Ayn Rand Killed My Father

Fascinating little testimonial on Salon entitled "How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood", which doubles as a startling treatise on the cruelty of the Law. Say what you will about the political commitments of objectivism (ironically, most libertarians I've met are actually coming from a place of faith rather than reason), the relational ramifications appear to be pretty horrific: what happens when confession and repentance are, um, divorced, and honesty crosses the border into self-satisfaction. Is this merely an inflated athropology in the clothing of a deflated one? Or, in this scheme, if God is an objectivist, does that make Jesus a subjectivist? Either way, count me out:

My parents split up when I was 4. My father, a lawyer, wrote the divorce papers himself and included one specific rule: My mother was forbidden to raise my brother and me religiously. She agreed, dissolving Sunday church and Bible study with one swift signature. Mom didn't mind; she was agnostic and knew we didn't need religion to be good people. But a disdain for faith wasn't the only reason he wrote God out of my childhood. There was simply no room in our household for both Jesus Christ and my father's one true love: Ayn Rand.

[Rand] is a Russian-born American novelist who championed her self-taught philosophy of objectivism through her many works of fiction. Conservatives are known to praise her for her support of laissez-faire economics and meritocracy. Liberals tend to criticize her for being too simplistic. I know her more intimately as the woman whose philosophy dictates my father's every decision.

What is objectivism? If you'd asked me that question as a child, I could have trotted to the foyer of my father's home and referenced a framed quote by Rand that hung there like a cross. It read: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." As a little kid I interpreted this to mean: Love yourself. Nowadays, Rand's bit is best summed up by the rapper Drake, who sang: "Imma do me."

I don't know exactly why [my father] sparked to Rand. He claimed the philosophy appealed to him because it's based solely on logic. It also conveniently quenched his lawyer's thirst to always be right. It's not uncommon for people to seek out belief systems, whether political or spiritual, that make them feel good about how they already live their lives. Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish.

Needless to say, Dad's newfound obsession with the individual didn't pan out so well with the woman he married. He was always controlling, but he became even more so. In the end, my mother moved out, but objectivism stayed.
---------------

One time, at dinner, I complained that my brother was hogging all the food. "He's being selfish!" I whined to my father.

"Being selfish is a good thing," he said. "To be selfless is to deny one's self. To be selfish is to embrace the self, and accept your wants and needs."

It was my dad's classic response -- a grandiose philosophical answer to a simple real-world problem. But who cared about logic? All I wanted was another serving of mashed potatoes.
------------------

From what I understood of his favorite capitalist champion, any form of altruism was evil. But how could that kind of blanket self-interest extend to his own children, the people he was legally and morally bound to take care of? What was I supposed to do, fend for myself?

The answer to my question came on an autumn weekend during my sophomore year in high school. I was hosting a Harry Potter-themed float party in our driveway, a normal ritual to prepare decorations for my high school quad the week of homecoming. As I was painting a cardboard owl, my father asked me to come inside the house. He and his new wife sat me down at the dinner table with grave faces.
"We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated," he said in his lawyer voice.

"What does that mean?" I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for most kids, declaring emancipation is an extreme measure -- something you do if your parents are crack addicts or deadbeats.

"You would need to become financially independent," he said. "You could work for me at my law firm and pay rent to live here." This was my moment of truth as an objectivist. If I believed in the glory of the individual, I would've signed the petition papers then and there. But as much as Rand's novels had taught me to believe in meritocracy, they had not prepared me to go it alone financially and emotionally. I began to cry and refused.

Hardcore objectivists often criticize liberals for basing decisions on emotion, rather than reason. My father saw our family politics no differently. In his mind, it was reasonable to ask that I emancipate myself and work for a living. To me, it felt like he was asking me to sacrifice my childhood so he didn't have to pay child support. To me, it felt like abandonment.

Keeping a Reckoning in The Idiot

From Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Prince Myshkin is retelling to the Ivanovna girls a memory of a friend who was imprisoned and suddenly had his death sentence reversed. A telling depiction of our most human response to grace given us. The Prince, though, seems to find hope that it is possible, though maybe not observably so.  Myshkin begins by retelling his friend's inner-monologue while imprisoned:

"...he said nothing was more oppressive for him at that moment than the constant thought: 'What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to me--what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then I'd turn each minute into a whole age, I'd lose nothing, I'd reckon up every minute separately, I'd let nothing be wasted!' He said that in the end this thought turned into such anger in him that he wished they would hurry up and shoot him."

