Just Rambling

There have been a lot of thoughts rambling about in my head now for a while, and the truth is that I'm not sure where to begin. Every time I come to my computer and try to type them out, my mind goes blank, and I can't bring them back.

While I'm thinking about it, they go something like this:

First: I find it sad that to say you have a degree in theology these days is all too often taken as declaring that your college major was underwater basket weaving, especially by those in the fields of psychology and counseling. It isn't necessarily their fault, as much as it is ours and the theological, biblical, or religious communities in general. In some real sense, our field was the original study of the “psyche” (the word for soul in Greek) and its treatment, and thus ours was the original psychology. But because we have drifted away from the treatment and deliverance of the psyche from our fundamental disorder and all too often concern ourselves with arguments over semantics, and irrelevant and inconsequential teachings, and shied away the practical applications of the Gospel because we have ourselves misunderstood or been ignorant of them; because of all of these things and more we have practically no credibility in that field within which we should know better than anyone.

Second: I recently watched “The Last Airbender” for the third time in the theater today. The acting and dialogue aren't great, but there's just something about it which speaks to me, to the point where I get choked up and nearly cry in a couple of scenes. Judging by the crowd in the theater this late after the movie opened this summer, I'm not the only one to whom it speaks. And I have to ask myself “why?”

“Avatar: The Last Airbender”, as a movie and as the original TV series takes much of it's spirituality from the eastern religions and beliefs, and over the last twenty or thirty years, many western people have turned to these beliefs to fill a spiritual need which they have been unable to meet in the churches. I have written and ranted in my rambles a lot about the catalysts involved in this exodus so I won't go through a full rant here about them. But it is sad.

I myself found a great deal of peace in Buddhist and Taoist writings, and a great deal of agreement and complementary teachings. I was disturbed about my reaction until I began to read such writings as “The Imitation of Christ,” “The Cloud of Unknowing,” and those by St. Peter of Damascus, and others from the Spiritual and Mystical traditions of the Church; and in these writings I found our brothers from the centuries before us saying much the same thing about practice, focus, detachment, and self-abandonment as the Buddhist and Taoist writings do while adamantly focused on Jesus Christ.

I have to wonder if, in some way, the world of “The Last Airbender” doesn't reflect the state of spirituality today, if not the Church directly. We, like the four nations, are fighting amongst ourselves. I can't even speak to old friends at times without them looking for an opportunity to try and “convert” me, or feel like I have to defend my Christianity as though it were somehow inferior to theirs. And in the end, I think most of us are trying desperately to practice our faith in Jesus Christ, knowing the Father through Him, but often don't really know where to turn. In some sense, like those in the movie, I think many of us are hoping that there is an “Avatar” out there who can teach us and lead us back to the way we somehow just know things are supposed to be.

I think this is why so many people leave the churches for something else, or else just think the Church is fraudulent at best.

Third: I have to be careful with this. I think, in some small way, I'm getting the hang of this. I'm not saying I've arrived, or that I'm perfect, or anything like that. If I were to feel or think that way, it would be a sure sign that I hadn't got a clue and was plunging headlong down a really, really dark path. But I think I'm finally at the point where it no longer feels like I'm spinning my wheels spiritually.

I'm finding that, at least for me, withdrawing from myself, and denying myself has less to do with isolation and more to do with being with people. I tried for months, as I wrote about before, to spend time in meditation, sometimes hours at a time. Meditation, prayer, private Eucharist. Sometimes it was well, sometimes it produced little it seemed. And then, a couple of months ago I was convicted about it. I had gone to do my prayers and Communion on my own again, and then realized that it had been a few weeks since my wife, not to mention my kids, had taken Holy Communion. I then included my wife. The truth is that it was a bit uncomfortable for me at first. In some ways it still is, because I have always been uncomfortable with other people being involved with my prayer life.

But that's just the point. I was trying to stay in a place where I was comfortable. I wasn't denying or abandoning self when I retreated to do my prayers, I was running headlong to it. And in so doing, I was preventing my family from receiving the Eucharist, and denying them Jesus rather than providing Him to them. I wasn't fulfilling my calling as a priest, I was abandoning it without truly understanding what I was doing, and so instead of drawing closer to Christ through self-abandonment, I was pushing Him away and keeping those dearest to me from receiving Him.

