Experimental Theology

The Litany of Penitence (adapted from the Book of Common Prayer for a first-person reading):
Most holy and merciful Father:
I confess to you and to others,
and to the whole communion of saints
in heaven and on earth,
that I have sinned by my own fault
in thought, word, and deed;
by what I have done, and by what I have left undone.

I have not loved you with my whole heart, and mind, and strength. I have not loved my neighbors as myself. I have not forgiven others, as I have been forgiven.
Have mercy on me, Lord.

I have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served me. I have not been true to the mind of Christ. I have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on me, Lord.

I confess to you, Lord, all my past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of my life,
I confess to you, Lord.

My self-indulgent appetites and ways, and my exploitation of other people,
I confess to you, Lord.

My anger at my own frustration, and my envy of those more fortunate than myself,
I confess to you, Lord.

My intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and my dishonesty in daily life and work,
I confess to you, Lord.

My negligence in prayer and worship, and my failure to commend the faith that is in me,
I confess to you, Lord.

Accept my repentance, Lord, for the wrongs I have done: for my blindness to human need and suffering, and my indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept my repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward my neighbors, and for my prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from me,
Accept my repentance, Lord.

For my waste and pollution of your creation, and my lack of concern for those who come after me,
Accept my repentance, Lord.

Restore me, good Lord, and let your anger depart from me;
Favorably hear me, for your mercy is great.

Accomplish in me the work of your salvation,
That I may show forth your glory in the world.

By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,
Bring me with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

For those of you interested in this conservation, particularly those from the Churches of Christ, I wanted to point you to three different online zines about the experiences of being gay on a conservative Christian campus.

Of interest to the Church of Christ folks is that these three zines are from our campuses.
The State of the Gay appeared last year on the Harding University campus.

Paper Clips Press appeared last week on a Church of Christ university campus.

Voiceless appeared yesterday on the Abilene Christian University campus.Last night I was honored, along with other ACU students, alumni, faculty and staff, to be a part of an evening where many of the authors of Voiceless read their stories publicly. The readings were, by turns, poignant, indicting, sad, courageous, and inspiring.

Today in ACU's chapel service I've been asked to share some reflections on Jefferson Bethke's spoken word video "I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." I'm sure you've seen the video as it has gone viral. At the time of this writing the video has received over nineteen million views on Youtube.

So whatever else is said, we can at least say this: Well done Mr. Bethke.



There have been a variety of reactions to "I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" on the Internet. Some have been approving, others more critical. In light of my chapel response today let me share some of my impressions.

First off, I'm in broad agreement with the sentiment of the video. In fact, I make a very similar point in the most popular post I've ever written (the Bait and Switch post), about how religion comes to replace loving your neighbor. As I noted a week or so ago, this is a significant theme in both the Old and New Testaments:
Amos 5.21-24
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Matthew 9.10-13
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”In Unclean I talk about some of the psychology behind this dynamic, how the pursuit of religious/cultic purity before God causes us to ignore the second of the Greatest Commandments: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." In Unclean I call this "the purity collapse."

The point being, when Jefferson Bethke is rapping about this theme in his video I'm grooving right along. Going to church is fine, but we can't ignore the injustices at the gate. God demands mercy more than praise music, prayer, and avoiding Harry Potter books

But something hiccups toward the end of the video. And I haven't seen a whole lot of commentary about this particular issue.

After his long criticism of religion in the video Jefferson Bethke ends with the big take home point. Here are the final words of the video:
Religion is man searching for God, Christianity is God searching for man
Which is why salvation is freely mine, and forgiveness is my own
Not based on my merits but Jesus's obedience alone
Because he took the crown of thorns, and the blood dripped down his face
He took what we all deserved, I guess that's why you call it grace
And while being murdered he yelled
"Father forgive them they know not what they do."
Because when he was dangling on that cross, he was thinking of you
And he absorbed all of your sin, and buried it in the tomb
Which is why I'm kneeling at the cross, saying come on there's room
So for religion, no I hate it, in fact I literally resent it
Because when Jesus said it is finished, I believe he meant it
What is really weird, theologically speaking, about the conclusion of the video is that Bethke doesn't end up where the prophets and Jesus end up, with a cry for more mercy and justice. No, Bethke ends up with penal substitutionary atonement. Rather than ending with a cry for justice and mercy we end with "...salvation is freely mine, and forgiveness is my own / Not based on my merits but Jesus's obedience alone / Because he took the crown of thorns, and the blood dripped down his face / He took what we all deserved, I guess that's why you call it grace."

Bethke's argument seems to be this. What makes religion bad is that it's a form of works-based righteousness, churchy things we do to earn our way into heaven. And that's fine, but this isn't the biblical criticism of religion. The prophetic criticism is how religion has become separated from care for our neighbors. It's the point Jesus is making in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And the Parable of the Good Samaritan isn't a parable about works-based righteousness. Far from it. The parable is placing a behavioral demand upon us.

So there is this disjoint sitting at the heart of the video. At the start of the video we think Bethke is going to make a prophetic critique of religion. For example, early on we hear him say this:
I mean if religion is so great, why has it started so many wars
Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor
Tells single moms God doesn't love them if they've ever had a divorce
But in the Old Testament, God actually calls religious people whoresThis is good stuff. We are hearing criticism about the religious sanctioning of war. About poverty. About compassion for the vulnerable and hurting. The point seems to be that the true follower of Jesus would be non-violent, caring for the poor, and standing beside divorced single mothers. So far so good.

But that's not where Bethke ends up. The poem doesn't end with a clarion call to justice but with the notion that Jesus will "absorb" our sins and for us to remember that Jesus was thinking of us while he was on the cross:
Because when he was dangling on that cross, he was thinking of you
And he absorbed all of your sin, and buried it in the tomb
Which is why I'm kneeling at the cross, saying come on there's room
So for religion, no I hate it, in fact I literally resent it
Because when Jesus said it is finished, I believe he meant itIt's not that this is bad in an of itself, but it's not the solution the prophets or Jesus was talking about. The solution to injustice at the gates is, well, stopping injustice at the gates. Not thinking about Jesus "absorbing" my sins. The solution to religious forms of social exclusion is crossing boundaries to eat with tax collectors and sinners. Not remembering that Jesus was thinking of me on the cross.

In short, yes, both Bethke and I hate religion.

I just think we hate it for different reasons.

Thanks to the great PR people at ACU for putting together this little promotional clip for The Authenticity of Faith.

Amazon link here. If backordered at Amazon the publisher link is here:



[Post-Script: In the clip I'm wearing one of those retro ties Jana buys for me at Goodwill as mentioned in my last post.]

I've never been one to dress up. I generally wear jeans just about everywhere. So I'm known for casual attire.

Incidentally, this makes "dressing up" a real pain in the neck, socially speaking. For example, Jana likes to shop at Goodwill stores. Recently she's been picking up a cool tie here and there. Mainly retro ties from the 60s and 70s that you just don't see anymore. So I've started wearing these ties to work once in a while. And when I do all day long it's "Hey! Look who dressed up! Look who is wearing a tie! What's the big occasion?!"

It makes for a very long day.

The point is, if I'm wearing a tie it's a big deal.

When I became the Department Chair seven years ago, selling my soul to the Principalities and Powers, my casual dress became a point of commentary. Mainly the issues had to do with something called "professionalism."

What does professionalism mean when it comes to workplace dress? Why are jeans not "professional" but pants/slacks/trousers are?

To be clear, in this discussion I'm setting aside clothing that is dirty, damaged, or immodest. What I'm talking about is this hierarchy of clothing where the suit and tie sit at the top and jeans sit somewhere at the bottom.

That there is a hierarchy here seems diagnostic to me. In Unclean I talk about Richard Shweder's idea that human moral psychology has three main domains: Community, autonomy, and divinity. A summary of the sorts of moral infractions and values from each domain (quotes from here):
Community: "based on moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy and interdependency, which is designed to help individuals achieve dignity by virtue of their role and position in a society."

Autonomy: "based on moral concepts such as harm, rights and justice, which is designed to protect individuals in pursuit of the gratification of their wants."

