Searching for God # 90

 Many of the pieces in this space have been alluding to, arguing for, advocating for and trumpeting the difference between literalism and myth, imagination, and symbol, especially as the theme has to do with both psychology and theology.

In his book, Honest to Jesus (1996), Robert Funk, Founder of the Jesus Seminar, writes:

Inerrancy and infallibility are the offspring of literalism. Literalism takes theological affirmations to be objectively descriptive. If it didn’t happen, literally, we are told by the literalists, it didn’t happen. Thus when Paul announces that Jesus died for the sins of humankind, the literalist takes that to mean that Jesus either made some kind of atoning sacrifice to appease an angry God, or that Jesus takes on the guilt of human beings and suffers in their place because suffering is the price God exacts for disobedience. This redemptive act on the part of Jesus is understood to be something that happened in the past, once and for all, and so cannot be repeated.

The crucifixion of Jesus is an event of the past, to be sure. In its literal descriptive sense it cannot be repeated. However, the redemptive function of that event is something that can be repeated, or at least newly appropriated, if it is to make a difference to us. As an event of the past, Jesus death is said to have taken place for us; as something to be appropriated for later occasions, it can be understood as something that happens to us. In the first sense, the death of Jesus is literally true; in the second sense, it may be said to be true nonliterally.

The redemptive function of Jesus’ death is usually expressed in mythological language. It is termed mythological because it reefers t an act that was performed by God, or by God’s son, on behalf of humankind. Such an act can be neither verified (nor falsified) on the basis of empirical data, by facts established by historical investigation. His death as redemptive event was not an act visible to the disinterested observer. All such mythological acts lie outside the purview of the empirical sciences and hence of the historian.

When on the other hand, literalists claim that certain biblical stories are =descriptively true, they are making claims that are an affront to common sense. Such stories include accounts of Mary’s conception while still a virgin, Jesus’ exorcisms of demons, references to seven heavens in the vault above the earth and to Sheol or hell below the earth, and Jesus’ resurrection as the resuscitation of a corpse. If this form of misunderstanding were not so deeply entrenched in the literalistic mind, it would make us snicker. In the wake of the Enlightenment, when scriptural and ecclesiastical authority were abandoned by scholars, natural explanations were sought for all such phenomena. That strategy was born of the desire to be rid of the mythical parading as the historical. Now we presumably know better. But our knowledge has not been disseminated much beyond the university classroom, so we go on confusing the two categories. Se either reject the mythical as pure unadulterated fancy or conflate the mythical and the historical as though they were one. Both positions are in error  because they have fallen under the spell of literalism.

Literalism has created what Northrop Frye has termid the ‘imaginative illiterate.’ This product of the ascendancy of the empirical sciences, who can understand things only literally, dominates both high and naïve levels of culture. It doesn’t seem to matter that the literalist understand the term literal in different senses on different occasions. At times, take ‘literal’ to mean the descriptive, true-to-fact assertions; at other times, he or she understands the ‘literal’ to mean the conventional, what everybody takes for granted.  (pps. 51-52)

Professor Funk, after many years in academic, founded the Jesus Seminar and the  Westar Institute in Santa Rosa California in 1985 to promote research and education on what he called biblical literacy. Among the Jesus Seminar’s assertions was that many of the miracles attributed to Jesus never occurred, at least in a literal sense. Nor, the Jesus Seminar concluded in 1995, did Jesus rise bodily from the dead. The scholars also agreed that there probably was no tomb and that Jesus’ body was disposed of by his executioners, not his followers. But scholars- who included Burton Mack, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan (and John Kloppenberg)—also concluded that the religious significance of Jesus’ resurrection did not depend on historical fact. (Los Angeles Times, Robert Funk, 79, Scholar Questioned Miracles of Jesus, by Larry Stammer, September 7, 2005)

Much of today’s religious ‘verbiage’ spews from the mouths of literalists, fundamentalists, and the opening statement from Professor Funk that Inerrancy and infallibility are the offspring of literalism, helps to explain why there is so much heat and so little light in religious talk.

Because stories are included in scripture does not mean that they are historical or literally true; nevertheless, their significance may, and likely does, exceed that minimally ‘contained’ in the literal.

