Thursday, January 26, 2017

Thinking is Work and Worth the Time

The end of the January interim is a time for students and professor to feel tired and exhausted.  For a month now we have been thinking about religious and theological ideas.  Religious questions are rarely easy.  Enough is enough.  Thinking is work.  We are designed to think but too much thinking strains the brain.  It rebels and demands a break.  I get it.

It is my fortune and honor to teach students to think theologically and religiously, to teach them especially to engage difficult questions, different religions, and particularly Judaism.  The fact that some students resist thinking about religious questions is particularly why I teach, in the hope that I can somehow provoke them into caring about these vital questions. In studying religion the questions are more important than the answers to those questions. I don’t have many answers but I work at asking the right questions. Some of you out there have walked with me, know what I mean and I thank you.

There is an old joke about God and thinking:  “Philosophers look for shadows in the closet, theologians find them.” To me the joke begs the question, are we thinking about something real?  Yes, I think we are.  But it is a mysterious, elusive, hidden strange force or energy with a puzzling methodology.  It is well worth the struggle.  But is not easy.

As someone who spends much of his time thinking about God, religion and meaning, I find, after teaching Religion 110 in January, I am tired and yet oddly pleased at the end of the term; we did some good thinking this past month.  I spoke, they listened, they spoke and I listened and it seems we heard each other as well as we could. It was a fine group of students and I am pleased.

Now comes the percolation. What we have studied will now be added to all else that jumbles around the brain and will be digested over time. The seeds have been planted; the land mines set.  We leave each other and will think some more, unconsciously perhaps, about all we have heard here. 

And soon, after a week, it will start again.  Tired as I may be, I look forward to meeting with students in the second semester and struggling against our inherent reluctance to think. 

The scripture reminds us all again and again, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.”  We have minds to use our minds, especially when it comes to religion. We will soon again give it all we have until we have to stop.  Such is our struggle and privilege to obtain wisdom.  So it goes from season to season, semester to semester and year to year.  I say to you and to me, thinking is work and worth the time.  I am indeed a lucky man!

Friday, January 20, 2017

Seeing is Believing with Mr. Trump

 Religious people often say , “when you believe then you will see.”  I suggest with Mr. Trump, we adopt the contrary saying, “When we see, then we will believe.”  He has promised a number of very general high sounding almost messianic promises.  We shall see.

What a strange person! He is not a politician. He likes to be unpredictable and unconventional.  He loves to tweet and the more people tell him to stop, the more he keeps on.  He is indeed an unprecedented president. I have to say, he has some good instincts and some ideas which might end up helping the country. Other ideas sound bizarre and misguided.  We will give him a chance and we shall see.

He strikes me like a brash bullying businessman who never admits to failing or having made a mistake.  He over confidently trusts his instincts.  He makes the best deal he can and calls it excellent, defends it at all costs.  He uses all sorts of rhetoric, lies and bluffs at will as a tactic or strategy, changes his story, keeps on dominating the news by all his tweets, sending out his sycophants to defend his latest comments, which they routinely declare, is his way of speaking his mind.  He isn’t even in office yet and he’s already successfully confusing and managing the press. The press may not like him but he is definitely not boring; he is a shining novelty in a culture whose head easily turns to every shiny thing.

What can we say about him?  He’s a character and we love characters even when we mock them.  His erratic behavior gets our attention because craziness and unpredictability always has power and makes the News. 

Some hope is that his vice president, his family and Republican leaders will keep his craziness in check.  We shall see.

I am willing to wait and see but am skeptical about what the next four years will be like.  We'll have to watch him and see if he can remain on track. Will he get lost in his myriad of tweets instead of actually governing?  How many times have we heard that he will soon pivot?  And yet he has remained who he has always been.  We shall see.

Finally, Mr. Trump should be aware.  “All glory is fleeting.”  The shiniest of stars inevitably fade and become black holes.  The Republican party will play along for as long as they get what they want from Mr. Trump.  The Democrats will remain wary, regardless.  This is true of the American people as well.  We are still a young country with high hopes willing to take leadership risks, yet quick to grow tired of the very novelties we have created. Let’s give him a chance but keep our eyes wide open.  In this case the smartest religious view is, “seeing is believing.”

Friday, January 13, 2017

The Problem with the Word "Grace."

Perhaps the most popular word in all of Christian vocabulary is the word “grace.”  A seminary professor of mine used to say, "The Lutheran Church is a movement in the Church Catholic to remind the Church about the centrality of grace."  For Christians, the word “grace” refers to the unmerited love of God given to the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.   Arguably,  the Lutheran national anthem which used to be A Mighty Fortress has now become Amazing Grace.

So, what’s wrong with the word “grace?”  The problem is the word is too easily abused.  The old song, Amazing Grace, asserts that God has come to “save a wretch like me.”  A wretch is an unfortunate, disgraceful and unhappy person.  But you and I are not wretches!  We are human beings created in the image of God.  We are not in a condition of sin.  We have the capacity to act poorly and the capacity to act well.  The notion that we are infected with sin, that no matter what we do, the act itself is tainted with sin is just not true.  I know the anthropological and theological arguments but they do not agree with the facts on the ground.  Human beings are not sinful by nature; they are ambiguous and inconsistent by nature.  Let’s not make more or less of what people are capable of doing.  They have the capacity for good, the capacity for evil and they do both.

In the Hebrew Bible, the word for grace is hesed.  Hesed actually doesn’t mean grace in the Christian sense.  The word hesed refers to the kindness or loyal love of God.  Yes, grace can be about forgiveness but grace is not intended to make us all into wretches needing to be saved.  The word “hesed” refers to a force at the heart of the universe that is working for us and not against us.  How this energy or force interacts within our world is puzzling, mysterious, open to doubts and skepticism.  But the word hesed or grace is about the disposition of this force, fighting at all times against chaos and madness produced by human and non-human nature. At least, that is our hope and trust.

And grace is not about diminishing our pursuit of what is right and just,   so we can do whatever we want, knowing we will be forgiven. The kindness of God is about teaching us to be real human beings. Judaism and Christianity are religions teaching us what it means to live as actual human beings.  For Christians, it is fair to say, through Jesus, God loves you the way we are but does not leave you the way we are.  For Jews, through Torah, God is constantly teaching us to live lives of character and to pursue justice.  And that is grace. That is hesed.

Finally, grace goes both ways.  God loves us by hesed alone and we love God by hesed alone.  God forgives us and we forgive God.  In a world that can be a dangerous place, we humans do what we can each day to stay sane.  And God does what God can do to help us stay sane.  Don’t let the word grace become a word that degrades you rather than uplift you. Grace or hesed is the kindness we ought show to each other each day.  It is the kindness of God in a universe that can be quite unkind.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Do What You Can Do

Assuming you have figured out how to get food, shelter and transportation, there are three central elements to having a sane life: instincts, skills, and chance.  The first two are under our control, the last is not.  Instincts are intuitions that we hone from mistakes we make until they transform into wisdom.  Skills are competencies we develop over time.  But chance or luck happens to us all for good and for bad.  We try to manage this trio every day in every way. Some of us are better at it than others.  Some of us are luckier than others.

Whatever God is about, God works within the interplay of these contingencies.  Near as I can tell, the world, as we know it, is not under anyone’s total control.  Nature has no conscience.  And it seems clear that in the last 2000 years, increasingly, God has withdrawn his power and given human beings more and more responsibility for running the planet, for good or for bad.  Seventy years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer enigmatically declared: “... And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world “etsi deus non daretur” [translation: "as if there were no God"]. And this is just what we do recognize--before God! God himself compels us to recognize it.”

The fact is:  We do not know who God is, but we know what God wants.  And, what does God want?  Near as I can tell, God wants us to care for each other whether we like each other or not.  We are called upon to pursue justice wherever we live.  God wants us to discipline our desires and appetites.  Most importantly, we are cautioned in our scriptures to avoid idolatry.  Whenever we do any of this, we have come closer to doing what God wants us to do.  Jesus asks his followers, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you to do?” (Luke 6:46) For Jews the Torah (read teaching) is what guides us to live a sane life.  What you do is more important than what you believe.

We try to manage our lives everyday, doing the best we can.  So, every day, in every way, do whatever little thing you can do to stop the craziness. Say a prayer, help one person, write a letter, shed a tear.  That may be, in our time, as close to God as we can get.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Trusting Without Knowing for Sure?

Faith is trusting without knowing for sure.  If we were certain and we knew for sure there would be no need to trust.  Then we would know.  But since we don’t know, we are compelled to trust and hope that what we trust is in some way true. 

Of course this makes many of us uncomfortable. We would like to know for sure.  So, sometimes we act like we are more certain than we really are.  This is certainly true about religion but it can also be said about politics, economics, science, technology and history.  In religion, we sing hymns, recite creeds, pray the same prayers everyday, attend worship services and try to encourage and convince ourselves that our faith and our way of looking at the world, is well placed. But, in those moments, when we observe the craziness and unpredictability of the world, we remain unsure.

Maybe like you, I want to be a person who trusts without any doubts.  I think and believe there is something going on with some sense of order to it, something I can understand, some force at the heart of the universe, for us and not against us.   For example, I ask myself why was there anything available in the first place for there to be a big bang?   Where did that something come from?  I get that some of our images of God are anthropomorphic and anthropopathic.  And I ask myself what are we doing here living on this planet floating and rotating in black space. So, I am a person of faith but I'm not sure I am right.  This sort of wrestling with faith is at the heart and soul of all religion.  We know and we know that we don't know.

For some, this kind of talk is a sign of pride, weakness or lack of conviction.  For me it is following the biblical command to “love the lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind.”  I do not believe that God gave us minds in order that we not use them to pursue the truth.  What do you think?