Divinity: "based on moral concepts such as natural order, sacred order, sanctity, sin and pollution, which is designed to maintain the integrity of the spiritual side of human nature." Looking at Shweder's domains it seems to me that questions about professional/appropriate attire are involved with the divinity domain. That is, is our dress commensurate with the "sacredness" or "level" of the situation, either the workplace or church? Here dress is a form of showing respect and meeting expectations of dignity and decorum.

So a lack of "professionalism" is a divinity violation. This is why we call casual attire dressing "down." With extreme forms of casualness we even say we are "slumming it." There is a sacred hierarchy at work here, with goodness and sacredness high on this dimension and the profane, base and vulgar low on the dimension.

That clothing is regulated by a divinity ethic isn't surprising. Clothing itself is a way we elevate ourselves above the animals. Clothing is trying to elevate and lift us up above the bestial. Consequently, feelings of sacred elevation become associated with clothing with various attire choices moving us up or down this dimension. Closer to the angels or toward the animals.

This is why, it seems, clothing can be so contentious in faith communities. Clothing has a sacred aspect to it and, thus, people fight over what is "appropriate" for communal worship.

But here's the problem with all this. As I go on to discuss in Unclean the divinity dimension is a source of what the psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls "moral dumbfounding." Dumbfounding occurs when normative judgments have an "I know it when I see it" aspect. That is, the judgment is driven by subjective feelings rather than objective, empirical, and publicly available criteria. Thus trouble emerges when sensibilities differ. With only feelings to guide us how are we to adjudicate between different judgments about what is or is not appropriate?

You can't. You're stuck, communally speaking. If people have different sensibilities there's not a whole lot you can do. One group sees X as "inappropriate." Others disagree. And since the differences here are not matters of fact there's nothing available, objectively speaking, to convince the other side.

Which brings me back to the issue of professionalism.

When someone says "Jeans are not professional" what are they saying? At root, they are simply expressing a subjective judgment about what they think is a divinity violation. But as we've just noted, divinity violations are often in the eye of the beholder. To be sure, these judgment don't emerge out of thin air. There is tradition and norms, what people typically wear in any given situation or context. However, these norms drift and change over time. Moreover, not everyone agrees with the majority view. For example, a younger generation with different subjective feelings about what is or is not professional might come into conflict with the feelings of an older generation.

And who is to adjudicate between the two groups? If there is no objective reason why jeans or shorts at church are inappropriate then all we are left with are our feelings.

So what am I saying? I'm saying that professionalism and propriety are subjective rather than objective states of affairs. That these are "eye of the beholder" judgments, I "know it when I see it" judgments. Which means that, at the end of the day, we're just going to have to agree to disagree about what is or is not professional or appropriate dress in either the workplace or at church. It's a dumbfounding issue. People are going to disagree with each other and there is little we can do about that, no consensus in our future. We're just going to have to learn to live with each other.

Vive la différence.

Let me point you to an interview I conducted with Chris Keller at The Other Journal as a part of their upcoming issue on evil.

In the interview we discuss the topics in Unclean from a variety of different angles, touching on evil, narcissism, positive psychology, virtue, political discourse, and the Eucharist.

In Part 20 of this series--The Devil's Work--we discussed, in light of the work of Ernest Becker, how our cultural worldviews make us violent. Given that our cultural worldviews, what Becker calls a hero system, props up our self-esteem in the face of death we defend these worldviews from threat and critique. We generally do this by demonizing outgroup members. According to Becker this produces the great tragedy of human existence: That which supports my self-esteem--the cultural worldview--is the source of human evil.

This argument is no mere theory. The dynamics Becker describes have been documented in the laboratory. Researchers have worked Becker's theory into a research paradigm called Terror Management Theory (TMT) that has garnered significant empirical support.

Developed in the mid-1980s by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, TMT has focused on two key questions rooted in the work of Ernest Becker:
1. Why are people so intensely concerned with their self-esteem?

2. Why do people cling so tenaciously to their own cultural beliefs and have such a difficult time coexisting with others different than themselves?As we know, Ernest Becker gave an answer to the first question in The Denial of Death and an answer to the second in Escape from Evil. TMT follows Becker, suggesting that we are intensely concerned with self-esteem because it guides us through cultural worldviews that give life meaning and significance in the face of death. Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski summarize the core axioms of TMT, relating self-esteem to success in upholding cultural worldviews in order to achieve death transcendence:
TMT posits that humans share with all forms of life a biological predisposition to continue existence, or at least to avoid premature termination of life. However, the highly developed intellectual abilities that make humans aware of their vulnerabilities and inevitable death create the potential for paralyzing terror. Cultural worldviews manage the terror associated with this awareness of death primarily through the cultural mechanism of self-esteem, which consists of the belief that one is a valuable contributor to a meaningful universe. Effective terror management thus requires (1) faith in a meaningful conception of reality (the cultural worldview) and (2) belief that one is meeting the standards of value prescribed by the worldview (self-esteem). Because of the protection from the potential for terror that the psychological structures provide, people are motivated to maintain faith in their cultural worldviews and satisfy the standards of value associated with their worldviews. Given the fact that self-esteem is involved in managing existential anxiety, Ernest Becker pointed out in Escape from Evil that the cultural worldviews that support our self-esteem are vulnerable to the critique of Otherness. The mere existence of alternative cultures, worldviews, religions, and value systems threatens the assumption that one’s own values, culture, or beliefs are timeless and eternal sources of meaning. Otherness threatens our self-esteem at the deepest level.

So in the face of this threat we demean, denigrate, or destroy ideological Others. We protect our existential equanimity by lashing out at difference. In the language of TMT we engage in worldview defense. In the words of Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski worldview defense occurs when we display “vigorous agreement with and affection for those who uphold or share our beliefs (or are similar to us) and equally vigorous hostility and disdain for those who challenge or do not share our beliefs (i.e., are different from us).”

We defend our worldview by siding with those who share our values and attacking those who do not, we display increased ingroup favoritism along with an increased tendency to denigrate outgroup members. And by engaging in these largely unconscious defensive processes we secure our cultural hero systems in the face of the existential threat posed by Otherness.

This is the source of human evil.

And empirical research backs up this conclusion. TMT studies have shown that, in the face of a death awareness prime, American participants denigrated non-Americans and Christians denigrated Jewish persons. In the face of death we lash out at these outgroup members to reap the solace found within our worldview, be that worldview based upon a nation or a god. And, more often than not, god and country are the very same things. In biblical language these are "principalities and powers" that keep us enslaved to sin due to our fear of death.

In many ways, you might say that the TMT research on worldview defense--denigrating outgroup members in the face of death--is how psychologists are studying demon possession in the laboratory.

In light of all this, how are we to be set free from the demonic impulse toward worldview defense?

Well, as described in the last post it seems clear that we have to "die" to the worldview and hero system. We have to "die" to the self-esteem project. And for the culturally religious, as described in the last post by Peter Rollins, this death also involves dying to the cultural god and religion.

But "death" here is largely a metaphor. What, exactly, does it look like when we "die" to the cultural worldview?

Let's get a start on an answer by thinking about this quote (a quote I ponder in the final chapter of The Authenticity of Faith) from Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld in their book In Praise of Doubt:
Sincere and consistent doubt is the source of tolerance.
In light of the work of Ernest Becker I think we can see the reasoning at work here. If fundamentalism about our worldviews--a neurotic dogmatism driven by death anxiety--is the source of violence (e.g., worldview defense) then the way toward love, embrace, welcome and hospitality toward others is letting go certainty. That is, if I doubt and question my worldview, if I hold it lightly, then there is little desire or impulse on my part to defend my worldview or demonize its critics.

Doubt becomes the precondition of love.

