[Preamble:
Many years ago I did a little Christmas reflection at church entitled "Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned Watching TV." It's a sweet, quirky three-point devotional that, due to the advent of YouTube, I thought I'd get out on the Internet for others to use. It would make for a good and lighthearted sermon, class, or devotional Christmas mediation, youth or adult.

For all readers who think this blog it too intellectual, this series is for you.]

As a child I loved all the children's Christmas shows. Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to name a few. With no videos or cable or TiVo, these were once a year opportunities. If you missed it, you wouldn't see it again for an entire year. So, these were BIG events in my childhood.

I was so addicted to these shows that, looking back, I can now discern that everything I know about Christmas I learned from TV. Specifically, I learned from TV three big lessons about Christmas.

The first lesson I learned was from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The lesson was this: There is something special about Christmas. Something that transcended the presents, Christmas trees, meals, or decorations. Christmas, to quote from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was a "little bit more" than all these things.

If you don't recall the show, here's the basic plot. The Grinch, who lives in the mountains high above Whoville, hates the noise associated with Christmas. So, he dresses up like Santa Claus and ties a horn on the head of his dog Max to make him look like a reindeer. In these disguises they set off for Whoville.

Once in Whoville the Grinch proceeds to steal all the Christmas presents, trees, decorations, and food. He packs all this up and heads back up the mountain just as Christmas day is dawning.

The Grinch's plan is simple. He figures that if he takes away all the Christmas "stuff" the Who's won't be able to celebrate Christmas.

But the Grinch is wrong. In the climactic scene the Who's come out of their homes and, without a single piece of Christmas paraphernalia or presents, begin to sing their Christmas song, Welcome Christmas:

Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
Come this way!

Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
Christmas Day.

Welcome, Welcome
Fah who rah-moose
Welcome, Welcome
Dah who dah-moose
Christmas day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp

Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome, welcome Christmas
Welcome, welcome Christmas Day

Upon hearing the song, the Grinch has this realization, and I quote:

So he paused. And the Grinch put a hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow...

But the sound wasn't sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!

He stared down at Who-ville!
The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

And this realization has such a profound effect upon the Grinch that his heart, previously two sizes too small, grew three sizes that day. The entire climactic scene can be seen here:



So, I learned from How the Grinch Stole Christmas that Christmas was more than ribbons or tags. More than packages, boxes, or bags. Christmas was MORE.

But here was the deeply puzzling thing about How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Watch it as many times as you want and it will never be revealed just what Christmas was truly about. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a negative tale. It tells you what Christmas isn't. But it fails, in a quite puzzling way, to tell you what Christmas is.

So as child I was left in quite a quandary. Christmas was clearly very special, but it was still a mystery. Luckily, there was more TV to watch! And a part of the mystery of Christmas would be revealed to me in that quirky tale of a mutant reindeer and his friend, the elf, who wanted to be a dentist...

Most of you I've never met face to face. Well, here's a great Christmas way to get a look at me. Click here. I'm the elf on the far right.

This little gem was created by my friend and colleague Jeff in the psychology department here at ACU. The other elves are, from left to right, Jennifer, Scott and Larry, other distinguished members of the ACU psychology faculty.

To make your own ElfYourself to terrorize your loved ones and work colleagues click here.

Merry Christmas!

There is a German proverb I like to tell my advisees as they select classes, minors, and majors:

"He who has choice, has torment."

Ah, the existential terrors of making choices!

The reason choices are terror-filled is because we are finite creatures. We only get one crack at life. We don't get the luxury of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, forever getting a chance to get it "right." No, we live life just once. And this makes choice difficult. Will I choose correctly? Or will I make a mistake and forever muck up my life?

Many people lack the courage to make the choices and suffer the mistakes. Thus, they retreat into infantile patterns of dependency, allowing significant or powerful others to make their choices for them. Or, they stick their head in the sand, waiting for fate to choose. Because if you wait, put off, or procrastinate long enough SOMETHING will happen. And many people prefer this kind of neurotic waiting game, letting the chips fall where they may, over the terrors of making an authentic choice.

Why do we prefer this neurotic choice-avoidance? Because choice implies responsibility. If you choose it, you take the blame. But if Bill or fate made the choice then you can blame Bill or fate.

But in truth you did made a choice. You chose not to choose. You turned your back on your existential freedom and handed your life over to someone else, someone you can blame. You played it safe, but the cost is passivity, inauthenticity, and dependency.

Christians often show this dependency by allowing God to make their choices. Rather than making hard choices, to step out in freedom, to risk the mistake, we pray for signs and "open doors" from God. We lay out the fleece: "God, if you want me to take this new job send me a sign."

Christians often talk about God "opening doors" for them, where God clearly marks and facilitates a choice. But I routinely ask, "How do you know it was God and not the Devil who opened that door? I'm very sure the Devil would have made the choice look like God was behind it."

Now this is a very troubling response on my part. I'm supposed to just nod and allow the person to reap the existential comfort of allowing someone else--God, in this case--to make their choices for them. If I bring up the God-or-the-Devil issue I've just plunged them back into the existential crisis: How do I KNOW I'm making the right choice?

The truth is, you don't know. Choice is risky. And we only get one crack at life. It sucks, I know. So courage is the only legitimate response. Do you have it? And will you take responsibility for the outcomes?

