Part III. What This Really Is
“F*ck your God.”
Before you get offended and shut me out, allow me to explain the significance of this quote.
I first heard this phrase used in the song “Judith” by A Perfect Circle. I later read an interview with the band’s lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, in a Christian magazine. He was asked, “When you said ‘F*ck your God’, were you speaking of Jesus?” He replied, “When I say ‘F*ck your God’, I don’t mean THE God, I mean YOUR god, or your perception of God.” This intrigued me, because I’d never really understood there to be “perceptions” of God, or different ways to think about who He is and what He does and that sort of thing. He was just a certain way, and the way that I was taught was the correct- and only- way that anyone needed to perceive Him.
I was reminded of this song one evening, a few years later, when one of my floormates at North Central University stood out in the middle of our hallway and screamed this at one of the other guys on our floor, with two middle fingers held firmly up in the air and his face red with anger. “F*ck your God” he said more than once, and guys came at him hard- “Brother, don’t say that!” “In the name of Jesus I rebuke you!” “You don’t mean that, dude!” And to that he said, “Yes, I do. F*ck your God!” And after a physical confrontation with one of our “discipleship leaders”- an upperclassman whose job it was model for us how a proper North Central student should live life- he stormed out of the building and didn’t return for hours. He did apologize for exploding like that, but not for what he had said.
(I’ll add that this guy became one of my good friends and apartment roommate at a later time, and that he is happily married and last I heard was leading worship and very involved in his local ministry.)
That moment, though, has really stuck with me. I had come into North Central the previous fall expecting to find that this successful center for church leadership would be all over the problems I had begun to see within Christianity, and would’ve already had solutions for fixing them. I expected that most people would’ve figured out by now that there was something wrong going on. Well, it turns out that I was the one who was wrong. While there were a few people interested in shaking things up a bit, the majority of people were interested in learning the same old thing, a very specific idea about God and everything revolving around that, and about more effective ways of getting everyone to buy in to the same old thing. A huge premium was placed on “holy living”- no, I won’t call it placing a premium- that IS what it was all about. The university president even had a little catch phrase that he would throw around constantly, and would usually elicit great cheers from students: “North Central students are CLEARLY SUPERIOR.” I’m sure he meant it simply as a feel-good rallying cry for all of us, but the superiority complex was pervasive. Things that North Central touted in its campaign for “clear superiority”: mandatory chapel services every day at 11am, no rated R movies, no dancing, no gambling, no alcohol in any amount, a 1:30am curfew, no one of the opposite sex allowed in any dorm (except for 3 hours every Saturday night), and a strict rule of not allowing any DVD players, VCRs to be possessed or any movies to be viewed in dorms at any time. No one even suggested cable as a possibility. Each and every student had to sign a pledge that they would not do any of these things, or various other activities or behaviors deemed inappropriate by the college. This pledge was called The NCU Way, and it was doctrine. I don’t use that word lightly- if you violated any part of this pledge for any reason, you weren’t simply breaking a rule, you were sinning against God Himself. People defended The NCU Way like they defended The Bible, creationism, and the existence of God. It wasn’t just The NCU Way, it was The Only Way, the way God truly intended for us to live. Anyone who didn’t agree with it should simply remove themselves from North Central, because when it all boiled down, you weren’t superior. They instilled this in the dorms’ resident advisors, and especially so in the discipleship leaders, who basically served as the lifestyle police, and though they could not take direct disciplinary action against you, they would rat on you behind your back if they felt you weren’t in line.
Then there was the political aspect. Being propagators of the gospel of unconditional submission to authority, they were especially fond of a man who seemed to hold very close to that what-I-say-goes model of leadership- the current president, George W. Bush. Though at the time I entered NCU I was a very big fan of Bush, I was very taken aback at the pressure to support him and the Republican Party, and the anger with which people would respond to those who would speak out against them. “George W. Bush is a man of God, and we are to respect those in authority, and God chose him by hand to lead this nation.” And even though at the time I agreed, I was thinking in the back of my head, “You know, I never saw this attitude when Bill Clinton was in office.” In the election of 2002, when we all went to vote at our polling place, the lines were buzzing with tension and pressure to vote straight-ticket Republican. Those who were unsure were mocked, and it was just assumed that they knew better. Later on in the year, around the time the rallying for the invasion of Iraq was becoming louder, it became the “cool” thing to do to go around stealing “Say NO To War With Iraq” signs off of people’s lawns and collect them in the dorms. One of them even got stolen and taped over “NO” with “YES” and was plastered on the wall on our floor as a trophy for all to see. In addition to inviting an anti-Muslim activist to come and speak in chapel about how the spread of Islam was the root of all the problems in the world- on the first anniversary of 9/11- the university, which had banned movies and cable TV from the dorms, began piping in the Fox News Channel to the TVs in all the common areas across campus. It was war all the time, Saddam Hussein this, al Qaeda that, and God was with us and we needed to go to war. The night the war began, I woke up from a nap to a song entitled “Rock Saddam Hussein’s Ass” being blasted down the halls and switched on my TV and watched the explosions on the screen. A few weeks later, it became an issue when a couple of students attended an anti-war rally at the state capitol, and it was widely considered that they should be punished, and possibly kicked out of school for it.
And God was FOR all this. Not only was He for all this, this was just how God worked.
By far the biggest issue at hand, though, was allowing movies to be watched in the dorms. Looking back, it was such a miniscule, dumb issue, but at the time it was so hotly contested that the Student Senate finally held a hearing to discuss and vote on a measure that would overturn the rule. The majority of the student body supported the measure, but our senators had made clear that it would be very difficult to convince them to support it. On the night of the hearing, the room was packed from wall-to-wall and to the rafters with students looking to voice their opinions and hopefully influence their senate representative. A two-hour long discussion broke out, and the premise came down to- will overturning this rule detrimentally affect the culture and values of the community? Person after person got up, explaining how allowing students the adult right to choose their own entertainment and make their own life choices would develop better spiritual habits, or how watching a movie was often a social bonding experience and not the “lonely, closed-door, community-killing” practice that many people believed it to be. Many others got up and explained that it would cause grades to drop, would waste time that we could all be using to do things for other people, or would compromise the strong stands that the university had taken to ensure that their students indeed remained “clearly superior”. The moment of the night came when a young woman got up and, sobbing through tears, expressed that God had shown her that the student body would be subject to the influence of Satan, and that Satan wanted so badly to infiltrate the North Central student body and that allowing DVDs to be possessed was that one little foothold that the devil needed to bring us all down. There were a few other appeals to this end. It was very much about keeping up the appearance of this holy lifestyle and sacred institution. After the discussion had ended, the Student Senate voted right in front of us to uphold the ban. People stormed out of the room, many of us throwing immature hissy fits that eventually were gotten over, but we all kind of felt the same- if this was truly what Christianity was about, holding life at an arm’s length, living in a sanitary bubble devoid of choice, being required to act and believe a certain way, we didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
We all went back to our dorm rooms, angry and embittered, and this is where my friend made his pronouncement: “F*ck your God!”
A lot of the guys on my floor couldn’t understand how he could say such a thing, but I knew exactly where he was coming from, because I was there, too. I explained that he was rejecting the idea that God was contained within this institution that we were attending, these theologies and doctrines we were being taught were the only way to believe, and especially the idea that in order to follow God more closely and be an effective example to the world around us, we had to remove all the things of the world from our lives. We all kind of agreed; we’d had it with being “Clearly Superior”, we’d had it with the elitist attitude of holy living as The Way, and most of all, we’d had it with this God.
Myself, and most of the guys I was closest to, left North Central University completely disillusioned with who God was, and absolutely sick of the whole Christian thing.
After all this, let me make clear that my purpose here is not to complain about how badly I was treated, or how the people at this school are evil, or anything like that. North Central is a great school for a lot of people. I have friends who are still there, who have graduated, or are about to graduate. I met some amazing people there, some of the most enviably disciplined and dedicated individuals one could meet. I think that the intention behind these rules and restrictions and the pressure for “holiness” came from a good heart that wanted to see students reach their full potential, and the school believed that a strict system of discipline was the best way to achieve this. The problem I had was that this system was upheld as the “superior” way, that not living up to these standards somehow made you less of a Christian. But I am not angry anymore. Of course I went through a phase where I would get so angry at North Central and everything it stood for that it might make you uncomfortable. I also did horrific work as a student, passing one class with flying colors (Systematic Theology, ironically) and failed the rest because of skipping too many classes. I often blamed the environment I was in for failing to motivate me to learn at this institution, and numerous other things… except for myself. This was wrong, and I take partial blame for the angry attitude I had toward North Central. I’m over it.
I am not, however, over what my experience at North Central taught me, and the path it set me on. Put quite frankly, I needed to leave God in order to find Him. Now, it could be argued whether or not I actually “left” God, or if He left me, or whatever. What I did do, though, was leave the Christian context, and I have no regrets for doing so.
