God Sauce: a dialogue

My hope is that we can create a dialogue around God, Jesus, and belief.  Please join me by posting your responses to this blog post on your own blogs or as comments to this blog entry. 


How about we stop for a moment and really think hard about what it means to "believe."

For example, if I am to say that I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, from the outset, I might be doing a few things: 

1) Am I making it seem like I still live in the Middle Ages?  But the only two kinds of "Lord" that exist today are King Pins and Apartment Owners.  I don't buy illegal substances from Jesus nor do I pay rent to Jesus Christ.  So, that way of thinking of Jesus Christ as Lord just don't flow.  Although, I do get a kick out of imagining a bearded, tattooed Jew in Birkenstocks smoking cigarettes, while preaching abiding love to tax collectors and prostitutes. 

2) Am I making it seem like I'll do work for Jesus Christ, as long as he, in turn, protects me?  Although the structure of Feudalism no longer holds sway on this Earth, perhaps its function does?  Feudal Lords used to pledge to protect their surfs (and peasants) in exchange for manual labor.  So perhaps I could say that I do the work of Christ (his manual labor) and in exchange he protects me from things?  But here I encounter a rational problem, and a problem of suffering to boot.  How could a man who has no tangible existence—not one that I can grasp using my five senses—protect me from the material things I do sense?  And, then, wouldn’t I have never been called a f*g, nor beaten up, nor stolen from, nor had my heart broken, etc?  Wouldn’t I have been able to avoid suffering?  People might say that these material benefits only come when I do the work of Christ—perhaps I wasn’t Saintly enough.  I do curse, and I do possess a more liberal understanding of sexuality than my Evangelical friends would like me to have, I don’t give money to everyone who asks, I don’t do every possible good thing one could do.  So maybe I just don’t do enough of Christ’s work to reap the material benefits.  Or maybe by, “protect,” he doesn’t mean, “keep from suffering.”  Maybe he only means particular things—but, then, which particular things? And how would I know which they are, if they’ve never happened to me?  Much akin to Republicans who keep arguing that even with President Obama’s stimulus package, the economy has worsened; I (and they) have no counterfactual.  Obama would argue that the economy is not as bad as it could have been, and so might Jesus argue that my life is not as bad as it could have been.  Indeed, but isn’t that simply a matter of the good choices I’ve made?  After all, I am the one who decided to go to private high school, which is how I likely got into a better college and a better grad school.  So then, perhaps those good choices were guided by Jesus… but how can I tell that Jesus has communicated with me?  How do I determine whether the thoughts I came up with to make the decisions I made were not merely in my mind, but were also a product of Jesus Christ’s guidance?  And how do I tell that life would be worse, and not better, or the same?  It seems, calling Jesus Christ my Lord, is complicated.  

3) When I embed these abstract ideas, like “Jesus Christ,” and, “Lord,” into a discussion, I am either forgoing logic altogether in a stance of Faith, or constructing my own logic within a context of Faith.  The latter is what theology attempts to do, and which I would prefer to avoid doing.  (So, then, would somebody tell me why I am getting a Masters in Theological Studies?)  Faith does possess its own logic, a non-rational logic, and makes sense given its divergent axioms.  These axioms, however, make little sense in the context of science, of materialism, and of rationality.  Thus it is pointless to waste time attempting to justify something according to a logic, which has its foundation in faulty axioms.  Jesus cannot be my Lord, not if I accept the laws of physics (which are not made up, but discovered through a rigorous application of the scientific method).  But bless those who seem to make a living writing and studying theology!  Someone’s gotta do it—just not me.   

4) So then, to say that Jesus Christ is my Lord, is called a belief.  It can’t be scientifically demonstrated that Jesus is my Lord—it’s just what I believe.  I believe outside scientific systems of thought.  We simply separate questions of religion from the realm of science—we call them two different systems of thinking, two different structures of culture, and then we move on.  Or do we?

5) Making a claim that “Jesus Christ is my Lord” could be, simply, mystical.  Perhaps we are all talking about the same sort of experience to which I refer when I say that Jesus Christ is my Lord.  And so it is merely a matter of cultural framing, one born of the interplay between science (or rationality) and religion, which has informed the growth of the Western world sense the pre-industrial period.  See The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, by Ernst Cassirer.

