Same God, very different people

(This is all generalizations, so if you think that's wrong, you'd best move on.)

Most Christians hang out with and talk to other Christians who they can relate to, people who are "into" Christianity for roughly the same reasons.  Most nonChristians don't hang out with a lot of different Christians.  Because of this, I'm not sure people are aware just how different Christians are one from another.

The reason I bring this up is because among Christians, there seems to be confusion and consternation if two Christians feel or think differently, and they tend to stop seeing each other if this goes on too much, perpetuating the sameyness of the little groups.

For example, some Christians are in it to feel like they are special people who, if not actually better than other people, are in a better position before God.  They want to be a special, select group who God loves/are right, and who want to continually feel they in a position before and relationship to God that other people know nothing about.  They stress the (to them) huge differences between them, and others.  This, of course, makes it pretty hard for others to relate to them.

Other Christians are in it for the shame and gratitude.  They focus heavily upon the idea of their own unworthiness and their message is all about surrender of everything to God because of how incompetent to live out own lives we really are, if we think about it. Their songs, their speeches and their epiphanies are all about how much they really suck (because they keep forgetting) and then they can be grateful that God loves them anyway, but filled with pious shame at how their suckitude made Christ suffer.  The amount of dominance/submission content in their conversation and literature is so great that many find it hard to relate, and any exploration or experience of life or God which isn't about this just doesn't seem to resonate with them.

Some Christians are into it for the success in life they believe it will bring.  The rules are simple: you don't have promiscuous sex, and God gives you a loving spouse.  You work hard and don't cheat on your taxes or waste money, and God makes you rich.  These people have trouble relating to people looking for a relaxed, slow-paced lifestyle, to poor people, to people who are "aren't good with money."  They don't relate well to single, chaste people, and hard-working people who can't seem to get out of debt.

There are Christian who are in it to get as high on Jesus and church and worship as they possibly can.  A lot of ex-addicts end up fitting into groups like this, which also contain people who have not, in their lives, allowed themselves to get high on or excited about anything much that wasn't in a church setting.  The excitement, the drunken, wild-eyed, headlong dash of these people make it almost impossible for anyone outside their group to connect or relate to them in any way.  Shame-seeking Christians certainly can't connect.

There are also Christians who, like Heath Ledger's Joker, are in it to watch the world burn.  They pore over parts of the bible which deal with judgement and wrath and the end of the world, and they seem to be having their lives and world-views affirmed by the idea that all the people who seem to be getting away with naughty things right now are going to get it in the end.  They get excited at the very idea that the world might be laid waste soon, and that the current systems of order which are in place are going to be thrown down.  Taking joy in judgement isn't something God does, and is something Jonah was judged incompetent/lacking because of.  It really does make it hard for people who like certain things in the present system to connect to any of it at all.

Some Christians are in it to have a quiet, subtle affirmation that things are under control, and that they are doing the right thing, and that everything is going to be ok.  They are upset by people wrestling with life stuff, or with scripture.  They are annoyed by controversy, discussion and disagreement as to anything really, particularly what can or should be done with the various odd parts of the bible.  Seekers have trouble connecting to Christians of this kind, and they in turn don't know what to do with seekers, who seem to find more to be troubled by than comfort in the bible.

Some Christians are in it to know things others don't.  They want to be able to watch the news and look at the world and claim a unique position of having most of it figured out, like they can see through it, see where it's going or has gone wrong.  The steep learning curve to talk to these people, the continual relentless chapter-and-versing, the wya they think they can simply quote bits of bible at you and you already have the whole context, framework (and exactly the same focus and interpretation as they have, like that's in there, rather than being added by them) makes it hard to connect to them.

Some Christians are activists, wanting to pick causes to stand for and against.  Sometimes it's about protecting "the children" from the latest hidden danger in Miley Cyrus or Harry Potter.  Often, they pick a pet cause (hunger in India, AIDS in Africa, illiteracy in South America) and seldom have they much interest in the western world, apart from how it can serve the rest of the world and seek to alleviate its troubles.  The fact that they simply aren't here much (or that they are always going on about other parts of the world) makes it very hard for anyone unaware of the areas they are focussing upon to really connect much with them at all.  Things become very one-sided.  They're leaving in two weeks to dig wells in Africa.  You're repainting your bathroom. It doesn't work.