The rhetoric of Jesus, among the chosen literary devices, includes the parable. Again, today, we are not familiar or even formally introduced into the parable as a literary form. Professor Funk writes this in his introduction to the explication and exegesis of the ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan’:

In the beginning was the parable. The parable, for Jesus, was a window on the world; through that window Jesus looked out on familiar scenes—a harvest of grapes, dinner parties, mustard growing in a field, a woman baking bread—and saw these common realities in an entirely new light. For him the logic of life had been radically revised. Jesus’ parables and aphorisms are doors opening on to an alternate construal of reality. The vista through these doors takes one back to the dawn of time, to chaos giving way to order. Parable is genesis. Parable is creation.

Jesus names this new logic God’s imperial rule, or, in traditional language, the kingdom of God. In that realm, in God’s domain, people and things do not behave in expected ways. In Jesus’ imagined world, normal, everyday expectations are regularly frustrated. (Funk, op. cit, p.165)

The business of attempting to offer ministry to a Christian congregation, in a Christian mainline church, in the 21^st century, is replete with the confluence, and convergence and tensions that inevitably arise even with a single use of a specific word from scripture. Its literal meaning, whether or not it is a naming of an historical event, whether it is a part of an aphorism, a parable, or some other literary device, its ‘reputed author or speaker….etc…..

And yet, the general attention span, along with the individual’s experience in some far off English language class, his or her openness and curiosity as to the relevant and potential exegesis of both the word and the context…all of these factors taken together in a gestalt, generally, if not invariably, result in a glib, superficial and somewhat predictable repetition of what has been established as conventional, if reductionistic, interpretation.

A more complex and more compelling reading of the texts, however, as Funk writes, remains ‘secret’ and out of reach of the parishioner in most churches. And the predictable deferral to the literal, empirical, for so many reasons, takes over.

Funk goes even further:

Clergy have decided that what they learned in seminary is a secret to be kept. Under duress of crusading fundamentalisms, the mainline churches have retreated into their cloisters and dissembled. The pulpit has become the locus of the soft assurance rather than the source of hard information.  Parish members wither and die on a vine that is neither pruned nor watered—unless they take matters into their own hands. The least common denominator and the collection plate have taken over Christian education. Worse yet the spiritual and intellectual leaders of Christian communities have allowed uninformed parishioners to determine the content of the gospel.,,,(T)here is the claim, occasionally made, that the Bible is the property of the church. These property rights, it is argued, give the church the prerogative to determine what the Bible means. If one wants to reinterpret the Bible, one must first persuade the church to change its mind. Those who make this claim often use the singular church as thought there were only one and they seem to assume that the belong to that one imaginary church. Journalists appear to have adopted this doctrine. They frequently presuppose that there is one authority, ecclesiastical in nature, that is the final, undisputed arbiter in theological disputes. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Billy Graham are members of this exclusive club. Scholars are not included. (Funk, op. cit. pps. 53-54)

My decades of seminary and ministry, some decade and a half, rarely included formal or informal discussions about the interpretation of scripture, among clergy, and only briefly and superficially among laity. Once, in an attempt to delve into this area with laity, I heard one parishioner remark, “Of course the Resurrection never happened!” She made the remark as she was departing out the door.

Today, I wonder, if I would attempt to ask her to pause, have a seat and begin to unpack the differences between an historical event, a myth, and an event to be repeated again and again in a Christian imagination. The political answer to that dilemma is different from the theological and spiritual answer to that dilemma, and it is not only the cleric’s discernment of the context, but also the lay person’s readiness and openness for exploration.

Searcing for God # 89

 Identified as impatient, too intense, incapable of small talk, expecting too much,  defiant, irascible, too enthusiastic, a ‘communist’ by adolescents, the ‘antichrist’ by parishioners, ‘jesus-atkins’ by my enemies, and ‘kind to a fault’…..I have no right or privilege or even expectation to have anyone read, listen to, understand, grapple with or support anything I have to say.

Some people colour ‘outside the lines’ while I ‘colour’ without even the prospect of lines. How do we know where the lines are if we have no prior expectation that lines are where any idea starts? A ‘walter-mitty’ approach to any new idea leaves one in a predictable, somewhat irascible position of being ‘in kindergarten’ on everything. Training to be an expert, however, seemed to be a memo that has for eight decades plus, escaped by line of vision, and certainly my choice of activities. The T. S. Eliot line about going as far as possible, in order to find out just how far one can go has served as a kind of mantra, in youth on an unconscious level, as an adult, entered into by merely testing ‘my toes’ into its waters, and later on, actually submersing and swimming in those waters.

