Church: It's Been a Long Time, Old Friend...

I’ve been to church thrice in the last year. Once last September because I had high hopes about finding a church in my post-Colorado life that was liberal enough for me…I was disappointed. Once as a big group thing the day after a family wedding. Once with my Mom because it was her birthday.

I went to church last Sunday, for me, and I loved it. Now now ok, before any of you (who know me and my falling out with church) start cheering about how the prodigal son has found humility and returned to what is all objectively right and good, this is a different kind of church. It’s a church that actually exhibits what I have, for some time now (including the time I have been away from church), envisioned a church could be (as it relates to my personal theological struggles). I found this church through a series of blogs and websites associated with the Emergent Village, a movement that I have been following for several years now and truly love what they are doing. Anyway, I found this church not long after I moved to Chicago (fall ’07) and have meant to visit, but for some reason never got around to going until last weekend.

I must say that I am very weary of small church communities, or “house churches,” or whatever you’d like to call them, because throughout my experience with those who’ve fallen out of traditional church settings, I often see these communities form because people are tired of church programming or hierarchical leadership or doctrinal statements or maybe just the sheer volume of people in many churches. I fully respect this, and have been there myself at times. But often what I have envisioned when being around these communities is that the group would do something new, not on a functional, pragmatic, or communal level, but on a theological level. It never seems to be the case, though. It usually ends up being a different setting where the same evangelical theology is propagated. If this is you, please understand that I am not criticizing such communities for what they are, do, or believe (not in this post, anyway), I’m only illustrating how I find this to often be the case, when for a long time I personally have sought out something very different.

This is a church here in Chicago on the north edge of Wicker Park, a very artsy and mixed neighborhood. During the rest of the week the church space functions as an art gallery and hosts a number of community events, such as film showings, Yoga, and so on. It just so happened that the night I decided to finally go, they were having a “where we come from, where we’re headed” sort of night. The pastor had a slide show showing the beginnings of the church and how they got started, their goals and what they work toward and so on. I wish I could have gotten a print-out of the slide show because there were many things that I thought pretty great, but I lacked that always suspiciously absent pen-paper duo at the time. But here are some things that I do recall…and greatly admired about the church. You may find them interesting if you’re curious about where I’m at these days

The LGBT Community – working for gay rights and inclusion both in and outside of the church, subscribing to no such theology that excludes the LGBT community from the church, on an organizational, social, or theological level.

Social Justice, Sustainability, Building Community – pretty self explanatory, stuff I would hope even the most conservative of churches out there are already working toward.

Hospitality – Setting aside organizational duties and standards in favor of welcoming (that is, from the outside perspective) those in the surrounding community.

Understanding Faith and Theology as Dynamic – Seeing the Bible as sacred and full of wisdom, but also understanding that it must be examined in context, not sitting around in a circle and talking about what we feel like it means. Those of you that know me well know that I’ve been stressing this for years now.

Focus on This Life, not the Afterlife – Believing that what we do with our time here is more important to focus on than what becomes of us afterwards (something else that I’ve been stressing for years). Along with this, there isn’t a focus on evangelism, and to use the words of the pastor herself, the open door of this church is not part of a “bait and switch” scheme, either. It is a community that is rooted in Christian tradition, but is not working toward making everyone a Christian. From what I understood, there is at least one Buddhist and one atheist regularly involved in this community.

And in case you’re wondering, no, these are not copied from the church bulletin or website, I put these values into my own words as I recall them. Of course there is a bunch of other cool stuff, like the fact that they are a community of about thirty or so, they do jazz vespers, and they have a potluck dinner every Sunday after the spiritual gathering time; I was invited to stay and was very welcomed by everyone, even chatted with a couple folks for an hour or so afterwards.

