Below is part of a letter I wrote recently. As an attempt to capture my spiritual path over the last 10 years or so, it seemed worth saving. I have removed anything that might identify the recipient.
I was born into a very devoutly religious family. My parents are both converts to Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with headquarters in Salt Lake City), which they found in early adulthood and have adhered to faithfully since before I was born (the eldest of six living children). I grew up Mormon, far away from Utah, in a small and close-knit congregation of Saints (as they like to call themselves, perhaps a bit pretentiously from your point of view). I went through the entire cursus honorum that contemporary Mormonism offers young men—attending weekly meetings faithfully, receiving and carrying out the duties of the priesthood (first Aaronic then eventually Melchizedek), graduating from seminary, receiving my endowment in the temple, serving a two-year proselytizing mission in northern Spain (I spent many months working in Galicia), graduating from Brigham Young University (the LDS church's university in Provo, Utah), and eventually marrying in the Salt Lake temple (which you may have seen: it is rather pretty, especially when compared to more modern Mormon architecture). Experience has taught me to beware of judging the quality of one's faith in terms of external career. In my case, almost everything I did from the age of about twelve came from a motivation informed somehow by my Mormonism—a Mormonism that was very sincere and earnest, perhaps too much so as it happens.
As part of my Mormon formation, I was taught church history and doctrine (I hesitate to call it theology, but the term is not utterly inapt) formally and informally. My formal schooling took place in church, in seminary, in special retreats held for missionaries, at BYU (my alma mater), and in the temple (where Mormons take part in complex rituals that dramatize the creation, fall, and redemption of the world). Informally, I did a lot of reading on my own. I was drawn very early to scripture, and over the course of my youth became very familiar with the King James Bible, in addition to other books the LDS church regards as holy scripture (including the Book of Mormon, which I have read many times). I was naturally interested in the history of the books I read—the context out of which they arose and took their first meaning before being handed down to me. Before I went out as a missionary, I had already begun studying religious history and had even decided that I would need to study biblical languages (Latin, Hebrew, and Greek) in college. As a youth, I did not notice any great imbalance between my personal religion and the religion preached and practiced at church. The more contact I had with the institutional church, however, the more this changed. My two-year mission in Spain was revelatory in this regard: I saw the church doing things that made no sense to me, things that seemed to me to cheapen the gospel in the interest of gaining converts to it (superficial converts, with no great understanding of what it was they were committing themselves to). At BYU, I began studying church history in great detail, on my own and in company with others, and I slowly came to realize that the church history I had been taught throughout my youth was by and large a complete fairytale—a transparent hagiography of the early Mormon movement that transformed men like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young from nineteenth-century mobsters (with good and bad traits) into modern Saints (with no evil qualities worth noticing).
By the time I was married and about halfway through graduate school (far from BYU), I realized that I could not participate actively in LDS Mormonism any more. Under the influence of my ongoing studies into church history (early Christian history as well as Mormon history), I could not see the LDS church's version of Christian history as anything but an increasingly transparent fable (as literal history: as a symbolic narrative, it has some merit). To make things worse, the church demands that the individual conform his private thought and (at the very least) public utterance to its versions of events. It does this by controlling access to temples (etc.) through a process of ecclesiastical confession that involves meeting regularly with local church authorities (the bishop or one of his counselors, and then the stake president or one of his—perhaps a bit like talking to your local parish priest and then the bishop). These gentlemen inquire into your orthodoxy (“Do you believe in the divinity of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost? Do you believe Joseph Smith to be a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator?” and so on). If you cannot answer questions to their satisfaction, then your status as an active Mormon is revoked until you repent. I cannot answer questions as they would like, and I cannot repent (for when I look into the historical record, I do not see what they want me to see—viz. that I must subject my opinion on doctrinal matters to theirs, whatever it may be, without critical judgement).
When I was no longer able to practice Mormonism actively, I did not cease to have a spiritual vocation. I needed to feel myself part of something larger than myself, but I also needed the freedom to express myself openly and honestly, even when others might possibly construe my expression as a threat to faith (not the way I construe it, but I can certainly appreciate that I am not the only person with a point of view that matters: we all see things, and we all matter; I am certainly as open to taking criticism as I am to dishing it out). Fortunately, my wife was not a dogmatic Mormon: she was one of the few external things that remained constant in my hour of confusion; I am very grateful for her unflagging moral support. Initially, I felt something of a gulf between myself and institutional Christianity. (To be completely candid, I still sense that gulf today, but experience has prepared me to confront it with curious interest rather than defensive hostility.) As a result, my first spiritual home outside Mormonism was a small Buddhist sangha in the Kagyu tradition (Tibetan). I found (and contine to find) Buddhist rhetoric very liberating (it is nice to be told that the self is impermanent when your own has just been brutally shattered), and I continue to enjoy the Kagyu liturgy (which involves meditation and chanting prayers, with or without the aid of tools such as a rosary or icons). But there is something important missing in my Buddhist experience, something that I cannot help but call Christianity.
It is hard to put into words, but let me try. Buddhism satisfies my intellectual hunger entirely, offering an outlook on the world that appears appropriately wise and skeptical (important to me, given my past history of being gulled into what the Buddhists would call “wrong views”). While it is very beautiful, Buddhism does not satisfy my aesthetic hunger: I find the bodhisattva distant and aloof, rather like the gods of Epicurus. Mormonism such as I grew up with was not a religion of passive acceptance. Mobster that he was, Brigham Young was also determined to build heaven on earth, and while I shrink back from some of the evil consequences of his efforts (e.g. the Mountain Meadows Massacre or the suffering of people involved in polygamy against their will), I still admire the aim. I want to make the world a better place, actively—or at least to see the examples of others engaging with sin or crime or other natural hardships in authentic ways that I might possibly emulate. I love retiring from the world, but I need to build something in retirement (“the kingdom of God”)—and I have years of exposure to Christianity that predisposes me to find meaning of some kind in Christian scripture, discourse, and ritual.
While serving as a Mormon missionary in Spain, I attended a public mass in the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago and conceived a desire that I carry to this day of completing a pilgrimage there on foot. If I ever have money and time, I will certainly carry this desire out, whether or not I become Catholic. I feel a great internal need to do it, to see the places where I came bearing Mormonism and give thanks for the many unexpected gifts I received in return. One of those gifts was a chance encounter with the Jesuit Andres Torres Queiruga, who invited me into his apartment to discuss religion and left a very profound impression on me (as being utterly sincere and good, even if his belief in the resurrection is metaphorical rather than literal—as mine now is, too). Regardless of how I feel toward what are sometimes called “religious truth-claims” (i.e. whether God is personal in some particular way or the Bible a literal history composed in the manner of Thucydides), I feel drawn toward Christian tradition, especially older versions of it that have a sense of their history—a memory of the good and the evil done in God's name over time. I don't know what to do with this attraction, whether I should abandon it to continue on as a Buddhist atheist (see below) or pursue it (as I am trying to do in reaching out to you).
My reading of the historical Buddha is very like my reading of the historical Jesus. What draws me to both is not the idea that they are more real or powerful than ordinary human beings, but the aspiration that they have come to represent to so many of my fellow creatures, an aspiration to make life beautiful where it can be ugly. I share that aspiration, no matter what I may happen to think right now about the ultimate order or disorder of the cosmos. “The kingdom of God is within you” is a statement that I continue to find incredibly edifying (and frustrating, as I seek some means of relating my window on that interior kingdom effectively to others—in ways that edify them and me, recognizing and respecting the reality that we need each other, that we are all part of a vast ecosystem of overt and hidden relationships that have the power to become incredibly beautiful even if they are occasionally also ugly).
Many people whose circumstances appear externally very similar to mine—people whose history has brought them into significant conflict with some fundamentalist, literalistic religious tradition (such as modern Mormonism has increasingly sought to be)—become atheists. Some of them find all the socialization, all the service, all the spirituality they need outside established paths. I have examined their ways of life thoughtfully, and I find much to admire in many of them. But at the same time, I cannot believe that “the old ways” are defunct, dying, or useless. To me it seems that history shows humanity existing with certain constant strengths and weaknesses. Occasionally, these express themselves in ways that are incredibly destructive (and we get something like the Holy Inquisition in Catholicism or the Danites in Mormonism), but that does not deny that they can also be very good—and dropping a particular ideology does not insure us against their destructive recurrence (as the last century has proved to me: atheism or secularism carries the same capacity for evil that religion does, more in an age where science exists to supply leaders of any ideological stripe with WMDs). I see that religion is occasionally poisonous (like all medicines), but that does not mean that I can abandon it (any more than I can abandon eating, though its eventual consequence is death). I value tradition, I am trying to say—even when I disagree with it, even when it challenges me, even when my response to its challenge is more negative than positive. A good man needs good enemies, friends who know how to wear their friendship in disagreement and disappointment as well as concord. I did not find that in Mormonism. I wonder whether I might find it somewhere in the universe of Catholicism.
Is there some way a person like me might become Catholic, or at least engage Catholicism in a meaningful way (mutually useful in terms of building the kingdom of God)? No matter what happens, I will always be grateful for the faith of men like Thomas Merton, whose books have been a real blessing to me over the
past few years as I have sought to rebuild myself in the image of God.
Showing posts with label Catholicism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholicism. Show all posts
Monday, August 5, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Leadership and Happiness
Some thoughts that I decided to write down this morning as part of an ongoing conversation about what it means to be a good leader.
Leaders will always be dangerous. This is true whether they deliberately set out to lead or not. It is true no matter what their intentions are: often well-intentioned leaders do more harm than those whose only purpose is to screw their followers over. (The shepherd who milks his flock for profit wants them to survive and be happy enough to make milk. The shepherd who wants his flock to be "happy" in some nebulous fashion that he struggles to make objective and singular invariably ends up torturing them. He is out to manage their lives much more intimately, intrusively, and dangerously than the guy with a bucket whose clear purpose is to collect milk.)
I can defend myself against the man with the bucket. But what to do with somebody who baits me with happiness? The best response I can come up with is to recognize and see (over and over again in all my experience, personal and vicarious) that there is no such thing as universal happiness. Happiness is a generic regularity that we all experience in fundamentally irregular ways, such that yours is not mine and never will be. You cannot offer me happiness, no matter what your name is, no matter what degrees or experience you have. I am freest to be happy when I recognize that my happiness is not your gift, never was, and never will be. I like you best (no matter who you are) when I see clearly what you cannot do for me and avoid expecting you to be something you can never be, do something you can never do.
Looking back at the course of my life thus far, I see myself as a lucky survivor in humanity's ongoing battle to destroy dangerous heretics--a warlock who somehow managed to avoid getting burned at the stake, so far. I think the best way to deal with any leader, whether or not he (or she) is ill-intentioned, is not to expect from him (or her) something that no human (or god speaking through a human) can provide. It is harder to be betrayed when you don't expect impossible things from other people.
As for lies, they are at least as ubiquitous as the leaders who tell them. Sometimes they are deliberate. Sometimes not. Sometimes they are well-intentioned. Sometimes not. I don't believe pure truth is possible, personally. I have never met it--in myself or anyone else, at all. So I live my life as a giant lie. I know that everything I say is going to be false somehow, no matter what I intend. I cannot manage my "persona" the way the modern LDS church tries to. I cannot run damage-control to manipulate your perception of what I write or say. I have to throw down and let you respond as you will (or won't). I have to respect your right to lie the same way I do. So I strive to do that. I strive to lie as honestly, transparently, and non-judgmentally as possible. I live for the epoche of the ancient skeptics (my favorite prophet from antiquity is Pyrrho of Elis, who like me spent his time reading Democritus and Homer in an effort to avoid passing judgment on stuff). Nobody has to believe a word I say. I don't believe them all myself. They are momentary ripples in a wild, untamed stream that can never be dammed and controlled with the precision many people expect. The human mind's capacity for comprehending the universe is severely and irreparably limited. There is no magic formula for making our thoughts inhumanly wise. Enlightenment is something you already have, hidden somewhere impossible to find in the dark recesses of your miserable little soul. Happiness is noticing how it peeks out every now and then:
"Gotcha!"
"Hey, come back here!"
"Come and get me if you can!"
There is no substitute for living your own life. We all make our own religion. Attempts to create and define giant communities like the Catholic church (or even the much smaller LDS one) are a total waste of time--a giant exercise in mental masturbation that becomes worse as people work harder at it (and seriously expect more real results). Catholicism that matters isn't about what a bunch of old fogies in red robes do somewhere in the dark halls of the Vatican (with or without altar boys). It is about the little family of Hispanics who walk past me on their way to St. Gertrude's, where the priest blesses them, the nuns help them with cheap school and daycare, and nobody would dream of molesting their kids. Mormonism isn't about what a bunch of old fogies do in a secret temple chamber in SLC (with or without plural wives). It's about my friend who goes to church here in Chicago with his wife and little boys and participates avidly, even though he is openly agnostic (does God even exist? who cares?). Theological debates are a sideshow: masturbation can be fun, but it isn't the same thing as sex, folks. Never was. Never will be.
Leaders will always be dangerous. This is true whether they deliberately set out to lead or not. It is true no matter what their intentions are: often well-intentioned leaders do more harm than those whose only purpose is to screw their followers over. (The shepherd who milks his flock for profit wants them to survive and be happy enough to make milk. The shepherd who wants his flock to be "happy" in some nebulous fashion that he struggles to make objective and singular invariably ends up torturing them. He is out to manage their lives much more intimately, intrusively, and dangerously than the guy with a bucket whose clear purpose is to collect milk.)
I can defend myself against the man with the bucket. But what to do with somebody who baits me with happiness? The best response I can come up with is to recognize and see (over and over again in all my experience, personal and vicarious) that there is no such thing as universal happiness. Happiness is a generic regularity that we all experience in fundamentally irregular ways, such that yours is not mine and never will be. You cannot offer me happiness, no matter what your name is, no matter what degrees or experience you have. I am freest to be happy when I recognize that my happiness is not your gift, never was, and never will be. I like you best (no matter who you are) when I see clearly what you cannot do for me and avoid expecting you to be something you can never be, do something you can never do.
Looking back at the course of my life thus far, I see myself as a lucky survivor in humanity's ongoing battle to destroy dangerous heretics--a warlock who somehow managed to avoid getting burned at the stake, so far. I think the best way to deal with any leader, whether or not he (or she) is ill-intentioned, is not to expect from him (or her) something that no human (or god speaking through a human) can provide. It is harder to be betrayed when you don't expect impossible things from other people.
As for lies, they are at least as ubiquitous as the leaders who tell them. Sometimes they are deliberate. Sometimes not. Sometimes they are well-intentioned. Sometimes not. I don't believe pure truth is possible, personally. I have never met it--in myself or anyone else, at all. So I live my life as a giant lie. I know that everything I say is going to be false somehow, no matter what I intend. I cannot manage my "persona" the way the modern LDS church tries to. I cannot run damage-control to manipulate your perception of what I write or say. I have to throw down and let you respond as you will (or won't). I have to respect your right to lie the same way I do. So I strive to do that. I strive to lie as honestly, transparently, and non-judgmentally as possible. I live for the epoche of the ancient skeptics (my favorite prophet from antiquity is Pyrrho of Elis, who like me spent his time reading Democritus and Homer in an effort to avoid passing judgment on stuff). Nobody has to believe a word I say. I don't believe them all myself. They are momentary ripples in a wild, untamed stream that can never be dammed and controlled with the precision many people expect. The human mind's capacity for comprehending the universe is severely and irreparably limited. There is no magic formula for making our thoughts inhumanly wise. Enlightenment is something you already have, hidden somewhere impossible to find in the dark recesses of your miserable little soul. Happiness is noticing how it peeks out every now and then:
"Gotcha!"
"Hey, come back here!"
"Come and get me if you can!"
There is no substitute for living your own life. We all make our own religion. Attempts to create and define giant communities like the Catholic church (or even the much smaller LDS one) are a total waste of time--a giant exercise in mental masturbation that becomes worse as people work harder at it (and seriously expect more real results). Catholicism that matters isn't about what a bunch of old fogies in red robes do somewhere in the dark halls of the Vatican (with or without altar boys). It is about the little family of Hispanics who walk past me on their way to St. Gertrude's, where the priest blesses them, the nuns help them with cheap school and daycare, and nobody would dream of molesting their kids. Mormonism isn't about what a bunch of old fogies do in a secret temple chamber in SLC (with or without plural wives). It's about my friend who goes to church here in Chicago with his wife and little boys and participates avidly, even though he is openly agnostic (does God even exist? who cares?). Theological debates are a sideshow: masturbation can be fun, but it isn't the same thing as sex, folks. Never was. Never will be.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Mormon Antichrist 2.0
S. Michael Wilcox. Walking on Water. Deseret, 2011. ASIN: B004ZLFOZ6.
Recently, a friend shared with me a story from this book, a story that I have heard elsewhere before. In the words of my friend:
In the Book of Mormon, Korihor comes along offering a familiar atheist message: God is just an old tradition that priests invoke to gull people out of their time and talents. Alma offers a standard defense to this schtick: "Thou knowest we do not glut ourselves upon the labors of this people" (Alma 30:32) -- at least not compared to those other guys (the whore of all the earth); our pet projects are modest and beneficial, so "Let's go shopping at City Creek!" Blah, blah. Let's skip to the important part, Alma's only argument (apart from reading Korihor's mind and then invoking the power of God to strike him dumb):
Alma and the younger Wilcox do have a point: in debate, the only things actively shared are words -- mine against yours. But not all words are created equal. Some map reality better than others. Some correspond to things in the real world. Some are just hot air. How does one tell the difference? Well, you have to put them to some kind of test (as Alma himself admits somewhere else). You have to live with them a bit. If you live with your eyes open you will notice several things that cast serious doubts on the efficacy of the argument that Alma and Wilcox use to dismiss atheists like Korihor.
(1) People actually do have different ideas about God, the world over. The fact that people have different ideas about what is important should be totally obvious today. Some people think that drawing a picture of the prophet Muhammad (or representing his figure in any kind of art) is an offense worthy of death. Others condemn these pious followers of the prophet as murderous terrorists. Some people think that monogamy is divine. Others (including a number of early Mormon leaders) think that the supreme being prefers polygamy. God himself is no better: in every religious tradition whose history I have examined closely, he contradicts himself, telling people to be nice and commanding them to slaughter one another ruthlessly. (I have already blogged about the schizophrenic God of history here.) What are we supposed to make of God's inscrutability? How can everyone be right, when we all contradict one another (and ourselves)? Mormons should be familiar with this theme, since it is prominent in the canonical version of the First Vision. We should know that rational people really do wonder how the heck it makes sense for God to tell people all over the world to care passionately about things that other people find completely uncompelling (like whether Muhammad gets a posthumous portrait done). Which leads us to another problem.
(2) God doesn't strike the right people dumb. In the Book of Mormon story, Korihor is never refuted. Alma accuses him of secretly believing and then strikes him dumb when the poor fool wants a sign that God exists. Here I think Korihor gets a bad rap. After all, if we think back to the First Vision, Joseph Smith went into the Sacred Grove to get a sign. That was the whole point. "Hey, God! People have no clue what you value. All your preachers contradict one another. I would like some personal direction, yo!" Why didn't young Joseph get stricken dumb? Maybe for the same reason so many of my Spanish "investigators" couldn't get a personal witness that God wanted them to drop everything and become Latter-day Saints? Maybe for the same reason I don't get an urgent desire to become a Scientologist every time I see Tom Cruise? Is it conceivable that people believe different things about the nature of ultimate reality, and that whatever divinity there is doesn't see fit to change that? I think it is. As I look at history, it seems to me that God is very hands-off. He lets people do their own thing. He lets them attribute anything to him, no matter what it is. Across the world, people build churches to him. They give food to the hungry in his name. And in his name, they blow up churches, take food from the hungry, and beat up homosexuals. They call God all kinds of names, say all sorts of contradictory things about his nature, and he is perfectly cool with it. He lets the Holy Inquisition do its thing with the same nonchalance that he shows toward the Salvation Army: the sun riseth upon the just and the unjust. The prosperity gospel found in Deuteronomy (and the Book of Mormon) is a steaming pile of crap (as Christians should know: Jesus was the best God had, and look what happened to him; no tradition that I am aware of has him "prospering in the land").
(3) No matter what anyone says, we don't know squat about God. The upshot of points (1) and (2) above is that we don't really know (a) if God exists or (b) what his nature is (what he wants from us). Let's say my friends tell me that there is this guy named Pete. Pete wants me to be nice, they say, and he will make things go my way if I send money regularly to a certain PO box. I am intrigued, so I start being nice and making payments. Then, my friends come and tell me that Pete wants me to rob a bank. I protest that this is not nice. My friends come up with all kinds of arguments showing me that robbing the bank is necessary: the clincher is that Pete cannot make things go my way if I don't trust him absolutely. I inform my friends that I am not willing to become a bank robber for a man I have never met. They ask me if I am willing to give up all the blessings I have incurred sending money to Pete. I ask them, "What blessings? You mean the same ones I used to get before you even told me Pete existed?" (Being nice is a good idea, even if you don't have an imaginary overlord recommending it to you.) And our conversation is over, unless and until Pete deigns to reveal himself and give me convincing reasons why the bank must be robbed. My friends can strike me dumb as a sign-seeker if they want, but that just proves that they are thugs (the same way Pete would be if that were his only response to my inquiry about the bank job). To make the analogy complete, imagine that I make some new friends who tell me that Pete's real name is Bob, and he wants me to move to LA and take up surfing. Then, other people tell me that my friend is a woman named Chris, and I should be selling Mary Kay products door-to-door. Everyone knows (passionately) that Pete, Bob, and Chris exist, and that they care (passionately) about banks, surfing, and Mary Kay. But I cannot ever meet them face to face. Until I do, our relationship is going nowhere: I cannot have a relationship with someone who cannot talk to me more clearly (and kindly, not to mention coherently) than God does.
What is really wrong with Alma's argument against Korihor, and Wilcox's argument against her professor, is that we are all using the same evidence. We all have opinions. All of our opinions are based in facts (i.e. they derive from our personal encounters with an objective reality "out there" in the world). So, Korihor has "all things as a testimony" that his opinions are true, the same way Alma does (in the passage quoted above). If Alma wants to change the game, he needs to introduce Korihor to God. (If my friends want me to rob the bank for Pete's sake, then they need to put me in touch with the guy.) In real life, you cannot simply introduce people to God. Wilcox does not convince her professor by calling down an angel. She cannot even strike her professor magically dumb (without some apparatus like the Holy Inquisition: what a marvel of divine engineering that was! was God pleased with it? why wouldn't he be, assuming he approved of the way Alma handled Korihor?). So she is left stating the obvious: "Well, you have your opinion, and I have mine." OK. Where do our respective opinions come from? She leaves the really interesting question unasked. She doesn't talk about human psychology, the nature of myth, or even her own personal experience. But let's assume she does.
Let's assume she is an LDS missionary like I was, and she tells her professor (who is supposed to be inquisitive, investigative, interested) the story of her personal relationship with God.
"I was born into a family where we prayed regularly to God. I prayed. I read some holy books. It felt really good. I grew up and came to the realization that I could be a moral, ethical person."
"Fascinating!" the professor might say. "I have a history too. I have experiences. I have meditated. I have read books that I consider holy, after a fashion. I too have learned the value of being a moral person."
"No," the missionary says, "you cannot be really, authentically moral unless you join my church, which is the only true church."
"But I like my church," the professor objects.
"You are misguided! Your church is really just an abomination, honestly. I mean, you believe all kinds of incomprehensible crap about God, whom you don't even worship consistently over time -- some of you don't even think of him as a real person -- and you drink coffee. How can you possibly be a decent human being, with these attitudes?"
"Well," the professor says, "I guess we have different ideas about what constitutes decency (but we agree on the big stuff, right? I mean, we're sitting here talking politely: we haven't gone berserk on one another yet). And everyone has different ideas about God. That is for the best, I suppose."
"No way! Everyone should know how God really is. Everyone should be a member of my church (the only true one). Everyone should see God the way I see him. Everyone should avoid coffee the way I do."
"Really? Why do you think the world would be a better place if everyone agreed with you?"
Here I will leave the conversation, since this is something I could not get over on my LDS mission. Shortly after my arrival in Spain (where I served), I realized that I did not want everyone to believe precisely what I believed. I did not want everyone to drop their personal religion to come join mine. I did not want all the old Catholic churches (some of them quite beautiful) to be abandoned so that we could all gather in strip malls (where most of the LDS meetinghouses were) or other drab, modern buildings. I did not want the Latin chants to cease. I did not want the incense to stop burning. I did not want people to stop making pilgrimages to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. I did not want everyone to think the same way I did about God, the universe, and everything. I liked it when people were honest with me. I liked it when we shared real conversations, in which both of us spoke our truth and nobody felt pressured to deny the reality he was living in (whether that reality was Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, pagan, or atheist). It seemed to me that converting the whole country to Mormonism would be a shame: think how much culture would be lost. It would be like replacing every restaurant in New York with a McDonald's. Why would anyone want to do that?
I guess if all the restaurants but McDonald's were serving poisonous food it might make some sense, but they aren't. I have encountered many people outside Mormonism as happy and "spiritual" as any Saint I ever met. The fact that they are not precisely like me does not make them "anti-me" -- we are different, but we are not enemies, and neither one of us is better than the other (even when one of us happens to be atheist). Behind all the posturing -- the culture, the different ideas about God -- we are both human. We are all human: it doesn't matter what religion you happen to belong to; what really matters is what kind of person you are. This truth hit me like a ton of bricks in the mission field, and I have not been able to get rid of it since. I don't really want to: I think it is one of the most valuable insights I have ever had.
In conclusion, I would like to refer my readers to two contemporary atheists explaining their beliefs. One gives the answer that Wilcox's professor should have given. (If all we have are opinions, which opinions matter most to you: those that are rational, arguable, and open-ended, or the ones that you accept untested from men who claim obscure magical powers and think that winning an argument means doing whatever it takes to shut the other guy up? Most professors will pick Socratic logos over tyrannical ethos every time, whether they are atheist or not, and rightly so. That is what civilized people do, even in antiquity.) The other reminds us, in a very personal way, that atheists are people just like everybody else: they have personal testimonies, too.
Recently, a friend shared with me a story from this book, a story that I have heard elsewhere before. In the words of my friend:
[Wilcox] shares an experience that one of his daughters had with a college professor who was always challenging his students' faith in God. Brother Wilcox told his daughter to challenge the professor back by using Alma's statement to Korihor (Alma 30:40): "And now what evidence have ye that there is no God, or that Christ cometh not? I say unto you that ye have none, save it be your word only." Well, one day the professor said, "We don't know that there are moral absolutes. There is no proof that there are moral, ethical absolutes. Society makes the rules and they can change what is right and what is wrong." Brother Wilcox asked his daughter if she was able to say anything to counter that statement. She was! She told him that she had raised her hand and asked, "What evidence do you have that there are no moral absolutes? You don't have any evidence. It's just your word." Brother Wilcox told her how proud he was of her and asked what happened then. She said, "It was wonderful. The kids all got into it and they kept saying, 'Yeah, what evidence do your have? And finally he had to admit that there was no evidence for his point either."This story bugs me, just like the stories of Antichrists in the Book of Mormon (including the one about Korihor that it alludes to) have always bugged me. In the Book of Mormon, the Antichrists (Sherem, Nehor, Zeezrom, Korihor) are invariably presented as dolts. Nehor is a transparent thug (who flies off the handle and kills Gideon when the latter ventures to disagree with him in public debate). Zeezrom is introduced as this cunning lawyer, an expert debater out to trap the righteous missionaries Alma and Amulek in their words, and then his only debating tactic worth noticing is to ask Amulek how much money he will take to deny the existence of God. Even as a kid, I found this really lame: "Well, Zeezrom, I know I just put my reputation on the line in front of the whole community watching us here, but when you mention money I get so weak in the knees: I'd be happy to out myself as a liar for the big wad of cash that you're not going to give me anyway (since you are only bringing it up to discredit me)." Finally, the only two Antichrists with anything worth saying, Sherem and Korihor, are dismissed without argument, really: God intervenes and kills them (striking Korihor dumb first) without effectively refuting anything that they say. The closest thing to a really useful discussion of atheism that readers of the Book of Mormon get is the debate between Alma and Korihor, which follows the script of the discussion between Wilcox's daughter and her professor. Forgive me for pointing this out, but either that professor was an idiot or God intervened and shut him up prematurely (like Korihor). Since God has not yet bothered to shut me up, I am going to come to the rescue of the atheists, who are not all stupid (or thugs, or even Antichrist, at least not any more than they are anti-Thor).
In the Book of Mormon, Korihor comes along offering a familiar atheist message: God is just an old tradition that priests invoke to gull people out of their time and talents. Alma offers a standard defense to this schtick: "Thou knowest we do not glut ourselves upon the labors of this people" (Alma 30:32) -- at least not compared to those other guys (the whore of all the earth); our pet projects are modest and beneficial, so "Let's go shopping at City Creek!" Blah, blah. Let's skip to the important part, Alma's only argument (apart from reading Korihor's mind and then invoking the power of God to strike him dumb):
And now what evidence have ye that there is no God, or that Christ cometh not? I say unto you that ye have none, save it be your word only. But, behold, I have all things as a testimony that these things are true; and ye also have all things as a testimony unto you that they are true; and will ye deny them? (Alma 30:40-41)Voila! The seminary teacher working with S. Michael Wilcox's daughter must be proud: she knows her Book of Mormon, and can put "rational" atheists like Korihor in their place. Unfortunately, this argument is actually quite lame, particularly when it is offered the way Alma (and the young Wilcox) offer it, i.e. as an end to discussion instead of a beginning. From my own personal experience with atheists (as an LDS missionary and one of those eternal college students), I am going to tell you what really happens when you uncork Alma's argument in live debate. In my experience, real atheists don't role over and take it the way Korihor does, and believers like Alma are not typically able to invoke the magic power of God to make their rivals shut up (unless they happen to be living in an area where rabid fanaticism predominates).
Alma and the younger Wilcox do have a point: in debate, the only things actively shared are words -- mine against yours. But not all words are created equal. Some map reality better than others. Some correspond to things in the real world. Some are just hot air. How does one tell the difference? Well, you have to put them to some kind of test (as Alma himself admits somewhere else). You have to live with them a bit. If you live with your eyes open you will notice several things that cast serious doubts on the efficacy of the argument that Alma and Wilcox use to dismiss atheists like Korihor.
(1) People actually do have different ideas about God, the world over. The fact that people have different ideas about what is important should be totally obvious today. Some people think that drawing a picture of the prophet Muhammad (or representing his figure in any kind of art) is an offense worthy of death. Others condemn these pious followers of the prophet as murderous terrorists. Some people think that monogamy is divine. Others (including a number of early Mormon leaders) think that the supreme being prefers polygamy. God himself is no better: in every religious tradition whose history I have examined closely, he contradicts himself, telling people to be nice and commanding them to slaughter one another ruthlessly. (I have already blogged about the schizophrenic God of history here.) What are we supposed to make of God's inscrutability? How can everyone be right, when we all contradict one another (and ourselves)? Mormons should be familiar with this theme, since it is prominent in the canonical version of the First Vision. We should know that rational people really do wonder how the heck it makes sense for God to tell people all over the world to care passionately about things that other people find completely uncompelling (like whether Muhammad gets a posthumous portrait done). Which leads us to another problem.
(2) God doesn't strike the right people dumb. In the Book of Mormon story, Korihor is never refuted. Alma accuses him of secretly believing and then strikes him dumb when the poor fool wants a sign that God exists. Here I think Korihor gets a bad rap. After all, if we think back to the First Vision, Joseph Smith went into the Sacred Grove to get a sign. That was the whole point. "Hey, God! People have no clue what you value. All your preachers contradict one another. I would like some personal direction, yo!" Why didn't young Joseph get stricken dumb? Maybe for the same reason so many of my Spanish "investigators" couldn't get a personal witness that God wanted them to drop everything and become Latter-day Saints? Maybe for the same reason I don't get an urgent desire to become a Scientologist every time I see Tom Cruise? Is it conceivable that people believe different things about the nature of ultimate reality, and that whatever divinity there is doesn't see fit to change that? I think it is. As I look at history, it seems to me that God is very hands-off. He lets people do their own thing. He lets them attribute anything to him, no matter what it is. Across the world, people build churches to him. They give food to the hungry in his name. And in his name, they blow up churches, take food from the hungry, and beat up homosexuals. They call God all kinds of names, say all sorts of contradictory things about his nature, and he is perfectly cool with it. He lets the Holy Inquisition do its thing with the same nonchalance that he shows toward the Salvation Army: the sun riseth upon the just and the unjust. The prosperity gospel found in Deuteronomy (and the Book of Mormon) is a steaming pile of crap (as Christians should know: Jesus was the best God had, and look what happened to him; no tradition that I am aware of has him "prospering in the land").
(3) No matter what anyone says, we don't know squat about God. The upshot of points (1) and (2) above is that we don't really know (a) if God exists or (b) what his nature is (what he wants from us). Let's say my friends tell me that there is this guy named Pete. Pete wants me to be nice, they say, and he will make things go my way if I send money regularly to a certain PO box. I am intrigued, so I start being nice and making payments. Then, my friends come and tell me that Pete wants me to rob a bank. I protest that this is not nice. My friends come up with all kinds of arguments showing me that robbing the bank is necessary: the clincher is that Pete cannot make things go my way if I don't trust him absolutely. I inform my friends that I am not willing to become a bank robber for a man I have never met. They ask me if I am willing to give up all the blessings I have incurred sending money to Pete. I ask them, "What blessings? You mean the same ones I used to get before you even told me Pete existed?" (Being nice is a good idea, even if you don't have an imaginary overlord recommending it to you.) And our conversation is over, unless and until Pete deigns to reveal himself and give me convincing reasons why the bank must be robbed. My friends can strike me dumb as a sign-seeker if they want, but that just proves that they are thugs (the same way Pete would be if that were his only response to my inquiry about the bank job). To make the analogy complete, imagine that I make some new friends who tell me that Pete's real name is Bob, and he wants me to move to LA and take up surfing. Then, other people tell me that my friend is a woman named Chris, and I should be selling Mary Kay products door-to-door. Everyone knows (passionately) that Pete, Bob, and Chris exist, and that they care (passionately) about banks, surfing, and Mary Kay. But I cannot ever meet them face to face. Until I do, our relationship is going nowhere: I cannot have a relationship with someone who cannot talk to me more clearly (and kindly, not to mention coherently) than God does.
What is really wrong with Alma's argument against Korihor, and Wilcox's argument against her professor, is that we are all using the same evidence. We all have opinions. All of our opinions are based in facts (i.e. they derive from our personal encounters with an objective reality "out there" in the world). So, Korihor has "all things as a testimony" that his opinions are true, the same way Alma does (in the passage quoted above). If Alma wants to change the game, he needs to introduce Korihor to God. (If my friends want me to rob the bank for Pete's sake, then they need to put me in touch with the guy.) In real life, you cannot simply introduce people to God. Wilcox does not convince her professor by calling down an angel. She cannot even strike her professor magically dumb (without some apparatus like the Holy Inquisition: what a marvel of divine engineering that was! was God pleased with it? why wouldn't he be, assuming he approved of the way Alma handled Korihor?). So she is left stating the obvious: "Well, you have your opinion, and I have mine." OK. Where do our respective opinions come from? She leaves the really interesting question unasked. She doesn't talk about human psychology, the nature of myth, or even her own personal experience. But let's assume she does.
Let's assume she is an LDS missionary like I was, and she tells her professor (who is supposed to be inquisitive, investigative, interested) the story of her personal relationship with God.
"I was born into a family where we prayed regularly to God. I prayed. I read some holy books. It felt really good. I grew up and came to the realization that I could be a moral, ethical person."
"Fascinating!" the professor might say. "I have a history too. I have experiences. I have meditated. I have read books that I consider holy, after a fashion. I too have learned the value of being a moral person."
"No," the missionary says, "you cannot be really, authentically moral unless you join my church, which is the only true church."
"But I like my church," the professor objects.
"You are misguided! Your church is really just an abomination, honestly. I mean, you believe all kinds of incomprehensible crap about God, whom you don't even worship consistently over time -- some of you don't even think of him as a real person -- and you drink coffee. How can you possibly be a decent human being, with these attitudes?"
"Well," the professor says, "I guess we have different ideas about what constitutes decency (but we agree on the big stuff, right? I mean, we're sitting here talking politely: we haven't gone berserk on one another yet). And everyone has different ideas about God. That is for the best, I suppose."
"No way! Everyone should know how God really is. Everyone should be a member of my church (the only true one). Everyone should see God the way I see him. Everyone should avoid coffee the way I do."
"Really? Why do you think the world would be a better place if everyone agreed with you?"
Here I will leave the conversation, since this is something I could not get over on my LDS mission. Shortly after my arrival in Spain (where I served), I realized that I did not want everyone to believe precisely what I believed. I did not want everyone to drop their personal religion to come join mine. I did not want all the old Catholic churches (some of them quite beautiful) to be abandoned so that we could all gather in strip malls (where most of the LDS meetinghouses were) or other drab, modern buildings. I did not want the Latin chants to cease. I did not want the incense to stop burning. I did not want people to stop making pilgrimages to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. I did not want everyone to think the same way I did about God, the universe, and everything. I liked it when people were honest with me. I liked it when we shared real conversations, in which both of us spoke our truth and nobody felt pressured to deny the reality he was living in (whether that reality was Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, pagan, or atheist). It seemed to me that converting the whole country to Mormonism would be a shame: think how much culture would be lost. It would be like replacing every restaurant in New York with a McDonald's. Why would anyone want to do that?
I guess if all the restaurants but McDonald's were serving poisonous food it might make some sense, but they aren't. I have encountered many people outside Mormonism as happy and "spiritual" as any Saint I ever met. The fact that they are not precisely like me does not make them "anti-me" -- we are different, but we are not enemies, and neither one of us is better than the other (even when one of us happens to be atheist). Behind all the posturing -- the culture, the different ideas about God -- we are both human. We are all human: it doesn't matter what religion you happen to belong to; what really matters is what kind of person you are. This truth hit me like a ton of bricks in the mission field, and I have not been able to get rid of it since. I don't really want to: I think it is one of the most valuable insights I have ever had.
In conclusion, I would like to refer my readers to two contemporary atheists explaining their beliefs. One gives the answer that Wilcox's professor should have given. (If all we have are opinions, which opinions matter most to you: those that are rational, arguable, and open-ended, or the ones that you accept untested from men who claim obscure magical powers and think that winning an argument means doing whatever it takes to shut the other guy up? Most professors will pick Socratic logos over tyrannical ethos every time, whether they are atheist or not, and rightly so. That is what civilized people do, even in antiquity.) The other reminds us, in a very personal way, that atheists are people just like everybody else: they have personal testimonies, too.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Furor Pietatis
William Kalosieh. A Caricature of Piety: My Descent into Scrupulosity and Compulsions. Xlibris, 2010. ISBN: 9781450020923.
My wife gave me this book a while back, and I read it through with great interest. John Dehlin's recent podcast on LDS scrupulosity sent me back to it, and I decided to do this little post collating things from Mr. Kalosieh's experience that match my own life and thinking.
On Sex and Pathological Guilt. In the following anecdote (pp. 86-88), Mr. Kalosieh describes very well the kind of religious experience that was the bane of my young adulthood:
On Pathological Confession. Kalosieh hits this one out of the park. We could have been the same guy, though he happened to be Catholic instead of Mormon (pp. 88-89):
On Blame and Healing. I resonate with much of what Kalosieh says here (pp. 237-239):
I don't hold the LDS church wholly responsible for the fact that I was what I was. I don't blame my parents, either. And I don't blame myself. We all did the best we could: I did, my parents did, and the church did, too. Unfortunately, we were wrong about what was best for me. Fortunately, I was able to figure out what was up before it got really out of hand (i.e. before I castrated or killed myself or became utterly committed to a program of treatment that would merely aggravate my symptoms ad nauseam). If I have blame for the church, particularly the leadership, it comes not from their human ignorance (which afflicts us all) but from their refusal to admit to it -- and for the unnecessary pain that this arrogance causes people like me, people who should not be spending hours obsessing and confessing under the illusion that such degrading behavior is guaranteed to make things better (whether here and now or hereafter in another world). These people need something other than your garden variety forgiveness and absolution, if they are to live happy lives. The repentance process does not redeem them: it merely crucifies them, over and over until they give it up. As long as church leaders, particularly those in the governing quorums, fail to acknowledge the inadequacy of their priesthood discipline as a panacea for every kind of soul sickness, they will continue to hurt people like me, and I will continue to recommend that people avoid undergoing their treatment -- just as I would warn the bodily sick against a surgeon who tried to cure all illness with bleeding (or some other ancient treatment whose anecdotal effectiveness in one instance is no guarantee that it won't cause massive harm in another). Honesty is something I value, and honesty requires I that admit the fact that church discipline has not helped my life: on the contrary, it came pretty close to ruining it. If it helps you, that is great, but your experience does not cancel out mine. The drug that helps you may kill me (and vice versa). People who are like me (rather than you) need to know that I exist, and that church discipline was not good for me.
On Faith. Kalosieh's concluding statement of faith comes close to mine (pp. 241-242):
I don't necessarily deny the numinous, the mysterious, what some call the divine. Life contains many things I do not understand. If we put them all together, assuming they are bound up together somehow, the result might be called God (or the gods). I have no problem with that, until some of us invoke this semantic patch as an excuse to control others. My inability to comprehend ultimate reality (God) does not give me authority to dictate to you unilaterally. In my experience, Mormon priesthood leaders -- all of them -- are men just like me. (The lack of women in leadership roles is another issue, but we don't have to go there now.) They have no more right to dictate unilaterally to me in the name of God than I have to dictate to them. If their counsel works, then I believe it should be followed (just as counsel from a doctor should be followed if the observed result is that patients get better). If it does not work, then it should not be followed (just a series of deaths in the hospital would curtail the privileges of a rogue physician with a bad idea, or a string of bad luck making him a danger to his patients). Philosophically speaking, I think I am ultimately more of a materialist and an atheist than Kalosieh: for me, God is more like an emergent principle of order in the universe, an unexplained tendency of matter to form itself into ordered patterns. Practically and ethically, we are on the same page. What matters is what you do, how you live your life here and now--not how some great hero of the mythical past lived (or didn't), and submission to authority is no substitute for personal engagement. You may feel called of God to tell me how to live my life, but that does not mean I feel called to submit to your direction, particularly when it makes me miserable.
Unlike many in my position, I don't mind praying or singing hymns. I do both, on occasion, and I enjoy it (especially the singing). In this I am like Kalosieh. From my perspective, it does not matter what the service is -- whether it is offered to this god or that one, to Jesus or Allah or Ganesh (etc.) -- but what it does in the heart of those who take part. I can pray with any believer, in any religion: if his worship conduces to the values I share (things like integrity, family, hard work, charity, sacrifice, community, etc.), then I have no reservations about participating. And I include thoughtful conversations with atheists among some of my most uplifting "spiritual" experiences, in all seriousness.
Reading Kalosieh's book was a special experience for me. I laughed. I cried. I looked over some passages again and again. In many cases, it was like meeting my Doppelganger, and yet, at the end of the day, we are very different men. There is beautiful poetry in our likeness proving unlike. When it is done right, religion gives this poetry a voice: it gives us words to talk about how we are at once alike and different -- unique and particular manifestations of profound generalities that we cannot always see clearly. Mormonism and Catholicism both offer material for creating particular windows onto an unknown (and wild) reality -- the generic, objective truth that some call God. Science and humanism can also create windows into this same reality, and they do not make it any less miraculous. I wish more people understood this.
My wife gave me this book a while back, and I read it through with great interest. John Dehlin's recent podcast on LDS scrupulosity sent me back to it, and I decided to do this little post collating things from Mr. Kalosieh's experience that match my own life and thinking.
On Sex and Pathological Guilt. In the following anecdote (pp. 86-88), Mr. Kalosieh describes very well the kind of religious experience that was the bane of my young adulthood:
[As a teenager in high school,] I was watching an old movie on TV, and the heroine was Lucille Ball in a dramatic role. I was accustomed to seeing her in the comedy series I Love Lucy and had never thought of her in a sensual way. As I was watching the movie, she appeared fully dressed, but her breasts caught my attention--and in a flash the thought passed through my mind, "I never realized she was so big." I was immediately struck with fear, terror, and guilt. I found myself accusing myself of having indulged in impure thoughts. The more I defended myself to myself, the worse it became. I was having an argument within myself, and I was losing. I could not minimize nor allay my anxiety. I certainly could not forgive a momentary indiscretion because my accuser (my "conscience") did not see it as minor. Sex is serious. I had deliberately taken pleasure in a sexual thought. I knew it was wrong and I fully consented to it; therefore, I had committed a mortal sin. Those who commit mortal sins, according to the Baltimore Catechism, are not worthy of God's friendship nor of heaven. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you die as God's enemy and go right to hell. There and then, and for many months to come, I thought how horrible my plight was. Other people who have all kinds of problems and enemies can run and hide under God's protective wing, be consoled by his love for them despite their hardships. But when God is your enemy, where can you go and hide? From where can you seek extraordinary help? When God hates you, so does all of heaven.Mr. Kalosieh's experience is like mine, only I was not even as normal as he was. In my case, I was never able to do any of the "normal" things that didn't bother him as a kid. (Night-time emissions in particular would send me into tailspins almost every time, following the path of guilty self-flagellation that he outlines.) After I hit puberty, I was unable to interact normally with age-mates of the opposite sex until I was more than twenty years old. I was too ashamed, too frightened. Until I met my wife, I never had a girlfriend: more than that, I never had a friend who happened to be a girl close to my own age. A few girls tried to be nice to me; I am ashamed to say I pushed them away. I was caught in a very uncomfortable mental place, in which I alternately longed for female company (but could not have it because I was too impure) and eschewed it (because girls were agents of Satan, tempting me with walking pornography). I was caught head over heels in the false mind-trap that reduces all sexually attractive women to impossibly pure virgins and/or impossibly evil whores. Thank goodness I got out.
Over and over and over again in my mind, I questioned whether I had indeed taken any pleasure in the thought--fully or partially. I had already conceded to my accusing conscience, which was berating and vilifying me, that the deliberate entertaining of impure thoughts was mortal, not venial, but I protested that I did not take pleasure in the thought and that the thought was not deliberate but spontaneous. To no avail. Like a victim in the jaws of a crocodile, my conscience had had its teeth in my mind and heart and was twisting and thrashing me about mentally and emotionally. After several hours of this internal struggle and with tears streaming down my face, I thought to myself, "I wish I had never been born." My reaction to this thought was as intense as the reaction to the internal passing idea regarding Lucille Ball. Had I not just then committed the dreaded and unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit alluded to in scripture? And so for several more hours, my conscience accused me of sinning against the Holy Spirit. It was the last thing on my mind before going to sleep at night, and the very first thing when I awoke. If I awoke in the process of turning in my bed, the thought of sin assailed me.
I did not discover sex [when this happened] ... I had had ample exposure to the differences between the sexes, and I'd picked up misinformation from my peers in the streets and from glimpses here and there. I played spin the bottle at graduation parties from grammar school and played who could kiss the longest with willing girls in the neighborhood. The occasional nighttime emission and deliberate manual manipulation were not unknown to me. But never had my reaction to the mere hint of sexuality provoked such a dreadful and villainous response.
I could not wait to go to confession and rid myself of this dreadful guilt. I recall stumbling over my words as I attempted to both defend and accuse myself before a priest of St. George's Church. My sense of shame prevented me from going to Fr. Paul [the family priest] for confession. I was so distraught that I could not conceal my tears, but I was also angry because something inside me knew that I was innocent of the charge. Had I wished never to have been born? Was this a type of desire for suicide, and isn't suicide a slap in God's face for the gift of life? How does one explain all this to a priest in two or three minutes, when there are about a dozen people outside the confessional box waiting to be cleansed? The priest assured me that I had not committed the sin against the Holy Ghost and that I should avoid any near occasions of sexual sins in the future. I was absolved and given a penance to say. In my attempt to avoid all near occasions of sexual sins, I eventually realized that everyone and anything could, by association, eventually be considered sexual. For a while, I would not look at a girl or woman beyond an acknowledging glance.
On Pathological Confession. Kalosieh hits this one out of the park. We could have been the same guy, though he happened to be Catholic instead of Mormon (pp. 88-89):
I cannot recall presently what all the subsequent "sins" were that I felt a horrible dread for, but I know that anything having to do with sex, getting angry, or hesitation to declare Christ publicly were the theme for many subsequent confessions. I could not distinguish temptation from sin, to the satisfaction of my accusing conscience. Suppressed anger was still anger and required absolution. Likewise, any reluctance to proselytize, proclaim, and pray in public meant I was denying Christ. Once on the public transportation bus to school, I heard a girl whom I hardly knew say to a girlfriend in the course of their conversation that she intended not to attend mass the next day, which was a holy day of obligation. The thought was in my mind that as a good Catholic and out of fraternal concern for the welfare of her soul, I should call her at home and admonish her for her contemplated sin. I didn't know her phone number, but after hours of tormenting myself with "should I, shouldn't I," I gave in and found her number in the book, but stopped short of completing the call to her. By my private logic, I had denounced my affiliation with Christ and I was indifferent to her spiritual welfare! In a similar fashion, if someone took the Lord's name in vain, I felt compelled to assert, "Blessed be the name of Jesus!" If someone had a task to accomplish, I felt obligated to encourage them to say a prayer first. I felt very guilty if I said anything negative about anyone, especially if I made public "the unknown fault of another." And I thought I was rejecting God's grace whenever it was suggested to me to do an act of charity or of penance, because I was made aware of the chance to do good and I opted not to ...
All the while, I recognized in some small, rational manner that what was being "suggested," "demanded," "recommended" to me by the "Lord" or the voice of God--my conscience--could not be right. Failing to follow the internal directives generated guilt, shame, and terror. How does one pray at all if he believes God is furious with him? Going to confession was a nightmare for several reasons. First, the embarrassment of trying to convey to the priest why I thought I had both sinned and didn't sin. Second, his absolution was, in my mind, only going to be valid if I were truly sorry and fully resolved not to commit that "sin" again. I would always question myself, not only about the three things that made an action/thought sinful (knowledge, intent, full consent), but also on the sincerity of my contrition and resolve not to repeat the "sin." Third, if the priest did not execute his function correctly (fully aware and attentive, properly understanding the case being presented to him, accurately reciting the prayer of absolution), the forgiveness of sin would not have taken place. Fourth, more often than not, one of the above conditions was thought to be wanting, thereby invalidating the confession or the absolution, as a result of which I was still in "sin." Fifth, no sooner would a valid and acceptable confession be executed than another sin would get committed, requiring another confession. Were it not for the agonizing fear, the endless tendency to analyze and defend myself, the guilt felt and the tears shed, my confessions would have been comical.I remember doing everything Kalosieh talks about here. Something would set me off (having a wet dream, seeing an attractive woman or girl, saying something that in retrospect did not strike me as wholly true or candid, etc.). I would spend some time in solitary prayer, crying and begging God to have mercy on me. I would look around desperately for signs that he had. Sometimes I found them. Other times, I didn't. Either way, I would end up going to the bishop (the Mormon version of the priest who takes confession). If I was really unlucky, our encounter would occur as part of some routine interview determining my worthiness to participate in a group youth activity (like a temple trip). I would enter the bishop's office with my bitter self-accusation and self-defense, the paradox that Kalosieh describes so well above, and hijinks would ensue. It didn't matter what the bishop did. If he agreed with my self-accusation, then I was despondent (sometimes suicidal, though I never got as far as acting out on any of my fantasies). If he agreed with my self-defense, then I would depart in a state of temporary elation, which would always wear off quickly as I doubted the integrity of his decision (did he really hear what I was accusing myself of? was he paying close enough attention? was he ignoring the prompting of the Spirit that I should be dealt with more harshly?) and fell once more into "sin" (having a wet dream, seeing an attractive female, saying something even remotely dishonest). In many ways, this latter option was worse: I got a little taste of forgiveness before God reached down and snatched it away again, smashing all my aspirations of escaping "sin" once and for all. A little moment in heaven for all my hours in hell. It was so frustrating. No one understood what was wrong with me: I didn't, my parents didn't, and my bishop sure as hell didn't.
On Blame and Healing. I resonate with much of what Kalosieh says here (pp. 237-239):
On a couple of occasions I have been asked if I blame the church for my inadequate (twisted?) spiritual upbringing and all the harm that came with it. Here too I am inclined to answer both yes and no. No, because I received virtually the same education and instruction as many of my peers, and they did not react to it as I did ... If one student is terrified by the instructor's teaching that to miss mass on Sunday is a mortal sin and the rest of the class is "indifferent" -- not sold on the teaching or merely curious about the idea -- why blame the teacher? This is not to say that the actual doctrine one is reared in makes no difference ... While religious doctrine that cultivates the notion of evil in human nature (or a primordial rupture between the person and the Divine) is not exclusively responsible for the tendency some people have to develop overwhelming guilt and obsessions regarding the ultimate questions of life, it is difficult to envision the cessation of such a disorder as long as this belief is instilled into young, impressionable minds ... Dealing with questions about the meaning and purpose of life (if any), the nature of being human, life before conception as well as life after death, the foundations of morality, etc., etc., does not necessarily unhinge a person, regardless of whether he believes or not. But the descent into the meaning of life and the significance of the individual is fraught with profound consequences, which only denial or suppression of human needs can take with an attitude of detached indifference. It is not the "fault" of religion (or any other human inquiry) that it deals with this type of soul-searching, and it is eventually up to the adult individual to decide what he accepts as true or what to reject as false, what he believes and what he doubts.
Paradoxes abound in the human dimension, and attempts to explain them are limited by language. Language itself is often inadequate to communicate meaning. The great religious thinkers and teachers rarely used a univocal paradigm by which to address their audiences. Variety and plurality of parables and metaphors characterized their teaching and constituted their pedagogy. Western minds are especially prone to become unsettled by this because it threatens the illusion that all knowledge should be black or white and lead to predictability and control ... If the [religious] student is a person of integrity and honesty, the ideas researched [as part of a religious education] may bring about a conversion of essential, foundational beliefs, which in turn regulate frameworks of thought and behaviors. Such inquiries may be debilitating precisely because the student must wrestle with his self, his meaning and his significance, that of others, as well as of life in general. The neophyte descends into the depths of selfhood searching for ultimate truths. His tools are of the very essence of his dignity and courage: freedom, intelligence, language, spirit, character, etc., but their value and suitability will be challenged. All who descend with the intent to excavate and explore are vulnerable to a primordial dimension of chaotic proportions, and the encounter can leave one indelibly marked. Singular explanations do not suffice there because the experiences defy portrayal with a photographic precision or a mathematical preciseness.
If I say, on the other hand, that I can fault, to a degree, those who educated me in the area of religion (and, specifically, in the areas of spirituality and morality) I can do so only because men and women recognized by history as giants in the field of spirituality and morality have themselves done so. For example, the mystic St. Teresa of Avila frequently advocated for spiritual direction from someone learned and educated, and complained that for many years, she was harmed by the wrong advice given to her by various spiritual directors. Good, pious intentions are not enough to be someone's spiritual director, and spiritual direction is a specialty. An individual with a number of cognitive dysfunctions may not be an ideal candidate for spiritual direction because the expertise to address the malfunctioning judgments, affects, and comprehension lie outside the typical spiritual director's scope, unless he is also trained in the art of pastoral counseling [as lay Mormon clergy are even less likely to be than their Catholic counterparts].For me, healing required growing up and learning to deal with my own problems. I had to put aside the counsel of scriptures, prophets, and local LDS leaders, and confront myself on my own terms, with no distractions. Like Kalosieh, I discovered that I was uniquely fragile, broken, and dysfunctional. I realized that there is no single, simple way to repair a broken psyche -- that my shattered soul required unique attention, a unique (and personally applicable) solution. In the midst of all my weakness, however, I also discovered strength. I found the ethical values I really do aspire to. I learned what I really think about the nature of God, righteousness, and the universe. I acquired an adult perspective on the world -- a perspective that is unique to me, a perspective that I use for myself but do not impose unnecessarily on other people. I learned that others are different from me, sometimes vastly so, that their needs are not always my needs, and that they occasionally need things that I emphatically do not. And I realized that I am OK with that, even thought it means that my conception of useful religious faith is nothing like the official doctrine of any organization, particularly not authoritarian organizations like the LDS or Catholic churches (which place the individual member under covenant to submit wholly and utterly to priesthood leaders).
I don't hold the LDS church wholly responsible for the fact that I was what I was. I don't blame my parents, either. And I don't blame myself. We all did the best we could: I did, my parents did, and the church did, too. Unfortunately, we were wrong about what was best for me. Fortunately, I was able to figure out what was up before it got really out of hand (i.e. before I castrated or killed myself or became utterly committed to a program of treatment that would merely aggravate my symptoms ad nauseam). If I have blame for the church, particularly the leadership, it comes not from their human ignorance (which afflicts us all) but from their refusal to admit to it -- and for the unnecessary pain that this arrogance causes people like me, people who should not be spending hours obsessing and confessing under the illusion that such degrading behavior is guaranteed to make things better (whether here and now or hereafter in another world). These people need something other than your garden variety forgiveness and absolution, if they are to live happy lives. The repentance process does not redeem them: it merely crucifies them, over and over until they give it up. As long as church leaders, particularly those in the governing quorums, fail to acknowledge the inadequacy of their priesthood discipline as a panacea for every kind of soul sickness, they will continue to hurt people like me, and I will continue to recommend that people avoid undergoing their treatment -- just as I would warn the bodily sick against a surgeon who tried to cure all illness with bleeding (or some other ancient treatment whose anecdotal effectiveness in one instance is no guarantee that it won't cause massive harm in another). Honesty is something I value, and honesty requires I that admit the fact that church discipline has not helped my life: on the contrary, it came pretty close to ruining it. If it helps you, that is great, but your experience does not cancel out mine. The drug that helps you may kill me (and vice versa). People who are like me (rather than you) need to know that I exist, and that church discipline was not good for me.
On Faith. Kalosieh's concluding statement of faith comes close to mine (pp. 241-242):
My commitment to Catholicism, such as it is, does not endure because of scripture and what theologians refer to as public revelation, i.e., that period of time from the life of Christ up to the death of the last apostle ... I doubt that a genuinely religious person is merely someone who adheres to a system of beliefs (creeds) and a way of life (morals and spirituality) because of recorded events (accurately recorded or not) from millennia past. The very notion that a person's ultimate values should hinge exclusively upon historical events, I find repugnant. I believe that religion continues to live within the human community for reasons over and above that of traditions and cultural education. Religion is inherent in our nature, just as are music, art, dance, wondering, politics, science, etc. Faith is anchored not so much in the accuracy or inaccuracy of historical events, but in the experience of the human community then and now. Neither the solitary individual's experiences nor the historical events recorded in manuscripts enjoy a monopoly on the truths of the religious dimensions in mankind. Just as anyone would be foolish to ignore the history of any issue, idea, problem, or undertaking, so too would a person be foolish not to consult the experiences of the human community with regards to religion and religious experiences.
History, however, does not have a monopoly on the mystical, the experiences of awe and wonder, the drive for meaning and significance. As in the past, so too today the exact nature of those experiences can be questioned, debated, doubted, or believed. I believe that God can and does intervene in our time and space. Whether directly or indirectly, through nature or beyond nature, I am still open to further considerations as to how this is achieved. When I look at history in search of signs and wonders, I discern that the Catholic Church seems to enjoy an abundance of people and places where and to whom those interventions occur. It would be preposterous, however, to imply anything along the lines of God hearing and answering only Catholics, just as it would be unthinkable that only Catholics enjoy the miraculous in their midst ... Ironically, although the Catholic Church is quick to assert the miraculous in the life and times of Jesus and the apostles, she is skeptical of the miraculous in the present era! Mystics who report apparitions, locutions, etc., are said to enjoy "private revelations." The church does not obligate the faithful to embrace any of these (although after an exhaustive investigation along empirical scientific lines, she may encourage the faithful to assent to them). Wherever it appears that an altered state of consciousness is involved, the church turns skeptical and scientific. She does well to do so because "private revelations" are no guarantee of the whole truth in what is "revealed." For example, predictions made in these altered states of consciousness have proven wrong, erroneous, and sometimes harmful, both to the person who has had the experience and those who believed and took action based upon it. On the other hand, there were also genuine, authentic, wholesome, and helpful revelations that proved their genuineness over time in the life of the recipient and those who believed, e.g., Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima ...
Critics could reduce my commitment to Catholicism solely to my upbringing. But the only way to demonstrate that such is not the case would be for me to renounce it. I would be like the character who lamented that the only way he could prove his freedom was to commit suicide. Ironically, whereas some see me as a staunch Catholic, others see me as outside the fold. I see myself as neither. I can pray with any religious person.Today, I am in a position much like that of Kalosieh. The correlated LDS experience produced by the Corporation of the President has little for me, since I cannot actively participate in meetings where vocal submission to priesthood authority is required (and I find much of the doctrine simply wrong as it is taught, reflecting a poor understanding of history and the human condition, past and present). But I am still a Mormon. I use Mormon language. I have Mormon tastes (even if they don't match what is most popular currently at the Church Office Building). I have a Mormon history, and the ethical values that I continue to find meaningful have a long history in Mormonism. (I value personal revelation, integrity, family, hard work, charity, sacrifice, community, etc. I do not have to believe in the pristine moral purity of Joseph Smith to hold these values. I do not have to approve modern church leaders' decision to build a great and spacious building in Salt Lake City. I do not have to think that all priesthood counsel must be followed regardless of circumstances, or consequences. I do not have to deny my birthright as a rational being. I do not have to hold beliefs I find untenable or practices I find repugnant.)
I don't necessarily deny the numinous, the mysterious, what some call the divine. Life contains many things I do not understand. If we put them all together, assuming they are bound up together somehow, the result might be called God (or the gods). I have no problem with that, until some of us invoke this semantic patch as an excuse to control others. My inability to comprehend ultimate reality (God) does not give me authority to dictate to you unilaterally. In my experience, Mormon priesthood leaders -- all of them -- are men just like me. (The lack of women in leadership roles is another issue, but we don't have to go there now.) They have no more right to dictate unilaterally to me in the name of God than I have to dictate to them. If their counsel works, then I believe it should be followed (just as counsel from a doctor should be followed if the observed result is that patients get better). If it does not work, then it should not be followed (just a series of deaths in the hospital would curtail the privileges of a rogue physician with a bad idea, or a string of bad luck making him a danger to his patients). Philosophically speaking, I think I am ultimately more of a materialist and an atheist than Kalosieh: for me, God is more like an emergent principle of order in the universe, an unexplained tendency of matter to form itself into ordered patterns. Practically and ethically, we are on the same page. What matters is what you do, how you live your life here and now--not how some great hero of the mythical past lived (or didn't), and submission to authority is no substitute for personal engagement. You may feel called of God to tell me how to live my life, but that does not mean I feel called to submit to your direction, particularly when it makes me miserable.
Unlike many in my position, I don't mind praying or singing hymns. I do both, on occasion, and I enjoy it (especially the singing). In this I am like Kalosieh. From my perspective, it does not matter what the service is -- whether it is offered to this god or that one, to Jesus or Allah or Ganesh (etc.) -- but what it does in the heart of those who take part. I can pray with any believer, in any religion: if his worship conduces to the values I share (things like integrity, family, hard work, charity, sacrifice, community, etc.), then I have no reservations about participating. And I include thoughtful conversations with atheists among some of my most uplifting "spiritual" experiences, in all seriousness.
Reading Kalosieh's book was a special experience for me. I laughed. I cried. I looked over some passages again and again. In many cases, it was like meeting my Doppelganger, and yet, at the end of the day, we are very different men. There is beautiful poetry in our likeness proving unlike. When it is done right, religion gives this poetry a voice: it gives us words to talk about how we are at once alike and different -- unique and particular manifestations of profound generalities that we cannot always see clearly. Mormonism and Catholicism both offer material for creating particular windows onto an unknown (and wild) reality -- the generic, objective truth that some call God. Science and humanism can also create windows into this same reality, and they do not make it any less miraculous. I wish more people understood this.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Pilgrim's Prayer
Paulo Coelho. The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom. Trans. Alan R. Clarke. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. ISBN: 006251279X.
Coelho's book tells the story of a fictional pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (a journey which I really want to complete for myself one day in real time: I have already lived in several cities along the Camino for extended periods of time, working as an LDS missionary, and Spain will always be a part of me). The chapter on "personal vices" includes a prayer by the pilgrim guide (Petrus), which really speaks to me. I will quote it here (pp. 150-154):
There are few things we can actually do in life. One of the most precious of these things, in my experience, is to be present in the moment, especially those moments that are emotionally charged (whether with joy or sorrow). I cannot determine the circumstances of my birth or death, but (as it happens) I have some control over the dance that I execute between entrance and exit. I can strike a heroic pose, embracing the truth that I find (whatever it is), or I can worry about what someone else thinks the whole time (and pass him all the panache of living my life: the risks, the fear, the elation, the sorrow, the anticipation). I choose to live my life myself: ultimately, I think this will make me a better person, my associates better people, and the world a better place (no matter what happens: some of it is always going to be awful).
Coelho's book tells the story of a fictional pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (a journey which I really want to complete for myself one day in real time: I have already lived in several cities along the Camino for extended periods of time, working as an LDS missionary, and Spain will always be a part of me). The chapter on "personal vices" includes a prayer by the pilgrim guide (Petrus), which really speaks to me. I will quote it here (pp. 150-154):
Pity us, O Lord, for we are pilgrims on the road to Compostela, and our being here may be a vice. In your infinite pity, help us never to turn our knowledge against ourselves.These days I find myself often in a strange position: on the one hand, my religious friends see me as secular apostate; on the other hand, my secular friends recognize that I am still very deeply religious (if anything, my real religious faith, a faith in humanity that I have always had, has become stronger). Intellectually, I am keenly aware now of the difference between history (what happened) and myth (what we say about what happened). I am also very keenly aware that I cannot ignore my own myths and blithely follow someone else's (even if that person claims a divine revelation, popular support, or a Nobel Prize). I see all people as human beings: most of us want good things, for ourselves and others, good things that we often fail to achieve. Failure would not be such a problem if it came alone: more damaging is the illusion of success. Some of us stumble upon happiness (historical fact), and promptly concoct some absurd story (myth) explaining (1) how we did it and (2) how you can do it too (often this involves paying the myth-maker). There is nothing terribly wrong with this universal tendency (even down to paying for myths that won't always pan out), until we insist on ignoring the fact that we are just playing (pretending to understand things that have actually eluded us). Life is a game--a deadly game: our existence is on the line all the time. But it is still a game, a farce, a joke. It is meant to be laughed at (after the tears: they have their place, and I would never deny that). If we pretend that the game is serious (i.e. that it has regular rules that make some kind of continuous sense that we or someone smarter understands), we lose the chance to live for real. We become focused on the myth more than the reality that it describes (but does not and cannot contain). We avoid some small tragedies (facing the realities of unfairness and death), but at what cost? What profiteth it a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? I want to suffer my own life. I don't want to lose my experiences. I don't want the edge of my suffering dulled by long drafts of intoxicating myth lying to me, telling me that all is well, that the ruin I see around me is unreal, just a bad moment in kindergarten before an eternity in heaven (with mansions and virgins and gold and whatever else the fashionable prophet du jour promises). The only thing worse than suffering terribly in life is failing to suffer what one actually suffers. The only thing worse than being crucified myself is letting Jesus be crucified in my place.
(1) Have pity on those who pity themselves and who see themselves as good people treated unfairly by life--who feel that they do not deserve what has happened to them. Such people will never be able to fight the good fight. And pity those who are cruel to themselves and who see only evil in their own actions, feeling that they are to blame for the injustice in the world. Because neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'But the very hairs of your head are numbered.'
(2) Have pity on those who command and those who serve during long hours of work, and who sacrifice themselves in exchange merely for a Sunday off, only to find that there is nowhere to go, and everything is closed. But also have pity on those who sanctify their efforts, and who are able to go beyond the bounds of their own madness, winding up indebted, or nailed to the cross by their very brothers. Because neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'Be ye therefore as wise as serpents and as harmless as the doves.'
(3) Have pity on those who may conquer the world but never join the good fight within themselves. But pity also those who have won the good fight within themselves, and now find themselves in the streets and the bars of life because they are unable to conquer the world. Because neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'He who heeds my words will I liken to a wise man who built his house on rock.'
(4) Have pity on those who are fearful of taking up a pen, or a paintbrush, or an instrument, or a tool because they are afraid that someone has already done so much better than they could, and who feel themselves to be unworthy to enter the marvelous mansion of art. But have even more pity on those who, having taken up the pen, or the paintbrush, or the instrument, or the tool, have turned inspiration into a paltry thing, and yet feel themselves to be better than others. Neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known.'
(5) Pity those who eat and drink and sate themselves, but are unhappy and alone in their satiety. But pity even more those who fast, and who censure and prohibit, and who thereby see themselves as saints, preaching your name in the streets. For neither of these types of people know thy law that says, 'If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.'
(6) Pity those who fear death, and are unaware of the many kingdoms through which they have already passed, and the many deaths that they have already suffered, and who are unhappy because they think that one day their world will end. But have even more pity for those who already know their many deaths, and today think of themselves as immortal. Neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'Except that one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'
(7) Have pity on those who bind themselves with the silken ties of love, and think of themselves as masters of others, and who feel envy, and poison themselves, and who torture themselves because they cannot see that love and all things change like the wind. But pity even more those who die of their fear of loving and who reject love in the name of a greater love that they know not. Neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.'
(8) Pity those who reduce the cosmos to an explanation, God to a magic potion, and humanity to beings with basic needs that must be satisfied, because they never hear the music of the spheres. But have even more pity on those who have blind faith, and who in their laboratories transform mercury into gold, and who are surrounded by their books about the secrets of the Tarot and the power of the pyramids. Neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.'
(9) Pity those who see no one but themselves, and for whom others are a blurred and distant scenario as they pass through the streets in their limousines and lock themselves in their air-conditioned penthouse offices, as they suffer in silence the solitude of power. But pity even more those who will do anything for anybody, and are charitable, and seek to win out over evil only through love. For neither of these kinds of people know thy law that says, 'Let him who has no sword sell his garment and buy one.'
(10) Have pity, Lord, on we who seek out and dare to take up the sword that you have promised, and who are a saintly and sinful lot scattered throughout the world. Because we do not recognize even ourselves, and often think that we are dressed, but we are nude; we believe that we have committed a crime, when in reality we have saved someone's life. And do not forget in your pity for all of us that we hold the sword with the hand of an angel and the hand of a devil, and that they are both the same hand. Because we are all of the world, and we continue to be of the world, and we have need of thee. We will always be in need of thy law that says, 'When I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, you lacked nothing.'
There are few things we can actually do in life. One of the most precious of these things, in my experience, is to be present in the moment, especially those moments that are emotionally charged (whether with joy or sorrow). I cannot determine the circumstances of my birth or death, but (as it happens) I have some control over the dance that I execute between entrance and exit. I can strike a heroic pose, embracing the truth that I find (whatever it is), or I can worry about what someone else thinks the whole time (and pass him all the panache of living my life: the risks, the fear, the elation, the sorrow, the anticipation). I choose to live my life myself: ultimately, I think this will make me a better person, my associates better people, and the world a better place (no matter what happens: some of it is always going to be awful).
Friday, November 18, 2011
Useless Truth
Philip Jenkins. The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. ISBN: 9780061472800.
While at BYU, I noted a peculiar fascination with Greek Orthodoxy among some of the faculty with interest in early Christianity. One of my professors in particular mentioned that if he were not Mormon, he would be Orthodox. The Orthodox tradition was attractive for its connection to ancient Greek Christianity (or better, Christianities), the closest thing(s) to authentic primitive Christianity that objective-minded historians can find.
Jenkins tells the story of the Greek Christians, and of other Christians outside the western European tradition (though he refers freely to that tradition to illustrate his narrative). Here you will find the story of ancient Christians in Syria, Egypt, Persia, India, and China, not to mention Asia Minor (modern Turkey). You will find Nestorians, Monophysites alongside more exotic (and independent) heretics, like the Manichaeans and (inevitably) the Muslims. You will learn how the Christians conquered the East, and lost it all. You will be forced to confront how the prosperity gospel (expressed in scriptures like Deuteronomy 28 and Mosiah 2:22) does not work, as you see covenant people suffer the almost complete dissolution of their culture--in spite of every promise, in spite of every revelation, in spite of every miracle. You will find stories of religious genocide, occurring still in relatively modern times (e.g. the annihilation of millions of Greeks and Armenians by Turks in the early twentieth century). You will see the best faces of religion (the scholar, the humanitarian, the pillar of society), and the worst (the holy warrior, the sectarian, the scourge of God). You will see the power of chance, which offered the eastern Christians safety (with the possibility of a Mongol alliance against the Muslim powers) and then snatched it away, perhaps forever (when powerful Mongol chieftains converted to Islam). Notice that persecution of the Other is a non-denominational doctrine: Christians brought it to the Muslims, and vice versa. Religion knows how to be kind, and how to be cruel, regardless of who is in charge or what they claim to believe.
The best part of the book, from my perspective, is the very end, where Jenkins talks about the need in contemporary Christian thought for a theology of defeat, failure, and disaster. How do we deal with the failure of God? How do we process divine indifference to prayer, to sacrifice, to basic human decency? Historically, we tend to ignore it, an ignorance that impoverishes our perspective on reality, and cheapens our faith (leaving people like me loathe to believe anything any religious leader may say). We dismiss the losers as apostates, has-beens, divine rejects. Their stories go untold. Their thoughts are forgotten. Their experiences, the good and the bitter, teach us nothing. Jenkins calls us to repentance (pp. 261-262):
In a nutshell, modern, western Christianity suffers from the same problem that plagues modern LDS Mormonism: an inability to deal productively with its faith history, a history which is full of what Boyd K. Packer might call useless truth. But that truth is not useless. That truth is what points us toward new revelation, showing us problems that we have failed to address adequately. That truth is what keeps us humble, showing us that we do not know the mind of God, that we are (in fact) extremely ignorant of any guiding principle at the helm of the universe. We have to preserve that truth, telling the "faith-destroying" stories of heartbreak and disaster (like what really happened at Mountain Meadows, or the Council of Nicaea, or the Battle of Ankara, or the Latin sack of Constantinople, or the modern Turkish "cleansing" of Smyrna). We cannot pretend that uncomfortable truth does not exist without endangering our souls, the souls of our children, and the very heart and soul of our entire community. Whether you are Mormon, Christian, both, or something else, lying for the Lord is bad. Ignoring for the Lord is bad, too. I cannot lie, and I will not ignore. To do so would be to go against everything that I stand for as a moral human being, as a Mormon and a Christian.
Truth is healing. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). It sets us free from pretending, free from the fear that something unknown "out there" may take away the inner strength that keeps us sane. We ignore and abjure it at our peril, especially when it tells us things that we do not want to know, showing us where our puny efforts to control reality break down. The more we harden ourselves against useless truth today, the worse we are going to feel tomorrow, when it is inevitably shouted down at us from the housetops. I cannot resist it any more, and that is why I am what I am--estranged from my faith community, without a secure job that I might have had, and generally disillusioned with "faithful" attempts by some religious to obfuscate and deny real suffering (my own and that of other people). Like better men before me, I come to you now, Internet world, "from the back of a broken dream," simultaneously shattered and inspired by my personal encounter with useless truth.
While at BYU, I noted a peculiar fascination with Greek Orthodoxy among some of the faculty with interest in early Christianity. One of my professors in particular mentioned that if he were not Mormon, he would be Orthodox. The Orthodox tradition was attractive for its connection to ancient Greek Christianity (or better, Christianities), the closest thing(s) to authentic primitive Christianity that objective-minded historians can find.
Jenkins tells the story of the Greek Christians, and of other Christians outside the western European tradition (though he refers freely to that tradition to illustrate his narrative). Here you will find the story of ancient Christians in Syria, Egypt, Persia, India, and China, not to mention Asia Minor (modern Turkey). You will find Nestorians, Monophysites alongside more exotic (and independent) heretics, like the Manichaeans and (inevitably) the Muslims. You will learn how the Christians conquered the East, and lost it all. You will be forced to confront how the prosperity gospel (expressed in scriptures like Deuteronomy 28 and Mosiah 2:22) does not work, as you see covenant people suffer the almost complete dissolution of their culture--in spite of every promise, in spite of every revelation, in spite of every miracle. You will find stories of religious genocide, occurring still in relatively modern times (e.g. the annihilation of millions of Greeks and Armenians by Turks in the early twentieth century). You will see the best faces of religion (the scholar, the humanitarian, the pillar of society), and the worst (the holy warrior, the sectarian, the scourge of God). You will see the power of chance, which offered the eastern Christians safety (with the possibility of a Mongol alliance against the Muslim powers) and then snatched it away, perhaps forever (when powerful Mongol chieftains converted to Islam). Notice that persecution of the Other is a non-denominational doctrine: Christians brought it to the Muslims, and vice versa. Religion knows how to be kind, and how to be cruel, regardless of who is in charge or what they claim to believe.
The best part of the book, from my perspective, is the very end, where Jenkins talks about the need in contemporary Christian thought for a theology of defeat, failure, and disaster. How do we deal with the failure of God? How do we process divine indifference to prayer, to sacrifice, to basic human decency? Historically, we tend to ignore it, an ignorance that impoverishes our perspective on reality, and cheapens our faith (leaving people like me loathe to believe anything any religious leader may say). We dismiss the losers as apostates, has-beens, divine rejects. Their stories go untold. Their thoughts are forgotten. Their experiences, the good and the bitter, teach us nothing. Jenkins calls us to repentance (pp. 261-262):
Christians believe that God speaks through history; and only by knowing that history can we hope to interpret momentous events like the Japanese persecutions [which annihilated Catholicism in early modern Japan] and the fall of the Asian churches. Yet Christians have systematically forgotten or ignored so very much of their own history that it is scarcely surprising that they encounter only a deafening silence. Losing the ancient churches is one thing, but losing their memory and experience so utterly is a disaster scarcely less damaging. To break the silence, we need to recover those memories, to restore that history. To borrow the title of one of Charles Olson's great poems: the chain of memory is resurrection.
In a nutshell, modern, western Christianity suffers from the same problem that plagues modern LDS Mormonism: an inability to deal productively with its faith history, a history which is full of what Boyd K. Packer might call useless truth. But that truth is not useless. That truth is what points us toward new revelation, showing us problems that we have failed to address adequately. That truth is what keeps us humble, showing us that we do not know the mind of God, that we are (in fact) extremely ignorant of any guiding principle at the helm of the universe. We have to preserve that truth, telling the "faith-destroying" stories of heartbreak and disaster (like what really happened at Mountain Meadows, or the Council of Nicaea, or the Battle of Ankara, or the Latin sack of Constantinople, or the modern Turkish "cleansing" of Smyrna). We cannot pretend that uncomfortable truth does not exist without endangering our souls, the souls of our children, and the very heart and soul of our entire community. Whether you are Mormon, Christian, both, or something else, lying for the Lord is bad. Ignoring for the Lord is bad, too. I cannot lie, and I will not ignore. To do so would be to go against everything that I stand for as a moral human being, as a Mormon and a Christian.
Truth is healing. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). It sets us free from pretending, free from the fear that something unknown "out there" may take away the inner strength that keeps us sane. We ignore and abjure it at our peril, especially when it tells us things that we do not want to know, showing us where our puny efforts to control reality break down. The more we harden ourselves against useless truth today, the worse we are going to feel tomorrow, when it is inevitably shouted down at us from the housetops. I cannot resist it any more, and that is why I am what I am--estranged from my faith community, without a secure job that I might have had, and generally disillusioned with "faithful" attempts by some religious to obfuscate and deny real suffering (my own and that of other people). Like better men before me, I come to you now, Internet world, "from the back of a broken dream," simultaneously shattered and inspired by my personal encounter with useless truth.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Responsible Religion
Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. 2nd edition (originally published in 1961). New York: Abbey of Gethsemane, 2007. ISBN 081120099X.
(8) What is the purpose of religion? In my experience, religion is a tool that individuals and communities use to tame human appetites. Merton addresses this aspect of religion:
(9) As Merton says elsewhere:
(10) All the foregoing militates strongly against the idea that there is something useful to be gained from theorizing about absolute truth from an imagined universal perspective. If there is such truth, the process of human development effaces it so effectively that it might as well not exist, covering it up with crazy rituals that have little or no connection to it (and may impede responsible ethical conduct as much as they foster it). Practical religion is always a question of balancing imponderables, making decisions without full understanding:
(8) What is the purpose of religion? In my experience, religion is a tool that individuals and communities use to tame human appetites. Merton addresses this aspect of religion:
It should be accepted as a most elementary human and moral truth that no man can live a fully sane and decent life unless he is able to say 'no' on occasion to his natural bodily appetites. No man who simply eats and drinks whenever he feels like eating and drinking, who smokes whenever he feels the urge to light a cigarette, who gratifies his curiosity and sensuality whenever they are stimulated, can consider himself a free person [an individual with integrity]. He has renounced his spiritual freedom and become the servant of bodily impulse. Therefore his mind and his will are not fully his own. They are under the power of his appetites. And through the medium of his appetites, they are under the control of those who gratify his appetites. Just because he can buy one brand of whiskey rather than another, this man deludes himself that he is making a choice; but the fact is that he is a devout servant of a tyrannical ritual. He must reverently buy the bottle, take it home, unwrap it, pour it out for his friends, watch TV, 'feel good,' talk his silly uninhibited head off, get angry, shout, fight, and go to bed in disgust with himself and the world. This becomes a kind of religious compulsion without which he cannot convince himself that he is really alive, really 'fulfilling his personality.' He is not 'sinning' but simply makes an ass of himself, deluding himself that he is real when his compulsions have reduced him to a shadow of a genuine person. In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today (85-86).Religion aims to create an interface through which the community warns the individual about the dangers of going wherever his unguided fancy may take him (or her). When it succeeds, it provides healthy (or at least innocuous) alternatives to the insane rituals we create spontaneously for ourselves. When it fails, it magnifies the bad effects of ridiculous ritualism (which is endemic in all human life), fostering mass delusion.
(9) As Merton says elsewhere:
Where men live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be greater sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and cliches repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn't care, he doesn't hear, he doesn't think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional noises. He does not think, he secretes cliches...Here the sin is not in the conviction that one is not like other men, but in the belief that being like them is sufficient to cover every other sin. The complacency of the individual who admires his own excellence is bad enough, but it is more respectable than the complacency of the man who has no self-esteem because he has not even a superficial self which he can esteem. He is not a person, not an individual, only an atom. This atomized existence is sometimes praised as humility or self-sacrifice, sometimes it is called obedience, sometimes it is devotion to the dialectic of class war. It produces a kind of peace which is not peace, but only an escape from an immediately urgent sense of conflict. It is the peace not of love but of anesthesia. It is the peace not of self-realization and self-dedication, but of flight into irresponsibility (55-56).As with the individual, so with the crowd: nothing really good comes from just going through the motions. Maybe the rain came because our ancestors danced this way and not that way--maybe our ancestors avoided moral problems by living this way and not that way--but how are we to sort the really useful kernel of the ritual from the (infinitely more abundant) cultural chaff? How do we know that ethical behavior is guaranteed by chanting certain mantras (and not others), reading certain books (and not others), marrying certain people (and not others), obeying certain people (and not others), et cetera ad infinitum? Until we think critically about how our religious behavior affects communal and individual moral integrity from an objective perspective (one that we can understand and apply as individuals, without outsourcing the thinking to someone else), our worship is no more rational or effective than that of a cargo cult. Religion, to be useful, must be thoughtful, self-critical, and tailored to the foster the unstructured development of the responsible individual.
(10) All the foregoing militates strongly against the idea that there is something useful to be gained from theorizing about absolute truth from an imagined universal perspective. If there is such truth, the process of human development effaces it so effectively that it might as well not exist, covering it up with crazy rituals that have little or no connection to it (and may impede responsible ethical conduct as much as they foster it). Practical religion is always a question of balancing imponderables, making decisions without full understanding:
A man who is not stripped and poor and naked within his own soul will unconsciously tend to do the works he has to do for his own sake rather than for the glory of God. He will be virtuous not because he loves God's will but because he wants to admire his own virtues [which he may or may not be in a position to judge]...Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand. You will travel in darkness and you will not longer be concerned with yourself and no longer compare yourself with other men. Those who have gone by that way have finally found out that sanctity is in everything and that God is all around them. Having given up all desire to compete with other men [in the mission field, at the university, before the congregation, on Wall Street] they suddenly wake up and find that the joy of God is everywhere, and they are able to exult in the virtues and goodness of others more than ever they could have done in their own. They are so dazzled by the reflection of God in the souls of the men they live with that they no longer have any power to condemn anything they see in another. Even in the greatest sinners they can see virtues and goodness that no one else can find. As for themselves, if they still consider themselves, they no longer dare to compare themselves with others. The idea has now become unthinkable. But it is no longer a source of suffering and lamentation: they have finally reached the point where they can take their own insignificance for granted. They are no longer interested in their external selves (58-60).So the truly holy man (or woman) is not encumbered by some specious "mantle of leadership" that obliges him (or her) to tell lies or condemn others harshly for their ethical mistakes (whatever standard we use to determine these). This to me is the essence of Christianity, the point that Christ is getting at when he tells the religious leaders of his own time (who were deeply committed to their own importance as the only legitimate representatives of God): "Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you" (Matt. 21:31). I understand Christ to mean that the point of religion is not maintaining some outward form of piety (the kind that has to be justified by lies and threats because it cannot withstand rational inquiry), but fostering an inner integrity (something that all are equally capable of achieving, and that each must find for him or herself). It is my belief that this integrity flourishes best in the complete absence of tyrannical moral authority. So I am open to free and frank discussion with my fellow-travelers on the road to enlightenment (or salvation, or whatever), but when they tell me I must submit to their superior light and knowledge or be damned, I respectfully refuse to cede to them the character that I construct only for God (or whatever we happen to call the mystery of life that lies in and around us). Responsible religion depends upon thoughtful dialogue, which can only exist when both parties to the conversation have equal authority to construct their own beliefs (including access to the information from which those beliefs are constructed). The fact that leaders of the LDS church have been willing to ignore this fact (as I perceive it) for the past 200 years is very disturbing to me. From my perspective, they are either (1) evil masterminds who take delight in bilking their gullible fellowman, or--what is more likely from the facts--(2) poor saps like the rest of us who happen to have inherited a broken (or malformed) cultural paradigm that they perpetuate for lack of anything better. But enough ranting for the present: I do not want to make too great a show of my own unholy urge to condemn others.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Religious Integrity and the Church
Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. 2nd edition (originally published in 1961). New York: Abbey of Gethsemane, 2007. ISBN 081120099X.
(4) The theme of individual freedom and integrity is one that Merton comes back to repeatedly. Here is one passage that really struck me:
(5) Another telling passage speaks about the pointless meeting (reminding me of my mission):
(6) The problem with meetings is not that they exist per se. They have a disturbing tendency to substitute relatively ineffectual learning methods (in the form of passive listening and empty rhetorical posturing) for effective ones (practicing empathy with another person, undefended by artificial codes of conduct that narrowly prescribe action: it is easy to be "charitable" when this involves nothing more than sitting quietly or uttering platitudes at a podium; if we want to strengthen our charity, however, we should seek out situations that test it a little more). So the church (whether LDS or Catholic) becomes something of a paradox:
(7) Ideally, the Church provides social space in which the individual saint can build his own integrity and simultaneously improve that of his neighbor:
(4) The theme of individual freedom and integrity is one that Merton comes back to repeatedly. Here is one passage that really struck me:
We are free beings and sons of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth. To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. We can evade this responsibility by playing with masks, and this pleases us because it can appear at times to be a free and creative way of living. It is quite easy, it seems to please everyone. But in the long run the cost and the sorrow come very high. To work out our own identity with God, which the Bible calls 'working out our salvation,' is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as He reveals Himself, in the mystery of each new situation. We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be...The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, by God's will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, my own sanctity. To refuse them is to refuse everything; it is the refusal of my own existence and being: of my identity, of my very self (32-33).I have spent a fair amount of time "playing with masks" as a closet doubter in the LDS church. I went through the motions of orthodox belief, even as my view of reality made it impossible for me to believe honestly. I felt isolated and alienated at church, where I could not share my problems with anyone for fear of arousing anger, frustration, and increased alienation (not to mention the possibility that others might take my revelation as a catalyst to radically destabilize their own lives: I did not want to bring anyone's life crashing down by revealing that much of what is taught at church is patently "untrue"). But I needed to express my spirituality positively. I needed a place where I could share my thoughts and feelings freely, knowing that others would respond affirmatively and constructively (instead of telling me to shut up and get back in line, reading scriptures and attending endless meetings where we are spoon fed pat answers). I felt my spirit dying at church (from lack of positive nurture), and so I ended up fleeing to other places in search of spiritual refreshment. It felt so good to take off the mask and be honest for a change (proving that I can still believe in the concept of a resurrection after all, even if I mean something different by it than the old bodily resuscitation).
(5) Another telling passage speaks about the pointless meeting (reminding me of my mission):
We have said that the solitude that is important to a contemplative is, above all, an interior and spiritual thing. We have admitted that it is possible to live in deep and peaceful interior solitude even in the midst of the world and its confusion. But this truth is sometimes abused in religion. There are men dedicated to God whose lives are full of restlessness and who have no real desire to be alone. They admit that exterior solitude is good, in theory, but they insist that it is far better to preserve interior solitude while living in the midst of others. In practice, their lives are devoured by activities and strangled by attachments. Interior solitude is impossible for them. They fear it. They do everything they can to escape it. What is worse, they try to draw everyone into activities as senseless and devouring as their own. They are great promoters of useless work. They love to organize meetings and banquets and conferences and lectures. They print circulars, write letters, talk for hours on the telephone in order that they may gather a hundred people together in a large room where they will all fill the air with smoke and make a great deal of noise and roar at one another and clap their hands and stagger home at last patting one another on the back with the assurance that they have all done great things to spread the Kingdom of God (83).Reading these words, I am taken back to zone conference (where sugar replaced the smoke: the mission is a great place to pick up "clean" vices). I am also reminded of other experiences (such as the first priesthood session of General Conference that I attended without my wife) where I found myself asking, "Why do we need to have this meeting? What are we accomplishing?" and being dissatisfied with the answer. The church is certainly not the only organization that persists through pointless meetings (as the faculty at my university will attest), and not all meetings can be avoided, as long as I am trying to be a part of society in any useful capacity. Nevertheless, reading Merton confirmed me in my desire to avoid a useless meeting whenever possible, and made me even more skeptical of the alleged benefits of such meetings (increased "spirituality" at church; magic improvements in "efficient educational delivery" at college: too often it all boils down to a lot of hot air whose import is at best insubstantial, at worst an impediment to real learning and growth).
(6) The problem with meetings is not that they exist per se. They have a disturbing tendency to substitute relatively ineffectual learning methods (in the form of passive listening and empty rhetorical posturing) for effective ones (practicing empathy with another person, undefended by artificial codes of conduct that narrowly prescribe action: it is easy to be "charitable" when this involves nothing more than sitting quietly or uttering platitudes at a podium; if we want to strengthen our charity, however, we should seek out situations that test it a little more). So the church (whether LDS or Catholic) becomes something of a paradox:
Human traditions all tend toward stagnation and decay. They try to perpetuate things that cannot be perpetuated [e.g. naive myths about the nature of reality]. They cling to objects and values which time destroys without mercy [e.g. human infallibility, institutionalized celibacy, polygamy, racist and sexist doctrines of supremacy]. They are bound up with a contingent and material order of things--customs, fashions, styles, and attitudes--which inevitably change and give way to something else. The presence of a strong element of human conservatism in the Church should not obscure the fact that Christian tradition [which for me includes Mormonism], supernatural in its source, is something absolutely opposed to human traditionalism (142).So the Church (as Merton calls it), in order to avoid becoming just another human organization, must foster life of a kind that does not occur elsewhere--a life that takes what is good from the tradition of the past and adapts it in revolutionary fashion to the challenges of the present. It must be open to losing some things its members like, and embracing some things they hate.
(7) Ideally, the Church provides social space in which the individual saint can build his own integrity and simultaneously improve that of his neighbor:
Very few men are sanctified in isolation. Very few become perfect in absolute solitude. Living with other people and learning to lose ourselves in the understanding of their weakness and deficiencies can help us to become true contemplatives...Even the courageous acceptance of interior trials in utter solitude cannot altogether compensate for the work of purification accomplished in us by patience and humility in loving other men and sympathizing with their most unreasonable needs and demands (191).How can I achieve this ideal of iron sharpening iron when I cannot even speak my concerns about righteousness without being removed from the community as an apostate? How can dialogue exist when one side of the conversation has no voice? The moment I express doubt in anything spoken from the pulpit by an imposing man in a business suit, the community (including some close friends) assumes I have no integrity and tells me to repent or go away. Contrary to what I have heard others say, I have no desire to impose my beliefs (or the lack thereof) on the imposing man in the suit or those who elect to hang on every word he utters. I am perfectly willing to put up with the nonsense of others. Why can they not put up with mine? Does Christ make us all brothers and sisters of equal worth to the community, or does he just give some of us a convenient excuse to lord it over the rest of us?
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