This is exactly what Becker concluded in Escape from Evil. Becker was skeptical that we could abandon all hero systems. He believed that we need myths to orient our life projects, values and "greater goods" to narrate our lives. But we need to protect against the evils inherent in these myths, how they dispose us to become violent. The way forward is to treat these hero systems as fallible and open to criticism. In the biblical language, hero systems need prophets. Becker's assessment:
Men cannot abandon the heroic. If we say that the irrational or mystical is a part of human groping for transcendence, we do not give it any blanket approval. But groups of men can do what they have always done--argue about heroism, assess the costs of it, show that it is self-defeating, a fantasy, a dangerous illusion and not one that is life-enhancing and ennobling. As Paul Pruyser so well put it, "The great question is: If illusions are needed, how can we have those that are capable of correction, and how can we have those that will not deteriorate into delusions?" If men live in myths and not absolutes, there is nothing we can do or say about that. But we can argue for nondestructive myths...This is, incidentally, what I think Peter Rollins is doing in Insurrection, arguing for a myth--a way to use religious language--that is less destructive compared to the dominant myth of Christianity. The notion that "God is love and only love" is less self-defeating and dangerous, it is more life-enhancing and ennobling.

In summary, the way toward love is to begin to die to the hero system that brings us into conflict with others. This may involve a "dark night of the soul" but it will generally manifest as a self-criticism, suspicion and doubt about the hero system. Of course, there is an emotional cost to all this. But it is worth the price to find better ethical footing. Dogmatism is comforting--It is existentially cozy to have all the answers--but doubt is the route toward love.

But there is more here than just doubt. Recall again the connection between the cultural worldview and self-esteem. The doubt here isn't abstract. We're doubting the things that give us legitimacy and significance. We're doubting the ground of our identity. So the doubt here is as much psychological as it is philosophical.

What might this doubt about the foundations of self-esteem look like?

I think one of the best descriptions of this comes from Paul in Philippians:
Philippians 3.7-11
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.Notice how Paul dies to the hero system. All those things that used to be props for his self-esteem project Paul now considers "loss" and "rubbish." It's also interesting to note how Paul focuses on the word "righteousness." As Ernest Becker points out, "righteousness" is just a religious synonym for self-esteem, the way we experience the self-esteem project within a religious hero system.

Paul has rejected all this. Paul rejects everything in his cultural worldview that made his life meaningful, important, significant and righteous.

In a certain sense, Paul no longer has self-esteem. He's left that game behind and the way it is pushed and pulled by a death anxiety that is masked as a quest for significance. Paul no longer has a self-esteem project. He has died to all that to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Paul no longer lives. Rather, the resurrected Christ lives within him setting him free from the slavery of death and the power of the devil.

Around the Internet you often see people spell God as G-d. I believe this is done as sign of respect based upon the Jewish practice of refusing to speak the name of God.

As most are aware, in the Hebrew Bible God gives his name in Exodus 3.13-14a:
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM."The name given in verse 14 is יהוה‎ in the Hebrew and is rendered in English as YHWH. YHWH is sometimes called the Sacred Tetragrammaton (a tetragrammaton being a word with four letters).

In the Hebrew Bible YHWH is the proper name of God. And as a sign of respect for the name observant Jews will refrain from pronouncing it aloud though, from what I understand, they may write the name.

Which brings me to G-d.

The word God is generally used to translate the Hebrew words El and Elohim. Elohim is not the proper name of God. In its plural form Elohim is translated as "gods" and, thus, is used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to both YHWH and to Canaanite deities.

This raises two questions I have about G-d. First, Elohim isn't the proper name of God as is YHWH. So why not spell God in full? Why G-d? Second, as I understand it, the show of reverence for YHWH is not speaking the name aloud. Writing it is permitted. So why say God aloud but not spell God? Seems backward.

But these are quibbles. If someone wants to show respect to God by spelling G-d then kudos to them.

For this post I'd like to push on and talk a bit about another way of spelling God, the difference between God and god.

The general convention is to spell God with a capital G. This signals that we are talking about the God of the Universe. God, capital G, has monotheistic overtones--we are talking about the one, true and only God. Conversely, little g is used--god--to refer to false deities or polytheistic deities. When you spell God as god you are showing that you don't think the god you are writing about is real. This is why Christopher Hitchens chose to use a lower-case g for his book title "god is Not Great." Hitchens was signalling that he didn't think God was God.

Now, in many of my recent posts I've been resorting to the spelling god. I do this, for example, when I'm talking about idolatrous conceptions of God. In my last post interacting Peter Rollin's book Insurrection I talk about his argument that for many Christians god is a deus ex machina. And in that post I extensively used god to indicate that this view of God--god as deus ex machina--isn't really God. I'm using the spelling to make a visual discrimination between true views of God and false views of God. God versus god.

But here's what I'm wondering. Who has a true view of God? No doubt I think my views of God are more truthful than those expressing deus ex machina views of God, but what does "more truthful" mean here? Aren't my views just as false, idolatrous and self-serving?

Here we run up against the difference between positive and negative theology, cataphatic and apophatic theology. Positive theology speaks to what can be properly said about God. This is what we tend to think of when we think about theology. It's the theology of church, this blog, and the seminary. It's a theology of words.

Negative theology is the theology of the mystics, the theology about that which cannot be said of God. It takes its cue from statements such as this from St. Augustine: "If you understand it, it's not God." It's the theology of the ineffible and inexpressible. A theology of silence and the failure of words.

One of the contentions of negative theology is that in a very important sense every spoken claim about God is a lie, a falsehood. To illustrate this, consider the following statements:
God is a father.
God is love.
God exists.These are examples of positive theology, linguistic attempts to say something truthful about God. But are they true? Well, sort of. There is truth in each statement, but in important ways each sentence is also false.

It's easiest to see this with the first sentence. Is God a father? Well, yes, in a certain sense. Given our understandings of "fatherhood" God is like some of those things. But we also know that this is just a metaphor, that God isn't really a male. For example, we find ample maternal images of God in the Bible as well. So we know God is genderless. God is a father. But God is also a mother. And at the end of the day God isn't really either.

So let's make it more difficult. Is God love? Yes. But then again human love is a dim window on divine love. There are aspects of God's love that we don't understand. Paul speaks to this in his ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13: "Now we see in a glass darkly but then we will see face to face."

Now let's get really abstract. Does God exist? Yes. But then again not the way we understand existence. In our minds things that exist are objects. If unicorns exist this means that we can locate an object in the world somewhere that fits the description of a unicorn. But if we can't find this object then the unicorn doesn't exist.

Okay, if God exists is God an object? Here's a way to get at that question: Are there two things in the cosmos, God and the universe?

Does God + Universe = 2?

No. God isn't an object that can be counted alongside other objects. So in a key sense God doesn't exist. Not in the way we understand existence.

In short, you can't say anything about God--God is father, God is love, God exists--without speaking a falsehood. God foils all attempts at verbal description.

Which is why many consider silence to be more truthful about God. That negative theology is superior to positive theology.

I tend to agree. Which brings me back to god.

According to negative theology every time I speak of God I am really speaking of god. The word God is more false than true. And if that's the case should I not signal that I'm telling a lie? For example, I'm more than willing to use god to describe the deities of others but what makes me think I can use God to describe my understanding? Isn't spelling God in reference to my own deity the utmost in hubris?

What I'm basically saying is this, shouldn't every spelling of God be god? Not to say you aren't trying to point to the one true God, but spelling god is a sign--to yourself and others---that anything you say about God is inherently limited, fallible, contaminated, self-interested and idolatrous.

Shouldn't we all opt for god over God and G-d?

Continuing with my engagement with Peter Rollins's book Insurrection let me swing back in light of my last post and point to other areas where I'm in significant agreement with Rollins.

In fact, there is a great deal in Insurrection that overlaps with the work in my recent book The Authenticity of Faith (I've linked to the publisher as Amazon is now back-ordered). In many ways, much within The Authenticity of Faith makes the empirical, research case for what Rollins is describing in Insurrection.

You can think of The Authenticity of Faith as Insurrection in the psychological laboratory, statistics and all.

For example, recall that at the start of Insurrection Rollins's begins by talking about god as deus ex machina. Deus ex machina is Latin for "god out of the machine" and it refers to an ancient Greek plot device where a god, in the form of a Greek deity, would swoop in to resolve the plot (e.g., rescuing the hero after he/she made a self-sacrificing choice). And by "swoop in" I mean literally swoop in as the deity would be lowered in on ropes (hence the phrase "god out of the machine"). In short, the deus ex machina is a plot contrivance to get us to a happy ending. The god rescues the story from ending on a tragic note.

