The Good News?

Alternate title: A rambling semi-ranting, partially coherent post about church in the media here in Quebec.

More than 100 churches in central Nebraska canceled Christmas services, CNN affiliate KHGI-TV reported.

The decision for safety's sake could put a serious dent in some churches' finances.

"The Christmas collection in a parish typically is very important," the Rev. William Dendinger, the Roman Catholic bishop of Grand Island, Nebraska, told KHGI. "We hope those people who don't make it that day will be there New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and make those kinds of contributions."

Although that particular quote is from CNN (here), that's the only kind of story we hear of church and religion up here. We get similar stories, where above the importance of people actually going to church on Christmas to worship God, show appreciation and be in community on the day which represents the incarnation is money and church greed. It's partly the media's spinning and it's partly what we see with our own eyes if we ever do set foot into lavish, wasteful, usually empty churches here.

We also get stories like this, where four priests are complaining that there is too much English in services here. In a place where pews are empty, where churches are being turned into condos and where the overwhelming majority has been burned by the church in some way, it is just incredible that four priests would be so openly apart from the cause they are supposed to be for. Instead of bringing the good news, they're bringing bad news, badness and even more resentment for an already poorly viewed church. It's horrible and the media loves it.

If there was any accountability at all, these four would be sent to a gospel bootcamp to learn what it is they should be fighting for. But alas, as the people here have seen clearly over the years, there is no accountability. Molesting priests are given funding by the church to attend university, an opportunity for education most people here can't afford, and one which the priest in question obviously did not deserve according to the informed public (sorry, I can't seem to find a direct link to that story online at the moment).

Stories like these are the ones we hear about. They're all we hear about when it comes to anything religion. Four preachers from all across Canada abusing and destroying the people they are supposed to be serving. And that's just in one week.

Even more positive stories, like this one, in which they interviewed a priest who has a reputation for giving great sermons discourages me, albeit in a far more subtle way. The Montreal newspaper journalist had to leave the city of Montreal, cross a bridge and drive a good fifteen to twenty minutes (without traffic) to another city to find a preacher worth publishing a story about? What does that say about the situation here?

I just want to grab somebody in some sort of position of authority and shake them and say, "What the hey are you doing?" But there is no person of authority. Well, unless you count the pope, and it seems somebody already tried to shake him this week.

How are people supposed to hear the good news when all they hear is bad news? Overwhelmingly horrible bad news at that.

The sad thing is if there ever was some sort of governing body that could and would go defrock the baddies, it's likely that eventually it'd become a boys' club, and would start to select for the wrong reasons.

So this is how it's going to be? False prophets abound, pain and hurt rampant, separation from God instead of reconciliation? This is all there is?

Why did God let Noah live? So Jesus could be born? So that we, the descendants, could tarnish His image, lead His beloved sheep astray and slaughter them? Why? Why would God create us to begin with? Why would He allow such horrible, selfish, ungrateful beings to exist?

I can't answer why he created us to begin with, but I'm guessing the reason He hasn't gotten rid of us is due to the incomprehensible grace, mercy and patience He has for us.

Sometimes, I kinda wish He didn't.

Then we would cease to exist and finally stop hurting each other so much.

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3)

No matter what we do, we just can't fix ourselves. Not as individuals nor as a collective.

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” (Luke 2)

Merry Christmas.

Anirniq.

In Tim Keller's "The Reason for God", chapter nine, titled "The Knowledge of God" talks about the knowledge we have of God that seems to come innately. As he puts it, "I think people in our culture know unavoidably that there is a God, but they are repressing what they know." (p 146 in the hardcover version)

But what if believing in the Christian God represses what we know to be true of a different God or a different set of truths? Or what if there is more than one truth?

While watching "The Snow Walker" the other day, I felt immersed in Inuit culture, even if for just a small fraction of time. Everything has a spirit. Everything works together in a certain brutal harmony. Everything is important and the spirits must be respected. I won't get into too much detail, both because I don't know most of it and because I don't want to be disrespectful and write things out of context without doing them adequate justice. But the principles in the movie, which were very influenced by the Inuit people in the making of the movie in an effort to be accurate, are the principles I know and have always known.