After North Central, I entered the workforce. I went into working in coffee shops, and living with dudes in various apartments in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We worked our jobs, didn’t go to church, constantly made fun of our Christian upbringing, spent many a night grilling out and drinking too much, and generally had the time of our lives. We took crazy road trips to the South, and to Canada, and in one specific instance, a trip to Winnipeg, Manitoba. We spent 4 days, you guessed it, drinking with Canadians and crashing on couches and standing out in the November cold in our boxers watching the Northern Lights. We learned about what makes a Canadian a Canadian, and I noticed three specific characteristics about these Canadians that were a bit different than most of the Americans that I knew. For one, they were very concerned with the world around them and their effect on it, not just locally, but globally. They were very up on their local and national government, yes, but also on the American government, and global situations. You just got the feeling that they didn’t see themselves as the center of the world. Next, I noticed that they had a very simple way of life. They weren’t concerned with getting ahead or the accumulation of wealth, the big houses, and the fast cars (the person we stayed with didn’t even own a car- she rode the bus! Gasp!) They wanted to go to college for the sake of learning and bettering themselves, and they wanted to work their jobs and pay their rent and spend lots of time being with friends and watching hockey and drinking beer and just enjoying life. The third and most pronounced difference I noticed between Americans and Canadians was the general lightness with which they dealt with the future. They weren’t obsessively worried about what was coming next. This intrigued me because I had come to a point where I had realized you know, this life is all about the anticipation of the next thing. I bounced this off of my Canadian friend, a Buddhist. Here’s an excerpt from the email that I sent to her back in January of 2004:
"…why is it that life revolves around anticipation? Is it a human need for there to always be something next? I know you said that for "some people" there is, but could it be that everyone is like that? I mean... everything about our existence is anticipation... we go to school early in our lives in anticipation of acquiring knowledge... we anticipate going to college after school and acquiring a degree we anticipate will get us a job that we anticipate will make us money. We anticipate meeting someone who we anticipate we will spend our lives with until we come upon the death that we anticipate... Christmas is a multi-billion dollar orgasm of anticipation... heck, even orgasms are built on anticipation! We sleep in anticipation of acquiring more energy for the day that we anticipate will come tomorrow. Religion is completely based around the anticipation of rewards to our eternal soul, in anticipation of the death of our physical selves... think of everything else about life... what would life be without anticipation? As you are experiencing, it's boring and meaningless. When you're not anticipating something, what is there to live for? You can actively live out everything you've been anticipating that you've achieved... but there will still be that want within ourselves, that need for there to be something next, something to work for... not even to be rewarded, but just to work for it and... anticipate. Life IS the anticipation, the journey... the means to an end we anticipate will be the end, but will not in actuality be the end of anticipation, for anticipation is what drives us and keeps us alive, makes us human. It's not about the destination, it's the journey... and that's about all I've figured out so far. Anticipation is a human need... of what, if anything, I'm not sure... maybe we'll never know... but maybe it doesn't matter anyway... it's the anticipation that we thrive on.
And her response:
“…what I have come to decide is that not only is anticipation a human need, it is that which will destroy all chance of eternal happiness- but is also that that gives us the greatest happiness. Human nature is to succeed and excel and learn and grow and become more. I read a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and he speaks of this affliction. The book refers to these type of people, i.e. you and me and ninety percent of the world, as “ego travelers” and the quote reads "He's here but he's not here. All that he sees, all that he wants is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it’s all around him. He longs to be further up the trail but when he gets there he is unhappy............why? Because again, he is here." I believe the key is to strive to achieve and have that anticipation but still always immerse yourself in the beauty that surrounds. The destination does not always have to be the end result, perhaps the journey is the destination for the destination always seems to disappoint.”
In a strange sort of way, I heard the God that I knew, but had felt very distant from, coming from this Buddhist. This went against what I had been taught, that God speaks only through Christians, and only in King James English. Haha, okay, that last part is not true, but you see what I’m saying. You’re taught that even though something may ring so true inside you, if it doesn’t come from a specific type of person or stream of thought, then it can’t be true. It was through this that I began to realize that God does not limit Himself to Christianity, because Christianity is a man-made religion, and God is alive and active regardless of what label we slap on it, or how we think He is. I think my biggest dilemma at the time was that I just could not follow a God who was solely concerned with the ultimate destination of our eternal souls, and as a consequence would throw into the fire everything else. I like this world. I think it’s an awesome place, full of all kinds of natural wonders and possibilities and cool people and cool things. I also know that this world does not live up to how it was meant to be, and that there are some horrific things that occur by the human hand every day and in every place. Does this make the world bad? I don’t think so. But does it need help, and to be saved from the evil things that we are all prone to? Yes, and I think that God loves this place, too, so much so that He sent Jesus into it to provide that help and exemplify that way in which we can help alleviate those evil things. However, humans are not God, and as we have this ability to make decisions by ourselves- free will- we will make wrong decisions, bad decisions, evil decisions, every last one of us. Should this stop us from having hope for better things? Quite the opposite- this should give us the hope- the anticipation- that as imperfect as we are, God is still able to use who we are to bring good into this world. This idea that we are just anticipating the next thing after this life, that it’s all about what’s next, and to hell with everything else, makes us irrelevant and useless, because God placed in us a desire to work for the betterment of ourselves and those around us . I think we have lost sight of what is at hand, and possibly most important, and that is that God IS here and now, inviting us to actively work with Him to improve our condition IN the here and now. When we immerse ourselves in the beauty that surrounds us, we realize that God is here and available to us, wherever and whomever we are. God put in us a sense of anticipation of good things, and this anticipation is meant to drive us while we are alive and in the world, a sense of hope that God can use people to bring about good things in this world, that even when we can’t see clearly what’s happening, and despite the fact that we will screw things up on occasion, we can anticipate that what God is doing is and will be good.
This realization that God likes this world like I do- and definitely much more so- is what kept me from completely walking away from Him. It was wonderful to know that God wasn’t so concerned with the things that North Central, and the churches I had previously been involved with, held as their highest priorities.
But I think the biggest thing that I learned was that God is alive and active outside of the boundaries of Christianity. We were all taught that we had to convert people to a certain way of living FIRST, get them to subscribe to these certain “truths”, and THEN God could start being active in a person’s life. But I would say just from the time that I stepped outside the safety and structure and promises of the church, I saw God alive and well (maybe even more so than I saw IN the church!) in this world that Christians so love to hate, in people who Christians wouldn’t touch with a ten-and-a-half foot pole, and in places where Christians wouldn’t be caught dead going.
The religion of Christianity has hijacked God, and is holding Him hostage and saying to the world, “Say the right words, and do the right things, and you can have Him.” And this defensive attitude is backfiring, because most people are saying, “That’s great. You can keep him” and moving on with their lives, because Christianity is not the sole perpetrator of God’s work; indeed, God alone is the perpetrator of God’s work.
Religion, including that which we call “Christianity”, is really in the end a man-made, fully inadequate structure that tries to quantify and, all too often, DEFINE God to meet our own expectations and purposes. And when God becomes defined, He ceases to be God, and he becomes a god. And as our gods begin to fall apart, we defend them, and as we defend our gods, we lose what it is we were trying to define in the first place.
As history shows, when we offer what we think is a final definition of God, our ideas are quickly shown the door, so that something new can emerge…
1.27.2008
12.29.2007
Part II: What Is This?
Ideas, though often ill-advised, are generally a good thing. Sometimes there are bad ideas that make you want to slap your forehead and say, "What were you thinking?!" And sometimes there are those great ideas that make you want to slap your forehead and say, "What was I thinking?!" The exchange of ideas is one of the most important parts of who we are as human beings. We're hard-wired to approach a situation and begin thinking of things- problems, solutions, methods, or even something completely unrelated to the topic in front of your nose- you know, ideas! Cute little bubbles above your head, light bulbs, question marks, etc. What makes us human is thought, and the essence of thought is ideas.
Humans have figured out that if they can control thought, they can control other humans. They, often unconsciously, establish certain thought patterns. Usually these patterns have a very specific goal in mind and because of that they become rigid and immovable, and any ideas introduced into the fray become enemies that must be silenced, because this whole thing is already thought out to its end. This is where we enter into the realm of the "ideology". Ideologies have the tendency to shut down thought, to discourage ideas and to bring into line anything that is separate from the established thought process. It would seem to me that this act would cheapen the decisions made from this process… it would make everything simple, and it would get results, but it would cheapen everything. This is the epitome of industrial age thought, and the cheapening of things is a necessary and acceptable byproduct. But when it comes to people, I don't think anyone is interested in a cheap and simplified way of treating each other, especially when it comes to faith tradition.
There was a time during my senior year of high school that myself and some other people, mainly from the Pentecostal youth group I was involved in, decided it would be a good idea to start a Tuesday morning Bible study at school with some students from other churches. We asked permission from the principal to have a designated room, and asked one of the math teachers (who also served on the adult leadership team at youth group) to be our faculty representative. So we'd meet, and the idea was to have a topic of discussion pulled from a passage in the Bible and toss around ideas amongst ourselves, hashing out what it meant. We'd invite our friends, and I think at one point we may have put up fliers on the walls around the school or something to "advertise" our little weekly early-morning shindig. I think we mainly existed to make a statement to the folks around us, something to the effect of, yes, you go to school with Christians and yes, we're here and active and yes, we can pray and read our Bibles in this public place because yes, it's our right. We were alive and we were organized, so watch out! God's really gonna get ya now! While I liked the idea of having a group of us meet and talk about God stuff, I think I wanted it to be more about the conversation and the exchange of ideas than about the delivery of some kind of message, or keeping up some kind of appearance. However, I think that's all that most of us knew. Each week, we'd take turns leading the discussion, which was less a discussion and more like delivering a "message", a compilation of passages that we felt strongly about, to those who gathered with us- usually about 8 or 10- and no one would really have anything else to say about it and so off we'd march through the door of our meeting place, knowing that people knew where we met and who we were, and that they were probably watching us and might even ask us what we were doing in there and so we should be ready to speak confidently of our convictions. We'd then walk into our first period class and lose whatever we'd just talked about.
