The Buie Knife

Letter to a Young Skeptic of Religion

Religion asks you to accept a lot of things "on faith" without thinking them through, the young skeptic of religion says, calling himself a disciple of logic, reason and science. In the Christian Church, for example, one is expected to recite the Apostles Creed, to swallow it hook, line and sinker, which he isn't prepared to do. He doubts whether Mary, the mother of Jesus, was actually a virgin, and doesn't necessarily believe Jesus' miracles were performed in the way they are described, and he doubts whether the laws of science and gravity were broken and the body of Jesus "rose from the dead," levitated to heaven, where the body was healed of all earthly wounds, then flew back to earth to encounter the followers of Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Was that really Jesus or an apparition in the minds of his followers? How did Jesus "die for our sins"? he asks. How could that be possible? Not only did Jesus somehow die for the sins of all those believers who came afterwards, Christianity asserts, but at least some of those who lived before? All that could be a lot of hocus pocus, he suggests, theological constructs, not too different from what the Greeks and Romans thought about the imaginary gods they created.

I reply that it's good he's thinking about these things, and yes, such details can be stumbling blocks to faith. But they don't have to be. The Gospels were written, what, 60 years after the events occurred, and if the writers got some details wrong, it's not a big deal to me. I don't consider doubts about any of those details to be barriers to participating in a Christian community.

The trouble with scientific atheism, I ask ironically, is "how do you live with your doubts?" By that I mean those moments when the spirit of God seems real, and you feel in harmony and at one with nature and the universe? Most if not all of us have such moments, as well as moments of doubts. Few people are religious believers all the time, every moment of life, and few people can sustain atheism or agnosticism, complete cynicism and doubt, through every moment of life either.

In closing oneself off from God, Allah, the Force, a higher power, or whatever you call "it," from a spiritual community, in proclaiming dogmatically that the spiritual world does not exist, one is closing the door on a whole dimension that makes life more meaningful and can help us get through disappointments, rough patches, bumps in the roads, disasters. Which nearly everyone, sooner or later, experiences.

I contend that one's understanding of various theological questions will change and develop over time, and no one will ever have a complete understanding. Words crafted by humans can be a pretty inadequate way of describing that which is so much larger than we are, often beyond our full grasp-- the divine and the eternal.

Perhaps the crux of Christianity is the belief /hope/ faith that God cares enough to intervene in human affairs. He sent his "only son" or another way of saying it, Himself incarnate, as an example to humans on how to live, with love as the foundation of life. And that humans, in their half-hearted and sinful nature, denied and crucified Jesus.

And yet the spirit of Jesus was so strong despite the attempts to kill Him off through crucifixion. The resurrection might mean simply that His spirit survived death and still thrives in the hearts of men and women who open themselves to that spirit, from that day to this day and into eternity. And that God continues to intervene in human lives throughout the world. Our task is to be open to it, to try to comprehend it and try to be a part of God's love and work here on earth.

One doesn't need to accept or comprehend it all, certainly not all at once. I said I currently have a problem with the concept of heaven as a place of eternal reunion with loved ones with whom we "live" for eternity. Nice thought, but actually we are altered by death and by separation from our bodies. We can no longer be the same. And after 100 years or so, the individual personalities of nearly everyone who lived -- except for a few historical greats -- are forgotten, because there's no one around who remembers them.

So, the notion of my loved ones' individual spirits surviving or being active "until the end of time" seems improbable to me. But, what do I know? The notion of spiritual reunion after death is a nice, warm, comforting feeling and hope and if it's true, that's wonderful. If it's not, well, this life might be all there is, and it will have to have been enough because there's not much we can do about it.

What seems most important is that the spirit of God -- I might add Allah, or the God of other major faiths (the same by different names and with different cultural interpretations) -- the spirit of love, the spirit of Jesus, survives and thrives until the end of time. And that we all become part of that spirit, if we so choose or if it chooses us. Those who don't develop their spiritual side are dead when their body expires because there's nothing to pass on or to the spiritual world. But I've met only a few people in my life who seemed to have no spirit whatsoever or a purely malevolent spirit. So who's to know or to judge? Not humans, for sure.

Many of these questions evoke mysteries which we cannot fully solve in this life.

My friend Bruce Johnson also had some thoughtful answers to these questions. He writes: 

There's a beautiful Talmudic essay asking why the psalmist asks God to place his words "on" the psalmist's heart rather than "in" it.  The answer is that if our hearts are closed, the prayers can then fall into our hearts when we open them.  The same I think is often true of words we say about faith - they come back to a person years later, an experience I've had both with things I've heard and things I've said to people.

