"The Lord is a God who avenges"

I've mentioned that I'm writing a new book. The working title is "The Book of Love." It's a book about how the read the Bible, cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, as a book of love. 

One of the things I tackle in the book is the theme of Judgment Day. A lot of readers of Scripture are chilled by lines like this one--"The Lord is a God who avenges"--from Psalm 94. And yet, we seem to have curious relationship with God's vengeance. 

For example, in my book I talk about two songs written by Johnny Cash toward the end of this life, one was an original song that I talk about in Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash, and the other was a cover of an old folk song. The original song was "When the Man Comes Around." The folk song was "God's Gonna Cut You Down." Both songs were huge hits, and both songs were about Judgment Day. Curious!

For example, take a peak at the music video of "God's Gonna Cut You Down," all those artists and celebrities singing the lyrics:

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later, God'll cut you down
Sooner or later, God'll cut you down

Go tell that long-tongued liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down

Well, you may throw your rock, and hide your hand
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What's done in the dark will be brought to the light

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later, God'll cut you down
Sooner or later, God'll cut you down

So, yeah, we have a curious relationship with Judgment Day. 

Easily triggered by "The Lord is a God who avenges" but loving to sing "Sooner or later, God'll cut you down." 

As Stephen Bullivant has pointed out in his book Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America, for every one convert the church makes we lose five "Nonverts." A Nonvert is a person who was raised in a religious tradition but who now identifies as a None, as in "no religious preference." That is to say, a Nonvert is a person who has left the faith. Nonverts are also called the "Dones," those who were raised in church but are now "done" with church. 

Why are people nonverting? Why are more and more people "done" with church?

Following upon the work of Charles Taylor and Andrew Root, the argument of Hunting Magic Eels is that faith in a secular age is difficult for us due to pervasive disenchantment. And while I do think disenchantment is implicated in the rise of the Nonverts, something else is at work as well.

Specifically, after publication of Hunting Magic Eels pastors have shared with me that the biggest factor driving nonverting isn't disenchantment but the moral witness of the church. People are just fed up with the church. From the sex and abuse scandals to the ugly political polarization. 

If this is so, re-enchantment won't fix the Nonvert problem. If the problem is that the church has lost its moral credibility, then what are we supposed to do?

My response here has been to turn to the religionless Christianity of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Specifically, in the wasteland that was the German church after the rise of Hitler and WW2, Bonhoeffer sat in prison reflecting upon the future of the Christian witness in Germany. Bonhoeffer was struggling with the same despair we are facing regarding the church: its moral failures and corruption. Given all the things that have gone on in the church in recent decades and years, what is the future of the Christian witness in the world?

Pondering his situation, the compromised moral position of the German church, Bonhoeffer suggested that, going forward, the church must become "religionless" in the world. This was the only way the church could rehabilitate itself and regain the confidence of the world. What does a "religionless" witness in the world look like? I think the key line from Bonhoeffer's letters and papers is this one:

The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself.

When the church loses its moral authority its witness in the world must become "religionless." Rather than speech, the church is called to silent righteous action. Having lost the confidence of the world, the only sermon the church can preach is "the deed which interprets itself." Our actions become our witness. 

This "religionless Christianity" was how Bonhoeffer felt the church could regain its moral credibility and authority after Hitler. Our actions must speak louder than our sermons. Perhaps, after a season, the world would start caring again about what we have to say. But this is a right that has to be earned. Trust has to be regained.

Here, then, is how I think we need to respond to the Nonvert trend. We can't talk our way into moral credibility. Why would anyone believe us? When the church loses its right to speak the only sermon it has left is the deed which interprets itself. Silent righteous action is how we regain the trust of our children and the world. 

If you are knowledgeable about evangelical end times beliefs you might have raised some objections about yesterday's post. (I generally write posts three months out, so I can only guess what reactions might be.) The specific issue concerns how Trump features into a lot of end times prophecies and scenarios. 

But let me back up. 

Over the last ten years I've kept bumping into weird things regarding evangelicalism and Judaism. I won't go into all the details about how I end up in these various spaces, but I often find myself among pentecostal evangelicals, where evangelical support for Trump is strongest. These are the same spaces where end times prophecy is deeply connected with right-wing politics. I'm a bit of a theological and political fish out of water in these rooms, but I'm an affable fellow and get along with people across religious and political divides

I was once in a room where a gentlemen, in the middle of his presentation about our need for Bible study, went off on a tangent about how, secreted away in the Vatican, were New Testament manuscripts written in Hebrew, manuscripts that pre-dated the earliest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. In short, he claimed, the New Testament was actually written in Hebrew but this fact had been hidden. The original Hebrew New Testament was being suppressed and covered up by the church. 

This was obvious nonsense, as anyone familiar with New Testament scholarship knows. We have no Hebrew manuscripts of the New Testament that pre-date the Greek manuscripts. Consequently, I looked around the room as the presenter made this claim, citing only Youtube as his evidence, to see if I could detect any signs of incredulity. I didn't spot any. Everyone was just nodding along, taking it all in, hook, line, and sinker. 

On a different occasion I was organizing baptisms out at the prison. A chaplain associated with another Christian Bible study asked if he could join us. I did the first few baptisms using the Trinitarian formula, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." After a bit, I stepped aside so our guest could perform the next few baptisms. He did, but used a very different baptismal formula. Speaking in Hebrew, he began to baptize "in the name of "Yeshua HaMashiach." And so we went back and forth, between "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" and "in the name of "Yeshua HaMashiach." It was such an obvious contrast I visited with the man afterwards about the origins of his baptismal formula. He was an evangelical, he said, but had recently begun to identify as a "Messianic Jew." I found this curious. Generally speaking, ethnic Jewish persons who come to confess Jesus as Israel's Messiah are called "Messianic Jews." But this gentlemen was a Gentile evangelical Christian who was now describing himself as a "Messianic Jew." 

