Toxic Work Ethic in America, Part Three

This essay follows from Toxic Work Ethic in America, Part One and Toxic Work Ethic in America, Part Two.

We humans intensely comprehend our own limitations, fears, and psychological twinges, because we’re all passengers inside our own heads. We can never truly understand other people’s mental states from outside. In my last two essays, I made sweeping generalizations about working-class and upper-class mindsets, but I’m no scientist. I simply constructed a tentative hypothesis from personal experience, conversations, and observing public figures.

To recap, I suggested that most people have conditioned inner narratives driving their workplace habits, and “work ethic” is the benign manifestation of malignant inner trauma. I attribute this trauma to fathers, perhaps because my sources, both personal and public, are men. Maybe women learn more workplace habits from mothers; leave an informed comment. Either way, our “work ethic” is an external tool to paper over inner damage.

But this carries deeper implications: if I’m right, then work ethic, and workplace habits generally, orient toward the past. We appease the voices which exposed our inadequacies as children, constantly trying to silence condemnations that, as adults, only exist in our own heads. Addiction treatment specialist Gabor Maté says something similar about substance users, that they mostly want to assuage pain which their brains keep inflicting on themselves.

(As an aside, many friends have warm, supportive relationships with their fathers. I largely did, too, before his memory started failing. I don’t disparage fathers, but observe how they sustain patterns which they themselves don’t realize have caused harm.)

Contra this past orientation, most spiritual traditions favor a mindful orientation toward the present. Buddhist meditation, Christian centering prayer, and Taoist wandering all encourage supplicants to exist in the present, attuned to each moment, listening for the universe’s subtle call. The workplace of capitalist accrual reminds us of past voices and future rewards. But spiritual practice calls us to exist here, now, as we are.

Bringing spirituality into a workplace ethics discussion is, I realize, risky. Many True Believers insist their spiritual tradition is uniquely true, which could split my audience. Yet bear with me. For all their manifold differences, the religions I’ve studied share a core proposition that the person before us, the community around us, or the conflict buffeting us, holds primacy in our spirituality. Here. Now.

Overcoming the inherent “work ethic” trauma means attuning ourselves to the present. It means listening to instructions, not in fear of punishment or longing for reward, but as they are. It means recognizing our bosses as humans, with the foibles and needs that entails, and not as manifestations of engrained father images. It requires being attuned enough to our own bodies and limitations to say, without malice or fear, “No.”

Humans find ourselves torn between our carnal condition, driven substantially by past traumas and future needs, and our spiritual nature, which faces the present. What’s worse, our spiritual leaders, themselves facing the same tension, encourage this divide. When a millennia-old textbook becomes more important than the immediate person, conflict, or community, then spiritual leaders sink to the level of employers and politicians.

Moreover, the worldly forces which profit from our “work ethic” trauma, already know this. That’s why they barge into our spiritual domains. Billionaires and politicians have transformed Christianity into a nationalist front, reduced “self-care” to retail therapy, and taught us to see mindfulness as a professional strategy. Developing a spiritual discipline will entail purging the anti-spiritual influences from your tradition.

The spiritual equanimity I describe has no single path. Despite me mentioning prayer and meditation, I’ve found these disciplines of limited personal value. But I’ve achieved something comparable by writing poetry: listening to each moment, and selecting the most appropriate word which exists, has helped me attune myself to the present. Whatever removes you from past traumas and future mirages may be your path toward spiritual balance.

This conclusion probably feels abstruse, distant from my starting premise. Yet I believe it holds together. Whether it’s my father chastising me for slowing down, or Errol Musk chastising Elon for not collecting enough accomplishment tokens, that condemning voice comes from the past. The past thus can’t save us, nor the future, which doesn’t yet exist. Only in the present, the spiritual center, can we escape that conditioning.

Elon Musk and I learned incompatible messages from our fathers, which produce wholly divergent outcomes. Yet the harm those messages continue to produce have made us smaller, spiritually less developed beings. And we could both escape by reorienting ourselves away from those messages. But that means stopping seeing ourselves as economic actors, and redefining ourselves as human.

The God of Justice, and the Justice of Humankind

Jesse Watters

“He just believed the election was stolen,” Jesse Watters said last week on his recently minted prime-time Fox News show. The “he” in this statement is, of course, former President Donald Trump, arraigned last week for his part in fomenting the January 6^th, 2021, insurgency. According to Watters, if Trump sincerely believed his legitimate reelection was stolen, violence was justified. As Watters and Greg Gutfeld both state, proving Trump didn’t believe this is nigh-on impossible.

