The Hole

I have been doing this thing where each Sunday I try reading an entire book of the bible, depending on its size.  Started in Genesis.  Did fairly well until I got to Jeremiah.  It's very long, and it's very, very me.  Unlikely, I thought, to change my heart much.  Giving me way more of what already causes me grief with other Christians.

   I decided: You know what?  I already think far, far too much along the lines of the prophets in the Old Testament: God is furious.  Everything we're doing is a bunch of idolatrous, self-serving, fake crap that stinks in His nostrils.  You need to shape up or He'll smite you even more. He will smite and smite and smite.  God SMASH puny sinners!

    I felt like I needed something different.  Not Jeremiah.  Jeremiah is particularly hardcore, because it's a prophecy for a people for whom repentance isn't an option.  Because it's too late.  It's not like with Nineveh or one of the others.  It's like Sodom and Gomorrah.  Too late.  The prophecy is simply that it's definitely going to happen, why it's going to happen, and how bad it's going to be.  There's nothing anyone can do.  The pain is in the mail.  Dead wives and children.  Castrated sons and prostituted daughters.  Streets empty but for scavenging dogs.

   So today I wasn't at all looking forward to starting where I'd left off in Jeremiah 30, and enjoying more God temper tantrums, and having to fight off feeling like Moses, tempted to smite the rock when talking to Christians.  But once I start things, I hate giving up on them, so I started in reading Jeremiah 30 anyway.  And something very odd happened.

It Happened In Jeremiah 30

Right in chapter 30, and also in 31, it was time for Jeremiah to tell Israel what God planned next.  After all the smiting He had been doing and was going to keep doing until He felt He was done.  Yes, He'd been betrayed and cheated on by his people Israel, with enough anguished, outraged bride and father imagery to make Christians question their exclusive claims to that kind of symbology.  But now it was time for Israel to hear, once God had really and truly vented his wrath, what came next.

   I read.  And I realized it was breaking my heart.  In a different way than I expected.  I wouldn't have been too into more smiting.  But I can't handle that kind of hope, either. That there's something next.  Something well-intentioned.  Something "for your own good" that might feel good, instead of "for your own good" like my Dad spanking me when I was a kid, with a wooden paddle with bible verses written on it in black magic marker.

   You see, as you probably know, I was raised that the World would persecute me and cast me out and that I would never fit in, not if I talked about Jesus.  Well, as it turned out, the World, whether it was kids at school, people at work, or people in bars and at parties, never really persecuted or cast me out at all, even if I did frequently talk about Jesus and God stuff.  That just never happened to any significant degree. I waited.  It didn't happen. Was I even doing Christianity right if people didn't hate me?
  Yet the church that taught me all that to begin with, well it sure did persecute and cast me out.  Targeted me. Ostracized me.  Repeatedly. Coldly and vindictively.  And they did the same thing to my friends and family.  Almost everyone I knew. We could never fit in. Not if we talked about actual Jesus. Not if we talked about what was actually in the actual World.

   My church had taught me the World was dangerous, but that there was something truly special for a Christian to enjoy, in the meantime.  Something else.  Something far better.  Yup, Star Wars and Spider-man and Iron Maiden were all dangerous, dark, deep, evil and wholly of the World.  Satan's claws were in them, ready to hook a young person's heart.  I had to give them all up to save my life from depravity, and there would be something else for me. Something worth enjoying instead.  Something Christian.

Something More Than Gold/Football

This reminds me of a little Sunday School charity kid telling Mr. Jones, a leading Sunday School (SS) guy that he'd be missing Sunday School next week.  You see, he was terribly excited to tell everyone, his absentee Dad was taking him to a CFL (Canadian football) game next Sunday afternoon.  I was standing there, too.

   In typical fashion, Mr. Jones was unable to "rejoice with them that rejoice," to see and enjoy the delight in the kid at getting to spend time with his father for once.  No, Mr. Jones characteristically fake-wept at them that rejoice, and contrasted how much better our Heavenly Father was than any earthly father (though we may, of course, love him very much) and how much better Sunday School was than (pah!) football.  He explained in detail how the kid was giving up the chance to hear about God's Things, Things That Last, for One Fleeting Afternoon of enjoying The Things of This Present Evil World.  (The kid still went with his dad the following week, despite all of that, oddly.)