Over the years, I've had increasing contact with evangelicals-turned-Messianic-Jews out at the prison. Many of the men in my Bible study have "converted" from evangelicalism to the "Messianic Jewish" community out at the unit. They wear the kippah, adopt Jewish dietary practices, and celebrate Passover. Interestingly, the practices and beliefs of the Messianic Jewish community out at the unit aren't in any conversation with actual Jewish people or communities. The religion they are practicing is wholly of their own invention, guided by self-appointed leaders who have educated themselves in Jewish customs and beliefs. A lot of the men out at the unit are attracted to this group because it seems to be a more "authentic" version of Christianity, connected as it is to Jewish observances and practices. But given its lack of connection with actual Judaism, the "Messianic Jewish" community out at the unit has a mish-mash, do-it-yourself, bespoke kind of feel. 

One more story. At the little church I've written so much about, Freedom Fellowship, this year some of our leaders have taken to celebrating the Jewish New Moons every month, complete with blowing a shofar at the start and end of the service. 

Now, what is going on with all this? 

On the one hand, a lot of the interest in Judaism and the Old Testament is simply due to a healthy and legitimate interest in the Hebraic roots of Christianity. And given the history of antisemitism and supersessionism in the Christian tradition, this is a welcome development. 

That said, as illustrated in some of the anecdotes above, there's also some weird stuff going on in evangelical spaces when it comes to Judaism, some of it patently conspiratorial. 

Which brings us back to Donald Trump and the end times.

Much of the evangelical interest in Israel concerns the role the Jews are believed to play in various end times prophecies. Specifically, based upon an end times reading of Romans 11, many evangelicals are looking forward to a mass conversion of the Jews, to either "Messianic Judaism" or "Christianity." So if you've ever wondered why evangelicals are so pro-Israel, this is the reason. Israel must be supported and protected because Israel, in its mass conversion, is a historical trigger in bringing about the Second Coming. Consequently, many evangelicals look for signs coming out of Israel of this pending mass conversion. For example, I was in another evangelical space where great excitement was expressed that a "red heifer" had been spotted in Israel. Again, since this isn't my world, I had no idea what the "red heifer" was referring to or why it caused so much excitement. Well, if you didn't know, the appearance of a "red heifer" features in some end times beliefs regarding the re-building of the temple, another purported trigger of the Second Coming.

So here's the thing. You have to be pretty far down the Youtube end times rabbit hole to know about the red heifer. And this is what I think is fueling a lot of the evangelical interest in, and conflation with, Judaism. Specifically, if you want to know more about the timing of the end times you need to know more about Judaism. Judaism is the key that unlocks the end times box. What you find, therefore, in pentecostal sectors of evangelicalism, where end times prophets and prophesies fill the Youtube channels and pulpits, is a fascination and melding with Judaism, some of which, due to the end times emphasis, borders on the conspiratorial. 

And this is where Donald Trump comes in. In taking his very pro-Israel stances, like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, many evangelicals believe Trump is moving Israel toward the end times triggers, like rebuilding the temple and its mass conversion. 

All that to say, my post from yesterday ignored this connection. I asked evangelicals to be "consistently apocalyptic," and in this I meant viewing every nation as being inexorably pulled toward Judgment Day no matter who wins or loses an election. Fair enough, but many evangelicals do see Trump as playing a critical part in end times beliefs in how he is a defender and promotor of Israel. In this, evangelicals are being "consistently apocalyptic" given how they feel that Trump is moving us closer to the Second Coming. 

Having now made this clarification, I do want to end with an ironic observation.

As I mentioned above, a lot of the evangelical interest in Judaism is legitimate and welcome. And yet, underneath a lot of this interest boils conspiratorial and politicized end times beliefs concerning the state of Israel and fate of the Jewish people. And while a lot of Jewish people have appreciated the pro-Israel support from evangelicals, many Jews have also expressed concern about how evangelical interest in Israel is mainly due to viewing the Jews as an end times domino. Evangelical interest in Israel, we could say, is a sort of eschatological utilitarianism, the Jews as means toward an eschatological end. 

In one of the chapters of The Shape of Joy entitled "The Superhero Complex" I talk about how end times beliefs function as an ersatz hero system among many Christians, in the same way conspiracy theories provide existential benefits to their adherents. In fact, end times beliefs are often just religiously-inflected conspiracy theories. 

When I say end times beliefs are an ersatz hero system I mean how end times beliefs make a crazy, unpredictable world more comprehensible and provide a pathway toward heroic identity and meaning. End times beliefs, like conspiracy theories, describe the world as a Manichean struggle of Good versus Evil, and the redpilled believers are enlisted in this holy war. End times beliefs provide an existential drug that is hard to find anywhere else. 

End times beliefs also get deployed in our other big hero system: Partisan politics. The two, end times beliefs and politics, are regularly conflated. The Apocalypse can help you win elections. And it's here, with the politicization of the end times, where some theological inconsistencies come into view. 

Specifically, in the lead up to the last election I witnessed, like many of you, how end times prophecy was used to demonize the Biden-Harris administration. The Biden-Harris administration was marching us toward Armageddon. This message was, of course, every energizing for the evangelical electorate, especially in those pentecostal pockets where prophesy and end times belief blend with party politics. Dire end times warnings helped get out the vote. 

And then Trump won. Which raises a question: Are the end times called off? Was the breaking of the Seven Seals paused the day after the election? Since Trump won is Armageddon being rescheduled?

