A Bridge Across The Stars.

The last time I updated this blog, I was well on my way to finishing a series of ten posts that I was writing up to illustrate my top ten list of general things I don't like about Christianity that are contributing to the rather awful state of affairs that Christianity is in. Yes, those two posts are still coming (for anyone left who actually cares!) but before I continue, I feel like I have something to say about why I feel like such a "Negative Nancy", and why, to be perfectly honest, I just don't feel like I want to do it anymore.

I know it's important to take a stand against what's clearly wrong - hate, injustice, intolerance - but how important is it to constantly go against the flow, against the tide, really, if it costs you your sanity and your happiness? Some may actually want to break free of the Matrix, and deal with all of the consequences which that kind of decision entails...but can you really blame people for being content to be little more than a faceless, nameless battery? Perhaps I am being overly harsh to fellow Christians when I make those kinds of comparisons (fair enough) but when people continue to not critically ask important questions about the things they do as Christians (or even worse, just fake it), to me it almost feels easier to just give up and either go back to joining in the current. Or, perhaps, to decide that it's time to step out of the stream altogether and see what life on dry land is like.

To me, Christianity always seems like that close friend I know who has other people consistently tell him (or her) not to do something which clearly wouldn't lead to anything good or useful or productive...and yet are left flabbergasted when they go ahead and do it anyway. In one ear and out the other. When the lesson is finally learned, it's too little, too late, and who's willing to be that they'll likely forget all about it tomorrow? (Or worse yet, twist it into a reason to keep on doing whatever it was they were doing, but harder, faster, better, stronger.) The token crowd of atheists/agnostics and such who love to rag on Christianity and Christians of course, conveniently ignore the fact that this is just as much a problem for people of other faiths and other belief systems (and them) as it is for Christians.

My point is that it just leaves me feeling frustrated, this constant desire to try to see Christianity improve beyond the constant closed-mindedness I see so rampantly, a closed-mindedness I see in how many Christians relate to the outside culture, to people outside their church, and people outside whatever social or economic grouping they belong to. It seems so sad when I look around me and find that as bad as I think things are, the reality is actually quite worse. I keep wondering when people are going to start getting tired of attaching and resting their faith and even whole theological world on things like the Culture War, and yet find that people are almost too eager to take up arms against Obama, the Homosexual Agenda, and modern science. It's left me feeling so alienated from Christianity that I find myself almost alienating myself from the Christians I know in my day to day life. I have a conversation with them and it feels like our minds aren't just on different levels -- they're on different planets altogether. And it hurt even more when you see that everyone's on that other planet, no one's on yours, and no one from over there isn't even trying to build a rocket to get to where you are.

Before this metaphor collapses under it's own weight, I just want to ask if it's possible to live on theological lonely planet - or if there's another way of building a bridge across the stars to span that distance.

Ten Things I Hate About You: #8 - The Persecution Complex

It's been Election Time lately - a fascinating mixture of Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, All Saints Day/Halloween and just about every other religious holiday of any significance you can think of. These past few months have been a mosaic of hope, anxiety, anticipation, thankfulness, pride, and a sense of a rebirth, a baptism of fire leading to a promised victory which will come for the faithful, "any day now". The antics we often see around the time of any major election reminds me of little kids fussing about in a sandbox, and the canvassers are like grown up versions of kids trick-or-treating - mind you of course, they're asking for a little more out of you than a couple of Tootsie Rolls and some change for the UNICEF box.

But above all, there's one emotion, state of mind, and mindset present, especially seen at these times, and among some of the more verbally visible elements of the Christian family - fear. The kind of fear I want to talk about here though is one fear you may have seen in others: the fear of persecution.

The story of the GOP in Arkansas from the 2004 US Presidential Election boldly proclaiming that you need to vote for the Republican Party lest dirty liberals ban the Bible is certainly one of the most extreme aspects of what I want to talk about in this post, and I'm certainly not asserting that such shouting is common to Christianity as a whole. However, it's a good example of something I like to call "The Persecution Complex". Let me try to break it down in manageable chunks so I can try to put it in basic terms:


1) Christianity is Under Attack:

This isn't so much a pervasive phenomenon in Canada, from what I see at least, but it seems to be something which is a lot more prevalent in the US. The basic point argued is that Christianity as a way of life is under attack from an overwhelmingly powerful and dominant force which seeks to suppress and/or destroy it.

To be fair to the people who make this a focal point of their view towards popular/secular culture, there is a considerable amount of truth to that basic idea. We live in a highly market-driven, extremely consumeristic and materialistic society feeding upon novelty; not innovation, but novelty - the next manufactured pop star, the next cookie-cutter sequel action movie, the next fashion trend or new shiny thing to buy. (People aren't rushing out to buy, say music from independent artists that are pushing the boundaries of traditional music styles and forms, regardless of the genre. Ironically, the Next Big Thing that consumer society chases after seems to be just another permutation of whatever came before.)

It's a hard world for any person of any spiritual level to live in while keeping a level head, and there's no denying that it's a potentially powerfully corrupting force.

Rebelling against this is all well and good, but the first problem is that you run the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As I mentioned in a past post, there are a considerable amount of things in popular, secular culture which are worth considering and bringing into our collective experience as Christians. To lose out on that would be to lose out on a wonderful way to add depth to the spiritual journey on which Christianity leads. A one-dimensional view of culture outside of Christianity threatens to reduce Christianity itself to being one-dimensional.

The second problem is who exactly are the villains in this story? The answer is very nuanced, and you could round up a whole list of reasonable perps as long as your arm, from the abstract (Free-Market Capitalism, Consumer Culture, Hyper-Materialism), to the concrete (CEOs, business and socio-ecnomically corrupt political leaders, multinational corporations, and other profit-driven institutions), to the unsettling (us, for being a willing -- be it consciously or subconsciously -- participant in the system). To probe the question of who's at fault is both hard and easy - it's easy in that if we go up the food chain, we can likely find something or someone to hold accountable. It's also hard though, because in the end, the person who you're going to blame likely had his or her strings pulled by someone else, who was beholden to someone else, and so-on, until you get lost in the tangle of who ordered who to do what that the only thing you have left to clearly blame is "The System".

Human beings though, are, I think it's safe to say, pretty lazy. So who do we blame? It's easy: Gays and Lesbians. Muslims. Jewish Hollywood. The Secular Liberal Media. All of these are excellent places to put our blame because they so easily symbolize everything we fail to understand, is outside our standardized view of what is accepted, and everything we find distasteful and hateful. (Or all of the above!)

The problem is that when it comes addressing the root cause of the problem, again, it's easy for us to take a one-dimensional view. When we have a one-dimensional view of a problem, we often always have a one-dimensional view of the solution, and how often do things like that work out?


2) Christianity is Being Oppressed

There are of course, various forms of this - Christians are being censored for the sake of political correctness; Christians are/have lost their freedom to express their religion on the grounds of other people not taking it so well (*gasp*! The Nerve!). The list goes on, and on. I'm sure that at church services, fellowship meetings, Bible studies and other such places, we've all heard at least *once*, a prayer request for the sake of poor innocent Christians who've, somewhere, been unfairly muzzled because of their beliefs.

Now, to start off, I know that there are actual places in which being a Christian, even on a very casual level (i.e. someone openly affirming their Christian faith to the man on the street vs. people who are obnoxious about it) is actually quite dangerous. The reasons for that are beyond the scope of this post, but suffice to say there are still places in the world where being a Christian does invite a serious and genuine level of peril.

The problem is when this notion is carried over to the realm of places where such a situation clearly doesn't exist. CNN founder Ted Turner's infamous "Jesus Freaks" comment is one example of an incident in the day to day lives of Christians where they came across very derogatory comments from someone outside Christianity - and its incidents like this, among other things like the teaching of evolutionary biology in schools vs. a Biblically Literal Christian view of science, or the equally infamous lawsuits to get "Under God" removed from the US Pledge of Allegiance, which drive people to believe that the sky is indeed falling on Christianity.

I don't want to turn this into a debate on the issue of the Separation of Church and State as codified in the US Constitution, but suffice to say, the fact of the matter is that we live in a pluralistic society, whether we like it or not, for better or for worse. We live in a society that we must share with people of other faith traditions and ethnicities and it's foolish of us to ignore the truth that they can see Christians and see their dirty laundry being aired for all of to look at. It may be the sexual immoralities of our grandstanding spiritual leaders or even the hypocrisies of Christians in their daily lives. The moment Christians start to get on their moral high horse and elevate themselves above others, others around us have every right to call us out on each and every one of our hypocrisies.

