I'm Not Just Saved, I'm SUPER-Saved!

Let’s talk salvation. I realize Pope Francis suggested about a month ago that even atheists could be saved based on good works. I am sure this was very bad news for many atheists. Francis was suggesting that it is not simply believing the right thing or saying the right words that get you saved, but it is also how you live. It is a works thing and if you are a good person you will not be automatically condemned.

Now the Vatican is back-peddling a bit to the relief of atheists around the world.

Such a statement and response brings to question what we want salvation to mean. Note that I have said that it focuses on what we want salvation to mean, not what salvation means – that is the work of theologians locked away in their towers slaving at their typewriters. What is it with the afterlife? I wonder why it is so important that we have a vision of a heaven where everyone we live with here will be with us there. How will that be different from what we are dealing with now? There are some people that I may not want to be with in “heaven” for various reasons. Some of those reasons is because I just don’t like some people; they annoy me. Can you imagine a place where everyone in your neighborhood is with you in heaven forever? Now you know Mr. Applesmith will always be in his home letting his lawn grow beyond what is appropriate and blasting Zydeco music at all odd hours. That is a hell that you will not be able to escape. How is that heaven?

All kidding aside, or some kidding aside, why is it that we want salvation to be about what happens on the other side of death? It may be because the great beyond scares us so much that we want to know that after we die we will be ok. Well, we will be ok, but we will still be dead, so that is a kind of bummer. It may be because it is easier to offer something for the “after” of life instead of something for the “now” of life.

What if salvation was for the living in the here and now? I know that many have addressed this topic (Rob Bell, the theologian rock band The Existentialists, Paul Tillich, and others), but I think it is something that we can give more time and attention to. It is a much more difficult message to offer to say that we can be saved in the here and now. It is easier to preach that if you believe the right things and you say the right words and you go through the right gestures then you will be assured a brand new home with golden toilets after you die. That is easier to preach because there is nothing to say that I am wrong, there is a noticeable absence of evidence and hence the joy of faith.

Yet how does salvation express itself today, here and now? How does my life change today because I am saved?

If Christianity, or any other religion, does not offer something substantial that can change our lives (i.e. save us) today, in the here and now, that why should be bother with faith at all? How are we saved in the now?

You may say that knowing your final trip to the stars is all set (i.e. afterlife) can have a major impact on how you live now and I am sure that there is some level of truth to such an idea, but I think there is more. It would be great if Christianity gave us super powers and that was how we were saved, but that is not what happens. What happens is that we claim an absurd assurance about who God is and our relationship with God that has an impact not only with our lives but in the story of creation and all humanity. It is an assurance that God is concerned about creation and humanity. It is an assurance that we will never be abandoned by God no matter how messed up we may think we are. It is an assurance that our lives do have worth and value no matter how valueless they may seem to us on the surface.

Now I am just waxing rhetorically, yet I hope you begin to get my point. I don’t believe that we need to push Christianity as a faith that promises you will get where you want to go, but more as a faith that promises that God is with you wherever you are. Let those implications set in.

So this means that yes, atheists can be saved if they want to be, but they will not be forced. Atheists can find the assurance of the presence of God in their midst if they want, but without Christ I believe it is darn near impossible to do. It also means that there is not some fiery pit of hell waiting to burn all those who do not say the right words or perform the proper rituals. In my view, living without that absurd assurance of God is a hell all on its own, we don’t need to add to it.

Meet Jesus and find salvation now, don’t worry about later.

I Feel Nothing

Because I was feeling especially happy and giddy I thought I would read a work that would take those feelings and smash them into the realm of despair and apathy. This is my devotional practice. So I read:

Less Than Zero – by Bret Easton Ellis

I missed the pop cultural boat when this book came out in 1985 and folks were excited about the insightful view of an aspect of American culture that Ellis offered. I was 11 at the time and not really aware of the drugs, sex, and rock and roll scene. For example, the first album I ever purchased was a Benny Goodman LP. So the book didn’t speak to me when it came out especially since my parents would never let me read it. In fact, I hope my mom doesn’t find out that I did read it because she still might not think that it is very appropriate and I don’t want to get in trouble.

