Four Mini-Topics

So, I haven't written a blog entry since last month. There are two great reasons for that:
    The most obvious one is that I spent the end of last month and the start of this one in Alaska, where I flew in small propeller planes, four-wheeled out to see glaciers, and broke bread with an open brethren group two Sundays while there.  And then didn't want to invade the privacy of the family I stayed with by blogging all about them.

    The other reason I haven't blogged is that this summer I've been getting a lot more than my usual number of long talks with people who are into that.  Usually, I have thoughts, but I have no one to tell them to, and so I blog them.  But this summer, I've had an awful lot of excellent, lengthy conversations with equally dogged conversants.  So the blog entries don't get written.  The tension built up by having the idea is released when it gets out.  Verbally.  In person.

Anyway, with no particular order or reason, here are some things that have been percolating in the old brainbox:

#1 Connecting With People Who Disagree

My friends in Alaska are Tea Party members.  Loaded guns everywhere.  They think I'm terribly liberal and socialist. But they're really smart and informed.  I really like them.  They like me.  At first we were afraid we'd argue or disagree about everything, and we totally didn't. Not in any bad way, anyway.  In good ways we argued, just like people who already knew each other.
   I guess when a bunch of our kind of people (the kind who like to think and talk a lot) are talking, even if they feel others are very liberal or very conservative, they may often find they really like each other and really enjoy talking to each other.  They may find the fact that they all care about all that stuff, and love talking and thinking a whole lot, becomes immediately far more important than what are the actual "positions" all the people hold.  And they learn that other people's "positions" are complicated, and part of a developing process, rather than a static "location."  Moving targets, all.

    If you disagree with someone's position, but you find the two of you have just spoken to each other flowingly and eagerly for two hours straight, something interesting happens.  You find you like each other, often, respect each other, usually, and you find the different views become interesting rather than becoming insurmountable obstacles.

   I think that pretty much everyone agrees about what, generally speaking, is wrong with the world.  What bad stuff we want less of.  Rapes.  Murders.  Theft.  Poverty.  But pretty much no two people ever agree at all about exactly what (precisely) should be done to fix any of it.  So that can just be taken as a given.  We already agree about what almost all of the bad stuff is.  We may never agree about how to fix it, or even what's causing it.

#2 "Obedience Is Everything" Christians

I'm noticing: a lot of Christians are so focused on obedience (and only obedience) supposedly being "the answer" to everything, that they are, to my mind, unable to engage properly in certain discussions.  Like ones about certain people in the bible (the prodigal son's elder brother, the Pharisees, the various rich men who could honestly tell Jesus they were pretty much keeping the law). People who were zealously obedient to the rules of the bible as they saw them, yet clearly did not please God.  Who were lacking in His Eyes.

    I mean, what were they missing?  They refrained from doing all the bad stuff one is supposed to refrain from doing.  They dutifully fulfilled all the duties they were supposed to dutifully do.  Yet something was still missing.  Jesus is quite harsh with Pharisees, despite their obedience to and knowledge of their holy scriptures.  The prodigal's elder brother is not a good role model.  Is arguing, rather than celebrating with his father at the end.  And is missing stuff he may never have learned at all.  Obedience to good stuff is good.  But apparently, obedience isn't "all."  Apparently being a Christian, or reading the bible isn't, after all, "all" about obedience. There's other terribly important stuff.  Stuff so important that if you miss it, it downright invalidates the obedience and duty entirely.

   Most anyone could tell you what they're missing: They lack an understanding of and participation in love relationships.  Charity. Empathy.  Commiseration and mutual celebration.  They obey the rules, toe the line, honour the limits, give the tithes and still "have not love."  They obey the father but don't really know him.  Don't know how to rejoice with them that rejoice, or weep with them that weep.  Their emotional responses are lacking or inappropriate.  Their modern counterparts are the same: Robin Williams commits suicide.  Instead of feeling shocked and sad, they get angry about how people are expressing their grief, and go on the Internet trying to "correct" it all.

   So some of these modern Christian people reading these stories seem to miss the heart behind the bible stuff too.  They are obeying or doing religion for the same reasons as those characters in the bible stories.  The ones who were depicted in order to discuss God's dissatisfaction.  They are obeying to be right or good, or so they will be thought of as those things, or to not make God/their father angry.  But they don't "get" about doing good to touch His/his heart, or anything like that.  They do good to stave off failure, to not be sinners, or to feel superior, or stuff.  Not for good's own sake.  They seem to have no real awareness that good is good.  They just know that it's expected.  And looks good. (well, better than that other stuff, anyway)  Things that are good have inherent worth apart from making you look better.  But some rich people buy paintings they don't understand, to display in their living rooms.  Some Christians are like that about God.

