The Now and the Know

This is my first post written using a third party editor. Wordpress was being stupid, so here we are. For anyone who is curious, I’m using "http://www.qumana.com/". Thus far, it’s been easy to set up and use. I’m generally a fan. Now, on to the good stuff.

As you might imagine, I frequently find myself in conversations about God, God’s nature, and what it might mean to follow God and/or profess faith in God. There’s a lot of God talk. I was having one such conversation recently with a friend of mine. She is an intelligent girl who asks intelligent questions. She is something of a self-proclaimed humanist. What is a humanist, you ask? Well, AmericanHumanist.org defines at as:

…a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

In essence, a humanist believes in, well, humanity. You will note the denouncing of the need for any kind of, "…theism and other supernatural beliefs…". It is the belief that we can make the world better and we can do it without God or any semblance of an organized believe structure.

#1 – Zero Sum Game

Here’s one of the problems with this thought: it seems to me that "personal fulfillment" and "the greater good of humanity" find themselves on opposite sides of the fence more often than not, especially in American society. We, often under the banner of American individualistic, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, have created a culture that is a zero sum game: your loss is my win.

Let’s ask ourselves this question: if I were to live a life of personal fulfillment by cultural standards, would I find myself aligned with the greater good of humanity? If we’re being honest, then I think the answer is no.

#2 – The Good

If you’ve been exposed to philosophy or theology in at all in your life, you’re probably familiar with concepts of "the good". And therein lies my second issue with humanism, as briefly defined above: it lacks a common understanding of the good.

In this system (or lack thereof) I have no basis for saying that, for example, it is wrong to take something that isn’t yours. We can certainly attempt to make the argument that people behaving in this manner is somehow unhealthy for the community, but without any shared understanding of the "greater good" the argument has little weight.

Perhaps the best way I think to explain this is stoplights. We have a shared understanding of what the colors on a stoplight mean, red means stop, green means go, yellow means go faster… and so on. It is this shared understanding that allows traffic to flow and thus enables us to commute safely. Now imagine for a moment that we lacked that shared understanding. Say, for example, there was just one man in your town that decided red meant go and every red light he accelerated, because in his understanding of stoplights that’s how that light is supposed to be interpreted. What would happen? There would be chaos and more than a few fender benders.

However, because share both an authority (the government who created and maintains the traffic system) and a common interpolation of said authority’s rules, we can drive and not die… speaking of…

#3 – Lifeboats

As we often said in our theology classes when having discussions of this nature, the only shared understanding of the good that humanity apart from God possesses is that we don’t like dying. No one wants to be dead, there aren’t too many people who would argue that point. And, for the sake of argument, let’s say we got everyone in the world to agree with this common understanding of the good. I’m not a fan of recycling material (although I do it frequently) but Don Miller’s quote from his book Searching for God Knows What is too pertinent to exclude here:

The thing is, if people are in a lifeboat, the reason they feel passionate about being a good person and all is because if they aren’t, they are going to be thrown overboard; they are going to be killed.

If all we can agree on is that we’d rather not be dead, we’re existing in a lifeboat. The only reason I’m nice to you, the only reason I don’t steal, the only reason I don’t cheat, the only reason I behave in a way that vaguely resembles morality is so that you don’t kill me.

#4 – Forward Motion

So let’s say again that we understand goodness to be us not dying. At best all we can do in this system is run in place. One of the things I love about Christianity is that there some sense of moving forward, towards something. If our only desire is to not die, all we can do is sit around and devise better ways to not die. That’s no way to live… or well it is but… nevermind…

#5 – Why We Need Favre (and Jesus)

This is the question I ask myself when facing humanism: do I honestly believe we (humanity) can do this on our own? The answer, I think, is Brett Favre.

So Favre now plays for the Vikings, which I could talk about but I’m not going to. Favre was brought in by the Vikings last year pretty late in the day, after the majority of OTAs and training camp was over and done with. Instead of going with one of the three QBs already on their roster, the Vikes opted to go out and get Favre. This begs the question: why? My answer to that question is pretty simple, it’s all about hope. With Favre they gained a guy who had a history that included kicking a drug habit, winning a superbowl, breaking a bunch of passing records, and helping the people around him become better players. Based on the things he’d done, based on his story, the Vikings put their hope in Favre, knowing that he gave them the best chance to accomplish their goals.