Rollins contends in Insurrection, rightfully so, that for many Christian god functions in just this manner. God is a fixer, a band aid, a balm, a Santa Claus, a force field, a butler, an answer, an opium. When life gets hard, when our life story tends toward tragedy, god is a deus ex machina that is lowered into our lives to save the day and make us feel happier.

This has been a criticism of religious faith for a very long time. In The Authenticity of Faith my focus is on Freud's influential version of this argument (Rollins also cites Freud in Insurrection), that god is a form of wishful thinking and existential consolation.

One question I try to answer The Authenticity of Faith is if all religious believers use god as a deus ex machina. The problem, obviously, for a researcher like myself is how you go about assessing this among Christians. You can't just describe the deus ex machina version of god and then ask people, "Is that how you feel about god? Is your god a deus ex machina?" Few would admit they are using god in this way.

So, what I've done in my research is to identify a suite of beliefs that are associated with a deus ex machina theological configuration. People are more willing to endorse particular beliefs in comparison to asking them to honestly assess their unconscious motivations regarding belief in god. These beliefs are assessed in an instrument I created called the Defensive Theology Scale:
Deus ex Machina Beliefs as Assessed by the Defensive Theology Scale

Special Protection: In the face of a hostile universe, the belief that God will especially protect the believer (and loved ones) from misfortune, illness, or death. The universe is existentially tamed.

Special Insight: In the face of difficult life decisions, the belief that God will provide clear guidance and direction. God’s guidance reduces the existential burden of choice.

Special Destiny: In the face of a life where meaning is fragile, the belief that God has created a special purpose for one’s life, a “destiny” that makes life intrinsically meaningful.

Denial of Randomness: In a life full of random, tragic, and seemingly meaningless events, the belief that God’s purpose and plan is at work. No event, however horrific or tragic, is existentially confusing or disconcerting. All is going according to plan.

Divine Solicitousness: The belief that the omnipotent God is constantly available and interested in aiding the believer, even with the mundane and trivial. God is an “eternal servant,” our Cosmic butler. In my research use the Defensive Theology Scale to assess the degree to which people have a deus ex machina view of God as described by Rollins (and Freud). I then compare these people who score low on the scale, those who eschew these beliefs.

So when you sort people in this way do they behave differently? More specifically, do they behave in the ways Rollins describes in Insurrection?

Part 3 of The Authenticity of Faith has some answers to those questions based upon a couple of different empirical investigations I've conducted. One of those I'll highlight in my next post in the Slavery of Death series.

Two weeks ago I was asked by our Psychology Club to share a few thoughts for their Club chapel. The theme for the chapel this semester is to share about characters in the Bible who have affected or inspired your spiritual walk.

I selected the unnamed concubine from Judges 19.

Judges 19 is, perhaps, the most horrific episode in the Bible. I expect this may be the first, last and only time the students hear a message from this text.

I started by reading the whole chapter. When I ended it was pretty quiet in the room.

Looking up I offered these thoughts:

You're likely wondering, I started, why I selected this text and this unnamed woman. Why is she a person in the Bible who has significantly affected my spiritual walk? My answer is this: I selected her because I see her. Just like you see her.

Here's what I want you to notice. When I read that story you couldn't help but read the story from her perspective. And why is that? It's because you are a Christian. You read the story from the victim's perspective naturally and instinctively. And because of that you are rightly horrified and outraged.

We read the story from the victim's perspective because our imaginations have been shaped, through repeated tellings, by the story of Jesus, from the Triumphal Entry to the Crucifixion. We've been trained to read that story from Jesus's perspective, from the victim's perspective. We follow the Innocent One through conspiracy, betrayal, denial. abandonment, perjury, a broken justice system, political posturing, Machiavellian machinations, mob rule, torture, and death. And because we read the story this way we become horrified and outraged. Just like with Judges 19.

The gospels have taught us to read the story from the victim's perspective. This is what defines the Christian imagination. It's how we see the world. How we enter the story.

We see the woman in Judges 19. We read the story from her perspective. Because we have eyes that have been trained by the gospels. As Christians we look for the weakest most voiceless character in the story--and in the world around us--and declare, "We begin here."

After the many outrages in Judges 19 in verse 30 the people say this: "Consider it, take counsel, and speak out." The Hebrew for "consider it" is an idiom for "turn your heart" and this is followed by the phrase "to her." The text asks us to "turn our hearts toward her." Unfortunately, at this point in the story it's much too late. Hearts should have been turned toward her from the very beginning. But they were not.

But our hearts turn.

We see her.

And all the rest.

In the most recent post of my Slavery of Death series I used Peter Rollins's book Insurrection to help illustrate some of the important ideas of Ernest Becker from The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil.

In the comments of that post some of you wanted me to say a few more things about Insurrection. Given that in my last post I pointed out things I liked about the book I figured I'd write another post about some of the problems I see in Insurrection.

The main criticism I have of Insurrection is this: It's a theological and psychological non sequitur.

What I mean is this. The core of Rollins's argument is that we need to undergo a "death of god" experience to truly experience the resurrection life of love, right here and right now. As Rollins writes:
In this very act of forsaking the religious God, along with all the psychological comfort that comes with it, we can find a way of fully affirming God--not in some belief we affirm but in the material practice of love. So then, as we turn away from the obsessive desire to find fulfillment, meaning, and acceptance, we come into direct contact with them. This is life before death; this is life in all its fullness.To get to love we have to undergo a "dark night of the soul" where we learn to live without God.

But here's my question, why should that be the case? What's the connection? Why does love follow from the death of god?

Rollins isn't particularly good in answering this question or in connecting those dots.

Reading through Insurrection I've looked for passages where Rollins tries to make the turn from "the death of god" to the practices of love. What, in his mind, connects the two? Logically, theologically, and psychologically?

It seems, and readers here can correct me if I'm wrong, that the critical chapter in making the transition from "crucifixion" (death of god) to "resurrection" (practice of love) occurs in Chapter 6 "We are Destiny." There Rollins discusses the contrast between God as an object of love versus God as love itself. This, it seems, is the critical connection. Rollins here making this case:
[W]e are introduced [here] to a radically different way of understanding God's presence in the Resurrection. Here we no longer approach God as an object that we love. Indeed, the idea of loving God directly becomes problematic. Instead, we learn that God is present in the very act of love itself. We do not find happiness by renouncing the world and pointing our desire toward the divine, but now we discover the divine in our very act of loving the world. God is loved through the work of love itself (Matthew 18:20, 1 John 4:20). It is in love that we find new meaning, joy, and fulfillment ...

When God is treated as an object that we love, then we always experience a distance between ourselves and the ultimate source of happiness and meaning. But when God is found to be love itself, then the very act of loving brings us into immediate relationship with the deepest truth of all. In love, the fragile, broken, temporal individual or cause that draws forth our desire becomes the very site where we find pleasure and peace. God no longer pulls on us as something "out there"; rather, God is a presence that is made manifest in our very midst. Here meaning is not found in turning away from the world but in fully embracing it through the act of love.
As best I can tell (again, correct me if you disagree), this is the critical passage connecting the "death of god" with love. The logic seems to go like this. If God is an object of love "out there" then our love becomes directed away from this world. Love, we might say, becomes "spiritualized," and not in a good way. By contrast, if God is love itself, we are thrust into the world.

This notion should sound familiar to regular readers as Rollins is explicitly following Dietrich Bonhoeffer here. I've worked through Bonhoeffer's notion of living etsi deus non daretur ("as if there were no god") here and how this creates the immanent transcendence of the "religionless Christianity" here. Rollins's analysis in Insurrection is also unpacking these ideas.

Now I agree with all this, both with Rollins and Bonhoeffer. We need to resist the other-worldliness inherent in religious belief and practice. I'm a huge fan of this move.

That said, I'd like to raise three quibbles with Insurrection.

Quibble #1. While Rollins unpacks Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity and etsi deus non daretur he fails to go on to discuss Bonhoeffer's treatment of the "arcane" or "secret" discipline in the Letters and Papers from Prison. What is this discipline and why is it secret? In his letter from April 30, 1944 Bonhoeffer describes the discipline as "worship and prayer." These are religious rituals directed toward God as "object." But why are worship and prayer to be kept secret? Bonhoeffer's worry is that these explicitly religious rituals will prove distancing and off-putting to a religionless "world come of age." Thus, according to Bonhoeffer we should hide these practices, as far as the world is concerned Christians should look "religionless." Christians shouldn't practice worship and prayer in public. "Before God and with God we live without God in the world."