   I was made similar promises as to the superior worth of going to Sunday School and church to pretty much anything else in the entire World.  Of course I never got to go to sports games on a professional, ticket-buying level any day of the week.  Movies either.  We could not be seen to entertain ourselves in any way that wasn't Christian-only.  I needed glasses and wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway.
   I was shut out of everything that might have made childhood more bearable, with this idea that I was getting/could get, Something Better.  Something Perfect and Divine, from God. Like Sunday School, with old Mr. Plank pinching our little knees if we zoned out for a minute. Like Reading Meeting, with old Mr. White doing ten minutes on how when we see the little word "but" in scripture, we always know that something's coming next.

   And that didn't end up working out.  At all.  They gave me church stuff and called it The Things Of The Lord, and I tried it. It was like tofurkey, or facon.  Veggie burgers.  Sawdust ketchupped and shaped to try to counterfeit Grade A Canadian beef.  It was like saltless pretzels, and sugarless, gluten-free, lactose-free Gummi Bears.  It was plastic, empty failed attempts to imitate the Real Stuff.

   Twila Paris was no Tori Amos.  Petra was no Pink Floyd.  Stryper was no Black Sabbath.  They lacked depth, originality, passion and nuance.  They were absolutely laughable attempts at substitutes.  And the "danger" prophesied for us if we were to ever, ever indulge overmuch in all this entertainment?  To the point of loving it, certainly?  It never really materialized.  Not at all.  Not even a tiny bit.  (Well, it did make church stuff look pointless, passionless and poorly thought out by comparison, so maybe that danger happened after all.  But it wasn't my spiritual health that was threatened by those things.  It wasn't Jesus who was threatened.  It was the church lifestyle.)

   And for their part, once they'd made all the money they could, the vast majority of the "Christian" artists didn't last, and in many cases, had their own sex scandals, money and legal murkiness, and substance abuse problems.  Would be fascinating to see what percentage of 80s and 90s Christian artists who were marketing successes retain a strong faith in Christ today.  And they had scores of kids following them, as safer alternatives to New Kids on the Block.

Does Entertainment Matter?

But that's all just entertainment.  Did it matter?
   That stuff mattered to me, because silly stuff like that is what really gets you through adolescence, in precisely the same way a colouring book and some crayons get you through a long road trip when you're a toddler.  And the message given us toddlers in place of all that, to explain why we couldn't have any of it, was nothing less than fear itself.   And shame.  We were forced to sacrifice joy in exchange for fear, shame and piety.  In Pink Floyd's obscure album The Final Cut, Roger Waters writes:

"By the cold and religious we were taken in hand.  Taught how to feel good and told to feel bad." 

   That was our experience.  Being taught that the World was bad.  Shame and fear, at best staved off with arrogant piety. Fear.  Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The World.
   I liked its stuff, though.  Thought maybe some of it was quite good.  It wasn't like puritanism was a NEW trick of Satan's, either, was it?  Yet we seemed ignorant of his designs, in using it on us.  We wanted so badly to be hardcore.

    Another part of the message was that Christians were God's people and to befriend them instead of worldly people.  That did not work out either.  It's what I did, of course.  Didn't want to be disapproved of.
   I have never been backstabbed and character assassinated in "worldly" circles as I have repeatedly been among Christians.  I have spent my life trying to meet Christians who can keep up with my agnostic friends in terms of generosity, courage, honour, charitableness, honesty, integrity and above all things, candour.  Mostly in vain.  They're (we're) up to something mysterious.  "Looking Christian."  "Living a Christian Lifestyle."  "Trying not to get any World on us."

Back to Jeremiah 30 For An Instant

But my reading of Jeremiah 30 and 31 today, suggested that the God I believe in has plans I absolutely have trouble believing in.  There is a gaping hole in my God concept.  I can believe that our Brethren fathers ate sour grapes of puritanism, and that we, the children's, teeth were set on edge thereby.  We all have that taste in our mouths still. Quite ruins our dining experiences.  

