What's the use?

This is a photograph of a sloth.

One day Anthony, a monk, was overcome by thoughts of hopelessness and lack of motivation. He thought he'd give up his monastic life, and go get a job and get married. As he observed negative thoughts beginning to overwhelm him, he cried to the Lord, "I want to stay here and find salvation, but my thoughts keep suggesting that it's all futile. What's the use? How shall I be saved from these disturbing thoughts?"

Once again, an answer was presented to him. He saw a man sitting, weaving baskets, then getting up to pray. He continued to work and pray, work and pray. Anthony heard a voice, "This is what you should do to be saved from your disturbing thoughts." His hopelessness gave way to joy and hope. Anthony continued to work and pray, and watch over his heart, and his troublesome thoughts left him. He was saved from his anguish by a gentle vision giving him simple instructions for living.

When faced with temptation, Anthony had some choices. Should he give in to the negative thoughts that disturbed his peace, and urged him to give up the monastic life? Or should he simply "man up" and force the thoughts away? He knew that he was not strong enough to combat these thoughts on his own. He liked to tell other monks "Do not trust in your own righteousness." In other words, "You're not as strong, upright, and moral as you think you are. You need help, and so do I." Knowing the futility of fighting against temptation on his own strength, he neither gave in to his negative thoughts nor relied on his own strength to save him. He called out for help from the one who is strong enough to help--the Lord.

Seeing his own helplessness in the face of disturbing thoughts forced Anthony to rely on the Lord. Ironically, his helplessness was the gateway to victory over those temptations. Anthony liked to say to his fellow monks, "We all need temptations to be saved." Temptations, if we watch for them, provide an opportunity to ask God for help, and rely more fully on Him. Temptations can break down that harsh master, our own ego. Temptations can produce humility and compassion, and we need them to mature and become closer and more like Jesus Christ.

(Stories taken from Benedicta Ward. Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1975, pp. 1-9.)

Vigilance

The Temptation of St. Anthony -Salvador Dali

One day, a monk named Anthony was sitting in his cave, weaving his baskets, pondering the state of the world. He was thinking about suffering, injustice, and poverty. He started to get bothered and a little bit angry. How can an all-powerful and loving God allow such suffering stain the His beautiful universe? In his righteous irritation, he prayed, "Lord why do some people die as babies, yet others live long lives. Why do some men starve on the street while others eat and drink their fill in palaces? Why does a good man work hard all his life and die penniless while a wicked man gets rich off the labor of his slaves?"

Anthony heard a voice answer him. "Anthony, keep your focus on yourself. All things are according to God's plan, and it will not help you to know the answers to your questions."

The voice did not answer Anthony's concerns. Anthony did not find out why suffering and injustice exists. The answer suggested Anthony should change where his attention was focused. In effect, the voice said "You will never know the answers to your questions, and even if you did, it would not help you. Instead of agonizing over these philosophical dilemmas, be vigilant over your own heart and mind to make sure that you do not become one of those wicked men you're complaining about. 'The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.' (Luke 7.45) If you continue to focus on the evil of other men, you will fill your heart with anger and resentment and risk becoming just like them."

Anthony spent his life watching over his heart and mind. He saw that the mind is nearly continuously presented with opportunities to be angry, hateful, greedy, lustful, proud, judgmental, gluttonous, depressed, and self-absorbed. Even though Anthony had great success in keeping evil thoughts at bay, he was tempted until the day of his death. These temptations did not hinder him from becoming a holy man. Ironically, as we shall see, temptations became the way he acquired holiness.

(Stories taken from Benedicta Ward. Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1975, pp. 1-9.)

Defense against the Dark Arts

“…for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6.12 

The words of the New Testament and of early Church Fathers are familiar to Christians. We hear the words repeated in liturgy and prayer. If we have some further education we may be familiar with some of their theology or hagiography. We consider their words to be instructive, and in some sense authoritative. In many ways, the life of the ancient Christian must have been very similar to ours. They needed to eat and drink, support a family, deal with illness and death, and relate to other people. They prayed, sang, danced, produced works of art, built roads, and paid taxes. Yet the world view of the Scripture and the early church often seems distant and foreign. Many miraculous healings and happenings seem to us to strain credibility. Our treasured New Testament is filled with healings, miracles, visions, appearances of the dead, and demon possession. Other literature of the early Church is just as strange. Ascetics fast for longer than seems plausible to us, speak with demons and angels, and do such strange acts as living atop pillars. The death-defying tortures of martyrs are described in grisly detail, yet the martyr seems to suffer not the slightest inconvenience.

