The Fourth Day of Lent

I cannot even begin to calculate the influence of music on my soul, my worldview, and yes, my theology. Christmas carols are among my earliest memories, and the developmental impact of sacred and religious music upon me is inestimable (congregational singing is one of the many things I miss since having left the Church). The development of my worldview within a theological context early afforded me an ability to sense the sacred/theological in genres well outside the hymnody of organized religion. The influence of The Beatles upon what and who I understand myself to be defies any attempt to qualify it, so let the following example suffice to express what I me:

Within You Without You

We were talking-about the space between us all

And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion

Never glimpse the truth-then it's far too late-when they pass away.

We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it

To try our best to hold it there-with our love

With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.

Try to realize it's all within yourself

No-one else can make you change

And to see you're really only very small,

And life flows on within you and without you.

We were talking-about the love that's gone so cold and the people,

Who gain the world and lose their soul-

They don't know-they can't see-are you one of them?

When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,

Is waiting there-

And the time will come when you see

We're all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

The Third Day of Lent

The routine is to have my lab work done two weeks prior to meeting with my oncologist.  That’s what I did this morning, arriving punctually at 8:30 to have a less than enthusiastic phlebotomist draw my blood at 8:50.  I’ve noted some distinct similarities between the Nevada Cancer Institute and mortuaries, most distinctly the syrupy reception followed by abject dispassion.  The majority of those whom I joined in the waiting area were there for chemotherapy, a process I have been mercifully spared by the miracle tablet Gleevec.  Three of us responded to the cattle call, had the tourniquet applied, the needle inserted, and the red fluid drawn from our veins.  Without any fanfare I was released back into public and drove home.  No sooner did I arrive and sit down at the computer than did the phone ring.  It was NVCI asking me to return because my potassium level was critically high.  This was eerily similar to how the whole leukemia thing began: a phone call; an elevated white count that required retesting; the confirmation that it wasn’t just a fluke but CML.  These were some of the thoughts running through my mind as I drove back to where I had just been back when it all seemed so routine.  I’m trying to be faithful to my Lenten commitment to give up those things that get in the way of—that interfere with—my conscious awareness of God, but it is precisely these kinds of distractions that make such a thing difficult if not impossible.  I suppose because my theology doesn’t allow me to “petition the Lord with prayer” (God bless you, Jim Morrison) there was really no sense in asking God to do anything, to change anything, because that’s just not the way it works.  But there was comfort in knowing that God was sharing the experience with me and that I was not alone.  The same cheerless technician perfunctorily asked me for the same identification I had given her less than an hour before and virtually inserted the needle into the same puncture.  I was instructed to remain in the waiting area now filled almost to capacity with kindred souls in various stages of transition until the second set of results was obtained.  Finally, the nurse practitioner declared me viable as she explained that potassium sometimes collects at the point the needle enters and results in a false reading.  So, where was God in all this?  I repeat: where was God not?

Where Is God?

Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet Cosmonaut, was the first human to orbit Earth on April 12, 1961. He reportedly radioed, “I don’t see any God up here.” There is no record of Gargarin actually having made the comment, although then Premier Nikita Kruschev later alluded to such in a speech to the Central Committee of the CPSU. Regardless of who actually spoke the words, they were a direct rebuttal to the religious notion that God resides in a heaven that is above the Earth (and for some religions Satan resides in a hell beneath the planet’s surface). When I began this tangent, I attempted to contrast the distinctions between religion and theology. I would hope that this example serves to further illustrate that religion implicity asks the question, where is God?; if by nothing more than claiming to know where God is: e.g. heaven. Authentic theology, however, more appropriately asks, where is God not? I believe there’s more to ponder here than mere semantics. For Lent I am trying to give up those things that interfere with my relationship to and with my Creator, and an almost insurmountable obstacle to that is to somehow try to locate God. If I put God “out there” it immediately negates the personal intimacy of God everywhere. Omnipresence is no easier for the human mind to comprehend than any ultimacy, but that doesn’t really excuse my attempt to restrict or limit God’s whereabouts just so that I can feel more comfortable. To be true to my Lenten quest of connecting more fully with the Divine, I am going to have to give up any such paradigm that would allow for the comment, “I don’t see any God up here.”

Ash Wednesday

The words of Walter C. Smith’s 1876 hymn keep running through my mind:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Anicent of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
But of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.

All laud we would render; O help us to see
‘Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.

Amen.

What I’m Giving Up For Lent

Every religion and faith tradition I can think of calls for some degree of self denial and sacrifice. In the midst of the current global economic crisis, even secular ethicists are dismissing the “greed is good” philosophy by calling for—you guessed it—self denial and sacrifice. I’m always a little taken aback when I read that Lent is a Roman Catholic observance because it was always central to my Methodist preparation for Easter. Regardless, conscientious self denial and sacrifice is inherent to the Judeo-Christian understanding of how to better relate to, to better experience, God.