In short, the problem I have with fleeces is that they are using God as a kind of magic. Using God to peer into and divine the future. God as Magic 8 Ball.

It is not that I think God doesn't give signs. He clearly does. My concern here is with a kind of magical thinking that can develop in Christian populations. My diagnosis here is that this kind of approach to God and prayer is deeply motivated by the need for existential comfort, the allures of choice-avoidance.

So here's my take. To be a people of deep, hard won character we have to make choices without signs and support from God. Further, I think God demands this of us, just as we demand it from our children. At some point in moral development we stop making choices for the child and begin to ask, "What do you think you should do?" Forcing the child to make the choice and accept the consequences. Of course, the child resists this. As we do as adults. But to rescue the child from this anxiety is to do a disservice to the moral development of the child. And I ask, would not God be doing the same thing for us? If God gives out signs on a regular basis, constantly rescuing people from hard choices, would God not be turning Christians into dependent, needy, and passive persons?

And if that is so, how can you change the world with a group like that?

I actually read Left Behind out of anthropological curiosity. I wanted to find out what the fuss was all about. My impression? Well, let's just say it was a theological eye-opener.

Here's the thing that kept bothering me. The book begins with the rapture. Unfortunately, this takes place while lead character Rayford Steele, a pilot, is flying his airliner. So landing the plane is kind of dramatic since key air traffic control people, who were good Christians, suddenly vanish. Rayford is married to Irene and they have a daughter, Chloe, and a son, Raymie. Upon returning home Rayford finds that Irene and Raymie have been raptured. But Chloe remains behind with him.

Well, very quickly Rayford and Chloe go to Irene's church--New Hope Village Church--to get some answers. They find only one member remaining, a minister named Bruce. Bruce, Rayford and Chloe eventually find a video left behind by the raptured pastor of New Hope. It's a kind of "If I and millions of good Christians suddenly disappear, play this tape" tape. I assume all pastors have one of these in their office.

They do play the tape and get a Rapture and Tribulation 101 Crash Course.

This, you might be surprised to know, isn't the part that puzzled me. What puzzled me were the activities of Romanian politician Nicolae Carpathia.

Nicolae Carpathia is the anti-Christ and through the rest of Left Behind we follow his rise to power. Now here is my first quibble. If you were the anti-Christ and you wanted to keep it undercover why would you choose the name Nicolae Carpathia? Because if I was the anti-Christ I'd want to go with something more nondescript like "Bob Smith." Think about it. If you met Bob Smith and Nicolae Carpathia who would you suspect would be the anti-Christ? See my point? Bob Smith just can't be the anti-Christ. It's the perfect name.

But the name isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is that Nicolae Carpathia, the anti-Christ, starts following the End Times script to the letter. The Bible prophesies that the anti-Christ will do X. And Nicolae Carpathia does X. The Bible prophesies that the anti-Christ will do Y. And Nicolae Carpathia, monotonously and predictably, does Y.

And I'm thinking, is the anti-Christ a complete idiot?

Because either the anti-Christ is a deterministic automaton, slavishly following the End Times predictions of the Bible, or he's a complete moron. It's really one or the other.

Let's assume he's a moron. Why do I draw this conclusion? Well, first, if I was the anti-Christ I would take the time to read the book of Revelation. Shoot, I'd take the time to get a Ph.D. in New Testament apocalyptic literature. Why wouldn't you? I mean, the opposing team just handed you the play book. At the very least the anti-Christ should sit down and watch the End Times 101 educational video left behind at New Hope church.

Think about it. How could the anti-Christ NOT know he's going to fight a battle at Armageddon? Has he not seen any Hollywood movies? This whole battle is a part of pop-culture. He's got to know.

So you have to figure, on the eve of the battle, that he might think back on his whole life, where each step has been predicted in perfect detail, and wonder, "Hmmmm. Maybe I shouldn't fight this battle tomorrow on the plains of Armageddon. Seems like a bad idea. Maybe I should, well, CHANGE TACTICS! Fight the battle somewhere else. Like Boise, Idaho."

Because if I was the anti-Christ that is what I'd do. I'd change my name to Bob Smith and fight the battle in Bosie, Idaho. I'd try to mix it up a bit. Throw Jesus a curve ball. In fact, I'd actually be Dr. Bob Smith. Because I'd have gotten my Ph.D. in New Testament apocalyptic literature.

The anti-Christ might be an idiot. But I'm not.

I spent four years working as a therapist at a psychiatric hospital. You learn a great deal about the human mind working with the very worst of our mental breakdowns. Very little about human behavior now surprises me. I've seen it all.

To start this post, I want to share with you one of my big realizations about the human mind that I discovered during those years working at the psychiatric hospital. To begin, one of the things you notice about people in very bad and miserable life circumstances is that they often refuse to make changes. Think of the classic case of domestic abuse. You work with the battered wife, laying out a plan for her to leave her abuser and move toward a new and happier future. But after discharge she heads right back into the same situation. Why?

Many therapists think the woman's refusal to leave is due to some kind of co-dependent dysfunction or "battered woman syndrome." I'm not denying that those dynamics may be involved on a case by case basis. But I think there is a less exotic, a more workaday explanation. I think this because this explanation works not just for the domestic abuse situation but applies to all kinds of "failures to change"; those situations where people stick with a miserable Present and refuse to move toward a happier Future.

