What if humans
have relegated all discussion of
truth to religion?

What if truth (the way we ought to live) were a set of natural laws (just like gravity and thermodynamics and motion and stuff like that)? What if the only reason humans have trouble knowing what is true and what isn't is because we've decided that we aren't subject to these laws? What if humans have relegated all discussion of truth to religion because, as far as they are concerned, truth can only be found in the supernatural, not in the natural? What if all this time, humans have been dead wrong?

A Heretic's Question

Most people are willing to
give up almost anything in exchange
for safety (even their souls).

Someone I consider a pretty good thinker posted this response to people who don't understand why he's critical of his religion, what it is that causes him to question the status quo:

"People always look for one instance that they can blame for my bitterness.... I'm hurt when people do this because they assume my reasoning is not based on logic but that I [just] haven't devoted enough time to finding answers.

"I have confidence in what I write because I have spent time reading and thinking. Where is your confidence? Why do you fear people will read what I write and believe me?

"This is why I am bitter. LDS people don't question. They won't read (and believe) anything by anyone who isn't LDS. They're guilted into thinking they could never find happiness outside of the religion. But their religion creates the sins that it frees them from."

Here's my response:

A reticence to face honest questions is not a uniquely Mormon issue. Institutions create cultural safety barriers, and most people are willing to give up almost anything in exchange for safety (even their souls). For this reason, you will find stilted logic and stunted minds in any and every religious institution.

Look at the Puritans who fled religious persecution in England only to create an American state in which more people were persecuted more harshly for their beliefs (and questions) than had ever been the case in England. Look at Richard Wright's experience within Seventh Day Adventism (as described in Black Boy). Look at Angelina Grimke's experience with Quakerism (kicked out because she wouldn't quietly give up her abolitionist work). She made people uncomfortable, questioned the tenets of a do-nothing faith on which their safety was built. So they revoked her membership.

In fact, look at fundamentalism wherever it exists. Fundamentalist Christians are no different from fundamentalist Jews (Orthodox today, Pharisees in Jesus' day), and fundamentalist Jews are no different from fundamentalist Muslims. They're all legalists. To question their rules is to admit that you don't belong, and the only way fundamentalists can cope with your questions is to soothe themselves with the notion that you must be in the wrong. (Whether traitor or lunatic, it all amounts to the same thing.)

The second type, however, is the
person who sees where others are going and decides from conscience or
context to head in a completely different direction.

Only two kinds of people make it into the history books.

The first is a well-known type. It's the individual with a gift, the person who finds something worth doing and does it better than it's ever been done.

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first man to break the 4-minute barrier, running the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

With her discovery of radium near the turn of the century, Marie Curie set the stage for research in nuclear physics.

Takeru Kobayashi beat his own world record in July 2006, swallowing 53-3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating contest on New York's Coney Island.

The second type, however, is the person who sees where others are going and decides from conscience or context to head in a completely different direction.

John Woolman's work -- started among Christian slaveholders in the 1740s – ultimately resulted in the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, and the Civil Rights.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu – later known as Mother Teresa – petitioned the Vatican in 1950 for permission to start a mission that would serve "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

Harvard Professor Henri Nouwen left the academic life in 1986 in order to live with and minister to the mentally handicapped residents of L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. His books, which openly share of his struggle with depression as well as his amazement at God's limitless love, are often cited by both Catholic and Protestant clergy when listing those works that most affect their own ministry.

Of these two types, the first is often better known, celebrated in popular culture, showered with gifts, idolized for its ability. And there are hundreds of millions who want nothing more than to set such a record. A handful may even succeed.

In spite of its relative anonymity, however, it is the second type that makes a difference.

Unfortunately, the gate is small, and the way is narrow, and few are those that find it.

When Words Fail

We are imprisoned in a society held up by words that are not our own.

Often, while speaking of God, I will talk in one direction, stop, turn, and stop again, only to find that I’ve run out of words without completing my thought.

At the beginning, the issue seems clear enough. I’m moving along under a full head of steam, when I suddenly spot a break in the track up ahead. I jump to another line, engine shuddering, as I try to maintain speed. But just around the corner, there’s that same break. Except for now, it’s a chasm. So I stop, try another metaphor, pull out a different analogy, hoping that this time I’ll jump the divide. But there it is again, looming ever larger.

And I wonder at this gift of words that is also a curse. After all, language gives us freedom to relate, to connect and create. What is the Church? It’s just a word. But the collection of our shared understandings, of our hopes, of our fears, of our deepest needs has made this word into a physical place of refuge for some, a family for others.

This same language, however, also confines. We are imprisoned in a society held up by words that are not our own, and we are isolated from those we love by a failure to communicate what we really mean, what we truly need.

What then can I do when my experience of God — of the very source of love, truth and life — transcends language? What dare I try when words fail me?

Read more of my writings for Barclay Press.

Am I generous with my time and
adventurous with my resources, willing to
risk all in order to help another?