To get a true feel for oppression and persecution, we need only to look at our own history, and I don't need to fill in the blanks of the many examples where ethnic or religious groups were singled out for the deprivation of their rights as citizens in their own country and/or targeted for ethnic cleansing. We haven't gotten anywhere even close to that in North America, and it's insulting to the people who have suffered in places like that when Christians view ultimately petty annoyances like Turner's comment or even the question of whether the phrase "One Nation Under God" has any credibility within the US Pledge of Allegiance as examples of the persecution of Christianity. In short, it seemingly all boils down to the observation that apparently, while Christians can dish it out, they certainly can't seem to take it.

What's even more perverse about it is that when we look at how people have viewed the matter of religion in the public square, it's clearly front and centre. Both the GOP and Democractic Party campaigns in the US heavily leverage the religious element, whether they're conscious of it or not. The US has had a self-professed Born-Again Christian in the Oval Office for two presidential terms now. The backlash seen towards the American commercial media after Janet Jackson's notorious "wardrobe malfunction" is proof positive that Christians can have an incredible effect on the media landscape in North America. Sure, there's still plenty of sex and violence in the media today, and the outcry of enraged Christian parents has done little to change that, but in turning to the time-honored solution of just rolling your own alternative, Christianity itself has become a media force to be reckoned with.

"It's probably best to send them straight to bed with no dinner!"

It's the sort of rhetoric that I see talking about Christianity being the target of oppression which reminds me most of whiny children (of which I used to be and to a certain extent still am). Talk to a kid about how they're doing and likely they'll complain about how their parents didn't get them item X or take them to go to event Y or see person Z. There's of course all sorts of mitigating factors at play here on the parent's side of things, but the child seldom sees things from his or her parent's perspective. Hence, they're being treated in a way that's unfair and unjust.

Hopefully though, those children grow up, get older, start to live a little, and begin to understand reality as not being so one-sided as they once thought; that the world really doesn't revolve around them. We'll have to wait and see if Christians steeped in the Persecution Complex can have the ability to eventually mature as they can.

Bethelemian Rhapsody

The Morning News' Daniel Nester, on Christian Parody Band ApologetiX:

The band first crossed my radar one morning in 2005, while I read my daily check of news updates on Queen, my favorite rock band. On the same day, Queenzone.com (“News and information about Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon”) and BrianMay.com (“The Official Brian May Web Site,” guitarist for Queen) reported a parody of the band’s 1976 opus “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Renamed “Bethlehemian Rhapsody,” ApologetiX’s version retold the story of David and Goliath. The song opens:

Is this a real guy? Is he just fantasy?

‘Cause of his grand size, no one’s safe from fatality

Open your eyes, look up at Goliath, and see:

I’m dressed for war, boys. I need no infantry

The later, rocking movement begins “So you think you can scorn me and spit at my tribe? / So you think you’re above me just based on your size?”

Ten Things I Hate About You: #7 - Happy Happy Joy Joy

Let's face it: Christianity isn't exactly a cakewalk. Especially in our day and age, Christians of all ages and walks of life face plenty of challenges both from within and outside the church. From my own experience and the shared experiences of people I've met, I've come to think very strongly that we all experience, at least at one point in our lives, a prolonged period where have our own journey out into the desert, with no food or water to sustain us. Sometimes we're tossed in kicking and screaming, cast out of the palaces of comfort that we've built for ourselves. Other times, we wander into it, lost, our heads stuck in a mist.

Still other times, it is an exile of our own choosing.

Regardless of the how or the why, it is a trying time, and those 40 days can seem very long indeed.

Hand in hand with the Prosperity Gospel encountered so often in its myriad permutations is the notion that Christianity is all quite pleasant, lovely and rosy. "Don't Worry, Be Happy" seems to be the general theme in some services I've been to. All you have to do is, as Willie Nelson once sang, "Ac-cent-uaaate the positive".

Frankly, I think it's plain unhealthy. I don't think anyone would argue with me when I say that if there is one thing life is not, it is an endless succession of ever higher and ever steeper peaks - there are plateaus of dullness and mundaneness. There are lows. And there are crashes. Sometimes, deep crashes from which a recovery to even just the baseline can take a lifetime to accomplish. I say "unhealthy" because when theology is presented with the broad brushstrokes of rosy living, it provides the perfect set up for all kinds of deep crashes:

First, it provides an over-inflated view of what Christianity is, what Christianity offers, and where the Christian believer fits within that greater context. Like so much stock of Nortel and JDS Uniphase (anyone remember them!?) it can lead people's expectations about the Christian life soaring through the stratosphere, but when the bubble bursts and the plane runs out of fuel, there is a very heavy price to be paid. Which leads to the second point: what happens when the crash comes. Is it my fault? Am I not being a good enough Christian, or am I not trying hard enough to be what the people around me see to be a Good Christian? There's a great post about the idea of lament in Christianity at InternetMonk, but really latched on to me was a comment to that post written by J. Michael Jones:

...We were missionaries in the Middle East at the time. We had just gone through two hellish years alone (with some very sick children). I had just sent out a newsletter asking for our donor/prayer team to pray that we “could cope with the situation.” It was the first time I had ever shown any chink in my armor. A few weeks later I had a letter of rebuke from one of our “prayer warriors.” I will never forget his words, “Christians don’t just ‘cope’ . . . they are always victorious! You apparently don’t have your eyes on Jesus.”

At that moment, my entire Christian world (built over 15 years) collapsed, like bringing down a skyscraper with a feather from a hummingbird.

We need to face up to the fact that yes, life is really bloody hard. We can react to this by pretending that it isn't, or we can make some effort to admit it, move on, and learn from the experience. Isn't that how faith grows and matures? We can also learn to accept this as a healthy component of our spiritual lives, and perhaps, even a vital component. I wonder sometimes from my own experience if our prayers are at their most truly heartfelt and honest when we're in our darkest hour and everything is collapsing all around us. I've often seen people in immense emotional or psychological pain, and yet are avoided or even shunned by the communities who in theory would be the ones most capable and able to help them, all because they seem to be object reminders of difficult and saddening life as a whole can be, let alone life as a Christian. What we really need is a realization that yes, there's nothing wrong at all with wanting to, along with "I'll Fly Away", sing the blues.

Questions Worth Asking

I’ve learned in my life that when Christians speak of Jesus you must ask some basic questions.

Are they speaking of Jesus as he really was, or as they imagine him to be?

Does this Jesus bless and approve of a privileged status for one group, color, denomination or nation?

Does this Jesus call us to discipleship or simply preside over a way of life we’ve come to call the “Christian lifestyle?”

Does this Jesus cross barriers, or does he send us back to hang with our own kind?

Does this Jesus have a mission, or just a moral agenda?

Does this Jesus show us where the Kingdom of God calls us, or does he spiritualize the Kingdom so that we never have to really think about it unless we’re about to die?

Is this Jesus a white, American Christian? Or a middle-eastern Jewish teacher?

Does this Jesus leave me alone? Or does he call me into community?

Does this Jesus give me a spirituality that makes me a “good Christian” on my own comfortable terms, or does he offer me a spirituality grounded in grace, but calling me into the tension of discipleship beyond the boundary lines drawn by religion?

Does this Jesus serve as the official spokesperson for organized religions lobotomized version of the Kingdom and the King, or is this the Jesus who started a world changing, cross-cultural movement of people filled with the power of the Kingdom of God?

From Jesus says Cross the Line, at Jesus Shaped Spirituality.

Why Christianity Must Change...

Sometimes I wonder why it's worth feeling like the practice of Christanity in North America as it exists today is deeply flawed and in dire need of a massive overhaul of the socio-cultural precepts that are its underpinnings. Sometimes I wonder if its worth exerting the effort to try to swim against the current of cultural xenophobia, and capitalist consumerism that underlies much of the most visible elements of Christianity today, especially in the United States.

Then, three things happened to me this week.

First, my friend Mike told me about how much of a difference I'd made in his life during the time we spent together here in Fredericton, as part of VCF.

Second, today my supervisor asked me an almost desperate question: where are all of the Christian biologists who are interested in the intersection of science and sprituality and religion, who are truly scientifically honest without being tainted with the deviousness of Intelligent Design?

And third, this evening, off of Digg, I saw the video on this page.



Until the day comes when Christians will learn to live with their brothers and sisters of other lands and creeds, rational Christians who understand the value of love and respect must never rest.

The real threat to Christianity today only comes from within - from the cancerous presence of those who use Christianity to gather unto themselves vast amounts of power, wealth and prestige. They only teach outsiders that Christianity exists only as a mass-market hate machine bent on nothing less than the utter annihilation of anything that does not conform to its strictly narrow-minded beliefs. They must be opposed, for the price of their fame and fortune is our collective conscience.

OMFG.

