Ben Stein is an interesting fellow. Speech writer for Nixon. Hilarious teacher of Ferris Bueller. I re-received an email recently and just got around to reading it; one which originated back in December of 2005 shortly after Mr. Stein offered a commentary on… what was it… CBS Sunday Morning. There are a few versions of the email, but I think the original commentary was pretty close to this:

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

I was reading this and thinking about a couple of people I've met this semester. In class is a Muslim woman from Jordan. Upon meeting her I made the reckless (reckless, because if I had really thought about it I might have realized this) mistake of holding out my hand to shake. She introduced herself and added, "…but I don't shake hands." This week I was in meetings with a guy from back east who is (I presume) an orthodox Jew. He wore his kippah and drank his kosher fruit juice in the midst of all the rest of us, and left early for his fly-back so he wouldn't be travelling on the Sabbath. My simple point is that in watching both of these individuals, I've felt a deep level of respect for the way they shape and conform their lives to their faith. I have no problem at all feeling that the three of us are connected through a committed devotion to God. I guess I simply liked reading Mr. Stein's words this evening. I am a Christian, and I am not at all offended by head coverings, kippahs, Ramadan, or being kosher. Quite to the contrary, I am drawn to simple, humble submission to our Creator—in its various forms.

As noted previously, when I was typing my post on Plato's Dilemma, I got to the two words "be humble" and was suddenly struck by the idea of my religious faith being a metaphor for the issues surrounding Plato's Dilemma. The parallel runs something like this:

God exists. God is truth. God is knowable, but only as something unknowable; what we ultimately come to know of God is God's ultimate un-knowable-ness. So, we acknowledge that there is Truth, we acknowledge that somehow it can/should/does guide our lives, but we also acknowledge we cannot fully ascertain nor articulate it. We must address the idea of God, of relationship with God. We must decide notions of faith for ourselves. But doing so involves making claims. It involves abiding in an ideology. We cannot/should not/must not make absolute claims. We cannot say our faith is superior to another person's faith without claiming to be God ourselves, which we most certainly are not. We must not judge another. In the face of this, we form a faith of our own (as Paul said, we work our salvation "with fear and trembling") and we hold it in the utmost of humility. We know it is frail because we have worked it out. We know it is precious because God has made it so. The key comes down to holding our faith in deep, profound humility before God and other human beings.

In other words, faith involves living according to a personal ideology concerning Truth, one that we must value, therefore live by, and therefore in some way espouse for it to be a faith worth having. Yet, we cannot universally verify or validate a given faith in human terms. And, since we cannot verify or validate it, we understand that each person's humble faith is just as valid as our own. Yet from a particular point of view, to say that every faith is valid is to negate the idea of Truth, and therefore the value of faith. Plato's Dilemma.

However, after years of wrestling with this issue in terms of faiths, I have resolved it to my satisfaction with this idea of humility; with this idea that it is not the intellectual particulars of faith which make it faith. Rather, it is the heart, the spirit, the humility of the faithful which is the key. The view needs to be elaborated upon to explain well, but it is a workable solution. I like to say in metaphorical terms that we religious folks spend a lot of time arguing over what kind of clothes (causal, dress, business) we are supposed to wear in the sight of God, but God only cares about the fabric; not the style or cut of the garments. Likewise, God cares about our heart, our humility, our submission and devotion to him at a deeply personal level. I don't think God is interested in doctrine and dogma.

And so. Reading Gee's work on Plato's Dilemma, when I understood Gee's point intuitively, as if it were a long lost friend suddenly formally introduced, and when I recognized that (contrary to Gee's claim) a solution exists, and it rests in intellectual humility, I was thunderstruck by the parallel to my personal view of faith. And I had to ask myself, which is the chicken, and which is the egg? As a born existentialist, have I worked out my faith as a response to a pre-existing intuition of Plato's Dilemma, or is my intuitive grasp of Plato's Dilemma, and the solution to it that I see as perfectly natural, born of my pre-work performed in working out my faith?

An interesting question, and one that could be asked more directly by asking if my view of God, Man and faith is based largely (merely?) in my existentialist mind. At present, I would wager that both my faith, and my grasp of Plato's Dilemma, are based in my existentialist nature. Which gets back to my posts of this year regarding belief, reality, and faith. We truly believe only what are minds of capable of truly believing; we can do nothing else.