 My overall view of faith is similar to yours.  Faith is above all a mystery.  We can't pin down the precise truths because our experience doesn't yet allow for it, any more than a baby, before birth, could understand what the outside world is like.  Not only do the mystics testify to this, but St. Paul says it explicitly ("We see now as in a glass, darkly") and Jesus does too ("the kingdom of heaven is LIKE . . .", he constantly says, because it can be expressed only by analogy).

In the end, my own faith I suppose is my trust that there is Someone who both cares about me and about everybody I care about and who has the power and the wisdom to make that caring effective, even if I only faintly comprehend it. 

As for Heaven, it's sort of the ultimate mystery, but my basic faith is that there is a part of me and you that is realer than whatever this stuff is that SEEMS so real but which physicists tell us is basically a bunch of electrical force fields perched precariously on the edge of dark matter that cancels out the anti-matter that would otherwise destroy it and whose appearance as we perceive it is somewhat deceptive.  And that whatever that part of us is, once it's separated from all its emmeshment in this world of appearances that can be both so enticing and so frustrating to deal with, will have all the fog cleared away and will see that Someone with a clarity that is impossible now, though we have faint glimpses or hints. 

Interesting that we've both had recent thoughts that were quite similar about death - it did strike me forcefully recently that when we die, the part of us that can find distraction in selfish pursuits will be gone. The only part of us that will be left will be the part that loves and that is committed to what really matters.  Which should motivate me to try to break free from some of those distractions before I don't have any choice but doing so, and be open to the real reality becoming a bigger part of my living, now. 

 

Karma

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. -- Buddhist Karma. Why Believe in Karma?

How Parents Grapple With the Worst Possible Nightmare

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, a spate of essays and meditations have appeared on unthinkable loss, and specifically on what it's like to lose a child or children. Just a few generations ago, prior to the 1950s, before medical science greatly improved survival rates from birth and youthful illnesses, losing a son or daughter was a commonplace experience. One of the reasons families were so large was that parents simply did not expect all of their children to survive until adulthood. Parents simply had to stoically accept the nearly inevitable death of children. Life then was -- and still is for far too many people in the developing world -- mostly cruel, unjust, short, and almost inevitably tragic.

Surprisingly, America's deadliest school violence on record was not Sandy Hook or Columbine, but Bath, Michigan in 1927. As pointed out in this Christian Science Monitor article, a local farmer and school board member, for reasons that are still not fully understood, stashed dynamite into the town's school, killing 38 children and seven adults. Instead of weeks of 24-hour national and international media coverage of the event, there was no media frenzy. After about three days of newspaper coverage, the story essentially disappeared from the national consciousness. There was little public grieving or angst-ridden expressions about a national culture of violence, and no mental health counselors to assist survivors.

Instead of "letting it out," putting expression to their pain, parents of that era were expected to hold in their grief, repress, compartmentalize, accept with steely determination, or deny their feelings and recite religious mantras such as "God does not give us burdens we cannot bear." If mothers or fathers succumbed to melancholia, it was seen as weakness, not widely talked about nor fully understood.

Journalist Arnie Bernstein dug into archives and interviewed survivors for a book about the tragedy.  "They didn't talk about it, period," Bernstein told the Monitor. "They were farmers, and they had to go back to work. Your cow couldn't take a day off for a tragedy...When I came in, it had been eight decades, and nobody had talked about it. It was just this scar on the land."   

Today, however, with smaller families in the developed world and widespread faith in the miracles of modern medicine, we no longer assume that our lives will inevitably hold tragic elements. For a child to die before a parent does seems utterly unnatural. When it does occur, it's absolutely devastating. Novelist Ann Hood captured the despair well in her article, " The death of a child: A parent’s worst nightmare."

Writer Maya Thompson blogged eloquently about her son Ronan's struggle with cancer. As he lay dying, she wrote:

"Everything happens for a reason." BULL**** ... "God has a greater plan for Ronan." BULL****. "Ronan wants to go home, where he belongs, to Heaven" ... Who the **** came up with these sayings because the next person I hear say them to me is going to get punched in the face."

Ronan, just fours old, died on May 9, 2011. For months, Maya told NPR, she prayed she would simply die. "I went through a very long period of not caring about myself or anybody around me," she says. "But to come out of that, I almost feel like I've been reborn again. And you either let this pain kill you or you let it make you stronger. I mean, it's a choice."