From BadAstronomy, comes this: "Oklahoma: One step from Doom":

The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a bill that says that a student can receive a passing grade in an Earth Science class if they say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Earth an hour ago, and then planted false memories into every single living creature on Earth to make it seem like they’ve been around longer.

Of course, that’s not the intent of the bill. The intent is that a student can say the Earth is 6000 years old and still get a passing grade. The bill itself says that a student cannot be graded down if they say that what they are being taught interferes with their religious beliefs.

Specifically, the bill states:

"A school district shall treat a student’s voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint, if any, on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner the district treats a student’s voluntary expression of a secular or other viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject and may not discriminate against the student based on a religious viewpoint expressed by the student on an otherwise permissible subject."

It’s the "otherwise permissible subject" phrase that’s sticky. That can easily be interpreted as meaning tests, besides just normal classroom discussion.

Just astounding. And a reaction from Mainstream Baptist:

A colleague phoned Representative Jones' office on Tuesday to advise him that I would like to speak in opposition to the bill as it came before the Education Committee on Wednesday. She was informed that no input from citizens would be permitted.

I decided it was unusual for citizens to be barred from giving input at Capitol hearings. Under previous leadership at the state capitol, citizen input was welcome but often limited to one or two minutes. So, I went to the state capitol and attended the committee meeting. Citizens were permitted to give input on the other legislation that came before the committee, but I was not permitted to speak against HB 2211.

US State Government officials have drafted and passed a bill that not only blatantly violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, but completely flies in the face of simple educational and scientific reasoning.

Oh, yes, and it was done undemocratically too.

Oh my F**king God.

Ten Things I Hate About You: #6 - Say The Magic Words...

Christianity, like other great religions, is a religion of language. Words almost seem to have just as much meaning as the concepts they're intended to convey, if not more so. What we have as a result is a panoply of beliefs, ideas, dogma, and institutions, all centered around the dissection and interpretation of the language upon which the Church has been founded. Naturally, human institutions being what they are, they all haven't been very good at getting along with one another.

I say this because, as I've spent time coming out of my little Catholic comfort zone and into the wide, wonderful world of Protestant Christianity it's really hammered home to me just how powerful words can be in Christianity (ironic, since I come from a denomination which is steeped in linguistic and semiotic meaning) and no, I'm not talking about The Word, but rather, the everyday language that people employ when they talk about their faith.

Like take for example, this question:

"Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

This (and all of its permutations) is a common canard we've all heard at one point in time, if not in church, and if not from people we meet, then perhaps, in web forums, blog comments, or in the popular media.

But what does this actually mean? It almost comes across as a blatantly loaded question, as if the person asking you this question, or making a factual claim with this concept truly understands what that means or implies. The idea of a "personal savior" seems to lead to the idea that the relationship between Christ and the believer is direct and singular. This is a powerful concept, as it implies that, as Paul said, that there is nothing which comes between you and Jesus - everything else then is a distraction, powerless and irrelevant at its very least, or a dangerous obstacle to be fought and defeated at its very worst.

But of course, isn't this what all Christians believe in? Surely, one of the prime tenets of Christian belief is that Jesus Christ died for the forgiveness of sins of each and every individual person, an act borne out of the love that God has for each and every person. Sounds personal enough to me. Then, why do such statements seem to apparently be made along denominational lines?

Moreover, this implies that Jesus can almost be thought of as a possession over which a person or groups of people can claim exclusivity: they alone know God, and they alone know Jesus - and you can too, if you join our church/renounce your own church and follow only us/send me a self addressed stamped envelope and your banking information to...

Additionally, it implies that Everything's Going To Be Okay once you chant the holy incantation; go to the front of the church - and boom - you're a Christian, with nothing to worry about at all. All of the horrible, worldly burdens weighing you down...you don't need to worry about those anymore. Why should you? You said the magic words! Of course, then those same people wake up one morning and they realize that the boogeymen haven't really gone away, the burdens they've been carrying around with them are still there, and they're all still waiting to be dealt with - it's even worse when they're growing impatient.

The problem with the idea of banking in phrases and concepts like that is that while there is a great deal of meaning attached to those words, you can easily run the risk of losing the message and the meaning of those words and narrowing your focus on the words themselves: you end up with Christians who say they're Christians, but actually haven't asked themselves the hard and important questions which all Christians should ask themselves but are of especially high importance to people who are new to Christianity - like, the question of evil and suffering and the omnipotency of God, of absolute truth claims, and the relationship between science and Christianity. And then of course, questions pertinent to our time, like how we are to approach other religions or sexual orientations. These are perilously hard questions to probe, but they aren't even necessarily demanding immediate answers - what's important is that Christians are asking them in the first place. You simply can't capture that in a 15 second soundbite asking a spiritually loaded question to which the person asking likely already knows the answer (hint: nine times out of ten, your answer will probably be wrong in their eyes). You certainly can't capture that in a creed or a testimony, or the many other things that people do to verbally present their beliefs. Christianity is a religion of faith, not of empty incantations, and while the creeds and testimonies are important, they shouldn't be made the front-and-centre focus of peoples' spiritual lives.

When the medium starts to supersede the message, then there is nothing spiritually sound to place a firm foundation on when people are consistently challenged in their faith (for better and/or for worse) by the observations they make in the world which run contrary to what their church leaders or spiritual advisors tell them. It is there, in that world, where Christians make themselves known (again, for better or for worse), and in that world, in this world, saying the magic words simply isn't going to cut the mustard.


- Thanks to Susan and Robbie for the impetus behind this post.

Ten Things I Hate About You: #5 - Seed, Scattered and Sown (Or, On being a Christian in a Secular World)

A few weeks ago, at the inaugural InterVarsity Christian Fellowship meeting of the year, one of the leadership team thoughtfully opined on the Parable of the Seed (Matthew 13: 18-23) - specifically of course, what the parable means and how that tied into the "vision" of the group that the leadership team had laid out for itself. Like many other parables, its one which doesn't take a PhD to figure out, and yet deceptively carries a considerable amount of depth. For Christians (or people of faith in general) there are many distractions and disruptions which serve as barriers to belief, and it is up to us to understand where they're coming from and how to deal with them.

Hearing that parable mentioned made me think a lot about how many people in my past experience approach this passage. The obvious and arguably most common understanding of these barriers is that they come from The Outside World; popular and secular culture, in all its myriad forms. The solution? Eliminate them. Anything not directly Christian related or ostensibly Christian is immediately suspect, if not shunned - once I was told by someone that he was disdainful of, and denounced anything that wasn't "Praise Music", and even thought of classical music as sinful for its lack of obvious praise. (I guess someone better go tell J.S. Bach.) It's an understandable position - to surround yourself with Christian culture, as a reinforcing habit.


This is the part where I start tossing in long biological words



This picture, shamelessly ripped off from a site in New Zealand is an illustration of a plant's root system. You can make out where the roots are, but one of the more subtle things about this picture is the greyish haze surrounding the roots, not to mention the small filamentous tendrils that branch off from the roots themselves. All of that comes from what's called mycorrhizal fungi. The term "Mycorrhizal" refers to the nature of the relationship between the host plant and the fungi, which commonly occur in soil, and it's a fascinating relationship.

The fungi is limited in its growth and survival by its ability to produce or acquire nutrients; the plant is limited in its growth and survival by its ability to access water. The solution? Work together. The fungi allow the plant to access more water, and the plant provides the fungi with the nutrients it needs.

The fungi are foreign bodies to the plant's root cells; nevertheless they are accepted when they come into contact with them. Instead of fighting, where the fungi tries to invade the plant for what it needs (to be confronted by the plant's immune system), the fungi and the plant have, in a sense, come to an understanding (okay, okay, I know I'm anthropomorphizing things here, please bear with me!). The fungi as a result prospers, as does the plant. In fact, it's been experimentally shown that plants grown in soil where the fungi have been removed through sterilization actually suffer compared to plants grown in soil with the fungi present.

For all of the talk of the evils of secular music, books, films and people that are often seen and heard bandied about by Christians, We often forget, or even refuse to realize, that among the junk that fills popular culture, there's a great deal of treasure to be had. There's an incredibly powerful Christian message of the meaning and value of selfless sacrifice (among other things) in 300, for example, seen in Miller's depiction of King Leonidas (and conversely, on the arrogance and pride of man, seen in his depiction of King Xerxes I). The Straight Story is a beautiful film about love and forgiveness, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, of course. That's not to excuse of course, the outright garbage that we often see in popular and secular media, but it's no reason to cast all of it with a wide brush stroke of disdainful righteous indignation (and it's not like Christian music isn't guilty of excessive banality, either). For all of the Britney Spears and Paris Hiltons we have to endure, there are people like Thom Yorke and Glen Phillips who have given us music with substance, meaning, and honesty (and I'll even include Trent Reznor, for his understanding of the importance of and meaning of music as expression). There's so much in all of that which people of faith can use to not only better understand other people, but themselves as well, and if we lose out on that, we lose out on a unique and special opportunity to challenge and enrich our collective perspective. Like the plant without the mycorrhizal soil fungi, to me I feel that there'd be something missing in my personal faith if I completely eschewed non-Christian music or books, and for that I really do feel weaker for it. To do so would be like saying that all soil fungi are pathogenic and deleterious to plant growth, advocating the growing of all of our plants in sterilized soil.