..."You're very fragmentary," observed Alexandra. "...That is all very praiseworthy, but, forgive me, what ever happened to the friend who told you all those horrors...his punishment was changed, which means he was granted 'infinite life.' Well, what did he do with so much wealth afterwards? Did he live 'reckoning up' every minute?"

"Oh, no, he told me himself--I asked him about it--he didn't live that way at all and lost many, many minutes."

"Well, so there's experience for you, so it's impossible to live really 'keeping a reckoning.' There's always some reason why it's impossible."

"Yes, for some reason it's impossible," the prince repeated. "I thought so myself...But still it's somehow hard to believe..."

Counting Sheep with Andre Dubus

From "Out Like a Lamb," in Dubus' collection of essays, Broken Vessels (ht MS):

"They were enclosed by a wire fence in a large section of the meadow. They had a shed there too, where they slept. All we had to do about them was make sure they didn't get through the fence, which finally meant that when they got through, we had to catch them and put them back in the pasture. This was my first encounter with sheep. When I was a boy, sheep had certain meanings: in the Western movies, sheep herders interfered with the hero's cattle; or the villain's ideas about his grazing rights interfered with the hero's struggle to raise his sheep. And Christ had called us his flock, his sheep; there were pictures of him holding a lamb in his arms. His face was tender and loving, and I grew up with a sense of those feelings, of being a source of them: we were sweet and lovable sheep. But after a few weeks in that New Hampshire house, I saw Christ's analogy meant something entirely different. We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves."

Even More From Franny and Zooey: Jesus vs. St. Francis

I know I'm risking overkill, but F&Z has got to be one of the two or three most quotable books I've ever read:

"Your age has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. There are no big changes between ten and twenty - or ten and eighty, for that matter. You still can't love a Jesus as much as you'd like to who did and said a couple of things he was at least reported to have said or done - and you know it. You're constitutionally unable to love or understand any son of God who throws tables around. And you're constitutionally unable to love or understand any son of God who says a human being, any human being - even a Professor Tupper - is more valuable to God than any soft, helpless Easter chick."

Franny was now facing directly into the sound of Zooey's voice, sitting bolt upright, a wad of Kleenex clenched in one hand. Blooomberg was no longer in her lap. "I suppose you can, " she said, shrilling.

"It's beside the point whether I can or not. But, yes, as a matter of fact, I can. I don't feel like going into it, but at least I've never tried, consciously or otherwise, to turn Jesus into St. Francis of Assisi to make him more 'lovable' - which is exactly what ninety-eight per cent of the Christian world has always insisted on doing. Not that it's to my credit. I don't happen to be attracted to the St. Francis of Assisi type. But you are. And, in my opinion, that's one of the reasons why you're having this little nervous breakdown. And especially the reason why you're having it at home."
---------------

"Franny, I'm being serious. When you don't see Jesus for exactly what he was, you miss the whole point of the Jesus Prayer [i.e. "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner"]. If you don't understand Jesus, you can't understand his prayer - you don't get the prayer at all, you just get some kind of organized cant. Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important mission. This was no St. Francis, with enough time to knock out a few canticles, or to preach to the birds, or to do any of the other endearing things to close to Franny Glass's heart. I'm being serious now, God damn it. How can you miss seeing that? If God had wanted somebody with St Francis's consistently winning personality for the job in the New Testament, he'd've picked him, you can be sure. As it was, he picked the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental, the most unimitative master he could possibly have picked. And when you miss seeing that, I swear to you, you're missing the whole point of the Jesus Prayer.

Another One from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience

"Where God is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things." (517) 

Conference Preview: Gracious Apologetics: Building Bridges to the Human Heart Through Similar Interests

I personally was really hoping that the 4th Annual Mockingbird Conference would finally be all about end time prophecy, and my break out session was going to be entitled “Are You Rapture Ready?” Alas, that is not the case so instead I will be leading a session on apologetics. I am a firm believer in the apologetic task; however this session will not be a fact seminar where one is given a bunch of proofs for Jesus’ resurrection, and the validity of the New Testament (although believe me the facts and the evidence exist).

