Love one another

We cannot love one another without learning to suffer the sins of the world together.

When I 'suffer the sins of the world' I experience the degredation, the inequality, the unnecessary struggle to live the good life.  This experience causes me to turn in upon myself, and to deflect my pain by seeking pleasure in automated joy - games, netflix, tv - I dull myself into an interior and solitary stupor.  

When I try to love another human, when I learn to love another human, I find myself unexpectedly thrust out of my interior solitary stupor.  But learning to love is voluntary and also bi-directional.  It isn't fully true that I learn to love you - we learn to love each other - together.  

And so, in a very real sense, I experience your suffering of the sins of the world.  I get to learn what it means to be you, and experience degredation, inequality, and the unnecessary struggle to live the good life even as you experience them.  And so my self grows because my experience changes.

So we don't live, we live with.  I live with you, I love with you, I fear with you, I hope, with you. This essential 'with-ness' of life re-writes power.  In order to approach and be approachable, to live with and be live withable, I must give up the notion of control - control of outcome, process, and experience.  Living with is disposession.  

In many ways, the more people I enter into life with, the more people I decide to love with, the richer my suffering the sins of the world is.  And so as I live and love 'with' people more and more, so I suffer more and more the sins of the world.  

And yet my desire to turn in upon myself, to deflect my pain, to not experience your pain, to seek pleasure in automated joy, to dull myself into an interior and solitary stupor also increases.  I wonder if this is what the old language about the mortification of our natural selves and the pleasure of the body is referring to.

Perhaps it is helpful to consciously think about learning to suffer the sins of the world together.  To name our shared degredation, our shared inequality, and our shared unnecessary struggle to live the good life.  

The Gospel is not sin management

Christianity isn't about sin management.  Christianity isn't primarily concerned (not even when the religion takes place as Christian Community) with the corporate managment of sin.  The goal of meeting together and of being together is not so that we can all (and each of us individually) learn to progressively sin less.  We shouldn't imagine that the reason Christ came was to put us in a corporate setting in which we could all examine our individual and corporate sin with the intended goal of leaving that sin behind and therefore becoming holier.  We shouldn't imagine that to love someone as Christ loved them primarily focused around helping them get over their sin.  We shouldn't imagine that the thing that makes Christian love different from un-Christian love is this particular focus on becoming pure from sin.

 

Let me clarify: Christianity is only concerned with sin in a secondary way.  If and when that secondary way comes into play, it only does so after the needs of the human being about whom and by whom the sin is in question are met.  Christianity is concerned about love before holiness, about compassion before purity, and about bearing other's burdens before moral perfection.  To say otherwise is to pretend that man was made for the sabbath.

 

The above point is crucial and must be said over and over again.  I fear that we Christians have wronged our world, our children, and our selves by getting the order here mixed up.  I fear that we have given ourselves a reputation for being more concerned with identifying sin and becoming free from that identified sin than we are with the people we think are being freed.  In other words, we have placed a great deal of our emotional currency on freedom from what we say sin is.  So much so, that we are in grave danger of not knowing the people in our community groups and our social circles and our parishes -- all we know is the sin we hope that they are being freed from.  When we actually meet someone who identifies with something we call sin in such a way that they can't leave it (just as they can't leave their foot or their hand behind!) we are left in a paradox.  We settle to love them as we would love anyone else who persists in sin.  But this is not love.

 

Love is blind.  Love asks not, love knows not, all love desires is the object of one's love.  Love is uncritical.  Love knows not the language we wrap around categories.  Love is expansive and resplendent with life.  Love will not be satisfied with settling for the tired definitions of sin that we give it.  Love cannot insist on maintaining intact the identity markers with which we view our world.  

An Imagined Ecclesiology

Ecclesiology is, as many of my dear readers are aware, at the center of Christian theology.  How one views the nature and role of what it means for the church to be the church determines how one views the Christic events, the make-up of the trinity, and the role of our other theological categories: like justification, sanctification, sin, forgiveness, creation, and re-creation.  Ecclesiology is the lived outworking of St. John's mandate to, "love your neighbor whom you can see" before we "love God whom we cannot see."