Ever since I was little, I've been an animist. As far back as I can remember, my soul felt connected to the moon somehow, as though it was watching over me. When I was young, probably around four, one of my earliest memories was rejecting the moon and feeling alone in the universe for the first time. But the moon still affects me. I can't pretend it doesn't. On a warm summer night, when its blue glow hits my skin, there's something different about it.

And as I studied biology, one recurring question or idea bothered me: how do we know what they think or why they do things? How do we know they aren't making concessions for us?

The analogy I used to use jokingly was of a bear. We think we're smarter than a bear because we've invented things like guns. Throw a man naked into the woods and see how long he survives. Are we really smarter than bears? Or do they just not need guns and cars? It wouldn't occur to us to invent tools and arms if what we were given physically was adequate for anything other than hiding.

Another example is the dog. There's a poem going around about a dog who gets rejected because he snapped at his owner and the owner reacted badly to it. I am the alpha in my house. I rule over my dogs. They listen to me. And if they don't listen to me, there are consequences. But my big dog's mouth, when fully opened, could fit the majority of my face. He definitely could fit my neck in there. Those jaws can snap beef leg bones in half. And my little girl? Her jaws aren't all that big, but she's agile. She could probably go for my jugular before I had time to react. But why don't they? Because I've trained them not to? I doubt that. I never pulled my dogs aside and provoked them to go after my jugular in order to correct them. "Never! Never touch my jugular!" No. Why don't they?

Obviously, there are stories where the dog gets aggressive towards its human, but usually, those stories follow years of neglect or other abuse, a traumatic incident or a head trauma. Dogs don't just "turn".

But I play with my dogs fairly aggressively and more often than not, I end up hurt in some way and they stop immediately and wait to see if I'm ok. They can't not know they're more powerful than I am. My big dog certainly knows he's smarter than I am and uses his intellectual powers for evil, so why not his physical strength?

How do we know what they think? How can we be so arrogant as to presume we understand their thought processes?

One morning, a dog kibble rolled under a closet door. My little girl saw it go under and tried to get it but wasn't able to. A few days later, when I'd totally forgotten about it, I got something out of the cupboard and walked down the hall, leaving the door open. My little girl wandered behind me and the second she had totally passed the closet door, I saw her remember. You could see her eyes change and she stopped and retrieved the kibble from inside the closet. Did she smell it? Or did she really just remember? If she remembered, she had to have a thought process about it.

Another time, I said something really quietly to her, something like, "Do you want to go out?" or "Do you want a cookie?" and she didn't fully hear me, so she stayed laying there, her eyes shifting around the room. About a minute after I had said that something, she suddenly got up and ran to whatever it was I had asked her (either the door or the cookie stash, I can't remember which it was). It was like when we humans barely hear something and then replay it in our minds trying to figure out what it was we'd heard.

My point being, as a child I was raised in the woods and spent hours alone in the forest or with my dogs and I could always feel them. I could feel the trees watching over me. I could feel my dogs doing the same. There was something very spiritual for me when I was young and surrounded by living beings who weren't human. It wasn't a God-human relationship though. It was more of an earthly partnership- we're all in this world together. We all have a certain level of suffering and of joy. We may as well share it and share the burden.

Maybe it's just shared energy rather than spirits. Maybe it's the way our molecules interact. Maybe it's anthropomorphism. Or maybe, as Tim Keller accidentally suggests to me, it's something my heart just knows is true.

But how does it fit with Christianity?

I'm a scientist. The major stereotype and prejudice against Christianity up here is that only irrational people can believe in it. And so, as a scientist, it wasn't easy to believe it. I had to work out all the kinks and loopholes and apparent inconsistencies. One of the means by which I did that was by acknowledging that if God (and consequently, the Bible) is the truth and science is the truth, then they must match. Of course, sometimes, the science we know to be true today is wrong tomorrow, but some things stay constant. Like... constants. So it's never either/or for me. As a simple example, if science points to evolution, somehow the Bible has to fit.