At a certain point in the aforementioned conversation with my friend, she said that she agreed that what Jesus taught us about how to treat one another was the best way. She even went so far as to say that she modeled, in some way, the teachings of Jesus. Where we eventually arrived was at this question: why is it important that Jesus was God? Why is Jesus divinity important? The answer again is hope.

Let’s say for a moment that we are willing to concede that Jesus teaches us the best way to exist in community. In doing so, we arrive at a common understanding of the good, so yay for us. But if Jesus is in no way divine, we are saying that we believe we can attain perfect community all on our own. We’ve all had numerous experiences that indicate the opposite, we can’t do this on our own.

Jesus has a history. God has a history. We know from the Scriptures and (perhaps more importantly) from our own experiences that God is the one who provides, the one who shows up, the one who abides with us. We have seen and heard things that God has done and now we put our hope is a God we know can get the job done.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I find Christians annoying. Now I know what you’re thinking (or might be thinking), “But wait, Chris, aren’t you a Christian? At the very least some sort of church associated type of individual?” Why yes, dedicated readers (all 1 of you) I am. And that’s probably why I find Jonathan Acuff’s (you can follow John on Twitter: @prodigaljohn) new book “Stuff Christians Like” so entertaining. What John does in his book is simple: he provides a list of stuff Christians like. I’m not all the way through it, but it’s been a speedy read so far due to the comedic nature of the writing and the “blog post” short, serial style. Just so you have an idea, here are a few examples of “stuff Christian’s like”:

Example 1: Using “Faith Like a Child” as an escape pod from difficult theological discussions.

Example 2: Fearing that God will send you to Africa if you give him your entire life.

Example 3 (a personal favorite of mine): Missionary Dating: When God Calls You to Convert the Sexy and Unchurched

Each list item is followed by a short essay, outlining in hilarious detail what John is talking about when he says things like, “The Side Hug”. I stood in Barnes and Noble today with this book and read about a quarter of it, laughing out loud (NOT ‘lol’ing’ thank you) at his clever insights. Reading the book, however, I am reminded of something that I had apparently forgotten: I’m often annoyed by Christians.

Now don’t get me wrong, at some point or another I’ve been guilty of 90% of the annoying-but-true items in the book, so I’m not claiming elitism. But if nothing else this book caused me think: why are we (Christians) the way we are? Why do we act the way we act and do the things we do? The answer, I think, has something to do with Tiger Woods.

You’d have to have been living under a rock… in an underground cave… in Antarctica… to have not heard about Tiger Woods in the last several months. Around Thanksgiving time his scandal broke and it caused him to go into hiding. For a few months, literally no one could find him. (My Theory: he was wherever Osama is… get it?) But recently he made his much anticipated return to golf, participating the last weekend’s Masters Tournament at Augusta. Spoiler Alert: He didn’t win. Sorry if you had the whole four days recorded on your TiVO and were planning to watch it tonight… My bad. Right around the time he announced this return, Nike (pretty much his sole remaining sponsor) released a controversial ad that showed Tiger in black and white… and had the voice of his deceased father imparting wisdom spliced into it. It caused a bit of an uproar, to say the least.

Here’s what I find most interesting about it, however, is that it doesn’t actually try and sell you anything. There is no actual mention of golf, Tiger doesn’t appear to be on a golf course, and there aren’t tiny elves swinging golf clubs in the background (would’ve been weird if there had been). Nike isn’t trying to sell you any gear with this ad, they’re trying to sell you Tiger. More specifically, they are trying to get you to buy Tiger 2.0, the new and morally and/or ethically improved version.

Here’s the rub: I think more often than not this is what churches are doing too. We are all being sold a certain picture of what it means to be Christian. Not unlike the Nike Tiger ad, we are told it means you become a certain type of person. You speak in a certain way, eat certain foods, drink certain drinks (or don’t), read certain books, and hang out with certain people. I’m not attempting to demonize all of that, some of it is good and it is all well-intentioned. In fact, I would be willing to bet that most of the things that have become Christian cliches have their roots in something with actual meaning and purpose. But all of that meaning has been lost now and what remains is doing stuff for the sake of doing it.