Like it or not, while Christians are a community unto themselves they are also a community that is part of a greater whole - and secular culture is an indelible part of that whole. It can be a source of spiritual obstacles, yes, but it can also be a source of spiritual reinforcement and edification as well.

Ten Things I Hate About You: #4 - The Do's and Don'ts of Evangelism (Or: Everything I needed to know about evangelism I got from indie Mac developers)

As a Mac nerd who's hooked on interesting and innovative new software programs made by independent Mac software developers, the MacHeist promotion intrigued me. For the uninitiated, it was a fascinating exercise in "viral marketing", using a new marketing technique called the "Alternate Reality Game" (or ARG - essentially, like a role-playing game but with "real-world elements") to try to sell you software programs. In the community-driven process, you won as prizes free software programs, many of them representative of the incredible drive to innovation and creative effort of many independent Mac developers...a lot of them high school, and college/university students actually, all trying to make their dent in the universe.


In Which I Shamelessly Flog Mac Software

One of these programs was called 1passwd, a program designed to store site passwords in web browsers (i.e. passwords, login and user names, address/payment information etc.) in a far more secure, intelligent and efficient way than usual. I got my copy free through MacHeist (usually the cost would be $29.95 CDN), and despite that, the developers at Agile Web Solutions took great pains to give the 'Heisters full support for their copies of 1passwd, even though they hadn't spent a dime on their product. When minor updates and bug fixes to 1passwd were released for the paying customers, the 'Heisters got them too, even though there was no obligation to do so (again, since we got all of our copies for free).

So to recap: the people at AWS spent many man-hours attending to and supporting hundreds of customers who hadn't spent any money at all on their product. Zip. Zero. Zilch. They could have just walked away from the 'Heisters, but they didn't. They could have charged us money for the additional minor updates and bug fixes, a totally fair thing to do, since we didn't pay for our copies. They didn't. And to top it all off, when a major update (major enough that all customers would have to pay to upgrade) for 1passwd was released, the 'Heisters were offered a 20% discount.

So to, uh, recap the recap: AWS went to a hell of a lot of effort to support a relatively small amount of users who weren't paying customers. Arguably, they lost hundreds, probably thousands of dollars in direct sales in the enterprise...which is fine if you're a massive software conglomerate like Apple or Microsoft...but potentially dangerous if you're an outfit of two guys operating out of Toronto.

So why did they do it?

If you asked a 'Heister about AWS or 1passwd, they'd be falling over themselves to tell you what an incredible bunch of folks the developers at AWS were. Heck, that's what I'm doing now, isn't it? They'd tell you, "Man these guys were incredible! Look at how unbelievably well they treated their customers, customers who got their stuff free! Run, don't walk, and buy their stuff now! Oh yeah, and by the way, their product works pretty damn well too..." The clear lesson to be learned here is that in spite of the immediate loss of sales that AWS sustained by giving away their product for free...they gained something arguably far more valuable, and far more powerful: customer good will. They left a lasting impression on those who dealt with them, an impression so indelible that those people wouldn't bat an eyelash at becoming essentially a passionate volunteer sales rep for their company and their product. No persuasion or aggressive advertising involved - all they did was show the MacHeist members how much they supported them, and the rest all followed by itself: the Heisters, myself included, were no longer customers, but software evangelists.


In Which I Draw The Obtuse Connection Between Selling Mac Software And Selling Christianity

If you make a contrast with software sold through aggressive marketing (i.e. ad campaigns), it's usually stuff which is the antithesis of what AWS did. They'd never do anything as risky as jeopardize sales to incur the good will of their people they're trying to engage...no, instead they push their products as hard as they can, over and over again. It's all about making that sale, and nothing else. Would Apple give away thousands of dollars' worth of software for free to people at random, and give them full, free support, no questions asked? How about Microsoft? Or Adobe? (I don't think I can ever imagine Adobe doing that with Photoshop, which last I checked cost $1099.)

One problem with how a lot of people approach evangelism is that it's too often approached from the perspective of an Apple or a Microsoft, or an Adobe when they try to sell software. People, when trying to share their Christianity with others, end up more often than not figuratively bashing them over the head with scripture, giving them both barrels with John 3:16 (and what is it with people and John 3:16, anyway? What about Matthew 5?), expecting them to magically convert to Christianity; that given enough verbal and scriptural lambasting (which can of course take on many forms aside from the usual stereotypical "Fire-And-Brimstone" crowd), they'll "see the light". And in the rush to push God and Jesus and scripture on other people, they completely forget about the people they're pushing it on...what about their needs? Their hurts, fears, pain and needs? Those are things that can be satisfied only through meaningful engagement on a truly human level, instead of just merely shoving a Bible in their hands and singing "I'll Fly Away".

All too often I've seen people try to evangelize to someone by doing just that. Getting so caught up in spreading the message they they forget the meaning of what it is they're trying to push in the first place. It becomes empty and hollow, and it only leaves the person you're trying to evangelize to, disillusioned and angry and bitter when things get rough. But it's of no concern, in the grand scheme of things - as long as they made that sale, that's what matters. I saw that back at U of T...people sharply dressed in business attire, prowling the crowded sidewalks along St. George Street, Bible in hand, hunting for someone to preach to. Christianity becomes something you sell to someone, in the hopes that in the process you'll get your own heavenly commission. The human element - the most important element - becomes totally irrelevant. Instead of truly being there, for someone in pain, you simply pat them on the head and say "Oh, I'll pray for you...", while you go on happily on your way, satisfied that you just made a new convert.

I think there's a valuable lesson to be learned from AWS and how they treated their MacHeist customers. AWS made an enormous profit by not making a single original sale to those people, because those people raved about them and their product, getting their friends to buy 1passwd, flogging it on their blogs or in forum posts to acquaintances, getting them to buy...and when the opportunity came for the 'Heisters themselves to buy in, they were more than willing to open up their wallets for them.

Likewise, I argue that Christians need to focus less on shoving scripture down people's throats and engaging people as, well, people, regardless of who or what they are. Like AWS forgoing their immediate sales, you're not going to turn them into Christians right off the bat - but what you will do is foster good will with those people, fostering a true image that Christians are more than just mindless Bible-selling automatons and people who genuinely care about them as real people, scripture-pushing aside. It leaves them with an idea of Christians and Christianity not as people and a religion to be reviled, feared or hated, but as people, and a religion that can earn and are deserving of their respect, acceptance and yes, even adoption. And that is something which is truly priceless.

Ten Things I Hate About You: #3 - Thinking Of You

One of the things that I've noticed about Christians when they rush off to decry about some new evil that of course has to be the latest and greatest threat to humanity is how little they know about what that new evil actually is. Nine times out of ten, it'll usually be a situation where the actual reason why that new evil actually is evil is because someone else told you to think it was evil. And if that's ever happened to you, have you ever stopped and asked why you need to think it's evil? How many Creationists or Evolution-deniers have you known who've actually read Darwin's "Origin of Species"? How about quote-unquote "Islamophobes" who've actually read the Koran? Or Homophobes who've actually talked to and known gay people?

Of course, it's much more easier and a lot more simpler to dispense with that altogether, because after all, if your Pastor tells you something, it has to be true, right?

A few months ago, I decided to go to a Protestant church service with two of my friends, just for kicks. The subject of the homily given was about intellectuals, and, towards the middle of the sermon, the pastor railed on evolutionary biology and mainstream science - he said that it had grieved him to know that children were being taught such things, and pulled out the usual distorted quote taken out of context from some biologist about how The Theory of Evolution was really just another religion. To put the cherry on top, he pulled out a typical Richard Dawkins quote extolling the virtues of atheistic, materialistic evolutionary science over religion.

Of course, never mind the fact that evolutionary biology, like the rest of science, doesn't concern itself with questions of religion. Go through the scientific writings of Darwin (and many, many others) and you'll find that books like Origin of Species say nothing about the invalidation of God or Christ, or the Bible. Pull out the latest issue of Science, Nature, Ecology, or Cell. Do they make any implicit statements in their research papers on the invalidation of Christianity?