Contemporary readers often choose to ignore or downplay the stranger parts of Christian literature. Patristic theologians focus on the doctrinal discussions of the Fathers rather than their more bizarre accounts of miracles and the supernatural. Other readers may seek to find the “real” meaning. A given story of a miraculous healing is read as “really” about faith in Christ, or some other abstraction more plausible to us. Perhaps a great number of contemporary readers dismiss the stories and associated religion altogether. A fourth group may piously read the narratives as literal and keep a lookout for demons, angels, and healings at every opportunity.

The worldview of the early Christians is often not fully understood or taken into account. To understand it, we might learn from the discipline of anthropology, whose practitioners are in a similar position to so-called primitive cultures they study as we are to the early Church. In one study of the mythology of Native North American religion, the Robin and Tonia Riddington write, “Mythical cosmologies are not the attempt of savages to explain in fantasy where empirical knowledge is absent, but are rather the opposite—statements in allegorical form about knowledge of the interrelations between what we would call natural (objective), psychic (psychological), and cultural (learned adaptational) aspects of reality.”[1] Mythic narrative, or if you must, stories of the supernatural, conveys knowledge, not fantasy. It stands at the intersection of three things: sensory observation of the world, inner psychological experience, and social expression. Presumably, human sensory perception, the phenomena they observe, and human emotions are more or less the same as they always have been. The learned response and expression of those things is what differs. In order to understand the strange stories of the early Christians, it is helpful to listen respectfully and sympathetically to the mythic narratives they produced.

One aspect of early Christianity that is not well understood is the widespread belief in demons and other malevolent spiritual beings. There are a number of familiar yet strange Gospel stories of Jesus casting out demons, and less-familiar discussion of “principalities” and “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” in the writings of Paul.

Demons also play a prominent role in the literature that arose from what is called early monasticism. Men and women began to move into wilderness areas of Egypt and Palestine in the third and fourth centuries to devote themselves more fully to Christian practice. They prayed, fasted, performed works of mercy, and tried to cultivate the Christian virtues. Broadly speaking, two forms of literature arose from this movement: narrative and exposition. Evil spirits appear in both types of writing. In one story about Macarius the Great, the saint sees Satan walking to the desert with a number of small flasks. Each flask contained “food for the brethren to taste.” Satan explains, “…if a brother does not like one sort of food, I offer him another, and if he does not like the second any better, I offer him a third; and of all these varieties he will like one at least.”[2] As the narrative continues, we find that Satan is seen as the source of a particular monk’s sexual temptation, to use our term for it. As the story continues, Macarius suggests certain practices that will relieve the monk of that temptation. In this example, language of the demons is not mere superstition, but provides a way to deal with a specific moral or psychological problem, sexual temptation.

In expository literature, demons and evil spirits are also seen, as in the following example by Evagrius.

"All thoughts inspired by the demons produce within us conceptions of sensory objects; and in this way the intellect, with such conceptions imprinted on it, bears the forms of these objects within itself. So by recognizing the object presented to it, the intellect knows which demon is approaching. For example, if the face of a person who has done me harm or insulted me appears in my mind, I recognize the demon of rancor approaching… [A]ll thoughts producing anger or desire in a way that is contrary to nature are caused by demons. Thus it cannot receive the vision of God."[3]

This example describes a common psychological phenomenon. Within a person’s thoughts a memory is produced of someone who has wronged him appears, and anger is rekindled. We might call this resentment. Evagrius suggests that the initial remembering of the old enemy is produced not by the some part of the person’s mind but by an external cause: “the demon of rancor.” The person responds to the thought or image of the old enemy and is thereby culpable for that anger, but the provocation or temptation to anger is produced by a demon. The initial cause of this evil is external and unnatural to humankind. Moreover, even if the provocation does not produce angry behavior, the attachment to anger itself is enough to hinder the “vision of God.”

Within the mythic cosmology that was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean, those early desert Christians explored the extremities of human psychology and adopted practices and rituals in order to transform and heal those who practiced them. Our Christianity is poorer if we neglect the treasure that these saints left for us. Yet due to the difference in world view, this literature is often neglected, misunderstood, or used for a source of proof texts. 

To learn from the desert fathers we have to listen carefully to what they have to say about the healing of the human soul, with all due care to historical and theological method. Hopefully, we can communicate that message to the contemporary reader who does not share the worldview of the ancient Mediterranean so that we may share the fruits of the spirit from those who have labored for them in the desert. 

