where I would raise no eyebrows if I stay within a standard deviation.  Only on the fringes (say warping myself in aluminum foil)  would I get a second look. Then in places that allow more cultural freedom, say West Hollywood, even my metallic attire would not garner even that second look.

Then, speaking of the fringes of culture . . . that's where most artists live. While they must face the restrains, culture is also the incubator of their creativity when you look at the big picture.  How many artists are inspired by the great Renaissance talents that went before them in our western culture. Maybe they borrow from the great Asian artist such as Gu Kaizhi.  So culture is essential and gives us the energy to create without the requirement to reinvent over and over.

But culture is also the great straight-jacket. Within it we are confined and embraced with a tough canvas cloak that suffocates at times. What we think we are doing is looking through our senses at reality, then using logic to decipher and finally using morality to respond.  But actually it is a robotic cultural response that is controlled by the personal emotions which are surrogates of the culture at large. What we think is the most intelligent way to look at something, as is determined by our reasons, becomes the "correct way" to look at it as is determined by culturally charged emotions.

Each layer of culture, like the onion's concentric spheres, has tighter and tighter restraints. So we live not in one culture but buried beneath layers of  the concentric globes of existence. Maybe the inner most is the culture of the self, the same self that resides on that deserted island. Then the family and tribal spheres.

So, in our setting (if I were still an evangelical) would be my family, my church, my evangelical world outside of which would be my geographical region, American, western and so on.

I started a journey a long time ago of trying to disrobe from cultural restraints, especially when it came to my Christianity. I don't mean to rebel against all that is considered Christian, but to try and live on a logical and deeply honest evaluation of life rather than simply memorizing the lines I suppose to say.  It has been hell.  I've gone from being surrounded by a huge group of friends to being friendless.  I've gone from being a "church leader" at every church I attended, to being on the outer most edge . . . with one more step and I wouldn't be in church at all.

I will make this more practical to see if I can make more sense.

I use to sit around with Christian friends.  I felt like we were all puppeteers,  standing high above the stage working the strings.  When each person spoke their lines, and you knew exactly what they were going to say before they said it, you would be rehearsing your lines inside your head to make sure you said them according to script.  If one of the other puppets said something off script the entire group would turn their heads and start to put intense social coercion (via looks and comments) to pressure them back to the script.

You knew that the narrative on the stage was of some pretend world where things made sense according to some "ideal" paradigm of Christian life.  But that deeply honest reality, what was really going on, was up in the dark curtains, shrouded from sight, even from yourself.

I began to speak off script and the heads would all turn to scorn me, even if on a subliminal level. I hated it because I'm a man-pleaser. I want people to like me.  It isn't long before you are no longer invited to, nor want to be invited to, these performances.

I think of one recent example was where I was asked to be a church elder by someone who I think follows the script quite well.  My predetermined response would be, even if I didn't want to be an elder, to say, "I feel humbled to be asked. Of course would want to serve God in this way."

Now imagine that if you really, really didn't want to be elder and you had to find a way out, the script (at total lie) goes like this, "I would love to and I feel so honored to be asked, but God is leading me into a different sort of ministry at this time."  Even that last response would be hard to muster but when you use the trump card of saying that God did it, they at least can't argue with you.

But what I felt was hell no.  I really enjoy church right now and every time I've been an elder it is like I'm being led down into the bowels of the church with a torch and and you see all the great leaders in their most hideous and dysfunctional forms.  I don't want to go there again.

So what did I say?  I have to go but I will be back.

I Just Learned that Edith Schaeffer Pass Away On April 7th

I don't have time to write right now but I just heard today that Edith Schaeffer passed away April 7th.  Warts and all, she was a fine woman and I had the privilege of knowing her for a short while.

New Boobs for Jesus, and Other Superstitions Part II

I promised I would come back to this thought and it has taken until now to get the chance.

I love the history of philosophy. If I had a Mulligan at life, I think I would choose philosophy as a major.  Of course the crux of the study of philosophy is the study of the history thereof. You can't speculate about the big questions without first building on the backs of others and avoiding asking the same questions that others have already answered.

So, back to the boob thing.  On the Discovery Channel was another hillbilly program, this one on drilling for oil in your backyard.  I've seen one episode and like I was saying, I focused on the superstition in general and two Christian drillers specifically. One, a Baptist church, believed that God spoke to them that they were going to strike oil and get rich. But God made a mistake in His message and they struck (equally as valuable) water.