Maya Thompson's blog attracted millions of readers, including singer Taylor Swift, who asked Maya to co-author a song about her son. NPR reports that Taylor Swift performed "Ronan," based on Maya Thompson's blog, at the Stand Up To Cancer benefit concert in September 2012. Maya set up a foundation in memory of her son that has so far raised more than half a million dollars for cancer research.

Among grieving parents, one of the most articulate is Linton Weeks, a national correspondent for NPR Digital News. He and his wife Jan Taylor Weeks created the Stone and Holt Weeks Foundation to honor their beloved sons who died in an auto accident in 2009. Here's Linton Weeks' NPR commentary, "When Someone You Know Loses A Child." And his earlier commentary, "Now We Are Alone: Living On Without Our Sons." 

Some parents understandably lose their religion when God "allows" their child(ren) to die. How could a loving God let this happen? The searching, tortured questions as to "why" are deeper than any pat or formulaic answers that can be given.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Christmas Day published a column titled, "Why, God?" She mostly quotes from a meditation by Father Kevin O'Neil, a family friend who had ministered to her brother Michael as he died from pneumonia. Father O'Neil had no answers, "no absolute bag of proof" to the question of "Why?" And even if he had answers, he doubts that's what people are looking for as they confront tragic circumstances and loss.

"Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong." he writes. "I don't expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not." 

The whole column is worth a read, as well as the thoughtful reactions from readers with diverse religious (and irreligious) perspectives. 

The notion that shared suffering in community can lift people out of the depression of meaningless loss is a common theme in many religions. From a Christian perspective, God, too, lost or sacrificed His only son; He accompanies and grieves with parents at the cross. In the words of Mary Luti, Visiting Professor of Worship and Preaching at Andover Newton Theological School, the cross offers "a common lot. It is the gathering place for all the world's sorrows, all its wasted efforts, all its murdered children, its violence and catastrophe, its indifference, its evasive posturing and political cowardice, and all its stupefied silences. Sooner or later life deposits us all at the cross.

"When we arrive at its foot, we discover its gift—a durable hope that comes not from assurances that the sun will come up tomorrow, or from the truth that God grieves with us, or even from our faith in a risen Lord; but simply from having a place to go; a place to gather so that we will not be alone, so that we will not get lost, when the pain is unspeakable and the sorrow beyond all bearing."

Related articles

Finding New Meaning In The Loss Of A Son

Grappling with the evil of Newtown: Love will win

Remembrance Day, For All Who've Died in War

I was especially moved to see Muslim sheikhs at the Day of Remembrance service for those who've died in war, held at St. Andrew's Church in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Also attending were former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as the American ambassador, the British ambassador, a plethora of military officers, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the UAE, as well as regular church and mosque attendees. I've visited mosques both here in the UAE and in Turkey, and if we people of different religious perspectives can show each other this kind of respect, it goes a long way toward reducing religious conflict, especially in the Middle East.

We all wore poppies, a symbol popularized by Canadian lieutenant and physician John McCrae's famous poem, In Flanders Fields, which he wrote on May 3, 1915, after witnessing the death of his 22-year-old friend on the battlefied in Flanders, Belgium. Poppies "grew in profusion in Flanders in the disturbed earth of the battlefields and cemeteries where war casualties were buried and thus became a symbol of Remembrance Day. The poem is often part of Remembrance Day solemnities in Allied countries which contributed troops to World War I, particularly in countries of the British Empire" (Wikipedia.)

The text of the poem, In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The Al Khubairat Singers and Orchestra, conducted by Jonathan Lyall, performed French composer Gabriel Faure's Requiem in D Minor, which Faure described as "dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

The recessional hymn was "I Vow to Thee My Country":

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

Words by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, Thaxted tune by Gustav Holst.

Has the Apocalypse Already Happened?

Reading Jerusalem: The Biography, one wonders if the Apocalypse that Jesus predicted -- the forces of evil aligned in a great battle against the forces of good, with "weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth" -- actually occurred a generation or so after Jesus' crucifixion, when the Jewish temple was destroyed by Roman pagans in 70 A.D. One needs only to read the first chapter of the book (free download from Amazon.com) to ponder whether another Apocalypse could really be more violent and cruel and insulting to God than what the Romans did to the Jews and early Christians of Jerusalem. As Munro Price wrote in his (UK) Telegraph review: "The bloodletting described is so horrendous that one wonders whether the Apocalypse, if and when it comes, could improve on it." 