Some Christians are in it for miracles and a glimpse of the Hand of God "reaching in and doing stuff."  They want to see Him taking an interest in the minute details of their, usually very understated, lives.  They want to see him making their day work for them, or serve to teach them things, all so they can feel like their life not only makes sense, but matters deeply at all levels to Almighty God, who is living it with them, always standing just behind their left shoulder saying "Go on.  I'm right here."  People who find descriptions of how God helped someone find their keys, or gave their eight-year-old a toothache so she could witness to a boy in the waiting room at the dentists rather...well....creepy, self-centred, weird or stupid are going to have trouble connecting.

Some Christians are in it for the majesty, the dignified, traditional, colossal presence of Something Bigger than Me.  They aren't going to relate to people who write new books or songs or blogs about God.  They are going to have trouble understanding why hundred-year-old hymns about dying in a dignified way with a brave eye turned heavenward just don't seem to be speaking the hearts and minds of modern young Christians.  Other Christians will see their getting mushy over stained glass windows, candles, choirs, incense, hymns, Latin or whatever, as inexplicable, sentimental, odd and/or creepy.

Some Christians are in it for the love, some for the hate, some for the forgiveness, some for evil people getting their comeuppance, some for the simple accessibility, and some for the arcane mystery and enigmatically cryptic, some for the quiet stillness and some for the galvanizing flurries of inspired activity, some for the reminder that they are really bad reformed sinners, and some for the feeling special.

The thing is, that Christians of these different kinds clump up with others of similar focus and motivation, and pretty much live as if there aren't any other kinds of Christians out there.  So the average person could be forgiven if he thought that Fred Phelps flying across America to picket Ronnie James Dio's funeral, and displaying "God Hates Fags" and "Dyke Nation" signs everywhere is what Christianity is really all about.

Comfort Reading

  It always confused me when people told me they read the bible like they were taking little sips of tea, and that it always, without fail, comforted them.  I always wondered "How come when I read the bible it's all eviscerated people, corpses being burned or strewn in the streets and gnawed on by dogs, whoredoms, beds of impurity, cups of blood, pits of death and wrath, wrath, wrath?  How come it's about not being good enough, and about what people don't do right?  How the hell is that comforting anyone?"
  I have slowly come to suspect that people who say that reading the bible and praying "always comforts" them  might not be doing what I'm doing.  I'm taking entire books of the bible, and not skipping bits, and reading them.  Stupid, I know.
  I believe what my comforted, opium-of-the-people colleagues are doing is amassing a "safe" set of go-to passages to read, and carefully outlined "bits to skip 'cause that stuff's just depressing and makes no sense to me."  In other words, while they're reading, if they aren't going "Ahhhhhhh!  How nice.  and David loved Jonathan!" or "Ahhhhhhh! Jesus wept.  He sure loved Lazarus!" or "Ahhhhhh! I'll be saved!" but are instead saying "What?! 'Peter said Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'?  Jesus cursed a fig tree for not bearing figs when it wasn't even the season to bear figs and it dried up?!" or "'Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.'?  This is really all getting a bit emo.  Like half of the Psalms are.  Why's that in here anyway?  I came to be comforted," a decision is often made to either ignore it, "not dwell on it" or just skip it.
  That's what I think's happening, anyway.  Once I decided that we tend to read the bible and skip anything that's "not working" for us, that doesn't feel good, that isn't comforting,  I resolved to do a little experiment:  I took online versions of the four gospels, so that it would be Jesus talking, and cut out all the go-to comfort bits and left in, well, everything else he said and did.  "Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow" and "wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together" and "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" (Jesus speaking to his mother) and "for the hour is coming, In the which all that are in the graves shall hear [my] voice, And shall come forth" and so on and so on.  It's not so much that we've never heard that stuff before, it's that we're mentally negating it by kinda pasting the stuff we connect with, that we like, right overtop of it.  Remove that, and the effect is quite striking. 

 If you would like to see what I came up with, comment and I'll send you a .pdf of it.  Obviously, if you think it's blasphemous, perverse or wrong to do that sort of thing, don't ask for a copy.