A closing point? A takeaway? I left it sitting on a doorstep in my previous post: be humble. To read, to hear, to interpret, to speak is to take a stand. Our stand may not be superior to any other. Or perhaps it may be. We may never know. This doesn't make our stand unimportant. But it does mean that we should stand humbly in a humility that recognizes it may be wrong, and in an even greater humility that recognizes it may be right.

I have no idea where I was, nor what I was reading, but two or three weeks ago I ran across a Christian's claim that "the Muslim God is not the God of the Christian." Hmmm. Well, this statement could have just as easily been made by a Muslim, or by anybody else for that matter, but I have to say that my understanding of Islam, extremely limited though it may be, is that Christians and Muslims do indeed refer to the same God. At least, certainly, if I was to sit down with a Muslim and talk about God, my underlying assumption would be that we were both talking about the Father of Abram/Abraham.

I suppose what the author of that line might have been implying is that Muslim and Christian would disagree, of course, about the idea of a trinity. But then again, so do Jews and Christians, and nobody says that the God of the Jew is not the God of the Christian. Sometimes I think that there are many things said out of pure fear and/or ignorance and/or malice.

What I was thinking, anyway, is that it's sort of a moot point for me. It seems to me that if you are a monotheist, then whenever somebody talks about worshipping the One or Supreme being, they are talking about God. That's the word I use, but the word is not magical; it's three characters of the particular alphabetic script I use, arranged in one of six possible ways. Even Paul, on Mars Hill, used this idea. He referenced a local statue labeled "to an unknown god" as an inroad to a sermon. So I see you have an unknown god. Well, let me tell you about this unknown God…

Just to clarify a little more, I understand the opinion that if you claim to worship God, but your concept of God is radically different from mine, then we are in some sense worshipping a "different" God. And I think this opinion has merit. So to be more to the point, what I am saying is that God is God irrespective of whether your idea and/or my idea as to the nature of that God is/are correct or not. God's Being does not depend upon a human's concept of God. Whatever God is, God is. And if you are claiming to worship that One Being, then whether or not any of us are conceiving correctly or not, the Being we are pointing to is still the same Being. I guess my point is simply that the Lord our God is one God. Muslim, Christian, Jew; the same Being begat us all, and the same Being is worshipped by us all. And, it's about the Being, after all. It's not about us. It is in this sense that the Muslim God is the Christian God, is the Jewish God, is the God of other monotheistic faiths.

Must it be so difficult, really, for us all to begin here?

In this season (unfortunately, more like year) of political campaigning, this general subject seems timely. The other day one of my classmates brought up the realm of a writer's voice as related to a writer's identity. Noting right from the start that voice and identity are both subjects that a person could spend a lifetime studying and theorizing about, I'd still like to cover some points about them.

There is a tension within me that results from various concerns and forces tugging and pulling at some nebulous, ill-defined center called 'my identity.' A few of them are involved with the subject of this post. Several years back, I worried a great deal about finding my writing voice, which in my thinking concerned style and content. "Oh if I could just figure out my innate style" I would lament. I sort of got over that, realizing that a writer doesn't have to have a single style. This alleviated some issues with style, but didn't do much for identity. So then I thought of identity in terms of confession and subject matter, until I wrote the essay "Deconstruction, Truth, Meaning." It was then I admitted to myself that neither writing, nor anything else, will ever result in a full presentation of one's identity. "This I confess," is possible; "Now you know me," is not.

These are part of the tension. An additional part is the ages-old spiritual quest for contact with one's singular, "true" identity, which nominally is expressed, with no façade or fiction, in every moment of life—versus the theoretical view that we each have multiple identities. We are different, in some ways, depending upon the context of the moment. Are we talking to children, our own children, coworkers, fellow students, folks at church, etc.? On the one hand, it seems each of us should "just be me" in all of life's varied circumstances. But on the other, are we really the same? Do we, can we, should we, must we show the same self to everyone in all cases? In theory I have an ultimate true identity in God. In theory identity is merely a malleable social construct.

Reiterating, voice and identity are subjects we could spend a lifetime analyzing and theorizing about. Likewise with our social interactions. None of these are simple. But just to try to place something onto somewhat firm footing, it's pretty safe to say that nearly all of us act a bit differently depending upon social context. We say different things, and we say things differently. And this is the small point of the moment, in this post. Do we each reveal a fundamentally different identity in each case, are we revealing different voices of the same identity, both, or neither? What determines what? Can we answer this, at all?