Since we can see the church (we can bodily go there on Sundays) and since we can see how the church engages the world, it becomes the locus of our faith.  It is in church that our doxology (worship) guides our belief about God (the pronouncement of our theology) and turns into action in the world.  When we imagine our ecclesiology, we engage in a conversation about how the church should be verses how it is.  This internal act of self critical assessment is crucial to our very participation in the church becuase it engages us in church.  (and yes, I did just use the word church almost as a verb, but that isn't a bad thing.  If church is, as we have said, the location where our coporate worship becomes spoken belief about God and then lived action in the world, then the word most certainly also has verbal qualities).

In order for the church to be faithful to her scriptural witness, her lectional guidelines, and her sacramental core, she must continually bear the needs of the world to the God she worships.  For worship is song.  And the song comes out of the void - Rilke is correct - it is out of the void of the death of Orpheus' brother that the song which "enraptures and comforts and helps us" is born.  What I'm trying to say is this; our human ability to really and finally approach each other is born from the pain of shared loss.  Our ability to approach God (together with all our experience) also springs from the void of death.  Like Orpheus, Christ descent into Hell resulted in life granted anew.  Unlike Orpheus, all of hell joins in the song of new life eternally.  

From the stand point of those who self describe as being outside of the church, how do we bear their needs to God?  I imagine those needs being born through a lived theology of the descent into hell.  In other words, I only get what Christ does for me, when I see Christ in my hell.  It is all very nice that he was born, that he ministered, and that he died and rose again.  But I need to know that the isolation I live with everyday is not also a prison.  I need to know that the way the bars to my prison of isolation are busted is by Christ living with me in my cell.  

And there is the rub, isn't it?  Very often the isolation that people feel (especially in the LGBTQA+ communities and others) has been created by our own culture wars.  The church we inherited sought a war on culture in order to win people for Christ, but ended up burning the hearts and memories of those they sought to 'save'.  Instead of Christ, (whether Christ born or died, or resurrected) they implanted justifiable rage. 

Yet it isn't this simple either - for the isolatin is also social.  We have been ok with a prosperity gospel, a capitalist system, and equating patriotism with service to God.  By ignoring the needs of many who are no longer met by a minimum wage at 8 dollars, by allowing wage theft and corporate greed to drain the social safety net, and by turning our eyes instead of our cheek in the face of torture committed by our government, we effectively tell the 'least of these' to better their own lives on their own.  No wonder they feel isolated.

I imagine a church that is strong because she stands up for the weak.  I imagine a church which adopts the social realities of the least of these as their own personal concern.  I imagine a church which preaches that Christ descended into hell.  I imagine a church that preaches the descent of our Lord by simultaniously living in the hell we have complicitly created, while always already advocating for justice, mercy, and peace.

Advent - It is Difficult to Wait

It is Advent. I love this season. For four weeks, the reading selections from Holy Scripture guide us through our increasing anticipation of the coming of Christ. For four weeks, our Priests and their assistants are draped in regal blue. For four weeks, each week, we light another candle - and the darkness of our world becomes a little bit less dark.

Blue - deep sunset ocean blue - is the color of Mary. We robe our Priests in it because we are full of anticipation. Anticipation. Like them, we are (for this season anyway) covered in hope and memory. Memory of the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem. Hope of the coming of Jesus the King. But Ferguson burns.

If it is really true that by age 23 half of all black men will have been arrested, if it is true that in Ferguson (a city of 21,000 residents) 32,000 warrants have been issued for minor offenses, if it is true that the St. Louis District Court receives 40 percent of its funding from fines imposed on those too poor to afford to mount a defense for petty offenses, if all of these are true, then we have a lot of work on our hands.

Mary - Theotokos, but also Our Lady of Sorrow - remembered all these things in her heart. She who received into herself the Spirit of God also carried the seven sorrows that pierced her own heart. The words of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of the boy in the Temple, the meeting of Jesus on the road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, the reception of the body, and the laying of the body in the tomb. But Ferguson burns.

