Words from God? (Part 2 of five)

In the first post I mentioned that I'm trying to create space for a discussion about what I referred to as the "negative shadow" that our beliefs cast "behind" us, on those who don't share our beliefs.  Theological discussion that is capable of fostering reconciliation must be self aware enough and interested enough in engaging with the other to think long and hard about how what we believe un-avoidably shapes the way in which we un-intentionally treat those who don't share our beliefs.  I promised that there would be 4 more posts.  I also promised that we'd discuss what happens when we refer to written (Scripture) and spoken words as coming from God, or being inspired by God.  And i rather darkly hinted that in the first three I'd address areas in which the negative shadow of our beliefs concerning inspiration can affect those who don't share those beliefs.  The last post will act as summary, but also as the beginnings of a description of ways in which we can cast less of a shadow. 



So, if you are still with me after that first paragraph, permit me, if you will, to gently layout how the next three posts will be organized.  We have before us at least three things we also end up saying when we say that words come from God.  We also have two forms of words: written and spoken.  So please expect each of the next three posts (this one included) to address one of the things we also end up saying.  Also please expect to view it from both the written and the spoken angles. 

Lastly, please carry with you at all times a deep respect for the humans that are involved in our theological belief -- both those that agree with you and the one's that don't.  If you can, please bear in your heart the reality that each of carry a burden.  We are (all of us, with no exception) full of our memories, hopes, fears, and dreams.  We all manage in different ways.  The ways in which we respond to belief is often indicative of how we remember our past and how we hope for our future, of how we fear what we don't know or can't risk losing, and of how we dream about both our past, our present, and our future.  As you read, you will both agree and disagree, and that is ok.  After all, our task is reconciliation -- a dreadful task indeed -- so I beg each of my dear readers to listen and speak in equal proportion, even as we all hold truth together with love. 



What else do we say when we say that words are from God?  When we "inspire" words, and declare them to be divine, what else comes along with that?  Well, for starters I expect at least some of you feel I got off here on quite the wrong foot.  After all, you may (and probably should) ask, "how dare you say that humans are the ones that declare words to be from God?  Don't you know that God is speaking?"   In short, you are asking, "how dare you, a mere human, say that words in scripture or spoken in worship aren't from God?" 



I am glad to have the chance to respond, if you'll let me.  Quite simply, I'm not.  I'm not saying that words aren't from God.  I'm not saying that God doesn't speak in human words.  What I am saying is that for every word that we have reason to think is from God (say, Scripture, or words spoken in prayer, or the like) there are quite literally hundreds of other words about those words. 

These other words go back and forth and consider whether and how and wherefore, and if and how it comes to pass and whether or not, about the words that are considered to be from God.  And so we humans talk and proclaim and declare and ponder amongst ourselves in endless dialogue about these words we say came from God. 

What I'm asking then, is when we say, "this word came from God" what else have we said, and how does that affect people? 

I think that the first thing we also say whenever we come to a consensus about the words as being from God is quite simple and very much in front of our face.  We say that it came directly from God, even when humans were actually involved.  How does saying this affect people?  What can we do about it?  Keep reading! 



Lets look first at spoken words in prayer or worship that we all agree come from God.  These words are closer to us in time and space, and so are less threatening than looking at Scripture (but don't worry, we'll get there next).  



I know for me at least, in the part of the Christian world in which I grew up, hearing the voice of God in prayer and then speaking that voice was an experience that was valued and desired.  Indeed, true worship was defined in some sense as stemming from this experience. 

We wrapped lots of classical language around it.  For example, one was said to have a relationship God, in which conversation would normatively take place.  If God didn't speak back, then we were urged to continue believing, to continue to have faith, and to continue knowing that God would respond in his own time.  Much of this language is central to the great mystical tradition of the church. 

I suspect that I am not alone in having these experiences.  In fact, I suspect that many of you who read this blog grew up in similar corners -- as was I, you were taught that our faith is not a religion, but a relationship.  For many of us, the roots of this relationship lay in speaking to God and desiring to hear his voice, and the branches of the relationship lay in speaking that voice when you heard it. 