  I wrote an intro to the thing.  It said this:

Introduction

  Imagine if a careful censor went through the bible with a black marker, editing out anything that seemed a bit odd, hard to explain and apply, troubling or just plain not nice.  Imagine if we ended up with a bible in which Jesus’ more venomous pronouncements against the Pharisees, his occasionally brusque responses to people, the times he insulted people or called them names, and the generally status-quo-upsetting, revolutionary tenor of his preaching was omitted entirely.  Would it be a good thing if we did this?  I believe this is pretty much what we have done. 

  Let me explain: The bible is sort of used as a tool to maintain our Christianity, it seems.  Exactly how do we “use” the bible?  We seldom read aloud (or together) entire books of it, but instead, we go through it and cherry-pick out all the comforting bits, the bits we like, the bits that help us feel good about doing what we’re already doing, and believing what we’re already believing.  We end up carrying in our heads (and presenting to others) a careful edit of the bible, a version which is convenient and reshaped to fit our needs, our concerns, our focus. 

  We feel quite ok about snipping bits out to decorate t-shirts, bumper stickers and our own writing and daily conversation, though every time we do that, we’re snipping off bits of content that was originally there. And we make it all about us.  And we present Jesus as some kind of kindly, stoned hippie figure, part Ghandi and part Jim Morrison.  The Jesus we quote would never have to worry about anyone trying to kill him, ever. 

  I felt, recently, compelled to take this subtle mental censoring in the very opposite direction, and that not subtly, just to see what that would look like.  This was in aid of casting a more vivid light on what we’re doing.  I then, using the King James Version (as it’s the most commonly quoted one in secular culture) went through and did the opposite thing to the four gospels.  I edited out a whole lot of Jesus being human and nice, most of the words of comfort, the healing, the life-affirming passages and generally all the stuff that makes us feel good[1]. 

   It all ended up really deepening my understanding of why the Pharisees and Scribes wanted Jesus dead.  It also, oddly, made Jesus far more real to me than I’ve ever seen him be before, somehow.  I saw him in a very different light.  More of his passion, his frustration was shining out.  I could believe he was a human guy a whole lot more, suddenly.

  Although I have to admit it gave me a bit of an absurdist chuckle to simply leave out the part where the Good Samaritan actually rescues the wounded man, or where Jesus eventually heals people who have come to him and been turned away or ignored by him at first, that really wasn’t my main intent.  This is not, to me, making a joke of the bible.

  With all the self-servingly comforting stuff left on the webpages from where I copied what I kept, I was suddenly able to read those gospel passages without that chronic DVD commentary track of past church sermons playing in my head louder than the words on the page.  That’s a real problem with me, most of the time.  The explanation was ingrained into my head far more deeply than the actual text explained, and it is nigh impossible to look at the text itself in a fresh way.  This little copy and paste exercise made that suddenly, happily possible. 

You see, most of the DVD commentary track from church is connected with the other stuff, the stuff I was leaving out.  This was different stuff.  Stuff that wasn’t so easy to use as a tool.  Stuff that spoke for itself and didn’t really work as an opiate.  Stuff that would never be Hallmark Card material.  I meant no disrespect.  I’m sure that many who heard Jesus speak heard mainly the stuff I’ve left in, and had much the same perspective on what was said as this edited version gives.

  The “nice” stuff is still there, in the real bible, and in my head and heart.  The process of trying to stitch together the four gospels and two snippets of Acts into one continuous story was extremely educational for me.  It all went a little like this:

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[1] The crucifixion part was weird, because, as I realized, we don’t use that part for comfort so much as try to feel guilty about it as hard as we can.

 

Easter Monday Recording

Didn't feel like a very good Christian yesterday.  On Easter Sunday, instead of going to a church and singing about how Jesus raised from the dead, I lay on the futon and watched illegally downloaded Doctor Who from England, with a newly raised from the dead Doctor running around having adventures and being silly.  And then the Facebook Farisees looked for special consideration for "knowing the true meaning of Easter" and tut tutted about people calling it "Easter" instead of  "Resurrection Sunday" (without complaining about the "sun" in Sunday) and this bugged me, so the next day I wrote and recorded this song about that.