Hearing this last week, I mentally time-traveled to President George W. Bush’s second term. As Operation Iraqi Freedom dragged on, suffering terrible mission drift and causing incalculable harm, a right-wing talking point arose that President Bush didn’t necessarily lie in falsely claiming Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction. Calling it a “lie,” conservative prognosticators claimed, implied Bush knew his statements were false. A “lie” wasn’t necessarily a false statement; lying required intent, which is unprovable.

In both cases, we witness conservative pundits defending Republican Presidents based not on actions, but belief. If President Bush believed, in the chambers of his heart, that WMDs existed, then he wasn’t morally culpable for deceit; he was as misled as the American people. (We now know this is measurably untrue.) Likewise, if President Trump legitimately believed the 2020 Electoral College outcomes were insidiously doctored, then his sincerity morally shields the legality of his actions.

We should immediately reject this argument. If one’s moral state protects the legality of one’s actions, then Americans would never prosecute minors as adults, even for violent crimes. Yet American prosecutors do this frequently, asserting that the heinousness of crimes committed by minors, especially Black minors, overrules the diminished moral capacity of youth. In these cases, action defines morality. But pundits claim that Presidents—America’s most morally culpable people—are somehow shielded by their sincerity.

Even beyond this prima facie contradiction, foregrounding belief unearths a vipers’ nest. It introduces a twisted variation on the Christian doctrine that only God knows the contents of a human soul. Despite what we’d sometimes prefer to believe, humans can neither let somebody into Heaven, nor condemn somebody to Hell; these options belong exclusively to God. Shifting the parameters away from what Bush or Trump did, to what they believed, makes justice a divine prerogative.

The Accused

At least nominally, jurisprudence focuses not on the defendant’s morals, but upon actions. Did the accused actually hurt, steal, or kill? We may consider aggravating factors, such as whether the violence seems disproportionate. Prosecutions for first-degree murder may consider whether the actions demonstrated “depraved disregard for human life,” as by elaborate advance planning or coordination. But even in these cases, we don’t question the impurity of the defendant’s soul, but the severity of their actions.

Using these standards, we can evaluate the Presidents’ actions, without considering their mental or spiritual state. Even if President Bush believed, with the solemnity of church, that Iraq possessed WMDs, members of his administration stated unequivocally that no such weapons existed. Bush notoriously overruled their objections. Likewise, Jack Smith’s indictment of President Trump takes Trump’s beliefs of the table in Paragraph 3; Smith spends 45 pages unpacking Trump’s actions, not his mental or spiritual state.

These right-wing pundits negate all questions of action by asking: do they know they’re committing a legal or moral crime? Even laying aside the base hypocrisy of the fact that they only apply this question to Presidents, they also replace a legal question with a theological question. They declare Presidents, or at least Republican Presidents, as members of the Elect, saved from earthly sin by God’s inscrutable movement. Their only judgement is the Final Judgement.

Earthly courts obviously cannot judge human hearts. That’s why jailhouse conversions usually don’t create thorny legal issues: if the incarcerated is legitimately penitent, well, the penitentiary has done its (supposed) job. Keep up the good work. Legitimately run courts, in the English Common Law tradition, care only about the accused’s actions—and, in Trump’s case, those actions played out on live television. Bad actions for benevolent reasons are still, in the court’s eyes, bad actions.

Even if this premise wasn’t bad-faith partisanship, we should still resist this intrusion of spiritual judgement into the earthly justice system. The law does not, indeed cannot, judge what happens inside a person’s heart or mind. Though courts have some latitude to judge purposes, for instance self-defense, these conditions should remain exceptional and rare. Once courts start judging anyone’s beliefs or intentions the state assumes God’s role. And that fact alone should cause bipartisan concern.

Humanity as a Man-Made Phenomenon

James Paul Gee, What Is a Human?: Language, Mind, and Culture

Like “freedom” or “democracy,” most people think we have a working definition of “humanity” in our heads, and it works adequately most of the time. But this loosey-goosey approach to human essentialism has caused negative outcomes throughout history. War and slavery have let powerful people strip the social designations of humanity from strangers, while belief in human exceptionalism currently threatens humanity’s very existence through anthropogenic climate change.

