Rewriting My Life

All history is interpretation. There is no such thing as “pure history.” We think history should be about objective data – dates, facts, and artifacts. But it is largely a subjective art. History is always an interpretation of selective facts told from a certain perspective. Other people see things differently.

Other facts could have been selected by another writer, which could produce an entirely different history. That is why there are four Gospels in the New Testament, which do not fit together seamlessly, even after piously trimming the edges of some puzzle pieces and omitting others.

Nations write their history in the name of patriotism; cultures do it out of pride. “History is written by the victors,” Machiavelli said. It is also written by the vanquished; it is just a different history. I am vividly aware of this whenever I hear differing accounts of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Every person is writing his own personal history in his head all the time. We fit the events of our lives into a personal narrative that we carry with us, amending it as we go along. In this way we make sense of our lives. We give our lives meaning, and hopefully some dignity.

I write my own personal history from my perspective. Therefore I usually make sure I come out looking pretty good! Unfortunately a lot of it is fiction. I tend to omit or rewrite the bad parts of my life to justify my own failings and shortcomings, and then believe my own fiction.

I skew the facts to fit the image of myself that I want to present. I change the past to coincide with what I think should have happened. I make myself look better in my own eyes and others’ eyes, and most importantly in God’s eyes.

But I know that my interpretation of my life is a fiction. My wife keeps me honest when I get too self-deceptive. But my unwritten autobiography could still qualify as fantasy or even science fiction.

I am painfully aware just how self-deceptive I can be… and self-justifying. I confess that I am self-righteous. I could add hypocritical to that autobiographical portrait. I am not being hard on myself. Sometimes I just see myself a bit more clearly. This seems to happen most often when I am on my knees.

In prayer I can’t get away from the fact that God knows me as I really am. David wrote: “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in - behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” 

I had a friend who changed his name – both his first name and last name. He remarried and moved to a foreign country and began a new career. He completely changed his persona in an effort to rewrite the story of his life. He was, I suspect, running from a painful past.

I do not want to hide from the past or fool myself. In my better moments I want to know myself – to know myself as God knows me. The words “Know Thyself” were inscribed over the entrance to the temple at Delphi. The assumption was that you could not approach God unless you were honest with yourself.

As David ended his psalm: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Unplugged Spirituality

It has been almost five weeks since I have watched television. It is not because I have decided to live a simpler lifestyle. I am not that holy or disciplined. It is because the house we are renting in New Hampshire has no television reception.

We have a radio, but we get only three static-free radio stations. The highlight of my week is listening to Prairie Home Companion on Saturday night. I actually look forward to it for days! The only news I hear is from Lake Wobegon.

I didn’t know what I was missing until I caught part of a news broadcast in a hospital lobby a couple of weeks ago. It was shortly before the September primary election, and the political commercials were horrendous. After being used to normal people treating other normal people normally, I was taken aback by the nasty things people were saying about other people.

Another thing I noticed was the fast pace of the electronic stream. There was no space to think about what was being said or shown. It seems designed to bypass the mental process of discernment and feed directly into the subconscious. I felt like I was being mentally ambushed by the television.

As I write this, I can hear only the rain dripping from the eaves, an occasional automobile passing by, and the oil furnace kicking on. There is space to think and talk, play games and read, feel and pray.

I have been having a lot of extended conversations this last month. I stop to talk to friends on the street, and a half hour goes by easily. We sit over a nice meal for two or three hours sharing stories, memories and opinions.

I don’t know how I found time for television before… or why. I understand now why my son and his wife decided against having a television. They don’t want themselves or their newborn son exposed to electronic pollution.

What I appreciate the most about being unplugged is the spirituality of silence. To hear God you have to have quiet space - more than just a few minutes a day. You have to breathe in silence for days and weeks.

When I am disconnected from the matrix for a while, my ears slowly begin to adjust to the “still, small voice” of God. It is not that I am hearing heavenly voices. The message is in what I am not hearing. In not hearing the voices of the world, you begin to understand the natural rhythms of God in nature and in people. 

God speaks without words or thoughts. His voice is deeper than intuition or conscience. God speaks beneath silence, before thoughts, deeper than self. It is the language of the Spirit, “speaking spiritual truths in spiritual words,” as the apostle says. To hear God’s voice clearly, it is best to keep the television unplugged.