But what I really wanted to do was have a fresh go at this song that I have been adding loud guitars and drums and harmonicas and five-string bass guitars and pianos and stuff to in an attempt to make it less draggy and quiet.  I abandoned all that work and just recorded an even slower, stripped down version and tried to make it sad.  I even stole the silly "sad trombone" sound from www.sadtrombone.com to be a bit tongue-in-cheek about how sad I was trying to make it.  I made the snare backwards to sound a bit like Johnny Cash's new song "Ain't No Grave Gonna Keep Me Down," though they're probably doing something unbackwards to get that scraping sound.

Being and Doing

I'm a teacher because I teach, not because I'm certified by the Ontario College of Teachers and fully qualified to teach.  I want to teach people stuff, I can teach people stuff, and so I do.  Thing is, when I look at the teachers who aren't any good (or me when I'm having a bad day), I see that they are thought of as teachers, not because they actually teach stuff and make sure learning is happening, but because they say they are teachers, because they are accredited (certified).  

  For their part, the kids are used to being asked merely to pretend to learn.  "What did you do at school today?"  "Nothing," they say.  Actually they 'pretended they were people who were going to learn stuff at some point.'  What would happen if they showed up and wanted to know a few things?  What if they demanded we tell them some stuff, or made sure they could actually do certain things instead of just waiting until we left them alone, because we were satisfied that they showed up and sat there and so have done all that could be asked?

  A friend and I were talking about why we can't seem to "get into" church activities and the bible discussions they purport to have.  It's like enough of the Christians are thought of and claim to be Christians because they want to be seen as Christians because being a Christian is a good thing, not because they want to be anything particularly Christian, and certainly not to actually need to be able to do anything Christian.  It's kind of an identity thing.  They need to feel superior to, as said below, the people who "don't know the real meaning of Christmas."  They seem to worship so they can claim to have worshipped, preached so they can say preaching took place and so on. 

  When they have what they describe as "bible discussions," there doesn't seem to be much discussion at all, and if there is, it doesn't go anywhere or result in anything.  It's like they know that a bible discussion is supposed to have talking at it, and that if there isn't any talking, then it won't have happened properly, so they talk so talking will have occurred (most meetings I have had to attend for various jobs seem to involve first pointing out the fact that we have met, and then explaining why we have met, then outlining what we will be discussing, now that we have met (and that we are now at step 3 of the schedule, having 1. pointed out the fact that we have met, and 2. covered why we are meeting, so have moved on to 3. outlining what we will be discussing, which will be followed by 4. wrapping up the discussion and 5. planning when the next discussion will take place).  What was missing?  The part (it should have fallen at 3b) where we actually discussed any stuff, perhaps followed by 3c, where we'd actually decide things.  The meetings seem to me to be place-holder activities.  Quite often actual discussion is not welcome and we don't get actual say, and things are already decided (or, it has been decided, are not going to be decided) but we are required to have a meeting nonetheless, pretty much to show we care to some degree and are willing to participate by sitting in the chairs and all.

  I badly want to be part of real stuff that matters.  I want it in every aspect of daily life.  Instead, we are policed by police forces staffed with people who became police officers so they could be police officers, rather than so they could police, and the like.  Doctors, nurses, parents, husbands, wives and priests, mostly filling the places so they can be place-holders, and not really doing the stuff.  We're surrounded by people holding the positions described in the jobs they applied for, the gaining of said position having been so challenging that they are now resting on their laurels, having arrived, and putting in effort which does little more than go through the motions most of the time.Whenever we encounter someone who is actually doing the stuff, it's like they're magic.  

  What would happen if we really did the stuff to get it done well, rather than just so we could say we kinda worked away at kinda doing it?  What if we engaged?

Easter

Apparently holidays are for Christians to go on Facebook and put statuses which basically say "I'm a Christian, so I understand properly about Easter/Christmas/Thanksgiving, unlike most people, with their commercialized pagan nonsense."  Guess I didn't get that memo.  Once again, I want to reiterate: "I'm not with those guys."  (like when they're getting together to openly hate and deplore homosexuality/abortion/"communism"/democratic-ness (they wouldn't say democracy) rather than doing anything good and unbigoted about stuff they can actually fix.  I'll be standing over here, away from them, trying to think of good stuff I can do/enjoy/help.)

And the annoyance fuelled the writing and sloppy recording of this song about that.

That's It!

That's it.  I have been repeatedly hearing people use the word "spiritual" as a euphemism for "imaginary" lately, and I'm sick of that.  I'm especially sick of Christian people doing it, or sitting by and smiling while someone else does.