I think where it went wrong was in missing the conversation part. Somewhere in our subconscious effort to make a statement, we lost what we (or at least what I thought we) were going for- a group of people on a similar path exchanging stories along the way. Instead, we became some kind of support group for preaching at each other to keep each other "in line". And I think it happens all the time. We have this disproportionate focus on our message delivery- how we're presenting what we're saying, how we look while doing it, etc. And when it comes to learning about God, we are trained to sit and listen to the message. We don't know how to converse with one another anymore, because we emulate that which we are accustomed to- a monologue designed to convince someone of something. It becomes a sales pitch. There's no room for disagreement, and by the very nature of a message-delivery-focus, there is a specific need to have a unified front, with not even a hint of disagreement, because well, what does that say about the God that we serve? The message delivery becomes the most important part, and don't even bother questioning what the message is in the first place. And so it is no wonder that none of us really knew what to do with a "Bible study", and those who had the most sharply-honed message eventually began to assert their authority. Pretty soon, one person began assigning verses for each person to look up and read to the group, ensuring that everyone had something to say, but what was said was set up to be a unified voice, the voice of the message-bearer. Conversation was limited to a few comments on how to apply said message to one's life; no one even thought about stirring the pot a little bit.
My goose was cooked.
Not only did I not feel comfortable in this sort of environment, I probably spent too much time and goodwill trying to explain how this approach was even less effective than what we had been doing before. But there was to be no change; we must be unified, I was told. God hates division in His church. I was not the lone voice of discontent; there were a few others who felt very cramped by this approach as well. We began to talk about meeting on our own; this talk was swiftly met with vehement scolding from other students in the group, as well as adult leaders from the youth group. So instead of stirring the pot, I simply removed my spoon, as did a handful of others. I think the thing eventually dried up and died after awhile.
Around this same time, I was in a Social Problems class with a few of the same people who were in the Bible study and youth group with me. Our big semester project was to, with a partner, choose a social issue, invite a person from the community on each end of the spectrum to give a presentation of their side of the topic, and then present our own point of view. This was worth half of our grade- the other half was based on attendance and our performance in a stock market game, and though I had no actual stock in Enron, I can say that I incurred a personal loss when the company crashed, as my partner and I invested heavily in their stock, causing us to earn an "F" on that portion of our grade. But I digress. So after a demonstration at our school by a "God Hates Fags" church group with fiery signs and screaming people protesting the genesis of a Gay-Straight Alliance at our school, a group in the class chose the issue of homosexuality as their topic. The first presentation was from some lady from a local GLBT support organization, and was very interesting, to say the least. The next presentation was from the minister of a local ultra-conservative Baptist church. After giving his spiel about homosexuality being a perversion, God's impending wrath, and God desire to "save" people from homosexual sin, an angry discussion broke out amongst two of the Christian people in my class and a few others. Feeling it was not my God-given duty to make people feel bad about how they felt about gays and lesbians, I sat on the sidelines until one of the people from my youth group said "C'mon, Ian? I need some support here. Tell them you believe this stuff, too."
And I couldn't.
I didn't believe it was my place to argue against a lifestyle that, for all I knew, might not be completely in someone's control. I mean, yeah, gay pride parades and naked dudes and rainbows and stuff weren't my thing, but if my first reaction is to be grossed out, or even to hate them, shouldn't I step back and check why I feel that way in the first place, and that maybe I should be feeling how God feels about them? And as far as what the Bible tells me, I think God might actually love fags. And if God hates fags, why does He love me? Am I that different from a homosexual dude that God views him differently than He views me? I'll bet he and I and the next guy have the same problems, and might even love God just as much. I think far too much time is spent divining between sins. I also don't think Jesus was killed for being exclusive of certain people groups- it was because His message was so incredibly IN-clusive that the establishment killed him. And I think He'd probably stand out in front of the "God Hates Fags" people and challenge them to cast the first stone. Call me weak, but I just can't do it. And I heard an earful for it. "If you can't stand up for your sister in Christ, can you even stand for CHRIST?" "I'm supposed to stand for Christ, not against people." "Well, Christ stands for people!" "And fags aren't people?" "I can't believe you!" I guess I can't, either, but I think if Christ actually was with us today in the flesh, after he got done shaming the "God Hates Fags" people, he might want to have a few words with all of us because not any of us is without fault; no, not even one.
I just don't want to be, and I don't think a Christian should be, known best for what they are against. And the majority of the time, that's where we're at.
After these episodes, I began to feel as though there was a deeper thing going on than God and gays. I'd see it in youth group worship band practice when someone would introduce a new song or a new way to try a song. Or when someone would challenge the usefulness of those little fill-in-the-blank sermon follow-along sheets. Or when I asked about our attendance at the youth conferences we'd been involved with for the past few years, only to find out that a decision had been made by someone disconnected from all of us to uproot us from that sphere of influence. "God is moving. God is good." I don't know how many times I heard those sorts of words in connection with various odd and shadowed decisions by the "spiritual elders" that I was supposed to honor and have respect for.
"God is moving in a different direction."
Here's a thought: God is constant. It's us who move in different directions. Why is it that we have this need to invoke God when making decisions? I absolutely agree that it's important to discover what He's doing, but what He's doing doesn't involve every decision we make. Rather, it should be flipped: every decision we make should involve what He's doing. What He's doing is good, and you can join in the good things He's doing in any way you are able. Slapping the God label on things which are ultimately human decisions is just plain wrong at best, and evil at worst. I wonder, too, if that is actually a closer application for the Biblical mandate to "not use the Lord's name in vain."
Eventually, things came crashing down at the youth group. Initially, we were given permission to take a group to this youth conference, and we made plans accordingly. Then as it came down to crunch time, we were told that if we went on this trip, we'd be kicked out of the youth group. Long story short, we resigned our various positions in leadership and left. The 6 or 8 of us who left eventually began conducting our own Bible study. We were accused of being divisionists, of hurting the youth group (the numbers began to dwindle even further after we had left), and I was accused by name of being a hand of the devil, "leading people astray".
This is the first time I realized clearly what I was seeing. Because I knew I wasn't "the hand of the devil", because I knew I was following God, I began to see that what I WASN'T following was the man-made system that was the church. Now, before I get all bleary-eyed about my patriotism for this or that, let me make something very clear- there was some pride involved. Of course there was. I felt that I was very right for doing some of these things, and while feeling you're right about something is a good reason to do something, it should never be the ONLY reason. As an eighteen-year-old, that wasn't always the case. But what I will say is that I began to notice that this whole thing called Christianity had a very deeply-seated streak of self-preservation in its system, that it was often less about God and more about just keeping this thing going, and keeping it going on a very ideologically set path.
It's a really funny human tendency, how we can take something that at first is so good, so genuine and turn it into something so synthesized, so robotic that it takes all the life out of it. Nowhere has this been so evident than in Christianity. We've become afraid of talking about what it is we're actually supposed to be about, and we're afraid of new ideas, because we're so worried that our "good and pure" religion is being defiled, so we take control of it and entwine God with all of our theologies, traditions, morals and leadership structures, and then we wonder, "Why is all this bad stuff happening in this world? Where did all the good go? Why don't people care about God anymore?"
I'll wager you that people care much more about God than we give them credit for.
It's our god that people don't care about.
Humans have figured out that if they can control thought, they can control other humans. They, often unconsciously, establish certain thought patterns. Usually these patterns have a very specific goal in mind and because of that they become rigid and immovable, and any ideas introduced into the fray become enemies that must be silenced, because this whole thing is already thought out to its end. This is where we enter into the realm of the "ideology". Ideologies have the tendency to shut down thought, to discourage ideas and to bring into line anything that is separate from the established thought process. It would seem to me that this act would cheapen the decisions made from this process… it would make everything simple, and it would get results, but it would cheapen everything. This is the epitome of industrial age thought, and the cheapening of things is a necessary and acceptable byproduct. But when it comes to people, I don't think anyone is interested in a cheap and simplified way of treating each other, especially when it comes to faith tradition.
There was a time during my senior year of high school that myself and some other people, mainly from the Pentecostal youth group I was involved in, decided it would be a good idea to start a Tuesday morning Bible study at school with some students from other churches. We asked permission from the principal to have a designated room, and asked one of the math teachers (who also served on the adult leadership team at youth group) to be our faculty representative. So we'd meet, and the idea was to have a topic of discussion pulled from a passage in the Bible and toss around ideas amongst ourselves, hashing out what it meant. We'd invite our friends, and I think at one point we may have put up fliers on the walls around the school or something to "advertise" our little weekly early-morning shindig. I think we mainly existed to make a statement to the folks around us, something to the effect of, yes, you go to school with Christians and yes, we're here and active and yes, we can pray and read our Bibles in this public place because yes, it's our right. We were alive and we were organized, so watch out! God's really gonna get ya now! While I liked the idea of having a group of us meet and talk about God stuff, I think I wanted it to be more about the conversation and the exchange of ideas than about the delivery of some kind of message, or keeping up some kind of appearance. However, I think that's all that most of us knew. Each week, we'd take turns leading the discussion, which was less a discussion and more like delivering a "message", a compilation of passages that we felt strongly about, to those who gathered with us- usually about 8 or 10- and no one would really have anything else to say about it and so off we'd march through the door of our meeting place, knowing that people knew where we met and who we were, and that they were probably watching us and might even ask us what we were doing in there and so we should be ready to speak confidently of our convictions. We'd then walk into our first period class and lose whatever we'd just talked about.