Do you remember meeting together for prayer?  We'd all kneel or sit or lay or whatever, and, each of us, speaks silently or aloud to God.  At times we would share our burdens with each other.  We would express these burdens to God, seeking healing and relief and the desire to be whole again.  Do you remember the fervent and devout pitch of emotion in the room?  Do you remember the moments of silent listening?  I do.  I remember.



Do you remember singing the songs of praise/worship before the sermon on Sunday morning?   Do you remember the particular emphasis (not on the quality of the musicians, but on the quality of the listening to God and the pouring out to God of our burdens)?  Do you remember, as each phrase is repeated and each clause  sung again, using the repetition in our hearts even as we cried silently to God?  Do you remember nervously raising your hand when you felt something (or not!)?  Do you remember, after a particularly long silence once the singing was done, the voices that would speak with the voice of God over the assembly?  Do you remember their intricate use of Old Testament imagery "come my people and seek me" (or again, "hear what the Word of the Lord says,") and their dual emphasis on love and terrible judgment?  I do.  I remember. 



In these moments, we collectively (as a group) said that God had spoken.  We said that God had spoken even though we heard Bill or Sue do the actual speaking.  Of course, it was best practice to try to offset for human error.  So we'd say something like, "When I was praying, I go this image, or that word, and I'd like to share it with you to see if it resonates at all with you."  That way if it resonated it was from God, and if it didn't, it was just human error.  The hope was that the person receiving the word could measure out and discern what was God and what wasn't God. 



While I respect this attempt, it finally fails in the end, and here's why.  It is roughly similar to a senior manager saying to a new hire, "I have a word that may or may not be from my boss for you.  I'm going to tell it to you and see if it resonates."  Do you see the problem?  The person on the listening end either takes it as a missive from God or they don't.  But even if they don't, always and for years, in the back of their mind there is this voice, "what if this word was from the boss?  What if I'm not listening to God?"

The possibility that God, the creator of the universe, may actually be speaking is much, much to large to ignore or smooth over with a caveat that this may be human error. 



And so at least one of the "negative shadow" effects of speaking to others words we hear from God is the creation of an increasing cacophony of words and images spoken to us by well meaning spiritual people.  We carry with us these voices, wondering in our still moments if we are ignoring God.  Or we carry these voices with us and act on them, believing ourselves to be following the expressed will of God.  And our actions off of these voices are different.

Have you seen people act badly to other people as a result of a "word" they received?  

By claiming that words are only from God even though they came through the emotion, intellect, and spirit of another human -- can you see the double blind involved here?  Can you hear the cacophony of voices given to you by others in your own life?  Do all of these voices help you with your burden?  Do some harm?  Probably both are true for each of us.  Was there ever a "word" or a "image" that was received by you as being from God and later it turned out to be harmful?  



There is a second "negative shadow" here as well; a second cacophony of voices.  Can you hear the people that don't hear from God?  They pray, they worship, they seek, they want to hear from God but they don't and they never have?  Do you hear as well their self-doubt?  Can you hear their own internal voice filled with doubts?  Can you imagine what it is to have one's Christian life be all about hearing the one thing (the voice of God) that you never personally and directly hear?  Can you feel their internal tension and turmoil?  Can you sense their eagerness when someone says, "I have a word that may or may not be from God for you?"  Are you aware of the immeasurable personal hope you invoke in their spirit -- how they want you to be right, to have actually spoken from God?  Do you know that you hold their soul in your hand?  



I want you to ask if the risk is worth the pay off.  My question is simple.  I also want us to critically evaluate our Christian culture that seeks always to proclaim words from God as the branches that prove the roots of a relationship (not a religion) with God.  

Please sit with the fact that while your personal relationship with God may be very life giving for you, and while you may think you are healing others by speaking words that may be from God to them, you add to several cacophonies of voices that we all carry with us for years.  Ponder if you dare the cost you may make someone else pay, because you buy into the narrative you have been told about your faith that requires you to speak when you feel that God is speaking to you. 