"Spirit" doesn't mean "imaginary."  The word "spirit" refers to breath (inspire: breathe in,  expire: breathe out/die/wear out), and it refers to that which makes the generation of fresh ideas likely ("I was inspired by...").  It refers to the attitude (orientation or direction) of a person or group of people ("The spirit of the group was one of critical negativity").  It refers to the will ("She has a lot of/a very strong spirit", "This movie is about the indomitable spirit shown by the men on D-Day.")  Things don't have to be physical (have molecules) to be "real."  Gravity, sound and light are examples of things that, as far as we know, may not have molecules, but are real things that affect them without being made of them.

Like most things that matter, you can't vivisect anything spiritual, can't make it happen in a Petri dish, but you sure can feel it, and it sure does change your day, your life and the whole world.  The bible never uses the word "spirit" to mean "soul."  Everyone has a spirit, and to talk about "spiritual" things is to talk about what inspires us, what our attitudes and the attitudes of others are, and about our judgement, our decisions, things we resolve to do.  Everybody talks about that stuff.  There are addicts sitting on the front stoop of a crack house right now talking about these things.

But people say "You're spiritual" (rather than "spirited" or "inspired") and they say "I'm not religious (into ritual and rules) but I like to think I'm spiritual."  And then wacko-ish people say "I'm VERY spiritual" (by which they mean they are able to believe any number of superstitious things, and all at the same time, too, even if a number of things they believe are quite contradictory.  Then I have to trip over people thinking that's what I mean if I use the word.  Well, everyone is "spiritual."  Some are more spirited or inspired than others, and some people are more irrepressible than others, but everybody's got an attitude, a direction, ideas and so on.

The body, of course, isn't a bad or shallow thing.  We are weird hybrids, though.  We are physical, and yet the "spiritual" things (love, justice, will, direction, ideas, distinctions, connections etc.) are very real to us, and the interplay between what we sloppily view as the "merely physical" and what we are willing to call "spiritual" is far more complicatedly interwoven than we want to admit.  The bible says nothing bad about the physical, but talks critically of people who seem to live as if they had no judgement, no will, no ideas.  "Carnal" (meatish/fleshly) living or thinking is living like we can't aspire to fairness, to excellence, to insightfulness, to empathy, to selflessness.  We're supposed to let both work.  I think a big part of children maturing is about them learning to be able to deal with ideas and sense and judgements, rather than just acting on impulse.  You can't play a "long game" strategy unless you have impulse control and can delay gratification. Those who can't, haven't matured, and seem to be what the bible is talking about when using the word "carnal."

The human emotions, and the hormonal, chemical, cardiac components which are tied to them, causing them and being caused by them in such a integral way, are kinda caught between awareness and flesh.  The direction of one's life, one's attitude, one's best judgements and ideas, these affect the physical self profoundly.  The physical component of the self shapes one's life, one's attitude, one's best judgements and ideas just as profoundly. (ask a heroin addict with no aspiration to get clean, and then ask one who is determined to get clean)

On that random note, and without tying the thing together with a bow at the end, nor exploring this in more depth, I'll put it out of its misery now.

Missed February entirely

Somehow.  It just happened that way.

Started the new semester at school after the usual being chased around by kids who hand things in at the end of the course and don't fail.  My newest classroom dealie is to lay out foam mats, each representing a decade of the 20th Century, and then have the kids correctly place items from a bucket of artifacts and toys, in the correct decades.  The trick is to refuse to let them guess, and refuse to help them find the right decade (they have computers, after all):

 

My montly routine is nicely broken up by taking a team of kids to compete in the regional Reach for the Top competitions.  This is like Jeopardy for high school kids, on local cable.  My kids beat every team they played the other week.  They is smart.

A hard drive of mine crashed this weekend.  It had important stuff in it.  I'm looking into getting the data recovered. Pricey, but almost worth it in this case.  A lot of edited and partly-edited video that I use in the classroom.  My mp3s and videos.  School stuff.

My nephew turned two this past weekend.  It was, therefore, fitting that I get him a plastic viking helmet and foam sword to run around with.  He got a riding toy and toy hockey sticks. He felt he needed to wear the helmet when using any of those and says "wear helmet" of his own accord very clearly for his age.