Instead this session on apologetics will operate from the foundation that no one can be convinced of the Christian faith, because when it comes to Christianity humans are always on the defensive. Therefore the apologist must be astute and in touch with the world around him, in order to break down those barriers through cultural connection, humor, and love. Essentially this session will discuss apologetics from a pastoral perspective and how one might build a bridge between their own cultural interests and the truths claims of Christianity in order to, like a bullet, break down barriers and effectively pierce the human heart.

This is going to be an amazing conference so register today!

Book Review: "Good News for Anxious Christians" by Phillip Cary

In the ever-shifting landscape of American Evangelicalism, it seems that many people are attempting to correct what they perceive to be failures in the system. Everyone thinks something is wrong and whatever it is, it needs to be fixed now.

Within this debate, Phillip Cary's book "Good News for Anxious Christians", provides an unique diagnostic of both ourselves and the state of modern evangelicalism. As a professor of philosophy at a leading evangelical university, Cary hears from his students how the "new Evangelical theology" has translated into the core beliefs and practices of our youth. What he finds are people who worry all the time about the inadequacy of their Christian life. His students are dogged by the never ending questions of: "Am I doing it right?" or, "What's wrong with me?". Cary suggests that this anxiety is propagated by the very beliefs modern evangelicalism. His students demonstrate the end result of all those sermons, bible studies, and mission trips. Cary seeks to both repudiate this harmful theology and articulate his own comforting alternative.

Consequently, Cary has organized his book around "ten practical things your don't have to do." This list includes such common clichés as: giving God control, finding God's will, hearing God speak, letting God work, or applying it to your life. The goal in each chapter is to release anxious Christians from that which harms and inhibits true faith and maturity while also promoting a life of true discipleship. If evangelicalism and its me-centered subjectivism has led to a paralyzing anxiety, then a steady diet of the sufficiency of Christ alone will lead to genuinely Christian faith, hope and love.

Cary writes cogently without either dense technical jargon or patronizing condescension. If I find fault with Cary's otherwise welcome book, it is that he has written a book for anxious Christians. Restricting the intended audience has sharpened the overall argument of the book, but it also has the shortcoming of addressing Evangelical Christian problems without reference to the underlying, more universal, issues. Consequently, one could quickly become lost without a familiarity with the current American Evangelical landscape.

Despite these mild criticisms, "Good News for Anxious Christians" covers many relevant themes and issues in a way that is very sympathetic to the theological vision here at Mockingbird. If you're an anxious Christian in need of relief, a burnt-out Evangelical leader who has run out of tricks, or more importantly, a former Evangelical (still practicing Christian or otherwise), then this book is written for you as a way to better understand the problems of modern Evangelicalism while offering a way to move forward. It is a needed restatement of the Christian gospel as the medicine to save us from ourselves and our misguided anxiety.

Pole Dancing... For Jesus

In the you-can't-make-this-up department:

PZ's Podcast: No Popery!

EPISODE 40

Religious partisanship is something I know about. It is something Charles Dickens knew about, too.

In his 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge, Dickens sought to understand religious strife from the inside out,

taking the "Lord Gordon Riots" of 1780 as his occasion for a cautionary tale.

The "Gordon Riots", also known as the "No Popery" riots, were a flash of mob violence, ostensibly ignited against legislation to relax the laws against the practice of Catholicism in England, which shocked Britain. George Gordon, a sincere but insecure Scottish nobleman, put legitimate fears about the Catholic religion, rooted in vivid historical memories of the reign of Bloody Mary, into a giant petition to turn back the repeal.

Lord George's delivery of this petition to the House of Commons triggered a wave of hysteria, soon fueled by alcohol, which resulted in massive arson and pillaging. Only after three days of dithering did the Army finally take charge, and restore order. Many of the instigators were hanged. Lord George was acquitted of treason, but soon converted to Orthodox Judaism, which is an interesting story in itself.

Dickens anchors his complex novel around the character of a good Protestant, 'Gabriel Varden', a middle-aged locksmith who goes some several extra miles in the cause of mercy and loyalty; and a bad Protestant, 'Martha Varden', Gabriel's wife, who exemplifies the pharisee and whose obtuse self-righteousness almost succeeds in destroying her life and the life of her family.  Fortunately, Mrs. Varden is saved -- by her husband !