We do the same thing though with Scripture.  We say that the words are directly from God.  Even though we know that real humans wrote these words in a different language, culture, and time.  We know that these words were translated and copied by hand in learned communities for thousands and thousands of years.  We know that the grammar in them is sometimes wrong, we know that the details don't always cross check with each other, we know that different books have different styles, we know that different books come from very different cultural settings.  Yet we say that these words are "holy words, words preserved, words come down from God."  

What else are we saying when we say this?  How do these other things we say affect real humans?  What can we do about it?  Keep reading! 



At least one "negative shadow" is this: we teach our parishioners to pre-judge how other people approach scripture by whether they think it is inspired.  The assumption that we have been taught is that those who believe Scripture is inspired (or infallible) respect Scripture and God, and those who don't, don't.  Of course, if I believe that Scripture is inspired, and you don't, we may get along, but sooner or later you will figure out that I think your salvation is at stake.  Sooner or later a chasm of sorts will open up between us, you may very well perceive my love as judgment.  



This pre-judgment we have been taught to impose on people is filled with tragedy.  Can you imagine the grief on both sides?  Can you hear both voices?  One crying out to God that God would change the other so that they can appreciate and learn from the Word?  Can you hear their fear and sorrow -- fear that their loved one does not, in fact hear or read the words of God because they are closed off -- and sorrow that they cannot share in the richness of Scripture?  Can you hear the other?  Can you listen to their experience of reading Scripture and seeing in it (if not the voice of God) then certainly the witness to the works of God in human history?  Can you (my reader) feel their sense of being affronted by the certain knowledge of their friend?  But most of all, can you feel the distance between these two?  Can you step into that chasm between them and appreciate that their communion (if it exists) and their community (if they dwell in the same one) is fractured?  



Perhaps another "negative shadow" is a certain loss of context.  If the words are indeed only from God (and did not involve the human agent) than the culture to which they are written is relatively meaningless because the words should be (so the argument goes) as timeless as their author, God.  And so all study that involves critically appraising the text as a historically situated document preserved over many millennia in different circumstances is frowned upon.  And when this is done conclusions are able to be drawn from texts that are utterly different than the context in which that text was first authored.  And people's real lives are changed and commanded and urged to be different in very real and lasting ways based off of insisting that Words from God don't include human involvement.  



This last "negative shadow" is deeply compounded when a person says something like the following, "I received from God a word (or an image) based off of this text for your life."  

Can you hear the cacophony of voices, the hope, the fear, the human and communal cost of this statement?   



I hope that my writing this has caused you to view this last statement in a similar way to how you view a photograph the first time you see its negative.  I hope you can see at least some of the other views and ways of looking at that statement that those who don't share your certainty that words are from God feel.  



Of course, there is a very deep irony here.  Regardless of what we believe concerning the words we say are from God (both written and spoken) I think we can agree that, collectively and separately, they urge us to deeply love without regard to social boundaries.  They teach us to find the alien in our midst, the widow, the orphan, the single mother, the outcast amongst us, and embrace them.  They teach us to seek out those without hope in this world -- those who are deemed by all as "lost" and give them a glass of water, visit them in prison, and feed the hungry.  



So this is what it comes down to -- when we insist on saying, "this (or these) words are from God" is that insistence worth it?  I don't want to answer that question right now.  I do want you to tune in for part 3 of 5, because I'll go into the second category of negative shadows that are associated with what happens when we declare words to be from God.  As always, feel free to comment!

Words from God? An attempt at Theological Reconciliation (Part 1 of 5)

This post is the first in a five part series.  The intent of the series is to engage in discussion about Words that we say are from God.  We will discuss both written words (Scripture) and spoken words (as expressed after the phrase, "I recieved a word from God").  This discussion, however, is going to be noticebly differant than most other discussions of this topic.  Let me explain.