It seems to me, if you want to be consistent, that the election of Donald Trump did nothing to the end times unfolding. If we were doomed under Biden-Harris we're still doomed under Trump. The end times don't start and stop dependent upon electoral outcomes. The end times isn't an on-again off-again affair. And yet, for the next four years we'll see a toning down of end times discourse. Evangelicals aren't going to finger Trump as the Antichrist. They'll wait until the next Democrat takes office to bring up 666 again. It'll take losing an election to get Armageddon back on the schedule. 

Here's my point in bringing this up. I don't mind anyone reading history through the lens of Revelation. I do. And what I find in John's visions is pretty pessimistic. But here's the contrast: I am consistently pessimistic. I consistently think America is symbolized as Babylon. I believed this to be the case under Biden-Harris, and I think it now with Trump-Vance. The end times aren't rescheduled whenever I win or lose an election. I have a very non-partisan view of the Antichrist. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding here, I'm not saying you shouldn't vote your conscience. Nor am I trying to draw false equivalencies between political parties. My interest here isn't political. My interest is Biblical. Specifically, if you want to espouse end times beliefs, that's great, but you need to roll those beliefs through every presidential administration. You can't call off Armageddon when you win and bring it back when you lose. If the end times clock is ticking during the Biden years it keeps ticking during the Trump years. If you want to read Revelation into history, fine, but do so consistently rather than opportunistically. Otherwise, you're letting your politics dictate your reading of Scripture rather than letting Scripture dictate your reading of politics. 

If you want to be apocalyptic then be consistently apocalyptic. 

I recently finished Jeffrey Kripal's book How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief and Everything Else. I found the book a bit uneven, but the parts I liked are relevant for this series about the Celtic fairy-faith. Believing in fairies is impossible for many people, so it might be helpful to provide some recommendations about how to think impossibly.

Related to Part 3 of this series, Kripal deploys a dual approach in the book. Part One of his book, "When the Impossible Happens," leans into the testimonial approach I've described, the sharing of first hand experiences. Similar to Evans-Wentz's method in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Kripal is convinced that the sheer volume of stories he recounts, like UFO encounters, settles the argument about the impossible. Simply put, the impossible happens. It just does. So instead of denying the impossible we have to shift to the next question: If the impossible happens then how are we do think about the impossible without denying the impossible? Because if you deny the impossible you aren't thinking about the impossible. 

So, how to think impossibly? 

That's the question of Part Two of the book, entitled "Making the Impossible Possible." In this part, Kripal turns to my preferred strategy for re-enchantment, as I described in Part 3 of this series, attending to cognitive and attentional biases. When it comes to the impossible, how do you move, as I described it, from a "No" to a "Maybe?" 

Kripal describes this transition from "No" to "Maybe?" as cultivating a capacity for "ontological shock." To think impossibly is to allow yourself to be interrupted and surprised by reality. This entails a posture of epistemological openness. How to do this? Kripal recommends the following:

1. "Think Impossibly"

By this Kripal means being aware of your "priors," the cognitive biases that reject the impossible on the front end. As Kripal puts it, "our conclusions are the function of our exclusions." That is to say, what you claim to be the truth, as a logical or empirical "conclusion," isn't really a conclusion at all. It's just an expression of what you already believe to be possible at the level of your prior assumptions. To illustrate this, and to provide a metaphor about how to think impossibly, Kripal uses a table metaphor:

[T]he conclusions one reaches about a set of phenomena will be largely a function of what one places on one's table and so also of what one takes off that table. Take things off the table and you will eventually be able to explain what is left (because you just took everything off the table that you cannot explain). Put more things on the table, however, and things will begin to look considerable stranger. The pieces on the table, moreover, will mean very different things--and likely things that we simply cannot understand with our present concepts and their implicit exclusions. In so many ways, impossible thinking is simply what happens when we do not take things off the table.

Back to the experiences of the Celts and the impossibility of the fairy-faith. One way to move from "No" to "Maybe?" is simply to leave the Celtic experiences of fairies on the table. That is to say, you don't have to believe in fairies, you can simply leave these experiences on the table as something to consider, think about, and ponder. For what you conclude about fairies is mainly due to what you exclude. Thinking impossibly involves simply refraining from letting your priors bias a conversation before it even starts. Just leave everything on the table.

2. "Get Weird"

In Part 3 of my series I described how stories and narratives don't generally work for skeptics. But Kripal's recommendation is that we take the widespread phenomena of the stories as evidence that something is going on. Kripal asks us to adopt a phenomenological posture toward these experiences. You don't have to believe the stories, but the stories themselves are empirical data worthy of critical attention. This method, says Kripal, "involves taking people's experiences, no matter how unbelievable they become, with the utmost care and seriousness." Kripal describes this posture as being open to what Erik Davis calls "high weirdness." Thinking impossibly, says Kripal, means welcoming high weirdness "onto our phenomenological table." 

Back to the fairy-faith.  Yes, the stories of fairies told by the Celtic people are highly weird. But being open to these stories, as phenomenological experiences worthy of serious attention, is a start on thinking impossibly. It's a simple posture of openness and generosity. Just listen with attention and care.

3. "Look Up"

This is David Bentley Hart's point from Part 2 of this series. As Kripal describes it, "Once one attempts a genuine phenomenology of the weird, it becomes clear that there is a 'vertical' dimension to some such experiences that has traditionally been framed as 'transcendent'..." 

Regarding the fairy-faith, in Part 4 I described how, whatever is going on in the fairy-experiences of the Celtic peoples, it seems clear those experiences are pointing to mysteries, mysteries that, in various cultural guises, humanity has experienced from the dawning of consciousness. The impossible happens and "looking up" means taking the supranatural seriously. 