There is also the title character, Barnaby Rudge, an autistic man of 25, whose insights -- and insight into the nature of God -- are to be listened to; and a vicious villain, Hugh, who himself experiences a conversion to grace in the catastrophe of the ending. Listen to Hugh at the end of the novel.

Barnaby Rudge, which I had delayed reading for years because I feared to read it, is an x-ray into the good of the Gospel, and the "devil in the details', i.e., the danger of putting secondary things in first place, and first things in second.  

Episode 40 of 'PZ's Podcast' exposits the shattering conversion of Martha Varden.

Listen here. Or subscribe to PZ's Podcast here.

P.S. For Mockingbird enthusiasts, George Gordon's sudden jump from Reformed Christianity to Orthodox Judaism will offer some delightful grist for the mill.

A Lenten Reflection on the Isenheim Altarpiece

Matthias Grunewald’s crucifixion, one of the panels of the Isenheim altarpiece, was commissioned for the church hospital of St. Anthony in Colmar France, which specialized in comforting those dying with skin diseases. Grunewald kept the background of this powerful piece of religious art intentionally dark to highlight the horrific scene: especially Christ’s smashed feet, his contorted arms, and twisted hands. The cross is bowed to demonstrate Jesus bearing the sins of the world. The most shocking part of the piece, however, is that Jesus also has a skin disease, and his loin cloth is the same as the wrappings worn by the hospital's patients. Completed in 1516, the altarpiece is a creation of such shocking intensity that many initially- and still today- find it offensive and are repulsed by it. Yet the graphic nature served masterfully to define and illustrate the Antonite brother’s powerful understanding of Christian ministry-a ministry defined by the theology of the cross. Apparently patients were brought before the piece in order to silently meditate on it as they died. Profoundly, the brothers were a quiet order, so there was no explanation given as the patient died. There was no awkward chatter and God was not piously left off the hook, “now remember, this is not God’s fault.” There was just silence.

[CONTINUE READING]

Catholic Action!

There are a lot of different Bibles out there. Go to your local bookstore, and you'll find Bibles for groups ("Make some non-Christian friends"), Bibles for teens ("Don't look at bad internet sites"), Bibles for the retired ("You can still have a vocation in your golden years"), Bibles for men ("Remember, don't look at bad internet sites"), Bibles for women ("Right now, men are looking at bad internet sites") and on and on. The text of these Bibles are almost always from the NIV, and therefore the same. It's the notes, the exercises, and the study guides that differentiate them.

This in mind, I went into my sacristy before church last week, and saw the book pictured to the left. I'm curious, what notes, exercises and study guides might we find inside? Got any ideas? Serious and funny ideas welcome...

Example: For group discussion: Who would win in a fight, The Pope or The Terminator? And go deeper: What characteristics does the T-1000's liquid metal constitution share with the Holy Spirit?

Voodoo Child: Classic Rock, Celebrity, and Idolatry

A fun NYT article about a link between celebrity and idolatry: In trying to discover why somebody would pay $959,500 for Eric Clapton's signature Fender Strat named Blackie, or thousands still for a "replica" of Blackie, a team of researchers at Yale have theorized that the same urges that drove our ancestors to magic and voodoo make us think that the celebrity artifacts are somehow "contagious" (though you might instead be thinking of "The Pearl of Great Price" if you love rock-n-roll!). The article is short and worth a quick read- especially for anybody who a) loves Clapton, b) loves a celebrity, or c) needs a primer on the subtle mechanics of idolatry.

The researchers asked people how much they would like to buy objects that had been owned by different celebrities, including popular ones like George Clooney and pariahs like Saddam Hussein. People’s affection for the celebrity did not predict how much value they assigned to the memorabilia — apparently they were not buying it primarily for the pleasant associations. Nor were they chiefly motivated by the prospect of a profit, as the researchers discovered when they tested people’s eagerness to acquire a celebrity possession that could not be resold... The most important factor seemed to be the degree of “celebrity contagion.” The Yale team found that a sweater owned by a popular celebrity became more valuable to people if they learned it had actually been worn by their idol. But if the sweater had subsequently been cleaned and sterilized, it seemed less valuable to the fans, apparently because the celebrity’s essence had somehow been removed.