As the name of the blog implies, theological discussion for the sake of articulation of beliefs is relatively useless.  I'm much more interested in discussing beliefs in such a way as to lead towards the reconciliation of social bodies that believe differently.  But, you may ask, "how does that happen?  Can theological discussion actually lead towards reconciliation?  And if so, what does it look like?"  Let me try to answer.

Almost everything we believe has associated with it what I want to refer to as a "negative shadow."  The negative shadow of our beliefs effects those who self describe as not believing whatever it is that we believe.  As an example, if I say, "I believe that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus lives inside of my heart", I have expressed, as I should, a belief.  If you say, "I believe that we can't say God lives in us" then we believe differently.  I'm not interested in whether your belief or mine is correct -- I'm interested in the human cost that results when you and I interact.

How do I treat you?  How do you feel treated by me?  Do you feel like a human, or a human with a condition (the condition of not having Jesus inside of you)?  Do you feel loved as an equal, or as an equal with the caveate that you need to change your belief?  If I believe that correct belief is in some sense salvific, then how do you feel treated by me?  Do you feel loved or judged?  Does my belief (even though it is well meaning) actually create a chasm between us?  In what ways do you feel judged by my belief?  These are the questions I'm interested in.  I'm interested in them because they give us the ability to talk about how we are loving each other in the context of what we believe -- and so we can hope to hold truth and love together in the same conversation.

Theological discussion that creates reconciliation involves listening. It also involves unburdening ourselves of moments and places in which we are in each other's negative shadow.  Negative shadow's are almost never intentional.  The irony is that my beliefs are formed in a large degree by how I've reacted to the negative shadow of your beliefs, and your beliefs are formed in a large degree by how you react to the negatve shadow of my beliefs.  My hope is that we can become increasingly more aware of the human and communal cost that we unknowingly force each other to pay by how and what we believe.

Hopefully at this stage in the discussion we can agree that theological discussion that creates reconciliation is possible.  Hopefully we can also begin to see a way forward in this discussion.  The topic at hand is, as I mentioned above, about Words we refer to as being from God (wether written or spoken).  So I'm not going to define different classical views -- there are hundreds of blogs and books that already accomplish that goal with more eloquence and scholarship and popularity than my little blog.  What I am going to do is introduce a very useful rhetorical device I like to refer to as "verbing" a noun.  I am also going to lay the groundwork for the followoing 4 parts in this series by beginning to articulate what some of the costs may be when we talk about Words from God.

I want to introduce the intentional use of “verbing” a noun for the purposes of this conversation.  Almost any noun can be used this way.  Just pick a noun and apply it as a verb in a sentence (often followed by the “-ing” ending.)  The result carries with it all of the connotations of the noun along with the active aspect of a verb.  When this is done, essentially what is being asked (of the noun) is, “what sort of actions surround this noun?  What types of activity to we implicitly associate with this noun?” For instance, take the noun “bagel”.  If I want to “verb” that noun, I can put it in a sentence like the following, “we are begal-ing the eggs.”  Since we associate with a bagel the role of having jam placed on it, or of being toasted, it is reasonable to assume that one possible context for our example sentence would be using the egg as a bagel instead of as an egg.

The reason I went into that explanation is because I want to talk about what happens when we take either written words or spoken words and apply to them the property of being “spoken by God.”  In the tradition that I grew up in (and I’m assuming in the tradition that many of you grew up in as well, the assumption is that these written or spoken words lose their human element entirely.  They become verbam dei, words of God.

I want to create space here in this blog for us to ask ourselves and each other questions about this process of “inspire-ing” either written or spoken words.  What sort of actions do we implicitly associate with Scripture?  What sort of actions do we implicitly assume have taken place when someone receives a “word” that has come from God?  Once we have done this, we can (and must) also ask what the both the human cost and the communal cost are when we “inscripture-ate” or “inspire” or otherwise attribute to God either written or spoken words.

