The Shipwrecked and the Catchers

Readers of this blog, I expect, come and go. Some of you have been with me for years. Others dip in and never come back. Some check in from time to time, like visiting an old friend. Some of you are new and are trying to decide what you think of this space and its author.

So, for those of you who are new to this space, perhaps it would be helpful if I explained a bit what you are witnessing.

I expect, if you are a conservative or traditional Christian (whatever those labels might mean), you'll find much of what I write about on this blog to be perplexing or disturbing. Consequently, in your alarm, you may follow this blog to monitor me, to set me straight, or to voice objections to protect others who might be reading. I understand those motivations and, in a way, find them admirable. You are, I guess, our Catcher in the Rye, trying to save us all from running off the cliff.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye..."
On my bike ride to work today I was trying to think about how this blog might sound to more conservative Christians and how it might appear to the rest of us. This was the analogy I came up with.

If your faith and doctrine are like a beautiful house, with the clean lines of certainty and the firm foundation of God's Truth, then letting me into your house would be, I'd expect, quite unsettling. Because I'd always be looking at a wall and saying "Is this a load bearing wall? Let me knock it down to see!" Day in and day out, this is exactly what this blog would feel like. Me trying to knock down every wall in the house. In short, from this vantage point--inside a beautiful house--all my work appears to be inherently destructive, breaking down and tearing up this beautiful building. So of course you'd want me to stop that. You'd want to protect the house.

But that's not really the best way to understand this blog. See, I had a nice house once. But a hurricane hit it. From a faith perspective I'm in a post-Katrina situation. All I have left is a bunch of rubble.

So what I do here, week in and week out, is to try to piece this rubble back together. In any given post you'll see me holding up two broken pieces of faith and wondering "Do these go together?" Or, because much of what I find in the rubble is broken and beyond repair, you'll also find me in any given post bulldozing stuff out of the way to clear room for the faith I'm constructing.

In short, when you read this blog you are watching a person pick through the rubble of his faith, a person trying to find anything useful that has been left behind.

So if you come here already living in a nice house what I'm doing here is, given your fireside view, going to feel destructive to you. But if you realize I'm actually standing on a heap of rubble hopefully you'll see that what I'm doing is constructive. I'm building, I'm not tearing down.

And this building is very much a work in progress. I don't know where it all is heading. I just keep at the work, looking for ways to build a shelter of faith from the rubble I'm standing on. And this very personal agenda governs the way I search theology. I'm not a theologian. And much of what passes for theology today leaves me cold. So when I read theology I'm actually looking for a lifeline, some new way of thinking about this rubble that allows me to fit the pieces together. That's why I like a thinker like Rene Girard. He's allowed me to pick up some of the pieces from the Old and New Testaments and fit them together in a way that makes sense to me. Is Girard right? I don't know. He's just a tool for me, some glue I found to hold some of the rubble together. In short, my theological reading is very idiosyncratic and has a very desperate feel to it. I'm standing on this rubble and I'm looking for some good ideas about how to put it back together again. Particularly given that some of the pieces of my prior faith have been damaged beyond repair. I have a lot less to work with.

I expect that regular readers know exactly what I'm talking about. And this is why you come here. Like me you are looking for tools, good ideas to piece faith back together again. And, in light of this, most of you approach me pragmatically. If what I'm saying is helpful, you listen. If what I say is unhelpful, you move on. Just like I do when I read theology. In short, most of you aren't coming here to save me, you have no interest in being my Catcher in the Rye. Rather, like me, you are in a desperate search to find shelter after your own post-Katrina faith experience.

And to the Catchers out there, I do remember the days I had a house. Fondly. But now all I've got is rubble. So week in and week out you'll find me here trying to fit two broken pieces together or sharing some new tool--some bit of theological glue--that I've just found. And if it's useful, come on back. If not, that's okay, there are a lot of other interesting sites on the Internet. And life is short. You don't want to waste your life arguing with a nut like me in the comments section. Take a walk. Hug your kids. Read a good book.

In conclusion, in all of this I'm trying to describe something that Soren Kierkegaard said, unsurprisingly, much better than I many, many years ago. There is no better description as to what this blog is about:
And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked.
To both Shipwrecked and Catchers: Grace and peace.

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9 thoughts on “The Shipwrecked and the Catchers”

  1. Richard, I love the analogies here - I see myself in the rubble of a once-fine house and in the shipwreck. What some folks in my (past) circles have difficulty seeing is that one can be content in this space. Faith ain't what it once was, and I have no idea if it will yet be anything at all... yet I am at peace with the unknown floating here in "seventy fathoms of water" (Kierkegaard).

  2. Questions are great. Deconstruction can be useful. But given the number of impressionable minds out there, some of whom often substitute the sincerity of the messenger for the veracity of the message, Matthew 18:6 must always be kept in mind. It's a clear, stark warning, and in light of the ubiquitousness of the internet, I'd hate to be the cause of leading someone down the wrong path. It does not say, for example, "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea [unless your intentions are really good]". That's not directed solely at the ideas in the post, but rather to comments here and across the internet on these issues. My 2 cents.