But here's the critical issue and the point where I think Rollins might have run off the rails. Specifically, Bonhoeffer isn't rejecting or denying the role of worship and prayer in sustaining the community of saints. Worship and prayer aren't eliminated. They are just secret. The religious, transcendent dimension isn't collapsed in a "death of god" move. The ritual is simply removed from public view as it is simply incomprehensible to the "world come of age." Worship and prayer are to be "words between friends." The best articulation of all this comes from a 1932 lecture Bonhoeffer gave in Berlin:
Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion. Such profession uses the confession as propaganda and ammunition against the Godless. The confession of faith belongs rather to the "Discipline of the Secret" in the Christian gathering of those who believe. Nowhere else is it tenable...

The primary confession of the Christan before the world is the deed which interprets itself. If this deed is to have become a force, then the world will long to confess the Word. This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda. This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community. This is a matter between God and the community, not between the community and the world. It is a word of recognition between friends, not a word to use against enemies. This attitude was first learned at baptism. The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world.This is a very different view of religion than what we find in Insurrection. For Bonhoeffer there is an economy "between God and the community."

This brings me to Quibble #2. Rollins seems to be suggesting that we have to choose between "God as other-worldly object of love" versus "God as the act of love itself." This is framed as an either/or choice. But why? Why not both? Why can't be God be both immanent and transcendent? Can't both be endorsed?

Take, as a real world example, Dorothy Day. Here we have an exemplary Christan when it comes to living out the works of mercy. If anyone is an example of a loving insurrectionist it was Dorothy Day.

But here's the deal. Day was a devout Catholic who believed in God as an object of love. She attended Mass every day, sometimes twice a day. She prayed the Rosary constantly. God as object of love sustained Day's living love as God. Just as Bonhoeffer said the secret discipline would sustain us. And for Day it was "secret." Day didn't make the poor go to Mass with her. She didn't try to convert them. As far as the poor were concerned, Day was "religionless." God wasn't used by Day to create "enemies," injecting religion between herself and the poor. But let's be clear, religion sustained Day, week in and week out.

So how does someone like Dorothy Day fit in the scheme of Insurrection? She's living a life of love, radically so, but with God as an object of love. Does that make sense in light of Insurrection?

In short, why does Rollins insist we have to choose? Can't we, instead, be Christians like Bonhoeffer and Day? True, both Bonhoeffer and Day were extraordinarily concerned with how "religion" is a constant temptation, sucking love out of this world into the black hole of other-worldly spirituality. But that's a far cry from saying that we have to choose one over the other.

Which brings me to Quibble #3. If all Rollins is talking about is other-worldly spirituality, about how "God as object of love" pulls us away from "God as love," then it seems, given what we've just discussed, that his cure is disproportionate to the disease. He's demanding a root canal when a filling would do. He's hunting rabbits with atom bombs.

Recall, again, what Rollins is asking us to do. We are to undergo a death of god experience that shatters us. In the words of Rollins: "In this dark hour, when the very earth beneath us gives way, we experience utter desolation."

What is unclear here is why we have to experience "utter desolation" if Rollins is just asking us to be more loving. Why can't, say, a transcendent worship experience with a great praise band motivate me to be more loving? It happens. Why can't things like worship and prayer, as mentioned by Bonhoeffer, be the route to loving-kindness? This is what I'm talking about in saying there is a non sequitur in the middle of Insurrection. Rollins doesn't explicate the necessary connection between undergoing "utter desolation" and love. Nor does he explain why such a drastic experience is required when less extreme options are available.

True, religious ritual tempts us into other-worldliness. But "utter desolation" tempts us to commit suicide.

It's not like Rollins's route to love is risk free.

So why prefer it?

Jana sent me this poem by Wendell Berry this week. Many of you are familiar with it, but it remain powerful after many readings.
To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzak Rabin, November 6th 1995.

Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know

there is no answer
but loving one another
even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be

the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.

In the early posts in this series we spent a lot of time focusing on Christus Victor theology and how it focuses salvation upon rescuing us from death and a life enslaved to the fear of death.

In more recent posts we began to unpack all this from a psychological perspective, mainly drawing on the work of Ernest Becker, but with significant help from the work of theologians such as William Stringfellow, James Alison, and Arthur McGill.

The climax of the psychological analysis was this. Our slavery to the fear of death causes us to seek self-esteem through cultural hero systems. However, given that these hero systems are largely created to repress and channel our existential fears, we find our self-esteem projects to be shallow, hollow and fragile. To use James Alison's turn of phrase, we get self-esteem by pursing ersatz meaning. Another way of saying this is that self-esteem is largely a neurotic enterprise.

But there is more here than merely noting the neurotic nature of self-esteem. The fact that humans are neurotic might be sad and pathetic but not particularly devilish or demonic. But the satanic outworking is observed when we note that the hero systems that give life meaning and security have to be believed in absolutely and protected from the threat of ideological outsiders. Thus the dark outcome: To preserve my self-esteem and life significance (often encoded in "our way of life") I have to demonize, in large ways or small, outgroup members.

This is why people kill for their gods and way of life. That which provides the foundation of our identities--our values, nation, worldview, religion and traditions--must be protected. Why? Because the alternative, to live naked and defenseless before death, is too heavy a psychological burden.

In all this we see a psychological understanding of what it might mean to be "held in slavery all our lives to the fear of death" and why such an enslavement leads to "the devil's works."

With all this in place, it's now time to devote some posts to what we should do about this situation. In light of Christus Victor theology how are we to be "set free" from the slavery to the fear of death and the violence it produces?

We've already gotten some hints about what this might look like. We've discussed McGill's idea of moving from identity-as-possession to identity-as-gift, an "eccentric identity" in the words of David Kelsey. We've also considered James Alison's discussion of "living as if death were not."

Those are important ideas that we'll be building on. But our review of Ernest Becker's work forces us to go a bit deeper.

Specifically, if my cultural worldview is, at root, a form of death repression, then what does it mean for me to "die" to this existence? It means leaving behind everything that, prior to my baptism, gave me worth, meaning, and significance. It means being "dead" to those things from which I constructed my identity. This is what Paul is describing in Romans 6:
Romans 6.2-9
We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.Death has no mastery over Jesus. And those who die with Jesus in baptism share in this liberation, the mark of which is being set free from sin to live a new life according to the Spirit.

But such a dying to the old self, the self that was mastered by the fear of death, is a terrifying prospect. Who am I once the cultural props have been kicked away? How will I find self-esteem if I let go of all my blue ribbons? How will I carry on if I listen to the Teacher of Ecclesiastes who informs me that my life projects are, at root, "meaningless" and "vanity"?

In The Denial of Death Ernest Becker attempts to answer this question, though he admits that he is articulating something of an ideal that might be unreachable. He suggests that the best we can do is to learn to master our anxiety less neurotically and more directly. Only then can we take charge of our anxiety and not allow it to affect or damage others. I don't have to demonize or kill others because I fear death. I don't have to fall into the Devil's trap as described above. Still, this is hard work as Becker summarizes,
The most one can achieve is a certain relaxedness, an openness to experience that makes [a person] less of a driven burden on others. William Stringfellow calls this relaxed, non-anxious existence "living humanely in the midst of the Fall." We live among Death's works but we are not pushed and fulled by the fear of death. As Paul describes Jesus in Romans 6, death has no mastery over us.

How might all this look, religiously speaking?

An interesting resource in this regard is the new book Insurrection by Peter Rollins.

Rollins's book follows a trajectory parallel to Becker's in The Denial of Death. I don't know if Rollins has read Becker, but he should as Becker has worked on, in much greater psychological detail, the picture Rollins sketches in Insurrection.

At the start of Insurrection Rollins talks about, following Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a god who is a deus ex machina. This is a god who is artificially dropped into our world to solve our problems, justify our way of life, and provide some existential comfort. This is the god behind our hero system, the god that props up our self-esteem projects. Unfortunately, as Becker has shown us, this is also the god we kill for.

