From where that pavement is...

"...'cause there's no parachute that they can make for this

'cause I put my pain, my heart, my soul, my faith in this..."

My spiritual infancy brimmed with missionary zeal. Every faithful Christian should eventually find their way to missions and ministry. Christians who simply gave financial support and prayed were just ducking the hard work.

Did anyone ever say as much? No, not once.
Was this the overwhelming impression that I was left with? Yes, I and very many others.

As adamant as these zealots might have been in saying that there was no two-tier Christendom, they never realized that their works and words created such a world. They scoffed and laughed at the charismatics who segregate the faithful into those who've spoken in tongues and those who haven't, but they then frowned on those who elected to pursue a dream apart from third-world countries or clerical collars.

Two tiers? No, never. It's just that some people love God more and some not so much. Not being in ministry meant you either didn't love God or you didn't love people.

Unacceptable hypocrisy.

God cannot be God of all creation and God of only those who are in ministry.

Creation, so great and so wide and God's name is writ large over it all. And yet, I believed, I followed those who would confine Christendom to church walls, literal and otherwise. The otherwise refers to the begrudging concession that Christ may be loved outside a church building. But a discomfort plagues them if the love is not covered in crosses, soft lighting and tearful conversion stories.

But now, day by day, the glowing upswell in me burns brighter. I know where I'm going. For so much of my life, I feared that my teachers were right and that God was a petty Asian bureaucrat who wanted to lock me inside a church. No, far more powerful, far more gentle than I could have imagined, he beckons me towards a life I was trained to believe could never be mine.

There has never been a moment of greater rebellion and greater obedience for me. Throwing my hat in the ring, I'm going to be a writer. An echo from years past rings in my heart "If you won't take a chance on this, what will you take a chance on?" I'm not going to write for Christian media. I don't have the stomach for trying to be awkward and impish, skirting family-unfriendly realities. Screw that stupid shit. It's not going to be for academia as if I cared about impressing them and acquiring for myself their distinctions and honors anymore. I won't have a big organization to hide me. My parents taught me that security lay in size. There is no security in size. There's only security in the hollow of God's hand. And I believe that's exactly where I am. Throw away so many of the beliefs I've been taught, so many of the doctrines that finger-wagging reverend faces have instilled in me. Throw away the fears, the false needs, the empty materialism. Throw away the useless practices that no longer serve me. Rebel, reject and return to the naked freedom of knowing that God wants you to be yourself.

Above Us Only Sky

I had mixed feelings reading this Slate article on heaven.
http://www.slate.com/id/2249657

When the piece began by debunking several conceptions of heaven, I was rooting for the author. I despise the Patrick Swayze, Precious Moments, All Dogs Go to Heaven version of the afterlife myth. Speaking in terms of theology, I believe that conception is an odd aberration that crept in when Scriptural watchdogs weren't looking. The Bible simply does not teach that belief. If I could speak to a gathering of evangelical leaders, I would tell them that correcting our beliefs in heaven by removing this strange and alien belief from our common practice should be a much higher priority than either gay marriage or prayer in schools.

But then the article sunk into the septic tank. The enjoyment evaporated like an ice cube in an oil spill. The writing became a tirade, another battlefield where nasty, backwards, primitive, blue-collar, fat American belief-ism dukes it out with progressive!, enlightened!, rational!, urban!, urbane! SCIENCE!

I'm not going to waste my time with such nonsense. I'm so bored with that discussion and life's too short for me to be bored. I'm done with arrogant epistemologists of either persuasion. I turn my nose at both the close-minded scientist and the ignorant Christian, both of whom are convinced that the scientific evidence shows whatever or that THE DEVIL (cue cellos) has blinded their eyes, closed their hearts and just waves away tough questions with screeching, nonsensical, counter questions.