"That is a belief in what is also called imitative magic: things that resemble each other have similar powers. Cultural practices such as burning voodoo dolls to harm one’s enemies are consistent with a belief in the law of similarity,” Dr. Newman said. “An identical Clapton guitar replica with all of the dents and scratches may serve as such a close proxy to Clapton’s original guitar that it is in some way confused for the real thing. Of course, the replica is worth far less than the actual guitar that he played, but it still appears to be getting a significant amount of value for its similarity..."

[CONTINUE READING]

Oprah, Lent and the Real American Idol

I ran across an fascinating interview on Salon.com with Kathryn Lofton--Assistant professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale-- who is the author of Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon. The interview is entitled "Worshiping at the church of Oprah Winfrey."

The interview begins,  "In the past quarter-century Oprah has become shorthand for self-help: a spiritual guide, a confessor and a warm shoulder for her adoring American public. Now in the final season of her revolutionary daytime talk show, Oprah's pronouncements have become the Word to live by for a staggeringly diverse audience. In fact, you could argue she is a religious leader for an America increasingly skeptical about organized religion." Indeed. This is exactly the premise of Professor Lofton's book. Here are some excerpts from the interview: 

What was it about Oprah that made you think of her in the context of American religious history?

Within these very corporate formats of daytime television, extraordinary forms of suffering were being confessed to and described. There's a great book about Oprah by Eva Illouz, "Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery," and Illouz points out something that I dig into, and that is the strange way in which the extremity of human despair -- not merely estranged spouses, we're talking stories of people coming home and seeing that their spouse has murdered all their kids and then themselves -- are being dealt with in the same way as these topics that are seemingly shallow. Good glasses for a spring party, best new strategies for boyfriend wear. This exposure of human need at 4 p.m. on a weekday afternoon made me think, "What is this thing?" We're so accustomed now to reality programming and a whole spate of shows spun off from Oprah, but, as a scholar of a religion, I think it's one of our jobs to be cued into how people manage pain, and the idea of evil, or whether or not we live in a just world.

What is Oprah's religious background?

Oprah talks about a Baptist church that her grandmother took her to in Mississippi. She tells an anecdote about how she was a successful young churchgoer and was asked to preach in front of that audience and was a very good girl who memorized scriptural passages. Then in her adulthood, she has some criticism of male figures in the church and the dominance of male authorities and it seems that by the time we get to the '90s, it's circulating that she's no longer a member of the church but she continues to use Christian idioms in her conversational speech. She says, "Jesus lives." She'll say, "Amen." She'll occasionally sing lines from obviously Protestant hymns, but she claims now that she's no longer interested in organizational religion, and she's more interested in a personal relationship with God. Indeed, she has around her a large collection of spiritual purveyors of a wide variety: Buddhist, Hindu, Unity Church. Every flavor of the contemporary, spiritual rainbow is welcomed into her studio.

If Oprah is a preacher, what is she telling us? What is her gospel?

Her gospel -- her good news -- is you. The good news is that if you take hold of your life; if you discover (as she says) your best life, anything is possible. Of course, this good news is translated not only through her exhibition of you -- you through her audience members, guests, columnists, message board commentators -- but also through the unending rehearsal of her. The good news is her revelations about her best life -- lived, she says, in service to you.

Why do you think so many people who shun religion are comfortable looking to Oprah for "spiritual guidance"?

Precisely because she says she doesn't seem typical in her authority. Because she represents -- in her race and gender and origins -- being utterly outside established power. Also, she isn't preaching to sell you something singular. She says, over and over: I am here to let you be you. My answers are mine, and they made my struggling life something fantastic to share. You're not joining a group, you're just finding your inner fabulous. This is appealing to people who associate religion with controlling authority, rigid dogma or social adherence. This is a religion for those who don't want to be religious, but want to feel revelation.

Given the ubiquity of suffering and despair, far be it from me to begrudge Oprah's audience from flocking to a place where they find a bit of tenderness and compassion, but, as Professor Lofton observes,  the deeply religious overtones of Oprah's "gospel," begs the question: what is the difference?  What is the difference between what Oprah offers through her“. . .  large collection of spiritual purveyors of a wide variety: Buddhist, Hindu, Unity Church.[where]  Every flavor of the contemporary, spiritual rainbow is welcomed into her studio.” and the Christian Gospel? 