I think we should try. When at the Abbey of Gethsemani, I talked to an aged monk who was long ago a friend of Thomas Merton. Naturally, we talked about Merton. So this monk's voice was the voice of a friend and historian. When this same monk talked to my daughter, his voice was more like that of a loving father. I would assume that his voice when speaking to his superiors in confession would be different. Yet, I tend to think that in this man's discipline and age and wisdom, all of these voices are from a singular, integrated identity. There is no contradiction; no false implications. No pretending. No self deception. On the other hand, consider a political candidate who travels from venue to venue. There is a speech in the northwest about gun-toting rednecks, perhaps. There is a speech in the south about the right to bear arms. There is a speech in the Midwest about the working man and woman struggling to make ends meet while the rich get richer. There are talks behind closed doors, about making the rich richer. And in each venue, not just the vocabulary, but the literal physical accent, inflection and cadence of speech, and the stories, change. What does this person believe? Who and what are they? What is false, pretend, real, genuine? What, if anything, do the answers tell us about identities? That the politician has many identities, or actually only one, which has nothing to do with being genuine and everything to do with wanting to be elected? This example is more personal than we might think, if we ask ourselves the same questions, only substitute "liked," "admired" or "loved" for "elected."

I am somewhat aware that there is code-switching in discourse, such as I might say, "I view this as a very positive development" to a group of professionals, and just plain "Sweeeeet!" to my pre-teen child. I can say to my younger coworkers, "Owned!" and they understand that which with an older audience requires, "Wow, the other party clearly attained the upper hand in this situation, and at your expense." This is natural in the sense that almost all of us do it every day, to some greater or lesser extent. There are people I know who don't, but they typically come across to others as boring, stuck-up, out of touch, or just plain frightening. A bit of code-switching is necessary, and is a positive aspect of discourse. To me, code-switching means I want to communicate with somebody at whatever level they communicate. And I think here is the crux of the issue. Why do I want to communicate, and what do I want to communicate? Are my motives selfish or no? Is my communication for good or ill? It is for the benefit of the other, or for me? And I can ask myself, should ask myself, if the communication is true to "who I am" regardless of the code.

And this leads me to a few concluding thoughts. When we communicate, we make statements explicitly and implicitly. We are also aware (I hope) that inferences will be made. True enough, inferences are largely the responsibility of the audience and cannot be controlled by us. But this is not entirely the case. We perceive at least the possibility of particular inferences. Sometimes we encourage them. Certain rhetorical forms depend upon them. In such cases, do we manipulate the inferences, and to what end? In all of these cases (explicit claims, implicit claims, and cajoled inferences), are we speaking from a single identity that controls our speech keeping it consistent to our "true self" no matter what the voice, no matter what the code? I have no firm conclusions. But one thing that seems promisingly useful is to remember that our actions are valuable in that they reflect our state of being. If our speech acts, properly translated from various voices and codes, are contradictory, we are not speaking from a single identity—or, our single identity is behaving dishonestly. It doesn't take a genius to realize that there are cases where we are genuinely, and for the good, being all things to all people—and cases which cross the line to where we are simply being false.

One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what to make of him. In fact, they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud; but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstract norms of "perfection" to his own life. He cannot seem to make his life fit in with the books.

Sometimes his case is so bad that no monastery will keep him. He has to be dismissed, sent back to the world like Benedict Joseph Labre, who wanted to be a Trappist and a Carthusian and succeeded in neither. He finally ended up as a tramp. He died in some street in Rome.

And yet the only canonized saint, venerated by the whole Church, who has lived either as a Cistercian or a Carthusian since the Middle Ages is St. Benedict Jospeh Labre. — New Seeds, chapter 14

The few lines of today's Merton Monday are deceptively simple; the ideas of "true" self and "false" self may not, in the end, cover all the bases. At the very least, I think the false self can be broken into false selves as far as I tend to view it. And then there's the idea in my mind that all this disunity within me, this propensity to foster the disunity by breaking things down, is a (if not the) problem. At the very least, walking a path of discovering one's "true" self in God involves not only casting false selves aside, but also integrating them—or parts of them—into a whole. In other words, part of my true self is the very fact that false selves tend to exist within me; I cannot ignore them, pretend they don't exist. I must recognize them and—in a certain sense and for a certain moment in my life—accept them. After all, there's no way to acknowledge them, to identify them, to bid them farewell, unless I first agree that they exist and then converse with them. And most likely, it is only some aspect of my true self that can accomplish this. Just thinking out loud for a minute.