   And I can believe that God is disgusted by how we all do Christianity.  I can see Christ being replaced by "church."  I can see real Christ not being delivered, and weak, watered down, safe, innocuous stuff being peddled to parents, to make a mint, while pretending to be better than what they are failing to imitate.  I can see Christian children growing up to believe that Christ means less.  That Christ means empty, fearful substitutes for more authentic things.
   I can see the World going to Hell in a handbasket. I can see the Church as a whole, gutted, decaying, fallen into the street, but still with posters up brightly advertising its own ability to save people, fix their lives and answer all their questions. I can see it then offering mainly pamphlets, trite slogans, t-shirts and other church stuff instead of treating people the way Christ did. Instead of listening.  Instead of connecting to and understanding them.  

   I was raised to have no faith in the government, or any of the parties or people involved in it.  I was raised not to believe we could save the whales or the planet. I was raised not to believe we will ever get a leash on the depredations of the rich, on people addicted to power, the inhuman corporate behemoths bestriding the planet they're intent upon having their way with.  I was raised not to believe that war will ever be over, even if we want it.  To believe that the better we get at war, the larger numbers of innocent people will die each time we do it.  That with each new war waged, the percentage of noncombatants who die will continue to rise so far above what it was in the First World War that the word "war" will start to be inadequate to describe what our tax money is buying us.

     I am a very true, successful child of that upbringing.  Seeing the World as en evil place with no future, where every hopeful or cheerful word is a trick?  That worked.

What The Hole Is

But even growing up, I knew there was a hole in my spiritual life.  Just as when the Christian substitutes for worldly entertainment failed utterly to satisfy (or even interest) me, when the idea that the ultimate payoff (Heaven) was brought up, I just didn't want to go.  At all.

    Oh, I didn't want to go to Hell of course, but Heaven?  When I was a teenager I would have much preferred there just to be nothingness after death, than to have to go to Heaven.  As it was explained to me anyway, it sounded like one colossal, neverending Plymouth Brethren bible conference.  And when person after person suggested at bible conferences that "it doesn't get any better than this" I thought "I'm out, then."  When they presented the supposed 'mountaintop experience' of these events as a precious precursor to Heaven, I thought "I really, really don't want to go, then."

   But there I was, sacrificing the fun "things of the world" that I wanted more than anything, to save my Brethren reputation, but not really getting anything one could call genuinely positive or worthwhile out of it.
   I didn't actually believe I needed to stay home and not go see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, or I'd go to Hell. I didn't believe it was helping me get to Heaven to not do that thing I wanted to do more than I may ever want to do anything again.  I even knew that it wouldn't hurt my relationship with God to go see it.  So why was I carefully putting it on the Brethren altar to be incinerated?  To escape the Brethren Hell of disapproval and shame and lost status.  To keep my head above water in that pious shark tank.  To not shame my family.  To not get shunned even more.

   Clearly, like most of my family,  I was missing what most would call a "positive" element.  We weren't like some of the more successful Brethren folk.  None of us had the usual, tired old ambitions to go be a missionary, the Best Thing A Brethren Person Can Do Ever.  We didn't really believe we'd do any good by attempting that.  And really, there was no good we thought God was doing or likely to do in this world.  We were 100% focused merely on the avoidance of much bad.

   So, the World was theoretically bad, but really, we sacrificed joy in it to escape bad that was in our church, from our fellow Christians.  In the World, they let me think what I wanted about Jesus, and at church, they never let me think or feel or be at all.  In the World, they respected me for trying to figure spiritual stuff out.  At church they felt threatened by me not feeling their answers fit all my questions.   In the World, they didn't care who I was or what I wanted to be.  It was ok.  At church (which, we somehow never suspected, was a worldly thing as much as any other worldly thing, and most definitely "in the world") it was not.