If it is really true that our justice system is capable of using a Grand Jury as a Trial Jury so that a failure to indict is treated as a verdict of innocence - in a town where every black resident has been issued a warrant for petty crimes (at least once, often more) by white officers - then we have a lot of work on our hands. It becomes our moral duty, our ethical responsibility, to find out and name the interests that keep the system the way they are.

The seven sorrows of Our Lady of Sorrow are darkly evocative of the whole journey of the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt under Moses. Only here that journey is remembered under the watchful gaze of the mother. Instead of the giving and subsequent breaking of a just legal code, the story line is punctuated by the renunciation of the gift she has been given. Instead of the liberation of a people of slaves into a country tasked with being just and merciful before God, the narrative pulses with the beating heart of the sorrow of the mother who buries her Son. But Ferguson burns.

If the story emerging out of Ferguson is true, then we live in two Americas. This isn't Republican and Democrat, this isn't conservative and liberal, this isn't even Christian and non-Christian. Rather, this is Upton Sinclair's Meat Factory as daily living conditions of those whose lives are hidden from the spotlight of the lives of the accepted moral majority. This is 1984's worst nightmare - Orwell couldn't have imagined two cities living on top of each other. Only in our nightmare, the rich city doesn't know the poor city exists - that is how complete the job of total policing has become. We need to be unsettled into action by this.

And so we wait. We watchers of culture. We wait for the coming of the King who shall judge with justice and mercy. Justice because He calls sin sin, and will condemn those who have vested interest in creating a system so oppressive that Ferguson has no choice but to burn. Mercy because the oppressed shall finally be ushered into a city in which there is no more weeping.

Our lives are filled with hope and memory. Memory of our current and unjust two-halved America. Memory of the black men killed by cops just in the last few months since Ferguson. Memory of the countless others for whom statistics don't exist - because we don't keep tabs on police brutality. Memory of the countless mothers and brothers and sisters working 60 hour weeks in part time jobs with no benefits on a minimum wage that won't support an individual, much less all their dependents. Memory of the sorrows of our lived reality. Memory of our buried dreams.

We dare to hope. We hope that we all won't always have to yell, "Hands up, Don't Shoot!" We hope that those who can write and investigate and agitate will publicly and loudly and continuously name the companies and persons who have a vested interest in keeping the many poor so that the few may become wealthy. We hope because we can participate imperfectly in the just and merciful acts of Christ the King. We hope because our advent will not be forever.

Ferguson and Unreconciled Bodies

Seasons Greetings.

I've tried not to post too much about Ferguson, because, well, everyone is posting about Ferguson.  But I'm bothered.  I'm also white, educated, and straight... I feel like anything I say always already sounds like it comes from the section of the mainstream culture that has earned the right to not be listened to.

But I'd love to have a discussion with you nonetheless.  There are many identities at stake.  The question at hand seems to be boil down to social culpability.  Both those who self identify with the cop, and those who self identify with the man who was shot want to answer that question.  Screaming out of all my news feeds has been this one theme "but he was innocent because...!"

What about the rest of us?  What about those of who self identify with the crowd?  We watchers of American life, what is our social culpability?  We examine the status quo and examine it -- but we also allow it to exist.  We profit from the system.  For us, for us watchers, the system is nurturing.  It provides the context in which we live and move and have our lives.  When does watching become an act that is no longer morally (or even ethically) neutral?  Are there other options?  If not, if watching is the only act available to us, are we content with that?  Why?

Exodus describes God as the God who takes people who are slaves to arguably the most powerful state in the region at that time and makes them free people.  They are commanded to glorify God by being kind, fair, and gracious to the alien and widow and socially dis-empowered among them.  It is possible to summarize the prophetic literature in the OT in relation to this identity.  Don't be like the nations around you who are unfair, unkind, and un-gracious to the socially dis-empowered.  