So what explains the inertia, the hesitance to move toward happiness? Here is my analysis:

The brain desires predictability over happiness.

To wit. The brain evolved to be a prediction machine. The brain is not a happiness machine. The brain doesn't exist to make you happy. The brain exists to keep you alive and to find your next meal. And it does this by making associations (learning) to create predictive expectations about the organism's immediate future. As cognitive scientists tell us, the brain exists to answer one simple question: What should I do next?

The point is, if the brain puts happiness versus predictability in the balance the brain will choose predictability. Which means we would rather live with a miserable but predictable life than venture out toward an unpredictable future, even if that future is potentially happier. We know our dysfunctions well. They are not fun and they are unhealthy. But they are KNOWN. And in that knowledge is a bit of biological comfort.

Okay, I bet you are now asking, "What does this have to do with the anti-Christ?" Let me explain.

Our world if filled with terrifying events. Hurricanes kills thousands. Tsunami's bring devastation. Earthquakes level nations. Terrorism and wars surround us. And global warming is going to put New York City underwater. In short, CNN brings us, on a daily basis, one global disaster after another. The world is a scary place.

But what if all this chaos was predicted? What if these events were not disasters but SIGNS? Signs of the End Times?

Many Christians are fascinated, transfixed even, by the Signs of the End Times. Numerous books and study Bibles fill Christian bookstore shelves on the subject. In recent years, this interest has been captured by The Left Behind series, a fictional imagining of the rapture, the rise of the anti-Christ and the battle of Armageddon.

If one reads these materials, some fictional and others purporting to be serious biblical scholarship, one is struck by the exegetical and hermanutical pyrotechnics. In a word, these readings of Scripture are very poor. And that is putting it nicely.

So the psychologist in me wonders, "Why would these poor readings of Scripture find such wide appeal? They can't be succeeding on intellectual grounds. So, what's the attraction?"

I think the attractions are existential and emotional. End Times theories take something chaotic, scary and unpredictable and turn it into something tamed, Providential, and predictable. Tsunamis become signs. Never fret, God is in control. Schematically, we can summarize:

(Scary World Events) = Unease and Fear

(Scary World Events) + (End Times Theory) = Security and Peace of Mind

Ah, the allures of the anti-Christ!

Recall my earlier point about the brain and predictability. The End Times theories are feeding this craving of the brain, the need for order and predictability.

Interestingly, this need for predictability goes haywire in paranoid disorders. As G.K. Chesterton noted, a sane person lives in a world where most things are random and meaningless. Like swinging a stick at some tall grass. We do it because it is pointless. For Chesterton, pointlessness was the hallmark of sanity. By contrast, a paranoid person sees TOO MUCH meaning in life. Nothing is pointless or random! That person swinging a stick is sending signals to malevolent forces out to get me. In short, when we see meaning in meaningless activities/occurrences we grow increasingly suspicious and paranoid. We might not have a psychotic break but we'll spend lots of time spinning or consuming conspiracy theories.

Perhaps this is why End Times thinking is so similar to conspiracy theories. Signs are everywhere. You see them in tsunamis, wars, and the resolutions of the United Nations. Nothing is simply what it is. It is MORE. And it is CONNECTED. The rapture is upon us! The End Times are NOW!

But at the end of the day, this is all just really about existential comfort. The need to render the inexplicable explicable. To tame the chaos and, as a result, attenuate the anxiety the chaos creates in us. We live in scary times. So it is okay to be scared. It's courageous to admit it. It's a form of lament.

But that might be too scary a prospect. So here's an alternative: Seek the comforts of the End Times Connect-the-Dots game. It's a game, like most games, that will allow you to pass the time.

Plus, it will make you feel better.

A couple of posts ago in this series I made the observation that in the face of death and existential terror one has a choice to make. You can either move forward into the anxiety with courage and authenticity or you can retreat from the anxiety and clutch at comforting illusions. You can either take the risk of authentic faith along with its accompanying doubts and fears, or you can choose safety and use "faith" as an existential sleeping pill.

This analysis struck me this week as I reflected on the role of biblical literalism in the minds of many Christian believers.

For example, my friend Bill sent me this blog post. It's a review of the Creation Museum that has recently opened in Cincinnati, Ohio. The reviewer is a secular author, sympathetic to Christianity but not Creationists. Regardless of the author's stance and tone (and language), if you read the review you might be struck, as I was, by just how far biblical literalists are willing to go to hold on to their reading of scripture. The point being, when I spoke above about retreating into illusions I meant that literally (no joke intended).

This observation was reinforced last week when I saw audience members struggle with Wayne Meeks' point about misusing the metaphor "The Bible says..." Recall, Meeks' point was that the Bible doesn't speak. It's a book. It doesn't have a mouth. Which means that the Bible, when spoken about, has been filtered through the mind of a human being. A human being with a gender, an age, life experiences, and an ecclesial history (to name a few things). Thus, when a person claims that "the Bible says..." what he is really asserting is what he (or his tradition) asserts to be the truth. The phrase "The Bible says..." is just an obfuscation. We are all interpreters of the Bible. It's inescapable.

But if you let that point settle in, as it did last week at the lectures, you can start to grow uneasy. Particularly if you are new to this post-modern game. If all is interpretation then how can we ever KNOW the truth? If this position is true doesn't it all just boil down to a multiplex of opinions? And if this is so, how could you ever adjudicate between good versus bad readings of Scripture?