Rollins argues that the Christian notion of crucifixion involves the death of this god, the existential crutch that helps us cope with existence. Similar to Becker's analysis, Rollins suggests that this "death" involves a loss of everything that made life structured and meaningful:
To experience the Crucifixion is to lose all the supports that would protect us from a direct confrontation with the world and with ourselves. We are robbed of all the stories that we construct about God and our own nature. Stripped of the guarantees and fantasies that previously marked out existence, we come face-to-face with anxiety in its various manifestations (death, meaninglessness, guilt).
This is a radical notion. As we have discussed repeatedly in the comments in this series, "God" can have one of two meanings. We've mainly been discussing the "god" that sits behind the hero system, the religious idol that confers legitimacy to my worldview and my life. This god is, at root, a neurotic coping mechanism. Which is why we need to kill to "protect" it. Thus, crucifixion for Rollins involves the death of god. Crucifixion involves the death of religion as religion is simply one aspect of the cultural hero system holding us captive (neurotically speaking). "Christianity" in this understanding is simply one hero system among many other hero systems, one among many neurotic paths to achieve self-esteem that will, in the end, bring us into conflict with others. "Christianity" here is simply another manifestation of our "slavery to the fear of death," the deus ex machina we create to solve our death problem (e.g., a fix for anxiety, meaning, self-esteem). Rollins describing this:
To lose that which grounds us and provides us with meaning involves nothing less than losing the God of religion in whatever form it manifests itself in our life. This does not require ceasing to believe intellectually in some overarching principle that guides us, but rather it means losing the psychological power that such a principle possesses of us. Like Jesus, we too must make the journey from Gethsemane to Golgotha, a journey in which we pass from the sacrifice of religion (where we give up everything for God) to the sacrifice of religion itself (where we give up everything including God).

In the sacrifice of religion, we lose all the security that any deus ex machina might provide for us. In this dark hour, when the very earth beneath us gives way, we experience utter desolation.According to Rollins this is how we are united in Christ's death. We cry out with Jesus as we experience the death of god in our lives: "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me!"

We undergo this death because the god of the cultural hero system is an idol, an existential death fetish, an illusion we use to keep death repressed and out of awareness. More, this god was the devil's work in our lives, the motive behind why we protected our ingroup and demonized the outgroups. So this god has to die for us to be able to love others fully. But again, the existential burden here is enormous:
We must give [Jesus's] cry its full theologically and existential weight. We must read it with all its horror and potency. It is a cry that comes from one cut off from all grounding in a deeper reality, one who has lost all sense of meaning, all mythological frames. It is a cry that exposes us to a man utterly destitute.To die with Christ, therefore, we have to move through this experience, intentionally and repeatedly. If we are to truly love others we have to let go of the cultural hero system, which includes god and religion, and undergo a "dark night of the soul" where we are left with nothing to ground our identity. But on the other side of this experience is a life freed to live for others. As Rollins describes it:
In this very act of forsaking the religious God, along with all the psychological comfort that comes with it, we can find a way of fully affirming God--not in some belief we affirm but in the material practice of love. So then, as we turn away from the obsessive desire to find fulfillment, meaning, and acceptance, we come into direct contact with them. This is life before death; this is life in all its fullness.In this view, god is no longer a idol that props up my self-esteem or our "way of life." Rather, God is the act of love itself, an act is only truly possible when the death of god has taken place. For us to truly find God and love others we have to let the religious idol die. We'll let Rollins take us home:
Resurrection faith is then manifested in a freedom and liberation in which we are able to courageously and fully embrace this world without repression, resentment, and fear. It is a way of living in love, a love that embraces existence, not because it is perfect, but because it is beautiful in the midst of its very imperfection.

This does not mean that we stop experiencing anxiety and sadness--not at all--but that in the very midst of these we still find life worth living. We no longer need to hide from our sadness and repress it. Rather, we can confront it and work through it. Indeed, it is the very acceptance of our sadness that can lead to its dissipation. Just as grace (the experience of accepting that we are accepted as we are) enables us to change, so too, by accepting that we must mourn (rather than run from it) we can ourselves move through our pain (rather than having it return again and again in various masked forms).

Here, death is robbed of its sting (1 Corinthians 15.55) and despair is overcome...

All this means that the event of Resurrection opens up a type of religionless faith in which we are able to embrace the world and ourselves without some security blanket. It is here, amidst the ashes of the death of the deus ex machina, that a different understanding of God becomes visible. This God is affirmed where people are gathered together in love and is testified to where the sick are healed, the starving fed, and where those who dwell in death are raised into life. "Where two or three come together in my name," we read in the Gospel according to Matthew, "there am I with them." In other words, where people are gathered together in love, God is present.

This last July we were driving through South Carolina. We had stopped to get some gas. I was waiting in the car with the boys and Jana had run inside to buy a drink.

When Jana emerged from the convenience store she looked shaken.

"You okay?" I asked.

She said, "Can't believe what I just heard in the store."

She was standing in line waiting to pay. A man in front of her was buying a newspaper. He had thrown the paper on the counter and was reaching for some money.

You'll recall that in July of 2011 President Obama and the House of Representatives were fighting with each other over the debt ceiling. The standoff had finally ended and the newspaper headline was declaring the deal, with a picture of Obama above the fold.

"Right there, that's an example of nigger thinking," said the man tapping his finger on Obama's picture.

The cashier, taking the man's money, nodded in agreement. "That's right." he said.

How did the Republican Party--the party of Lincoln "The Great Emancipator"--become saddled with racism?

I raise the question for a couple of reasons. First, as a college professor in West Texas I've found my students to be clueless about the relevant history. As far as they know the South has always voted for Republicans. No so. Take, as one example, the voting history of Mississippi. Since the Civil War Mississippi has voted for a Democrat in the Presidential elections 21 times. That is almost double the number of times the state has voted for a Republican (11 times). Needless to say, President Obama has almost no chance in Mississippi in 2012.

So what happened? When did this strongly Democrat state, along with the other southern states, turn from Blue to Red?

The other reason I raise the question has to do with Christianity in the American South, particularly evangelical Christianity. As noted in his recent book (which I reviewed in the post Are Christians Hate-Filled Hypocrites?), sociologist Bradley Wright cites statistics that show evangelical Christians to be one of the most racist groups in America. To be sure, only a minority of evangelicals fall into this category, but relative to other Christian groups as well as to non-Christians evangelical Christians are the most likely to hold a candidate's race against them in a political election. And as most people know, evangelicals tend to vote Republican and are plentiful across the American South. This racist strain in southern Christianity greatly disturbs me as I encounter it frequently where I live.

So what changed in the South? When did the South go from being strongly Democratic to being strongly Republican? The story can be summed up by looking at two electoral maps separated by a mere eight years:

Electoral Map of 1956 Presidential Election
Electoral Map of 1964 Presidential ElectionThe change is startling. This is one of the most dramatic shifts in American political history. The effects of which are being felt to this day and will be reflected in the 2012 electoral map. We are the heirs of this legacy.

So what caused the US political map to flip-flop in a mere eight years? What happened to cause the Southern states, proudly Blue and Democrat since the Civil War, to flip to Republican Red?

Why are the Red States Red?

What happened between 1956 and 1964?

Answer: The American Civil Rights Movement.

There's a lively Internet conversation going on right now regarding comments John Piper recently made about "masculine Christianity." For example, Piper said
...the fullest flourishing of women and men takes place in churches and families where Christianity has this God-ordained, masculine feel. For the sake of the glory of women, and for the sake of the security and joy of children, God has made Christianity to have a masculine feel. He has ordained for the church a masculine ministry.The fuller context of these comments can be read here over at Jesus Creed.

Responding to these comments Rachel Held Evans has asked for some men to weigh in on the topic. I particularly learned a lot from J.R. Daniel Kirk's response (who knew the translation of El Shaddai had anything to do with mammary glands?).

For my part, I tend to be late to these parties because I don't follow evangelical culture and they don't tend to follow me.

(Funny story in this regard. Last year the Family Research Council invited me to Washington to speak about the topics I discussed in my post How Facebook Killed the Church. I emailed them back saying, "Have you read my blog?" Invitation pulled. Poor souls, they had no idea who they were inviting to their party.)