The tradition has, however, been trivialized and perverted by such meaningless observances as Mardi Gras. “Fat Tuesday” becomes the last chance for hedonistic indulgence before giving up such mundane things as cigarettes, chocolate, and possibly even sex (I will give some serious thought to how I came up with those three examples). Obviously, a great many people indulge with gusto even when they have no intent of giving up anything afterwards, presumably just for the sake of the good time.

Much as I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore because it is such an empty practice, I’m tempted to purvey pseudointellectualism by pooh-poohing the idea of giving up something for Lent. But the resumption of my theological quest leads me to think that I will be the one to suffer from such neglect. While giving up some of the things I’ve mentioned represents an underdeveloped theology, it is incumbent upon me to develop practical experiences that are commensurate with a more mature theology.

Therefore, for Lent I am giving up those things that interfere with my relationship to, and experience of, God. I am thankful for this forum which will afford me the opportunity to more fully explore what an impossibly ridiculous thing I have just committed to.

Hello, You Five

That’s the average number of visits to Incite per day according to today’s sitemeter summary.  Although I don’t know for certain who you are, I have an educated guess that pretty well exhausts the immediate family.  Therefore, I hope that you will find this article forwarded to me by Rachel to be as fascinating as I do (be forewarned: I was mentally exhausted by the time I finished reading it).

Religiously Transmitted Diseases

by  Sam Kean

That Deafening Silence

Mom reminded me in her e-mail this morning of the special February 23 issue of TIME devoted to Science and Faith: The Biology of Belief. She commented on how the articles coincided with my thoughts of the last couple of weeks. I have to admit that there is some consoling affirmation when a national publication validates the subject’s worth, because as far as this blog is concerned, I haven’t “incited” a comment since January 27, and that was about my confusion over the economy. Now I must admit that I have received some personal e-mails since then (and to Steve the Elder I can only ask for his patience as I compose a response worthy of his articulate thoughts) and am blessed by a mother who believes I’m a genius, but I think I can empathize with the standup comedian who delivers his best punchline to a sickening thud from an unimpressed audience. Just as I hoped to elicit a response from the National Security Agency for calling George W. Bush a criminal idiot (and failed), so I had hoped that I might at least goad some fundamentalist Christians into a lively theological debate. Alas, theology just doesn’t get anybody fired up. And that’s too bad, because there is no other topic that may as comprehensively address our future as human beings. In the meantime, I encourage you to read the articles in TIME in the light of the distinctions I’ve attempted to draw between theology, religion, faith and belief. Perhaps these authors of reknown can make a believer of you.

Worlds Apart

I would like to think that I have developed a reasonably strong argument for personal experience as the bedrock of theology, as the means by which we experience God as God experiences through us. Where religion seems to be fundamentally at odds with this approach is its insistence upon mediation to authenticate or validate the experience. In other words, religion attempts to define the parameters of who, what, where, why and how a genuine “interaction” with God occurs. Priests, shamans, and witch doctors all claim, by virtue of the religious tenets to which they subscribe, that the direct personal experience of God is limited to those who are ordained, called, etc. When someone like Jesus of Nazareth comes along and proclaims a relationship with the Divine that is so intimately personal as to refer to God as “Daddy”, the religious establishment goes bonkers. While it is true that Martin Luther espoused the priesthood of all believers, the Christian brand of religion has steadfastly maintained that there are some who are “better connected” with God than others. This may serve to explain why—at least in my experience—so few churches genuinely focus on theology.

The Truth of the Matter

As you read these words, take the time to ponder what a truly miraculous thing is happening. In this time and place, you do not merely exist—which of itself is a miracle no one is capable of duplicating on a cosmological scale—but you are actually experiencing the existence by way of sentient prehension. In other words, these odd characters come together to create an experience that transcends that time and space in which it was created. Think about that for a moment before allowing yourself to ask the question, where does experience come from? In this current age which is so enamored (and justifiably so) with scientific empiricism, we have the MRIs and CATscans to reveal the physiological workings of the brain, but when all is said and done no one is yet in a position to empirically quantify or qualify experience. And again, even when we are able to (I don’t doubt that time is coming) we still will be no closer to knowing where the something that is everything comes from, particularly on the cosmological scale. I have no quarrel with the Big Bang explanation of the origin of the universe, but I sincerely doubt that there will ever be a satisfactory explanation of where the Big Bang came from in the first place. Likewise, I have no quarrel with the theory of evolution because once you fill in the gaps and missing links of the tree of life you will still be left with the question of what started it all. It is this metaphysical First Cause which incomprehensibly attempts to explain the something that is everything, which leads me to wonder why we search so diligently for the very thing which makes it possible for us to experience in the first place. Yes, I know. The impersonalness of it all is stupefying. And yet, if you have really stopped to think at all about what’s going on as you read these words, you become aware of the Source that is not just personal but intimately so as it experiences in, by, and through you. Therefore, I have no problem saying that without God I am nothing, because I don’t have a problem with the Truth.