The same idea can be applied to animism or the sort of nature-based spirituality I've felt my whole life and Christianity. If I know one to be true and I know the other to be true, they have to match.

At first, I thought it'd be a fruitless endeavor. Christianity was on the right and animism was on the left and getting the two into an area of common ground seemed impossible. But it had to work because these are my truths and letting one go would mean letting Christianity go and I could not do that.

Why Christianity?

Because it's the one that comes least naturally to me. While my soul loves both, I can't deny the things I've felt and experienced that led me to animism so early on. I will always feel them and remember them and know, deep in my soul, that they are true. But in the same way, after months and months of research, prayer and reading, I feel God too. I feel Jesus in my life. I know Him to be the truth now, although the process for me to come to that was not nearly as fluid, especially since it has always been far easier for me to reject Him.

While animism feels inherently natural, there are times when Christianity feels like a human concoction. There are aspects that are so quickly converted to religion and duty and those things consistently rub me the wrong way. The world is chaotic, yet ordered. It's beautiful, yet brutal. It's fantasy and reality all wrapped into one intense, powerful package that we get to experience for such a brief time. We do put too much pressure on the temporary to make us happy, but at the same time, we often don't experience the world for its awesomeness. Animism kind of allows that. It allows us to feel the world as a soul among many, as one togetherness, as Creation- the way God intended.

Earlier on, in the Intermission section of Tim Keller's book, he talks about how if you were forever a character in a play, you wouldn't know about the playwright unless the playwright wrote himself as a character in the play. And in our story, God did write Himself in, as Jesus. So we know about Him because He became a part of the story.

Elsewhere in the book, Tim Keller refers to the analogy of the elephant in describing truths. He says (although I believe the idea is attributed elsewhere) that often people look at the truths of the different religions as a group of blind people would experience an elephant. One would grab the trunk and say, "An elephant is long and flexible," while another would have the foot and say otherwise. They're all parts of the truth, but only the sighted observer from afar has the superior knowledge it takes to see the whole truth (which is impossible, really, and quite arrogant, but I digress).

But if we look at said elephant along with the fact that Jesus wrote Himself into the play, would it not make obvious sense then that each group was given a piece and all the pieces put together would form the elephant? "I am He," Jesus says when they come to arrest Him (John 18:5-6). What if God put people all over the world, in places isolated from the words of Jesus, to give us an idea of what the shadowed side of the elephant looked like while we were on the sunny side, or vice versa? What if we know it's an elephant, but the size of it and the complexity of it make it impossible for us to know all there is to know (and understand) about it? What if while Jesus told Israel He was God, God was elsewhere telling other nations truths also? The only way, apart from God Himself showing us, that we would know the whole truth would be to all come together and share what truths we know. Some perceived truths might be proven otherwise. And others might fit together in a perfect puzzle of complements, which, from the Christian perspective, would end up ultimately pointing to Jesus.

Apparently (according to the ever accurate wikipedia :D), the predominant religion among the Inuit is Christianity, but the Inuit have managed to intertwine their natural spirituality into Christianity. How did the Inuit, who became isolated from other societies so early on, somehow develop a spirituality that could line up so naturally and profoundly with Christianity? What are the odds that a nature-based belief system and a humanity-directed faith in Jesus could complement each other that peacefully and gracefully?

And so, thus far, I have no choice to make. For God so loved the world, not just the humans. He created all of it, and as I am but a mere human who will never fully grasp the greatness of God, I can't take for granted the partners He's given me to share in this earthly life.


Anirniq: Breath, spirit of life.
p.s. this book looks interesting.

Inspirations.

In this blog post on the Resurgence site, Matt Chandler discusses what stirs and robs him of affection for Christ.