The Color of Soul

It has been a long time since I have seen autumn come to New Hampshire. For years I have returned for a few days each October at the height of the fall foliage season, but I had forgotten what it was like to see the trees begin to change in September. This year I am daily enjoying the gradual transformation of the forest.

The colors start on the fringes of the trees and work inward. It looks like the trees are frosted with gold. The maples are bright red and orange, ash and birch are yellow, and the oaks are golden. Some smaller bushes and shrubs turn dark red. The pines stay green to add contrast.

There are a few trees that wear their full regal colors early, especially those in the wetlands, as if eager for the autumn to come. When the sky is blue and the sun is bright, it seems like heaven has visited earth for a season.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s lines come to mind: "Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pick blackberries." In autumn all of nature is “afire with God.”

I remember hearing the scientific explanation for the changing colors. The bright colors are the natural pigmentation of the leaves. The fall colors are there all along, but are masked by green chlorophyll in spring and summer. Only when the leaves prepare to fall are the real hues revealed.

As I write this blog post, I am watching a line of cars depart the rural cemetery near our house. I recall that a graveside service is being held today for a dear saint of the church. I knew her in her later years, what they call “the autumn of life.” This woman, who was always lovely and gracious, grew even better as she aged.

This is not always the case. Some people harden with age. In either case, people’s true colors are revealed as the years progress. The difficult times of life harden some people and soften others. Some depart this life in a blaze of beautiful color. Others grow dull and dry.

I hope that I am one of the former. Life is too short to let the inevitable hardships of life rob us of our natural joy. Family and friends are too precious to allow differences to divide us. The spiritual dimension of life is too important to let religious squabbles quench it.

So I will enjoy the autumn colors that transform both landscape and lives. And hope others will see the natural color of my soul.

Why I Am Not an Atheist

I have been reading books by atheists recently. I just finished “Good Without God” by Greg Epstein, and I am now reading “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens. They challenge me to think about God in ways that Christian writers do not.

Atheist arguments push me to examine my assumptions and presuppositions. Why do I believe in God? Am I fooling myself? Why am I so certain that God exists when these thinkers are so certain he does not?

My first instinct is to appeal to biblical authority; that is the way I have been taught. As the children’s song says, “Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” But arguments based on Biblical authority and inspiration are meaningless to atheists.

Why do I accept the authority of Scripture? Why do I believe what the Bible says about God? When I keep asking myself “Why?” long enough, it comes down to personal experience. Either you have had a spiritual experience that convinces you of God’s reality, or you haven’t.

The bedrock of my faith is a deep and abiding personal awareness of God. Apparently this is something that atheists do not experience. I don’t know why I have this awareness of God and they don’t. Maybe it’s grace. Perhaps it is what the Bible means by election. For me the awareness of the presence of God is strong and sure. Atheists’ arguments against the existence of God are irrelevant when asked in the presence of God.

Am I deceiving myself about my awareness of God? Maybe. But I might be deceiving myself about the presence of the chair I am sitting in or the light shining through the window. But those are physical phenomena provable by science, the skeptics claim. True.

Then how about beauty or art, mathematics or logic, love or music? God’s presence is as real as any of these for me. If I had to compare them, I would say that God is more real – even than the physical world. I am more certain that God exists than that I exist.

How can I describe this awareness of God? Words like existence, being or consciousness come to mind. Wholeness, joy, and peace express it somewhat. The phrases of Paul Tillich are helpful – Ground of Being, Being Itself, Ultimate Concern. But these sound so impersonal. God is not impersonal.

God is personal in a way greater than human persons. People can be so impersonal; God is never impersonal. God is not a superhuman personality – an invisible male in the sky. God is the depth and height of all relationships. God is that in which everything else exists. God is. When Moses pressed God repeatedly to identify himself, God finally responded, “I am who I am.” That is God.

God does not exist; God is. God is who God is. I am who I am in God. Apart from God I am not. I do not exist apart from God. Apart from God nothing exists. This primary awareness of God is where I take my stand. That is why I believe in God.