We began doing morning and evening prayers as a family using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and doing Mass at home with both my wife and kids; and I have struggled with it. But, that's the point. I do struggle with it because it's not comfortable to have anyone else be a part of my prayer life. Just like it's not comfortable to do the dishes, or feed the animals, or water the garden when my wife is unable to do so. It's not comfortable to sit and listen to someone rant about their problems when all you want to do is get away and watch a movie, or read, or play a game.

I think I'm finally beginning to get the hang of this because I am now recognizing that it isn't me who is doing any of these things when they happen, but the Grace of God within me. I recognized it before, but now I think I've got a grasp on it, if that makes any sense. It's penetrating through my thick skull that I can't just plow through a day and assume that I'm going to be kind, or gentle, or gracious. I can't assume that I'm going to keep my temper if things don't go my way. I'm accepting now that whatever temptations I encounter are because I want to do those things and therefore I am the one who is dysfunctional, not the circumstances surrounding me, and because I am the one who is dysfunctional I must, I repeat must, confess this dysfunction daily, hourly, minutely, and ask for His grace to flow through me, for Him to overflow within me with His presence, and power, a love, and compassion, and wisdom, and humility because I am poor, blind, weak, naked, and ignorant. I have a serious disorder, and ignoring that fact isn't going to make it go away. It's only when you admit that you have one, and apply yourself to the treatment plan that you are able to learn to function in spite of it. If you at any point deny that it exists, you are only lying to yourself and will make it worse, not better.

At any rate, I think I've finally said my peace, so I'll quit rambling for now.

A Ramble About Temptation

The Scriptures say that:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:13-15, WEB)

Temptations occur because inwardly we want something (or don't want something, as the case may be), and are then told “no, you can't have it your way”. For example, someone who absolutely cannot stand chocolate will not be tempted to eat one even if a hundred bars of chocolate are placed in front of them. This must be understood and accepted, if you are tempted to do something, it is because somewhere within you is the desire to do it.

We don't like to admit that fact. The married man who believes himself to be godly may refuse to admit to himself that he struggles with adulterous thoughts because he is somehow sexually attracted to women other than his wife. In other words, he doesn't want to admit that he is capable of such a thing, when in fact deep down he is not only perfectly capable of it, but a part of him wants to do so. The fact that the temptation occurs is a glaring reminder of our deep spiritual disorder; a disorder we may pay lip service to, but is painful to be reminded of in reality. It is so disturbing, and even traumatic, to the human psyche to be faced with this disorder that a person's mind can throw everything possible at him in order to avoid dealing with the reality of it.

This is why God permits temptations. We have a deep need to be constantly reminded of our problem, because we, by nature, constantly seek to ignore it and remain in self-denial about it. We have to be shown it on a regular basis. If we aren't, we will fall into the delusion that there's nothing wrong with us. Our salvation depends on us drawing nearer to God through Jesus Christ. Without the constant reminder of the problem, most of us (myself included), would drift farther and farther away as we delude ourselves into thinking that we don't have a problem and so don't need to approach Him in prayer and confession.

And, as 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, God allows the temptation to go so far, but no farther. The purpose behind permitting them is therapeutic, not to make us slide farther into the abyss. Just enough to remind us of our spiritual disorder and our need for Him, but not enough to where we can't say “no” and send us spiraling downward beyond our control.

If we are tempted to eat doughnuts when on a diet, it is because we want to eat the doughnuts and have been told “no”. If we are tempted to steal, it is because we want the item in question, and feel that we have every right to violate the person from whom we are taking it. If we are tempted to “sexual misconduct”, it is because we are sexually aroused by the thought of it and want to do it.

It is not the fault of the bikini clad girl that the self-professed Christian man struggles with his thoughts about her. The man desires her, refuses to admit it to himself or God, and continues to struggle in a losing battle until he does admit it and seeks help. Making her put on a tee shirt and blaming her for her indiscretion doesn't remove the primary problem within the man. It might be kind of her to do so in recognition of the man's weakness, but it is the man's weakness which is the issue, not her choice of swimwear.