I started asking what stirs my affections for Christ. What, when I’m doing it, when I’m around it or dwelling on it creates in me a greater hunger for, passion for and worship of Christ and His mission? [He lists eight for this one.]

I don't really feel like posting a neat, brief list. I'm not a brief kind of girl. But I'll put numbers just to satisfy my need to adhere to rules. :D

1. Prayer - the importance of prayer becomes apparent for a lot of people when they've suddenly lost control of something or feel helpless. For me, it's the other way around. Prayer forces me to admit I am helpless on any regular Thursday. Or in the car on the way to get groceries. Or in the shower. Or lying in bed at night. The only time I don't really pray is in the morning. Somehow, because I am already not a morning person, praying in the morning makes me irritable.

When I was in therapy for anorexia and panic attacks for a few years a few years ago, my shrink eventually discovered that if she booked me early enough in the morning, she could get at my core reactions a lot quicker than she would later on in the day. I'm vulnerable in the mornings. My guards are down and my only way of protecting myself is through anger and irritability. I am just not in a loving place in the morning, rather it becomes the time when all my wrongs, fears and traumas bubble up to the surface. I guess maybe that's why depressed people don't get out of bed in the morning.

The bottom line is, I don't pray in the morning because I'd rather not start my day as a puddle of goo on the floor. I need to build up a certain measure of strength before I can become powerless and vulnerable, as ludicrous as that sounds.

Either way, praying throughout my day maintains my affection for God and for Jesus, and I'll be honest, it helps that my prayers are answered so awesomely so often. But at the same time, God and I know that the day He doesn't seem to answer one of them, I'll still be ok and I'll still love Him because the only reason He is answering them is because they were the right things to pray for, they were things that glorified Him through my prayers and their fulfillment.

2. I'll steal one of Matt Chandler's- Walking through cemeteries - This one is new and it might not be the #2 of importance or anything, but it's fresh on my mind after two trips to the cemetery in under a week. My reasons are different than Matt Chandler's though.

First, I've always been an animist. I believe that everything has a soul, or at the very least, shared energy. I believe that we have the capacity to transmit strong energy to things outside of us. I believe the power of the mind and spirit is a lot stronger than we realize. We just don't take the time to understand it (or at least try to). Being in a cemetery affects my soul that way. There's something about it that stirs me in a particular way nothing else does. It's like there's a collective energy in there that our soul connects with deeply.

Second, it makes very evident the separation between living souls whose body has died and living souls whose body hasn't. It feels like a divide rather than an absence. And if our souls do separate and we end up with God alone, rather than together among other souls then it would only be natural to feel that divide until we are fully reconciled with God. It would be natural to us to feel as though our soul is apart from something it used to be in togetherness with. Cemeteries ignite affection for Christ in me because they stir up a desire for a bridge.

3. No escapism - I'm already the most sober person I know. I have been sober since 1996, after sitting on my front porch with my brother on a hot summer day and drinking my ceremonial last beer ever. I'm also the kind of person who tries to confront everything as it comes rather than giving it up to the usual defense mechanisms and coping strategies. I face my demons. But another thing I learned in therapy is that you can only get to the deeper issues after you've dealt with the explosive and vivid current issues. By watching movies, tv shows, fidgeting on the internet too long or even playing with my dogs, I sort of deprive myself of a much-needed quiet time and reflection time. When I'm overly busy, overly worried, or overly numbed, my mind can't sit still long enough to stay focused on what I'm reading, writing or praying. I need that time of just being that allows me to pursue soul matters more actively simply because I'm better prepared to venture into them.

