A Rudder

No one wants to be that strenuous being - the single individual. But men everywhere are in the service of that deceitful substitute - a group.  Let's a few of us join together, form a group - then we can surely do something. This is the most profound demoralization of the human race. 

*** 

 The task is not, as human stupidity believes it is: to justify Christianity to men, but rather to justify oneself to Christianity.

 -Soren Kierkegaard

The task that confronts me, as a practitioner of institutional Christianity at this particular time in history, is trying to figure out how this particular institution is going to survive the postmodern world.  To some extent, I know it's a task of vanity (the biblical sort not the "how's my hair look?" sort).  I believe that the work of God's Holy Spirit in this world is not a function of church attendance or stewardship campaigns, it is a pillar of creation, it is the Word, the Breath, the Holy Fire that makes all that is and was and shall be, all that mystical stuff.  Woohoo, but I've got a mortgage to pay and kids to put through college.  For better or worse, I have hitched my wagon to this thing called the Church.

A lot of times though... it just makes me kind of sad, not because of the usual stuff though, not because of the emergent postmodern griping about the church.  I don't really begrudge all the former evangelicals who have migrated out of the "toxic" waters that spawned them and found their "true home," among the liturgies of the Episcopalians or the Orthodox.  I think it's cool when people "discover" a system that has been around for 1000 years and it seems new.  But that's the problem, it seems like they are just in it for the novelty or the contrast, or the change from what they knew.  It's essentially teenage rebellion (a lot of them are 20 somethings).  The problem is that it is cool, or trendy, or whatever.  Differentiation from  your originating system can seem "cool" at first, but ultimately it becomes hard work, and if you don't do the work you will probably end up dissociated and having a difficult time forming healthy relationships.

Sorry, that might seem a little psycho-babble-ish.  Let me provide some context.  I didn't start down this path out of the blue.  Here are two more voices from outside my bubble that I came across this morning.  The first is Bret Stephens of the New York Times talking politics and how we seem to have lost the rudder of "The West." The second is Timothy Carney writing for the American Conservative, with a longish read about how the much vaunted support of Trump by Christians may be something of an illusion created by the peculiar animal called nominal Christianity.  I will state, as I usually do, that these folks are not Liberals, nor are they "cultured despisers" of religion.  They are, in fact, making a rather crucial point about how both liberal iconoclasts and right-wing propagandists have done damage to the moral and religious structures that we took for granted, perhaps took for granted for too long.

As a laborer in the field, I know all too well that, just because folk check the "Christian," box on a census form or slap an ichthus on their bumper (that's the little fish thingy), doesn't mean they are actually a follower of Jesus, or even a genuine participant in an actual church congregation.  By the by, the more time goes by, the more I actually do believe that going to church is an important part of actually following Jesus. When I was younger, I thought that maybe the "me and Jesus" kind of faith was a thing that could bear fruit, but time and human sinfulness have convinced me otherwise.  You need a community to grow, you need other people, you need Christianity in order to be a follower of Jesus.

You don't need Christendom necessarily, that's a chimera dire, a fusion of institutional church rules and political power-grabbing.  You don't need blind obedience to an institutional expression of Christianity, but you do need community and communion.  Carney, for all the relevant points he makes, is somewhat limited by an empirical approach that can only track numbers.  He relies on things like church attendance and polling data.  I think those things are only a tentacle of something much larger and more dangerous beneath the surface.  Many forms of church that are available to people these days offer attendance opportunities with little or no connection.  Mega churches are the obvious offenders, but smaller congregations can do it too: "Just come to our church, we promise not to ask too much of you."  Churches can play the game of clubs and cliques as well as the game of thrones, we're not above it, or immune from it, in fact, it's safe to say that most churches are probably a mess in their own special little way.

So why go? Why put yourself through it?

The theological answer is that God is about relationship, in the Trinity, and through the Incarnation.  God became a human being to demonstrate that the Spirit and the body are not enemies. Reconciliation, redemption, salvation, atonement, all that church sounding stuff, what it comes back to is that God is all about relationships and community.  In community you find people who challenge you in so many different ways, and you also find people who support you in ways you can never comprehend.  Community of that sort gives you a rudder, and a sense that there is something to steer by rather than just whatever you happen to feel at the moment.

Which leads to the second, more practical answer, religion, among other things, provides a moral framework.  Even if we disagree somewhat about what morality might be, there is a certain bedrock standard in Christian (and honestly in many other religions) faith.  That bedrock is what Jesus uses to sum up the Law and the Prophets: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." You can spend a lot of time unpacking those things, but they are pretty easy to remember, and they are useful benchmarks for anything else that you might try to build on to your religion.  They are the rudder we need.

Red In Tooth and Claw

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love creation's final law

Tho nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shreik'd against his creed.

-Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H

I have been thinking a bit lately about how it is often necessary to listen to unfriendly criticism.  It starts with the present and obvious reality that we all tend to inhabit bubbles of our own creation.  We want to have our worldview and our egos affirmed as often as possible.  I know I live in a bubble every time I turn on Fox News or listen to Donald Trump give... well I guess you could call them speeches.  There is screeching dissonance between the things I hear and see and the world I want to exist.  The question I have to ask myself then is whether the dissonance is between my own opinions and thoughts about how things are, which are essentially creations of my ego, or whether there is something more real underneath.

This is where the unrelenting assault on the truth becomes critical.  This is where the idea that we cannot trust anyone to help us discern the truth becomes savage.  This is where the postmodern blitzkrieg against objectivity and meaning becomes truly destructive.

These days I truly appreciate people who have the wherewithal to poke through bubbles rather than just comfortably dwelling within those bubbles. Richard Rohr names the enemy of our common humanity as something rather different than you might expect from a Franciscan priest, it is not Satan, it is not even evil, it is Dualism.  It is our stubborn insistence on creating dichotomy: good/bad, smart/dumb, believer/apostate, orthodox/heretic, Democrat/Republican, liberal/conservative.  Even as I wrote that list, I realize that I (unconsciously) put things in a certain order.  The things I consider good were first and the bad, or maybe less good were second.  Lord have mercy upon me, a wretched bubble dwelling sinner.

The problem with Dualism, from a Christian/Jewish/Muslim perspective, is that there is one God.  In fact, the Muslim mantra: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," is a pretty important feature in their belief and practice.  Likewise, the Hebrew prayer Shema: "Hear O Israel, the Lord, the Lord your God, is ONE."  We Christians have probably muddied this up more than our Abrahamic kinfolk with the whole Father, Son, Holy Spirit, perichoresis thing, but believe me, most of us do actually believe that God is one, just three in one, one in three, triune, God in three persons, blessed Trinity (sorry, I just started singing a hymn for no good reason).

I can't really begin to deal adequately with polytheism, pantheism, paganism, Hinduism or any of that, because while I can seek to understand them, they are too far outside my bubble for me to really feel them, so what I feel like I need to do is try to use the tools and weapons that I find within my own worldview to slay the dragons of dualism that I find here.  Helpful things that appear within my sphere, like say the opinion page of the New York Times.  Yeah, yeah, I know, liberal media, failing Times, fake news, whatever, they actually give some pretty good conservative folk a voice and even a few that probably should have their voice taken away (sorry, there I go with the Dualist hating again).  David Brooks consistently impresses me with his analysis of things.  This piece is no exception, TL;DR he talks about the rather troubling culture of the call out.  This is something I know, because in certain sub-cultures the call out has been around for a long time.  When I was in high school, my friends and I would have conversations/arguments about music groups that had either "sold out" or not sold out.  Depending on the group of people this could have been about punk bands like Green Day or metal bands like Metallica, and even the occasional rap group/artist.  In the punk scene, as the Invisibilia, episode Brooks is on about describes, there was a certain rigorous morality to the argument.  The most serious punk rockers of the 1990's were "straight-edge," which meant no drugs, no alcohol, sometimes even no sex, or at least sex within the confines of committed relationship only.  Fugazi, a very well put together band, insisted on never signing with a major label, never writing empty pop-punk songs, never charging more than $5 for a show, never giving in to the pressure/opportunity of becoming big time rock stars.

I saw Fugazi perform several times over the course of my high school/college years, and each time it became less fun.  The last time I went, Ian Mckay spent most of the night lecturing the frat boys in the mosh pit about playing nice, and getting genuinely upset when they seemed more intent on hitting the boys and groping the girls then they did about actually moshing in the good old fashioned way.

Those were the days when call outs were born.  Those were the days when a sort of fundamentalism that has overrun the interweb was hatching out of some vile egg of individualism.  They came for the pseudo-punks and I said nothing because those guys are jerks.  They came for the fans of crappy music and I said nothing because who needs more crappy music.  You get the idea, but eventually all of us get called out, and it's not any fun, especially if you kind of deserve it, like you make a racist or sexist comment, or if you forget to "check your privilege," in the wrong company.

I respect Ian McKay as an artist, and for his moral values, but man, he just flat out ruined a good concert with his call outs.  What Brooks is lamenting in his opinion piece is a very real problem for our current brutally polarized culture: no one wants to be the "victim" of a call out, and some people are willing to go to extremes to avoid it.  See sometimes Call Outs backfire.  

Example: A fairly equality minded white kid makes some comment that rubs a black kid the wrong way, a call out on racist ground ensues, and shame is introduced.  Do you think that that white kid became more or less racist on the basis of that call out?  If they are reflective and open enough, maybe they get better, but probably not.  Most likely the sting of that convinces them that they are, in fact, a victim, even though the reality may be quite different.