Now I don't want to get into post-modern or post-foundationalist readings of Scripture in this post. Rather, I want to do my psychological thing. I want to analyze the reactions and feelings we have when we first encounter the post-modern critique of "the Bible says..." formulation.

What I observed that day in the audience, as Meeks' point settled in, was existential anxiety (albeit only among a few of the participants; for the majority in attendance this is old stuff). The sense was that if Meeks was right then all bets were off. All was lost. It's a free for all. The end of all things. Doomsday.

Similarly, you will have noticed if you read the Creation Museum review that this movement--the loss of literalism to nihilism--is overtly spelled out in the Museum. Specifically, if literalism goes then the next step is the complete moral disintegration of society.

Now think this through. Notice the movement:

Loss of literalism to nihilism.

That's quite a leap. Surely there can be other ways to read Scripture. Surely the entire moral destiny of humankind isn't in the balance in how we read Genesis.

But some people think so. Why?

Well, here is my diagnosis. If we give even just a wee bit on biblical literalism then we open a can of existential worms. Specifically, it opens you to the possibility of being wrong. To the possibility that maybe the Good Book is just a human creation. Now, you don't have to draw that conclusion. Most Christians don't. But if you learn to read the bible in an non-naive manner then that possibility is clearly on the horizon as a potential outcome. Who hasn't upon learning how the bible was actually written and collected wondered about its authenticity as being the Word of God? In short, to approach the bible honestly opens you up to existential dread. So, as I said above, we have a choice. We can either confront the facts on the ground with courage, or retreat into the comforting illusions of the Creation Museum.

Interestingly, the biblical literalists, deep down, know what's up. They sense the risk. They know that if you open the door a crack, just a crack, then the specter of atheism becomes a real possibility. But rather than risk atheism they seek to play it safe. To eliminate the risk entirely. But at what cost? Well, intellectual credibility and honesty. The price of existential comfort, of the risk-free faith, is credulity.

In short, biblical literalism is a security blanket. It's comforting. It lets you feel certain, eliminating all risk.

It demands conviction, and lot's off it, but very little courage.


[Post-post-script: Having spent a day with my original post title I've liked it even less. So I've changed it.]

The world is a sad place. Full of tragedy, pain, and death. And in the face of this predicament our minds seek answers and explanations:

"Why did 9/11 happen?"

"Why did my child die?"

"Why did Katrina hit New Orleans?"

Some Christians know that there are just no good answers to these questions. Worse, these events create experiential and theological wounds that we know won't be healed in this life. We answer these questions simply with this:

"I don't know."

There is an emotional cost for answering in this manner. For you are admitting that life is full of causal "loose ends." Thus, life becomes populated with events that seem random and inexplicable. And if these events are traumatic or tragic then the prospect of existence becomes quite an existential burden.

Carl Jung once said, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” That is, rather than directly facing the pain of existence we avoid it, sticking our head in the sand, avoiding difficult choices or hard conversations. We would rather live with symptoms than suffering.

I think this "avoidance of suffering" model applies to religious faith as well. Specifically, rather than bear the pain and burden of existence we seek to quickly explain away the suffering with answers that are trite and silly. For example, Christians are notorious for saying horrible things to grieving people. Parents who have lost a child routinely face the following comments at church:

"She is in a better place."

"God must have needed him for a purpose in heaven."

These are chilling comments. They are intended to comfort (and they may even be true) but what is really going on is a refusal to suffer--personally and with the grieving parents--legitimately. The person is trying to get "around" the suffering. Amazingly, these comments suggest to the grieving parents that there is no reason to suffer at all! Suffering is, through a quick theological fix, subtracted out of existence. All is sunshine and roses. From a biblical perspective, rather than sit with Job people seek to "explain" the situation, to grasp its "higher meaning." The "reason." Lacking the courage to lament we live with neurotic theological formulations.

To live neurotically as a Christian is to use faith as a substitute for suffering. Faith is a quick band-aid we offer to ourselves and the world.

But to live authentically as a Christian is to lament and to move into the suffering. And this is difficult, a hard practice. Particularly in America where "happiness" is an addiction.

A few years ago, a friend of my wife lost her father to cancer. Jana knew him well. During college he would come to town while the girls roomed together in a house. When he came to town to visit his daughter he would help do odd jobs around the house and take his daughter and all her roommates out to eat. Rather than spend all his attention on his daughter he reached out to all her friends and became a father-figure to them as well. He was loved by all these girls.

So when my wife found out that he had died she wanted to write to her friend to console her in her loss. But what to write in such a letter? Jana asked me for my opinion. I said this, "Write about all your memories with him. About how he fixed things around the house and about the memories of those dinners he shared with you. How you all, even though he wasn't your father, looked forward to his visits." Jana replied, "But if I write all that, won't that make her cry?"

I said, "Yes. Yes, it will."

We do not avoid legitimate suffering. We don't seek to rescue people from it. We meet them in the midst of it.

Will Christians have the courage to do this? Or will our neurotic fears of existence cause us to abandon the world, leaving the grieving and suffering masses with trite theological slogans? Formulations that comfort us but cause even more pain to them?

A month or so later Jana was reunited with her friend and they talked about her father. At one point she said to Jana:

"When I read your letter I just cried and cried and cried. But of all the letter's I received, your's meant the most.

It's the only one I've kept."