Hitting close to home was an experience I had when I was 18, and just beginning to be fully aware of my faith as a Christian. I hung out a lot on list-servs and on one of them, a young girl asked about Catholicism. What ended up happening was a horrible, horrible experience for me, where the others perpetuated lie after lie after lie about Catholicism and Catholics. Lies like claims about how Catholics practice idolatry because supposedly, Catholics "worship the Saints" or "worship statues". Never mind that the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church is more than a little explicit about the fact that that's just not true. Not one of them had either been to a Catholic Mass or had known Catholics outside of myself and one other person (who meekly kept out of the way of the discussion). The list's moderator had known several Catholics as a child who had regrettably been very mean to him - this only reinforced his beliefs that he repeated again, and again, despite the fact that it was clear that he had no possible idea about what he was talking about. As he thundered about how awful and sinful Catholics were, more and more people followed him, and unquestioningly believed what he said, automatically assuming it to be true by default.

After all, why let something as insignificant as the facts get in the way of a good bashing?

The core problem here is that Christians, in my experience at least, in our emphasis of group coherence, have lost the ability to truly think and reason for ourselves about what others around us are saying - a problem affecting Catholics and Protestants alike. I've seen this in discussions about evolution, but also about homosexuality and sexual education as well - repeated memes about how abstinence-only sexual education is the only effective form of sexual education (at the total exclusion of anything else), or about other religions, or cultures or sexual orientations. Disagreeing or vilifying them of someone's own accord is one thing - doing so because your church leaders or your church group has told you to (without any question from you) is something else.

This is a dangerous place to be in for Christians, for without the ability to exercise rational examination of any claim about anything forwarded by a church's leaders, Christians end up being nothing more than mindless robots sent to attack anything that the leader or leaders disagree with, regardless of its level of true "evil".

I've often heard that Catholics especially find the notion of suicide distasteful and offensive because it's tantamount to inviting friends over for a birthday party and throwing the gifts they hand you back at them. Life is a sacred gift given to us by God, and to commit suicide is to commit one of the most grievous insults against God - not only a refusal of a profound gift from God, but a refusal indignant, and ungrateful.

I've come to think that the unconscious forsaking of rational-minded thinking among Christians to be intellectually, almost the same. Not only did God freely give us life, but God also freely gave us a mind to use with it. Forsaking our ability to think freely as human beings (and to effectively let other people do the thinking for us) is to say to God that we not only don't need freedom of thought - we don't want it, and don't care about it at all, and simply don't appreciate or are grateful for the wonders that come with it.

Ten Things I Hate About You: #2 - Hatred of Others

Several weeks ago, I decided to kick off my ten-post series with a discussion of what is ostensibly one of the most galling issues within modern-day Christianity - sectarian intolerance. To briefly recap, the notion that any one specific church of Christianity is "the right way" or "the only way" to Christianity sets up a deeply toxic atmosphere which fosters an "us versus them" mentality, where the group identity isn't defined in a positive way, but rather in a negative way...a process known as "Othering".

Sadly, this is really only the tip of the iceberg.

For all of the problems that othering carries with it among Christians, it's really a whole order of magnitude greater when we inevitably think about the issue of how Christians relate to other cultures and spiritual traditions. The fundamental issue of how Christianity is to relate to other religions and cultures is one that has arguably been the one of the defining questions facing Christians past and present, and, in world that is increasingly connected and interconnected, is one that Christians simply cannot avoid in the future.

The way that I see it, there are generally two options that we have when it comes to engaging others from which Christians can choose: War and Peace.

The War argument is extremely tempting. Define all that is good by what the group is (and by group, we can mean any Christian denomination of your choosing) - define all that is bad by what the group isn't. Wage war on the people who are not part of the group, and all who oppose can either convert or die. This was the religious argument behind such sterling episodes of human history such as The Crusades, and the European campaigns of conquest of North and South America (albeit, these went hand-in-hand with general wealth and power-grabs).

This of course presents you with some awkward questions. Like, how much is human life worth when comparing two sets of different cultures? Is a Muslim man's life worth any less than a Christian's? People would say, yes, it is, since the Muslim is not a Christian and does not believe in what are held to be "Christian ideals". So then, what are "Christian ideals"? What happens to your definition of "Christian ideals" if you look at someone else's Holy Book and find out that whatever they're saying really isn't all that different in principle than what yours says, except that the names might be changed and the wording might be different? What happens when you come across people who don't believe in the same things you do, but end up living fulfilling, productive lives that are arguably no less blameless than yours, if not more so? And furthermore, what happens if you find that your own "Godliness" is far lacking compared to the other guy's?

Generally, these questions were (and in my experience, are), answered by the general notion of "Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition!" (both metaphorical, and literal). There is no compromise. All of those who are not Like Us are to be either made to be Like Us or should be obliterated. And that ends up making your life pretty hard, doesn't it? Think of the effort you need to expend to wage total war on the outside world. You not only need to cut yourself off from the outside world, but you need to reinforce your hatred of it. So you surround yourself with exclusionary imagery, literature and personalities, all for the singular purpose of feeding your hate of everything that isn't you. Would you imagine being a little kid going to school beating up everyone else because they don't wear the same kind of clothes you wear, or because they don't live on your street? Eventually, you'll have tried to beat up everyone in your school, and you either won't have many friends, or you'll be living in a perpetual state of constant conflict and violence. So now you have an interesting quandary to think about: you've now immersed yourself in a state of hatred and prejudice against everyone and everything outside of your boundary defining "you". Is this what Christ, the "Prince of Peace" really had in mind?

Sure, people will say that it's not really "hate" because it's done in a spirit of "love". We're going to hate and discriminate and wage war on Muslims or gays, or anyone else we choose to vilify, merely just to teach them the error of their ways and turn them to our own ways. That type of logic is tantamount to severely beating a child for not setting the placement at the dinner table in the precise way you wanted them to and saying that it was for their own good. In the end, what serves as a better way of spreading the Gospel (assuming that's the overarching objective behind all of this) - a closed fist or an open hand?

As I said before, it's the absolute height of arrogance for any one group of people to presume that they have strict authoritarian say over what the correct and true way to approach God and divinity is. If God truly is as infinite as many of His believers would have you think, then such people in fact place themselves above God, and it is they who are telling God what to do, how to think, and how to act - the Christians who do this effectively recreate God in their own image. When this happens, people are given free license to do absolutely monstrous things to each other.

While I was poking around at random on Facebook, I came across a post made by someone on a university's Christian group that, from what I understand, was intended to be an all-out scathing "critique" of spiritual beliefs of Native Canadians, as outlined by the government. The message? Christianity (as defined by this person and this person alone, naturally) good, native culture and spiritual beliefs bad, destroy them and make them Christian. Obviously, such language wasn't overtly used, but the subtext was very strong, and hard not to miss. I find such sentiment interesting to read, since it was that same overall sentiment which was one of the factors that arguably fed the general disenfranchising, disgracing, and destruction of Native Canadian and Native American culture and rights for centuries. Indirectly, this implies that God endorses or approved of this, and by extension, endorsed the same for other aboriginal cultures in other parts of the world - a Godly endorsement for forced internment camps, the suffering and death of countless lives, deprivation of land, basic human rights and rights to representation and political power and the establishment of them as effectively second or even third-class citizens.

...which is evidence for a "Good", just and loving God, indeed.

Ten Things I Hate About You: "And now, a word from our sponsors..."

While I've been trying to hash out #2 in my Ten Post series, I wanted to bring up some great posts from across the Progressive Christian Blogosphere which have really captured my attention. Many of these posts touch upon the ten points that I want to talk about, so I think it's all rather apropos for what I want to do...


Slacktivist: Casting The First Millstone

The Left Behind series have quickly gained popularity amongst many mainstream Christians, primarily the more right/centre-right evangelical conservative Protestant crowd. You could say it's become the "Harry Potter" of the conservative evangelical Protestant Christians. Which doesn't sound so bad, until you read and find out that the books paint an "awful vision of a blood thirsty Jesus". But who's fault is it for Christians lapping this stuff up?

...The main problem here, though, is that such critics are blaming the victim. That's just wrong. Someone who has been tricked into paying good money for a Clay Aiken CD has suffered enough. There's no need to add insult to injury..."If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin," Jesus said, "it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck." That's angry. But the anger is directed at the proper target -- at the powerful and not the powerless.

More Than Fine: The Romeo and Juliet Effect: Why Christians Keep Having Sex Before Marriage

It's a valid question, and more often that not, the reason is staring us right in the face.

I'm a Christian and I think sex should be saved for marriage. However, if I had a teenage son or daughter, I think I'd rather they have a condom instead of some glorified notion of a supernatural ability to resist the devil. But that's just me. Despite high rates of teen pregnancy and STD transmission, I guess people still think that the way people are raising their kids now seems to be going just fine.