I think where it went wrong was in missing the conversation part. Somewhere in our subconscious effort to make a statement, we lost what we (or at least what I thought we) were going for- a group of people on a similar path exchanging stories along the way. Instead, we became some kind of support group for preaching at each other to keep each other "in line". And I think it happens all the time. We have this disproportionate focus on our message delivery- how we're presenting what we're saying, how we look while doing it, etc. And when it comes to learning about God, we are trained to sit and listen to the message. We don't know how to converse with one another anymore, because we emulate that which we are accustomed to- a monologue designed to convince someone of something. It becomes a sales pitch. There's no room for disagreement, and by the very nature of a message-delivery-focus, there is a specific need to have a unified front, with not even a hint of disagreement, because well, what does that say about the God that we serve? The message delivery becomes the most important part, and don't even bother questioning what the message is in the first place. And so it is no wonder that none of us really knew what to do with a "Bible study", and those who had the most sharply-honed message eventually began to assert their authority. Pretty soon, one person began assigning verses for each person to look up and read to the group, ensuring that everyone had something to say, but what was said was set up to be a unified voice, the voice of the message-bearer. Conversation was limited to a few comments on how to apply said message to one's life; no one even thought about stirring the pot a little bit.
My goose was cooked.
Not only did I not feel comfortable in this sort of environment, I probably spent too much time and goodwill trying to explain how this approach was even less effective than what we had been doing before. But there was to be no change; we must be unified, I was told. God hates division in His church. I was not the lone voice of discontent; there were a few others who felt very cramped by this approach as well. We began to talk about meeting on our own; this talk was swiftly met with vehement scolding from other students in the group, as well as adult leaders from the youth group. So instead of stirring the pot, I simply removed my spoon, as did a handful of others. I think the thing eventually dried up and died after awhile.
Around this same time, I was in a Social Problems class with a few of the same people who were in the Bible study and youth group with me. Our big semester project was to, with a partner, choose a social issue, invite a person from the community on each end of the spectrum to give a presentation of their side of the topic, and then present our own point of view. This was worth half of our grade- the other half was based on attendance and our performance in a stock market game, and though I had no actual stock in Enron, I can say that I incurred a personal loss when the company crashed, as my partner and I invested heavily in their stock, causing us to earn an "F" on that portion of our grade. But I digress. So after a demonstration at our school by a "God Hates Fags" church group with fiery signs and screaming people protesting the genesis of a Gay-Straight Alliance at our school, a group in the class chose the issue of homosexuality as their topic. The first presentation was from some lady from a local GLBT support organization, and was very interesting, to say the least. The next presentation was from the minister of a local ultra-conservative Baptist church. After giving his spiel about homosexuality being a perversion, God's impending wrath, and God desire to "save" people from homosexual sin, an angry discussion broke out amongst two of the Christian people in my class and a few others. Feeling it was not my God-given duty to make people feel bad about how they felt about gays and lesbians, I sat on the sidelines until one of the people from my youth group said "C'mon, Ian? I need some support here. Tell them you believe this stuff, too."
And I couldn't.
I didn't believe it was my place to argue against a lifestyle that, for all I knew, might not be completely in someone's control. I mean, yeah, gay pride parades and naked dudes and rainbows and stuff weren't my thing, but if my first reaction is to be grossed out, or even to hate them, shouldn't I step back and check why I feel that way in the first place, and that maybe I should be feeling how God feels about them? And as far as what the Bible tells me, I think God might actually love fags. And if God hates fags, why does He love me? Am I that different from a homosexual dude that God views him differently than He views me? I'll bet he and I and the next guy have the same problems, and might even love God just as much. I think far too much time is spent divining between sins. I also don't think Jesus was killed for being exclusive of certain people groups- it was because His message was so incredibly IN-clusive that the establishment killed him. And I think He'd probably stand out in front of the "God Hates Fags" people and challenge them to cast the first stone. Call me weak, but I just can't do it. And I heard an earful for it. "If you can't stand up for your sister in Christ, can you even stand for CHRIST?" "I'm supposed to stand for Christ, not against people." "Well, Christ stands for people!" "And fags aren't people?" "I can't believe you!" I guess I can't, either, but I think if Christ actually was with us today in the flesh, after he got done shaming the "God Hates Fags" people, he might want to have a few words with all of us because not any of us is without fault; no, not even one.
I just don't want to be, and I don't think a Christian should be, known best for what they are against. And the majority of the time, that's where we're at.
After these episodes, I began to feel as though there was a deeper thing going on than God and gays. I'd see it in youth group worship band practice when someone would introduce a new song or a new way to try a song. Or when someone would challenge the usefulness of those little fill-in-the-blank sermon follow-along sheets. Or when I asked about our attendance at the youth conferences we'd been involved with for the past few years, only to find out that a decision had been made by someone disconnected from all of us to uproot us from that sphere of influence. "God is moving. God is good." I don't know how many times I heard those sorts of words in connection with various odd and shadowed decisions by the "spiritual elders" that I was supposed to honor and have respect for.
"God is moving in a different direction."
Here's a thought: God is constant. It's us who move in different directions. Why is it that we have this need to invoke God when making decisions? I absolutely agree that it's important to discover what He's doing, but what He's doing doesn't involve every decision we make. Rather, it should be flipped: every decision we make should involve what He's doing. What He's doing is good, and you can join in the good things He's doing in any way you are able. Slapping the God label on things which are ultimately human decisions is just plain wrong at best, and evil at worst. I wonder, too, if that is actually a closer application for the Biblical mandate to "not use the Lord's name in vain."
Eventually, things came crashing down at the youth group. Initially, we were given permission to take a group to this youth conference, and we made plans accordingly. Then as it came down to crunch time, we were told that if we went on this trip, we'd be kicked out of the youth group. Long story short, we resigned our various positions in leadership and left. The 6 or 8 of us who left eventually began conducting our own Bible study. We were accused of being divisionists, of hurting the youth group (the numbers began to dwindle even further after we had left), and I was accused by name of being a hand of the devil, "leading people astray".
This is the first time I realized clearly what I was seeing. Because I knew I wasn't "the hand of the devil", because I knew I was following God, I began to see that what I WASN'T following was the man-made system that was the church. Now, before I get all bleary-eyed about my patriotism for this or that, let me make something very clear- there was some pride involved. Of course there was. I felt that I was very right for doing some of these things, and while feeling you're right about something is a good reason to do something, it should never be the ONLY reason. As an eighteen-year-old, that wasn't always the case. But what I will say is that I began to notice that this whole thing called Christianity had a very deeply-seated streak of self-preservation in its system, that it was often less about God and more about just keeping this thing going, and keeping it going on a very ideologically set path.
It's a really funny human tendency, how we can take something that at first is so good, so genuine and turn it into something so synthesized, so robotic that it takes all the life out of it. Nowhere has this been so evident than in Christianity. We've become afraid of talking about what it is we're actually supposed to be about, and we're afraid of new ideas, because we're so worried that our "good and pure" religion is being defiled, so we take control of it and entwine God with all of our theologies, traditions, morals and leadership structures, and then we wonder, "Why is all this bad stuff happening in this world? Where did all the good go? Why don't people care about God anymore?"
I'll wager you that people care much more about God than we give them credit for.
It's our god that people don't care about.
12.26.2007
Part I: What's Happened?
Certainly, our world is not the same as it was a quarter century ago, when I came into this world. Twenty-five years ago, we were marveling at the power of persuasion held by the family television. Already proven in its ability to give us an "insider's look" at the world- as it had just recently done so by bringing the harrowing images of the Vietnam War into our living rooms- we were learning of its profound ability to shape our public discourse into a superficial made-for-TV scheme of shallow one-liners and endless photo opportunities that only the wealthy could afford. Books like Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves To Death" would document this shift in-depth. Fast-forward ten years, and we're marveling over the Internet and its ability to connect billions of people worldwide and allow us to write to our relatives, manage our own finances like never before, and buy our Christmas presents in our underwear from the comfort of home. A few years later, we were learning of the vast cache of knowledge available to us by way of the internet (no longer spelled with a capital "I", such was its wide acceptance into our culture), its ability to endlessly entertain with the success of such "for fun" websites as homestarrunner.com and ebaumsworld.com, and its ability to connect and begin relationships with people we didn't even know were out there through the use of instant messaging, as well as websites such as lavalife.com, match.com and later, eharmony.com. And just in the past five years, we've seen the rise of MySpace and Facebook, where we can all post our silly party pictures and keep tabs on our friends by watching their every move on their "profile", a webpage which is in essence the "face" of a person on the internet. We've also seen the rise of the blog, in which anyone, anywhere, can talk about anything from dirty political rumors to the hot dish they cooked last night. We are able to find what amounts to a college education's worth of information through entities such as Wikipedia, which also allows us to contribute our own two cents on a topic, creating an ever-changing encyclopedic one-stop-shop for the knowledge of mankind, and also an incredibly easy way to blow an entire afternoon online. We can even get an ACTUAL college education as numerous public and private schools now offer online classes and degrees.