Given the prospect of death, many Christians seek knowledge and certainty in the face of their finitude. It never ceases to amaze me just how confident Christians can appear in their pronouncements, assertions, and judgments. And my knee-jerk reaction is always, "Really? How can you possibly know that?"

This is not to say that we cannot make passionate judgments. It is just that, at the end of the day, we recognize that faith involves doubt, risk, and courage. No Christian can claim to know anything. We believe a great deal. But we don't know.

And yet, when you listen to many Christians, you get the sense that, for some, belief is sliding toward knowledge. The reason seems clear: Belief is risky and knowledge is comforting.

What I'm saying is that dogmatism is a symptom of fear. To be dogmatic--to know--is existentially comforting. There is no doubt. No risk. No possibility that you could be wrong. And that has got to feel good. Very comforting. Soothing.

The trouble is, this fear makes you a terrible conversation partner. Before we even begin to converse you already know all the answers. And if I do start making some good points, poking holes in your comforting worldview, you get defensive and shut the conversation down.

If what I'm saying is true, the world is filled with scared Christians. And I've personally seen the fear on their faces. I've been conversing with people when I've made a point or observation that powerfully hits at their dogmatic worldview. And you can literally see the flicker of fear move across their face. They sense that you've just wiggled something deep within their worldview. Something foundational MOVED. Not by much. But it moved. And that scares them.

Have you not seen this yourself in your encounters with dogmatic Christians?

At this point, when the fear emerges, the person has a choice to make. Do I continue to go forward, knowing that my dogmatic house may crash down around me? Knowing that I might have a long and difficult journey ahead of me? Or do I retreat? Do I back away in fear, protecting my faith as it stands?

Existential psychologists have long framed the choice like this: Will you face the existential challenge with its accompanying anxieties or will you retreat and live with illusions?

At the end of the day, faith is risky. Faith implies a potential for failure. But risk and failure do not shut out the anxieties. So we pretend--living with illusions--that faith is risk free and that success is guaranteed. We trade in an authentic faith a security blanket. (And then proceed to act like a dogmatic jerk to all potential conversation partners.)

These thoughts remind me again of my recent readings from Tillich. Some final thoughts from Tillich:

"The element of uncertainty in faith cannot be removed, it must be accepted. And the element in faith which accepts this is courage."

"Where there is daring and courage there is the possibility of failure. And in every act of faith this possibility is present. The risk must be taken."

The last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.

We noticed smallest things,—
Things overlooked before,
By this great light upon our minds
Italicized, as 'twere.

That other could exist
While she must finish quite,
A jealousy for her arose
So nearly infinite.

We waited while she passed;
It was a narrow time,
Too jostled were our souls to speak,
At length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot;
Then lightly as a reed
Bent to the water, shivered scarce,
Consented, and was dead.

And we, we placed the hair,
And drew the head erect;
And then an awful leisure was,
Our faith to regulate.

--Emily Dickinson

Each year ACU hosts the Carmichael-Walling Lectures which features New Testament scholars. Last year's lectures were given by Dr. Margaret Mitchell, professor of New Testament and early Christian literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. This year's lectures, which I attended tonight, were given by Dr. Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Emeritus in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University.

Interestingly, Dr. Mitchell's and Dr. Meeks' lectures had some intriguing convergences. But first, a funny story about me at last year's lectures.

Dr. Mitchell had just finished her second lecture on "Looking for Biblical Literalism - in All the Wrong Places." I'll get to this lecture in a minute, but it had to do with how biblical texts were being used on the Internet. So, during the Q&A I raise my hand to ask a question.

I ask, "Dr. Mitchell, with the ubiquitous presence of bible search engines now on the Internet, I wonder about the hermeneutical effects this will have on how this generation will view the biblical text. I wonder if you could comment on the Googlification of the bible and how it will impact how we see and read the bible."

At this point I'm patting myself on the back. What a great, insightful question I just asked in front of all these people! The "Googlification of the bible"! What great stuff! (And, to be more serious, this actually is a half-decent question. What does happen to the bible when people primarily approach it using Keyword and Topical searches?)

Well, Dr. Mitchell says to me, "That's a great question. But if we think about it, this actually isn't a new thing. For example, think of the Eusebian Canon."

The Eusebian Canon????? What is she talking about????? Regardless, Dr. Mitchell is looking right at me, as is an entire room of bible professors and graduate students, waiting for me to nod my head sagely and say, "Ah, yes! The Eusebian Canon! Of course, I should have remembered that. Excellent point!"

But the trouble is, I don't know what the Eusebian Canon is. No clue. Which puts me in a bit of a pickle. I can't nod yes. I have a lot of friends in the audience who know I have no clue what the Eusebian Canon is. And if I nod yes, they will bust me for years for being a faker.

So, I can't nod yes. But Dr. Mitchell is still looking at me, expectantly, clearly not going on until I give her the nod. Seconds are passing and the question is just hanging there in the air:

"Think of the Eusebian Canon."

And I say the only thing I can say:

"I'm very sorry, but I can't."

And the room erupts in laughter.

And it quickly dawns on Dr. Mitchell that this lecture is open to the public and that people, like me, might actually be in attendance who have no freaking clue what the Eusebian Canon is. It really was a funny moment.

Okay, back to the serious stuff.