I'm also late to the party because I tend to roll things around in my head too long.

But I wanted to say something in light of Rachel's call because I had been thinking about this for the past week or so.

It started with me watching the movie Courageous. Long story about how I ended up viewing the movie, but I did. Courageous is an evangelical Christian film that is mainly about Christian fatherhood, about men "stepping up" to reclaim their roles as providers, protectors, and spiritual leaders of their homes. The film seems to hold to the view that Piper is articulating.

Let me first say this. I don't want to throw complementarians under the bus. I have a lot of conservative friends who just can't seem to see eye to eye with Jana and I on this issue. I also don't want to belittle attempts like those found in the movie Courageous that are trying to encourage Christian men. Because it seems that a lot of men are struggling, really struggling, with finding a place in the church. To be sure, pages and pages could be written about what, exactly, is the problem in this regard. For my part I tried to get into some of the relevant issues in my post Thoughts on Mark Driscoll...While I'm Knitting.

All I want to do is make a simple observation. Specifically, why does Piper say that Christianity has a "masculine feel"? A part of his argument:
God has revealed himself to us in the Bible pervasively as King, not Queen, and as Father, not Mother. Fair enough. Though we could debate the issue as to if the gendered God of the Bible is a feature of cultural context, as well as point to maternal images of God, on the surface we see Piper's point. God is called Father. Thus, Christianity has a "masculine feel."

To this, I have a simple response (and I'll even use the ESV):
Matthew 23.9
And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.That's my response. Jesus's explicit command is to call no man on earth your father.

Here's my point. Okay, fine, God's a father. But there is only one father. No man on earth can take or claim that role. Not in the family. Not in the church. If Christianity has a "masculine" feel, fine, but no human can step into the "masculine" role of authority. Only the Father holds that position of authority. Thus, to claim the title "father" as having authority over any other human being is a sin.

Well, it's a sin if you're a Christ follower.

You often hear the phrase, "God is God and I am not." Well, maybe in some sectors of Christianity it would be nice to hear more of this:

"God is Father and I am not."

Post-Script:
Dear Family Research Council: I'm still open to coming.

Just give me a call.

A few days after Christmas Sojourners asked if they could repost my The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity. It's now February and it continues to be one their "Most Read" essays each week.

I remain surprised at the staying power of this post. What buttons is it pushing? For good and bad?

For my part, I just think the post is a commentary on texts, among others, like Amos 5:
Amos 5.21-24
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

A while back I wrote about how different the bible sounds when read inside a prison. I'm also coming to see how songs sound different as well.

A month or so ago our teaching team at the prison bible study was reduced from three to two. The study is about two hours long. So with one less teacher we have some time to fill.

So we've started to sing a lot more. About halfway through the study, when we transition from Herb to me, we stop, pull out the songbooks, and I take song requests.

I've really enjoyed these times. Our church has pretty much gone over to the modern praise team/band songbook found in many churches. But the songs we are singing in the prison are the songs I grew up with. Amazing Grace. Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. There's a Fountain Free. When the Roll is Called Up Yonder. I'll Fly Away.

Sometimes the song requests can be pretty weird. Last week one of the guys called for The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Good Lord, I thought. But not wanting to be judgmental, I led it. I don't think I'd ever sung all the verses before. But there I was, singing away...
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!I felt like a Civil War solider camped out at Gettysburg or something.

But back to the old school hymns.

I don't blame my church for moving on from the hymns of my childhood. But I do miss them. Some of them are pretty bad as far as music goes, but some songs, when set to country, folk or blue grass music, just bowl me over with nostalgia. Get me some Alison Krauss or Gillian Welch on one of these old church songs and I'm a happy man.

But these songs aren't just dinged on the basis of musical quality. Over the years I've heard preachers and theologians completely throw songs like I'll Fly Away under the bus. Why? Because it's escapist!
Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away.

To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.

I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away;
when I die, hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.I understand the criticism. Where is the whole "may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"? Where is the vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth in Revelation 21-22? It does seem like I'll Fly Away is pointing us away from this world in anticipation of the next. The song suggests that the whole goal and aim of the Christian life is to "fly away" from this world to the next.

But here's what I found in the prison. I'll Fly Away is one of their favorite songs. We sing it every week. And it's not hard to see why. Particularly if you recall the second verse:
When the shadows of this life have grown,
I'll fly away.

Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away.And the third verse speaks to the bleakness of prison life as well: "Just a few more weary days and then, I'll fly away."

The point is, while I get the theological criticism of I'll Fly Away the song sounds completely different in prison. Just like the bible.

Because here's the deal, does I'll Fly Away make any sense when it's sung by rich people of power and privilege? I mean, what the heck are you flying away from? Life in suburbia? The Caramel Macchiatos at Starbucks? The vacations at the beach? The fact that you have clean water, indoor plumbing, central heating/air, and two cars?

But when I'll Fly Away is sung by people who are, quite literally, imprisoned or oppressed then the song is less about flying off to the Pearly Gates than a commentary about the world around us. I'll Fly Away can be an indictment and lament about the status quo. There is a prophetic aspect to I'll Fly Away that privileged people generally miss. Having never suffered slavery, oppression or imprisonment we can't hear the lament in I'll Fly Away. So of course when the privileged sing the song it sounds theologically shallow. The privleged shouldn't be trying to fly away. They should be worrying about the injustices at the gate.

In sum, I'm back to the realization that Christianity sounds different--theology, hymnody, and the bible itself--when heard from the margins of society. What doesn't make sense at the centers of power, prosperity and privilege often makes a whole lot of sense on the periphery.

Thérèse of Lisieux often gets a bad rap for being one of the most sentimental and girlish of saints. And the syrupy sweetness of much of the Catholic devotion for "the Little Flower" no doubt contributes to this impression. However, as I've tried to show in this series there is a toughness to Thérèse's spirituality. The Little Way is no easy or sentimental journey. It'll turn your life upside down if you let it. It's messing with mine for sure.

But beyond the Little Way, Thérèse is also of interest to us for another reason, something that also pushes against the stereotype that she is an overly sentimental saint. We are speaking here of Thérèse's dark night of the soul.

You'll recall that Thérèse was asked to write Manuscripts B and C of Story of a Soul--the spiritual heart of her memoir--because she was dying.

In 1896 on the evening before Good Friday, and this timing seems apt given what was to follow, Thérèse awoke in the night to find her mouth filled with fluid. It was too dark to know what it was, but the morning light confirmed her suspicions that it was blood. She had contracted tuberculosis. Thus began her slow, protracted, and painful walk toward death.

During this time Thérèse experienced a profound spiritual darkness that, as best we can tell, never resolved itself. Some of this darkness finds its way into Story of a Soul and some of it was captured in things she shared with sisters and novices at Carmel.

The root of it was this. Now facing death Thérèse began to doubt that there was a heaven. What once seemed so certain to her had evaporated in the aftermath of her Good Friday awakening:
[God] permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest darkness, and that the thought of heaven, up until then so sweet to me, be no longer but the cause of struggle and torment. The trial was to last not a few days or a few weeks, it was not to be extinguished until the hour set by God Himself and this hour has not yet come. I would like to be able to express what I feel, but alas! I believe this is impossible. One would have to travel through this dark tunnel to understand its darkness.Thérèse says that she was plunged into a darkness "far from all suns." Looking for heaven she says, a "fog surrounds me and becomes more dense; it penetrates my soul and envelops it in such a way that it is impossible to discover within it the sweet image of my Fatherland; everything has disappeared!"

She goes on to say that while she continues to obey Christ that obedience has lost its joy: "[Jesus] knows very well that while I do not have the joy of faith, I am trying to carry out its works at least." And when she sings of heaven it's more from hope than conviction:
I must appear to you as a soul filled with consolations and one for whom the veil of faith is almost torn aside; and yet it is no longer a veil for me, it is a wall which reaches right up to the heavens and covers the starry firmament. When I sing of the happiness of heaven and of the eternal possession of God I feel no joy in this, for I sing simply what I WANT TO BELIEVE. It is true that at times a very small ray of the sun comes to illumine my darkness, and then the trial ceases for an instant, but afterward the memory of this ray, instead of causing me joy, make my darkness even more dense.What we find here is one of the most extreme dark nights of the soul from the lives of the saints. And it's a startling and unexpected discovery given the sweet sentimentality associated with "the Little Flower." But there is nothing sweet or sentimental about Thérèse's faith struggles in the face of death.