In the context of 3000 years, the recent bloody history of Jerusalem seems relatively mild. In an interview, author Simon Sebag Montefiore observes: “Really, the past 60 years have been one of the most peaceful periods in Jerusalem’s history.”

Such historical knowledge can be used to justify Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians or a passive tolerance for the status quo. After all, things aren't as bad as they used to be, and Palestinians may find their lives better in the West Bank or Gaza today than some of their Arab brethren have it in the neighboring countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, or Libya.

But to a people aspiring to full human rights, the status quo is most definitely not acceptable. It's far wiser to look back on the history of Jerusalem and focus on the relatively peaceful times, which were dominated by TOLERANCE and co-existence, if not grudging respect for differences.

Related:

• What Jerusalem's Bloody History Teaches: Importance of Religious Tolerance. Control By 1 Faction Is Doomed 
• 'Studied Empathy' for Muslims, Christians & Jews Is Essential
• Salacious History in Jerusalem
• Will US Aid to Israel Eventually Prove Too Expensive?
• Muslims, Jews in Jerusalem Were Allied Against Intolerant Christians 
• Can You Recount the Basic History of Jerusalem?
• Jews and Muslims Lived in Peace for Hundreds of Years, Until Western Powers Carved Up Middle East

Cinematic Prayer

Hard to say there's no spirit behind the universe when watching this time-lapse video full-screen, taken mostly in Arizona and Utah by Dustin Farrell, though some of it looks like Cappadocia in Turkey.

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

Random?

In the last few days:

A friend posts on Facebook: "Thank God for airbags. I was in a head-on collision today and walked away from the accident. The driver of the other car fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into my lane. I'm a lucky woman, but unfortunately my car was pronounced dead at the scene."

An American friend residing in Tokyo posts on Facebook that he, his wife and friends are safe. 

A former student of my wife, a lovely Japanese man who had visited in our home along with his wife and young child, is from Sendai, Japan, ground zero for the tsunami. He wrote to say that he and his family are ok.

I discover on Facebook that a friend I had lost touch with in the mid-eighties, who was then undergoing chemotherapy, is still alive and still undergoing chemo. 

This makes you think that God is in control, if not of THE universe, at least of your universe, and that frequently unnoticed little miracles are taking place every day. Underneath the relief, you know things could have turned out much differently. Instinctively, despite all the carnage you hear and read about, you want to GIVE THANKS that people you know of and/or care about are ok.

Jeff Greenfield has a new book, "Then Changed Everything: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics." In it, he writes:

“History doesn’t turn on a dime; it turns on a plugged nickel.” History “is as much a product of chance as of the broader forces at play.”

“Geography, topography, ethnicity, ideology, climate, natural resources, the search for wealth, mass migrations, all set the framework; but the random roll of the dice is as potent a force as any,” he writes. “A missed meeting, a shift in the weather, a slightly different choice of words open up a literally limitless series of possibilities.”

Miracle of Gabby Giffords' Survival

It's hard to imagine how a person is shot in the head and not only survives, but four days later is opening her eyes, moving her arms and legs, and communicating with doctors. Right now it seems like an awesome miracle.

The path ahead for Gabriel Giffords, to recover from brain injury, will no doubt seem less like a miracle than a regimen of extremely hard work, as Lee Woodruff, the wife of ABC Anchor Bob Woodruff, reminds us. 

Scientific American explores

• The Key Series of Events That Helped Giffords Survive Gunshot
• Anatomy of Gifford's Brain Injury
• Link Between Violent Political Acts, Media, and Political Environment Often Murky

Happy New Year! Reasons to be Thankful

"If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over head and a place to sleep . . . you are richer than 70% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace . . . you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness . . . you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation . . . you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death . . . you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If your parents are still alive and still married… you are very rare, even in Canada.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful . . . you are blessed because although the majority can, most do not.

If you can hold someone’s hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder . . . you are blessed because you can offer healing touch.

If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed that over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all."

-- passed along by a friend. Don't know who the original author is. Happy New Year! 

Why I'm A Lousy Evangelical

I read and resonated to:

• "Failed Missionary," by Rhonda Vander Sluis, a chapter in the book, "Tales from the Expat Harem": A Christian evangelist from Iowa is transformed by the compassion of Turkish souls she hopes to save. It's a funny story worthy of Mark Twain. Sometimes, the Muslim Turks strike me as more "Christian" than professed Christians in terms of their hospitality, generosity, faithfulness, concern for the poor, and self-discipline.
• 13 Things That Make Me a Lousy Evangelical, by Rachel Held Evans (Hat tip: Michelle Bullock.)