Whether the affinity for that approach precedes, births, or emerges as a consequence of some ‘faith’ experiences, is a moot point, at this stage of life. Suffice it to say there is a correlation, and maybe even a cause-and-effect. Somehow intuitively, and somewhat unconsciously following in the footsteps of a grandfather who emigrated to Canada from Berkshire in the UK on an ocean liner, to study and then serve as a Baptist clergy in small Ontario towns, I had a ‘tugging’ sense, no it was not what some would call a ‘call’ to ministry. It was more like a path that seemed always to be in front of me, inviting my imagination and risk-taker to take the leap. And when I finally decided  I ‘had’ to move in that direction, it felt more like a need to discover whatever it was that was twisting me in a manner that seemed to be highly dependent on, if not obsequiously in need, of public adulation for whatever task I happened to be engaged in. It was certainly not a ‘calling to save the world’ from sin for Christ.

Rejecting a sincere invite to join my father in the hardware business he intended to purchase, if I would join, as I had little to no interest in ‘things’ hardware, I entered teaching, after a sputtering time in undergraduate studies. And then opportunities for coaching basketball, football, cricket, as well as learning to play squash fell in my lap in a first job in a private boys’ school. Activity, athletics, discussions, debates, and decades of time spent daily in classrooms with vibrant pre-teens and adolescents poring over literature texts, together, stretching into officiating in basketball courts, both adolescent and adult, were a kind of seasoning never even contemplated or imagined in youth.

Easily bored, and apparently (so I thought) starved of adult conversation, I took to selling men’s haberdashery on Friday nights and Saturdays. And then when the opportunity presented itself, I threw my hat into a vacant freelance job in television news and public affairs, the pittance of pay was almost irrelevant. And then, radio, weekly newspaper columns, and a new path seemed to be ‘a road not taken’ leading who knew where….apparently to a public-affairs, marketing, information post in a community college and then, finally, into theology studies.

What has all this ‘bio-bumph’ got to do with a search for God?

There was a childhood family ritual of church attendance, broken only when I refused to participate after a homily to which I have referred numerous times in this space. Bigotry, literalism, and a form of ‘Christian fundamentalist supremacy’ so offended me coming from the pulpit, that I withdrew.

Withdrawal seems to have become a pattern of either ‘not dealing with what is unacceptable, intolerable, or offensive, or, from my naïve perspective, ‘protesting’ the injustice and the offense. Doubtless, from the world’s conventional perspective, only cowards withdraw instead of staying and fighting for what one believes in, and what one considers a better world. And from the world’s perspective, especially and  undoubtedly my children, I have failed to stay and make the marriage and the family work. To argue, respectfully, that withdrawal is a coward’s approach, and demands no courage, fortitude or commitment, however, is to become mired in a stereotype, indeed a myth, which needs refinement and re-interpretation.

My silent activist protest at sixteen, away from the bigotry of that pulpit, in retrospect, is an image that has accompanied me for decades. Saying “no” or “that’s BS,” or ‘not-on-my-watch” or “I’m outta here”…..many times without even offering a full explanation of my reasons, and thereby leaving others confused, annoyed, and actually quite ‘pissed-off’ at my immaturity and impatience, and all of those words above in the beginning of this piece.

I said ‘no’ to many proposals starting with the born-again aspect to fundamental Christian evangelical theology.

I said ‘no’ to a daughter’s plea to remain in teaching after 23 years, when an opportunity presented itself to try my hand in a new challenge.

I said ‘no’ to a family restriction against boarding and mentoring international students on Rotary exchange believing that the family and especially the children would benefit exponentially by the opportunity to speak and live with young people from another country.

I said ‘no’ to a rejection of a cross-country trip with a tent-trailer-camper, believing that three children would see Canada and infuse memories of scenes, people, and activities unavailable in their home time.

I said ‘no’ to the conventional program  of higher teacher pay for higher ‘certification’ by subject matter, and chose instead a more general post-graduate program in educational administration. I later enrolled in additional subject courses in English and Film as my interests developed.

As an editorialist on radio, and a free-lance reporter on television, primarily from city hall, I strongly opposed a peripheral retail mall development over a downtown mall development, believing then, as I do today, 50 years later, that the downtown would never recover from the dramatic shift in retail premises.

I said “no” to a petition from a national television reporter that he claimed I “knew” that a specific alderman’s life had been threatened as a consequence of his opposition to the peripheral mall. I had no such knowledge and angrily demanded that that reporter never call again.

I said “no” editorially to those who adamantly demanded that city hall not provide bilingual services to taxpayers in a town where some 25% were of French heritage. I also said “no” to those French interests who demanded all city services be offered in French.