(I also really recommend reading the followup to this post, Pre-Marital Sex: Where Christians Get It All Wrong.)


Conscious Christ: LISTEN

In the film The Big Kahuna, one of the main trinity of the characters gives a little advice to his new co-worker, a self-affirmed Baptist who's not afraid to wear his cross on his sleeve, as it were. In doing so, he gives us all a little reminder of one of the issues with blind, aggressive evangelism that many Christians all too often forget, or choose to ignore:

Phil Cooper: "...It doesn't matter whether you're selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or 'How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.' That doesn't make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you're a marketing rep."

The act and art of truly listening to someone is harder than it seems, which makes it all the more important, especially to members of a faith community trying to reach out to the world around them. It's a critically important basis for dialogue, and without dialogue, we get nowhere with those around us.

Really listening to someone does more than impart to you the other person’s knowledge. It is one of the best ways to show someone love, respect, and concern. It is the easiest way to make someone new feel at ease, and the simplest way to express interest in another person. NOT listening is the quickest way to build a wall, as it expresses a lack of respect or genuine interest.

Said of one of someone I’d like to emulate:
"She is completely present when she's speaking with you - she gives herself to you at that moment. You come away from her feeling good about yourself, that you are cared for."

Ten Things I Hate About You: #1 - Hatred Among Churches

One of the interesting little quirks about human nature is our unerring tendency to form communities. These communities are highly important to us as human beings, on a whole variety of levels. Communities are arguably a defining characteristic of who we are as human beings, and are symbols of how people can transcend their own selfish desires to serve a common, greater good, which only serves to improve the lives of its constituents.

Sadly however, it's fairly self-evident that such communities can have a darker side as well.

Blunt Force Trauma
There are many voices in a community and when they speak with one unified accord, it can be a powerful force, but I've found in my experience that such forces are extremely blunt. Subtle yet important details can be drowned out among the deafening cries of the crowd, and such details are more often than not details of vital importance. When the subtleties of a highly nuanced collection of ideas such as religion meet the unstoppable juggernaut of a community united, wonderful things can indeed happen; but sadly, more often than not, horrible things are done.

Tomato, Tomahto
Which leads me to the ultimate subject of this post: hatred among churches. As a Catholic, I've seen this first hand, on both sides of the equation. Along with my friends, I joked and piled on insults at the expense of Mormons, and at the same time, I still bear the scars inflicted on me years and years ago of a vengeful list-serv which saw fit to treat me as being little better than spiritual gutter trash simply by virtue of the fact that I was Catholic in background.

It's been a while since I've really been exposed first hand to this, until a few months ago when, on two separate occasions, I witnessed two of my friends non-chalantly getting their kicks from spitting on the Christian Exclusionary Targets du Jour: the United Church of Canada. One of whom uttered a light-hearted joke which bore some exceedingly darker undertones; the other was more overt, getting on his bully pulpit and thundering at them.

It'd serve to only show my hypocrisy even more if I thundered at them for their remarks. After all, they're only human and I can't expect them to be any more tolerant and accepting than me if I'm just as guilty as they are. But it's not they as people that I want to point out as flawed - it's a mindset that is especially rampant among us as Christians. It is one that I feel, is acutely problematic among us Christians: Othering.

Othering is a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an "other." Whatever the markers of social differentiation that shape the meaning of "us" and "them," whether they are racial, geographic, ethnic, economic or ideological, there is always the danger that they will become the basis for a self-affirmation that depends upon the denigration of the other group.

And so, Protestants "Other" Catholics (and vice-versa, naturally). Protestants "Other" Protestants - just look at how Christians constantly battle with each other over things like the environment, the position and role of science, politics, secular society, LGTBQ rights, all with invectives that are incredibly powerful. Only the "true believers" that will surely get into Heaven are limited to a direct and narrow view of scripture and divinity - all others are doomed to eternal damnation. This is a mindset which of course, is a plague on Christians who fall on both the ideological Left and Right.

It's one thing to encounter hate and bigotry from non-Christians; that I understand. But it's another thing entirely when you encounter hate and bigotry from other Christians - people who should be your spiritual brothers and sisters, that are instead all too eager to hurl their epithets at you like so many spears and arrows.

This is stupid. In fact, it's not only bloody stupid, it's damned immature. It smacks of little five year olds at the playground arguing over a ball, or who called who a "poo-poo head" first. The only difference is that these five year olds argue over scripture in churches; sometimes the five year olds wear fancy robes. In fact, the true five year olds are even better in some circumstances: at least you know they genuinely hate you and want to beat you up after school. Adults on the other hand, love to lie and be two-faced, and while they're smiling at you with one face, they're quickly spreading gossip and slander among your friends with the other.

And the funniest thing about it is that all the while, while the people within the group are busy Othering people, they talk about making a positive change in the world. Mission trips are promoted, ministering initiatives are talked about and advertised. The obvious objective is to bring Christ to others, the implicit message being that the outside world is dirty, and that it is up to us to clean it. Of course, we forget that we have much work to do ourselves to heal our divisions and conflicts.

If Christians are to make a truly meaningful difference in this world, we need to first recognize that we have a problem: we are locked into our own readings of scripture and holy writ, and it is up to us to reconcile and understand our differences. One Church's view of Christ does not make it any less Christian than another's, and who gets to decide whose view of scripture and divinity is the sole One True View anyway? The immediate answer of course is "that the Bible tells us!" but the issue with the Bible is that it is so nuanced in its subtleties that a whole variety of interpretations of a whole variety of verses and passages can be argued and defended. Does this mean that Christianity is reduced to what some feel is a post-modernist nightmare of subjective relativism? No, in fact, it doesn't even have to be that you have to accept the opinions of others. In fact, the only demand is that we recognize the diversity of ideas and viewpoints that exist among us, and that all of them have something meaningful to bring to the table.

And it's realizing that which is often the hardest part. Then again, no one ever said the road to spiritual maturity was ever easy. We can stay in our comfortable form of insular spiritual stasis, ready to brandish the knives at anyone who doesn't think or act or believe like we do. Or, we can open the door to hurtful, painful change which has the real potential to further move us forward as Christians. As long as we choose our stasis, we will be locked into a state of pitiful jealousy spending more time inflating our own egos and bashing other people, than actually doing something meaningful for those around us.

Ten Things I Hate About You: My Problems With Christianity

An Introduction

I know I'm different. I knew it from an early age. Even in Toronto, a city where being different was something you took for granted, I knew my level of difference was something very much unlike that of others. Perhaps it was my stuttering problem. Maybe it was my looks, my attitudes, or the my outlook on life.

My faith experience has been no different - from a very early age I realized that the way I approached Christianity wasn't like other people my age at all, and it was both a blessing and a curse I've had to take with me for all of my life.

Nevertheless, I've found myself passionately ardent about my spiritual beliefs, regardless of how far they fall out of the mainstream. Which has led me to this point - a series of ten blog posts where I will try to identify the systematic points in which I will state that the Christian Church has not only failed those who it was supposed to serve, but has also failed its original mandate - to truly serve God. In doing so, I want to argue for a more humane Christianity, one which takes emphasis away from serving one's self, and places emphasis on unconditional service to others...one which, ostensibly, removes hate and arrogance out of Christianity, and fills in its place an atmosphere of acceptance, respect, and above all, humility. I talk of failure in the sense that it is we, as the people of the Church who have failed.

My inspiration comes from Charles Kimball's excellent book, When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs, a book I read when I was in 2nd year. It was an impulse buy at the U of T Bookstore (albeit a very expensive one, since at the time it had just come out in hardcover), and while much of what it said was stuff I'd already understood and realized, Kimball excellently and clearly codified a set of five key points that he identified as highly problematic not just with Christianity, but with religion as a whole, including Islam:

1. Absolute truth claims
2. Blind obedience
3. Establishing the "ideal" time
4. The end justifies any means
5. Declaring holy war

My ten points will clearly overlap with these, but I want to be a little more precise about what I want to discuss; specifically I want to identify behaviors, attitudes and mindsets that I have come across in my spiritual journey.

I've wanted to do this for a long time, and I've decided to do it because as a Christian living in this world, I see so many things that we're doing wrong that we could easily correct if we only has the wherewithal to do so. And I don't think these changes are highly fundamental - if anything they are changes that lie within the hearts and minds of believers themselves; no mass conversion to leftist socialism, or even "liberal" socio-political beliefs (i.e. pro-LGTBQ/women's rights) need occur.