[1] Robin and Tonia Ridington. "The Inner Eye of Shamanism and Totemism." Tedlock, Dennis Tedlock and Barbara, eds. Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy. (New York: Liveright, 1975), p. 191.

[2] Benedicta Ward. Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1975, p. 126.

[3] Evagrios Pontikos. “Texts on Discrimination in respect of Passions and Thoughts” in St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, eds., The Philokalia, G.E.H. Palmer, et. al., trans. and ed., London: Faber and Faber, 1979, pp. 38-39.

Sermon: Matthew 9.27-35

The following is a slightly edited sermon delivered at a preaching class. As I am new to preaching, I thought I would share it with the hopes of benefiting from your comments:

Photo credit

This reading is from the gospel of Matthew. It presents us with a story of Jesus who heals two blind men and casts a demon out of a man, restoring his ability to speak. The story takes place a little before halfway through the gospel. Up to this point in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus had begun his ministry by preaching “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He assembled followers and preached his message in the well-known “Sermon on the Mount.” He healed the sick without prejudice or partiality. He healed social outcasts, non-Jews, and women. He even raised from the dead the young daughter of one of the rulers of the synagogue. Matthew tells us through stories that Jesus is the one the Prophet Isaiah had spoken of: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” [Isaiah 53.4] As the crowds saw the miraculous healings that Jesus performed, they “glorified God, who had given such authority to men” the evangelist tells us. [Matt. 9.8]

As Jesus was travelling with his disciples, word began spread of this mysterious teacher, who was descended from King David himself, and who preached that the kingdom of God is near. He was not merely a teacher, but the kingdom seemed already to be near when Jesus was around. People marveled to one another saying, “Never before was anything like this seen in Israel!” Perhaps he is the Christ, the Messiah that will save us from the heel of Roman oppression. The word gave hope to those who were sick and infirm. The rumor must have reached the blind men in our story. Yet Jesus was met with scorn by the religious leaders of the day. The Pharisees doubted that his power to heal came from God, but said “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.”

As Jesus travelled, so the story tells us, two blind men followed him, crying out, and causing a great deal of commotion, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” Jesus does not heal them in the open, but continues to his destination. Jesus’s healings are not just for show, not to draw attention to himself. When the two blind men approach him, Jesus asks “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” In other words, “Do you trust me?” And without hesitation they reply “Yes, Lord.” They immediately express their trust that Jesus could heal their blindness—He can do what no human power is able to do. No doctor, no other prophet or holy man had given them sight. Their trust of Jesus is extraordinary.

Jesus touched their eyes and said “According to your faith be it done to you.” And their eyes were opened.

What is this faith that these men possessed? What did it mean for them to trust Jesus’s power to heal them? These two men came in their weakness, in their frailty, their powerlessness, and asked Jesus to have mercy on them. They asked Jesus to do what they were utterly incapable of doing. They had little doubt that Jesus could heal them.

The opposite of this faith is not doubt, but pride. Shortly before Jesus healed the blind men, a scribe came to Jesus and confidently proclaimed “Teacher I will follow you wherever you go.” He desired to follow Jesus, and was confident that he could. Jesus gave this man a strange reply, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” I’m not sure what Jesus was saying with this cryptic reply, but he did not say “I’m really glad you want to follow me, why don’t you join us?” He did not praise the man’s commitment as he commended the blind men’s faith. He dismissed him. Where the blind men came to Jesus in their poverty and weakness, the scribe came to Jesus with good intentions, yet full of confidence in his own strength. Trusting in my own strength is the opposite of faith.

The story of the healing of the blind men is an instance of something Jesus will say later in the Gospel. He said, “Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” (Matt 21.22) The blind men asked in faith, and received their sight. This story is instructional for us. We are to trust in the Lord and ask for his mercy. We are not to set up some sort of rule for ourselves: If I pray in this way, or fast, or be more self-disciplined or... The effort of our will, without faith, without God’s help, is useless. Although the story speaks of physical blindness, the important thing is spiritual blindness. We do not have eyes to see, and we do not have sufficient strength to follow Christ’s commands. We have hearts of stone, not loving God with all of our strength; we don’t love our neighbor as ourselves. We are too preoccupied and tangled up in thoughts, resentments and anxieties to do so.

Although this sounds depressing, this is good news. Our Lord tells us: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick… for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matt 9.12-13) We who are unwell can admit our frailties, yet trust in God to help us. It is precisely our weakness that the Lord bears for us.