We're discovering how dependant we are upon this connection with each other, and discovering the value of everyone's collective ideas available for all to see. We no longer take a "talking head" at his word, but go delving for the information ourselves and come to our own conclusion. Through this conditioning of discovering the truth for ourselves, we have learned that "truth" is much more subjective than we had once realized, and that more often than not, the truth is found hanging in the balance between many perceived "truths". We have become skeptical of anyone claiming to "know the truth" about this or that, as we now have the ability within our fingertips to verify and often dispute that claim. We've also learned the value that our own personal experience provides us, and sharing our experience with others' experiences shapes a much more personal and compelling "truth" than any one claim to the same effect. Summarily, truth is no longer found in any centralized body or structure, whether political, commercial or religious. It is on the topic of religion that I would like to speak to, and I'll use a timeline of my own life experience to illustrate.
I come from a mainly Baptist background, having a grandfather and an uncle ordained into the American Baptist denomination. I spent the first 10 years of my life in fairly traditional hymn-and-sermon Baptist churches. From my young memory, I remember these churches being places of kind-hearted and charitable people, accentuated by weekly potluck dinners and the implied importance of community, friendship and giving. After an out-of-state move, my family made the switch to a local Pentecostal congregation. These incredibly outgoing people were very focused upon seeing the glory of God physically manifested in every moment of everyday life, fighting militantly against the forces of darkness that threatened to overcome the world soul-by-soul, and a very specific teaching of submission to authority; generally speaking, your "spiritual elders"; more specifically, the pastor of your congregation. It was here that I would receive the bulk of my religious conditioning. After spending five years here, my family moved on to plant a church in a nearby town. This church was affiliated with the Baptist General Conference, a fairly conservative denomination, and was to be built on the Willow Creek/Saddleback model of "seeker-sensitive" churches, basically an approach designed for those who had "given up on church, but not on God", as the church literature would say. Here, I was exposed to many new and different ways of "doing church", from high-gloss Powerpoint presentations and tightly-produced worship bands to entire sermon series built on Hollywood movie themes. The entire flow of a Sunday service, and everything else about the way the church handled its business, was carefully choreographed, timed, and- quite often- scripted. The "growth story" of this church, an important part of a church's credibility, is now considered classic: we went from a living room to an elementary school, from an abandoned post office to an old car dealership and finally produced a large-scale fundraising drive to build our own church building. My father served on the elder board, and was also a lay advisor to the Great Lakes Baptist Conference, the regional governing body. My mom was nursery coordinator. My brother drummed for the worship band. I myself was involved in the youth leadership at this church. Simultaneously, I was involved in a youth group at an Evangelical Free denominational church, as well as continuing to serve as a student-leader and worship leader in the Pentecostal youth group at the church my family had left, also serving with them as an assistant camp counselor for two years. I was also occasionally involved in the local Young Life non-denominational organization.
Having such a relatively diverse church background and being immersed in leadership-this and ministry-that developed in me a strong sense that this was just what I was supposed to be doing with my life, and so in high school, I applied for admittance into the strongest ministry-oriented college that I knew of (and because they'd been sending me sweet-looking flyers since I was in 7th grade!): North Central University in Minneapolis. I was excited to gain admittance, and had it all planned out: I was going to start school, meet a girl first or second semester, marry her by junior year, graduate in 4 years and become a successful youth pastor, winning scores of souls for Christ and maybe writing a book or two about it. It'd be great.
I had written, in my admissions essay, of a desire to bring about a "revival"- an oft-used term in Pentecostal circles which typically means a large-scale change or deep shift brought about by the faithful in accordance with God's will. "Revival" usually looked like a whole bunch of people writhing in the aisles or dancing around at the front of the church yelling at God in strange languages. The pressure to "come on down and receive what the Lord had for you" was great; if you didn't get out of your seat or you weren't in the room for whatever reason, you risked "missing out"- the implications of which were never really clear, but you knew it might mean that something in your soul was in jeopardy, so you just didn't even go there. I mostly rolled with it, but I also felt like there was something more to be had, something much more practical, something much less weird, and that's what I wanted to see happen. It seemed to me that the "revival" I read about in the Bible was often at odds with the established order of things, and this revival I kept seeing was like a broken old 33 vinyl record playing on the 45 setting- the same old thing, but much more frenetic, and ultimately annoying. I knew this wasn't "it".
Before I'd leave for North Central, I'd begin to develop some ideas about what this whole thing looked like, or at least, what it SHOULDN'T look like…
We're discovering how dependant we are upon this connection with each other, and discovering the value of everyone's collective ideas available for all to see. We no longer take a "talking head" at his word, but go delving for the information ourselves and come to our own conclusion. Through this conditioning of discovering the truth for ourselves, we have learned that "truth" is much more subjective than we had once realized, and that more often than not, the truth is found hanging in the balance between many perceived "truths". We have become skeptical of anyone claiming to "know the truth" about this or that, as we now have the ability within our fingertips to verify and often dispute that claim. We've also learned the value that our own personal experience provides us, and sharing our experience with others' experiences shapes a much more personal and compelling "truth" than any one claim to the same effect. Summarily, truth is no longer found in any centralized body or structure, whether political, commercial or religious. It is on the topic of religion that I would like to speak to, and I'll use a timeline of my own life experience to illustrate.
I come from a mainly Baptist background, having a grandfather and an uncle ordained into the American Baptist denomination. I spent the first 10 years of my life in fairly traditional hymn-and-sermon Baptist churches. From my young memory, I remember these churches being places of kind-hearted and charitable people, accentuated by weekly potluck dinners and the implied importance of community, friendship and giving. After an out-of-state move, my family made the switch to a local Pentecostal congregation. These incredibly outgoing people were very focused upon seeing the glory of God physically manifested in every moment of everyday life, fighting militantly against the forces of darkness that threatened to overcome the world soul-by-soul, and a very specific teaching of submission to authority; generally speaking, your "spiritual elders"; more specifically, the pastor of your congregation. It was here that I would receive the bulk of my religious conditioning. After spending five years here, my family moved on to plant a church in a nearby town. This church was affiliated with the Baptist General Conference, a fairly conservative denomination, and was to be built on the Willow Creek/Saddleback model of "seeker-sensitive" churches, basically an approach designed for those who had "given up on church, but not on God", as the church literature would say. Here, I was exposed to many new and different ways of "doing church", from high-gloss Powerpoint presentations and tightly-produced worship bands to entire sermon series built on Hollywood movie themes. The entire flow of a Sunday service, and everything else about the way the church handled its business, was carefully choreographed, timed, and- quite often- scripted. The "growth story" of this church, an important part of a church's credibility, is now considered classic: we went from a living room to an elementary school, from an abandoned post office to an old car dealership and finally produced a large-scale fundraising drive to build our own church building. My father served on the elder board, and was also a lay advisor to the Great Lakes Baptist Conference, the regional governing body. My mom was nursery coordinator. My brother drummed for the worship band. I myself was involved in the youth leadership at this church. Simultaneously, I was involved in a youth group at an Evangelical Free denominational church, as well as continuing to serve as a student-leader and worship leader in the Pentecostal youth group at the church my family had left, also serving with them as an assistant camp counselor for two years. I was also occasionally involved in the local Young Life non-denominational organization.
Having such a relatively diverse church background and being immersed in leadership-this and ministry-that developed in me a strong sense that this was just what I was supposed to be doing with my life, and so in high school, I applied for admittance into the strongest ministry-oriented college that I knew of (and because they'd been sending me sweet-looking flyers since I was in 7th grade!): North Central University in Minneapolis. I was excited to gain admittance, and had it all planned out: I was going to start school, meet a girl first or second semester, marry her by junior year, graduate in 4 years and become a successful youth pastor, winning scores of souls for Christ and maybe writing a book or two about it. It'd be great.
I had written, in my admissions essay, of a desire to bring about a "revival"- an oft-used term in Pentecostal circles which typically means a large-scale change or deep shift brought about by the faithful in accordance with God's will. "Revival" usually looked like a whole bunch of people writhing in the aisles or dancing around at the front of the church yelling at God in strange languages. The pressure to "come on down and receive what the Lord had for you" was great; if you didn't get out of your seat or you weren't in the room for whatever reason, you risked "missing out"- the implications of which were never really clear, but you knew it might mean that something in your soul was in jeopardy, so you just didn't even go there. I mostly rolled with it, but I also felt like there was something more to be had, something much more practical, something much less weird, and that's what I wanted to see happen. It seemed to me that the "revival" I read about in the Bible was often at odds with the established order of things, and this revival I kept seeing was like a broken old 33 vinyl record playing on the 45 setting- the same old thing, but much more frenetic, and ultimately annoying. I knew this wasn't "it".
Before I'd leave for North Central, I'd begin to develop some ideas about what this whole thing looked like, or at least, what it SHOULDN'T look like…
12.21.2007
A Prologue
I've really done it this time.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be rolling out a four-part series of blogs that are part autobiographical, part sociological, part historical, part potential, and in large part, whimsical. Among a host of other descriptive words, they will be incredibly introspective and very personal. You may find out some things you never knew, some things you didn't want to know, and some things about which you may not care. But it's my story; it's where I'm coming from, where I'm at right now, and where it all may be going. The purpose is threefold: 1) I've got an incredible writing itch to scratch; 2) I've got some things to sort out in my own head and by writing it all out will serve to help me in that process; 3) I'd like to involve in the process everyone who happens to read my words, allowing them to share their thoughts and create a conversation, and in the classic Ian blog sort of way, challenge people to examine themselves, their own stories, and where they're going. I will purpose in this story, as much as I can, only to name ideas and not names, as that's not the point here. If you feel slighted, as though I'm pointing a finger and just not saying your name, I apologize- there is no anger or resentment meant toward anyone. If you feel as though you're being praised or otherwise shed in a positive light, that's awesome: you know who you are, you should feel wonderful, and I'm still not going to call you by name! I don't purport to be superior to anyone else, or even special for that matter, as I'm sure countless others have followed a similar path in life. But it's me, it's mine, and it can be a part of yours, too.