I’m sitting in the staff room at a Christian camp, looking at a map of the 10/40 window. That’s an evangelical term for the least Christianized parts of the world, and we’re often exhorted to go and preach the gospel to the 3 billion non-Christians who live there (or to send money in order to accomplish the same). But something about this push seems suspect to me.

Maybe it’s the fact that so many prayer mailings, books and conferences look as though they’ve been designed to open our wallets instead of our hearts. Maybe it’s the idea that God has given us the responsibility of taking Him anywhere. If that were the case, I’d gladly buy God a ticket and accompany Him at least as far as Europe. (I hear Italy is beautiful this time of year.) But that’s not how God works.

I don’t bring God to others. Neither do I bring others to God. I can’t. If God is omnipresent, then He’s already there — everywhere — and He’s already working in the lives of each person He’s created — everyone.

Where does that leave us Christians?

First, we don’t spread the word of God with money. We pass on his love through our lives. Am I generous with my time and adventurous with my resources, willing to risk all in order to help another?

Second, there are no mercenary Christians. If I’m not willing to go, I have no business paying someone else to do it for me.

Third, God’s Church has ministers, not members. If my life fails to make a difference in somebody’s life, then it follows that I’m not a Christ-follower.

Read more of my writings for Barclay Press.

Forgiveness and Greed

The blue-green grass swayed gently in the breeze at the cliff’s edge. It was about noon in the garden.

It was morning in the garden, and the Master had stopped at the garden’s edge where the blue-green grass grew right up to the place where the earth fell away. The Master looked down into the depths where a river of fire roared through the narrow gorge, and the Master spotted Ahab, blistered and burned, crowded with the others on a narrow shelf of rock above the flaming torrent.

It was true that Ahab deserved his fate. He had murdered some and stolen from others, but the Master remembered a single act of kindness. Ahab, lifting his foot to crush the head of a snake, had stopped, convinced that the snake was harmless. To kill it would be thoughtlessly cruel.

Remembering this, the Master felt compassion. There was a snake at his feet, casting off its skin. With his walking stick, the Master gently lifted the end of the dead skin and laid it over the edge. The snake wriggled and twisted, and its skin slowly descended into the abyss.

Ahab, crushed by the constant shifting of bodies on the rocky ledge, looked up away from the fiery river and saw the snake skin, slowly descending.

“If only it would stretch far enough,” he thought, “I might pull myself to safety.”

As the snake skin came closer, Ahab reached until he touched its tip. He grasped tightly the slippery scales, and in spite of his pain, Ahab climbed, hand over hand, higher and higher. At first, Ahab climbed quickly, but he soon grew tired, and the cliff’s edge seemed so far. As he looked back down to the river, however, Ahab was encouraged by how far he had come. But Ahab saw something else. There was a man beneath him, climbing the same snake skin. And beneath him, another man. And beneath him, another man.

Ahab let out an anguished cry. For how could the dead, slender skin possibly hold the weight of all those eager to escape the flames of the abyss? Ahab felt fear’s sharp sting, and then he was angry.

“Get off! Go back!” he shouted to the men below. “This is my skin!”

With that, the skin broke, and Ahab fell to the rocks and fire below. The Master looked on with sadness. Ahab’s greed had destroyed him (as well as the rest).

The blue-green grass swayed gently in the breeze at the cliff’s edge. It was about noon in the garden.

Read more of my writings for Barclay Press.

If God is the source of all truth, if
all truth is God’s truth, then the Christian character
must be marked by integrity.

Ihate losing, mainly because I’m so bad at it. I yell, cheat, make snide remarks, and when my situaton seems particularly dire, I sometimes find myself whiling away the time between turns, plotting violent revenge against whoever happens to be winning. Last night, that was my sister.

We were playing Risk, a board game in which players fight for world domination. My sister had publicly proclaimed, however, that her only aim was to destroy me, even if it meant letting my dad win the game. This, to my experienced judgment, seemed unsportsmanlike. But my thoughtful advice as to how she might improve her strategic position, coupled with a kick to the shins (subtly delivered under the table, of course), only succeeded in deepening her resolve.

So when Bethany finally lost, I rejoiced, even though I’d already been out of the game for an hour. In the midst of my quiet (and tasteful) celebration, however, I spotted a flaw in my position. During the game, I’d planned and plotted and sulked. I was consumed by my competitiveness, by my anger.

Please don’t misunderstand. For the duration of the match-up, I looked and sounded like any other normal adult. I smiled and laughed and held up my end of the witty repartee required when playing parlor games. But it was a farce. Underneath the happy face, I was anything but happy.

It makes me wonder. If I could successfully separate inner experience from outward expression during a game — a kind of social schizophrenia — then didn’t that make me a liar in real life?

If God is the source of all truth, if all truth is God’s truth, then the Christian character must be marked by integrity.

I realized (once again) that God isn’t done with me yet. In fact, it’s beginning to look as though this journey is going to take at least a lifetime.

Read more of my writings for Barclay Press.