4. "More Real than Real"

Here Kripal asks us to take the imagination seriously. A skeptical approach toward the imagination considers it to be fancy, delusion, or wish-fulfillment. In contrast to this deflationary view, Kripal asks us to consider "imaginal appearances as potential mediated revelations of the real." Perhaps dreams and visionary experiences are intimations of reality. Throughout history, dreams and visions have been true or have come true in anticipating or communicating events in ways that seem to violate our theories of space and time. Perhaps something real is coming through the imagination in signs, symbols, archetypes, and visionary experiences. 

Recall how, in our tour of the fairy-faith, special attention was given to the Celtic seers and visionaries, those blessed with "the second sight." Thinking impossibly means entertaining the Celtic second sight as mediating revelations of the real. The Celts were seeing something.

5. "It's about Time"

Kripal admits that this last point is the most speculative, and it overlaps some with the point above about dreams and visions. Specifically, time might not function in the linear fashion we assume. Many impossible things, like pre-cognition, seem to suggest that time loops back upon itself. And given the weirdness of quantum phenomena, with its non-local action at a distance, it seems clear that our current theories of space and time do not adequately describe the universe. The cosmos is a lot weirder than we tend to assume. And if the cosmos is weird we should be open to the weird in our search for a more comprehensive theory of the real.

Finally, Kripal would suggest that thinking impossibly simply means being a humanist, radically open to the fullness of human experience in all its oddity, peculiarity, and weirdness. This is exactly the posture William James described, as I noted in Part 4, as "radical empiricism." Being radically empirical means setting a capacious and hospitable table for the diversity of human experience. 

So if the Celts reported experiences of fairies, well, as a posture of humanistic openness, that stays on the table. As impossible as that might be.

"mightier than the waves of the sea"

In the ancient Near East, the sea was a primeval, chaotic power. In the Babylonian creation story the Enuma Elish, Tiamat, the Mother of the Gods, is a primordial sea goddess who embodied chaos. In Ugaritic texts, the weather god Baal battles Yam, the chaotic sea deity. In Egypt the sea god was Nu, who was called the "Father of the Gods." Living in the waters of Nu was the great snake Apep, called "the Lord of Chaos" as the embodiment of disorder and darkness.

Given this cultural background, it's not surprising that the Hebrew Scriptures describe Yahweh as Lord over both sea and serpent. From Psalm 74:

You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

What's of interest here is how the sea and serpent represent some unruliness (even un-rule-ableness) at work in the world in relation to the reign of God. Some chaotic force in creation resists. The Lord of Chaos has to be put down. 

To be sure, it's difficult to weave this imagery into a coherent, systematic account. So much of this material in Scripture is poetic and allusive rather than propositional and dogmatic. God created the world ex nihilo and it was primordially good. And yet, the sea is filled with monsters. We see this marring all around us, the darkness and disorder. Revelation describes Satan as "the ancient serpent." The Lord of Chaos troubles the earth.

Psalm 93 is described as an Enthronement Psalm. Yahwah is envisioned taking his seat on his throne and establishing his rule over the earth. In depicting this, Psalm 93 highlights the Lord taming the sea:

The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
Your throne is established from of old;
you are from everlasting.

The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
Mightier than the thunders of many waters,
mightier than the waves of the sea,
the Lord on high is mighty!

And more than a taming is hinted at, the sea breaks out in praise: "The floods have lifted up their voice." In the New Testament this is proclaimed as Christ's victory over all the rebellious powers in heaven and earth. As Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15:24-26: 

Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

The Lord of Chaos will come to heel. Darkness and chaos will be defeated. 

The Lord is mightier than the waves of the sea. 

In the conclusion of The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Evans-Wentz connects the Celtic experience of fairies with psychological and psychical research that was prevalent at the time. According to Evans-Wentz this research helps prove the existence of fairies.

Recall, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries was published in 1911. Freud had published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, putting the unconscious on the map. Hypnosis was being widely used at the time in the treatment of mental disorders. The Society for Psychical Research, devoted to the scientific investigation of psychical phenomena, like telepathy, mediumship, and near death experiences, had been established in 1882. The Fox sisters kicked off the spiritualism movement in 1848, which attracted a lot of scientific attention through the rest of the 1800s and into the 1900s. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries sits within this scientific (and pseudoscientific) stream, connecting the Celtic experience of fairies with psychical phenomena, the unconscious, trance states, dreams, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness, near death experiences, and telepathy. Celtic claims about the "second sight" fit naturally into this mix of perspectives about the mind and how it was making contact with unseen phenomena. The very first conclusion Evans-Wentz draws at the end of The Fairy-Faith in the Celtic Countries is this:

Fairyland exists as a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions; or for an indefinite period at death.

His second conclusion is this:

Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychical researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like what William James has called 'soul-stuff', or more individual units, like veridical apparitions.

William James, the famous American psychologist and philosopher, had co-founded the American Society for Psychical Research in 1885. James was a skeptic about a lot of psychical phenomena, but he was an open-minded skeptic. For example, he attended seances to observe mediums communicating with the dead. James described his stance as "radical empiricism," arguing that the odd, kooky, spooky, and unusual should also command scientific attention. James argued that empiricism had become too wedded to scientific materialism and therefore ruled out, a priori, non-empirical, psychical, and spiritual phenomena on the front end. A truly radical empiricism, according to James, rejects the metaphysical prejudice at the heart of positivistic/scientistic accounts of empiricism.