I'm so tired of this debate. It gets nasty. It gets nowhere. And it just leaves people angry. And there's no communication. None whatsoever. This is the gravest issue and the one people tend to work on the least. To properly visualize what this type of debate inevitably becomes, imagine two 5 year-olds. Picture them screaming, caterwauling and making the most God-awful noise in the world. Now watch as they plug their own ears with their fists and try to headbutt each other to death. Now place this snarling juvenile mess in a locked latrine. Any debate touted as reason vs. faith can only rise this high.

But conversations are beautiful. They're beautiful because there's communication, connection and humanity. I love having conversations with anyone who believes anything. We can talk about baseball or manga or God. Whatever. When we do talk about God, I'm OK with them believing whatever they believe and their reasons for doing so. Often it's psychological. Sometimes it's rational. And other times, it's a complete non-sequitur. I believe in God because I'm Irish. Um, OK? I like people. I want to learn more about them. Maybe they want to learn more about me. I don't ask for it up front. If they want to know more, they'll ask. I don't like to be in the business of telling. I'm not sure I should hold the assumption that strangers are just so curious about me.

Conversations are beautiful because one human heart touching another human heart is beautiful. That's where alithea-truth exists. I'm thankful for having read Heidegger because he gave me a better word than heart-truth, which people just interpret as "feelings." Alithea-truth is not your goddamn emotion. It'll affect you emotionally, but it's not your emotion. When you take your medicine, it affects your body. But the medicine is not your body.

Alithea-truth is not fact truth. "This computer I'm using is running Internet Explorer 6 and I hate it." That sentence is an example of fact-truth, veritas-truth. Alithea-truth is Eureka, the I-Have-Found-It experience of life. An example of alithea-truth would be the pitcher on the mound realizing "I have to throw a fastball." "I have to throw a fastball." is not a fact. It's almost something of an anti-fact. Facts describe what is. "I have to throw a fastball." is a judgment concerning the future, concerning the what-is-not(-yet). For those who don't care for sports but know something of love, another example of alithea-truth is the realization "Just be yourself." It's a truth you can't check. A command, like a question, is immune to fact-checking. How do you find out if "Sit down!" or "Who's Billy Mays?" are true statements? Alithea is truth beyond truth, truth beyond fact.

The alithea-truth of God is simply "God". Although you may phrase it in a way that looks like veritas-truth - "God exists.", "God is real.", "Jesus Christ is the Son of God.", "God loves me." - the most vital part of the statement lies in the realization. Verity gives it substance. Oh, pardon me. Did you think that these were exclusive categories? They're not. "Once you hit the liver, you can hit anything." is Bas Ruten's alithea-truth of fighting. It's also the veritas-truth taught to all Mexican boxers as part of the curriculum.

Alithea-truth can't be taught. Veritas-truth can. To use John Piper's (I like him again.) famous illustration, you can't reason a person into realizing ice cream is delicious. They taste it. They like it or they don't like it. Teaching you the biology behind mint leaves and chocolate chips won't help you enjoy the taste more if you don't already like the flavor.

Without this understanding of alithea-truth, all discussions about God are absolute dung. Don't take the easy way out and psychologize the issue saying "People believe because they're scared of dying." or  "People don't believe because they want to keep sinning." Both are insulting and absurd. Cite some specious statistic and assume that the entire population sit uniformly on an issue offends common sense. Each person is an individual. Respect them as such. Treat them as such. Investigate, discover, explore the alithea-truth of their life. Ask them for it. Maybe they'll share it. C'mon reach out and touch somebody. People aren't that scary. Grown-ups only bite when you ask them to.

Belief Beyond Borders

The seed from which this entry grew.

I am a Christian.
But I don't want to see a Christian nation.

At least and definitely, not in the way the current discussion uses the phrase. Proponents say that this nation was founded on God. It was also founded on the backs of slaves, the blood of indigenous peoples and the belief that man was and always should be the final arbiter of value.  Why don't we return to our roots?

But that's an easy question to answer.

I think the more difficult one is for Christians: "Why are we such cowards?" Is our faith more steady when our government points guns at others?