I found the book very well constructed, engaging, and exhausting to read. That last part is meant as a compliment. The characters are all empty and yet I was still able to connect/relate with them at some level which is why it was exhausting. It was mostly Clay, the main character, with whom I found a connection and I think that was Ellis’ point. Clay offers introspection, reflection, and insight into his pain.

Clay is searching. He is searching for something that he lost, innocence, an Eden, a time of feeling, or just a nice place in Palm Springs. Regardless what it is, Clay has lost something and the readers are led to believe that the other characters have lost something as well. On one level they have everything they need, materially speaking, but on a deeper level they have nothing. Their relationships are fleeting, there is no sense of family, love, or loyalty. There is no sense of purpose in life. This is the emptiness that I found in this work.

Does this book speak to today or is such a work strictly a historical phenomena? I don’t know if I would say that many have everything they need, but there certainly is a practice of excess in much of America. This adds to the emptiness that many feel. I don’t know if people are searching for anything but there is a sense that something is lost in our American culture. What it is will vary, but we all may have that shared experience that what we once had was great and it now is gone.

Think about this from a religious perspective. When considering how to “be” a church many offer programs, activities, different worship services, and more and more. We have a great culture of abundance in our society and churches tend to try to capture such a culture. A “busy” church is often seen and portrayed as a “good” church even if people are working themselves to death. If we can offer more and more then maybe people will come or stay and we will find whatever it is that we have lost.

How has that been working for us?

If we feel we have lost something, what is it? If people who have no connection with a church community or any idea of faith feel they have lost something, then what is it? We do not know. We do not know what it is that we have lost and yet we are killing ourselves trying to find it. Here is the connection with Less Than Zero.

We will kill ourselves trying to find something, anything to hold onto because it will never be enough. We will kill ourselves saying we know what is the answer when we are not even sure about the question. Stop trying, stop searching, and just sit still for a moment. Sit still and cry. Sit still and lament. Sit still and grieve and maybe you will start to realize what it is that you are missing.

I think God is a part of this. I believe that our faith can offer guidance and hope, but I cannot and will not say how. We all are at a place that is so far gone that we do not have anything to lose, that we are all at a place than can be categorized as less than zero.

See, happy and fulfilling.

I'm a Real Doctor (just not the kind you need?)

Is it tacky to write a post about the same book twice?

My editor says, “no,” so I guess it is ok.

I finally finished Jeffrey Bishop’s work The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying, and I have to say it was very good. I’m not going to write a review because that has already been done and I don’t really want to go through and summarize his arguments chapter by chapter. I’m not paid enough to do that… at least not yet.

I will say that his use of Foucault and his analysis of the medical ethos and philosophical approach to healing is fantastic. Like I said, it is a good book.

What I want to reflect on are his concluding thoughts. Bishop reflects on what it means to be a person, what it means to live (rather than what it means to die). He then considers the “call” of medicine, i.e. what is it that drives one to enter into the vocation of medicine. For Bishop, a great deal of that call is based on relationship between the medical professional and the person who is suffering and sharing to one degree or another that suffering. This is a corrective that Bishop feels is important for all doctors to have when caring for the dying.

So far so good.

He questions in his concluding paragraphs what medicine might look like if it considered the purpose of life over the function of life and admits such a question moves into the philosophical areas of thought. “In other words, these questions open into an arena of uncertainty, where meaning cannot be limited to what is true and transferable to all other bodies” (313).

In response to such a push a medical professional may say something like:

“Damnit Jim, I’m a doctor not a philosopher!”

Bishop also states, “It just might be that the practices of religious communities marginalized in modernity and laughed at as unscientific are the source of human medicine…. Might it not be that only theology can save medicine?”

Now imagine me, reading this at 5am, in my pajamas, drinking my tea, J.S. Bach playing in the background – serene, isn’t it – and I yell out loud,

“Damnit Jim, I’m a theologian not a doctor!”

(Actually I am a doctor, but not that kind of doctor, so again I say Damnit!)