Run That Past Me One More Time!

I have now made the argument that something trumps nothing. I welcome debate from those who would argue the opposite (this will be a neat trick coming from nothing). I think that it naturally follows that everything is something and that something ultimately includes everything. This is how I have come to understand God: something that is everything. I agree that this is not very spiritually satisfying (the same reaction that I had to Ernest Holmes description of God as “the thing Itself”). Such vague ambiguity is very disturbing to the human mind that has a penchant for labeling and categorizing—a hunger for concreteness, if you will—and this may explain the role that religion begins to play in relationship to theology. Making the incomprehensible comprehensible has tremendous appeal to the human mind, especially when it comes to concepts of infinity and eternity which both apply to something and everything. To envision that everything is something that I can see, smell, touch, and so on, is much more palatable than trying to accept that it is by its very nature beyond my ability to comprehend. This explains why, then, the human mind—like water seeking its lowest level—leans in the direction of anthropomorphization. In other words, it’s easier for me to identify with an old man upstairs than it is with something that’s everything.

Moving Right Along

As far as I can tell, there is a distinct difference between existence and experience, that being sentience. Both existence and experience are grounded in the something that negates the nothing. The example I have found helpful is that of a rock. A rock exists, to be sure, but to the best of my knowledge it does not experience. A rock on Earth is subject to gravity just as is a human, but I cannot argue that a rock experiences that law of physics, or certainly not in the same way that a human experiences it by employing perception, interpretation, reason, etc. Both the rock and the human are subject to the same physical law, but the former exists while the latter experiences. I understand that it is time to move beyond the experience issue with regard to theology, but I hope that I have set the stage for distinguishing the difference between belief and experience. While both result from sentience, it makes a great deal of difference to me, anyway, that experiencing God is more genuine than believing in God. Put another way, someone who believes in God but has not experienced God runs the risk of placing her/his “faith” in something that is inauthentic.

Who Cares?

Theology deals with the ultimate. For humans, the ultimate experience is life proceeding to death. Science has deceptively boiled down the question of where we come from to a fertilized egg; nevermind where this whole scenario orginated, because our minds are able to accept such an objective explanation even though it has only been available to our species for a relatively infitessimal time. It is the concluding ultimate human experience—death—that evades scientific examination to the extent that belief becomes preferable to the eternal angst of not knowing. Thus, employing Occam’s Razor once more, the simplest answer is nothing. Life is experienced and with death the experience ceases; nothing before, experience during, nothing after. Just as Occam’s Razor denies God for simplicity’s sake, so it denies that there is anything more to human existence than being born to die. Such simplicity is again complicated, however, by the same argument that because there is something, nothing becomes (forgive the pun) void. The biology of procreation offers many helpful answers, but it fails to answer the ultimate human questions: where did I come from; what am I doing here; and, where am I going? To claim that it doesn’t matter is disingenous because the history of our species is fighting to the death to stay alive. We are here, we experience, and theology becomes the venue of trying to make sense of it all.

From Me to You

Experience is made fundamentally personal by reason, by the ability to intelligently interpret and rationalize. Even the most common of experiences: day, night, up, down, etc; are perceived and processed by the individual. The pseudo-science of psychology studies these differences in perception, but I am unaware of any findings that are absolute. We may all agree on the color red, but that does not account for what red means to you or what it means to me. Commonality is the wondrous cohesiveness by which we are able to communicate with one another, and when we stop to consider the infinite possibilities of perception it truly is a miracle that we ever make sense to anyone other than ourselves. Sacred literature—Scripture—is the testament to the human experience of God—the transcendant higher power—which is both universal and intimate. I experience God personally, and because of that I (and others who experience) am left to translate that experience in such a way that others might recognize that same experience for themselves. This is what it means to be human: to experience, to reason, to share the process that is common to us all.