Regarding the "soul-stuff" to which Evans-Wentz refers, in Principles of Psychology James attempts to describe how thoughts can be identified with neurological brain states. James is unwilling, commendably so, to reduce or identify subjective consciousness with neurological functioning. Clearly, James asserts, there is something "more" than neurobiology going on with consciousness. Some "soul stuff" seems to be in play. And yet, James admits, to speculate upon this "soul stuff" is to jump into metaphysics, which goes beyond the bounds of empirical psychology. Still, ever curious and always daring, James floats a speculation. Instead of individual souls possessed by each person, James brings up the Greek belief in the animia mundi, a "world soul" that permeates the cosmos. This "soul-stuff" or "soul-substance" of the "world soul" is what Evans-Wentz refers to about the reality of fairies. Simply put, there is some psychical, soulish "stuff" at work in the world that humans, in certain psychological states, can "see" or "experience." The Celts, in their culture, whenever they saw or experienced this soulish, spiritual stuff, described it as "fairies." Thus, concludes Evans-Wentz, "Fairyland exists as a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions." That these altered states of consciousness--experiences of Fairyland--were real is because "they appear to be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychical researchers...what William James has called 'soul-stuff'." 

Now, how has Evans-Wentz's argument held up over time? In some ways, not very well. The science Evans-Wentz deployed in The Fairy-Faith in the Celtic Countries has largely evaporated. The Fox sisters were frauds. Mediumship was debunked. Psychical phenomena hasn't been able to establish an empirical track record. Freud's influence on psychological research is practically nonexistent.  

And yet, Evans-Wentz's theory opens up pathways to plausibility. Evans-Wentz's argument isn't that fairies as "tiny magical creatures with wings" exist. Rather, "fairies" were how the Celts described their encounters with the spiritual realm. Which brings us back David Bentley Hart's point about how enchantment is a saner and more rational posture toward the world given how it straightforwardly admits what we all know to be true, that existence is inherently mysterious. The exact same mystery William James struggled with when he tried to explain human consciousness and was thrust, as a consequence, into metaphysical speculation. If you're a radical empiricist you know these mysteries exist. They are staring right at you. Mysteries which necessarily point you toward metaphysics.

Radical empiricism demands that we honestly face and admit the mystery. The experience of this mystery was described by the Celts, given their culture, as Fairyland. The Otherworld. And in that sense, to be empirical is to believe in fairies.

So, let's say you want to believe in fairies. More, you take Hart's argument from the last post to heart and have concluded that you have a moral duty to believe in fairies. Or, you at least think that being open to believing in fairies is saner, more rational, and more wholesome than an arid, boring, and soul-sucking disenchantment. How, then, is such a leap into the purportedly fantastical to be accomplished? 

How do you make yourself believe in fairies? 

Well, to go back to the first post and Evans-Wentz's anthropological study in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, what you'll find in that book is a lot of testimonials, much of it second hand. People share stories with Evans-Wentz about fairy encounters they heard from their parents, grandparents, or neighbors. But some of the testimony is first hand, people recounting their own experiences with fairies. Evans-Wentz builds up his case for fairies by the volume of stories he collects, a volume he takes to be decisive evidence for the fairy-faith.

This, then, is one way to approach the prospect of re-enchantment, the sharing of stories recounting first hand experience. In the current conversation about Christian re-enchantment, this is the strategy deployed by Rod Dreher in his book Living in Wonder. Dreher tells spooky stories, for instance, about demonic possession and UFO encounters. These stories are shared to convince skeptical readers, much like Evans-Wentz's strategy in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries.

Trouble is, a lot of people don't find evidence like this all that persuasive. Stories like those in Living in Wonder and The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries tend mostly to confirm the beliefs of the already converted. If you already believe in demon possession or alien encounters, you'll find Dreher's stories a thrilling and worldview-affirming read. But if you're skeptical about such things, I doubt Living in Wonder will do much for you. 

To be sure, stories and testimonials can be persuasive, but if reading the The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries or Living in Wonder doesn't do the trick, what's your other option for re-enchantment? The approach I take in Hunting Magic Eels, and even in Reviving Old Scratch, is to focus upon cognitive and attentional biases. I assume a skeptical reader and conclude that sharing a lot of supernatural narratives isn't going to be helpful. In fact, hitting a skeptical reader with a lot of woo-woo might cause them to throw the book in the trash. My approach, to borrow from William James, is to make enchantment feel "hot" and "alive" with possibility. As James observed:

Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. 

In contrast to a "live" hypothesis, any hypothesis that strikes us as totally implausible James describes as "completely dead." I wrote Hunting Magic Eels and Reviving Old Scratch for readers who found enchantment to be a "dead" hypothesis. Maybe not stone cold dead, dead-as-a-doornail dead, but pretty dead. I wrote those books for Christians who were drifting into skepticism, people who had once believed but were now struggling to believe. People who were like me in the early years of this blog, the formerly enchanted but now disenchanted Christians. And knowing a bit about people who were like me, I knew that telling them stories about ghosts, aliens, miracles, or demons wasn't going to be very helpful. Sharing spooky stories wouldn't do much to make enchantment feel any more alive with possibility. Frankly, it would have been counterproductive.   

Basically, my strategy for re-enchantment took its cue from stages of change theory. If people are in the contemplation stage of enchantment, open to enchantment as a possibility, then, sure, I think telling stories can be of help. But if people are in the pre-contemplation stage I don't think stories do much good. If someone is in the pre-contemplation stage of enchantment your first job isn't belief itself but wanting to believe, being open to belief. Making belief more alive than dead. Moving from pre-contemplation to contemplation. From a firm "No" to a "Maybe?" 

That's the first step toward re-enchantment. From "No" to "Maybe?"

In my researches about the Celtic fairy-faith, preparing for my class this summer in Ireland, I came across David Bentley Hart's 2009 essay "The Secret Commonwealth," which Hart has reposted on his Substack newsletter. 