What I like most about this Merton Monday is the idea of the immense tension which exists between the humility to be ourselves and the pride of our false self (or selves). Merton is correct that this is a struggle of heroic proportions. The idea of it reminds me of intuitions I feel when I'm around other people. At one end of the spectrum are folks who are totally immersed in false selves (their own and those of other people). At the other end are the rare breed who seem to have found their true self and are amazingly humble and peaceful. In the middle is all the rest of us. Toward the people along this spectrum, I confess, I hold various opinions and feel various emotions. I feel compassion for those who are so mired in falsehood they don't even think about truth. I am amazed by those few who seem to have found their true selves. Honestly, I think the ones I just can't stand are those who are fully bound up in falsehood yet spend their time proudly proclaiming it to be the singular Truth. And honestly, I think the ones I identify with the most are those who at some level understand the struggle and are fighting gallantly, against the whole world, to win it. Some of them appear as total freaks to the rest of the world, but I really think that many of them are attempting something quite noble—whether they fully realize it or not. The role of humility in this latter case is to recognize that being considered a freak may at times be necessary—unavoidable, even—in the quest for truth, but it is not an end in itself. Being a freak for the sake of being a freak is a pride which is just as ignoble and ugly as any other of its more common, accepted forms.

And so it takes heroic humility to be yourself and to be nobody but the man, or the artist, that God intended you to be.

You will be made to feel that your honesty is only pride. This is a serious temptation because you can never be sure whether you are being true to your true self or only building up a defense for the false personality that is the creature of your own appetite for esteem.

But the greatest humility can be learned from the anguish of keeping your balance in such a position: of continuing to be yourself without getting tough about it and without asserting your false self against the false selves of other people. —New Seeds, chapter 14

Wow. A whole week slipped by me somehow. Back to Merton Mondays…

[The truly humble man] is able to see quite clearly that what is useful to him may be useless for somebody else, and what helps others to be saints might ruin him. That is why humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and a common sense without which there is no sane morality.

It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life? His sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone… —New Seeds, chapter 14

Of course Merton understood that we find ourselves and we find God in the lives and love of other people, but he also took great pains to point out that while we are doing so, the working out of our salvation is a mystery which occurs in our internal lives, between each individual and God. In my estimate, what is so very important in Merton's presentations is his understanding that this occurs only when we are each free to be our self as God created us. This freedom must be allowed by others, certainly, but also by ourselves. Both are difficult, and their necessity cannot be overestimated.

This is, at the very least, one of the core weaknesses in mainstream Christianity; that in the name of being holy we spend our lives trying to be something we were never intended to be—while in truth each precludes the other.

To the truly humble man the ordinary ways and customs and habits of men are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or nonconformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. Ignoring all this as indifferent, the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leave the rest aside. — New Seeds, chapter 14

I've posted before about Vinnie, a mentally challenged young man I know, and from that post I'll remind the reader of two things:

(1) Vinnie speaks pretty well and gets his point across, sometimes he's really funny without trying to be, and he always speaks sincerely. He knows the value of communication and of being transparent. (2) Vinnie knows the value of many things much better than I do. Lots of times he comes to church at the same place I go. Vinnie was formed by the same Loving God as me. That's why he's my brother. I'm going to watch him more closely this year. I think he's here to be a teacher—for people like me.

I saw Vinnie at church services today. He came up to me after they were over, said "Hi," and held out his hand to shake mine. I returned the gesture, offering, "Hi Vinnie. How ya doin' today?"

"I'm doing good I was just wondering if you have any plans for lunch today—" he said. Most of his sentences are spoken with the inflection of part statement, part question.

At this, I was thinking Vinnie was trying to ask me out to lunch, maybe because I gave him a ride home recently. So I said, "No, I don't, I'm just going to go home because I have some other things I gotta go do later. I don't really have time to go out to lunch today. But thank you very much for asking."

"Ohhhh okaaaaay," Vinnie said as his eyes gazed past me, looking around the church auditorium, as if searching for something. I decided it would be a good idea to try to clarify the conversation, so I asked, "Were you wanting to ask me out to eat with you today?" At this point, I'll just note ahead of time that this is how we normal, average, blah-blah people think: Ah-hah! I did a nice thing the other day, and so I'm being offered payback! Good for you, Vinnie! That's so nice of you!