   And when this kind of Christian talks about the bible at all, without an understanding of feelings, of love relationship, he's just the sound of annoying cymbals banging on endlessly about obedience, without a single good reason WHY to obey.
   That's how people like that seem to me, anyway.  And I used to be one.  Still am one, to an embarrassing degree.  A Hermione Granger.  A rule-follower (or an all-too-rules-conscious breaker of same).  Not someone who connects and understands people and forges bonds of relationship easily.  Not someone who understands that good is good, and so has inherent, rather than external, worth in it.  That's why I need God.  To show me that good isn't just something to obey, or stand beside, or associate myself and my reputation with.  It's Him.

#3 Feelings and Control

A lot of Christians don't feel comfortable with God (neither as Father or incarnated as the Lord Jesus Christ) having the full range of human emotions.  Particularly not breaking down and crying, finding things funny, or losing His temper (certainly not bursting out laughing).  None of that.  Sounds to them like it would be a flaw to do that, as it involves an apparently giving up (or loss or release) of control.  

   Because to many, the essence of not sinning is not losing control.  Control (or, as the scripture calls it in humans "the flesh") is perfection.  Completeness.  To be holy is to be always, ever in control.  To suppress our bad.  Which is anything at all which doesn't want to be suppressed.  He who loses control first, loses the interaction/debate/negotiation/argument of the moment.  (many Brethren relationships end this way.  The "control contest" winner loses his/her spouse forever).  And it is therefore commonly thought to always be sin to give up control, release it or lose it.
   (Well, if you sneeze, fart, orgasm or yawn, that's seen as a physical loss of control, so it's okay.)  But anger in particular is a thing where if you lose control, that's always sin, they think.  No matter what's just happened in front of, or to you, or to someone you care about.  If you lose your temper, you shouldn't have. No matter what.  Hitler shoots your Mom and pees on her bleeding corpse.  Be appalled.  But don't lose your temper.  Because that's always sin.  God wouldn't do that.

   Thing is, no matter what body function, humans "work" in terms of release of tension.  When you need something, whether it be sleep, to pee, to sneeze, to breathe, whatever, you get increasingly uncomfortable as you prolong satisfying this urge to release the tension.  The tension and discomfort builds and you increasingly look forward to being able to satisfy it so the discomfort and tension can leave you.  (Laughter and tears are a way of "venting off" excesses of emotional energy.  Hurts to keep them in.  Same with anger.)  So, you carefully don't pee your pants, or burst out laughing, or lose your temper and yell, and then you eventually decide it's time, and you let loose.  And you feel much better.  You needed to do that.  (Of course you try not to empty your bladder, your nose, your tears or your temper all over some innocent stranger.)

    Howard the ex-pastor was once at a retreat, and found himself involved in a discussion of how exactly one knew when the Spirit was moving one to speak or act.  Howard said it was just like when you need to take a dump. You are increasingly filled with a growing discomfort, a need to take care of this.  Something needing to come out.  And then it does, and you feel relieved.  Being moved by the Spirit is just like that, Howard explained.

    Apparently, like in many of Howard's stories, some older pastors were a tiny bit scandalized at this downright biblical choice of imagery.  When the bible's using descriptive language, it all too often goes straight to poo imagery.  (Or whores.)  When I do that, I get told to stop.  Because I'm not Jesus.  Or Ezekiel.  Or Jeremiah.  Or Isaiah.  Should talk more like pastor Billy Bob.  You know.  Should talk like "A Christian." Gosh.  Dangit.  My word.  Bless.

    So, an increasing tension, followed by release.  Built right into our design.  And all stories, pretty much, are structured that same way, to appeal to how we're made.  The reader increasingly feels a building tension/suspense which is released only when the story is pretty much over. In fact, the release (the "climax") means the story had better end pretty soon afterward.  Because the tension, the growing suspense or action, was keeping the reader's attention.  Making him eager to have it resolved.  And now it's been released, freeing him from needing to read very many more pages.

    So, do these human faculties, especially when emotional, reflect our being created in God's image, so they say something about Him, or are they more the result of our being physical?  Can God, being a spirit, or can any angel or devil, weep, laugh, or get angry?  Have emotional responses build up, hold them in until it gets uncomfortable, and then release them? 