In "The Secret Commonwealth" Hart sets out a defense of the fairy-faith. If you know Hart's work, this will not be surprising. For example, Hart's most recent book is entitled All Things Are Full of Gods, which takes its title from a quote from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus. You can draw a straight line from the ancient belief that "all things are full of gods," that nature is alive with spiritual powers and potencies, to the fairy-faith of the Celtic peoples of the British Isles. The Greeks believed that life was due to psyche, the life force or "soul." As Aristotle set forth, psyche animates vegetable, animal, and human life. All living things possessed a soul. And while this view of a spiritual potency, a soul, infusing living creatures might strike modern minds as outdated, primitive science, Hart argues in All Things Are Full of Gods that life remains a fundamental mystery that reductionistic materialism cannot solve. So perhaps the Greeks were closer to the truth than modern biological science. And if that's so, then so is the fairy-faith.

Hart begins his 2009 essay by introducing the work of Robert Kirk, a Christian clergyman, who published his treatise The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies in 1691. As Hart describes, Kirk wasn't just interested in documenting the lore of the fairy-faith, he was particularly interested in the Celtic seers and visionaries, those among the Celts blessed with "the second sight." As Hart observes: 

Kirk’s real concern, as it happens, was not simply the fairy realm, but also that rare breed of mortals who enjoy the ability to see its inhabitants with their own eyes. In large part, it is a treatise on the “second sight,” a special gift that Kirk believed to be possessed by only certain specially privileged souls—a great many of whom were, like Kirk himself, seventh sons—and one whose reality is attested not only in folklore, but also in scripture. Not to everyone do the “peaceable folk” appear, it seems, but a wealth of credible anecdotes—concerning persons who have experienced remarkable flashes of foreknowledge or encounters with the specters of friends who have died far away or other uncanny revelations—prove that there are those who have from birth been granted the ability to see the unseen, and even in many cases to pierce the veil within which the fairy realm is hidden. And such individuals, says Kirk, are of the same family as the prophets of ancient Israel, and of all the truly inspired prophets of every land and every race.

In commenting upon Kirk's work, Hart makes a few observations about what he calls "the essential sanity" of the fairy-faith, the "deep conviction that those traditions touch upon a real dimension of vital intelligence or intelligences residing in the world all about us, occasionally visible and audible to us, but for the most part outside the reach of our dull, earthbound senses." 

In defending the sanity of the fairy-faith, Hart makes two points.

First, the fairy-faith is much closer to the Scriptural imagination than our disenchanted modern imaginations. Simply put, the fairy-faith is biblical.  As Hart observes, "such warrant [for the fairy-faith] really can be found in the Bible if one chooses to look for it, and Kirk was simply a more careful reader than most other Christians on this matter." Hart points to the letters of Paul who described "elemental powers" ruling the cosmos. These cosmic and spiritual powers had once been in a state of rebellion but have now come under the dominion of Christ (see Col. 1:20). This is the same vision that C.S. Lewis uses in The Chronicles of Narnia where we see pagan nature spirits and gods come under the rule of Aslan/Christ. In Lewis's imagination, paganism is baptized. Or, as Michael Martin says, the fairies are Christian. 

Hart's second and bigger point in defending the fairy-faith is how its vision of the world pushes back upon a mechanical vision of the cosmos. The fairy-faith is saner than mechanistic visions of nature as it helps us recover a deep intuition that the world is, well, alive, suffused with mind, intelligence, agency, and personhood. Hart goes even further to say that there is a moral imperative in coming to see the world in this enchanted, vital way. Here's Hart making these points:

....there was an essential sanity in Kirk’s approach to reality that we would all do well to emulate whenever we find ourselves gravitating toward the obscene fantasy of a purely mechanical natural order. One need not yet believe in fairies to grasp that there is no good reason why one ought not to do so, and that there may even be some moral imperative that one should. To see the world as inhabited by these vital intelligences, or to believe that behind the outward forms of nature there might be an unperceived realm of intelligent order, is simply to respond rationally to one of the ways in which the world seems to address us when we intuit simultaneously its rational frame and the depth of mystery it seems to hide from us.

In short, the issue isn't can we believe in fairies, but that we must believe. And the reason for this, Hart continues, concerns how the way we see reality impacts our emotional and moral experience of the world. Materialism evacuates the world of meaning and significance. And as I describe in The Shape of Joy, this evacuation has both mental health and moral consequences. Thus, while believing in fairies might seem to be, from a scientific perspective, delusional, from the perspective of human flourishing and moral engagement the fairy-faith is a saner and truer view of the world. Here's Hart making these points in concluding his essay: 

Even if one is so misled about the frame of reality as to think that the world Kirk describes is sheer delusion, again that is of no consequence. A vision of reality this amiable is endlessly preferable to the sheer metaphysical boredom of the materialist view of things and, for that very reason, makes a moral demand on any responsible soul; boredom is, after all, the one force that can utterly defeat the will to care what is or is not true to begin with. It is only some degree of prior enchantment that allows the eye to see, and to seek to see yet more. And so, deluded or not, a belief in fairies will always be in some sense far more rational than the absolute conviction that such things are sheer nonsense, and that the cosmos consists in nothing but brute material events in haphazard combinations.

Another way of saying this, I suppose, would be that the ability of any of us to view the world with some sort of contemplative rationality rests upon the capacity we possessed as children to see in everything a kind of eloquently articulate mystery, and to believe in far more than what ordinary vision discloses to us: a capacity that endows us with that spiritual eros that allows us to know and love the world, and that we are wise to continue to cultivate in ourselves even after age and disillusion have weakened our sight.