In his youth, James Paul Gee initially trained for the priesthood, but after losing his faith, he earned a Ph.D. in linguistics. This duality probably influenced the interdisciplinary nature of his subsequent activities, such as the tacitly public nature of literacy, or the social interpretation of video games. This book, written as Gee retired from active academia shortly before the pandemic, is the culmination of his life’s work.

Gee identifies human nature through a balance of extremes. Each human is utterly unique, he writes, but unique human attributes manifest themselves mainly through social context. Therefore we are separate, circumscribed by the limits of our senses in the world, but we’re never truly separate, as we rely utterly on relationships with other humans and the natural world. We lack “free will,” a sludgy and imprecise term, but that lack doesn’t justify determinism.

Past attempts to define humanity have fallen down on the lack of nuance inherent in brevity. Recall Plato defining a human as a “featherless biped,” and Diogenes responding by brandishing a plucked chicken. Gee makes no such mistake here. His definition of humanity sprawls over 200 pages, sometimes narrowly focused on precise scientific outcomes, other times expanding to encompass philosophic maunderings and autobiographical anecdotes. Brevity isn’t Gee’s weakness.

Humans, to Gee, exist in community; he uses termite mounds as his metaphor (sometimes stretched to breaking). Obviously we rely upon others to divide labor, collaborate on labor, and amplify our thought processes. But we don’t just exist in community; we are ourselves communities, what Gee calls “transacting swarms,” made up of our microbiomes and our relationship with the earth. We live in termite mounds, and we are termite mounds.

James Paul Gee

But Gee distrusts the mechanistic materialism of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Just as humans have organic biomes, we have “spiritomes,” the complex nest of spiritual realities in which humans dwell, individually and collectively. Though Gee, a lapsed Catholic, flinches from capital-T Truth claims, he believes human spiritual subjectivity is real enough to matter in making life-altering decisions. We all have relationships with evidently noncorporeal realities.

To this point, Gee’s thesis draws heavily on research from other thinkers academically grounded in the physical sciences. Not surprisingly, as a linguist, Gee’s anthropology becomes most dense and detailed when discussing how language shapes the human mental structure. Gee admits coming from a Chomskian generative linguistic background—fascinating but often abstruse. But exactly how his linguistic background shapes humans may surprise you.

Gee admits never reading poetry until after achieving his doctorate. How he studied linguistics without at least a historical survey of poetic metaphor eludes me, but whatever. Gee waxes rhapsodic about what a revelation it was discovering poetry in adulthood, unclouded by state-school “skillz drillz.” The unsullied joy he describes bespeaks a wonder that we who still read poetry often struggle to recapture. I’m downright jealous.

Despite his sometimes scientistic mindset, the humanities offer Gee’s greatest insight into the relationship between our outside, communal world, and the strictly internal neural landscape of senses and higher reasoning. We perceive the world according to our senses, and also according to our ability to describe it to others. His lavish fondness for poetry, especially Emily Dickinson, bespeaks a worldview in which subjectivity isn’t a weakness, but a defining trait.

To his credit, Gee doesn’t pretend his definition is more binding or global than it actually is. He acknowledges that any definition of humanity is provisional and circumscribed by the author’s background and prior knowledge. His language is colored by nuance and the frequent need to walk a tightrope between seemingly contradictory positions. He invites informed readers to challenge and refine his definition of humanity; he doesn’t just stand pat.

Now past seventy, Gee clearly writes with one eye angled toward how posterity will remember him. He clearly intends this volume as a capstone of his academic career. He finished writing in the months leading up to the pandemic, and one wonders how this book might’ve looked just six months later. Yet as a prolegomenon to future humanistic studies, Gee offers an exciting, readable, and purely joyful philosophic consideration.

Americans and the Lost Art of Repentance

Insurgents attack the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021—
the first such successful breach since the War of 1812

I first remember hearing “forgive and forget” in third grade. Six bullies, including one former friend, had surrounded me—an unusually tall, skinny kid and therefore highly visible—while walking home from school. They made a circle, screaming insults and shoving me around, while other kids, equally terrified to intervene, watched in silence. I eventually escaped, but had to leave my sweatshirt behind, in one kid’s thick, grabby hands.

“Forgive and forget,” my mother said, when I tearfully pleaded for my parents to do something. “That’s the Christian thing to do.” I told her, if I forgave them immediately, they’d simply repeat their attacks; she remained unmoved. My inability to forgive became pointed in coming days, as I saw that bully wearing my sweatshirt; unable to prove ownership, I had no choice but to watch him wearing it. “Forgive and forget,” my mother urged.