   If as Christians we had ambitions to make a lot of money, that was bad.  If we had aspirations to make it in politics, or worse yet, sports or other forms of entertainment, that was really, really bad.  We didn't believe in a God who would support any of that.  If one found one's self a star something-or-other, in the NHL, NBA, or on MTV, or Prime Minister of Canada, clearly one had well and truly screwed up.  It was the devil, and not God, who gave people stuff like that. Success in this World Came At A Price: relationship with God.  So we were to sacrifice anything pleasant, pretty much.

  And for His part, what did God appear to give back, on a weekly basis?  Nothing.  Didn't kill us, maybe.  Boredom.  Abstinence.  Pimples.  Loneliness.  Sacrifice.  And a whole lot of fear and shame.  (of course that was church, and not Him, but it took me some time to even be able to draw that distinction between the two in my head.  Like, at all.)

   Was there a Christian ambition that was okay?  Having a family.  That was the prize, the golden calf, the sacred cow.  Our North American Idol.  The one permitted payoff.
   And even that only kind of came from God, somewhat condescendingly.  I mean, we all knew how much the apostle Paul had dissed marriage and families, and had written that they were nothing but trouble, were not really the point, and were not "convenient" to being a Christian.  Not properly, anyway.
  We knew that the most obedient of servants of the Lord would remain celibate for life, and go around the world giving out gospel literature, being that Baron amongst Brethren, The Missionary.  Like the Jungle Doctor had done for two years of his life.  Because we knew that, if only we listened enough, that's what God wanted every single one of us to do.

   Well, that's all pretty stupid, isn't it?

Life After Life?
One time in the 90s some (clearly clued-out) person actually allowed my friend's very unconventionally Brethren dad to give a talk to the youth group at Montreal conference.  He did something very troubling to everyone: he suggested that this idea that, after death/the Rapture, we go to Heaven and then do nothing forever, isn't what the bible says.  Like, at all.  That there would be a whole lot of other stuff going on after that.  That God had plans.  Was up to stuff.  That the bible didn't present Heaven as The End.  Far from it.
   And we'd all read our bibles.  So we knew he was right.

  But: What?  I am Joe's complete inability to cope with that simple fact.  If it's not a simple "sacrifice pleasure on the Brethren altar to get bitcoins in Heaven/don't be yourself at all and God won't punish you because you weren't you" thing, then what's the point of Christianity/church at all?!

   And many folk like N.T. Wright agree with my friend's dad.  They suggest that the whole black and white mindset, that we sacrifice joy on earth to buy bliss in Heaven, that God has no good plans for anyone right now in life, nor the world itself, is unscriptural nonsense which demonstrates clear psychological problems.  Just like the idea that we should laugh with delight at the idea that the world will soon burn and we can all stand around, holding our bibles and smiling awkwardly at one another in Heaven while the (formerly) cool kids scream in Hell.

   Well, I think something happens after death, alright.  Stuff described only occasionally and rather cryptically, if we're honest, in the Bible.  The Old Testament in particular presents almost nothing about afterlife.  It's complicated.  Like the rapture.  I used to believe very strongly that I knew all about that, but now I am really not terribly sure about it, one way or the other.  Could well be.  I don't know if that's what the bible means.  I don't pretend to know exactly how stuff ends for me, just like I don't pretend to fully understand and be able to picture and stick numbers all over how the Universe began.  But the idea that God might want us to bring good things to people around us in the world, and not just gospel pamphlets?  Crazy.  Seductive.  That we're to live a life, which might involve sacrificing stuff for people, so as to actually help them with stuff they want, rather than sacrificing stuff they don't want, so they can persecute us and we can be all holy and right?  What?!

   The idea that God wants to set things right sometimes, rather than simply trash everything for being imperfect?  Amazing.  The idea that maybe He likes some of the stuff that I like, and in fact, is actually inspiring/fuelling it?  Staggering.