My brother Vinnie, though, he's much more clearly focused than us, far less calculating, with no ego whatsoever. His response? "Uhm no I was just going around asking the older people to see who's going out to lunch to see if somebody might take me out with them—" I smiled broadly and genuinely, and explained again that I was going out of town, and didn't have time to go eat. Vinnie told me good-bye, and continued with his quest.

The lesson from Vinnie to me here? I'm having trouble finding all the right words. It's a very clear, very simple lesson, but it's big. It's a big lesson about how we should relate to other people, versus how we actually relate to other people. I think the best way I can put it is, Vinnie wanted food and he wanted companionship. No calculations. No ego. No attachment to outcome. No strings. No reading into things. No hurt feelings. No embarrassment. Clean. Pure. Simple. Childlike. Innocent. Just basic human needs, as natural and acceptable as daybreak and nightfall. I need. You give? No? Okie. I ask somebody else.

Naah… we normal, average, blah-blah people would never be satisfied with something so uncomplicated. We can't seem to think we're alive unless we have something to be unhappy about, and somebody to blame for it.

Several months ago, probably closer to a year ago, I began putting together a post but had some problems working it out in my mind. I thought up until this week that I had eventually posted it, but I can find it nowhere, so I'm guessing that I didn't. In that case, it's a nice thing that I didn't, because I think I've now remedied the problem I was having (best as I can recall) with feeling good about posting it in the first place.

The post was supposed to be the first of three concerning "dirty little secrets" of Christian faith (note, please, that I'm referring to specific traditions in modern Christian faith; not Christian faith in general). Well, so I didn't publish the first, I forgot the second, and I ended up posting the third as "Faith, Belief, Reality etc. Part III." Now that I recently posted some ideas on judgment, I think I'm ready to publish the first post now, in a slightly edited form without some introductory materials concerning dirty little secrets. I'll include the post here and now, and append a comment or two related to the judgment post:

[begin]

A lot of us, Christian or not, spend a fair amount of time talking about "justice." Oftentimes, perhaps usually, we talk about how justice was or was not carried out in a particular criminal or civil case. Sometimes we talk about justice in terms of our Christian faith, generally when we talk about Heaven and Hell and who will or should go to either place. In the majority of all these cases we like to say we "cry out" for justice to be served, which is in itself a borrowing of language inherited from religious tradition. We believe, for whatever reasons, that crying out for justice is a good, moral, Godly thing for us to do. And so it is. But now we have to get a little closer to the dirty little secret, and to inch toward it I'll start with Micah, who is credited with saying:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, NRSV)

Some English translations of the Old Testament give us "mercy" instead of kindness in this verse, and I'm not sure which, if either, is closer to the Hebrew. I'm going to go with mercy, since it's what I've heard most often and because, admittedly, it goes better with my point. To love mercy implies that we will extend mercy, and extending mercy necessitates that beforehand a wrong must have been committed. (After all, if none had been committed, there would be no need for mercy.) In short, it seems to me that if we accept that the three things Micah admonishes us to pursue are not mutually exclusive—and there is no reason to think they are so—then mercy is dealing with gracious forgiveness toward wrong-doing and if so, then the justice we are supposed to "do" is not about dispensing an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. It is not about people "getting what they deserve." Justice here cannot be about punishing wrong, nor about giving another person their just desserts. So here's the beginning of the dirty little secret: The justice we typically seek in mainstream Christianity is not the justice God asks of us, but is a purposeful misinterpretation on our parts; one which allows us to ignore what Micah says the LORD really requires of us: that we be socially just.

I have long believed and often said that every problem of man comes down to his frighteningly insidious and clever pride. In the case of ourselves vis-à-vis Micah, what we have is a pride that tells us we should be able to possess whatever we want in life no matter what the cost to those who can't seem to get what they need in life. It is pride that tells us that we deserve spoils and they don't, because, simply, we are good and they are not (in a sort of incestuous reasoning , we have previously concluded, via our poor theology, that they are not good because they do not have). Once this pride convinces us that justice is about punishment and vengeance rather than social welfare and fairness, then we can tell—which is to say, lie to—ourselves that we cry out for justice, while we commit all manner of crimes against social justice. Furthermore, because this twisted view of life necessitates that we relegate the justice for which we "must" cry out to the realm of punishment and just desserts, we throw mercy out the window, saving it as well for those whom we judge to be deserving—which we read as those who haven't really done anything wrong other than what we ourselves may have already done or are currently doing. In short, we somehow manage to make sure that justice and mercy are defined in such a way that each affords us personally the most benefit possible. Whatever that psychological, intellectual "somehow" may be, it is allowed to succeed because it is approved by our pride.