Episcopal theologian Fleming Rutledge writes something important in her book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. “When affluent white Americans think of heaven, we tend to think of celestial serenity, natural beauty, and family reunions. Black Americans… would be much more likely to think of God’s promise that there will be ultimate justice.” I’ve read similar statements before, but Rutledge removes the waxy-apple finish and exposes the core.

Well-off people, especially but not necessarily White, love thinking of God as merciful, forgiving, and generous. The disadvantaged more often remember God as just. This isn’t coincidental. White America’s creeping abandonment of religion reflects an internalized belief that we’re good enough, even blessed, as we are; even White Evangelicalism, the religious bloc famous for supporting our outgoing President, sees religion as a ratification of presupposed godliness.

We’re witnessing this currently in American politics. Defenders of the status quo demand we “move on” and “unify” following last week’s attack on the Capitol Building. These demands for unity are a secular, political equivalent for “forgiveness.” Like my well-meaning mother, these politicians want everyone to forgive the attackers, and more importantly the politicians who encouraged them, without any secular form of God’s justice.

Christian scripture, however, links forgiveness strictly to repentance. Unless somebody demonstrates a changed heart, forgiveness is an empty show, simple permission to keep transgressing. Repentance, in Hebrew, is shuv, “to change one’s path”; in Greek, it’s metanoia, “to think again.” God’s forgiveness, in scripture, comes after God’s judgement, which depends entirely on human willingness to change one’s mind and walk a new road.

An insurgent carries General Lee's battle flag into the Capitol
Building during the same attack, a first in American history

Recent culture is replete with examples of what happens if people don’t demonstrate repentance. Politics is only one example; the President’s refusal to amend his ways, after his impeachment, show he learned nothing and wasn’t remotely chastened. Likewise, comedian Louis CK, rather than relinquishing his career, turned his performances into fascist rallies. Fill in your own blank: powerful people want forgiveness, without pausing first for repentance and justice.

My mother urging me to forgive bullies, who hadn’t expressed an inkling of repentance (and, with the kid wearing my sweatshirt, the opposite of repentance), plagues me today. When my bosses are exposed lying to me, I feel guilty that I cannot immediately forgive them; my guilt makes me swallow my objections and comply even more vigorously. Same with deceitful politicians, thieving neighbors, and other wrongdoers: I feel guilty when I cannot instantaneously forgive.

This internalized script probably isn’t coincidental. Powerful people, both religious and secular, have hijacked the concept of forgiveness to support their agendas. By taking religious teachings, and other moral principles, out of context, and repeating them aggressively, they’ve successfully reprogrammed our thoughts to accept powerful people’s prerogative. The demand that we constantly forgive, for instance, the president’s sexual crimes, makes it easier to rewrite law to support his rich friends.

Don’t misunderstand me. My mother wanted me to live without the heavy burden of petty grudges. Anger and resentment can stunt the human soul, as anybody knows if they’ve witnessed the damage wrought on themselves when they can’t forgive somebody who’s dead or otherwise gone. Sometimes it’s necessary to forgive someone who hasn’t expressed repentance, because the beneficiary is yourself.

But when powerful people demand your forgiveness, they usually want it because they hope to short-circuit the need for repentance. If forgiveness is something they expect from others, something they shame well-meaning people into providing, it’s because they hope to avoid justice. That’s what we’re seeing in Washington now, and elsewhere, too. When others demand forgiveness, before even attempting repentance, that isn’t Christianity or morality. That’s ethical gaslighting, plain and simple.

Liberty, Responsibility, and Spirituality: a Rumination

Why are Americans so spectacularly bad at regulating ourselves? This question has become particularly pointed in the COVID-19 era, when we’ve witnessed an eminently preventable disease sweep through our country, causing economic devastation and personal tragedy. The quintessential American definition of “freedom,” meaning personal autonomy as close to perfect as possible, requires a citizenry willing to regulate itself. Why do we seem unable to do that?

In my younger, more conservative days, I tried my hand at political Libertarianism. It didn’t take. For me, Libertarianism was intellectual hygiene: if government is bad, as conservatives believe, and there’s no clearly definable boundary between “enough government” and “too much government,” I reasoned, then the only conclusion is total abolition of government altogether. Let Americans regulate themselves! We have, I insisted, the wisdom that governments just don’t.