In Matthew and Luke, Jesus self describes in predictable, prophetic, language, "I have come to heal the broken hearted, and preach deliverance to the poor."  In John, light is a thematic element that is associated with the mission of Jesus in the world.  When Christ comes, light comes with him.  If we accept that at least part of why Jesus came into the world is to do what He said he came to do, then how do we accept into our lives the beautiful words of John 3?

"and this is the verdict: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does wicked deeds hates the light and does not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed."

The desperate fight to establish social culpability, is also a social conflict about vindication.  It is difficult, in part, because there is no real saving face.  If we maintain the status quo, we have to be completely ok with a system that is quite possibly guilty of systematically denying equal opportunity to Americans whose skin is black.  If we disrupt the status quo, we have to be completely ok with admitting that we watchers have culpability in this systematic inequality.  

We are culpable in part because we watchers of society have watched everything but precisely this dynamic.  We bought into the idea that the war on drugs, or the fact that a black man is fantastically more likely to be imprisoned than a white man kept us safe.  We have to willing to confess our dual blindness - we celebrate Martin Luther King day while allowing Americans who are black to be the 'other' from whom we are protected by our police.  

A reconciliation of the social bodies at odds in the Ferguson story that does not also create justice is cheap, insulting, and, at best, an enforced peace.  For now, we who watch do well to remember that there is a verdict.  Evil deeds are possible.  Deeds are evil when they result in darkness.  Find that which is hidden in our culture, and bring it into the light.  Do so with grace and love.

Seasons Greetings.  

Failed Series, and the use of sacred text

I attempted to write a 5 part series on the Word of God, and failed.  There was too much that I wanted to discuss, and the structure of the series didn't allow me to unpack everything before imploding under it's own weight.  There were four rather separate points that rather all needed to be articulated at once.  In this post I'm going to try to devote just one paragraph to each so that they can at least have some time on a page.

1.) Everything we believe (including doctrines concerning the Word of God) has a negative shadow.  What I mean is that by believing X instead of Y we necessarily (and many times unconsciously) impose the constraints of our belief on those who don't share that belief.  I'm not saying we shouldn't believe anything, I am saying that if I want to be a conversation partner in a dialogue that actually leads to reconciliation between us, I have to be willing to admit the ways in which my belief imposes itself upon your life.  I have to become eager to listen to you as you describe that imposition as well.

2.) Obviously, this negative shadow is longest in issues regarding arguments from religious communities regarding ethical value judgments -- both communally and personally.  The temptation for many of the religious communities is to mistake the ethical value judgment for the religion itself.  Because of my belief I may build a hospital or a hospice center, but my belief is not the hospital or the hospice center.  Similarly, because of their belief, many oppose abortion or gay marriage -- but the belief of the religion is not opposition to abortion or gay marriage as such.  The human and communal cost of not recognizing this distinction can be catastrophic.

3.) there is a distance between God as God, and human words about God.  When we reduce this distance, we fail to do Christian Theology as such.  This distance is expressed by the tradition as the following analogy: For every similarity between God and creation, there exists an even greater dissimilarity.  The more the similarity increases, the more the dissimilarity also increases.  Practically, this means that we need a way of looking at sacred text that is more robust than simply saying, "this text that God wrote told me that you can't do that." The fact that the text is written by God and Human, means that this analogy exists inherently in the text itself.  We need to recover much of what was lost during the reformation in terms of analogically allowing the text to interpret itself within a larger tradition for our culture and time.

4.) The fourth point is really the reverse of the proceeding three, but it deserves it's own bullet because it's conclusions are truly massive.  An interpretation, dogmatically asserted from a literal interpretation of texts selected owing to their desired vocabulary is not responsible Christian interpretation.  As an example, if I want to see what Scripture says about slavery, and look up the texts that have the word "slave" used in a social kind of way, I see, among other texts, "slaves, obey your earthly masters with trembling and fear" (Ephesians 6:5) and "slaves, your earthly masters in everything, and do it, not only when their eye is upon you, to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord" (Colossians 3:22), and "slaves, in reverent fear submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate but to those who are harsh" (1 Peter 2:18).  Among other verses, especially if I gained economically from the pronouncement, I could claim Scripture supports slavery.  Obviously, this is a false claim, but many of the denominations we have in America today exist because they split over precisely this issue.  Many Baptist traditions and the United Methodist supported slavery off of precisely this kind of literal and dogmatic non analogical reading of the text.