Dr. Mitchell's second lecture was fascinating. The premise of her talk, "In Search of Biblical Literalism," was to go looking for biblical literalism among the websites of the Religious Right. The idea was this. The Religion Right, biblical fundamentalists, claim that there is a clear, unambiguous, and literal reading of the bible. The bible simply says what it says. This is often called the "plain sense" of the text.

So Dr. Mitchell takes us on a tour of fundamentalist Internet sites analyzing, as we go, how these biblical "literalists" are using the bible. And what do you find? Well, you don't find biblical literalism. But you do find lots and lots of biblical interpretation. Specifically, when the "plain sense" of the text suits their position on war, or sex, or gambling then the fundamentalists trot out the "plain sense." But when there are no proof texts available they resort to cobbling together texts, assumptions, and argument. The point? The biblical literalists aren't so literal. Far from it. And if the literalists aren't being literal then perhaps there is no "plain sense" of the text. All text involves interpretation.

Tonight, in this year's lectures, Dr. Meeks made a similar point. Specifically, Dr. Meeks discussed how people misuse the metaphor "What does the Bible say?"

Meeks made the point that when I use the phrase "The Bible says..." I'm actually engaging in a bit of fakery (his word). The Bible doesn't speak. We speak. We interpret. Thus, to say "The Bible says..." is disingenuous for it is I, and not the Bible, who is speaking. To use the phrase "The Bible says..." is just a power play, a way of hiding my interpretation behind the authority of the Good Book. Paraphrasing Dr. Meeks, when we say "The Bible says..." we are simply hiding the true power we want to enforce on others: Our own.

To conclude, I think Mitchell's observation that a literal reading of the bible just doesn't exist jives nicely with Meeks' point that the phrase "The Bible says..." is often just a power play.

(And for the record, I did eventually find out what the Eusebian Canon was.

And yes, Dr. Mitchell, you make an excellent point.)

To start, two autobiographical stories.

First, a story. I grew up with a fundamentalist view of things, of course shaped by my ecclesial tradition. That is, when I was younger I believed only my church was going to heaven. This belief made me very concerned with those in my extended family who were Baptist. Didn’t they know they were going to hell? Shouldn’t someone in the family warn them? So, one day, I decided to take up the subject with my Baptist cousin. I was around 13 and he was around 23. So looking back, he was being very tolerant of me.

Anyway, I start to share about how he’s going to hell. And, of course, he kindly disagrees. We debate back and forth on the nuances of biblical texts. And, eventually, I see that I’m just not going to change his mind. And the horror of that realization settles over me: He won’t listen, he’s going to go to hell. I’ve failed.

And I start to cry. Very hard. And I make one last appeal through a storm of tears.

Second story. Around this same age I was invited to give my first sermon at my small church in Pennsylvania. It was to be the Sunday evening sermon. (We had two services on Sunday. A morning service and an evening service for those who could not attend the morning service and take the Lord’s Supper.) The Sunday evening sermon was a little shorter and less formal. Attendance in the morning was around 100 but at the evening service it was down to around 20 or so. It was a causal affair for the most devoted of the church. This was, of course, the crew that came back to attend church twice in one day.

During the week I was mulling over my sermon topic. To kick around some ideas I took a few bible study tracts home from the church. One of these was entitled “What Hell is Like” by Jimmy Allen. Jimmy Allen, you should know, was notorious in my fellowship for these Sinners-in-the-Hand’s-of-an-Angry-God kind of sermons. He could really scare a person into immediate repentance. Well, my first exposure to Allen was this tract and it terrified me. Hell was horrible, terrible! I was suddenly convicted: People need to know about this!

So I decide that the first sermon of my life is going to be on "What Hell is Like." There I was, about 13, preaching at the most faithful contingent in my church, the people who came to church twice on Sundays, telling them point for point just how bad, awful, terrifying, and horrible hell was going to be.

I’m quite sure they all thought I was insane.

But they needed to know, right? Well, late in the sermon the sheer tragedy of hell, the vision of all those lost, tormented souls, just overwhelms me. And I begin to weep. I deliver the last ten minutes of the sermon through a veil of tears. Just sobbing in front of the church.

By this point in the sermon I’m sure they really did think I was insane.

Why do I share these stories? Well, if you know this blog you will know that my views on these matters have changed considerably over time. But regardless, given what I was convinced to be the truth about hell at the time, I want to point out my reactions in both stories to make a contrast.

Specifically, have you ever noticed how some Christians, particularly some of the loudest, most public voices on the Religious Right, seem pleased that people are going to hell? That is, it has always troubled me that so many Christians seem, well, happy about the damnation of most of humankind. True, they may protest against this diagnosis, stating that, deep down, they really are grieving the future torment of liberals and gays and Hollywood producers. But if you look at them, they don’t seem all that sad. Like I did when I was 13. They seem happy. Or at least smugly self-satisfied.

Why is this? Why does hell make so many Christians happy?

I think part of an answer comes from the analysis offered in my last post. Specifically, given the existential anxiety caused by death and exacerbated by the prospect of hellfire, many Christians reach for tangible markers that allow them to verify that they are, indeed, saved. As I wrote in the last post, this is often accomplished by drawing clear ecclesial lines in the sand. We crave a clear circle that encloses the Saved, the Church. Outside of that circle are the Lost, the Damned.