Thus, what I have over-simplistically demonstrated is that, culture frames the way we think about experience, and it even constructs for us how we experience experience.  I don’t think it would be far-fetched, even to imagine that ways of relating to thoughts (like meditation) change brain-patterns, the organization of our synapses.  See this article from NPR and this from the Harvard Gazette.  And for more technical articles see this website off of Harvard University’s main webpage.

Belief itself is an artifact of Western culture.  To believe in something suggests doubt, because it brings its own counterfactual.  When I believe, I believe because there is a possibility that what I believe could be un-believed.  That it is 100 degrees outside with high humidity, is a matter of fact, which doesn’t involve belief.  Would not it seem a little strange if I were to say that I believe that it is 100 degrees outside, in the same sense that I would say that I believe in God?  Similarly, if I were to say that it is way too hot and way too humid outside right now, someone might counter me and say: “Well then you should experience Miami humidity; then this weather would be nothing.”  It might make more sense for me to say that I believe this humidity is too high.  I would be referring to the same experience of humidity.  Yet I would be painting it, with words and thoughts, in a different shade of green (a putrid chartreuse).

What if we were, instead, to define religion as a culturally-bound iteration of the same mystical experiences we all have had.  Experiences of one-ness, of deep connection, deep gratitude, deep humility…  Have you ever experienced that experience of witnessing another being (human or not) and noticing with great awe how it seems to move of its own accord, how it has its own beauty, and its own relevance that is altogether separate from your own?  And what else is there to do, in the utter appreciation we feel, than to call this witnessing a sacred event.  At the least, it is an event altogether separate from our everyday states of experiencing.  And could not we call this God, or mystical appreciation, or seeing the oneness in another, etc?  Some might be dissatisfied with the reduction inherent in this way of understanding the intersection between religion and rationality.  Probably atheists and evangelicals alike would be dissatisfied with this reduction, for different reasons.  Perhaps I am merely constructing another useless theology (and quite unsophisticatedly at that).  But there is something to be said for these bouts of knowing, which if cultivated, can span much (if not all) of our experience.  What cultural frames would emerge if we were to focus our attention on these experiences, calling them what they are?  Likely, a myriad of different ones.  Likely, we’d get exactly what we have.  But if we could accept that, in the end, we are all talking about the same thing with different words and different thought patterns and differently arranged synapsis, we might get along much more easily. 

Right now, I’m asking people to think a little more deeply, and to really see if, differences in thought given, we might actually have been living in the very same temperature and the very same humidity—the difference being that I’m from Philly and you’re from Miami.  What if belief were just a social position, a moment in time, a thing that directs us, rather than a notion reified into existence?  I invite conversation around this question. 

Dear God

Dear God, 

I was walking in my backyard yesterday when I thought I saw you, washing your son in the bathtub-pool-thing you set up the day before, for hot days like these.  He was smiling as all get-out and loving you.

Earlier, I was walking in Harvard Yard, and I thought I saw you pushing at your companion's shoulders as you argued with him vigorously.  Some visceral joy you got, as you weighed him down with question after question. 

And then, I was pretty much weeping when you called me and wished me well, and wanted to connect (and when you called me again, and when you called me another time after that).  So funny how your laughter can have infinite timbres, but the same loud love. 

I was walking into the subway when I thought I saw YOU weeping, and I was overcome with wanting to give you some of my own love.

I thought I saw you incredulous and afraid as I gave you some leftover ham to eat—panting from your mouth and obviously parched, I gave you some water, which you lapped.  Then you pranced away.

It was so nice to see you yesterday.

Love,

Zachary

Marriage is About Community

Dean Obeidallah characterizes marriage as an antiquated, death dealing institution—something quite outdated and useless.  See his article.   His premise is that, today, postmodern, liberal people seem to have arrived at an understanding of marriage that approaches mere nonchalance.  It is perhaps much less a matter of fulfilling your social destiny, and more a matter of preference, something relegated to one's inimical thirties (a.k.a. the mysterious fog demarcating life after your twenties).  There is nothing sinister about marriage itself, it’s just that marriage, supposedly, doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore—especially given that nowadays most liberals move-in together, have sex, and can get palimonies without ever skipping and hopping over to the Justice of the Peace. 