What the secret comes down to, the dirty little secret too dirty for our minds to allow to bubble up to the surface of our consciences, is that we rich, Bible-thumping Christians are not leading the lives God asks us to live. In spite of all our rhetoric, in spite of all our crying out, in spite of all our so-called morality, we are missing the basic, essential facts of Godliness. And dirtiest of all, when it comes down to it and the rubber meets the road, we aren't really willing to face the facts. Plain and simple, we don't want to be in line with God's program. We don't want to be, because we are too selfish. We don't want to be, because we don't want to share. We don't want to be, because we would rather believe that we deserve life's extravagant spoils and others deserve comparatively nothing. We don't want to be, because in the end we care about ourselves far more than we care about others. We don't want to be, because we like it this way. We don't want to be, because it's a lot more fun to wheel our SUV through the drive-thru than it is to be like much of the rest of the world: hungry, sick and suffering from exposure to the elements. Besides, what thinking person can't see the truth that some of us are blessed because of who we are, some are cursed because of who they are, and this is the way life always will and should be? (Well and of course, notwithstanding that Micah, the other prophets and Jesus disagree.)

Many of us, and I fear myself included, are hypocrites in the realm of justice. It's a secret that only we don't know.

[end]

As best as I can recall (and believe me, my memory is not so great anymore), the problem I had with this post was questioning myself on my interpretation of the word justice. I seem to recall going a few rounds in my head about whether or not I was being sufficiently open to the form of justice that I was rejecting. But, after reviewing Jesus' invective in Matthew, where (it seems clear to me, anyway) that Jesus is quoting the prophets regarding justice, mercy and humility, I have to side with my original thoughts. Jesus was far more interested in social justice (or, more correctly, the lack thereof) in his time than about "legal" justice. What is significant here is that I can find no evidence that the Pharisees, scribes and such were short on the "legal" justice. To the point, given that these men were more than willing to deny, cast out and punish those whom they considered to fall short, and given that in such an environment Jesus would say they had neglected justice, I really must conclude that Jesus' take on the prophet was that the reference is to social justice.

Do I feel better? Yes, in that I think the original post stands on firm footing. And no, in that I think the post stands on firm footing.

Continuing my previous post, here's quite a long ramble concerning the "complication" I mentioned…

To look at a person or a group who claims to be Christian, and to say the religion practiced thereby is "not much of a Christianity" because it is divisive, is a dicey stand to take. It is to create a sort of division, seems contradictory, and some might even say is hypocritical. I think it's fair to say that it is not a clearly defensible position to take, similar to saying, "I accept everybody except those who can't accept other people," or, "I believe (absolutely) that all things are relative." I'm well aware of this, and by and large I have long struggled, and continue to struggle, to not draw lines and to be very careful not to take stands which divide. The problem is, there isn't any way to have convictions for one's life without drawing lines and taking stands somewhere, and to draw lines and take stands means that sometimes you make claims that divide. By the way, I should mention that while this probably seems as obvious as the sun in the sky to most of you, it's something that I've really had a hard time with. Perhaps I've just gotten high-centered in my thinking somewhere back in a long ago, and let's not forget personal psychology; I just don't like causing conflict and I'm a bit of a cowardly little thing. So. What to do?

All of this is wrapped up in a realm of general fear, foreboding and mystique in Christian religion; the idea of "judging" other people:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.—Matthew 7:1-5 (NRSV)

I have to note that I've noticed a great number of Christians who, in my opinion, pretty much fail at this injunction. Judgment seems to be high on their can-do list, ranging from judging a person's entire worldview all the way down to attitudes revealed via common gossip: "Do you know what he said she said? Can you believe that? What kind of a person says something like that?" Even at the small scale this is judging in a certain sense, and not just judging, but reveling in the act of it; it's a sad curiosity that sometimes Christians form social bonds based upon shared judgment against others. But, part of my problem is that I've never gotten it straight in my mind as to just what "judge" is supposed to mean. I use the word, I talk about the concept in argument, but what exactly does it mean? Does it mean simply on emotional human terms, does it mean judging facts, behaviors, beliefs, eternal salvation or what? Does it mean I don't like somebody, that I disagree with them, or what? To my mind those forms of judgment—disagreement and (dis)affection—are natural and acceptable. But often we use the word in the area of judging whether a person is "good or bad." I'm not sure this clarifies the issue at all; we never well define what "good" and "bad" mean, but the implication is that we consider them morally inferior to ourselves. I seriously doubt that Jesus would approve of this. We use the word "judge" more definitively in terms of a person's "eternity status," as in, "Yep, that one over there is going to hell for sure if he doesn't change his ways," and that sort of thing. I also seriously doubt that Jesus would approve of this usage, and in fact I'm convinced that he would not. Now, most Christians will say they're judging behavior and acts, not people and souls. To do this is a pretty supportable idea Biblically; it's okay to say that murder is wrong, and you can do it without casting judgment on whether the murderer is morally inferior or going to hell. But the truth is, I'm not sure that the majority of Christians make the distinction.