  3. @Guest
    Are the ideas and teachings you hold to exempt from falling under Matt. 18:6? Are traditional or conservative ideas just a prone to being a stumbling block?

  4. You and i, Brother Richard, are on the same voyage, and that is why i find your concerns, your responses, and your various provocations a matter of daily interest. We are not in the same place now, for we started in quite different places, and i launched long before you were born. We have made some quite different ports of call, but we have also visited some of the same stations along the way -- the great Kierkegaard not the least of them. We have drunk from some of the same wells and eaten at some of the same tables, and yet we are, i think, quite different, and that is good. i am learning from you, most especially in the many areas where we do not "agree." i am not interested in echoes; i can talk to myself whenever i please, but i learn from other voices and other perspectives, from other places on the journey.

    In the typhoons that have battered my little boat, i have never once "lost" faith God and our Lord Jesus -- although i have had, and have yet, many failures of faith, but that is something else. Our Brother Peter, in the New Testament, failed in faith many times, but never quite lost it. i don't have to imagine how he felt.

    i have never lost faith in God, but quite early on i lost all faith in humankind. ("I shall not fear the Last Judgment," says one of the great Camus's characters, "after having known the judgment of humankind.") i turned then to Scripture, and i have sought to learn the history of Christianity in its various contexts. i have sought to be useful in struggles against oppression, helping other people to help themselves, saying what needed to be said and doing, as i was able, what needed to be done. i was once politically "active," but i have come, with the help of Scripture and experience, to understand all participation in the human political order as idolatrous. Along the way in my journey i have acquired some knowledge and appreciation of human psychology, and you and i have that much in common: You have a little Scripture, and i have have a little psychology; i can learn from you.

    God's Peace to you.

    d

  5. My morning commute is fascinating. I drive through Mid-City New Orleans to the university I work at in the Gentilly area. Most of my drive is quite picturesque. I drive past the beautiful oak trees in City Park draped with Spanish Moss then I cross over the bayou. Right before I arrive at work I drive through a neighborhood that was severely damaged by Katrina and has yet to return. Some houses in the neighborhood are picture perfect with manicured lawns and new roofs. Others are, as you said, nothing more than piles of ruble. Last week one of the abandoned houses in the neighborhood finally collapsed. On Wednesday the house was still leaned to, but on Thursday it was a pile of dust. As I pass though the neighborhood I pray for the families who live there. For the ones who had the strength to come back and the ones who had to cut their losses. I used to drive through neighborhoods like this and feel sick to my stomach. I wondered how long we would have to live with all that rubble, a constant reminder of the day our world fell apart. Now I see the destruction in a new light. Perhaps because I have become more comfortable with my own "spiritual rubble." I know the heartbreak of standing in the rubble, both physically and spiritually, all to well. But, just as I pray for the families in the neighborhood I pray for believers everywhere, the ones who reside in perfectly manicured theology, the ones who've abandoned their destroyed home altogether, but especially the ones like you who hold on to hope and try to put the pieces back together. I'm thankful you are brave enough to share your journey to rebuild your spiritual house with the rest of us

  6. My morning commute is fascinating. I drive through Mid-City New Orleans to the university I work at in the Gentilly area. Most of my drive is quite picturesque. I drive past the beautiful oak trees in City Park draped with Spanish Moss then I cross over the bayou. Right before I arrive at work I drive through a neighborhood that was severely damaged by Katrina and has yet to fully return. Some houses in the neighborhood are picture perfect with manicured lawns and new roofs. Others are, as you said, nothing more than piles of ruble. Last week one of the abandoned houses in the neighborhood finally collapsed. On Wednesday the house was still leaned to, but on Thursday it was a pile of dust. As I pass though the neighborhood I often pray for the families who live there. For the ones who had the strength to come back and the ones who had to cut their losses. I used to drive through neighborhoods like this and feel sick to my stomach. I wondered how long we would have to live with all that rubble, a constant reminder of the day our world fell apart. Now I see the destruction in a new light. Perhaps because I have become more comfortable with my own "spiritual rubble." I know the heartbreak of standing in the rubble, both physically and spiritually, all to well. Today, just as I pray for the families in the neighborhood I pray for believers everywhere, the ones who reside in perfectly manicured theological homes, the ones who've abandoned their destroyed home altogether, but especially the ones like you who hold on to hope and try to put the pieces back together. I'm thankful you are brave enough to share your journey to rebuild your spiritual house with the rest of us. Blessings.

  7. I just received this blog link in an email from a friend to check out.  I loved the post and how your journey is unfolding.  I am a person who is also on a journey and enjoy asking those difficult questions because I find growth in the asking though I find there are less answers than questions (perhaps that's par for the course).  I do have a question though, in your analogy of tearing down walls, questioning if they are supporting walls or not, how do you determine if they are?  And ultimately how is the footing defined that these wall are built on?  Are they build on our understandings or is there something more "concrete" (sorry for the very bad pun there lol) that they are built on?

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