But Libertarianism failed for me because simple observation demonstrated that while Americans perhaps could regulate ourselves, we clearly don’t. As a people, we’re too often drunken, selfish, reckless with money, and heedless of safety. Even before COVID, I watched seemingly reasonable citizens drive at breakneck speeds on residential streets, and rewire their houses without tripping the breaker first. American behavior frequently crosses from inconsiderate, into downright destructive.

Admittedly, outside regulation does only incrementally better. I struggled to define the problem, until I read James C. Scott. He describes the tension between central governments and local communities to manage resources, including land and labor. Governments struggle without what Scott terms “local knowledge,” the intimate familiarity with conditions that comes from knowing and working closely with a place and community. Governments standardize; communities localize.

What knowledge, I realized, is more inherently local, than knowledge of oneself? Just as pre-modern communities regulate themselves by knowing their land and their people intimately, individuals could hypothetically know themselves intimately enough to regulate their responses to crime, economic insecurity, and pandemic. The reason we can’t regulate ourselves, I grasped with a jolt, is because too many Americans don’t know themselves intimately. We’re strangers to ourselves.

This demands two follow-up questions: why don’t we know ourselves better? And how can we fix it? The first is easy. We can’t see ourselves from outside; we need to outsource some knowledge of ourselves onto others because we’re limited and finite. Just as local communities must sometimes seek opinions from neighboring communities, or the federal government, to understand their conditions, we likewise need others’ input to understand ourselves better.

The repair becomes sticky, because it involves a word which makes many Americans squeamish today: spirituality. Let us stress, this doesn’t necessarily mean religion, though it could. Rather, historic spiritual practices, like Christian centering prayer or Buddhist meditation, involve pausing the rhythms the world enforces upon us externally, and hearing ourselves better. Only by pausing the world, and listening to ourselves, can we gain local knowledge to regulate ourselves.

I don’t mean this frivolously. The outside world demands we satisfy the economy, support the hierarchy, and abnegate ourselves. Though we have institutions rather than kings today, capitalism has centralized power more thoroughly than Louis XIV could’ve ever dreamed. This centralized order demands individuals set aside dreams, work for others, and pursue appetites—which spirituality demands we see and resist. Spiritually autonomous people make poor consumers and wage slaves.

Addiction specialist Gabor Maté describes addicts as the ultimate slaves to appetite. Driven by trauma or isolation, they seek something to numb the pain. But what does anyone do, when we define ourselves by bigger houses and sleeker cars, than a socially acceptable version of addictive behavior? Likewise, Maté writes, addicts gradually develop control over their appetites using Buddhist meditation. Though many, including Maté himself, remain agnostic, spirituality yields self-control.

American libertarianism might work if citizens had spiritual self-control. While we’ll always necessarily outsource some acts of regulating ourselves to our neighbors, who can see us in context more objectively, we might captain our lives better if we knew ourselves better. But we don’t. We’ve relinquished all forms of self-knowledge to corporations, billionaires, and financiers. Americans can’t regulate ourselves because we’re strangers from ourselves, walking around with weak, malnourished souls.

Watching Americans demand their freedom without knowing themselves first, I believe we could’ve avoided this whole catastrophe. The problem began long before a noisy, aggressive minority thought they were too important to wear masks. It began when Americans surrendered decision-making authority to rich property owners, while maintaining the illusion that they were free. We’re an individualist society full of withered individuals, and the only solution is to turn inward.

Fear of Darkness: Part Three

This essay follows Fear of Darkness: Part One and Fear of Darkness, Part Two

So, to recap: stuck in a broken-down truck beside a rural highway, miles from help, with no cell signal and no way to contact humanity, I had two realizations. First, darkness and isolation dismantle the distractions of my senses, forcing me to confront truths I’ve long known but couldn’t process. Second, human perceptions of time are illusory; “now” only exists later, when I think about it. Only what has happened, and what could happen, really exist.

Trapped and isolated, forced to sit still and listen, these first two realizations led to my third and final realization of the night: that only action really matters. We make excuses for the past, and promises for the future, because fundamentally, we humans know what only darkness made me realize, that “now” doesn’t exist, and therefore doesn’t matter. Instead, we focus on what we did, what we could’ve done, and what we hope to do going forward.