There's another factor that has long confused me, too. Look at what Jesus says, according to Matthew, in the following invective:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath. ' You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, 'Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.' How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?" Matthew 23:1-33 (NRSV)

For a person who said do not judge, and for a person who said he was not here to judge the world, Jesus obviously held a strong stand concerning the behavior of these people and—seemingly—their state in the face of God. At first blush, if he wasn't judging them in some way, I don't know what I should call it. So I've long asked myself, "If Jesus said don't judge, isn't he violating his own idea here? Isn't this inconsistent?" But, I think there's a fairly obvious connection or two between the two passages: first of all, in three words, "Pride is bad." Working it out in relation to these passages, if you think about it, pride is at the root of casting judgment, it's at the root of placing yourself above others, it's at the root of condemning others, and it's at the root of hypocrisy. (Admittedly, my conclusion comes as no great surprise, since I believe strongly that pride is the root of all our human problems, so my take on these passages may be more than a bit biased.)

Pride causes us to view ourselves in relation to other people rather than in relation to God. I really tend to believe that Jesus understood that what is good or bad about a person at the most fundamental levels is known only by God. Furthermore, the knowledge between individual and God is the only one that matters. To judge another in a moral sense is to manifest the fact that you are placing yourself in the place of God. Being hypocritical manifests that you are worried about how others see you, about your appearance in their eyes, rather than about how you stand in relationship with God. In short, judging others and hypocrisy are both signs that we have our focus all wrong. Both indicate that we have adopted a person-to-person view of life, rather than a God-to-person view of life. We have failed to understand that all human interrelations are person-to-God-to-person. We have pushed God aside, and attempted to usurp God's position as God. I think this is what steamed Jesus so greatly about the scribes and Pharisees. They talked a great deal about God, but didn't have room for God. All they had room for was placing themselves alongside others, with themselves in the superior position. Jesus just couldn't stand for this. He drew a line. It is very interesting to note that overall in Jesus' ministry he accepted the humble people, some of whom were tax collectors, prostitutes, drunks and the like. But he drew the line at pride.

As to the second connection between the passages, a fair question to ask would be, "So in this case, Jesus didn't seem to allow for the God-person relationship with the scribes and Pharisees. He stepped right in and judged them." Well, apparently, yes, unless one would allow for a view I consider likely. Note that Jesus in the earlier passage says that we ourselves determine the measure of judgment that is poured out upon us. Could it be that Jesus is saying, "Given that you people condemn others based upon a system that you yourself fail to fulfill, given that you are guilty of those things you claim sentence one to hell, then how can you avoid being sentenced to it yourself?" In other words, Jesus wasn't himself judging the scribes and Pharisees; his point was that they were guilty under the standards of judgment they wielded against others. The hypocrites judged themselves, and he was merely pointing it out. While I admit that the felt need to find some consistency between the two passages is mostly a matter of the western modernity's influences in my mind, I consider this analysis to be reasonable enough to be considered seriously. If it is in anyway correct, then there is a contemporary counterpart to it that should be considered, most of all by Christians who are doctrinally legalistic.

There are Christians who claim that believing the "correct" Christian doctrine is absolutely essential to salvation. I'm not saying they simply believe you have to have the Trinity, Immaculate Conception and Resurrection correct. I'm saying they believe things like, oh, if you have a kitchen in your church building, or you play an organ while you sing hymns, or you get the roles of men and women in church mixed up, you're doomed. Needless to say, if you're of a different denomination than they, or perhaps a different congregation of the same denomination, well, you're doomed. I've actually had a conversation with a guy that went like this:

Me: So, are you saying that the people in your church are the only ones going to Heaven?

Him: Oh no. I wouldn't say that. The Bible says we aren't to judge others. But I will say that only people who follow the Bible correctly are going to Heaven. I believe the Bible teaches this quite clearly.