From Sojourners:

The viewpoints of Bishop Williamson on the Shoah [Holocaust] are absolutely unacceptable and firmly rejected by the Holy Father, as he himself ... reaffirmed his full and indisputable solidarity with our brother recipients of the First Covenant, and affirmed that the memory of that terrible genocide should induce "humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human heart," adding that the Shoah remains "for everyone a warning against forgetting, against negating or reductionism, because violence committed against even one human being is violence against all." Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to the Episcopal functions of the Church, must in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions regarding the Shoah.
- Statement by the Vatican Secretariat of State, issued in the wake of international outrage following the lifting of the excommunication of British Bishop Richard Williamson, a holocaust denier. The statement also said that the Pope had not been aware of Williamson's views when he lifted excommunications on him and three other bishops last month. (Source: Zenit)
+ Sign

Are You Experienced?

Writes James Poniewozik, “We are all born solipsists; we begin life thinking that our perceptions define reality. Gradually we learn perspective: that there’s a difference between how we see ourselves and how others perceive us.” Because I fancy myself a process existentialist, I find Poniewozik’s words to ring true in a theological context. It seems to me that Reason is fundamentally couched in Experience. All I have ever known in this life is sentience, and so I really can’t say if it is possible for Reason to function independently of Experience or not. Jimi Hendrix struck the chord with his question, “Are you experienced?” I perceive experience which I then, by reason, interpret. With all due respect to those who vouch for the primacy of Tradition (as Roman Catholic theology does) or Scripture (as evangelical Protestant theology does), I would argue that neither of those facets of the Wesleyan quadrilateral would have any meaning absent Experience and Reason. It is in this context, then, that I have formed my opinion that a basic theological dichotomy exists between believing that God exists and knowing that God is. I know that God is from personal experience, and for my money that trumps whatever anyone believes.

It is probably giving The United Methodist Church more credit than it is due to say that it has entertained a theological debate since its inception in 1968, but Wesley’s quadrilateral did receive some attention when the conservative folk raised to primacy Scripture over Tradition, Reason and Experience. My bias toward Reason is thus far painfully obvious but I’m just enough of a behavioral scientist to believe that rational thought, sentience, the ability to think—Reason—is necessarily the first step in theologizing. If the ability to think is absent it’s hard for me to imagine that Scripture or Tradition spontaneously appear on their own. I am of the opinion that Reason and Experience complement each other as the basis of theology, whereas Scripture and Tradition are the result of beliefs. Beliefs are not always accurate or true, two facets which are absolutely necessary to a legitimate theology. A study reports “that 92 percent [of Americans] believe in God or a universal spirit”, but the majority means more to politics than it does to empirical objectivity. In other words, just because nine out of ten Americans believe in God does not prove one way or the other whether or not there really is a God. In this scientific age where technological prowess is derived from empiricism, to argue that there is or is not a God demands more than belief. This contention is naturally offensive to religion because it is based in beliefs that manifest as sacred literature and practices. We are now to the point of asking whether we believe there is a God, or if we know there is a God.

Coming and Going

You are what is messing up the atheistic equation. While it is inarguably true that 0+0=0, you are just as inarguably not nothing. You have a sum value that may be nothing more than .0000001, but that makes you something. That you are something changes the math, so to speak, because we must now account for the factors which create the sum. It is understandable to now ask, What difference does it make? Why even be bothered with it? Two questions help to provide an answer: Where did I come from? Where am I going? Even for those who are content to accept death as the final nothingness, the question of why we were born to die remains. It seems simple at first. I was born because of sexual intercourse between my parents, and so on. I have no problem with the Darwinian theory of evolution because it never denies First Cause. I have no problem with the Big Bang theory of creation because it never denies First Cause. Religion has taken upon itself the task of defining First Cause resulting in the predictably arcane anthropomorphization of God. Just as a reasonable person matures to the point of not accepting the stork as a reasonable explanation for where babies come from, so must one’s theology mature to the point that a humanlike deity fails to intelligently explain where we come from and where we are going. J. B. Phillip’s book title says it best, “Your God Is Too Small”.

Maybe. Maybe Not.

Occam’s Razor makes short work of the question, Is there a God? Simplest answer: no. Legitimate theology must allow for atheism.

Occasionally, absolutism has its place. The black and white test often fails because of the ambiguous grey area, but there are instances when it passes. 0+0=0; in the most fundmental sense there is no benefit arguing such a truth.

So, to posit that there is no God becomes an open and shut case. That is until attendant questions are asked. How does something emerge from the void of nothing? This metaphysical question of First Cause challenges the notion that something can come from nothing. Really? Show me beyond the shadow of a doubt that such a thing is possible.

If something from nothing cannot be empirically demonstrated, the absolute open and shut case deteriorates in the light of something needing a source that cannot be equal to nothing. Reason, therefore, allows for the existence of a source to explain that there is something which cannot be accounted for by a void. In other words, there may be something, and the theological term for that is: God.