The point of this post is twofold: 1) Trying, yet again, to get into the swing of blogging. I already know that it’s something I really enjoy and is a great way to get my thoughts out there and start some healthy dialogue. Or even if it’s really only just good for me to process thoughts in writing, whether or not others read them. 2) To let some of y’all know where I’m at these days. For a more specific version, look forward to an upcoming post of my current, yet ever-changing, statement of faith. It might surprise some of you out there whom I haven’t had any deep chats with in a few years. I’d like to do it NPR’s “This I Believe” style.

Oh, and I think I’ll be going to church again next week.

Check out Wicker Park Grace.

Q + Tree = Dignity.......What???

I must say, I have yet to succeed in getting into the blog rhythm. Many many a thing interest me in the topic under which I created this blog, but so often the subject, as it comes up, frustrates me too much, fades away too quickly, or I just simply find myself too busy to feel justified in spending my time on typing it for the internet world to see...as if I really cared. Well, I suppose I do care a bit, because I like dialogue and conversation, and I'm told that's what blogging is all about. So maybe for a while I'll attempt to blog about things that I can sum up in few words and then perhaps it won't demotivate me so much from blogging at all. We'll give it a shot...

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So this one goes back a few months, but I've never been able to let it go in my mind. I have this scholar friend of mine. He is a thorough Christian thinker with a master's degree in apologetics (Christian apologetics, to be clear). A small handful of you who may read this know who he is; most of you don't. Either way, it doesn't really matter, as he will remain nameless. I used to meet with him once a week for breakfast to talk about Christianity, theology, philosophy, etc. Many of the things that came out of those conversations will make it on to this blog at one point or another; some already have. My point is that I am not mentioning him so that I can attack his character. Rather, I am intrigued and often frustrated by some of the things that he believes and argues and thus, they make for good blogging material. I just wanted to make that clear: this isn't a bash-fest.

Moving on, here's one particular topic we talked about one morning over breakfast. We entered onto the subject of the traditional Christian doctrine of hell. This is a subject that I've spent so many hours thinking about over the years that I would actually just like to say "screw it" and get some of those hours back for more productive purposes. However, the devil himself probably couldn't even make that happen, so we'll just live with it. Here's the conversation. I was asking the following question, which may resemble my personal beliefs to some degree that perhaps not even I am aware of. But more importantly, it was for the purpose of discussion.

(from the human perspective) "Why does a finite amount of sin warrant an infinite amount of punishment?"

The following is his response (verbatim):

Well, a finite crime against an infinite being warrants an infinite amount of punishment.

Now here's my response to that (that unfortunately I did not have at the time). Why on earth would someone think this makes sense? From the viewpoint of a logician, this is absurd. The reason so many people in the western church culture would buy this argument (among many many other reasons, I think) is because is sounds really nice. In fact it sounds very mathematical. However, there is no real logical basis for it. Who says a finite amount of crime against an infinite being warrants an infinite amount of punishment? Why doesn't a finite amount of crime against an infinite being warrant a finite amount of punishment? Why does the punishment reflect the victim rather than the crime, or even the criminal? I'm not trying to rule out anyone's response to this, but I honestly don't think an American court system analogy would do any good here, as I'm not talking about a general consensus of morality. This subject is clearly much bigger and unfortunately, abstract.

Anyway, there's the food for thought. Please understand that I am not trying to spark a debate about the existence, reality, consequence, or doctrine of hell. That subject is way too big for right now and I have no interest in going into it as a whole. So please, any thoughts you may have out there should only relate to the above argument, not the topic at large.

There, so much for keeping it short.

Logic, Subjectivity, & Persuasion...

We all know the phrase “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Well, in philosophy, it goes something like “be careful what you study, it just might change your point of view…whether you like it or not.”

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This is somewhat of a continuation of the previous post. However, the aspect of atheism that I'd like to dissect here really has nothing to do with atheism at all and more to do with perspective, attitude, and persuasion.