This realization puts me at odds with two of humanity’s greatest religious traditions. Christianity teaches that we have an intimate relationship with transcendence, that our ability to commune with God defines our souls, and the ultimate disposition of our undying essence. Whether that means the catechistic salvation of Catholic tradition, or the Reformation’s promise of “salvation by grace through faith,” we are saved by transcending ourselves, not by doing anything.

Simultaneously, Buddhism teaches that living outside the moment creates suffering. Chaining ourselves to the past reminds us of our limitations, and keeps us anchored, unable to exist currently; while casting our hopes onto the future keeps us striving after goals which cannot literally exist, because the future never wholly arrives. Though different Buddhist schools disagree on how to achieve their goals, they agree: only the present really, meaningfully exists.

I wandered into my personal wilderness, like Jesus seeking temptations at Lent or Siddharta renouncing his palace; yet my conclusions differ wildly from theirs. Yet I don’t believe I’ve contravened their realizations, either. Because Jesus offers salvation, while Buddha offers Nirvana, and I offer neither. Indeed, I offer nothing, because I don’t believe I’ve uncovered truths that apply to anybody but myself. And that’s my biggest reward for a dark, tumultuous evening.

Huge swaths of my life have been defined entirely by the desire to avoid causing offense. Sometimes I’ve wondered why this is. Was it my parents, encouraging me to pursue life goals consistent with earning a living rather than accomplishing personal fulfillment; teachers who harped on every shortcoming in my work, making me so afraid to screw up that I’m left paralyzed; my rootless youth, needing to reinvent myself every two or three years? Who knows?

Whatever the reason, the future became a source of terror, the past a reservoir of regret. My entire present has been an effort to avoid hurting anybody’s feelings or making anybody think poorly of me; as a result, I’ve remained perpetually unfulfilled. Ironically, in attempting to keep people thinking well of me, I’ve avoided doing anything that would’ve built deeper human connections, like getting married or putting down roots. I’ve become a ghost.

Rather than avoiding offense, I need to act boldly, acknowledging that some outcomes remain beyond my control. Yes, I will inevitably do something to hurt or pique others. Because I’m fundamentally human, and mistakes simply happen. That’s what it means when the present only exists retrospectively: I cannot know the effects my actions have upon others. But look what avoiding those effects has accomplished. That isn’t the second-best choice.

Instead, I must simply do something, anything. And, if I cause pain or moral injury to another, I must seek forgiveness and learn from my mistakes. I must make myself a better person, and make the world around me better for my having been present; and if, in doing so, I hurt others, I must seek atonement with the same boldness with which I’ve acted. I must own my future, and in doing so, I must own my past.

If my nighttime lesson is true, the present exists only for me; future and past exist for everyone together. This hasn’t been an easy lesson to internalize. In the days since receiving this personal truth, I’ve frequently wanted to retreat into the comfy habits which existed before that night. I have to consciously remind myself to keep acting toward the future. But I believe, if I keep practicing, my nighttime truth-visit will make me, and everyone around me, better for the experience.

And that, friends, is kind of scary.

Changing the Rules In Mid-Game

I struggle sometimes when friends share something publicly, which they intend as uplifting and encouraging, but which reveals their unexamined biases. Do I draw attention to the implicit bias, knowing this likely causes hurt feelings for limited social gain? Do I ignore the situation, knowing it allows wrong ideas to ratify themselves? Spoiler alert: I’m so conflict-avoidant that I usually do the latter. But this time I’m speaking up.

This weekend, several friends shared a story on social media about a developmentally disabled boy named Shay who, seeing other boys his age playing baseball, asks to play. He gets placed low in the batting roster. When he’s at bat, the opposing team literally bobbles every available play to ensure Shay bats a run, even knowing it’ll cost them the game. This is presented as a heartwarming story of kids granting a disadvantaged boy the opportunity to feel loved and useful.



Having limited experience with similarly disabled kids, I appreciate the sentiment. These kids seldom get to feel included, or welcome with peers. Because developmental disabilities often manifest in parallel physical disabilities, such kids are often denied the opportunity to compete equally. Yet, for all I appreciate the underlying motivation, I think the expression is potentially dangerous, because it makes the story all about what we, the “normal,” do for them.

We can find the first problem in the name. Though the story got new traction this month, Snopes identifies the story originating in a book published in 1999. Shay’s name, though, has been anglicized from the more assertively Jewish “Shaya.” I’m reminded that a bowdlerized version of Taylor Mali’s poem “What Teachers Make” continues circulating, with the cusswords excised, and the narrator renamed “Bonnie.”