In conclusion, I think am making the argument I am because I see a pattern.  Within Christian circles I see nuanced and clever literal interpretation of Scripture which leads to dogmatic and divisive ethical judgments in society.  In non Christian circles, I see these pronouncements treated with derision and contempt because they appear close minded and harsh.  Inside of Christian circles, this contempt is perceived as contempt for Jesus Christ, and we are perceived as "suffering for Christ" when in reality we are suffering the contempt of of our culture because we confuse how we approach Scripture with what we believe Scripture teaches.

Words from God? (Part 3 of 5)

If you read Part Two in its entirety, congratulations!  That was an unforgivably long post, and probably rather poorly written.  I have included a very brief summary before I launch into Part 3.  Thanks for your interest.

Part three of this series deals with the second catagory of negative shadows that are associated with what happens when we say words are from God.  Please know that in writing this I'm not saying that words are never from God -- i feel it is important to repeat that.  What I am interested in, however, is in the human and communal cost that is paid by those who don't necessarily share our views.  The first category acknowledged that when we say words are from God, one other thing we end up saying is that the human through whom God spoke contributed almost nothing and the words are, in their entirety, from God.  (Of course, that last sentence was a bit of an exageration, but the trend it indicates is still valid).

For spoken words, we looked at how those who don't hear from God when they worship or pray may be affected when we say to them, "hear what God has said to me."  We concluded that for many, we leave them with all of these "words" from God that were spoken over them when we prayed for them.  The upshot is that they have no way of judging for themselves and knowing wether these words are from God or not.  All they know is that they can't risk it either way and so these memories turn into a cacaphony of voices that they carry with them.  If you are one of those who has been spoken to in this way, please accept my apology.  You know what it means to carry with you these "words" and you know how risky and unsettling they feel.  We dont.  We speak because we buy into the narrative we have been told about our faith -- and a fundamental part of this narrative requires us to speak when we think we have heard from God.

For written words, we looked at how we teach our parishioners to pre-judge other people based off of whether those other people share our views on the inspiration of Scripture.  We concluded that at least one of the negative shadows here is a loss of context (cultural, textual, etc) for the actual words in Scripture.  By emphasizing their timelessness, we can at times urge people to do things that the text itself doesn't support.

The second category acknowledges that when we say words are from God, at least one other thing we end up saying is that God speaks when we ask him to.  There is a culture of worship in which we "seek the Lord" -- and wait for Him to "come upon us."  In short, we assume that there are certain pre-requisets that must be met for God to speak.  Now, obviously, as soon as you read this it is self evident that God can and (sometimes) does speak whenever and however he wants to.  We all acknowledge that in theory, The voice of God is free.  We know that, (as with Saul) the Spirit of the Lord can fall upon whomever He wills, regardless of the willing or unwilling recipient.

Yet for the rest of us in the congregation, there is a felt distance between the theory and the practice.  In theory, God is perfectly free to speak if and when God desires to speaks.  In practice, the words of God are spoken when there is a noticeable amount of human communal energy expended in the form of worship.  This felt distance is a negative shadow because it effects everyone in the room in unintended ways.  The intent is to create a worship environment in which we seek the free and living God.  The result is often a personal and communal attempt to answer the question, "where is God?"  Ways to answer that question include internal and personal questions that can amount to deep self doubt.  The fostered fear is that somehow I am not open enough, surrendered enough, repented enough, or that some sin can be blocking the movement of God in our lives.

Thus there is an unintentional internal disconnect that exists.  This disconnect can exist both personally and communally.  I have seen both.

A slightly more subtle negative shadow is cast when we shift the emphasis from the spoken word to the written word.