There are at least 3 ways in which I think we unintentionally create a negative shadow around words that we say are from God.  I'm going to address each of them in a seperate post.  I'll finish this series by suggesting a possible view that consciously attempts to decrease the negative shadow while still holding that inspiration is, in some sense, real.  Please rest assured.  I am not in any sense arguing against inspiration.

In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with these questions: in what ways do your beliefs cast a negative shadow on other people?  In what ways are your beliefs formed by the negative shadow of the beliefs of other people who have placed (perhaps perfectly unintentional) expectations upon you by their own beliefs?  As always, feel free to comment.

Interpretation and Orthodoxy

The story we tell ourselves about what the Bible is supposed to be and how it is supposed to be used in our lives is at least as important to the Christian life as what the words within Scripture actually say.  The irony, of course, is that we are very often blind to the former and obsess about the latter.  I've been trying for some time now to figure out a way to reflect on this, and I hope the following post is helpful.  As a side note, it has also been too long since I've posted on my blog.  I hope that more posts will follow soon.

We tell the people in our parishes to ask simple questions like, "do you believe the Scripture is the completely inspired word of God?" and, "Do you take the Bible literally?" or again, "do you believe that Scripture contains errors?"

If the answers are anything other than yes (even a qualified yes) then we have tought our parishioners to treat the person they are questioning with suspicion.  I'm sure that each of us have experienced such a conversation.  I suspect that each of us have been on both sides of this conversation as well at some point in our lives.  I have two goals in writing this post.

1.) I want to call into question the efficacy of teaching our parishioners to use rigid questions as tests of orthodoxy.   To my mind they are less than helpful.  If I can succeed in invoking a certain doubt in your mind here this post is a complete success.

2.) I want to argue that the way a person answers this question is not, in and of itself, a marker of orthodox thought -- nor, historically, has it been.  If I can create, in my reader, a safe space in which to explore this question, then this post will (to my mind anyway) be quite worthwhile.

What is at stake when we teach our parishioners that they can determind whether someone is orthodox by how they answer a list of questions?  If you have read this far, it is reasonable to assume that before we can actually address the question, you may (quite rightly) say to me, "the church has always used question and answer as a way to determine orthodoxy.  Indeed, the creeds themselves are in effect a short list of answers to questions which must be believed.  To not believe them is to not be Christian."

So before we say that Orthodoxy itself is at stake, let me underline something that is quite crucial here.  The story of the development of the creeds (orthodoxy) is at least as much a story of the interplay between world politics and religious belief as it is a story about the development of doctrine.  We fool ourselves if we actually think that any of the official formulations of the church (of any denomination) were made in a pure and holy vacuum, devoid of human corruption and power grabs.  Nicea, Chalcedon, Trent, Westminster, Dort, (to name only a few) all involved the winners gaining wealth and power and acceptance at the expense of the losers.  I'm not trying to say that what we believe is corrupted.  I am saying that just as many people died for what we don't believe as for what we do believe.  And the decisions (this is true that is wrong) created (in many instances) those deaths.  At every turn, it wasn't just the Saint's who gave their lives, but also the heretics -- those who were on the loosing end.  Indeed, precisely in the formulation of our faith, the church has been built on the blood of the winners (saints, martyrs) and on the blood of the losers (the heretics, the oppressed, the ostracized).

On a side note, Ortho-Doxy has more to do with correct or right worship than it does belief anyway -- and that is more a function of asking how the church has historically worshiped than what she has historically believed.  Orthodoxy has more to do with Eucharistic Worship (the formal and historic expression of Christian worship) then it does with what the church believes about the Eucharist.

Since none of our beliefs developed in a pure vacuum (or descended from God without anyone being excluded from the community of the faithful)  we cannot say that the beliefs we cherish are holy.  They are beliefs, God alone is holy.

If you are still reading, you may object again and say to me, "when God called Israel out of Egypt, it involved the Israelites believing on The Lord Their God, and it involved the exclusion (and in some cases celebrated and divinely commanded death of) their enemies.  The 'riders have been tossed into the sea' comes into mind."