I must also warn that in accordance with Point 1 of the Threefold Purposes of writing this series- the one about scratching the writing itch- I will be employing what may at times sound like a deliberately grandiose style of prose.
I like to hear myself think; my apologies.
Stay tuned…
Over the next few weeks, I'll be rolling out a four-part series of blogs that are part autobiographical, part sociological, part historical, part potential, and in large part, whimsical. Among a host of other descriptive words, they will be incredibly introspective and very personal. You may find out some things you never knew, some things you didn't want to know, and some things about which you may not care. But it's my story; it's where I'm coming from, where I'm at right now, and where it all may be going. The purpose is threefold: 1) I've got an incredible writing itch to scratch; 2) I've got some things to sort out in my own head and by writing it all out will serve to help me in that process; 3) I'd like to involve in the process everyone who happens to read my words, allowing them to share their thoughts and create a conversation, and in the classic Ian blog sort of way, challenge people to examine themselves, their own stories, and where they're going. I will purpose in this story, as much as I can, only to name ideas and not names, as that's not the point here. If you feel slighted, as though I'm pointing a finger and just not saying your name, I apologize- there is no anger or resentment meant toward anyone. If you feel as though you're being praised or otherwise shed in a positive light, that's awesome: you know who you are, you should feel wonderful, and I'm still not going to call you by name! I don't purport to be superior to anyone else, or even special for that matter, as I'm sure countless others have followed a similar path in life. But it's me, it's mine, and it can be a part of yours, too.
I must also warn that in accordance with Point 1 of the Threefold Purposes of writing this series- the one about scratching the writing itch- I will be employing what may at times sound like a deliberately grandiose style of prose.
I like to hear myself think; my apologies.
Stay tuned…
11.26.2007
The Cold Dead Fingers Of Winter
What is it about winter that's so disheartening? Why is it that one mention of the year's coldest months sends shivers down one's spine? Okay, I know, cold weather is inherently COLD, how can't you shiver? But rhetorically speaking, the shivers of anger, resentment, bitterness, hopelessness and all-around poor attitudes seem to reverberate through the collective backbone of who we are come October and November, and continue until March or April.
Doug, the pastor of the church community my wife and I have been becoming a part of, said to me quite bitterly one particularly crisp evening that "The cold, dead fingers of winter are upon us." Now, the only thing hopeless about Doug seems to be his hopelessly positive outlook on life- seriously, this guy WRITES BOOKS about hope. What is it about winter that can bring even this hope-filled man to his knees?
Jalyn, my manager at work, has a generally sunny disposition and by all appearances loves life. But these days, she tells me she can hardly get out of bed because she hates the cold so much. She tells me that she is literally scared to death of the next few months, because she dreads the cold THAT much. I will throw in an asterisk here and tell you that she is from the West Coast; we Midwesterners nod in understanding that a West Coaster in Minnesota is about as close to the proverbial "fish out of water" as one can get, but still… fear of winter?
As I talk to the many people that I come into contact with at my job at Starbucks, the consensus seems to be the same: winter sucks. And when I ask people where they're from, the majority of them rather sheepishly admit that they're from here. So shouldn't they be used to this? Beyond being used to it, shouldn't they maybe even embrace it as a part of who they are? Apparently not. The votes have been cast, the chads have fallen like icicles from rooftops , and no recount is necessary; it's unanimous, winter is SO not cool.
Then there's me. I love winter. The colder, the better. A city wrapped in a thick blanket of snow is as comforting to me as a blanket is to a 3-year-old. For me, June through about the beginning of September are the harshest months, the time when my hope sinks and I tend to be bitter and not get out of bed. I usually bottom out about the end of July or beginning of August- just go and read my blog postings from that time of year! But then a funny thing happens: right about the end of September or beginning of October, right about when everyone else seems to go into depression mode, my morale and general outlook on life spikes significantly. That's right: the time of the year when the air becomes crisp, and the trees change color and begin to die, and when the frost kills off everything and you have to start scraping your car off when you're already late for work, and the first snow causes rush-hour traffic to stand still- this is my most wonderful time of the year.
I've tried to understand exactly why this is my favorite time of year, but I can't quite put my cold, dead finger on it. I know someone out there is reading this and thinking "Well, it's because you're a sick and twisted individual; you think the movie 'Fargo' is hilarious, your idea of uplifting music is the typically depressing Midwestern emo scene and rain-soaked Northwest bands with names like 'Death Cab For Cutie', and the hardest you've ever laughed was at a picture of a hearse being obliterated by a city bus." To which I would say "Yes! But…" I am by no means a sad, bitter or pessimistic person. Cynical? Sometimes. Sardonic? Okay. Irreverent? Definitely. But I'd like to think I can be positive and hopeful in even the worst of situations, and that when people are at their lowest, I can be an uplifting influence in their lives.
Now, I don't claim to be entirely consistent on any of these counts. Generally speaking, though, could this be why I enjoy my winters? I mean, when everything is dying, when everyone else seems to be down and out and hating life, I feel like I am at my best. Why is that?
I went for a walk today. I'll admit it wasn't by choice- I had to drop off the Focus at the shop, and had no place to go except for the Dunn Bros two miles down the road. I was a dork and had forgotten my hat and gloves, but off I went, walking down Minnetonka Blvd, heading directly into the 25-degree windchill and lugging my laptop around my shoulder. This sucked at first. It was cold, and the road is tree-lined and mainly shady, so any warmth the sun was offering was being soaked up by the trees. And the thought that it was two miles, or 10,560 feet, or approximately 40 minutes to my destination, did not at all help. But I noticed this funny thing happen after about 10 minutes: I began to adapt. My body got over the initial shock of the cold; my mind, the initial shock of the long haul ahead. I became less concerned with my internal affairs, and more concerned with the external, what was around me. It was quiet, or as quiet as the middle of Minnetonka can get, and there were some animals in the woods, scuttling around. The sun was bright, casting the trees and grass as a red-orange and the sky a frosty blue. It was really pretty outside, and I was lucky I stuck it out long enough to allow myself to adapt- and to enjoy a steaming cup of coffee at the end of it.
Many a study has been done that has chronicled humans' amazing ability to adapt to changing surroundings, proving that as uncomfortable as we may be in any sort of environment- climatic or otherwise- it's in our DNA, our very makeup as humans, to self-tweak and change, if only just a little, to allow ourselves to function properly in a new environment and find the good and the life that is present in these new surroundings. At the same time, we also possess an incredible ability to NOT change, to refuse to adapt, and to hold tight to things that we insist must NOT change, must NOT adapt. And oftentimes, this leads to us becoming so obsessed with NOT adapting that we lose what we were holding tight to in the first place, or find ourselves so averse to our surroundings that we become completely irrelevant and eventually, for all practical purposes, dead. It is our God-given ability as humans to adapt, and- while in some rare cases it may be necessary- going against this part of our nature may be undoing our ability to relate and survive.
I will be the first to admit that I suck at adapting sometimes. Like the summertime, the heat and overbearing sunlight kills me, and I just plain don't want to do much of anything, and so I allow myself not to adapt. This leads to the very depression, bitterness and bad attitude that I profess to lament, the state that everyone around me seems to get into in the wintertime. Eventually, I pull myself out of it, and I do end up adapting to the heat and do plenty of things and go plenty of places during the summertime, but it's not easy. Without excusing myself, though, is it possible that the need for a person to be positive and uplifting is slightly less of a need during the warm weather months, when most people seem to already be at their highest point?
I guess all I'm trying to say here in a very roundabout way (and thank you for bearing with me through this extremely long blog post!) is that everybody at one point or another re-evaluates who they are and what they should be doing with themselves, and as I sit and try to put two-and-two together about my own life, maybe my love of winter in the face of all the resentment toward this season is a sign that in some way I'm supposed to be the proverbial spark in the dark place, or blossom on the cow pie, if you will. I feel like I can make a difference in this world by showing how good it can be to adapt oneself to the cold and otherwise crappy seasons in life. Everything comes in cycles, in seasons, so let's stop dreading the inevitable- and oftentimes necessary- and try to adapt, to embrace the good in where we're at in life; whether we're wrapped up in the warm, comforting arms of summer, or the cold dead fingers of winter are beginning to brush our cheeks, we can live well, enjoy our lives and be useful to those around us no matter where we're at.
Doug, the pastor of the church community my wife and I have been becoming a part of, said to me quite bitterly one particularly crisp evening that "The cold, dead fingers of winter are upon us." Now, the only thing hopeless about Doug seems to be his hopelessly positive outlook on life- seriously, this guy WRITES BOOKS about hope. What is it about winter that can bring even this hope-filled man to his knees?
Jalyn, my manager at work, has a generally sunny disposition and by all appearances loves life. But these days, she tells me she can hardly get out of bed because she hates the cold so much. She tells me that she is literally scared to death of the next few months, because she dreads the cold THAT much. I will throw in an asterisk here and tell you that she is from the West Coast; we Midwesterners nod in understanding that a West Coaster in Minnesota is about as close to the proverbial "fish out of water" as one can get, but still… fear of winter?