The cost of our mistakes? The goodwill that we should be fostering with other cultures and nationalities; the support and presence of people like myself, who constantly see in other Christians a reason to not participate in Christianity, or even believe in it altogether, and, above all, the health and safety of innocent lives.

We can't afford to keep on making the same mistakes we've been making for so long. We need to make a change - the only questions are when, and how.

Lent + Muslims = ...

A couple of very insightful posts by the Soujourners that I'd like to pass on:

Jeff Carr: How do you know someone until you talk?

"...One of the (Iranian Muslim) leaders said that he had read the Bible from cover to cover 10-20 times in the course of his study, but he wondered if any of us had ever read the entire Quran. It was a fair question, and one that actually made me feel somewhat guilty. As I began to think about the primacy of the role of religion in Iran, and how much of their nation's value system comes out of the Quran, I began to think about whether or not you can truly understand a people if you have not read their holy book. Could people truly know me as a person, and understand me, if they had no real knowledge of the Bible?

These conversations, as well as many others, have also made it clear that the Iranians are very interested in being respected, but feel like they have not received much respect from the West. Everyone we have talked to has expressed this pain and frustration, and yet they have been so gracious, and continue to want to reach out and build bridges with us, in spite of feeling disrespected. It's a value I think we as Christians in America could learn from our Islamic brothers and sisters in Iran, and it's a value that would go a long way in helping us solve some of the differences between our nations."

Joy Carroll Wallis: Walking with Jesus Through the Wilderness

"...Firstly, we read that Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread. There's a great humanity about this temptation. You have to remember now that he was hungry, he was exhausted; he hadn't eaten for 40 days! This was a temptation to security. Immediate gratification, the quick fix, the easy answer. My kids know all about that temptation! So do I. In my constant efforts to be efficient, I am always looking for the easy instant solution. On a purely domestic level, it's so tempting to buy the ready-to-serve juice pouches, the individual applesauce pots ... but all that excess packaging!

Much of life is like that. We go to great lengths to have an easy life. It can be a daily temptation for us not to discipline ourselves in areas of greed, materialism, or even sensuality. Health and wealth – we want it now. We want God to speak to us now, to guide us now, to heal us now. And Jesus is saying: No, have patience. Be in the wilderness and discover how to rely on God. Simplify your lifestyle, reject the easy answers, and the wilderness journey will start to teach you something about trust in God and how to serve God with your heart, your soul, and your mind."

Both posts make valuable points which I think many Christians would do well to at least listen to, and contemplate.

Talking to Creationists (or: A Reply to "Bill")

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

In my line of work, and amongst the crowd with whom I've found myself running around, it's inevitable that I'd meet and come into contact with Creationists. The first time that blatantly happened, it was with a handsome young chap named 'Tom', who offhandedly remarked about how "the evidence for Creationism was overwhelming". At seminar I'd attended on prayer, one of the talks took a subtly anti-intellectual bent, encouraging prayers for people to "accept the research of learned Christians" (read: that Atheistic Darwinian university/college biology departments would start teaching Intelligent Design/Creationism). At a wonderful talk given by a speaker at VCF, the speaker was a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould, but thought he was "out to lunch when it came to Creation-Evolution", and didn't hesitate to lump him in the same crowd as Richard Dawkins (!? - Sorry, but that's like lumping Jim Wallis or John Shelby Spong with Pat Roberson and Jerry Falwell). All this left me with an important question: how do I react to this? How should I react to this?


Anger Management

As I've alluded to in posts I've made in the past, back when I was but a young caterpillar resting on some grass at Joker's Hill (U of T's field station where I first got my taste for field biology), I was filled with a lot of anger at Creationists. I'm passionate about my faith, and I'm passionate about my science, so you can only imagine how I'd feel to see my fellow Christian brothers and sisters attacking science and scientists, labelling it as morally bankrupt, inherently atheistically biased, anti-religious, anti-Christian, and downright intellectually dishonest. Never mind the fact that scientists are among some of the most honest, and hard working people you will ever meet, and many of them are quite open to the idea of religion (sure, a lot of them are hostile to religion, but hey, who can blame them?). And of course, there's the little contradiction of people following a religion of love filled to the brim with emotions that are anything but filled with love.

I've realized now that it doesn't get me anywhere being so angry, and if anything, it just gets me more depressed. I've talked to and seen enough Creationists to know that nine times out of ten, a Creationist simply won't budge from their position. You can show them all of the evidence in the world and it won't register with them. The only thing I think I can do is to just shrug my shoulders, say, "live and let live" and hopefully reach a happy compromise. Contrary to popular belief, Creationist Christians aren't all terrible monsters who would damn you to hell for what you think - in fact, on the whole, they're fairly nice people with all sorts of wonderfully humane and progressive attitudes on a lot of different topics. If there's one message I have to give to scientists, especially biologists, it's this: Creationists are not your enemies.

And here's why - at the talk at VCF I'd heard earlier, I noticed two fundamental things which a lot of Creationists do, things which are at the heart of the reason as to why there's so much negative sentiment between Creationists and science. But guess what? They are all mistakes of which we are all guilty, Creationist and "evolutionist" alike...

1) Assumptions: You only need to read my posts about my experiences with my friend Alan then and now to see just what kind of problems making assumptions can get you into. Assumptions are easy to make, but they're hard to break down. It's all too easy to trot out Richard Dawkins as the face of Evolutionary Biology, but look closer - how many evolutionary biologists does he speak for? He doesn't speak for me, or for my supervisor, or for many of the profs I've worked with both here and in Toronto; in fact, many of them downright hate him for being a total asshat. Even atheists think he's total nutbar for acting like a downright dickstick with others who disagree with him.

My first point being: don't assume things about a group of people you don't know. You wouldn't assume that Christians are murderers because of people who go out shooting abortion doctors or advocate total war with Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran. Likewise, it would be equally unfair to assume that evolutionary biologists are a bunch of atheists who want to destroy Christianity.


2) The Limits of Your Expertise: A short talk I had with this speaker revealed just how much he actually knew about Gould's writings - he had conflated the "Punctuated Equilibria vs. Phyletic Gradualism" debate with the disputes that Dawkins had with Gould over "The Selfish Gene" and Sociobiology...two topics which are related, yes, but in a deeper sense are actually very different. Oh yeah, and Gould actually argued for a peaceful coexistence or even harmonious synergy between science and religion, unlike Dawkins. I asked him if he had read Gould's papers on Punctuated Equilibrium (in which he would have known that Gould actually wasn't as critical of "Phyletic Gradualism" as many people usually claim). He hadn't.

My second point being: if you are going to make statements on something...anything really, what you need to do is inform yourself. Go straight to the source. What did person X really say to person Y? See it for yourself, and not what other people want you to see. Do the primary sources confuse you, or are they overwhelming for your level of understanding? Contact someone else and get them to help you out. For Christians, this shouldn't be too hard to comprehend - we do it already, all the time...it's called Bible Study.


You'll see I'm not the enemy/Just a prisoner of society

It'd be foolish of me to not hold people on the other side accountable for this too. For all of the senseless and needless wallowing in the "oh, woe is me" Persecution Complex that more than a few Christians love to immerse themselves in, it's hard to argue that there isn't a similar prejudicial attitude of condescension, ridicule, and suspicion of Christianity and religion as a whole. People like P.Z. Myers and Larry Moran (A biochem prof at U of T who I've tangled with on several occasions) are guilty of these same sins - the only difference is that they do it for the side of evangelical Atheism.

I don't want to give the impression that this speaker was a horrible little ignoramus of a troll. He was a genuinely wonderful man with a whole set of interesting and refreshing insights on things, and I truly enjoyed talking to him about other things. (Hey, he shares a rather dim view of Ann Coulter with me, so you know he's a pretty cool guy just based on that alone.) His mistakes are not egregious sins leading unto death, but rather, common errors universal to all humans regardless of their religious background. How many times have you instinctively cast snap judgments or made quick prejudiced assumptions about people based on first impressions? God knows I have, many, many more times than I'd ever care to admit.

That to me, is what Christianity is about. Allowing our belief and faith in the divine to help us to rise above the mistakes we make as beings of flesh, towards a higher state of being - working against our instincts to judge and bear grudges against people, to be arrogant and hateful with each other...so we can be better people than what we were before.

To my Christian brothers and sisters: I am an evolutionary biologist. But I am not your enemy. As a scientist, I come to you not with a clenched fist, but with an open hand seeking dialogue and friendship. What you choose to do with that however, is ultimately up to you.

Three Weeks

Three Weeks. Apparently, if you're a middle-aged man in Japan, you can survive for at least this long in less than 50 degree F weather without food and water by hibernating. If you go on the Pritkin Diet, this is at least the amount of time it takes for you to "cure" diabetes. And if you're Pastor Ted Haggard of New Life Church, this is how long it takes you to be "cured" of homosexuality.