The ironic thing about the above example, is that we, as Christian men, have a tendency to become angry with the woman and blame her rather than facing the problem within ourselves. There are some men who will blame the woman for being raped if the clothing she wore was too provocative. There are many thieves who will blame the person they stole from for their thievery. There are many people who eat doughnuts who blame the baker for making them.

The first step in the treatment of any disorder or addiction is admitting that you have one. Once this is done, in order to continue making progress you must continuously be aware that you still have that problem and come to terms with it on a regular basis. It isn't the liquor store's fault if a recovering alcoholic walks in and buys the alcohol believing that he no longer has that problem. For all intents and purposes, it isn't the drug dealer's fault if the recovering addict pops by on the street corner for a quick fix because he thinks he can handle it. If I myself were to pop by and speak to the same dealer, there would be no issue because I myself have no such addiction and would not be tempted to buy and use it.

Removing the temptation only serves to delay the inevitable if the root problem is not faced and admitted. I love watching Stargate. It is also a distraction from spiritual pursuits. Putting away the DVDs for a while doesn't solve the problem, it only delays it. Removing the DVDs altogether doesn't solve the problem, because I will be tempted to go out and replace them. The root problem is the desire to escape by watching Stargate and to see “what happens next”.

In some respects, that God permits temptation can be one of His greatest gifts in our spiritual growth because it encourages us to keep our eyes focused on Him, where they need to be, and to face the reality of our spiritual disorder.

A Ramble about Creation

I don't think I've ever written a ramble directly about this subject. I know I've alluded to it, but I don't think I've directly talked about it. If I have, please forgive the redundancy. I just started mulling it over again in my mind after reading an article in Scientific American online, and then reading some of the responses in the article from other well meaning Christians.

The book of Genesis says that God created the world in six days. Modern science says that the universe, the planet, and all life on it took billions of years to form. This is “the” classic argument between those of us who believe the Holy Scriptures, and those of us who read and keep up with modern scientific study, theories, and advances in understanding. There's a lot of good research and evidence that indicates that modern science has a more correct view of the time-line involved, and yet the Bible is the inspired word of God, and whether or not we accept the doctrine of “sola scriptura” (the doctrine which teaches that Sacred Scripture alone is sufficient for doctrine and teaching [to which I do not ascribe]) there are few professing Christians who will declare the Bible to be somehow wrong (myself included).

Thus began the great war of words between Bible believing Christians and sincere scientists (“the Bible says this!” and “but the data says this!”). The great conflict between general and special revelation. The question then becomes, if both means of revelation are given by God, how can they contradict each other?

I remember reading in one book by a Dr. Hugh Ross (it was either “The Fingerprint of God” or “The Creator and the Cosmos”), an astrophysicist who is also a professing Christian, that the order of the six days of creation reads like watching the formation of the earth and evolutionary history from the viewpoint of someone standing on the earth. There are many who have taken a similar standpoint putting forth ideas such as each “day” of creation as actually being an “evolutionary age” of time.

I would like to go back and expand on Dr. Ross' observation and suggest that what Genesis is describing is not six literal 24 hour days of “creation”, but it is describing six literal 12 hour periods of revelation about creation. Genesis itself gives us the clue to this as it describes, literally, “there is evening and there is morning, day one, … day two, … day three, etc.” Moses is describing being shown something for twelve hours at a time, and then given twelve hours to process what he has seen and sleep before the next round.

Here is my opinion. Moses was on the mountain for forty days according to Exodus. During those forty days, God took six days to reveal millions of years of His creative acts. Being God, He showed it to Moses, from Moses' viewpoint on the ground, in a kind of “fast forward”, as much as his human mind could assimilate and process at a time, and then it all amalgamated in his mind as it attempted to absorb and retain all of it, and he then wrote down the gist of what he could remember. The point of the book of the first chapter of Genesis then becomes not how God created the world, but that He created the world.