4. Blogging - I do love to blog. I tend to clash with a lot of people in "real" life, and blogging is my outlet for just being me. It's like prayer in a way- it's just honest. I don't cater to an audience. I just hash out my thoughts in the most explicit way I can communicate them, which I've found to be through text on a screen. I type as I think and I generally don't plan out posts and the ones I do plan out always end up in my drafts, never getting published because I just don't have the passion for them as I do when I'm typing as though I am talking. But when I blog about God things, I am forced to research (which I'll admit, I haven't done much of lately) and I'm forced to really try to think things through, and when I'm done, all of my thoughts are laid out in front of me to reread and understand better. It also captures a moment in my head, which is kind of what some of the Psalms David wrote are like. He'll switch back and forth from doubt to certainty, just like any normal human would, just like I do. These posts, all busted up and cynical, are my psalms. They might not be all cheesy about trumpets and singing praise and all that... They might have more of a "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying," kind of message. And I am. I'm trying to work through all this and I'm doing it out in the open because that's who I am. Basically, it's a way of sorting out the scary parts of God in a realm of my life that I'm very comfortable in, and that encourages me.

5. Traffic - It's true. Sitting in traffic all those hours when I was working gave me time to think, to pray and to listen to endless sermons. Without that commute, I'm not sure I'd have a foundation laid down as strongly as the one I have (or that I believe I have). I love me some traffic. Flowing rivers of brake lights that suspend time, obligation and control.

6. Migraine-free days - I had a migraine for two years straight until very recently and I am so grateful for these days when I wake up and don't feel like I've been punched in the face repeatedly while I was sleeping. It's a distraction that creates crazy amounts of self-pity, self-loathing and pain and without my migraine, I've got a lot more free time and energy. And truth be told, it stirs up affection and gratitude because I prayed for it.

7. Reading blogs, books and even tweets by pastors and listening to sermons - not the dry writings though, but the ones where their heart is exposed. I think the best pastors are the ones who humanize the Bible by making it relatable, by allowing us to watch it in action through them and by hearing it passionately from their mouths. It's like listening to somebody read poetry to somebody they adore. Their genuine love and adoration for God stirs up my love for God and inspires me. I think I'm a fairly empathetic person and by feeling that affection through somebody who is passionate, I can be opened to new avenues of affection within myself.

Man, I could go on and on- folk music, my beautiful doggies (past and present) and their unconditional love, Christmas... I'll just skip to the next question before it's suddenly 4AM. :D

I also wrestled with and paid attention to what robbed me of affection for Christ. What, when I was doing it or spending time around it created in me an unhealthy love for this world? [He listed six for this one.]

1. I want to start with church. While it doesn't create an unhealthy love for this world, it does rob me of affection for Christ. Religion, obligation, serving in a capacity outside of that which I am comfortable, feeling the constant pull between legalism and not obeying- a lot of the time, after going to church, I'll go for waffles with my brother and sister-in-law and the first thing out of my mouth will be, "Man, I suck at church." I end up feeling so discouraged and out of place that if that is what it takes to be a "real" Christian, then I just am not a "real" Christian. I get into this cycle of negotiation, teetering towards giving up. Pastors I listen to online are all, "Just Jesus," but in reality, it's never "just Jesus." It's always, "If you have an affection for Jesus, you need to show it by serving in and being a member of a church." And if you put up a fight, tell people a bit of your past so that they might understand why this is such an issue, they always reply, "Jesus can redeem all that, but you have to be a member of a church." I'm not sure of what God wants for me in particular, maybe He wants my body to be my temple? But either way, your bullying me isn't helping. I was agnostic for 28ish years, and if but by the grace of God am I saved, then thank God, but if God chose me and then will create for me an eternity without Him because I suck at church, so be it. I'm doing the best I can, and that's not good enough, whether I somehow serve or I never find the way to be able to. But by the grace of God am I saved, not by submitting to peer pressure and bullying...

Anyhooooo.

2. Les Boys - I can't do both. I can't actively pursue relationships and be close to God. The way I've been trained by the society around me to pursue relationships is so not godly and the men I attract generally aren't either. And the end result is that I am distracted in a bad way towards bad things and God ends up sort of shut off. I assume that eventually, I'll find a balance that is healthier, but for now, there is nothing healthy or godly about my pursuit.