This May I'm teaching and leading a class on Celtic Christianity, taking a group of students to Ireland. 

I did a deep dive into Celtic Christianity to write my chapter on "Celtic Enchantments" in Hunting Magic Eels. I'm proud of that chapter for its scholarly integrity and academic rigor which avoids a lot of the commercialized nonsense one finds among those who sell visions of "Celtic Christianity" to spiritual-but-not-religious audiences.

Leading a three week class on Celtic Christianity has caused me to return to the pre-Christian Celts and the Irish monastic tradition. I'm wanting to lecture a bit on some of the peculiarities of Irish folklore and belief concerning the supernatural realm. And so, I've been learning a lot about fairies. 

One of the best places to start if you want to learn about the fair folk of Ireland is The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by Walter Evans-Wentz. Published in 1911, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries was Evans-Wentz's Oxford doctoral dissertation. As an anthropological study, Evans-Wentz traveled through Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany, and Ireland collecting stories, folklore, and firsthand accounts of fairies. From these testimonies, Evans-Wentz concludes that the fairy-folk are real, or at least evidence of a supernatural realm existing alongside our own. Evans-Wentz places much of the blame for the loss of the fairy-faith among the Celtic peoples upon modern urban and industrial life. Modernity has deformed us and made us unnatural. Evans-Wentz writes:

The great majority of men in cities are apt to pride themselves on their own exemption from ‘superstition’, and to smile pityingly at the poor countrymen and countrywomen who believe in fairies. But when they do so they forget that, with all their own admirable progress in material invention, with all the far-reaching data of their acquired science, with all the vast extent of their commercial and economic conquests, they themselves have ceased to be natural. Wherever under modern conditions great multitudes of men and women are herded together there is bound to be an unhealthy psychical atmosphere never found in the country...they have lost all sympathetic and responsive contact with Nature, because unconsciously they have thus permitted conventionality and unnaturalness to insulate them from it.

Evans-Wentz argues that the fairy-faith--experiences of fairies, pixies, brownies, leprechauns, and other sorts of spirits, from ghosts to nature spirits--is the legacy of the pre-Christian faith of the Celtic people from the British Isles. Broadly speaking, the fairy-faith is an animistic vision of the world, a world full of spiritual agents and powers, along with a strong belief in the Otherworld which intersects and interpenetrates mundane reality. Here's how Evans-Wentz describes the Otherworld called "Fairyland":

Most of the evidence also points so much in one direction that the only verdict which seems reasonable is that the Fairy-Faith belongs to a doctrine of souls; that is to say, that Fairyland is a state or condition, realm or place, very much like, if not the same as, that wherein civilized and uncivilized men alike place the souls of the dead, in company with other invisible beings such as gods, daemons, and all sorts of good and bad spirits. Not only do both educated and uneducated Celtic seers so conceive Fairyland, but they go much further, and say that Fairyland actually exists as an invisible world within which the visible world is immersed like an island in an unexplored ocean, and that it is peopled by more species of living beings than this world, because incomparably more vast and varied in its possibilities.

In a word, the fairy-faith experiences the world as enchanted. 

Interestingly, the fairy-faith sits comfortably with Christian belief. Many of Evans-Wentz's interviewees were Christian ministers and priests who were occasionally called upon to deal with malevolent fairies. This syncretism between the Celtic fairy-faith and Christianity is one of those things that gives Celtic Christianity its unique and mystical texture. And it should also be mentioned that the fairy-faith remains alive and well to this very day.

Which brings us to an interesting question I'll ask my students this May and explore with you in this series: Should we believe in fairies? 

I'll turn to that question in the posts to come.

"It is good to give thanks to the Lord"

Gratitude is having a cultural moment. It has for a while now, due to the research of positive psychology making its way into wellness culture. I tell much of this story in The Shape of Joy. But it's important to make a distinction between interpersonal gratitude and what is called existential or cosmic gratitude. 

Gratitude, we know, is the emotional response we have to being given a favor or gift. When we receive these gifts from another person our gratitude is directed toward the giver. This is interpersonal gratitude. Relational thanks. But where is gratitude directed when we experience the gifts of life itself? The gift of a beautiful sunrise, a sandy beach, a soft spring rain, a delicate flower, the starry sky, the wind in your face? What about the gifts of beautiful moments? A warm cup of coffee in the morning, an engrossing book, an evening walk, your dog welcoming you home or your cat snuggling in close. For the love and belonging you experience? Family, dear friends, and the kindness of strangers. For life itself? This breath, the courage to take the next step, your heart still beating.

The list can go on and on. Where to direct this thanks? To whom is this gratitude due? From whence comes these gifts? What is the source of such grace?

This is why being religious is deeply sane. There is a ribbon of grace that threads through our lives. And when we experience it our hearts surge toward transcendence. It is good to give thanks to the Lord.

Cosmic gratitude traces the shape of joy.

Out at the prison we were discussing the "do not worry" passage from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

This can be a difficult text to preach and teach. We live in an "age of anxiety." Young people are described as the "anxious generation." Anxiety on the rise and everywhere you look. Which makes Jesus' message extremely relevant but also hard to hear. To say to people "do not worry" can sound like you are disregarding people's experiences. Plus, simple religious exhortations are deemed inadequate for treating stubborn mental health issues. Lastly, a moralizing and judgmental attitude can show up if worry and anxiety are described as failures of faith and trust.

We discussed all this out at the unit, how to talk about worry and anxiety in a complicated mental health context. And beyond mental health issues, worry and anxiety are just natural human emotions. So, how are we to think and talk about Jesus' teachings about worry and anxiety?