There is one aspect of this that really gets under my skin: the idea that one must be counter-culture in order to be truly Christian. Let me attempt to explain. While in college I had the opportunity to hear author Shane Claiborne speak at a neighboring college. He, along with several others, is the founder of a community called “The Simple Way” (see the above link) which is an example of what many are now calling a “new monastic” way of life. Shane spoke about his experiences helping others and witnessing, which included several arrests and subsequent nights in jail. I really have nothing personally against Shane or The Simple Way or anyone who reads Shane or loves The Simple Way, but the message I took away from this was: if you haven’t been arrested in the act of following Christ, you’re not truly following him.

Whoa.

Is it what he really meant to say? Probably not. But if that’s what I heard, then other people heard it too. And it’s contributing to a very dangerous (and somewhat absurd) myth about what it means to be Christian, which is that one must oppose “culture” at all times and with every step and breath. Yoder writes about this:

To make “distinctiveness” a value criterion is to measure the truth value of meaning system A in terms of the other systems (whether B or C or N or X) that happen to be around, from which [A] is supposed to differ. That is a method mistake. Some of the neighboring systems may be very much like it. Some of them may be historically derived from it, which is true of most of the post-Christian value systems in the West. To ask that Christian thought be unique is nonsense. What we should ask of Christian statements is that they be specifically or specifiably Christian, i.e., true to kind, authentically representing their species. Whether a specifiably Christian statement [or social structure] is “distinctive” depends on the other guy.

Rant #1: Defining Things by What They Are Not

It’s a theological and philosophical no-no to only define a thing by what it is not. That is to say, in attempting to describe a coffee cup to you I wouldn’t say things like, “it’s not a humpback whale” and “it’s not a dump truck”. There are umpteen billion things that the coffee cup is not. We would be here forever if I only used “it’s not” statements. And while what the coffee cup is not contributes to what it is, the cup is not defined by what it isn’t. (Does your head hurt yet? Mine does.) If I really wanted you to understand the essence of what my coffee cup (I’m sitting here at Mars Cafe in Des Moines) actually is, I would tell you things like, “it holds liquid” or “it has a handle” or “it’s made of porcelain” or “it’s white”. A thing is not defined by what it is not, but rather by what it actually is, by the qualities it possesses.

The same is true about Christianity, which is it bothers me so much to say that Christianity is “counter-culture”. That statement defines Christianity by what it isn’t: it isn’t popular culture. But that doesn’t actually define anything or tell me much about what it means to be Christian.  And furthermore…

Rant #2: What If Culture Changes?

The other big problem with saying that Christianity is “counter-culture” is that culture is not static. Culture (which here means the secular things to which Christianity so often opposed) is ever changed. Right now, secular culture might tell us to do things like only look out for ourselves and value things like money and stuff. I’m not going to argue, that is certainly the opposite of what Jesus tells us.  The key problem with attempting to use this as a part of the definition of Christianity is essentially this: what if it works? That is to say, what if “culture” starts telling us to love one another, take only out of need and give back to others. What if people actually start doing it and it becomes the norm. Is Christianity still supposed to be “counter-culture” then? Like Yoder says, “Whether a specifiably Christian statement [or social structure] is “distinctive” depends on the other guy.” Whether Christianity is counter-culture or not doesn’t depend on Christianity at all, it depends on the culture. If I say, “This cup is not a humpback whale,” we all know what a humpback whale is, giving us a vague (and almost useless) idea of what the cup is. A humpback whale is not variable, it is static. A humpback whale is what it is. But if a humpback whale were to suddenly become a cup (somehow) then my statement, “This cup is not a humpback whale” no longer makes sense. And therein lies the problem with defining Christianity as counter-culture.

Rant #3: Counter-Counter Culture

Part of me wants to say that I’m counter-counter culture. In describing myself I will say things like, “Look at how not counter-culture I am!”… But that seems problematic. I’ll just say this instead:

All the coffee cup can do is be what it is… the rest is up to the whales.