In reply, it is worth noting that the Egyptian crime was more more than failure to believe in God.  They oppressed God's people.  They held Israel in slavery.  God reveals Himself as the One who releases the oppressed from exile and commands his people to treat the exiles within their midst with mercy.  And, when Israel is punished, it is for failure to love the exile, the widow, the oppressed, and the orphan within their midst.  Indeed, in these moments, God seems to say, "you have become worse than the heathens whom you drove out."  There is a ton of literature about this particular topic here, and I don't have the space to treat it adequately.  For our purposes we must observe that (similar to James, actually) right belief is demonstrated not by a confession of faith but by love without borders or social division.

To bring us back on point, what is at stake when we teach our parishioners that they can determine whether someone is orthodox by asking a series of questions?  Simply put, we separate belief from action.  We say (in essence) "let me determine what you profess to see whether you can be in our community.  If the wrong answers are given, then we may let you in, but we will expect you to change your beliefs.  And if you persist in your wrong beliefs, there really isn't room for you here at this time."  The irony is that by excluding someone who believes differently (whether that exclusion is spoken by us or just felt by them doesn't really matter) our actions simply do not match our own creedal and orthodox beliefs.

When this separation is made, either we actually love our neighbor (in which case their belief really doesn't give us cause for grief or worry) or we love our belief (in which case we defend that belief and use it to define heretics and saints).  If it is in fact our belief that we love, how do we also claim to love God?  What went wrong here?  Why do we teach our parishioners that correct belief is so crucial?  Is it our love of our neighbor or our love of our belief that separates the Christian Community from the world?  Just because we are willing to condemn someone for wrong belief, why do we think God will?

Now to bring us back to my second bullet.  The way a person answers the question, "do you believe Scripture is the inspired word of God" isn't a marker of orthodoxy as such -- nor, historically, has it been.

If the care at hand is Orthodoxy, we really are limited to the early Creedal Formulas -- and these formulas talk about the persons of the trinity and what those persons of the trinity accomplished in human history.  They don't actually talk about Scripture or how to approach Scripture.  For that matter, they also don't mention sin (but I digress).  I can affirm the creeds and believe that Scripture contains all kinds of contradictions, was written by human and divine agents, and developed over thousands and thousands of years.

To be sure, the way I answer the question certainly informs how i approach Scripture.  Indeed, if we answer the question differently than you do then  we probably approach Scripture differently.  But that difference of approach doesn't mean that I don't take the text seriously.  The difference of approach does not mean that I don't think Scripture is normative.  The difference of approach doesn't mean that I put Scripture "on the same plane as any other book."

Approach to Scripture isn't a zero sum game determined by one's view of whether it is inspired.  It isn't as if either one believes it is inspired (and therefore different than every other book) or one believes it isn't (and therefore the same as every other book).  To be sure, one could make such a reduction, but it is an absurd reduction -- indeed, to make such a reduction probably says more about the reasoning process of the reductor than the one who answers the question differently!

In summary, what have we discussed, and what do I hope you'll take away?  We used some common questions that we teach our parishioners to ask others about what they believe about Scripture as an excuse to talk about Orthodoxy itself.  We argued that correct belief is demonstrated by an active and embracing love of others that does not recognize social barriers or expectations but rather seeks to upset them.  We then pointed out the deep and inconsistent separation of action and belief -- a separation that we encourage precisely by teaching our parishioners to ask these types of questions.  We are, of course, darkly hinting that a Christianity which excludes others as a necessary result of her confession of faith is in fact a deeply mistaken and confused Christianity.

We then addressed the second point, namely that the way in which one approaches Scripture is itself relatively irrelevant when the question I'm asking is, "is a person orthodox or not?"  Indeed, one may have all sorts of ways of approaching Scripture, and be entirely orthodox in their love of their neighbor.

In conclusion, please don't think I'm arguing that orthodox belief isn't important.  It is important, maybe even tremendously important.  But the importance we give to orthodox belief isn't the thing that allows us to decide who to love, accept, and support and who to exclude and ignore.