   God presents Himself in the Old Testament prophetic books as a supernatural being, the ultimate source of all things, being able to feel broken covenants and betrayals and infidelities to a clearly supernatural degree, with a wrath that is far beyond that of any human being, as often as not resulting in the entire destruction of entire civilizations, leaving landscapes strewn with bodies, or a planet with almost every once-living creature reduced to a sea of bloated, rotting, drowned corpses floating in angry unceasing rain from a wrathful sky.  God depicts Himself as able to be jealous and hold grudges and be angry for far longer than a human lifespan.  And He seems to feel deeply.

   He can forgive.  Sometimes does. Doesn't always.  Depends who.  Some people get flowers and a rainbow. Others get fiery death from the sky.  And though of course not forgiving is His perfect prerogative, we are rather uncomfortable with the idea that He doesn't treat everyone the same.  But He doesn't.
  And the Old Testament seems largely about Him taking sides, playing favourites, picking  unlikely nations and people to back, and "walking right past" others, who He seems to value much less, though many are good, serious, obedient folk.
   And there are so many pages about Him getting and staying angry.  Really angry.  For decades.  And sending death and destruction on people.  The bible describes it as "sending evil" upon people, and then talks about Him eventually "repenting" of having done it.  If you do an Old Testament concordance search on the word "repented" in the KJV, you'll get an awful lot of hits. And the vast majority of the  time, you'll find it's God who is described as "repenting."   He "sends evil" (calamity) upon people He loves, and then "repents" of sending it after a while, and stops doing it.  Feels angry, then eventually feels regret and stops what He's doing.  That sounds rather... human?  Almost like a Person of some kind.
   Eventually, moving on from "God gets to do that because He's God," one has to ask "What kind of Person is He?"  In reading the prophetic books, it has helped me to view God as repeatedly hurt.  As feeling slights.  As jealous.  As wounded by infidelity.  As superhumanly capable of feeling it when abandoned and cheated upon and betrayed.  I dunno.  Works for me.  Try this: read all the Old Testament prophets in order in a couple of months.  See how you feel about Him.  Let me know.  He's not just forgiving everyone all the time.  He's up to a lot of pretty upsetting stuff. Why?

   Because this is pages and pages and pages of bible.  We don't picture God breaking down and crying, though as Jesus He did.  We don't picture God laughing, and scripture is silent as to whether Jesus lived for three decades and never cracked a smile or laughed, or what.
   And though God seems to be having a supernatural temper tantrum in the Old Testament, generally something cataclysmic and nearly world-ending, I find Christians don't want to imagine God first being patient, then getting more and more frustrated, and then eventually unleashing his temper, because He has gotten angry.  Not so much to teach a lesson.  Not so much to keep the world pure (?)  Because He's upset.
   Christians want to talk about justice and righteousness and things that make His anger necessary and proper.  But they don't want to talk about Him "losing His temper."  They think if He ever lost His temper, that would be losing/releasing/giving up control, and therefore, sin, or a flaw.  They want to think that He calmly, righteously, collectedly unleashed decades of city-levelling wrath in a controlled, measured fashion.  Like a blank-faced sociopath.  Because He loved Sodom and Gomorrah.

   I'm not so sure, anymore.  To me He sounds like a repeatedly jilted lover, whose spouse cheats and cheats and whores around, and whose children rape, rob, terrorize, torture, maim, disfigure and murder each other unceasingly.  And that He feels that keenly and is patient and kind for a long time, but then He responds.  That He's alive, and therefore responsive.  Not "above" feelings.  Maybe created us with them, in His image.  Maybe not bothering to build that into angels? I dunno.

#4 Howard Talks About Relationship

Howard no longer delivers my pizza, but we meet up a couple times a week, often.  I'm trying to get him to blog.  He was a pastor, and had a very rough life before, during and after doing that job for over a decade.  He's seen the extremely seamy (and pointless, bureaucratic, political and self-deluding) side of church life, but he hasn't given up on it.  Not as a concept, anyway.  Talking to him pushes me emotionally to places I don't normally go, spiritually speaking.  Stuff that church doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of.

    Howard says it's good to wake up and not say:

-Hmmmm... now what do I feel like doing today? (That's easy.  This was always presented to me, as a teenager, as a very unChristian, "worldly" mindset that we were to sacrifice entirely to God. We were to always and only seek to do what He wanted.  We weren't to want things.  The Lord is thy shepherd.  Thou shalt not want.)

nor, does Howard feel, we should either wake up and say,

-"Oh Lord, I do hereby sacrifice my own desires, and will do nothing at all whatsoever until You make clear unto me precisely what You would like me to do today, for You, so I can go and do it and then come back and tell You I did it, or tried to."