The second was a lady who God had spoken to and Jesus was going to show her where to drill to strike oil, so that she could get a boob job . . . and a new butt.

When I see things that are so wrong and I can't just shake my head and walk away, I must dwell for a while.  My mind attempts to build handles around the whole cultural phenomenon that sets up such crazy ideas so I can grasp what is going on here.

I love intelligence. I love highbrow things.  I don't know what my own IQ is, but it isn't extra-ordinary. I'm probably below average in language skills . . . maybe math.  So, I don't think that this is any type of arrogance to say I love to listen to people who think.

Superstition drives me crazy.  I am bombarded by superstition everyday because I work in health care, and I was bombarded with superstition when I was an evangelical . . . even more so.  But ignorance and superstition are usually choices one makes.  To think that Jesus wants you to find oil (and the superstition that He spoke to you in a cloud) is a moral choice, yet I don't blame the hillbilly folks.  I will remind you that I'm speaking of them from the inside because I am a hillbilly.

But let me drift back to the philosophical roots to the "boob job for Jesus" mentality for a moment. I sincerely think that if you map out the rise of the Bible belt, along the ridges and rivers that the old Methodist circuit riders rode, a couple of hundred years ago, you would see the outline of the territory where this choice of ignorance is playing out in today's world.

Not all parts of the country are this way.  You might fight someone one in Boston wanting to drill for oil because Jesus told them they would find it so they could buy new boobs . . . but not as likely as in eastern Kentucky.  Now the Jersey Shores is a different story but they think that Jesus (maybe Mary) wants them to have new Boobs for a different reason.

But when the Gospel entered the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee (my home state) it didn't come in with a simple purity but is was wrapped in layers of baggage. One of those concepts (and the theme to this whole blog) is that this world is not as important as the next.  That Heaven was the purpose of all that is . . . not art or complex music.  Sure, the hillbilly tunes have great value in expressing the heart. But I say this music flourished in spite of the dualism that penetrated the area, not because of it.

I can remember growing up and people talking about "learning" as a bad thing.  "He's done got too much of that dag gone learning to do any body a damn bit of good. They ought to just take that boy out back and shoot him fer he is good for nothing."  That was the view of college educated people rather than those that worked in the mines.

So when you believe that this world is superfluous at best, nothing matters here.  Sure make some money. Buy some tacky things.  A house make of plastic that looks like stone is just as good as one of those stone houses that has stood in Italy for 800 years.  Jesus is coming back any day so it doesn't matter if the plastic oxidizes and warps under the sun after a couple of years.

The Gospel here also becomes so narcissistic that it is like a beautiful mountain lake that, through acid rain, becomes so corrosive that only bacteria can live in it. Maybe what John and Charlie Wesley thought of when they considered a deeply personal religion, was a good thing in the beginning. They were reacting to the horrible religious wars of Europe, where large, deeply thinking, institutions were slaughtering one another in cold blood.

But when, over time, the personal gospel becomes so personal . . . you don't wear a cross around your neck anymore, you wear a tiny capsule around your neck and God lives inside it.  He becomes your personal charm, your genie.  Maybe like the cat in Men in Black, with a whole universe in a capsule on its collar.  It is this type of God that fits comfortable in the hills where we were taught that this world was insignificant. Where we were taught that learning things was bad.  And were we imagined a God that is so much our servant that, not only is He in the business of making us rich, but He makes us rich to buy new boobs to try and fill that insatiable longing for a "proper" body image.

After all why would God be interested in saving the children being slaughtered in Syria, or those buried beneath the tornado, or under an Iranian earthquake? Why would God be interested in answering the aspirations of a lost generation?  Aren't my boobs (speaking theoretically here) more important?

A Voice from From My Home Town (or could have been)

I watched just the beginning of the Billboard Mag Awards Show this week.  One of the first performances was by Kacey Musgraves and I admit I've never heard of her before.  But the lyrics quickly caught my ear.

I grew up in a small southern town, deep in the Bible-belt and I can say that virtually the last two generations have been lost from Christianity.  Preachers (those that still do believe) like to blame the evils of this world and the poor choices of the kids for the leaving.  I say, the kids were given nothing to stay for . . . but pretending or "out of ought."  Those that stay are often the most pretentious ones. Which brings me back to Boobs for Jesus (two posts ago) and HUG, I will get back to that thought.