So we here on the Looney Liberal Left got more than our fair share of chuckles after hearing how Pastor Ted Haggard, founder and leader of one of the most powerful and largest mega-churches in the US, with a direct channel to George W. Bush and The White House no less, was publicly shamed and humiliated after a story broke out alleging that had had been involved in a homosexual affair with a male prostitute, with a little methamphetamine use on the side. That Haggard left his church with little protest after his half-hearted admission of "some indiscretions" almost certainly confirms a large extent of the story of what happened between the two men. It's a story which makes me really sad actually. If you read the story of Haggard and New Life Church, it's a very inspiring story of how one man built up a faith community so big it has a single service of 8000 people, with it's own "spiritual NORAD" where teams of 70,000 people around the world act as prayer warriors. To see Haggard lose all of that is almost heartbreaking, and while Haggard would be more than happy to cast me and others like me down into Hades if he had his way - I have to say I don't feel hate, or anger, or that classically delightful word "schaudenfreude", but rather, sadness and pity. Pity that someone feels ashamed for something they should be proud of, and sadness that someone like Haggard may very well never learn from his experience (albeit temporary) as an outcast gay man.

Like that man who was locked in a period of physiological stasis for 21 days, we too lock ourselves into a state of spiritual stasis where we are content to stay where we are, spiritually, and never change - I wonder if this is a defense mechanism we employ to protect the mental peace of mind we get by sticking to the status quo, like how hibernation protects the body's systems from extreme cold. And like a fad diet, we often delude ourselves into thinking we have it all figured out, and know how to do things The Right Way, when in fact, we really don't at all.

And so, I watch, and wait. I wait for the next time Haggard or someone like him stumbles in his journey of faith, because when they do, people will have to be there to remind others, Christian and non-Christian alike, that acts of weakness need to be met solely with acts of forgiveness.

Vincent Redux

As one of my personal heroes, Stephen Jay Gould once said, "The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape our history." As if we didn't need reason enough already, one reason to be good to others which I have always found deeply compelling is that singular acts of wrongness have an uncanny tendency to quickly have effects grossly disproportionate to their true size. History and our own personal experience is full of examples of instances where simple words or actions have led to profound personal and/or professional tragedy.

Three years ago, one such action sent me out of the trajectory of the VCF group at Toronto. It involved a young Chinese man, probably a second-generation Canadian like myself; someone who like me at the time, carried within him a deep and painful emotional burden. His name was Vincent. I won't go into details, going back to old wounds like how I'd pick at a dried-red scab. All I can do is link back to the original post I wrote on him back at The Chrysalis. The act wasn't directed by him at us, but rather, I feel it was directed by us at him. And I really do mean "us" especiallly including me - there's no sense passing judgement on someone else if you don't submit to the same gavel yourself. It was clear that he needed something from us, and after all the time I've had to think about it I don't know quite what it was - companionship? Friendship? Love? - but I do know that when we, or should I say, I, had been challenged to rise to the occasion, nothing happened. The disappointment I felt compelled me to leave for good. I've not seen anyone of them ever since with the exception of a few friends, and to this day I still think and wonder about them.

For reasons I still can't fully grasp, I took the whole of the text from that post, and sent it in an email to the VCF staff worker we had at the time, a woman I hadn't seen in years - and had left behind in a reclusive vanishing moment, left to expecting me, but never seeing me. Remarkably, about a week later, she sent me a reply, thanking me for my willingness to share such a deeply personal story with her. The rest of the email was terse and succinct - she would forward the concerns I'd voiced at the next executive meeting and present my case before them. Thank you, farewell, and goodbye. At the time I perceived a thinly veiled hostility draped in curt politeness, but now in retrospect I feel that it was her way of dealing with what amounted to a complete core dump of a mind in an email, sent her wey by a curiously melancholic student she met once who never talked to anyone, and who never got talked to.

It wouldn't be fair to fault the VCF group there for what happened. I see myself probably reacting in the same way as the staff worker did if our roles were reversed, and it's only natural to assume that a Christian group servicing a university with over 60,000 students spread across three campuses and seven colleges has a set of challenges not seen in a group serving UNB and STU. The staff worker I knew there was an incredibly wonderful and vibrant woman who would always light up a room that she entered. Perhaps the fault was my own for not taking the risk to reach out to her.

Still - I can't get out of my mind the image of Vincent, captured in a snapshot in my mind that I hastily and furiously typed out on my blog. I can't get out of my mind the emotion of bitter desolation he exuded and how they so well resonated with my own that it almost seemed like our hearts were beating in sync with each other. I wondered how it was that, if we started out the same way in our faith, I had been able to hold on while others I had known and met like myself and Vincent continued to suffer and fade, their faith or whatever remnant of it that was left gently slipping away. How could God allow others to suffer like that, while at the same time letting me retain my faith? I couldn't accept the idea that God could be like that. Then I remembered the old French proverb that "God helps those who help themselves", that God never gives us a problem or a situation that He knows we couldn't possibly handle. Perhaps God does give us the tools that we, the spiritually depauperate, need to survive in our faith as Christians; it's only up to us to recognize what they are and how to use them. Maybe that means I had my mind attuned in such a way as to do both, meanwhile Vincent may simply take a little while longer. I don't know at all.

I asked a few people I met this weekend to pray for him. It still isn't the same as the hug I wanted to give him all of those years ago, but perhaps it goes some distance to make up for my own failure to be there for Vincent when he didn't even know that he really needed me. I pray that he will find the peace that he seeks. For the disillusioned, the angry, and the broken and the sad, peace is often the only thing we can ever hope to strive for.

Postscript to "being from Toronto" (or, My big fat apology to AJL)

A while ago, I wrote about something that, at the time, kinda bugged me a little bit. It was about assumptions and outward appearances - specifically, those of a racial nature. I took a little incident that was, in the grand scheme of things, not really as bad as it could have been (or, not as really as bad as it ever was) and wove it into a grandiose post about racial uneasiness (which by the way, I do feel somewhat reassured on, after conversations with people like my therapist).

And now, thanks to that wonderful literary device known as "retributive justice" (or what some would just call Karma) I find myself falling victim to those very same assumptions - not quite racially based mind you, but they were assumptions nevertheless, and that they weren't racially motivated doesn't make them any less wrong.

...Take 3

So fast forward a few months after the aformentioned incident. Since then, he and I actually got be pretty good friends and while I didn't knew him extremely well outside of our Christian Fellowship group, we knew each other pretty well, well enough to trade friendly barbs and jabs here and there as only two fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grain could.

Anyway, the other night we were conversing and he brought up a comment I'd made earlier about how I found him quite intriguing (which was actually what I'd said). As if he read my mind, when I was trying to answer his question of why I found him intriguing, what he said was something to the effect of "Well, it's probably because I'm not what you expect..."

And well, that's right - he wasn't what I'd expected at all. Lo and behold, we had much, much more in common than I'd thought - shared general socio-political interests, shared theological interests, attitudes and experiences, even shared experiences and thoughts concerning The Opposite Sex...oh and of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Oh, and we've both developed a liking to Rickard's Irish Red.

Closed-minded facist Bible thumper? Au Contraire. As a matter of fact, someone for whom I've developed a profound amount of respect. Not that I didn't respect him a lot before, anyway - but now it's like that respect has taken on a newer sense of depth. I compare how I think of him now to how I thought of him, say, when I first met him, and it's so wholly embarrassing that I could ever have thought that. I mean, what else would you expect someone who's a leftist/socialist "Liberal Christian/Reformed Catholic" anti-war and pro-women's/LGTBQ rights wacko, so used to congenial ostracism and polite isolation (or downright hellfire-and-brimstone righteous indignation) when he first meets one of the people coordinating and heading up the local Christian group? If you've been through more than your fair share of Christian hatred and intolerance then I'm sure you know what I'm getting at, but nevertheless maybe you're also probably thinking of the kind of feelings I really should have had, but didn't - the feelings should have been there instead of an emotional sensation akin to a caged animal thinking that the fanged baddies are all around him.

If there's a moral to be learned from all of this, it's that we are so comfortably perched on our moral high horse when we accuse people of making undue assumptions and prejudices based on first principles that we never truly see the forest for the trees - we end up being guilty of the same sins we accuse others of making (something I'm sure I've opined about before, but in my usual fashion probably forgot about). Come to think of it, that's quite a bit of the root of why we're so downright unpleasant to each other, isn't it?

Nevertheless, what I can only offer is a tip of the hat to my friend for a wonderful evening's conversation, an humble apology for my own embarrassing sanctimoniousness, and, a resolution that next time, I'll try to do just a little better than before.