Historically, this demographic to whom Oprah ministers--those who are seeking "[a] religion for those who don't want to be religious, but want to feel revelation"---is similar (if not identical) to the majority of the world into which the first Christian preacher came saying things like, “I am the way, the truth and the life. . . , " and "whoever would save his life will lose it. . . "

He and his followers definitely did not get IPads, but some eventually did make it to Australia. 

The Joy of Lent

A sweet meditation from Psalm 32 on the huge release that comes from admitting what we are -- and why Ash Wednesday is the happiest of days.

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up* as by the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’,
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Therefore let all who are faithful
offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
shall not reach them.
You are a hiding-place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

Another Week Ends: Galli on B(h)ell, Growing Up Catholic, Secret Millionaires, Immortal Billionaires, Lillian Roth, Mixed Signals and Nicolas Cage

1. If you've been scratching your head over the whole "Rob Bell universalism" uproar this past week, conference speaker Mark Galli will set you straight with this charitable overview of how the topic of Hell has been dealt with over the centuries. Suffice it to say, there's nothing new under the sun, and the outcry says a lot less about Bell than about the folks reacting to his as-of-yet largely unread book. 

To lighten the mood, check the sort-of related and apparently very real After The Rapture Pet Care (ht CH).

2. The Guardian takes a look at the new laugh-or-cry memoir by comic Rory McGrath, The Father, The Son and the Ghostly Hole: Growing Up Catholic. Evidently it plumbs the depths of Catholic guilt - stemming in this case from an experience of religion as Judgment with a capital J (and zero Gospel) - in a particularly unflinching and let's-face-it tragic manner. Not exactly groundbreaking, but nonetheless striking, ht AOC:

"[After being disillusioned in high school, McGrath] never returned to the church, and he never quite shook it off. He was expecting to embark on a binge of guilt-free hedonism at university, but it didn't quite work out like that. He felt rootless rather than liberated. "You think, 'What do I do now, where am I supposed to go, what am I supposed to be doing?' It had an effect on my first years at university because I didn't know what to do. I don't know if this is to do with religion or just my character, but I had a total lack of self-discipline."

Nor did the sense of guilt disappear with his divorce from the church. In fact it grew, and he started to feel responsible for anything and everything. "I think guilt grows inside you. I'm still discovering it now, aged well whatever age I am. I'm over 40 and now discovering it's all guilt."

3. In an editorial that touches on some familiar themes, CNN accuses ABC's reality show Secret Millionaire of "shamelessly promoting a fantasy about the redemptive power of wealth." I haven't seen it but would love to hear others' thoughts:
[CONTINUE READING]

God Is My Co-Pilot

Possibly Insane Thoughts on Ash Wednesday (Written on the Occasion of a Sleepless Night)

A close friend of Mockingbird contributes the following reflection on the meaning of the day, and I'm sure you'll agree that it is a welcome and considerably more profound alternative to the (admittedly irresistible) irreverence with which we've treated (the "public displays of piety" which characterize) Lent in past years. A touching and personal defense of the season, and today in particular, from an exceptionally sympathetic a point of view: 

For those of us who came of age in certain fundamentalist or evangelical Protestant churches, life was a strangely disembodied affair. It is true that various sins of the flesh were railed against, but it never was in name of a truer way of actually inhabiting the world, of living joyfully within it. Instead, our bodies and the physical spaces of our existence were essentially temporary confinements, nothing but occasions for temptation, impediments to the spiritual life. Our subjugation to matter would be remedied through rapture or cataclysm – eschatology took the shape not of patient hope for the redemption of creation, which even now we groan for, but release from the grip of physicality altogether. Worship, and the religious life more generally, went ahead in spite of our bodies, with the hope of eventually transcending them altogether.

My fascination and love for Ash Wednesday only can be understood in relation to such a past, for lurking within this day’s penitential posture is a celebration of our mortal existence. It is a liturgical episode that takes our physical existence seriously. It is, perhaps surprisingly, an extraordinarily hopeful day. The superficial gloom of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, points to the paradoxical, deep truth of the Christian faith: those who lose their life will gain it. It is a day to be released from the deadliness of doing, which is to say released to live in the world.

