Words Less Spoken

I had to post this ad from our local paper or few people outside the Bible belt would believe me. I’m still not sure if they’re selling a building for use as a church of their liking or trying to recruit new members to fill a church they’re starting. In either case this ad just fills my heart with warm fuzzy feelings and an irresistable urge to run down the aisle on Sunday to throw myself on the altar.

Maybe you were one of those snobby rich kids that had everything they ever wanted growing up, or maybe you were the kid who saved up every dollar and bought your own pair of designer jeans twice a year and took exquisite care of them. I was neither. I had nice things but Levi’s were the extent of my brand loyalties. Aside from the trendy things we all focus on as teenagers, there are a myriad of other mundane everyday things in our adolescent lives that we use because they are available to us. Toothpaste, ketchup, shaving cream, etc.

When you leave home for the first time, whether for college, marriage, or the working world, you are suddenly faced with more choices than you ever thought possible. You take for granted all the common utilitarian things your parents provided for you. Do you remember the first time you went out to buy toothpaste for yourself? What do you get? Do you buy what your mom had always bought for you? Do you stretch your rebellious wings in protest and go for something new? As simple and foolish as it sounds, it is a microcosm of the process we go through into adulthood. How much do we cling to? How far do we run away?

I still remember vividly walking into my first dorm room at La Tech and finding a nicely packaged shoe-sized box on my bed. Inside were Edge shaving cream, Coast soap, Crest toothpaste and several other necessities and loads of marketing flyers and coupons. Thirteen years later I’m still using those same brands. I did not consciously choose to try something different. Had I wandered down to Wal-Mart after running out of whatever I brought from home, I very well may have bought Aquafresh toothpaste because I had used it all my life, but I was given the opportunity to consider an alternative.

My trips down to the food court and cafeteria in the student center were just as life-altering. They had Bullseye BBQ sauce and Log Cabin syrup. I never had that before, and I really liked them. We always used Kraft BBQ sauce and Blackburn syrup at home. I don’t know how many kids ask their parents to try a different BBQ sauce. You just use what you have, what you’re comfortable with. To this day I still buy those brand at the grocery store. It was a conscious minute rebellious stand on my part. “This is different. I am on my own.”

The religions we grow up with are not all that different than the foods and everyday items we are comfortable with from our childhood. We all know (and you may have been) one of teens who ran away from the church of your childhood as fast and hard as you could the moment you were out the door. I wasn’t. I went deeper. I changed schools, switched my major to religion, married my high school sweetheart, and began pastoring churches by my sophomore year in college.

[Can we take an aside for just a moment and address something here? Who the hell lets a 19 year old kid pastor a church? For crying out loud, I don't care how mature or intelligent you are. It borders on child abuse. I know now that I was no where near mentally and emotionally mature enough to be in that situation. There is a lot to be said for the Methodist system that requires training, accountability, and assignment. This Baptist free-for-all independent streak can be detremental to the emotional well being of all concerned. Okay, just had to get that off my chest.]

It was later after several years of pastoral ministry, graduating college, and lots of life experiences that I began to move away from the comfortable religion of my childhood and seriously question the tenets and methods intensively. Once I stopped going to church every Sunday, it became easier to think clearly. While we may enjoy the fellowship and worship, there is an enormous amount of direct and indirect conditioning taking place. Whenever you remove yourself from that environment and begin to think independently, you may come up with different answers than those you were taught in Sunday School.

I don’t know which label is most appropriate to describe my theological quandry. It’s like trying to hit a moving target because I’m in a constant state of evolution. Maybe I’m a very liberal Christian, but there’s more that I disagree with in the church than I agree with, so it seems disingenuous to consider myself a Christian. I personally feel somewhere in the middle of agnosticism and atheism. My simple understanding of those terms is that one says we can’t know whether or not God is and the other says he is not.

I don’t really know whether God exists or not. If there is a God, he cannot possibly be anything like the Judeo-Christian version we’ve all been brought up to believe in. I’m much more inclined to believe in a unifying field or consciousness than a divine deity. Science and theoretical physics have given me answers to who we are, how we came to be, and what we’re doing here more than any sermon I’ve ever heard. It’s not really important to me which label fits me best, but I’ve felt more and more pressure to have a “coming out.”

I have no desire to diminish the faith of others or make a spectacle of myself. I just don’t believe the same way anymore. There are reasons why I turn down invitations to preach, why I don’t read the Bible the same way as others expect me to, why I don’t care about going to church, etc. I think it’s only a matter of time before family members, friends, or peers force the issue. I’d rather avoid the shock waves and the fallout, because I know that people get angry, they get hurt, they feel the need to put your name on the prayer list. I’m not interested. I may be called an atheist, an agnostic, or a liberal, but I’m happiest just being me. In fact I’m happier being me than I have ever been in my entire life, and for the first time in my entire life I chose to be me.

And the point is?

I’ve got to give two big thumbs up for Hillary on this one, and that’s a hard thing to do for this lifelong Republican voting for Obama.

After a weekend spent making direct appeals to gun owners and church goers, Hillary Clinton said Sunday a query about the last time she fired a gun or attended church services “is not a relevant question in this debate” over Barack Obama’s recent comments on small town Americans. (CNNpolitics.com)

I could care less about how often our political leaders go to church or where they go, as long as it’s not the FLDS compound in Texas. All these made-for-TV photo ops at the gun range are just as ridiculous. What matters is what you say you believe and do your actions bear that out. It’s been a long hard fought campaign, and as much as I hate to confess it, my admiration and respect for Hillary has gone up significantly, although I am still pulling for Obama. 

My fear of another Bush-like Republican in the White House has gone up as well. If you remember, W. did not run as a hard right wing conservative. He ran as “a uniter not a divider” on the promise of “a new day in Washington,” where Democrats and Republicans could work together. He had such a track record in Texas. All of that sounds very McCain-ish to me, and aside from the “Bush tax cuts” and the Cheney/Rumsfeld warmongering, he’s been a very moderate Republican president. I’ve had more than enough of the hawks in the hen house. The days of saber-rattling must come to an end. It’s the 21st century by the way. At least Hillary has had the courage to realize it, at least for today.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. ~ Luke 23:42

For all of our religious observances to remember Jesus, perhaps it is our greatest desire to be remembered, hoping that in this life through all of our trials and suffering that we will not be forgotten.. praying that when life comes to a close we will not be lost.

When we step outside the religious worldview we were raised with, we discover that there are very deep, very primitive motivations at work in us even without our knowing. We want to be accepted, to be desired, to be safe, to have significance. Religion offers all of those but at a price. Do this, don’t do that, and you will be saved.

Personally, I’ve always related more to the thief on the cross than the saints on the ground. His prayer is our prayer. His hope, our hope. Jesus stands at odds with much of the religion devoted to his remembrance. He says that you are accepted. You are loved. You have worth and meaning not because of anything you have done but because you are. Your life alone is so rare and precious a gift that no other acts of devotion could make God love you more. If we understood that, if we believed that, we would value others just as much, even do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

“Jesus, remember me”from Taize community (.mp3)