Like my mother has always said, it probably was never a very good idea to get married just for the sex. 

It seems increasingly feasible that 1) life wouldn't fall apart if not everyone on the planet got married, and 2) many people just are not hardwired for strict monogamy much the same way that ten percent of the population is homosexual, bisexual or transgender (not counting the other thirty percent who won't admit it, including my mother).  More and more of the couples I meet (married or not) run open relationships, it seems, without a hitch.  See Mark Oppenheimer’s article about Dan Savage. 

If all that ever constituted marriage was sharing bank-accounts, then, hell, my apartment mate and I could get that arranged right now!  So, then, what would be the point of wasting a bunch of money, and inviting a lot of people I barely know, to celebrate a relationship I already have, and in a suit I’ll probably never be skinny enough to wear again?

I ask this question while bracketing a discussion of legal privileges—as if this were the only tangible explanation for why people get married anymore.

The value and the beauty of community have been neglected in much of the discussion I see floating around town—especially in liberal circles.  For a second I’d like to imagine that the individual is not the most important entity in the universe.  For a second I’d like to imagine that robust, supportive and vital community is just as important as individuality (if not more so) for a person’s life.  To rephrase an earlier iteration—I hope that when I get married I can invite everyone in my life who is important to me; everyone who constitutes my family.  For now, I define family broadly. 

Imagine, additionally, that “wedding” is just a word for the celebration of a commitment between two people to meet each other’s needs for intimacy, sex, family, love and purpose (however these needs manifest for the couple).  And imagine that “marriage” is just a word for this commitment.  Much akin to why we celebrate people’s lives with birthdays, and love with anniversaries, it seems just good fun to throw a party to celebrate commitment.  So, then, we could call it a commitment ceremony, or a life-partner party, and not merely a wedding.  Happiness and good things deserve ritual celebration in my opinion, and as a lover of parties, I support weddings and marriage simply for this reason. 

What is marriage, then?  What is the difference between calling my life-partner my husband, as opposed to my committed lover, as opposed to my alpha-guy, etc?  I suppose some of it pertains to individual preference; some of it pertains to religious tradition; and some of it depends on whether you want to be committed for life or just for the foreseeable future (although I was never sure of the difference when I was growing up).  Certainly, I want to be committed to someone, and I want that commitment to be and to remain life-giving.  We have somehow come to think of marriage as inherently death-dealing (as seen with Dean Obeidallah).  But that’s just stupid.  You should not be getting married, or committing yourself at all to someone with whom you do not feel enhanced life.  And this applies to all types of relationships (romantic and otherwise).    

I’d like to get married and to have a nice Quaker wedding.  And I’d like to do this because marriage is about commitment in the context of a community, which pledges to support, nurture, and shepherd it (along with any of its fruits).  Marriage is about affirming family, and it is about growing family (connecting two different people and their communities).  When people celebrate a commitment and pledge to support it, they also pledge to support the additional members of the family the couple might introduce.   They pledge to engage in relationship with everyone “on the other side of aisle.”  This is about the villages we all carry around with us (in our cell phone contact book and on Google+ now, instead of in the surrounding huts).  For me, getting married will be just as much about affirming my commitment with my fiancé, as it will be about re-affirming the beauty and the deep bonds of the community, which provide me with (more than any thing else) a sense of home on this earth.

skinny dipping

He left all of his clothes behind and went swimming; he ran deftly, barefoot and all, through the trees and the grass, skipping over all the sharp stones, his body rejoicing.

The light danced between him and the shimmering water once he reached the lake, and his face was pure and paltry—like two-bit memory or shaking hands with someone you’ll certainly forget and then never remember. 

One day, he knows, he’ll grow old or not, and die too.  But the freedom of this moment: as he jumped into the cold liquid, which embraced him, and he laughed like he doesn’t remember doing, but which again he craves every day without knowing.  His heart pumping to the beat of the ripples against his face, he splashes and dreams of things.  Summer sings in his lungs, and breath is his seat.  He swims out into the open expanse of water, examining his liminal fate, and stunned, he has, for this moment, forgotten and surrendered and returned.