As I talk to the many people that I come into contact with at my job at Starbucks, the consensus seems to be the same: winter sucks. And when I ask people where they're from, the majority of them rather sheepishly admit that they're from here. So shouldn't they be used to this? Beyond being used to it, shouldn't they maybe even embrace it as a part of who they are? Apparently not. The votes have been cast, the chads have fallen like icicles from rooftops , and no recount is necessary; it's unanimous, winter is SO not cool.
Then there's me. I love winter. The colder, the better. A city wrapped in a thick blanket of snow is as comforting to me as a blanket is to a 3-year-old. For me, June through about the beginning of September are the harshest months, the time when my hope sinks and I tend to be bitter and not get out of bed. I usually bottom out about the end of July or beginning of August- just go and read my blog postings from that time of year! But then a funny thing happens: right about the end of September or beginning of October, right about when everyone else seems to go into depression mode, my morale and general outlook on life spikes significantly. That's right: the time of the year when the air becomes crisp, and the trees change color and begin to die, and when the frost kills off everything and you have to start scraping your car off when you're already late for work, and the first snow causes rush-hour traffic to stand still- this is my most wonderful time of the year.
I've tried to understand exactly why this is my favorite time of year, but I can't quite put my cold, dead finger on it. I know someone out there is reading this and thinking "Well, it's because you're a sick and twisted individual; you think the movie 'Fargo' is hilarious, your idea of uplifting music is the typically depressing Midwestern emo scene and rain-soaked Northwest bands with names like 'Death Cab For Cutie', and the hardest you've ever laughed was at a picture of a hearse being obliterated by a city bus." To which I would say "Yes! But…" I am by no means a sad, bitter or pessimistic person. Cynical? Sometimes. Sardonic? Okay. Irreverent? Definitely. But I'd like to think I can be positive and hopeful in even the worst of situations, and that when people are at their lowest, I can be an uplifting influence in their lives.
Now, I don't claim to be entirely consistent on any of these counts. Generally speaking, though, could this be why I enjoy my winters? I mean, when everything is dying, when everyone else seems to be down and out and hating life, I feel like I am at my best. Why is that?
I went for a walk today. I'll admit it wasn't by choice- I had to drop off the Focus at the shop, and had no place to go except for the Dunn Bros two miles down the road. I was a dork and had forgotten my hat and gloves, but off I went, walking down Minnetonka Blvd, heading directly into the 25-degree windchill and lugging my laptop around my shoulder. This sucked at first. It was cold, and the road is tree-lined and mainly shady, so any warmth the sun was offering was being soaked up by the trees. And the thought that it was two miles, or 10,560 feet, or approximately 40 minutes to my destination, did not at all help. But I noticed this funny thing happen after about 10 minutes: I began to adapt. My body got over the initial shock of the cold; my mind, the initial shock of the long haul ahead. I became less concerned with my internal affairs, and more concerned with the external, what was around me. It was quiet, or as quiet as the middle of Minnetonka can get, and there were some animals in the woods, scuttling around. The sun was bright, casting the trees and grass as a red-orange and the sky a frosty blue. It was really pretty outside, and I was lucky I stuck it out long enough to allow myself to adapt- and to enjoy a steaming cup of coffee at the end of it.
Many a study has been done that has chronicled humans' amazing ability to adapt to changing surroundings, proving that as uncomfortable as we may be in any sort of environment- climatic or otherwise- it's in our DNA, our very makeup as humans, to self-tweak and change, if only just a little, to allow ourselves to function properly in a new environment and find the good and the life that is present in these new surroundings. At the same time, we also possess an incredible ability to NOT change, to refuse to adapt, and to hold tight to things that we insist must NOT change, must NOT adapt. And oftentimes, this leads to us becoming so obsessed with NOT adapting that we lose what we were holding tight to in the first place, or find ourselves so averse to our surroundings that we become completely irrelevant and eventually, for all practical purposes, dead. It is our God-given ability as humans to adapt, and- while in some rare cases it may be necessary- going against this part of our nature may be undoing our ability to relate and survive.
I will be the first to admit that I suck at adapting sometimes. Like the summertime, the heat and overbearing sunlight kills me, and I just plain don't want to do much of anything, and so I allow myself not to adapt. This leads to the very depression, bitterness and bad attitude that I profess to lament, the state that everyone around me seems to get into in the wintertime. Eventually, I pull myself out of it, and I do end up adapting to the heat and do plenty of things and go plenty of places during the summertime, but it's not easy. Without excusing myself, though, is it possible that the need for a person to be positive and uplifting is slightly less of a need during the warm weather months, when most people seem to already be at their highest point?
I guess all I'm trying to say here in a very roundabout way (and thank you for bearing with me through this extremely long blog post!) is that everybody at one point or another re-evaluates who they are and what they should be doing with themselves, and as I sit and try to put two-and-two together about my own life, maybe my love of winter in the face of all the resentment toward this season is a sign that in some way I'm supposed to be the proverbial spark in the dark place, or blossom on the cow pie, if you will. I feel like I can make a difference in this world by showing how good it can be to adapt oneself to the cold and otherwise crappy seasons in life. Everything comes in cycles, in seasons, so let's stop dreading the inevitable- and oftentimes necessary- and try to adapt, to embrace the good in where we're at in life; whether we're wrapped up in the warm, comforting arms of summer, or the cold dead fingers of winter are beginning to brush our cheeks, we can live well, enjoy our lives and be useful to those around us no matter where we're at.
8.17.2007
Fingerpointing
** The following is an edited version of my original post. It was brought to my attention that my choice of language was not the best, and because I feel like I have a point to get across, I'll refrain from using angry expletives. **
It's been 17 days since The Bridge, and the fingerpointing has begun.
This talking head said this. And this person in charge did that. Well, this other guy whose job it was didn't do it well enough. This whole system lacks the income it needs to sufficiently run itself. Well, those elected officials signed a no-new-taxes pledge, so they didn't raise the gas tax 5c, so they took millions out of the road-and-bridge fund, so it's THEIR fault, those small-government, penny-pinching, near-sighted buttholes.
WHO PUT THESE PEOPLE IN POWER OVER US, ANYWAY?!
Oh, wait. That was us.
Remember when that dapper dude with the perfect teeth got up and invoked the name of Jesus and lowering taxes in the same breath? Dang, did he sound good! The Lord doesn't want money in the pockets of no money-grubbin' government. The Lord wants money in OUR pockets, for we're Americans, and the Lord has BLESSED us with a good income with which we're to be good stewards. He's got my vote.
Or, remember when that other person told us that as Americans, we're to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and make it happen ourselves? We don't need a big bureaucracy to tell us what to do or help us live our lives- God meant for us to be a FREE people, FREE to make our own life decisions and FREE of Big Brother looking over our shoulder. That's just like what daddy used to tell me. They've got my vote.
Well, folks. It's not that all these power figures and decision-makers that we've voted into office are bad people, have bad ideas or are even bad policymakers. Maybe they didn't think things through entirely, but then again, neither do we. Why should we expect anything more out of our government than we expect out of ourselves? It's not their fault. It's ours. They're all great at one thing:
SPEAKING OUR LANGUAGE.
We hate taxes. We hate spending money that's not on a movie or a latte. We hate spending money that's not on ourselves. In fact, we love ourselves. And we loathe anything that gets between us and our ability to love ourselves more. And the only thing we loathe more than that is a person with a face telling us or making us do something that gets between us and our ability to love ourselves more. So we latch on to the people with faces who make us feel good about ourselves, who tell us we can keep our money and keep spending it on our lattes and our Cosmopolitan magazines and our new baseball stadiums. Oops, scratch that last one. We didn't have a say in that one, but the feel-good faces said it was okay to tax us for that.
Well, those 100-plus people on the Interstate 35W bridge had a face. The kind of face you see everyday. So does everyone else who drove that highway that day. I drove that highway that day. I have a face. I also have a name. It's Ian, nice to meet you. They had names, too. They had lives. I know, because I saw them with my own eyes. I watched as the ones who were lucky enough to make it off that bridge, and well enough to be out of their hospital beds, limped down the aisle at a memorial service with Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, all of whom were praying for and remembering those who were not lucky enough or well enough to be with us.
But we forget that they're there. In fact, I'll be so bold as to say we don't care that they're there.
If you're going to point fingers, point them at me. I'm lazy, and I don't care about other people. I especially hate spending money on people other than myself, especially if it involves giving money to a gas pump. But after you're done pointing it at me, do yourself a favor- be honest and turn that finger around, point it at yourself. You'd complain about an extra 5c on a gallon of gas, too. Maybe not you specifically, but if I had 5c for every person who I've heard complain about the cost of loving themselves with a cup of coffee I'm serving them, I'd probably have enough money to chip in a few bucks to keep a bridge in decent running shape and keep myself, or you, or maybe even that whiny witch from finding themselves at the bottom of the Mississippi.
"Well, I would NEVER wish for someone to end up at the bottom of the Mississippi!"
Yes you do. You wish it every single day. I know I do. For my complete willingness to love myself and not give you a second thought, I wish for you to end up on the bottom of the Mississippi.
There's a quite simple term for this type of behavior. It's called masturbation. Us Christians are taught that it's bad for us, that it takes the focus off of others and puts it squarely on ourselves, for our own sake, to love ourselves. It's selfish. It's evil. It's sinful. It's also called, in more derogatory terms, "screwing yourself". And we do it everyday, with our money and our time and our resources that we spend on ourselves and not others. We do it over and over, and it feels great. You become so involved with it that basic everyday life stuff goes un-maintained. And then when an everyday something that you took for granted crashes to the bottom of a river, you start to think "I've really screwed myself now."