Of course it is possible, even common, under the misguided moralism that blights most of our churches, to turn the beginning of Lent into a peculiar form of asceticism: we mortify the flesh in the name of the spirit, and deprive our bodies for the sake of religious “growth.” For Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and other liturgical Christians, a season of fasting and restraint can transmogrify into a dualism that is different in form, but not really content, from my youthful fundamentalism. The spiritual life can be pitted against our embodiment in a variety of contexts, whether “high church” or “low church,” liturgical or not. The constant allure of escapism is always at hand to turn such practices into a fearful longing to abandon the task of living patiently, generously, lovingly in a world marked by pain and sorrow. Part of us always wants to flee our bodies, and the world they move through, and Lenten observations can find their way to this place with astonishing ease.

One response to this line of thought, which is not unpersuasive, is that Lent assumes a relationship between our physical and spiritual lives. It is in its own way a season for people with bodies. It takes our bodies seriously enough to allow for a connection between what we do, eat, and drink, and what spiritual valence is possible for us. We go through our bodies, not away from them, when we make certain sacrifices. In a very basic sense, this is true. We might be able to fix our attention more clearly, or focus our attention in prayer more steadfastly, under certain conditions. Taken for not more than what they are, these practices can be a part of basically sound spiritual life. But such an observation misses the more important existential, personal element to what Ash Wednesday signifies.

The search for sanctification never is that far removed from neurotic burden. There always is something half-comical, half-tragic about the banalities of what we “give up” for Lent.
[CONTINUE READING]

Tender Are The Ashes

Happy Ash Wednesday... from Honeybus:

Frank Lake on Confession, Depression and The Dangers of Religious Duty

From pages 350-351 of Clinical Theology, a Theological And Psychiatric Basis to Clinical Pastoral Care (Volume 1), ht JL: 

"There is all the difference in the world between the word 'must' as an ethical obligation which can be fulfilled by an external act of mere attendance, and as an ontological statement, affirming that this is the nature of things, or in this way the Eternal God has covenanted His gifts to man. If churchgoing becomes a duty to be performed in order to stand right with the parson and his religious picture of God (certainly determined by the depressive dynamics of the natural man) then the centre of gravity is displaced from the Gospel of God. It now lies between the unwilling man and the law which stands over him, with the religious pedagogue in the foreground, ostensibly speaking for God, who is supposed to be behind all this. Here is religion. It is not Christianity.

We go to confession in 'order to receive not to give', writes Luther. You go conscious of your misery and seeking help, 'in order to have once more a joyful heart and conscience'. Confession brings joy and healing. That is the clear intention of it in St. James's Epistle. These are exactly what the depressed person needs above all. But the whole gist of the matter in confounded if confession is made into a religious duty by anxious priests, eager to exercise their power with God and man. In New Testament terms it is not an extractive religious duty; it is a donative Christian resource. Luther says, and he has the dynamics of it perfectly straight, that 'it is better to abstain from confession than go to it unwillingly or in order to do a good work'.

Religion is basically effort and striving. Christianity is basically rest and abiding. That is why, in the crisis of depression, religion is a menace, whereas Christianity is a marvel of therapeutic resource." [italics his]

Ideas or the Human Heart?

From a BBC news flash yesterday:

Pope Benedict has rejected the idea of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ's death, in a new book to be published next week.

Tackling an issue that has led to centuries of persecution, the Pope argues there is no basis in scripture for the Jewish people to be blamed.

It’s a good thing for the Pope to say this, of course. But the BBC article (read it here) is misleading in that it repeatedly gives the casual reader the impression that this idea is the result of groundbreaking exegetical research. That’s of course always going to be the bias of a “news” organization (News Flash! Stunning pronouncement changes 2000 years of Christian teaching!). To say “Pope reaffirms again what many Christians from many communions have said for many centuries” -- that’s not quite as sexy of a headline.

More importantly, however, beneath the BBC article lies a worldview: which is that human nature is not in itself a huge mess of evil passions (“If you, being evil…”), but instead tries to explain human evil on bad “ideas.” Centuries of terrible anti-Semitism must be traceable, the BBC and most people think, to some bad idea early in Christian thought. If only we had had Pope Benedict around in the first few centuries, he could have given us the right “idea” and then we could have been saved all those years of pogroms, and Inquisitions, and death camps! A more accurate reading of human history, however, is the Christian aphorism from the late 1500s: What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies. People would have always have found some reason to commit terrible acts against a vulnerable people; anyone who remembers bullies in the schoolyard knows this intuitively. The BBC thinks that an idea comes first, the free human reason chooses it, and then one’s heart is based on the idea. Thomas Cranmer and others knew better.