Setting this subrosa colonialism aside, I still struggle to understand how it’s ennobling to change the rules of a game already in progress to ensure desirable outcomes for certain kids. It creates the idea that their successes are something we, the arbiters of normalcy, permit them to have. It establishes the disabled, including all categories of the disabled, as requiring our pity. Ultimately, the story exists to make “normal people” feel good about themselves.

Part of the nature of sports is that we follow the rules. We don’t do so because the rules are morally right, like rules against murder or theft; nor because the rules standardize social interactions, like traffic laws. Rather, when playing baseball, football, or whatever, we follow the rules because they are rules. Because doing so puts every participant on equal footing, allowing distinctions to arise from comprehensible and consistent foundations.

That isn’t what happened here. In this story, players deliberately ignored the rules and biffed the game to elevate one kid above others. While I can understand maybe throwing the disadvantaged kid a slower pitch, the coördination necessary for this many kids to deliberately manipulate a game’s outcome seems particularly unlikely. Sure would be nice if kids really gathered to protect and advance their own this way.

Both teams could, hypothetically, huddle together—with Shay in their midst!—to create nonce rules that keep everybody participating equally and make the game about something other than winning. Existing leagues have done that. But that isn’t what these kids did. Instead, they created rules that only applied to one player, for one at-bat. Then they celebrated that kid for accomplishing the remarkably low standards they set him.

The celebration, therefore, cannot be about Shay, though he, surrounded in the excitement of the moment, may perceive in that way. Ultimately the kids celebrate themselves for showing magnanimity do somebody they consider deserving of pity. Like the temple leaders whom Jesus castigated for loudly pouring their coins into the copper kettle, these kids celebrate so they can publicly affirm, to themselves, what good people they are.

Please don’t misunderstand. I laud and praise these children’s motivation, even if, as Snopes admits, the story is more likely a parable than something which actually happened. They wanted to make a chronically excluded child feel included, and I cannot disagree with that. If something like this happens in your view, please reward this behavior, and help the children find ways to pursue their goals that aren’t condescending.

But as told, this story extols “normal” people bestowing largess from their places of power. It creates a temporary endorphin boost for one disadvantaged child, but teaches his peers that generosity is something they bestow from atop the hierarchy, with only minor sacrifices that won’t impact their lives very much. And that, sadly, is no kind of message for today’s children.

The Need For Holiness in a Secular World

A photo snapped live of Notre-Dame de Paris burning on Monday evening

I cannot imagine how many millions of people worldwide watched the fire unfolding at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Between straight journalism coverage, and the live-streaming from hundreds of smartphones around the city, we sat transfixed, wondering whether a piece of our physical cultural heritage would survive the night. Coverage of the al-Aqsa Mosque fire was more sporadic, but probably because the mosque is harder for outsiders to see.

Most interesting for me, the coverage crossed religious bounds. The most direct reportage of Notre-Dame, not surprisingly, came from France and Britain, the closest large countries. These are countries where the plurality religion is now “no religion.” Yet one needn’t have any specific faith to recognize that the possible destruction of these two iconic sanctuaries cuts into something shared in our culture: something valuable, historic, even—dare I say—holy.

The retreat of religion from modern life has made holiness a loaded concept. I contend, though, that it shouldn’t. Rudolf Otto writes, in The Idea of the Holy, that in its oldest form, calling something holy doesn’t mean calling it “godly” or “pure.” Calling something holy means calling it “separate” or “set apart.” Holy places, holy experiences, holy times are those which we divide from our mundane continuity and recognize as unique.

This may mean having special direct connection to divinity, but that’s only one kind of holiness. We’ll perhaps see this most directly in the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. Whether the aged former king in Oedipus at Colonus or the exiled master warrior in Philoctetes, both these characters are punished for stepping on “holy ground.” This isn’t ground ritually consecrated, like a church sanctuary; in these plays, the holy ground isn’t even marked.

But it’s set apart from ordinary use, and humans aren’t supposed to walk there.

We all have experience with the holy, or anyway a longing for holiness, even without any particular faith. Some people find holiness in churches, mosques, and temples. Others find holiness in the people who congregate in churches, mosques, and temples.Still others find it in the Louvre, the National Mall in Washington, or their local veterans’ memorial. More would find holiness in the Olympic National Park (supposedly the quietest place in America), hiking from coast to coast, or in a boat on the ocean.