I said “no” to the prospect of women applying to the church for ordination whose sole purpose was to advance the cause of feminism. There was no, or very little, preparation, research and planning to execute a highly radioactive political demand, from inside the church hierarchy, largely a group of men who acted as if they were afraid of this onrush of women demanding ordination. How to screen appropriate female candidates, for example, from those whose interest was to ‘use’ the church for their political purposes, was not studied, reflected upon and helped to initiate policies of male-female relationships that damaged both men and women. Theology, while accepting the responsibility of liberating the oppressed, and women, from the perspective of their having been barred from ordination for centuries, was more than the liberation of a single demographic. Integration, as a principle of theology, as opposed to ‘invasion’ was considered, if at all, peripherally and incidentally.

I have always said “no” to the notion of forbidden relationships between co-workers, believing that women, if they are to be treated equally with men, are eminently capable of deciding if and when they are being taken advantage of. Human resource policies that respect the wishes of workers, both within the ecclesial world and in the secular world need to be dramatically refined to not only permit but actually legitimate both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships with certain specific conditions made clearly available to all. For employers, and for churches to regulate, litigate and prosecute human  sexuality, in any of its many forms, ought to be both forbidden and that probation considered mandatory in all workplaces. Not only has the ‘state no business in the bedrooms of the nation, neither do the employers, nor the bishops, nor the archbishops.

I have said “no” as loudly and as frequently as possible to the outright competition between and among religious sects, denominations, faith communities. The business of the search for God, divinity, the deity, is so complex, infinite, unknowable, multilayered, historic, timeless and universal that no single group, irrespective of its centuries-long pursuit of the truth as it sees it, can legitimately claim to have discovered that absolute truth.

I have also said “no” in as many ways as I can find, to the proposition that ‘the other’ is by definition, the enemy, the stranger, the danger, and the Devil or Satan.

I have also said “no” to the proposition that the different respective faith communities have a right and an obligation to impose their ‘faith’s dogmatic positions on the laws of any land.

I have said “no” to the legal principle that ‘church and state’ must be separate as defined by the American constitution, given than the principles and ideas and ethics one learns and accepts from one’s religious training can never be fully excise from one’s political, ethical and moral discernment.

I have also said “no” to the proposition that increased, enhanced, and highly funded law-enforcement against a rising and exponential list of crimes is counter-intuitive to the amelioration and remediation of those persons engaged in the commission of those crimes. It is rather the setting of the table of the ethos, the culture, the anima mundi to which the legislators and the body politic must direct its attention to incubate, inculcate and enrich the lives of all of the children to the degree that the resources and their distribution permit, rather than passing laws that demonstrably favour the rich and the powerful. I have always said “no” to those who oppose a guaranteed annual income, believing that a state-sponsored healthy start in life for all would do much to reduce the stress, struggles, homelessness and poverty that infects and infests so many of our public policies and public dollars.

I have said “no” to band-aid programs to combat homelessness, when state-ownership of apartment buildings for homeless, complete with training and employment services, health care access and a ‘home first’ approach will, as the evidence demonstrates prove itself less costly and more humane in the long run,

Similarly, I have said “no” to the harsh and inhumane treatment of prisoners as a path to remediation, reconciliation and reduction of crime. Scandinavian countries have demonstrated that separation from one’s home and family is a serious deprivation, and need no further inhumanity to enforce remorse and restitution and return to the community of those convicted of crime.

I have said “no” to the current structure and voting system of the Security Council of the United Nations, given that five vetoes continue to emasculate all attempts to resolve geopolitical conflicts.

 I have also said “no” to the absence of an enforcement force, a police force, for example, for the United Nations, thereby enabling volunteer tokenism to Environmental Protection Agreements and endangering the health of the planet’s ecosystems.

I have also said “no” to the notion that whistle-blowers are outliers to the body politic, and instead, need legal and political protection including witness protection from the illicit power of those demanding secrecy and also inflicting revenge on  those whose courage keeps the system and those operating it minimally honest.

I have said ‘no’ to the relative importance of the salvation of the individual over the salvation of the whole human community, believing that, so long as we ‘individualize sin, forgiveness and repentance we blindly either ignore or dismiss the prospect that each of us has a religious, faith obligation to confront, non-violently the abuse of power, with force, whenever and wherever we see or experience it.

And that’s only a starter and a primer to saying “no”…..to be continued.