To myself, and to anyone and everyone who's reading this: we are severely near-sighted. Please start seeing other people and realizing how each of us is dependent upon the other for life itself, because it's time to wake up and realize:
We have really screwed ourselves now. The finger points at you and me.
It's been 17 days since The Bridge, and the fingerpointing has begun.
This talking head said this. And this person in charge did that. Well, this other guy whose job it was didn't do it well enough. This whole system lacks the income it needs to sufficiently run itself. Well, those elected officials signed a no-new-taxes pledge, so they didn't raise the gas tax 5c, so they took millions out of the road-and-bridge fund, so it's THEIR fault, those small-government, penny-pinching, near-sighted buttholes.
WHO PUT THESE PEOPLE IN POWER OVER US, ANYWAY?!
Oh, wait. That was us.
Remember when that dapper dude with the perfect teeth got up and invoked the name of Jesus and lowering taxes in the same breath? Dang, did he sound good! The Lord doesn't want money in the pockets of no money-grubbin' government. The Lord wants money in OUR pockets, for we're Americans, and the Lord has BLESSED us with a good income with which we're to be good stewards. He's got my vote.
Or, remember when that other person told us that as Americans, we're to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and make it happen ourselves? We don't need a big bureaucracy to tell us what to do or help us live our lives- God meant for us to be a FREE people, FREE to make our own life decisions and FREE of Big Brother looking over our shoulder. That's just like what daddy used to tell me. They've got my vote.
Well, folks. It's not that all these power figures and decision-makers that we've voted into office are bad people, have bad ideas or are even bad policymakers. Maybe they didn't think things through entirely, but then again, neither do we. Why should we expect anything more out of our government than we expect out of ourselves? It's not their fault. It's ours. They're all great at one thing:
SPEAKING OUR LANGUAGE.
We hate taxes. We hate spending money that's not on a movie or a latte. We hate spending money that's not on ourselves. In fact, we love ourselves. And we loathe anything that gets between us and our ability to love ourselves more. And the only thing we loathe more than that is a person with a face telling us or making us do something that gets between us and our ability to love ourselves more. So we latch on to the people with faces who make us feel good about ourselves, who tell us we can keep our money and keep spending it on our lattes and our Cosmopolitan magazines and our new baseball stadiums. Oops, scratch that last one. We didn't have a say in that one, but the feel-good faces said it was okay to tax us for that.
Well, those 100-plus people on the Interstate 35W bridge had a face. The kind of face you see everyday. So does everyone else who drove that highway that day. I drove that highway that day. I have a face. I also have a name. It's Ian, nice to meet you. They had names, too. They had lives. I know, because I saw them with my own eyes. I watched as the ones who were lucky enough to make it off that bridge, and well enough to be out of their hospital beds, limped down the aisle at a memorial service with Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, all of whom were praying for and remembering those who were not lucky enough or well enough to be with us.
But we forget that they're there. In fact, I'll be so bold as to say we don't care that they're there.
If you're going to point fingers, point them at me. I'm lazy, and I don't care about other people. I especially hate spending money on people other than myself, especially if it involves giving money to a gas pump. But after you're done pointing it at me, do yourself a favor- be honest and turn that finger around, point it at yourself. You'd complain about an extra 5c on a gallon of gas, too. Maybe not you specifically, but if I had 5c for every person who I've heard complain about the cost of loving themselves with a cup of coffee I'm serving them, I'd probably have enough money to chip in a few bucks to keep a bridge in decent running shape and keep myself, or you, or maybe even that whiny witch from finding themselves at the bottom of the Mississippi.
"Well, I would NEVER wish for someone to end up at the bottom of the Mississippi!"
Yes you do. You wish it every single day. I know I do. For my complete willingness to love myself and not give you a second thought, I wish for you to end up on the bottom of the Mississippi.
There's a quite simple term for this type of behavior. It's called masturbation. Us Christians are taught that it's bad for us, that it takes the focus off of others and puts it squarely on ourselves, for our own sake, to love ourselves. It's selfish. It's evil. It's sinful. It's also called, in more derogatory terms, "screwing yourself". And we do it everyday, with our money and our time and our resources that we spend on ourselves and not others. We do it over and over, and it feels great. You become so involved with it that basic everyday life stuff goes un-maintained. And then when an everyday something that you took for granted crashes to the bottom of a river, you start to think "I've really screwed myself now."
To myself, and to anyone and everyone who's reading this: we are severely near-sighted. Please start seeing other people and realizing how each of us is dependent upon the other for life itself, because it's time to wake up and realize:
We have really screwed ourselves now. The finger points at you and me.
8.01.2007
Minnehaha Recreation
It's summer in Minnesota. It's nasty hot outside, we haven't hardly seen a drop of rain (at least on this side of town) in who knows how long, and we all know how I feel about hot and sunny weather.
Recently my Fossil watch died, so I had to bring it in to a Fossil Store to get the battery replaced. The only Fossil Store we have around here is at the Mall of America. Malls are my least favorite places to be, and so I think I can safely draw the conclusion that the Mall of America is my least favorite place to be in America. To me, they represent everything that's wrong with our system, and the MOA is a stadium-sized altar on which we sacrifice our time, money and sanity to the material gods of our culture. And the most frustrating part is that I am still maddeningly and willingly dependent upon this system. So needless to say a mall on a hot summer day, while the A/C is nice, is not my favorite place to be.
Fortunately, the Twin Cities is a place of balance.
For those of you who don't know Minneapolis, there's about a dozen or so lakes with parkways around them, as well as a six mile stretch through the heart of the city called Minnehaha Parkway, a road that parallels the winding Minnehaha Creek. There's bike trails, arching bridges and enough trees and birds to make you forget that you're in the midst of 3.1 million people and only a few miles from the largest megamall in the U.S. I made my way across Lake Nokomis and turned west onto the parkway, put down the windows, opened the sunroof, and immediately noticed that there was easily a 15 degree temperature difference between the streets and the parkway. The speed limit is 25, and it's single-lane, one-way. Under normal circumstances, this is a driving nightmare for me, because I can't stand 25mph speed limits and want to blow past anyone who actually uses them. But driving on Minnehaha Parkway is the antithesis to my, and probably most of America's, way of life. Soaking in the rural in the midst of the urban, creation in the midst of destruction, the natural and the real in the midst of our synthetically satisfying lives, is a little bit closer to how we were meant to live, and it's a good place to be.
But it shouldn't just be confined to one little narrow strip of green space in a field concrete and pollution. That place where we go should not be separate from the lives we lead. Ask yourself what's real; the daily going to work and the shopping and the gas pumps and the "reality" TV? Or is it the making people smile or the time spent in your garden or at the park or having a beer with friends or simply sitting alone with a cup of coffee staring out the window that makes you feel more alive, more attuned to who you really might be beyond your job title and net worth?
I believe this is the definition of "recreation", to do as the word says, to "re-create", or re-realize what's real and how you were meant to be. We live in an immensely complex world of money, politics, anger, me-first and gimme-gimme, and if we were all constantly engaging in recreation, the world might be in a bit better shape.
Recently my Fossil watch died, so I had to bring it in to a Fossil Store to get the battery replaced. The only Fossil Store we have around here is at the Mall of America. Malls are my least favorite places to be, and so I think I can safely draw the conclusion that the Mall of America is my least favorite place to be in America. To me, they represent everything that's wrong with our system, and the MOA is a stadium-sized altar on which we sacrifice our time, money and sanity to the material gods of our culture. And the most frustrating part is that I am still maddeningly and willingly dependent upon this system. So needless to say a mall on a hot summer day, while the A/C is nice, is not my favorite place to be.
Fortunately, the Twin Cities is a place of balance.
For those of you who don't know Minneapolis, there's about a dozen or so lakes with parkways around them, as well as a six mile stretch through the heart of the city called Minnehaha Parkway, a road that parallels the winding Minnehaha Creek. There's bike trails, arching bridges and enough trees and birds to make you forget that you're in the midst of 3.1 million people and only a few miles from the largest megamall in the U.S. I made my way across Lake Nokomis and turned west onto the parkway, put down the windows, opened the sunroof, and immediately noticed that there was easily a 15 degree temperature difference between the streets and the parkway. The speed limit is 25, and it's single-lane, one-way. Under normal circumstances, this is a driving nightmare for me, because I can't stand 25mph speed limits and want to blow past anyone who actually uses them. But driving on Minnehaha Parkway is the antithesis to my, and probably most of America's, way of life. Soaking in the rural in the midst of the urban, creation in the midst of destruction, the natural and the real in the midst of our synthetically satisfying lives, is a little bit closer to how we were meant to live, and it's a good place to be.
But it shouldn't just be confined to one little narrow strip of green space in a field concrete and pollution. That place where we go should not be separate from the lives we lead. Ask yourself what's real; the daily going to work and the shopping and the gas pumps and the "reality" TV? Or is it the making people smile or the time spent in your garden or at the park or having a beer with friends or simply sitting alone with a cup of coffee staring out the window that makes you feel more alive, more attuned to who you really might be beyond your job title and net worth?
I believe this is the definition of "recreation", to do as the word says, to "re-create", or re-realize what's real and how you were meant to be. We live in an immensely complex world of money, politics, anger, me-first and gimme-gimme, and if we were all constantly engaging in recreation, the world might be in a bit better shape.
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