If I approach the written word with the assumption that I must invite God in order for me to hear God speaking, what else happens?  What else am I saying about how I receive these words from God which I find in Scripture only when I'm in a position to hear?  The risk that we run here is that I will end up listening more to my own readiness than to God.  If my reception of God is (in practice) deeply tied to my own struggle with sin, then Scripture itself becomes the meta-narrative inside of which my narrative exists.  In other words, I unconscously wrap the words of God around my own journey instead of simply reading the text I believe to be inspired.  Do negative shadow here?  Do you see how the distance between expecting that God will speak freely but knowing in practice that He only speaks if I am receptive forces me to read Scripture as a story about the personal and interior struggle with sin?

There is so much else going on in Scripture.  There is so much else going on when we meet together for Christian community and worship.  Is it worth it?  That is the question we have to ask about our negative shadows -- is it worth it?  Is proclaiming our beliefs worth the unintentional negative shadows which we cast over ourselves, those in our community, and those who don't share our belief?   Why or why not?

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.

A Question of Inspiration

Inspiration is one of those words in the Christian world that instantly polarizes those who use it.  The word comes from the Latin, inspirare which is actually two words combined into one, in + spirare literally, "to breath in, or, "act of inhaling".  We refer to a movie or a book or a symphony and say to each other, "wow, I am/felt inspired by that".  What we mean is that we have taken into ourselves somehow the beautiful qualities of the drama we have witnessed and somehow feel more rich, full, or better than we were before the event.

When the word becomes applied to Scripture though, we want to say that Scripture has this quality of being that which is breathed into by God.  We want to affirm of the text, that has been breathed into by God, and so it carries with it a quality that brings us into the spirit of God when we read it.

A good deal of ink has been spilled over the nature of where this inspirare resides.  If it resides in the text itself then questions like: "is every word inspired, or just the major phrases?" and, "which version is inspired?" and, "is something wrong with me if I don't feel the Spirit of God when I read the text?" and, "which texts are inspired, the protestant ones or the catholic ones too?"

On the other hand, if the inspirare is thought to reside not in the text itself but the relationship that the text facilitates between the reader and God, then a whole new and different set of questions must be posed.  Some questions that fall into this category are: "how is God revealed in each book differently?" and, "why do these texts reveal God in a way that other texts don't?" and, "what role does prayer have in the reading of Scripture?"

There are a couple of things that can be said about both.  Regardless of where you place the inspirare (and respected theologians and scholars and pastors from both sides exist and give cogent reasoning for their view) the question of interpretation must be asked -- and answered.  In both cases (whether one thinks Scripture is actually the breath of God in verbal form or whether one thinks Scripture causes creation to receive the breath of God) words which interpret the words of Scripture are being spoken by pastors that result in the instruction of their parish.

It is unhelpful, damaging, and divisive to argue that people who place the inspirare of Scripture in a different place than you do are in fact deficient in their faith.  The literature from both sides indicates that both sides give equal prominence to the Lordship of Christ.  Both sides are seeking to learn from Scripture.  Both sides view Scripture as that text which has ultimate authority for the way in which we Christians live our lives.   Interestingly enough, it is possible to read the texts used in this debate in both directions.

The classic example of 2 Timothy 3:16 should suffice.  One could argue that since Scripture is clearly the object of the verb, inspirato that it is the text itself which is where inspiration lies.  One could also argue that this verse essentially limits the quality of inspiration to "all Scripture" in such a way that ensures that other texts don't also carry the authority of revelation.  But what one can't do from this text is argue that those who hold a different view are in some sense setting themselves up above Christ or subverting the authority of God, or seeking their own end and not the will of God for their lives.

Can we all stop discerning the will of God? Right now? Please?

In the human pursuit of the will of God it is common to ask the question about some particular perceived course of action, "is it the will of God for me to do this or that?" Whether the inquiry be the purchase of a new car, a new cup of coffee, who to date, or whether to pursue a degree, change a job, or move to a different city, we spend much of our time focused on discerning the will of God on these crucial decisions of our lives.