I'm currently taking a class entitled Language, Logic, & Persuasion. (it’s essentially an Intro to Logic course), and I've enjoyed this class immensely thus far. One of the most important things to me in any class is the professor. I like a professor who has a point of view but knows how to effectively teach objectively. It matters not to me what their point of view is (in life or on particular topics), but I like to know what they are because it's interesting and helpful to know where he or she is coming from. The following are some thoughts that I began to put together in my head more clearly via several conversations with a fellow classmate of mine (Joe, if you're out there and you find this blog, I would enjoy your comments).

So in the case of this class my professor is an atheist. I have no problem with this and it's of little consequence to me. I knew this from the start because the professor has his own website with course materials as well as personal stuff and I took the initiative to read his bio at the beginning of the semester. It’s interesting but like I said, in the end I couldn’t care less where a professor is coming from so long as they can, in fact, teach objectively. However, I begin to notice certain things...

One, in presenting and dissecting arguments, he has, on numerous occasions, pointed out some classic Christian and theistic arguments and why they are faulty or at least weak. At first this really doesn't bother me much, mostly because he's right in his analyses and they're often arguments against portions of Christianity that I don't personally subscribe to anyway and I really appreciate learning that. But what I've noticed at this point is that not only is he an atheist, but that he likes to embrace opportunities to "point out" Christianity. Still no problems yet, just interesting observations.

Next, I began to notice that he doesn't seem to have a strong concept of deconstruction and it's mental and psychological effects on the individual. In other words, you can't simply crush a person's worldview (which they may depend on to a very strong degree) simply in the name of truth. I say "truth" here as nothing more than the individual's perception of objective truth through the eyes of a subjective experience. He will very casually make comments about theism (particularly Christianity) and do so with a hint of a smirk or attitude that suggests "this stuff is really quite ridiculous and you guys shouldn't buy into it." What I think is interesting is that throughout the course he has never so much as taken an informal survey of the class's religious or lack of religious convictions (which philosophy professors commonly do). There are always some students that will respond in humorous agreement with him when he makes these comments, but what of those who make no comment? For all he knows, they could all be devout Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Agnostics, even Jehovah’s Witnesses (as the professor indicates in his bio that he himself was raised as, but now thinks is essentially ridiculous.....”like all other religions”). I guess the point I'm trying to make in this paragraph is that for those who have been given the “power” of philosophy, which is inherently a very dangerous but infinitely valuable and important study, much responsibility has to be included (Spiderman, anyone?). In a philosophy class (or any class), you’ve got one instructor, and that instructor has free reign to teach whatever he or she likes. And for the simple fact that that teacher inherently has about a thousand times more knowledge than the student, they can twist it in any way they like. Or to quote Jack Black in School of Rock, “all I need are minds for molding.”

In this latter half of the semester we are studying the concept of critical thinking, which could be otherwise described loosely as "reasonable skepticism" or the “reality of belief in something without good reason." This is where the class has taken a turn of difficulty for me, but not for reasons one might guess. The material is fascinating and I'm embracing critical thinking more and more. In fact, I'm discovering that I've been a critical thinker for several years now, but never knew what to call it (the church generally doesn't embrace critical thinking and for obvious reasons doesn't do much to encourage it; if it's not supported by the teachings in the bible, it's not true, and that's really all you need to know). No, this class is becoming difficult because the professor is using a lot of biased philosophy (oxymoron) to make points that benefit his atheistic perspective. Last week after class my friend and I speculated on the possibility that our professor believes the following:

“If you take critical thinking to its absolute limit, you will have no choice but to end in atheism.” (i.e. radical skepticism)

Where this gets interesting is that the whole idea of critical thinking is to evaluate things in the world that people believe but generally have little to no good reason to. Obviously as an atheist it would seem that my professor would say that this includes ALL things that cannot be explained by science, including religion in general (though he has yet to specifically state this). Side note: how does this guy teach metaphysics? But to come back a bit, what’s happening here has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I’m a theist and he’s an atheist. I really couldn’t care less about his personal beliefs. Actually, if I were the atheist student and he was a Christian professor trying to slip in biased opinions about the absurdity of atheism while masking them as objective philosophical reasoning, it would probably irritate me even more. But what’s getting to me is his attitude toward what he believes and more importantly his attitude toward that which he does not believe, which speaks against his whole background in philosophy.