This consciousness of the presence of God does not feel like an experience to me. Experience assumes a certain distance between the experiencer and the experienced. Experience needs a subject and an object. God is not an Object that I experience. This feels more like an intuitive awareness in which there is no distance between God and me. If I had to describe this as an experience, I would say that I am conscious of God experiencing me.

That may not make a lot of sense, but it is as good as I can do. I am certain it is not good enough for atheists. I am sure they can explain this in naturalistic terms. But it is good enough for me.

Thank God For Atheists

 I just finished reading “Good Without God” by Greg Epstein. It is subtitled, “What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.” Epstein is the Humanist chaplain at Harvard University. What is a humanist chaplain? Isn’t that title an oxymoron?

A friend loaned me the book. In return I suggested he read William Young’s “The Shack.” I am now a bit embarrassed that I suggested such a lightweight book, whereas he loaned me such a heady volume. It turns out that “Good Without God” is a sort of “Purpose Driven Life” for atheists – but much better written. He even references Rick Warren in his book several times.

You might wonder what a Baptist preacher is doing reading a book about atheism. Well, it turns out that even atheists (he prefers the term Humanist) have a spiritual life. They just don’t attribute it to the Spirit.

In fact the whole volume is an attempt to answer the oft-repeated accusation (voiced by Warren) that there can be no morality without belief in God. To quote Dostoevsky, “Without God all things are permissible.” Epstein counters that argument and builds a case for a humanistic ethic.

The strange thing is that I have been arguing Epstein’s case for years. Whenever Christian colleagues would say that there is no morality without religion, I would argue the contrary. In my experience nonreligious people are just as “good” as Christians. There are studies to back up my argument. For example, in spite of all their talk of “family values” the rate of divorce among evangelical Christians is actually higher than nonchristians!

There is something in human nature that naturally produces ethical systems. You see it throughout history and across cultures. I have argued that ethics is a human phenomenon rather than a religious one. As a Christian I attribute this to the natural revelation of God in human conscience. But those who do not believe in a Creator have no need to find a heavenly cause for the ethical instinct.

As I read “Good Without God” I found it very spiritual, even religious. I guess it is the way he defines atheism. He sees people like the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, American Deist Thomas Jefferson, and even Christian philosopher Paul Tillich as closet humanists. Epstein sees the religion of these men as a nascent form of atheism.

But for all his insights, Epstein falls into the same trap as all atheists. The God that he rejects is not God. It is an image of God; images of God are, by nature, false gods. At one point he quotes his mentor Shewin Wine as saying, “Sometimes the nicest thing you can say about God is that he doesn’t exist.” That is true; the God that atheists don’t believe in doesn’t exist. I don’t believe in that god either.

God is by definition beyond definition. All definitions are by nature idols. As a cultural Jew (he refers to himself as a “Humanist by faith, a Jew by cultural heritage, and a Humanist chaplain and rabbi by profession”) Epstein knows that the first two commandments are not to worship other gods or make images of God. Doctrines are mental images. Theology is an image-making endeavor.

In this regard the atheist is the believer’s best friend. The atheist is an iconoclast, relentlessly tearing down the idols erected by his theistic brethren. Atheists believe that when all gods are revealed to be false, there is nothing left to believe in. From my perspective, when all the man-made gods are shown to be false, what is left is God.

Contemporary atheists do Christians a great service, and we should listen carefully to their voices. They relentlessly expose the idolatries and falsehoods in religion, and thereby reveal the true God.  The Greg Epsteins, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens of the world teach more about God than most popular Christian authors these days. Thank God for atheists.

Ontological Illusion

In God I cease to be, and yet I am. It is kind of confusing. That is why I am so hesitant to write about my prayer life. Words seem so sloppy and imprecise. So are ideas. In prayer we dwell in the space between thoughts. Doctrines cannot contain the God of prayer anymore than colanders can hold water. 

In prayer we live in the expanse behind the material world. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God. It is not “up there” in heaven, nor “down here” on earth. It is not “out there” or “in here.” Yet it is both up and down, here and there. It is breaking in and yet to come. See what I mean? Words are sloppy.

I use the word God to describe the presence behind the creation because it is the best word I know. But the word “God” has been so distorted by theists and atheists that it would be equally true to say “not God,” by which I mean not the idols we mistake for God.