But listen to Kacey's voice and look at the lyrics below. She captures the hopelessness that I see in the backwoods of where I grew up.  Bible-belt Evangelicalism having gone to seed . . . as the great migration out or the Boobs for Jesus pretentiousness.

If you ain't got two kids by 21,
You're probably gonna die alone
At least that's what tradition told you.

And it don't matter if you don't believe,
Come Sunday morning you best be there
In the front row, like you're s'posed to.

Same hurt in every heart.
Same trailer, different park.

Mamas hooked on Mary Kay
Brothers hooked on Mary Jane
And Daddy's hooked on Mary two doors down.

Mary Mary quite contrary,
We get bored so we get married
And just like dust we settle in this town.
On this broken merry go 'round and 'round and 'round we go,
Where it stops nobody knows...
And it ain't slowin' down, this merry go 'round...

We think the first time's good enough,
So we hold on to high school love,
Say we won't end up like our parents.

Tiny little boxes in a row,
Ain't want you want it's what you know,
Just happy in the shoes you're wearin'.

Same checks we're always cashin',
To buy a little more distraction.

Cause Mamas hooked on Mary Kay
Brothers hooked on Mary Jane
Daddy's hooked on Mary two doors down.

Mary Mary quite contrary,
We get bored so we get married
And just like dust we settle in this town.
On this broken merry go 'round and 'round and 'round we go,
Where we stop nobody knows...
And it ain't slowin' down, this merry go 'round...

Mary Mary quite contrary,
We're so bored until we're buried.
And just like dust we settle in this town.
On this broken merry go 'round...
Merry go 'round...

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
Jack burned out on booze and pills,
And Mary had a little lamb,
Mary just don't give a damn no more.

God Bless the Neanderthals

I love the Neanderthals and I don't mean that term figuratively  I think I love them so because I'm so curious about things and they are so perplexing.  When I was a kid they were pigeon-holed as a bus stop on the evolutionary trail (as taught by a few brave evolutionists in my Bible-belt society).

Years later archaeologists/anthropologists figured out that they were not in the Homo sapien chain at all.  Then we learn that they actually lived along side Homo sapiens.

Now the latest findings suggest (more than suggest) that we (Europeans and Asians but not Africans) all have Neanderthal DNA, thus inbreeding must have happened between them and us. So, were they human or not?

The other perplexing thing is that they are not in the Biblical narrative . . . at least in a recognizable way. For this reason, evangelicals have always tried to dismiss them.

In the Bible belt (and thanks to some Chick tracts) we were taught that the whole concept of the Neanderthals came from one tooth . . . or was it someone who died in the 1700s but had severe rheumatoid arthritis?  I think I heard both stories. Boy, those scientist who came up with the idea of Neanderthals must be pretty stupid . . . you think?

But of course neither of those stories were true.  There is an incredible archaeological record about them.

More recently I've heard all kinds of stories from evangelicals to justify their existence.  One was that it was a demonic race that had fought with Israel and God had cursed them (I think they pulled that story out of their holy butt hole).

But I love a mystery. Loving mystery is, in my opinion, the way we were created.  That's why we go to the moon and want to go to Mars.  The universe is God's playground and who wouldn't want to explore it.

Think about this.  The Neanderthals lived on this earth for 170,000 years. That is a freakin huge amount of time. Their technology evolved over that period of time of making better spears (by 25%). Maybe a few other improvements in their lives.  In contrast, we modern humans (with smaller brains) went from riding horses and reading by whale oil to walking on the moon and quantum computers within 100 years.

But I can't wait to ask God to explain this to me. Did the Neanderthals sin? Did Jesus die for them?  He must  have.  I mean, if I carry Neanderthal DNA (and I'm sure I do) this has to make sense somehow.

A few years ago I was trying to lead a couples' small group Bible study at my house.  I think I  made a comment about watching a program about the Neanderthals (as I did last night on Nova and that is why I'm writing about this tonight).  When we took a snack break one of the guys from my church, an elder, came up and put his arm around my shoulder and said, in a condescending way, "Mike . . . don't believe all you see on TV.  The atheist scientists make up all this crap just to make people believe in evolution so that they will leave God. Its all there in Revelations. We are in the last days."

I just shake my head and feel that I belong on Mars more than I do on Earth.  But I yearn for the unknown, the mystery, the unimaginable, the perplexing . . . and when we do, I think it makes God smile.