I was struck by the word "Therefore" at the start of the passage. Which indicates that the "do not worry" exhortations are flowing out of something preliminary and prior. 

Backing up, then, here's the passage that comes right before:

“Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness!

“No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."

"Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore, do not worry." That's how the argument runs. The exhortations about worry and anxiety are connected to concerns about idolatry, serving money rather than God. As additional evidence for this connection, toward the end of the worry passage Jesus says "seek first the kingdom of God." 

Stepping back, it seems to me that Jesus' concerns about worry and anxiety are not about worry and anxiety per se. Jesus' broader concern is how worshipping and idolizing money--seeking treasures on earth rather than treasures in heaven--tip our hearts into anxiety and worry. As Jesus says, where our treasure is there will our heart be. Or, where our treasure is there will our worry be.

To be sure, Jesus' message is still hard for our culture to listen to. But framing his concerns as being about idolatry and less about emotions gives us a richer picture. We shouldn't shame people for feeling how they feel. Nor is it productive to tell people to stop feeling what they are feeling. But we can step back to assess and diagnosis how we've structured our hearts, where we've placed our confidence and trust, and how these investments are affecting us emotionally. That's a productive and much needed conversation.

For years in this space I've made the point that faith involves both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. There is both "right belief" and "right practice." The notion that one can "practice Christianity" is new to many people and is generally neglected. Christianity tends to become mental, theological, doctrinal, creedal, propositional, and metaphysical. Christianity is something we "believe in," "espouse," or "assent to." We hold to Christian "values," "beliefs," and "worldviews." But Christianity is also something we do. Christianity is acting, behaving, and living.  

Beyond orthodoxy and orthopraxy, there is a third description of faith that has increasingly come to occupy my attention. This word is "orthopathy." Orthopathy concerns "right passions" and "right affections." The emotional, passionate, affectional, and motivational life of the Christian has a particular shape, character, and orientation. I mention motivations as emotions are what drive or draw us toward a goal. For example, in some activity or life-defining goal we describe our investment as "pursuing our passions." We pursue what we are passionate about. Orthopathy, therefore, gets down into the deep motivational structures of our lives. In the Bible, orthopathy is located in the "heart" and, as Jesus says, it is from the heart where good and evil comes. 

Also, many of the imperatives of the Christian life aren't really behaviors but address our emotions. The arena is internal and affectional. The ask is for orthopathy. Love your enemies. Do not be anxious. Rejoice in the Lord always. Forgive. Such commands address our passions. 

And finally, there is the Augustinian notion that all sin is, in the end, malformed desire, a twisted love. If so, spiritual formation is primarily, to coin a new word, orthopathic, the right ordering of our passions and affections. 

So, if you've never heard of it before, I wanted to set before you this trio. There is orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy. Right belief, right practice, and right passion.

You often hear very earnest Christians proclaim that they love God "more" than anything else in their life. That we have to love God "more" than our spouses, our friends, and our children. And while I understand what I think these people are trying to say, I've always had a worry and concern here.

For example, as newlyweds and young parents, Jana and I once had a conversation with a very devout and earnest couple from church. We were sharing about our spiritual lives and how we wanted God to strengthen our marriages. And at one point in this conversation the couple said, "We don't want our marriage to be good for ourselves, we want our marriage to be good to glorify God." Some spiritually heroic sentiment was being expressed here, but I also found the statement a little weird. Implicit in this couple's vision of marriage was an agonistic relationship between God's glory and our good, an assumption that you could have a marriage that glorified God but wasn't flourishing. 

That's always been my worry with declamations about loving God "more" than others, the assumption that loving God and loving others can come into conflict. The stories here are numerous. Christians behaving hatefully because they love God "more" than their fellow human beings. Fundamentalist parents who control and manipulate their children. And that couple who wanted to glorify God with their marriage? They got bitterly divorced.

The problem I have with the "loving God more" framework is with the word "more." More implies less. For example, should a parent to say to their child "I love God more than you" all the child hears is "I love you less." And again, we can all share stories of how some distorted vision of "loving God more" has ruined families and hurt children, where some parental fever dream of holiness and righteousness came to terrorize a home. In my own extended family we have a story of a family member who got pulled into a fundamentalist, cultish Christian group and have witnessed the familial wreckage of "I love God more" zealotry. 

All that said, from an Augustinian perspective I understand what is attempting to be said with "I love God more." Things of earth can become idols. Loves and desires can become malformed. Thus, all our loves, including our love for our spouses and children, need to be rightly ordered toward God. I understand all this, and agree in principle. But here's my reframe. I don't think the word "more" accomplishes what we are striving for here, because the love of God itself can become its own idol. Exhibit A: The Pharisees in the gospel accounts. Far too often, loving God more means loving people less. Worse, loving God more often leads to hurting people. Our families included.

Rather than "more" I think the word we want here is "better." I don't think God wants us to quantitatively rank our loves from "more" to "less." Rather, God is seeking a qualitative transformation of my loves. For example, the better I love God the better I love Jana. And I think this is what the "I love God more" people are trying, but often failing, to say. That when I love God more and more I love you better and better. Loving God doesn't encroach upon my loving you, it enhances and deepens my love for you. 

All this is hard to put into words, so I'll share what this has looked like as a husband and a father. My love for Jana and my sons can be both selfish and lazy. But because of my love for God my love for my family has been transformed into something sacrificial, self-offering, and Christlike. The more I love God the better I love my family. God doesn't subtract from my loves but transforms them. 

True, to experience this transformation I have to make God my priority. But our loving God must always keep in view this Christological aspect, how loving God "more" means loving you better.

So while I understand what is trying to be said with "I love God more" I think the clearer, safer, and more theologically sound way to say it is: "The more I love God the better I love you."