Even in our doubt, in our lack of faith, the Lord can help us. At another time, a man who asked Jesus to heal his son, yet lacked faith cried out “I believe; help my unbelief!” and his son was healed. [Mark 9.24] Even those of us who are not gifted with unshakeable faith can trust the Lord to do what we can’t.

The church gives us the opportunity to imitate the blind men in our story. When we confess our shortcomings to one another and to the Lord, we admit our spiritual blindness, our hard-heartedness, the futility of our will to accomplish the Lord’s commandment of love without his aid. When we partake of the bread and wine, we approach our Lord, ask for his mercy, and he touches us. By relying on the Lord, rather than our own strength, we can begin to be healed of our infirmities, and be transformed into what we our creator intended us to be: men and women who see with new eyes and love him and our neighbor with new hearts.

Partiality

I am a student at seminary located in the leafy suburbs of a major US city. The seminary looks out over an understated but relatively wealthy neighborhood. The respectable residents of these beautiful quiet streets commute every morning to the city and bring home city paychecks. In the summer months, early mornings hiss with those automatic sprinklers that keep the lawns green and lush no matter how dry the weather gets. Mexican laborers manicure the gardens and keep the stainless steel kitchen shiny. Things are comfortable and good. On days with snow on the trees, or when the leaves are turning color and lit by the low autumn sun, it is a beautiful place to be. Glory to God!

One road snakes through campus. Recently, construction closed the road and split the campus in half. Some dorms were inaccessible by car. The back gate was opened so that students could drive to those dorms. One day, in a fit of lethargy inspired by a trip to the local donut shop, I decided to drive rather than walk to the dorms by the back gate. This was the first time I had driven through the neighborhood on the back side of seminary, the neighborhood on the opposite side of the aforementioned leafy 'burb. This neighborhood is a rather drab collection of town houses and apartment blocks, with patchy lawns and litter. The residents of this neighborhood seem to be working or lower working class, and much more racially diverse. This neighborhood, which is less prestigious, and a little grubby, is usually completely cut off from the campus. 

The geography of my own seminary expresses certain aspirations and hopes. It faces the neighborhood that is more respectable, comfortable, and wealthy. Nothing wrong here, right? We all (including me) aspire to improve our financial and social situation. We want beauty around us, and we want to live relatively comfortably. These things are a gift of God, and not to be taken for granted.

Yet a fence and locked gate cuts off the campus from the less desirable neighborhood. We face what we want and turn our back to other neighbors.

We think of ourselves as this church: 

photo credit here

We do not think of ourselves as this church:

photo credit here

As I pondered this, I happened to read this passage of Scripture: 

"My brethren, show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man with gold rings and in fine clothing comes into you assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, "Have a seat here, please," while you say to the poor man, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?... If you really fulfill the royal law, according to scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you do well. But if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors." (James 2.1-9)

God gave human beings the desire for comfort, respectability, and financial security. These qualities produce stability and continuity in human society. Yet, as many early desert Christians knew, these desires can become more important than they should be, and cut us off from the love of God and neighbor.

Why I'm not worried about a demographic crisis

photo by Chandler David Poling

Among various Christian groups, there is an argument that goes something like this:

• "Christian Civilization" is threatened due to the decline of the population of Christians in traditionally Christian nations. 
• This decline is due to the encroachment of the ideas of modern secular humanism, which encourage women to delay marriage and childbearing by means of birth control and abortion, decreasing the Christian birth-rate.
• Moreover, the population of non-Christians is increasing in traditionally Christian countries due to immigration of non-Christians who still have large families.
• Christian women need to embrace their "highest calling" and have many babies and bring them up in the church to stop this demographic crisis.

This is admittedly a straw-man, but one hears various versions of this floating around from time to time. Here's why I'm not worried about a demographic crisis:

Jesus said "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." Matthew 28.19. This command, the "great commission" is far from finished. There are nearly 7 billion people on this planet. 7 billion! Probably 5 billion of the do not know Christ, and perhaps a bundle of the 2 billion or so Christians are Christians in name only. That's a lot of nations that have not had disciples made of them.

Trying to keep the demographics like they were in the good-old days means we don't minister to those on our doorstep who don't look or act like Christians. Let's bring in the harlots and the publicans and the Samaritans rather than be anxious about breeding more PLU's.

A simple Christian faith suggests trying to do what Christ says we should do rather than wringing our hands about this or that thing we perceive as problematic or evil. The Lord is in control of the world, not humans.  

By all means, have babies, have lots of them, and love them! Bring them into the church and raise them to be faithful Christians. Be fruitful and multiply! Don't give into the temptation seek consequence-free sex, or to indulge your every desire. At the same time, neither "Christian civilization" nor babies are the "one thing needful."