3. The opposite of #3 above about escapism.

4. Excessive sleep - Again, it doesn't create an unhealthy love for this world, but it does make me crabby and intolerable. I'm ok with sleeping in. If I wake up at noon, that's ok with me. I don't feel as though my day is wasted because the best part of my day is now (i.e. when the world sleeps). But what I can't stand is when I wake up at noon after going to bed early. That's annoying and does waste my day, which is one of the reasons I end up staying up late also. If I stay up late, I don't need as much sleep. If I go to sleep early, I wake up at the same time but have wasted the better part of my night asleep. In the end, this robs me of affection for God because not only am I all irritable and hating everything, but I tend to get it in my head that I have to cram an entire day's worth of stuff in a really short amount of time. The being busy part causes me to lack focus and distances me from anything that draws me closer to God. I am not a busy person. I am quite lazy actually, so when I say I'm being busy, it's not that I'm actually accomplishing things so much as panicking about accomplishing things. It's a circular path to nowhere.

5. My laziness - I don't know how to fix that or even if it's a bad thing, but the societal pressure to constantly produce gets to me often. I'm a ponderer rather than a doer. In my head, the way I am draws me closer to God in being, but not in doing, and it's the doing part that I think I need more of, maybe. I don't know. That's the thing- I never know if I'm supposed to be doing what I'm actually fond of and good at or if I'm supposed to break myself apart to try to fit into the roles I'm not good at. I'm good at explaining and understanding things (or vice versa I guess would make more sense) and I'm good at living it in my own life but I am not a hard worker in the conventional sense. I'm not ambitious and driven. I'm not all, "Oh, there are poor people in the world, I need to help now!" and hop in my car and slave away somewhere. Is that a bad thing? It feels like a terrible thing, but even if I was to hop into my car and go slave away, I know I'd suck at it simply because my heart is not into it. If my heart is into something, I'll put in the time and effort needed and then some. But should I wait for my heart to be into it? Do I let myself get too comfortable in this world full of worldly comforts? I don't know. But that feeling of sort of self-loathing because I believe I'm lazy is not a motivator and does not stir up affection and drive to build God's kingdom.

6. Aimlessness - to be honest, in Matt Chandler's question, he points to an affection for this world over God and Jesus, but aside from my #2 in this section, I don't really have all that much that I would not give up in a heartbeat. I grew up undeserving and unentitled and unloved, really. Even if you took away my dogs, my babies whom I adore and whose love and friendship helps get me through the worst times, I'll be sad, I'll be broken, but all I have is me. I've felt for the longest time like a nomad, without a home, without attachments, without normal drives towards the pleasures of this world. I do like some things, but if you take them away from me, I won't die. Everything I have and/or have access to is a privilege. It's all a gift. My dogs are a gift. We aren't entitled to gifts. They are gifts. But like the laziness above, what this does is create an aimlessness and lostness that leaves me sort of stranded without direction. I don't know if I glorify God better when I'm aimless and have nothing to move toward but better understanding. I don't know if I glorify God more when I am forced to work out a plan based on my smaller passions because the doors to my bigger passions have slammed shut. I just don't know. It affects my affection for God because if God is really in control and this aimlessness is what He wants, then these doors will just keep slamming and after a while, it becomes harder to stay passionate. Constant rejection wears a girl thin after a while, and so I ask for guidance and more doors get slammed shut, but none open in consequence. Do you really want me to be this aimless, God? Or is there no God at all, rather a string of mediocre luck mixed with self-fulfilling prophesy? Aimlessness does take a toll.

But hey, among all this aimlessness, laziness, lustiness and church rejection, God still is providing for me. I am so grateful for everything I have been given, including faith and a passion for learning, for prayer and for God.

p.s. I'll post this now and edit it tomorrow when I have eyes again. :D

How many?

I don't have a lot of outspoken ideas lately (not any that are publicly blogworthy anyway... :D), but I stumbled upon a blog post about this verse from Mark ch 14:

24 And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”

And the blog author was thankful for the sacrifice, as is the usual response from Christians to this passage, I guess.

But my response?

Many? Why many? Why not all?