How is it that we have gotten to the point that a Christian's personal faith and relationship with God is so fragile that it depends on a specific, yet scientifically problematic, interpretation of Holy Scripture? How is it that we have gotten to the point that entire theologies of salvation are dependent on a specific translation or understanding of a particular word in Hebrew or Greek?

How would some Christians react to the information that, most likely, the Old Testament was not originally written in the oldest language we have copies in, namely a 6th century Babylonian dialect of Hebrew? The Torah, the first five books, were written in approximately the fifteenth century before Christ, concurrent with the lifetime of Moses. Hebrew did not exist as a language prior to the time of King David, approximately 1000 B.C.

Hebrew as we know it is a descendant of a dialect of Canaanite, much like Spanish is a descendant of Latin, and was likely adopted after the conquest of Canaan and the subsequent (forbidden) intermingling between the Israeli and Canaanite peoples described in the book of Judges. The descendants of Jacob and his twelve sons were in Egypt for four hundred years, and there is no record of the Egyptian Pharoahs seeking to suppress their language or culture, even while they were ordering the death of the firstborn. Furthermore there is a consistent pattern of the Israeli, and later Jewish people, of adopting the language of the people of the land in which they are living. So that we have a dialect of German such as Yiddish, a dialect of Spanish such as Ladino, prior to this in the time of Christ, the Jewish people predominantly spoke either Greek, or Aramaic. Hebrew itself was such a dead language among most of the people by the time of Ezra, at the end of the Babylonian captivity, that Ezra had to translate the Scriptures for the masses. Hebrew only really existed among the Rabbis much as Latin only really continued and still continues among the Roman Catholic clergy and religious. This was the reason for the translation of the Scriptures into the Aramaic targums, and then later the translation from the Hebrew into the Greek Septuagint, which was the Bible most familiar to the Jewish people of the first centuries both B.C. and A.D.

This in mind, there is good circumstantial evidence that the original words of Moses were likely written in Egyptian, or some Israeli variant of it which was later translated into Hebrew, probably during or after the time of King David, and there is good internal evidence within the Scriptures that they were later appended and added to in both Hebrew and Aramaic (and then later in Greek, although most Protestants will likely argue this point).

I believe that God inspired the original words. I also believe that God was perfectly capable of inspiring each well meaning editor, redactor, and translator until we have the Scriptures we have today. I believe that the important message that God intended to be passed down from generation to generation continues to be passed down. That He created the heavens and the earth. That He did it all by Himself with no one to assist Him. That He did it in the way he wanted, and in the time (which means nothing to Him) He chose to do it.

I find it fascinating that there is good archaeological evidence that the beginnings of civilization arose between six and seven thousand years ago near Tabriz, Iran and southern Georgia, the best location I have ever heard for the geographical site of the Biblical garden of Eden (believe it or not, it matches perfectly with the Biblical description of where Eden was located). I find it just as fascinating that human beings most likely started wearing clothes about 150,000 years ago (roughly when the body louse evolved). I also find it fascinating that Neanderthals actually died out between thirty and fifty thousand years ago and were not genetically related or descended from modern Homo Sapiens.

I think God told us what he considered important in the Holy Scriptures. I also think there's a lot He didn't say; whole Chapters of Human history which He refused to elaborate on because He didn't think it necessary for His purposes to tell us. Chapters, some of them quite dark, which we get small glimmers of through archaeological and paleontological research. Some of which chapters are likely better left buried in the past from what I have read. This doesn't make Him a liar under any circumstances, but it does make Him far more prudent than ourselves in what he chooses to reveal directly.

The important realization of our human history which Genesis tells us, is that somewhere in our distant past, our ancestors screwed up royally and passed down a disorder which keeps us from knowing God without His direct intervention. The next important realization is the constant direct intervention by God in our history so that we would come to know Him in spite of our disorder.

If we are continuously fighting about how much time (a concept which is meaningful only to human beings) God took to create the world, were are limiting God and missing the real message of Holy Scripture, that God wants to help us and has been working without a break to do so, through this meaningless distraction. This divisiveness can only be described as the very definition of heresy.