Is Bishop asking me (not me personally) to enter into the fray of what it means to live and to actually offer some thoughts? And is Bishop suggesting that other doctors (MDs not PhDs) actually listen to what I have to say? Yes he is.

Granted, this is a leap that Bishop is making that not all in the medical profession can make. It hinges on a sense of faith of one kind or another. I don’t think one has to profess a faith in a god of one kind or another, but has to have an awareness of a “greater-than.” Thus a humanist theologian <> could offer something to this conversation.

The premise that Bishop seems to be pushing is that life means something. Life has purpose and that purpose/meaning is best discerned through a community with a sense of the “other.” Let’s be honest, doctors cannot study this as well as everything else that they have to study and need the input of others, like theologians. My worry is about those who either do not ascribe to the values/narrative of a particular community or do not have any sense of “other” at all. Then what does the theologian have to say?

I am speaking from a specific context, culture, and community. There are certain, basic values and ideals that are held in that community (even though many theologian’s bread and butter is earned by arguing about those values and ideals). If there is someone who is a part of my community who is struggling with questions of life and death and dying, then I am ready to jump in and help.

What about those who are outside?

How do I help someone who comes from a different faith tradition or community? How do I help someone who is not from any faith tradition or community? Do those people need “help?”

One of the challenges of medicine is doing away with the multiple differences so a problem can be treated regardless of the context of the person with the problem. There is a pragmatic necessity to this. To a degree chaplains have done this with assessment forms and the like which Bishop addresses in his work. There needs to be some uniformity, but only within the consistency of the narrative of the community of the individual. Beyond that, the theologian must be open, sensitive, and listening to the individual. The theologian becomes more of a philosopher in such cases.

I could go on, but then this would no longer be a blog entry and would become an article and then I would have to spend a lot of time really working on the details of the piece.

Bishop is right that religion has been, for the most part, pushed to the side in the medical arena. It is the role of the religious community to be clear about what it means to live and to die. It is the role of the theologian of that community to articulate different ways of understanding such questions. Then it is up to the individuals to voice their own embraced beliefs and the doctors to respect such beliefs. There the theologian does have a role.

Finally, I can feel like I have something to offer!

I Like You, Do You Like Me?

Some good thoughts recently shared by my friend and parishioner Gordon Pierce:

A Pondering – Expectations

I believe one of the major causes for relational disconnection is probably one person’s expectation of another. The expectations held by a husband are not met by his wife, a wife’s are not met by her husband, parent’s are not met by their children, a child’s by the parents, a church’s congregation are not met by their pastor, on and on it goes. 

There are several way by which I came to the conclusions I have reached is by listening for sound bytes on the subject of Christian Concealing, and web sermons addressing family relationships. Reading my Bible and a book on the subject of prayer by a saint in the 19th century named E. M. Bounds I gained insight on relationship issues. 

One problem I have discovered about expectations is some people believe that happiness and security rests on another person’s performance. They fail to realize that the other person is busily walking through their life, not realizing they are expected to meet any wants or needs. The person who is failing to meet the other’s expectations is probably overwhelmed by what they have to do in the course of a day. Social media is not helping them in this regard. 

I can add a typical Sunday school teacher thought at this point which is; a person can only find true happiness and security in God. However let me add this to that thought. The Bible and the E. M. Bounds book state “God chastens those He loves.” He may be using the expectation failing person’s performance in chastening the person who has had an expectation. 

Unfortunately many people who are being chastened drift away from God instead of towards Him. 

Another expectation issue is simply this. One person’s expectation of the other is unrealistic. I believe we are all guilty of this misjudgment. Lets pray that our Lord will give us the grace to become realistic with our expectations, or to not have expectations at all. 

I have a short story to share on unrealized expectation. An elderly man was helping A fourth grade student. The student had a homework assignment that directed him to correct a miss used adverb in each of seven sentences listed. The student expected the elderly man to quickly identify and express which word in each sentence was the incorrect one. Much to the student’s dismay the elderly man struggled to help the student quickly. It had been sixty years since the man had to concern himself about incorrect adverbs.