Example: A man makes what he considers a gesture of friendliness or politeness towards a woman at work and gets called out for sexism or even sexual harassment. Do you think he automatically becomes more conscious of gender inequality? Or does he become more hostile towards women in the workplace as a sort of defensive posture?

This is a serious problem, this is how you make majority groups who are objectively privileged feel threatened and unpredictable and likely to do something irrational that may even be contrary to their own interests.  How does everyone these days seem to think the media is biased against them and their tribe?  Why do most of the people you talk to feel like the world is just sliding into the abyss in some way, shape or form?

I think it's because they have bought the dualism at the heart of all of our worst impulses: if I'm good others are bad, if I'm going to win others have to lose, if I'm going to survive others must die.  Nature, red in tooth and claw, but that is not the ultimate truth.  There is a "more excellent way," as the Apostle Paul says.  Love is creation's final law, because God is One and God is love.  Love not only casts out fear, it casts out dualism altogether.  You can't really "call out" someone you love, at least not in the way it's being done these days. You can challenge them, you might be able to correct them, but you have to love them first, and that, friends and neighbors is sorely missing from our world.

We Need More Woody

I have intentionally and unintentionally taken a bit of a hiatus from writing this blog.  Part of the reason was because Christmas happened, and I was busy, that was the unintentional part.  The other part was a sort of pre-new years resolution that I would try and write things only when I had something good to say.  Of course, you can argue with my definition of "good," but this is, after all, my blog not yours.  At the end of November I just felt burnt out on politics, the election seemed important and I was pretty happy that my side managed to wrestle at least one hammer away from the toddler (credit Will Rogers for that imagery).  But a month after that result and pretty much daily assaults on the dignity and decorum of nation left me feeling like I had just run out of outrage, and I don't want to run out of outrage, in case I need it for something important.  Besides that point, I kind of feel like me just pouring my outrage out here on the interweb, only increases the level of general outrage, and I think that is not what we collectively need right now.
So I'm going to talk, again, about Woody Guthrie.  I have a deep admiration for Woody Guthrie as a songwriter, but honestly, if he were trying to make a go of it these days, his twangy folk style probably would sell in Nashville or any where else, no matter how clever the words were. I have come to suspect that perhaps one of the cures for what ails us politically might just be found in the ethos of Woody Guthrie.
Let me explain what I mean. Despite being exceptionally well known for a ragamuffin folk singer, despite writing This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land, despite being a primary influence on Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Woody never got rich.  Woody died poor after suffering from the debilitating progressive horror of Huntington's disease.  Guthrie had, as a young man traveled around getting involved in various labor causes.  Living a life that was sort of like the life that John Steinbeck's fictional character Tom Joad lived, Okies and migrant workers, factory workers and coal miners, Woody didn't just write songs about them, he went among them.  Bruce Springsteen, in his recent Broadway show, admitted that while he made his living writing songs about hard work and factories and such, had never held an honest job in his life (it was his Dad that did that, and it's really a powerful and touching story, but that's for another day).
That was not the approach Woody took, his sympathy and his identity came from the blue collar and the no collar workers.  His music told their stories, but it wasn't just an act, those were his stories too.  I think that if we're going to get past this current mess of outrages, we're going to need more Woody.  I'm not just talking about a person cut from his cloth, but an actual re-discovery of the ethic of the common man and the values of hard work and honest work at that.  I know that kind of sounds Republican, and it could be if they were honest about it instead of just using it as a con to sucker the rubes while they hand money to the bankers.
Once upon a time both the Democrats were the party of Labor Unions and working people, and they still are in some essential ways, but they've also become the party of the metropolitan areas and the cultural progressives, which essentially sends the working people running to the... well to Donald Trump, who I guess is about as much of a traditional Republican as Bill Clinton.  The problem I see is that no one is really looking out for the masses of people, because the masses don't have anything to give the politicos other than their vote, and votes have been cheapened by a lot of different mechanisms and systems.  Votes are so cheap, in fact, that nearly half the eligible population just throws theirs in the garbage.
Our democracy doesn't work very well when the people who live in it don't care enough to know what's going on for real, which brings me back to Woody.  One of the things good folk music does is put you in touch with reality, it tells you a hard luck story or two, if reflects the good, the bad and the ugly of human experience, often without much window dressing.  We don't have much in the way of folk music these days other than as a sort of acoustic museum exhibit of songs that used to be about important things. Rap can do it, and has done it at moments, rock can do it, it doesn't have to just be twangy, beat up guitars and gravelly, wiry ragamuffins, but songs can relate to people about things that are true, and truth seems to be in short supply these days, so yeah, we need more Woody.