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Ok, so I actually began writing this a couple weeks ago and put it down until now, so I’ve lost a bit of the passion that I had about this particular topic and I’m not entirely sure where I was headed. But I think there’s enough stuff here to serve as, at the very least, some food for thought.

I guess my point, if anything, was that as humans we tend to adhere to the “rationale” that helps our agenda, or more specifically, we tend to buy into the arguments that encourage our point of view (this is the fine line that traverses theistic apologetics). We never seem to give weight to the arguments against our beliefs. We find one argument (with strength level x) to support our argument and ascribe value x + 10 to it. Then we find one argument against our position (also with strength value x) and multiply it by -1, negating it and making our overall position shine above all as undoubtedly true. The overlying problem is that math and logic are not subjective, but the way we present them often is.

If this is confusing to anyone, I will probably go into this a bit more in the next post, so hang tight. If it’s not confusing, please share your thoughts.

First Things First...

I first must admit, I'm really not a big fan of the "blog" scene. I apologize to those whom this refers, but there's something about me writing a blurb about my life every day and expecting the whole world to care that's just a little sad. Now, to those of you out there who write poetry and try to express your artistic side or even your commentary on relevant issues via the blogosphere: right on, I salute you. But if you're writing a blog to tell the world that you had Cheerios for breakfast.....well, you get the idea. My point is that this particular blog won't consist of any Cheerios.

In any sense, you could consider this first post a continuation of the blog description, since I was only allowed a few words up there. In essence, I have spent several years in the evangelical Christian bubble and almost all of that time working in Christian leadership of some kind. I've had influences from all over the place and it has definitely stretched my brain a bit. During my sophomore year of college at a Catholic university (studying theology, no less) I began an intense struggle with and new appreciation for different approaches to understanding faith. That process hasn't ceased to continue ever sense and, as a result, has drawn me farther and farther away from the mainstream Christian sub-culture. For some time I simply avoided the issue by not talking about it with others that I was involved in leadership with. But the more I studied, the more I found that many of the ways in which we do this "Christian" thing just didn't seem to be right. However, for the first time in years I am no longer involved in ministry leadership and I thought it would be a good time to pursue this discussion head on, thus the origin of this blog.

An important blurb: I would still consider myself a Christian in the sense that I believe that there is compelling truth to the life of Jesus and I do my best to follow him. However, many western evangelical Christians might not qualify me as a Christian myself if they were inside my brain, since it seems that there is more to being considered a Christian today than just following Jesus. The unnoticed irony of that statement, of course, is that we do not agree on what it means to "follow Jesus."

So in the following posts I shall do my best to approach more specific issues. If they interest you, reply. If you think they might interest others, tell them. Let's have a discussion and learn from each other.

To spark any interests out there, here are a few topics that I would like to approach (sooner or later):
- what it means for God to be omniscient (all-knowing)
- heaven and hell and why people actually like this concept
- pragmatism and it's role in the development of religions (including Christianity)
- the "authority of scripture" and the fact that there are over 40,000 versions of Christianity
- the role of emotion in shaping our personal theologies

peace,
Tony

p.s. In case you were interested, the origin of the blog title "A New Paradigm" comes from the honest realization that as I attempt to approach an new understanding of truth, I am undoubtedly influenced to varying degrees by everything I learn. In other words, it is impossible for humans to develop an objective worldview, and even if we could, something tells me that would be quite boring. And even though we do our best to think outside the box, for too long now I think that only means that we've done so only to find ourselves inside yet another box. Here I will do my best to avoid boxes, but I have little doubt that they will creep in here and there.