A short glance through the book selections at most bookstores (online or brick and mortar) with a Christian section will almost certainly include books designed to help the person making a decision to pray through the different options. We talk to our friends, our co-workers, our families, we spend time alone in prayer, we journal at length, we enter into a period of discernment with trusted friends, we spare no amount of emotional or psychological effort in the desire to find the will of God.

I was raised in a Christian environment that automatically assumed that this practice was normal. I went to a Seminary on the other side of the country that also functioned under this paradigm. I went to a church while at Seminary that also operated with a heavy dependence upon the perceived and discerned will of God for guidance in almost all its critical and non critical decisions.

The desire is to live the way God wants us to live. The fear is that we will make a decision that is not, as the language says, "according to the will of God." Everyone is consciously aware that Scripture is incredibly limited when it comes to actually offering advice though on how we discern the will of God. So we trust our emotional instincts, we search for internal peace, we try to recognize the voice of God in prayer, we do all these things -- but the argument from Scripture for them is implicit at best.

There is something that doesn't match up here, and this blog post is a small attempt at providing another alternative when it comes to knowing the will of God.

The thing that doesn't add up is the sheer lack of Scriptural support for having the lives of communities and individuals dominated by a spirituality that insists on discerning the will of God constantly. The other thing that doesn't add up is the emotional stress that is placed -- both on the decision makers and on the people that go along with the decision that is made. Drawing the line here between human group dynamics and the actual discerned will of God is nearly impossible. Saying that we know we are right because we have “faith” that God has spoken and that we have heard Him is psychologically dangerous and irresponsible.

By contrast, Scripture does say that we all (by virtue of our having been created by God and by virtue of how God self reveals in Scripture as the one who liberates the unliberated) have both a responsibility and a desire to do acts of Justice, of Mercy, and of Kindness to our fellow humans. I'm aware that that was a long sentence, so let me try to break it down a bit.

What I'm saying is this: to be a human that follows God in the world is to do acts of Justice, of Mercy, and of Kindness. Why? Because God created us and because God reveals himself as the one who liberated the oppressed Jewish people from their slavery, giving them a land all their own. We are correct to infer that every human has a very human right to their own sustenance, their own shelter, and the preservation of their own life. Christ reveals himself especially in Mark as the one who heals the Leper, heals the shriveled hand in the synagogue on Sabbath, binds the wounds of the broken, and sets the captives free.

When we seek to follow this Christ, we do the same. End of story. To close, there are a few very basic guiding questions we make ask in regards to any decision. None of these questions assume, however, that God desires us to either buy or not buy the car, date or not date the person we like, pursue or not pursue that job or that degree. In the final analysis, an answer that provided a yes or a no in one of these situations always runs up against the things above that don't add up about asking these types of questions in the first place.

1.) does this activity provide a chance for me to act more justly in my life? In other words, can I remove the suffering of someone, can I fight against stigmatization, can I work to make right that which is wrong?

2.) Can I do acts of mercy? Are there people who are suffering and who probably brought the suffering they are experiencing upon their own heads -- can I remove their suffering anyway? Can I give them the unexpected and desired something (whatever it is, in whatever their situation is) that will cause them less pain, less torment, and less suffering?

3.) Can I do acts of kindness? Can I look out for myself and for others in a way that increases their love, that treasures them as people, that walks with them on their journey and carries their burden with them? Can I surprise them with joy? Can I appreciate with them the dreams they don't dare to hope for anymore?

I think these questions have biblical support. I think these questions do real and lasting good in a person or in a community's life. I think these questions don't create emotional stress and don't rely on an internal "presence of peace". I think these questions don't focus on me and my future -- instead they focus on the life, wellbeing, and health of those around me.

In conclusion, in discerning what path to take, look for these opportunities. Look for a way to answer yes to at least one of these questions in your quest. It isn't as if, if you do, you'll know the will of God for that decision -- but it is the case that if you can answer yes to any of the three questions I posed I suspect that your eyes will be opened in such a way as to easily see how God is moving in your life and the lives of those around you.