Me: So would you say, though, that only your church follows the Bible correctly?

Him: Well, yes. That's why I'm here in this church.

Me: So you're saying that your church is the only ones going to Heaven?

Him: No. I didn't say that.

Well… yeah, he did. And he's not alone. What's most unsettling about this view is that if you ask somebody who is deeply committed to it, "But what about those people who are humble of heart in following a different doctrine? Won't they be saved in the end by a loving God who reads the hearts of men?" they will answer, "No. I know that sounds like it would be nice, but the Bible teaches that 'there is a way that seems right to man, yet leads to destruction,' and, 'Many people will say to me on that day, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and I will say them to them, Away from me, for I never knew you'." There is no room in these people's minds for being mistaken about what the Bible "really teaches." So, to put things into their frame of reference, wherein a person meets God on Judgment Day and accounts for one's life, it seems to me it would have to go something like this: (1) Since they have said that correct doctrine is essential (the key) to salvation, God will use doctrine to judge them. (2) Obviously, their doctrine is imperfect (as is true of all doctrines), so they deserve to perish. (3) In response, a loving God could and would accept them in Grace and Mercy anyway, based upon humility of heart in their beliefs and upon their love for Him alone, but ... (4) They themselves have said this counts for nothing. Their bad. In this hypothetical scenario, such people would stand condemned, and solely by their own standards; not God's. To my mind, this is essentially why Jesus presented the scribes and Pharisees with a bleak and tragic outlook. They had created this same situation for themselves, and Jesus was stating the obvious. But I digress a bit.

My point? Drawing lines and taking stands are things to do—things we must do—between ourselves and God. Yes, they affect how we live and what we judge as right or wrong for ourselves. They sometimes divide us from others in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. But are the lines we draw to be lines for other men and women as well? I think not. I think those lines are their business, between them and God. It is okay to disagree with some people. It is okay to not like some people. But it is not okay to presume the ultimate moral state of another, nor his or her ultimate standing in relation to God. Nor is it okay to hate. So, when I spoke in the previous post about divisive forms of Christianity "not being much a Christianity," I meant it. I take that stand. But in making such a statement, be it clear that I'm disagreeing with doctrine; namely doctrine that denies entrance to God's Kingdom from those who humbly desire to be a part of it. Perhaps I am also going so far as to not like some of my fellow Christians. But as for their ultimate moral state and ultimate standing with God? As far as I can tell, they're right here with me, as equals, in strength and weakness, in wisdom and foolishness, for good and for bad, warts and all. Who am I to deny them the Kingdom? I cannot and would not. Thanks be to God, who is no respecter of persons and accepts all of us who remain humble before him in all our disparate—and undoubtedly flawed—beliefs. May God rid me of all my pride, and keep me safe in an ever maturing humility.

I couldn't resist the reference to pop culture. And by the way, this post has no relation to the previous one.

I just made my usual late-night run to X-Mart to buy "stuff," and thought I'd make a quick post now that I'm back home.

I doubt my acquaintance Vinnie will ever read this blog. But if you do, then hi Vinnie. I'm glad you stopped in.

Vinnie is a young man doing the best he can. Sometimes I see him gathering carts at X-Mart, wearing one those fluorescent vests and getting a little help from that cart-pushing robot-thing he calls "Buddy." Sometimes he's cleaning the tables at the little dining area inside X-Club. He works hard; he's always sweating and doing his job with gusto. He's glad to have a job. He knows the value of feeling like you're doing your part.

It takes Vinnie a long time to count change when he does his own shopping, and he doesn't have enough money to buy anything you'd call "stuff." He buys food and once in a while some clothes. He knows the value of a dollar.

Vinnie can't drive a car. He isn't qualified. So he rides a bicycle. He knows the value of transportation. He wears his helmet. He knows the simple beauty of being alive.

Vinnie speaks pretty well and gets his point across, sometimes he's really funny without trying to be, and he always speaks sincerely. He knows the value of communication and of being transparent.

Vinnie's big dream, last time we talked, was to someday have his own trailer house with air conditioning and a refrigerator. He knows the value of a comfortable place to call home.

Vinnie knows the value of many things much better than I do. Lots of times he comes to church at the same place I go. Vinnie was formed by the same Loving God as me. That's why he's my brother. I'm going to watch him more closely this year. I think he's here to be a teacher—for people like me.

May God richly bless the special people of the world. They, like children, are the precious ones.