Again, as best biographers can tell, this dark night lasted to the very end. In fact, as discussed by Tomáš Halík in his book Patience with God, a recent biographer of Thérèse's, Thomas Nevin, argues that Thérèse died without faith.

That's a shocking conclusion. And, of course, we'll never really know. But the interesting thing I'd like to draw your attention to is how Thérèse transformed her dark night into love. Thérèse might have died struggling with doubts, but she was firm in her commitment to die in love. In the very last line of the section where Thérèse describes her dark night she concludes with this:
I no longer have any great desires except that of loving to the point of dying in love.In other conversations and writings she echos this sentiment:
My will is to endure, by Love,
The Darkness of my exile here.
...
If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into...Everything has disappeared on me, and I am left with love alone.I am left with love alone. One interesting example of this, one discussed by Halík, is how Thérèse's dark night brought her into loving communion with atheists and non-believers. Before her own trials Thérèse didn't really think it was possible to be an atheist. She felt that God was so present in every heart that, deep down, atheists really knew there was a God:
...I was unable to believe there were really impious people who had no faith. I believed they were actually speaking against their own inner convictions when they denied the existence of heaven...But after her dark night Thérèse understood, intimately so, what non-believers were experiencing. She found herself in loving solidarity with these non-believers, forced through the grace of God to eat at the shared table of non-belief. And in this solidarity Thérèse sees herself as intercessor. In her doubting Thérèse becomes the priest of non-believers. More, in her doubt she offers herself as a loving sacrifice to purify and save her non-believing brothers:
Your child, however, O Lord, has understood Your divine light, and she begs pardon for her brothers. She is resigned to eat the bread of sorrow as long as You desire it; she does not wish to rise up from this table filled with bitterness at which poor sinners are eating until the day set by You. Can she not say in her name and in the name of her brothers, "Have pity on us, O Lord, for we are poor sinners!" Oh! Lord, send us away justified. May all those who were not enlightened by the bright flame of faith one day see it shine. O Jesus! if it is needful that the table soiled by them be purified by a soul who loves You, then I desire to eat this bread of trial at this table until it pleases You to bring me into Your bright Kingdom.I'm not sure I can track, with my rationalistic mind, the mystical flight Thérèse is taking here in this passage. But the general idea is clear enough. Thérèse finds herself at the bitter table of unbelief in solidarity with non-believers. And there she intercedes for her brothers, calling out for their justification and salvation, as well as offers her own life of doubt as a ransom for theirs.

In all this we see Thérèse sacrificing faith for love. Her last act isn't faith. It's love. As she says, "I am left with love alone." Faith is irrelevant (or gone missing). All she wants to do is love "to the point of dying in love."

Here's how Halík summarizes the dark night of Thérèse and her comments about the relationship between faith and love:
At the gates of death, did Thérèse perhaps experience something of that final state of which St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians--that ultimate state when everything will come to nothing? Perhaps his words also apply to faith and hope, for they will have "fulfilled their task" of accompanying us in the valley of shadow of this ambiguous world--but love will endure? Was the hell of Thérèse's suffering and inner darkness paradoxically the entrance to a "heaven" where just one of the three divine virtues survives?
...
Man does not fall into boundless darkness but returns home, into the full light of true: faith has already fulfilled its pilgrim task; only love reigns here and now. This will not cancel faith but fulfill it; if faith "dies," it does so only by being dissolved in love--but even this death may be experienced as a passage through the dark chasm of nothingness.

Christian faith--unlike "natural religiosity" and happy-go-lucky religiosity--is resurrected faith, faith that has to die on the cross, be buried, and rise again--in a new form. This faith is a process--and it is possible for people to find themselves at different phases of this process at different moments of their lives.

I have often heard the ironic statement that faith is simply "a crutch" to help those of us who are weak and lame, whereas the strong have no need of it. It is not "a crutch," but it might be compared to a pilgrim's staff that assists us on our journey through life. Maybe when someone is just about to cross the threshold of home, when the staff won't be needed anymore, it falls from his hands; it's not surprising if he loses his balance for a moment. "Seen from the other side"--from the viewpoint we can only experience here as an assurance, as hope--beyond that threshold, at the moment we lose all supports and certainties, there awaits us an embrace of love that will not let us fall into emptiness.

Faith is converted into love--sometimes not until the last gate, sometimes earlier, perhaps. Where faith dies, love continues to burn so darkness cannot have the final victory. Is it our love or His? It's a pointless question. There is only love.Beyond faith and hope there is only love.

Thérèse, I think, would agree.

I was thinking yesterday about the personality types that struggle the most with theodicy questions, why a powerful and loving God allows such suffering in the world.

My thoughts ran along these lines. Generally speaking, people tend to cluster in one of two groups. On the one side are your rational types. On the other are your emotional types. It's head versus heart. We are speaking of these types when we talk about left-brained and right-brained people. We also see it in the "either/or" nature in the Myers-Briggs personality types where "thinking" is placed in tension with "feeling" in how we make decisions. You're a T or an F.

But what if you're both?

For the most part, the two don't go together. Highly rational, logical and analytical types aren't generally known for their empathy or interpersonal skills. (I'm smiling here as I think of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.)

On the other side, socially intuitive, sensitive, and emotional people don't tend to specialize in logic, physics, or computer science.

Of course I'm painting with very, very broad strokes with all this. But here's the point I want to make. Theodicy has two sides. There's an analytical side and an empathic side.

The empathic side is easy to see. When we see others suffer our hearts go out to them. We suffer with them. Thus, if you have a soft, compassionate heart you'll likely struggle more with theodicy issues. Many of us can put images of suffering out of our minds. Others can't. And that creates a heavy theological burden.

But theodicy has an analytical side as well. There are a lot of people who struggle with God simply because they are tenacious in following the theological thread to the logical and bitter end. A lot of us think our way into faith problems. It's not that we think too much, just that we insist that people face up to the logical assumptions and consequences of their beliefs.

Generally speaking, because for the most part people specialize in one of these two areas, you can find solace in the area you aren't so good at. Emotional types, who don't really want to reason through theological puzzles, often settle for mystery. They don't mind "not knowing." Here their disinterest in analysis gives them a place to run when the emotional burden gets too heavy. When the emotional weight starts to crush they can fall back on "God is in control."

Conversely, analytical types can find shelter on the emotional side. That is, in demanding logical consistency these people might reach a conclusion that demands a certain level of hardheartedness. A lot of Calvinists fit this description in how they handle the problem of evil. As a system Calvinism has a sort of cold, implacable logic to it. But tender-hearted people simply recoil in the face of it. We get the logic of the system but are too softhearted to stomach the conclusions. That's what I'm trying to point out. You can work the logic but you have to hedge on the empathy. And by reducing empathy you can wiggle out of the theodicy trap your theology is creating.

So we see people doing one of two things to run from theodicy problems. Hedge on the empathy or hedge on the logical consistency.

But what if you're the sort of person who can't hedge on either? What if you're one of those rare individuals who are both very analytical and very empathic?

It seems to me, if you are one of these sorts of people, that you're basically screwed. All around you people are suffering. And you feel this acutely. More, as you reason it all out God comes out looking more and more like a monster or less and less like the God of orthodox Christianity. You're getting hit from both sides. You are unable to run from either the empathy or the logic. More, the two fuel each other in a feedback loop. Our analytical minds penetrate the bubble of worship and Sunday School platitudes. And our hearts won't hide the horror of life.

It's a theological nightmare.

You can't turn your mind off. Or your heart.

Theologically speaking, I think some of us are just wired to suffer.

Sadness isn't the only thing we are all experiencing with the loss of Liam. It's very rare in life that you get to meet a truly heroic person. Liam was heroic.

Thus, in the midst of sadness we also feel inspired to be better people. I have this feeling that, for the rest of my life, I'll be asking myself the question, "What would Liam do?"

You can read more about Liam and his project--Liam's Wells--here and here.

You can donate to Liam's Wells here.