This circle is existentially comforting. But its comfort hinges on its concreteness and clarity. If the line becomes fuzzy or indistinct then it no longer serves its existential purpose: Concrete reassurance of salvation. Thus, the boundary markers of faith, and their razor sharp clarity, become more important (and more prone to provoke an argument) than the essentials of faith. Churches fight over trivialities because those trivialities mark boundaries. And in the face of death it isn’t the core of faith that reassures us. Rather, what is critically important is the boundary and where I stand in relation to it. If everything outside the circle is bound for hellfire what matters most is not where the center of the circle is but where the edge is. The edge, the boundary, is what I need clarified. Thus, churches fight over edges, leaving the center, the core of the gospel, overlooked and unattended. For those who fear death, the core just isn’t as important. It, in a very real way, just doesn’t provide the needed reassurance.

And if all this is so, if the clarity of the boundary is what is so reassuring, then it stands to reason that we need, for existential soothing, a group of people to be clearly on the other side of the line. A clearly defined saved group by necessity creates a clearly defined damned group. And the more clearly defined the better. In short, many Christians need a clearly defined damned group to reap existential solace.

The point? Simply this: The fact that some people are going to hell—clearly are going to hell—is comforting to many Christians. It makes them feel better. About themselves, their world, and, weirdly, about their God. They actually need the damned to feel happy.

So if it seems, sometimes, that certain Christians seem downright giddy at the prospect of millions of people going to hell, well, now you know why.

In this blog I've written a great deal about the relationship between death and doctrine. Mainly, I've been critical of what I call thanatocentric ('death centered") belief systems. My concerns have been twofold.

First, I've been very critical of thanatocentric soteriological schemes. In thanatocentric soteriologies one's moral status (saved versus damned) is defined at the death event. But given that we all start off in different moral climates and that death is an arbitrary event, our moral development is randomly truncated in a way that calls thanatocentric soteriologies into question. I've illustrated this in what I call the Cartesian Race. Eric Fromm perhaps said it best: "The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born."

Second, I've also been concerned with how death pushes around religious belief. This analysis comes from the existential perspectives that infuse my online book Freud's Ghost. Specifically, existential thinkers have asserted that we deploy ideological worldviews to imbue life with significance and meaning. More concretely, these worldviews allow us to proceed with existential equanimity in the face of death. In short, the prospect of death is continually threatening to nullify all our workaday strivings. With death looming we are continually faced with the nihilistic worm at the core of existence: "What's the point?"

But this analysis isn't just a coffeehouse musing, over a decade of replicated empirical research has shown that worldviews (routes to meaning and significance) are explicitly involved in death repression and transcendence. And this story has a dark side. Given that our worldviews are existentially vital, we react hostilely when our worldview gets poked, prodded, or attacked. In short, much of the ideological violence in the world today can be traced back to death concerns. The conflict between fundamentalist Christians in America and fundamentalist Muslims in the Middle East is overtly about ideologies and worldviews, but covertly the issue is about death. Both groups have worldviews in place that allow for death transcendence (i.e., being saved/favored by God or Allah at the death event) but the mere existence of the other calls each worldview into question. Who has the correct vision here? It is a question that is an existential bomb. It's a question that suggests that our cherished worldviews might be arbitrary human constructions. And if that's the case then death fears surge into the mind as we contemplate the purpose and meaning of our existence.

If you read me a lot, this is all review. What I want to do in a few post is just make some ancillary comments and observations about things I've been thinking about lately.

So, my first observation: The anxiety and emotion involved in doctrinal debates.

I am a member of the Churches of Christ. If you don't know us we have an ecclesial tradition of a cappella worship. Voices only, no instruments allowed. At its best, this is a rich and amazing worship tradition. See the recent The Ascending Voice conversation hosted at Pepperdine University.

But this tradition also has a dark side. Specifically, the Churches of Christ formally broke with the Disciples of Christ in 1906 over, along with many other issues, the use of instruments in worship.

The issue of a cappella worship continues to be a hot button issue in the Churches of Christ. More progressive Churches of Christ are increasingly seeing the issue as a non-issue while more conservative churches consider this to be an issue of Ultimate importance, that to worship with an instrument will incur God's wrath and send you to hell.

Now, as a psychologist I'm not going to weigh in on this debate. I'll let the preachers of the Church of Christ work this one out. Rather, what I'd like to do, as a case study, is to analyze the psychological dynamics at work in this debate.

My interest in this case was piqued when I saw a blog post blow up on my friend (and preacher) Mike Cope's blog. In the post Mike writes about the progressive/conservative split about our a cappella tradition. And the post (as other posts before it on this topic) proceeds to blow up with over 250+ comments.

For a psychologist the comments to this and related posts are rich in data. Many of you might be interested in reading them out of anthropological curiosity. As I read the comments my overwhelming response was the degree of defensiveness in the conversation. Doctrinal positions were locked in and immovable. Reason is absent and emotions run hot.

When a psychologist sees behavior like this we think of one thing: Defense Mechanism.

For example, let's say we have this exchange:

Scenario A:
Me: "Sam, you need to quit smoking."
Sam (thoughtfully, ruefully): "I know. It's just hard."

Is Sam being defensive? No. Sam is calm and thoughtful. Open to conversation. Compare that with this exchange:

Scenario B:
Me: "Sam, you need to quit smoking."
Sam (angrily): "Who are you to talk! You're not so healthy yourself."

Is Sam being defensive? Yes, yes he is.