Reading after Fundamentalism I

 

Photo: Morgana Wilborn

In the last centuries of human life, the methods of natural sciences have produced great blessings for mankind: vaccines, abundant and secure food supplies, and Marshmallow Fluff, to name a few. The runaway success of the scientific method, which depends upon objectivity, experimentation, replication, and empirical observation, has convinced many of us that knowledge derived from scientific inquiry is the only real knowledge.

When we read, we tend to consider that we are reading in one of two ways. Non-fiction is objective, that is, it reveals some objective truth about the universe. Fiction is subjective, good for entertainment or creative self-expression. Non-fiction is important, fiction is fun.

When believers read the Christian scriptures, we tend to think of them as important non-fiction. We bring our more-or-less scientifically educated minds to the task. We have kind of a sieve through which we sort what we read. "This must be true." or "This cannot possibly be true." In short, we are concerned primarily to sort out our truth claims.

Unfortunately, well-intentioned zeal for truth may lead us to misunderstand what we read. When modern biblical criticism began to question the historical accuracy of the account of Genesis, some Christians totally freaked out, and begat one of the most well-intentioned bad ideas in the history of well-intentioned bad ideas: fundamentalism. Whereas until now the historical truth of scripture had been more or less assumed, (although some influential church fathers felt quite comfortable denying it) with fundamentalism, the literal truth and inerrancy of the bible became a litmus test of correct dogma, and a tool for hatred, in some cases. In any case, fundamentalists often miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes it seems that understanding what scripture says is less important to fundamentalists than defending biblical innerrancy as a doctrine.

However, perhaps so-called fundamentalism and so-called modernism are two sides of the same coin, products of the same presuppositions. Both value truth which has been denuded of the subjective. Objective truth is valued--the subjective is relegated to poetry or entertainment.

The search for objective truth, however, might be more elusive than previously thought. During the course of the 20th century, some men (who have a high probability of having a French last name, and an affinity for Gauloises) have debated whether objective truth can ever be realized, or if there is any chance of reaching anything like a universal truth (or any chance of correctly pronouncing Gauloises). Although the demise of so-called modernity is not as complete as some college philosophy students would have you believe, the consensus that truth equals objectivity is more difficult to maintain.

Some Christians have followed the so-called post-modern lead, and tried to get derive more meaning from scriptural stories by viewing the stories as myth, or useful fiction. Various terms are used for this view: "anti-realist," "post-modern," "fictionalist." When they read scripture, they think "This may not be literally true, but it comforts me to think of it as true." or "This is lovely poetry, the truth of it is irrelevant."

This approach to reading the scriptures is attractive in some ways. It help us not be distracted from the big picture of the story by being preoccupied with which bit of the story is literally true and which bit is not. The literary or mythical approach can focus on the way that stories can shape our minds and hearts, give us hope, and help us behave a little better.

Unfortunately, this approach also has a problem: truth. Perhaps the stories in scripture are entirely fictional and function only has useful parables on how to live better lives. Perhaps "God" is simply an idea that expresses the finiteness of humankind and the wonderment of the universe. But this is not what Christians have believed from the beginning and, I hasten to add, it is not what I believe. My faith in a creator demands that he be "real" somehow, that "God exists" even if in some transcendent way.

Moreover, the Church has believed for centuries, and I believe, that Jesus Christ really rose from the dead, and that his tomb was really found empty. The fundamentalist temptation is to get caught up in proving Christ's resurrection as an objective truth claim. The fictionalist temptation is to deny the objective truth in favor of the subjective "meaning" of the story, and thereby strip the story of its power. A story cannot save me from my sins. Jesus, I believe, and so the church teaches, can and will save me.

I said all that above so I can say this: most of us don't know how to read the scriptures. We are concerned to find some objective truth that may never be realized. Yet if we jettison the search for truth, we end up being followers of fables. Going to church becomes as meaningful as going to Medieval Times or watching Star Trek. What is a modern reader to do?

The following posts will suggest an alternative based on earlier precedents in Christian history. When I read scripture, I might fruitfully put aside the impulse to find objective truth, and instead look for a message applicable to me.  Perhaps it is less important to seek information about the history of Israel, the life of Jesus, or even the nature of God. It is more important (and more firmly grounded in the more noble traditions of the church) to read the stories of scripture in order to be transformed from the messed-up, anxious, and inconsistent humans we are to people who can receive the gifts of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (Galatians 5.22)