God is “not me” and “not the world.” Rudolf Otto called God “the wholly other.” Theologians speak of the transcendence of God. I guess that term will work, as long as transcendence is understood to include immanence.

God is present during prayer. No argument can convince me otherwise. I am more certain of the reality of God than I am of my own reality – much more certain. In prayer one perceives a divine depth to existence that is normally in the background of our awareness. But in prayer, we notice it because we are paying attention.

It is like the optical illusion of the vase and the faces, or the hag and the beauty. It is all how you look at things. We tend to look at things the way we have been conditioned. But when we are alone with God, then God nudges us into a new way of seeing – to see the kingdom of God that is hiding in plain sight.

In prayer the vastness of eternity is made known. It is so real that everything else seems like a mist in comparison. It is more real than my individual personality or even the material world.

In the presence of God my personal identity is perceived as little more than a fleshly fiction whose main purpose is to keep me from God. It is where Adam and Eve ran to hide from God, and we have been hiding ever since.

But in prayer we can come out of hiding, and God comes out of hiding. “Truly you are a God who hides himself,” the prophet Isaiah said. But he is also a God who reveals himself. He hides in plain sight. He who has eyes to see, let him see.

One-Third Free

“I stand before you today only one-third free,” said Sarah Shourd, the American hiker freed from Iranian captivity after more than a year. She spoke these words at a recent press conference and was referring to the fact that her fiancé and a friend are still in Iranian custody, accused of espionage.

She continued, “That was the last thing that Josh said to me before I walked through the prison doors. Josh and Shane felt one-third free at that moment and so did I. The only thing that enabled me to cross the Gulf from prison to freedom alone was the knowledge that Shane and Josh wanted with all their heart for my suffering to end.” She then went on to say that she would now turn all her attention to gaining freedom for the remaining hikers.

Being a student of religions, my first thought on hearing her words was the bodhisattva vow. According to Mahayana Buddhism, bodhisattvas take a vow stating that they will strive, for as long as it takes, to free all sentient beings from bondage and lead them to enlightenment. In other words, a bodhisattva will not enter Nirvana until all enter Nirvana.  To use Christian language, they will not enter heaven until all enter heaven. They are not saved until all are saved.

It is a noble sentiment. As a Christian, I wish there was more of this attitude in my Christian religion. But as a pastor I have seen a different attitude. Christians say they believe in eternal heaven and hell, and they rejoice in their salvation. But they do not seem very disturbed at the thought that their neighbors and friends will not be spending eternity with them.

They seem unconcerned that, according to their model of salvation, most of humanity will spend eternity in hell. They certainly would never think of delaying entrance into the pearly gates until all are saved. In fact they seem eager to leave this vale of tears behind and get to their celestial reward.

It is disturbing that the Buddhist religion seems to demonstrate more compassion than Christianity in this regard. It certainly isn’t Jesus’ fault. Christ demonstrated supreme love and compassion. He willingly went to the cross, and experienced death and hell for us!  He worked tirelessly during his ministry and gave his life for our salvation. But I don’t see this Christly attitude in his followers.

When Sarah Shourd stated that she was only one-third free, her words struck a chord in my heart. I don’t know what her religious convictions are, but her attitude felt profoundly Christian. 

Can any human being feel content until all humans are free? Can any Christian enjoy freedom from sin and death until all are free? How can any Christian rest until they do everything they can to ensure that all are saved? How can any person walk through the heavenly gates knowing that loved ones have been left behind?

According to religious statistics from the year 2000, one third of the world’s population is Christian. (That is a very generous figure that includes all forms of Christianity and counts all nominal Christians. The real number of sincere, active, believing Christians is certainly a fraction of this figure.) But if we accept the figure – and furthermore assume that the Christian gospel truly presents the way of salvation - it means that we are only one-third free.

So we either change our apathetic attitude toward those facing eternal imprisonment or we reexamine our model of salvation. Anything else is hypocrisy. We either join Sarah Shourd in directing all our attention to freeing our companions on this earthly journey – or we rethink our doctrines of heaven and hell. 

But to enjoy a life of freedom while believing that others are still facing endless imprisonment and torture is unconscionable … and unchristian.
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Photo is of American hikers Shane Bauer, left, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal.