My Favorite Quotes: Joseph Epstein

Whether we are religious or not, we are all human and every day in every way we are constantly making decisions.  This quote from Joseph Epstein reminds me to pay attention to what I say and do.  Perhaps it will help you too.  Happy New Year to all and to all a sane 2018.

“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live, courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide. What makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.”

Joseph Epstein

Do Religion Professors Hurt Faith?

I recently spoke to a friend who used to be a student in one of my courses.  He’s about fifty years old now and he told me he was finally figuring out what questions have to do with faith.  But, he added, he still meets people upset at Religion professors who hurt faith.

So, what is really going on in these religion courses?  Remember, these courses are being taught at an institution committed to the liberal arts and affiliated with the Lutheran Church.(ELCA)

First to say, all the professors teaching the courses are people of faith and members of a religious tradition.  We do not teach for the tradition, nor against the tradition; we teach within the tradition.

The introductory course is entitled Exploring the Christian Faith. We do not try to Lutheranize or Christianize students. The class is not glorified confirmation.  Our job is to excavate the Christian tradition, to examine the tradition, history and theology warts and all, to not shy away from or evade any question, to search for the truth without fear or concern.

But, you might ask, shouldn’t we be worried our young and naïve students, many of whom carry a simple faith or some with no faith, will be shocked at the questions, and thereby “lose their faith?” Every professor at our place is aware of the possible aftershocks. We care about their lives and their souls. And we realize that each student walks into the classroom with a different religious background, different faith experiences and different degrees of faith maturation.

The fact is, there is no safer place to engage the inconsistencies and questions that are part and parcel of any religious tradition.  There is no safer place to wrestle with the existence of undeserved suffering and evil along with the mystery that is God.  And if we are not honest here, where can we tell young people about the fragility of our theological constructions?  This is the class where we teach students not to fear the questions but to engage them.  This is the class where we look at Biblical texts that forewarn us that questioning God is not against faith but a specific part of having faith.

So, Religion Professors at Augustana do not hurt faith.  They inoculate students against losing faith.

A New Course in the Spring

In the Spring I will be teaching a new course entitled Different Voices: Christianity, Atheism and World Religions.  The course deals with the collision between our faith commitments and the varied ways of interpreting our existence in this world.  How do we live with such a myriad of religious interpretations swirling around us?  Some believers in each interpretation seem to trust they have acquired the truth while the rest of us have been at best mistaken and at worst deceived.  And as the world gets smaller and smaller these different voices are in our faces.

All of you will not be there for the course but all of us live with this confusing array of interpretations of reality.

This course is really about the conflict and confusion caused by so many religious interpretations.  Where do they come from and why are some of us so sure we are right?  We will think about how we are trained to look at the world through certain glasses and how these glasses allow and disallow us to consider other interpretations.

 We know there have always been different voices, different perspectives, different political opinions and different religions.  We may be more aware today of these voices, but they have always been there.  Our job, as people with brains, is not to be frightened of other interpretations.  Aggravating and difficult as it may be, we will engage these interpretations and evaluate what they are saying.

Try to avoid the extremes of interpretive absolutism and Interpretive relativism.  One says, “we have the absolute truth.”  The other says, “There is no truth.  It’s all relative.”  As in the course, we all ought to listen, engage, argue and evaluate.  Whatever else students take from the course, my hope is, we all will not escape the vulnerability of our interpretations and face up to the fragility of our cherished beliefs.  Faith is trusting without knowing for sure.  Let’s be honest about that.

Hanukah and Christmas

The word Hanukah means rededication.   In 165 B.C.E. the Maccabees were able to recapture and rededicate the temple in Jerusalem.  There was not enough oil to light the temple candles but for one night. The candles resisted the darkness and stayed lit for eight nights.

Hanukah is a holiday of lights that proclaims the darkness will not last forever.  Christians too are approaching their holiday of lights and their belief in Jesus, the light that overcomes the darkness.

For all their differences both Jewish and Christian traditions know about the reality of evil.  They know despite over two thousand years of Hanukah and Christmas celebrations, evil has not been defeated and seems to be doing quite well. The lighting of Hanukah candles and Christmas trees is very nice but insufficient.

Over two thousand years ago, the Maccabees were the Maccabees because they were not indifferent.  Jesus was Jesus because he resisted the darkness. 

Let us light our lights, Jews and Christians, and recommit ourselves to do what we can do to resist, to resist and to resist again the power of the darkness, in ourselves and wherever we live. 

Telling the Truth about Men, Women and Sexual Harassment

My students are usually surprised at how much sex is in the Bible.  From Adam and Eve running away naked, to the sexual exploits of Noah and Lot’s children, to Abraham’s various wives, to Jacobs various wives and maids, the rape of Tamar, to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, not to mention the women who can’t get pregnant and God shows up and the babies appear.  And that’s just Genesis.  There are plenty of more stories.  The best one may be the story of David and Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.  David used his power to rape and take advantage of Bathsheba for the sake of his own pleasure.  When Bathsheba gets pregnant, David tries to cover up what he has done and finally has Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah killed.

The point is we did not invent power and sex in the 1960’s.  It has been a problem for as long as men and women have roamed the earth.  Sex is a power we all use and abuse.  So much of what happens with sex is biologically and culturally determined.  We are sexual by nature and our culture trains us to be sexual. We are taught what it means to become intimate with someone.  We are taught the purpose of sex, its relation to having babies, the role of contraception, what turns us on and what does not.  We are taught what is sexy and what is not.  We are taught who is supposed to do what and when we are permitted to do it.  But what we are seeing today is a culture that is no longer sure what is permitted and what is not.

We learn the rules of sex from parents, friends, television, movies, books and most important in our time, the internet.  And once you disconnect sex from love and marriage and turn it into a commodity, it gives some the impression that anything is permitted. When I was in India a few years ago and spoke to some Indian young men, they talked about their impressions of women in the United States after having seen “some American movies.”  They assumed all American women are eager to have sex at any moment, that American women are eager for men to grab them at will.  When I told them they were wrong, they thought I was lying. They thought of America as a place where anything was permitted.  Let’s be honest: There is a problem with the way we have or have not established sexual boundaries and limits.

So, what do we do?  First, we call people to account.  The prophet Nathan tells David God knows what you did and is not pleased.  David feels bad and says he is sorry.  David had to learn to respect women and to respect himself enough to care. Did he understand why what he had done was wrong and did he gain a new respect for women?  Did he learn that he could not do what he wanted to do just because he felt like it?  Could he be trained to be a different kind of man? 

If you study the David story, you will know the answer to the questions.