The point is that when you look at the blowups on Mike's blog you don't see Scenario A. You see Scenario B. Lots and lots of defensiveness.

So what is going on? Why so much defensiveness? Well, here is my analysis in light of what we know about death anxiety buffers:

Death is a terrifying prospect. This is exacerbated if one also believes there is a hell of never-ending torment. Thus, faith, belief and doctrine begin to cluster around defining the Saved versus the Lost. If the church is our lifeboat then we become very invested in making a clear demarcation between church and non-church. I need very clear lines in the sand so that I can self-verify, over and over, that I'm on the right "side."

That is, I think the need for ante-mortum salvific self-verification is at the root of many doctrinal disputes. Let me unpack this. If my faith is thanatocentric then faith becomes fundamentally about where I stand at the moment of death. Am I with the saved or with the lost? How can I tell? Well, you can tell by drawing ecclesial lines in the sand and then check--self-verify--where you stand. And you keep checking, almost daily, because death can come at any moment. Faith becomes a kind of obsessive-compulsive salvation check: Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Doctrine becomes about existential self-soothing.

Back to our case study. In my tradition, being saved was defined by being a member of the Churches of Christ. And one of the defining features of that church was non-instrumental music. For better or worse, that issue became a means of ante-mortum salvific self-verification. But what happens, as is currently being done in progressive Churches of Christ, if that line in the sand starts getting rubbed out? Blurred? Well, you start robbing people of a mechanism for existential self-soothing. You've taken away an existential security blanket. If you start rubbing out all those lines of demarcation how can you tell who is or who is not going to hell? More vitally, how can I tell if I'm going to hell? That's the real issue. Where do I currently stand? Saved or Lost?

In short, in my diagnosis, the defensiveness of these debates trace back to death concerns. The issue isn't really about doctrine at all. It's about existential comfort. And if you poke at a defensive mechanism you'll see the anxiety shoot through the roof.

In this final installment to this series we turn to perspectives coming from the emerging church conversation. Specifically, I want to walk through Peter Rollins' notion of Christianity as a/theistic.

In his book How (Not) to Speak of God Rollins talks about a/theism:

"...the early Christians were called atheists because their own affirmation of God involved a rejection of the gods advocated by the Roman Empire. Yet the atheistic spirit within Christianity delves much deeper than this--for we disbelieve not only in other gods but also in the God that we believe in.

As we have seen, we ought to affirm our view of God while at the same time realizing that that view is inadequate. Hence we act as both theist and atheist.

This a/theistic approach is deeply deconstructive since it always prevents our ideas from scaling the throne of God. Yet it is important to bear in mind that this deconstruction is not destruction, for the questioning it engages in is not designed to undermine God but to affirm God. This method is similar to that practiced by the original cynics who, far from being nihilists and relativists, were deeply moral individuals who questioned the ethical conduct they saw around them precisely because they loved morality so much. This a/theism is thus a deeply religious and faith-filled form of cynical discourse, one which captures how faith operates in an oscillation between understanding and unknowing.

This a/theistic language employed by those involved in the emerging conversation is not merely a way of shedding some inaccurate ideas we have picked up about God and faith before we can begin the serious task of construction, and it is certainly not a provisional clearing away that must happen before a new religious structure is built: rather it is a recognition that negation is embedded within, and permeates, all religious affirmation. It is an acknowledgment that a desert of ignorance exist in the midst of every oasis of understanding.

...the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God. " (pp. 25-26)

"This is in no way equivalent to saying that the Christian ought to adopt a position of disinterested agnosticism--far from it. The point is only that the believer should not repress the shadow of doubt that hangs over all belief (the potential lie that may dwell in the heart of every belief)." (p. 34)

"To be part of the Christian religion is to simultaneously hold that religion lightly." (p. 44)

"...there is a sense in which Christianity is atheistic because it rejects its own understanding of God...This does not mean that Christianity teaches us to reject our religious beliefs but rather reminds us that we must engage in a process of 'de-naming' God every time we name God." (p. 97)

For Rollins this whole approach is summed up by Augustine (p. 98): "What do I love when I love my God?"

To conclude this series, I hope you have been struck by the following similarities:

Tillich's Protestant Principle

Barth's dialectical method

Rollins' a/theistic approach

I find the convergence here remarkable considering the differences among the thinkers given their agendas, settings, and ecclesial situations.

Recall in my first post I said that the "religious disease" sets in when faith becomes insular, static, and morally convicted. And I hope in my comments to my first post I clarified that I am not saying that moral convictions per se are diseased. Far from it. Moral convictions only become toxic and potentialities for violence when they become impervious to external critique and possibilities for growth.

So how do we cure the religious disease? I think we've seen the way. Tillich suggests building criticism into faith. Barth suggests that we alternatively affirm and reject our notions of God in a forward moving conversation. Rollins suggests that we hold our faith "lightly."

All this suggests, as Rollins has noted, that there is a cynical, self-critical, and even atheistic facet to healthy faith. A faith so configured is always listening for God, searching. God is encountered then released. Or, rather, God is continually escaping, transcending, leading. This keeps the believer leaning forward, intently seeking.

Further, given that the believer is actively engaged in self-critique and a/theism, sources of religious criticism from atheists are welcomed, valued, and embraced as containing a truth we need to listen to.

For, as I like to say, idols always need smashing and many hands make for light work.