Time To Get Some Life Into My Life

Suddenly if David Gilmour's solo in "Comfortably Numb" literally brings tears to the corners of my eyes, because I've finally put aside the shame and fear at being judged "worldly" for going to see him, and have ventured out and gotten myself into the same room as the man to hear him play, it is just possible for me to believe that God made David Gilmour, his talent, my ears, and also made my newly-freed heart and so many other things necessary for all this to happen.  And maybe God's into it, and in it, and in me.  Maybe it's good.
   Maybe it's good because of Him.  Maybe nothing that's good is good without Him, and maybe when we judge and scoff at things that are good, we scoff at Him. (I will confidently risk doing that in just a moment, at the next heading.)

  The folly of the tired old Puritan "Sacred vs. Secular" line, with church stuff being all holy, and nonchurch stuff being all sensual and sinful, isn't new.  But it's something I've been wrestling with my whole adult life.  (When I was a kid, I didn't wrestle too hard. Too busy making sure I didn't lose any gold stars.  In our church, you didn't so much get a gold star for success, as you were allotted a whole box of gold stars, just for being Brethren.  You didn't get to play with the stars, and if you ever acted unBrethren, you started losing stars from your box.) 

   But I'm scared.  Scared to "allow" God to be in the world.  Maybe doing good.  I'm scared to allow Him to have plans (today) and not just plans (soon) to scorch and melt the whole thing into nothingness, saving His favourites and sticking them in an overlit white waiting room to wait for nothing for all Eternity.

   I mean, I know the bible is full of stuff about God doing things right now, and that no matter how bad things were at any point in it, He was always up to stuff with overcomers, with individuals who wanted to experience Him.  But still.  Hard to be me, and believe this new stuff.
   And I know that the bible even speaks of a future state of the world in which it will all be set right, when Christ will, rather than sacrificing himself and apparently "losing" to evil, vanquish evil in the world, and that it also speaks of a future new earth.  God doing good instead of wrecking everything.  Crazy stuff.

   All that stuff presents a God I don't really know how to believe in properly.  Much easier to believe in a Church Lady God, tut tutting.  A piety God made of purest elitist spite.  Judgment and hate.  Who has no loftier schemes that to stave off gay marriage, Miley Cyrus videos, and sex ed being taught in school until our own kids are safely married to people of the opposite gender, having clearly declared their church allegiance and safely sat on several committees with ever spreading influence/circumference.

   But I think, ultimately, that He will insist upon being Himself to us.  If we want to create an idol, a god puppet (or a God Boogieman) we can try that, but I think, really, He's out doing stuff in the whole world.  He's out there.  Right now.  We'd have to stick our heads pretty far up our steeples to miss it.

Audience Reactions

Yesterday evening I was stealing some blissed out audience reaction shots from a colossal praise and worship festival video I found on YouTube, to misuse for my own nefarious video making purposes (I needed an "audience" in one of my own videos), and while snipping out snippets of audience reaction shots, of course I had to actually listen to it.  I couldn't believe how the Worship Team Captain/Quarterback/Leader spoke to God.  He was all like:

"God, we just pray that You would increase your presence.  Increase it now. Just increase it here, come right into this room with us, right here, right now.  INcrease Your presence, our God! We have decided that You are worthy.  We have decided to just come here because You are worth our time and our seeking.  Some of us have driven from great distances.  We have chosen to be here.  Just come into this room, now, oh Holy Spirit.  Increase Your presence here, where we have come together.  Just increase it, right now!"
(no facial expression.  Hands in air. Very authoritative, edgy-blank tone.)

It went on and on and on.  And I know I'm a dick about these things.  And I know I was raised to despise stuff like this, and despise it I did.  I was tempted to mock it immediately:

"Oh God, just make Your way to the stage at this point in our blessed service, as this is the bridge of the song, after all.  Just take the aisle on the right, oh Holy Spirit, being careful of the power cables running across the floor to power the floodlights we need to look awesome and yet sincere.  God, oh Holy Spirit, just increase Your presence, focus harder, manifest more strongly.  We are starting to see a vague outline of You.  Try harder.  Like Ben Kenobi would, our God.  Please increase Your Jedi-like presence particularly on the left hand side of the stage. (That's Stage Left, oh Holy Spirit)  And just try really hard to make us care about You.  We don't care much, so just reach down into our successful middle-class hearts and excite us and stroke us and just stimulate us for You.  Make us just feel something for You, oh God.  Our hearts are made of plastic.  We are all busy people, with active lives and things to do, and some of us booked time off work, or spent a fair bit on gas to even get here, but we've decided You're worth it, Oh Lord.  You are worth us taking this time out of our full, full lives, to be videoed in HiDef getting totally high on You (DVD and BluRay available online, Credit Cards and PayPal accepted.  Follow us on Twitter, oh Lord.)  Oh Holy Spirit, we are not tripping balls even yet.  We are just so resistant to You.  Just increase our euphoria tenfold until we have forgotten our own phone numbers and can't walk straight. Fill us with Your love, oh God.  Come into us, oh God, and just grab us hard, never let us go; shake us, move us, throw us down, love us and just fill us up with You!"

And mock it like that I did. Instantly. In my head.  And I felt guilty.  Were these guys sincere?  Does "sincerity" excuse everything?  And never mind the huge amount of money involved.  Can I at least see their attitude as oddly narcissistic and God-controlling without just being dumb?  As perhaps immature and self-serving?  It seemed like they were wanting to take a part of themselves more generally catered to by raves and Justin Bieber, and to try to jam God in there, on their terms, without Him getting much say in any of it.  GodJam 2014.  So they could get high.

   Well, I suck.  I don't know what I'm doing spiritually.  And I can bliss out to David Gilmour's guitar playing, and see God is in it the same way that He's in trees, rivers, mountain ranges and the voice of someone who really cares about you.  But  I cannot connect to "inviting God into rooms we've holed up in."  And it looks to me like nothing more than going into an (admittedly extremely expensive, multimedia) church experience, shutting "the World" out and then imitating it as closely as we can.  Unsuccessfully.  Nagging God to deliver in that safe, cotton-balled environment, the stuff He only sometimes gives out in the real world He put us in.  It's not like he's a tame lion.  And even Ben Kenobi wouldn't manifest on command.  Weekly.  On video.

Two Ideas

But I'm reading Jeremiah.  And even when God's furious, He's got plans.  Not just plans about us fantasizing about Him.  Plans to make us strong.  Plans to make us unique.  Plans to set things right. Plans that will work for real people, being their real, rather than their "best" selves, with real problems. For people who can't afford to go to stuff like that worship thingie.  For people too old and too dark to not burst out laughing at even a YouTube video of it.  Plans out in the world.  Plans that pull us out of our comfort zones, out of our homes and churches, and suck us into what He's doing in the world itself and everyone in it, rather than us trying to do a seance and summon God Himself to ft. in the middle of our fifteen word, adolescent worship wankfest, fifteen minute power ballad.  Rather, even, conversely, than trying to pay for our salvation by living a lifelong Lent on Earth.  

   We will never lay up treasure in heaven by locking ourselves into a church and scoffing at, judging and "warning against" things of genuine joy and value that are loose, out in the earth.  Nor will we do it by making a paper-thin counterfeit of those things, safely in that church context, carefully recreating the same stuff, but making it all part of our contemporary Jesus Brand (merchandise available online at http://www.christianshit316.ev).

   I am overwhelmed lately by these two ideas:

1.  Satan's not in Hell. In fact, according to the bible, anyway, he's never been there. He's in the world, mixing it up with everyone and everything, including the forces of good, who are also here, and not in Heaven.  He's definitely heavily involved in churches.

2.  God's not just in Heaven.  We've got to stop treating God like he's glowy Ben Kenobi, getting off his Heaven-couch and manifesting, "showing up" at church to do a solo in the bridge of the song.  He's at work everywhere right now, and He's in us and out there accomplishing things already.

Would be so much easier if He'd just sit up in Heaven, looking down scowling, but doing nothing. Or maybe showing up for part of the hour on Sunday, if we ask really hard.  

  But fixing stuff?  Doing things?  Things we have to go out into the world to see Him doing, rather than going into a church and inviting Him in?  Crazy.