For me, I believe one of the real tragedies of Christian history lay in Constantine's conversion to Christianity. It would've been a joyous occasion if only he produced fruits in line with repentance, if only he weren't Emperor, and if only the Christian faith hadn't been made official. Should the Church have been given Imperial authority to decide how to punish heresy and unorthodoxy? Israel of antiquity did it, so why not Rome, why not America? God had commanded the kings of Israel past to cut down the Asherah poles and demolish the altars to Baal. If these politicians wish for America to be a Christian nation why don't they stump for the demolition of mosques and fire-bombing of Buddhist temples? Should Billy Graham lead a cadre of Navy SEALs to seize Tom Cruise and the Christian Scientists?

My problem with this whole idea of a Christian nation is my very real conviction there's a lot of heresy pork-barreled into the words "Christian nation." When I see the term used, there's a very real idea of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christianity, a Bible-belt Christianity, a kind of Christianity liberally sprinkled with football and country music references. I have never understood "Christian nation" to mean the Christianity of immigrants and refugees, the sector of Christianity most alive and thriving in America today. I have never understood the Christian to refer to urban Christianity of prison ministries, AIDS ministries, battered women ministries and homeless shelters. It has always been megachurch Christianity, happy, shiny, plasticanity, a sickening, saccharine creed of cowardice.

I think that dirty fingernails are a sign that Christianity is done right because this is the kind of faith that grew from a soil uncontaminated with the "Cleanliness is next to godliness" tradition of Sunday bests. True faith has no geography. It realizes that Christianity doesn't end with the reach of the bayonet and border patrol but that the line separating the heathen from heaven is drawn through every heart of every person. This was Rome's mistake. When it became a Christian nation, Christianity only spread as far as the Roman gladius could take it. What of the rich Christian tradition in ancient Ethiopia and India brought by Philip and Thomas, or if your tradition has it, St. Philip and St. Thomas? They've been Christians longer than the Romans, easily have direct linkages to people who have seen Jesus, but they don't look like the cultural Christian "us."When we see bearded, dark-skinned, turban and robe wearing figures, our eyes see terrorist and not 'brother'. What lies have we bought into? How much will it cost to buy us out?

This belief I'm going to share with you next is applicable for every single area of life: The greater the trial, the greater the risk, the greater the pay-off. Doing hill sprints for a workout has a dramatic effect on improving my leg strength, lower-body power, cardiovascular system, and carving out a six-pack. But doing them requires intense mental exertion to keep going. For the rest of the day, I'll struggle with a seductive somnolence. I'll need to rest for the next few days or else I'd re-injure my right ankle and left knee. Big risk. Big pay-off.

The same is true of faith. The bigger the risk, the bigger the pay-off. When we clamor for security, what are we making safe and what are we endangering? When we want our government to secure our doctrinal borders along with our national borders, I can only see disaster as a result.  There are lots of great passages in Scripture that illuminate the proper method of Christian ministry but this one from Psalm 20 has stuck with me since my days in Baruch has been this one: "Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God." Christian ministry is not predicated, never has been predicated, and never will be predicated on safety. Parents whose great hopes for their kids go no further than well-paying jobs, social acceptance at large and regular attendance at an ornate popular church don't get it. Rather Christian ministry contains a great deal of risk and unpopular choices that buck the conventional wisdom. Congregants say they need a bigger church but Christianity seems most alive in places where the faithful gather together in obscure places and whisper in hushed tones. A movement says we need to return to our roots and become a Christian nation that doesn't tolerate gays. I think Jesus' heart would be closer to the marginalized who's been cast out, trodden down and looked upon as a subhuman than the powerful majority, the oppressors.


It feels very safe to be in a great crowd of people who talk, think and dress like you. You're making yourself safe at the risk of having genuine connection with those outside of the tribe. It's a great personal risk to go where you are vulnerable, to have someone whose views and thoughts are opposite yours to be in power over you, but the possible reward is great for doing this testifies to your belief that such things don't matter, that God alone is the one who changes hearts and the changed heart, not the political boundary, is an indicator of where faith is.

Now there's a lot more to be said about what kind of specific legislative acts to vote for and the wisdom of voting one way or another, but that's for another time.