Howard says it's good to wake up and say
-"So, Lord, what are we going to do today?  Let's go do some stuff. What do You think of...?"
   Like a date.  Howard solidifies my suspicion that many of us are in a stand-off with God that goes rather like this:

Christian: [on knees] Lord, why won't you tell me what You want me to not do today?  Just tell me.  I'm ready and willing to sacrifice it to You!

God: Dude, I need you to want something.  Then we'll talk.  I love you and want to know all about, and give you, the desires of your heart. First discussing how workable and good they sound in the long term, perhaps.  But you don't appear to have any desires yet, which means you're not really being alive much yet.  And my Son died so you could live and be free.  And you're not doing that.  Be a person.  Let the identity I intended for you, the personality I have designed, flourish and grow!  Don't try to thwart my design by stifling your identity and burying your personhood in the ground, or hiding it under a basket. I made it for a reason.  I want return on that investment.  Be!

Christian: Oh Lord, just tell me who not to be, and I'll do my best to not be that person!  Tell me who and what not to want, and I promise I'll do nothing at all today but not want that, as hard as I can.  I gave up Sarah for You.  I want to not do whatever YOU don't want in my life, Lord...

God: You know, you're really being a very bad date... No fun at all.  And I built some into you.  I remember distinctly.  Where is it?  (It's a good thing I love you.)

Because, according to Howard, our relationship with Christ, with God, is supposed to be intimate.  It's supposed to be a two-way, growing, negotiated thing, with two people in it, rather than being seen purely in terms of power and "say." For one person or the other.  Because it's not meant to be an abusive relationship.  And abusive relationships are the only ones that are all about one person getting all the "say."  And many of us had those kinds of relationships at home and at church.
   It's supposed to be (like any marriage, Howard says) something other than merely a boss/employee, master/servant relationship.  More intimate than that.  More of "us" tossed into it.  Not less.  There's more than enough of Him to go around.  So we need to toss our whole selves into it wholeheartedly.  We have to be our whole selves, as hard as we can, and grow more "all of that."
   I spoke with a Brethren woman last week who told me that, very much unlike me (I felt like I was born with a very clear, indelible identity, whether I liked it or not, and people around me did nothing but try to reject, sideline or surgically alter it) she felt like she grew up with no identity.  Like, while I went to church youth group and felt continually called upon to justify why I was different, why I liked and didn't like the kinds of stuff I did and didn't, she went to youth group and went along with everyone.
   She did this to pretend that they all had strong, well-developed identities that just happened to be more or less identical to her own.  When actually, she said, she and many of them were kind of... empty.  Their identities hadn't grown.  Not yet, anyway.  And the culture wasn't encouraging or safe for people developing, having, exploring or expressing identities, despite the fact that God had planted those inside everyone.
   And she said in her twenties, after some random pinging around, terribly vulnerable to this and that and the other person or thing (way too much of a susceptible blank slate) she had to eventually come to terms with finally being who God made her to be.  Which was perhaps somewhat negotiable.  But was certainly going to end up with her being someone, rather than not being herself.  Not just a negation of natural impulse.  Not just an obedient suppression of everything He'd designed into her.  And that this was certainly something that had to be looked into, run after and explored.
   So she had to commit to that and do it up right.  And she did.  And it was very contrary to how she'd been molded.  And it took work.  But there's really no other option that isn't nihilistic and inhuman.

The odd thing is, I talk about myself, and about God, and about "Christian stuff" all the time.  With lots and lots of very different people. But after something had happened too many times for me to ignore it, I eventually had to recognize a fact:
   ...every time Howard speaks about this kind of friendly, warm, collaborative, mutual, loving interplay with God, a unity, no battle over one or the other being given all of the "say," it makes me choke up.  Literally.  At first I tried to ignore or dismiss it, but it kept happening.  Made my eyes watery.  Made my voice wobbly.  Each time. No matter what I did.  I had to pretend to be interested in the nothing that was happening out the diner window.

   I was trying not to feel it, but it was getting me.  There was a bit of a "stung," angry feeling at suddenly having something somehow get past my emotional walls and touch my heart and my hope like that.  That's not supposed to happen.  It was a vision of a relationship with God that worked.  A two-way thing.  Where He wanted something other than for me to sacrifice me and not be myself.
   Far easier to present and view all of my relationships as being at standstills or not working.  More familiar to fuss and fret over stuff not working than to have to deal with the uncomfortable, demanding reality of something working, for once, with Someone.  Seemed too good to be true to imagine something like that.  Like a trick.  Leading to my ruination as a Christian and a person.  To imagine a relationship working that needed me in it to do that at all.
   There was confusion at to why this emotional response was happening and how.  Over what was even happening.  Food for thought, certainly.

That's all I have to say right now about all of that.