The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. (Because of Jerusalem's urban design,
few good photos apparently exist of Monday's brief fire in action.)

What transcendent meaning we ascribe to holiness almost doesn’t matter. Holiness isn’t about getting close to God; it’s about a place carved out in life. A place where we are guests, visitors, a place where we’re invited in but never permanent residents. Both Notre-Dame and al-Aqsa have stood, inviolate, for nearly a millennium, surviving wars, occupations, tyrants, and atheists. They are different from our ordinary lives. Even without God, that makes them holy.

In both cases, modern life rushes right up to the perimeters of their sanctuaries. Nearly every photograph or live-stream of Notre-Dame burning is shot between high-rises, Second Empire apartment blocks, and other new-ish development. The sightlines around al-Aqsa are so crowded that I couldn’t even find a good picture of the fire. But in both cases, modernity crowds around the edges of the holy development, and stops.

Because these places are separate.

We watched these landmarks of holiness burn, fearful that we might be watching a dimunition of potential holiness in modern life. Even if we aren’t Christian or Muslim ourselves, we recognize we have diminishing opportunities to experience holiness. Keeping afloat means dedicating longer hours to work. Childrearing expectations have changed, and we’re required to hover over our kids constantly. Very little in life is set apart.

We have fewer places we go simply to be in that place. We have fewer times reserved to exist entirely in that moment, surrounded by people also entirely in that moment. As we discovered at Standing Rock in 2016, those who only value life by its dollar signs are rushing to run pipelines and strip-mines through the few sacred spaces remaining. Modernity cannot stomach something truly set aside.

Thankfully both Notre-Dame and al-Aqsa survived their fires. The spaces remain set apart from modern activities. The surge of mourning we witnessed on Monday and Tuesday, which crossed lines of religion and irreligion, reflects humanity’s desire to step outside ourselves and exist someplace, sometime, outside space and time. Fortunately, such places will continue to exist, at least for a while.

Hopefully, as we reckon with the feelings we felt this week, we’ll also muster gumption enough to create holiness. Because it isn’t enough to mourn when the holy burns.

Spiritual Fruits and Religious Nuts

Martin Thielen, The Answer to Bad Religion Is Not No Religion: A Guide to Good Religion for Seekers, Skeptics, and Believers

We’ve all seen bad religion in practice. Whether we’ve gotten burned by self-righteous judgmentalism, inflexible anti-modernism, or political drum-banging, even the most spiritual among us have gotten burned by bad religion. We’ve probably felt the temptation to abandon religion altogether. Fully one-fifth of Americans today admit of no religious affiliation. With so many pressures demanding our attention, it’s easy to walk away.

Reverend Martin Thielen begins this book discussing how the Christian denomination where he formerly pastored became entrenched in nationalism, gay-bashing, and anti-semitism. (He doesn’t name the denomination, but his official bio states his former affiliation with the Southern Baptist conference.) He, too, considered walking away. But he reveals his thesis in his title: he reinvented himself as a Methodist minister and strove to define what constitutes good religion today.

Most of those religiously unaffiliated persons, called “nones” in social science parlance, retain some inclination toward spirituality. Irreligion is on the rise, but not necessarily unbelief. Many still crave connection with transcendent principles, but feel alienated from institutions of worship. They’ve grown tired of absolutism, but believe something awaits them beyond material life. Congregations can reclaim these wanderers by emphasizing formerly common faith virtues like hope, community, and service.

This book isn’t fundamentally about faith. Thielen doesn’t entice unbelievers to change their ways. Rather, Thielen writes about religion, that is, about the communal practices that arise when people sharing faith come together. Spiritual crowds, like any other crowds, can become toxic, perpetuating base impulses and rebuffing outsiders. But when religious congregations reclaim the open, generous spirit that attracted early converts, the spiritually hungry will rejoin our table.

Moreover, though Thielen comes from a Protestant Christian background, the principles he identifies aren’t specific to any religion. New converts accept their faith because it provides guidance to their lives. Believing brings joy. Acts of worship which unify communities of believers can nourish that joy, or smother it. Unfortunately, no checklist exists of which behaviors have which consequences; Thielen encourages us to constantly reëxamine our actions, considering their consequences.

Examining which prevailing behaviors alienate, and which unite, Thielen manages to establish certain patterns. The alienating behaviors will surprise nobody. Citing Anne Rice’s famous 2010 declaration that “in the name of Christ, I quit Christianity,” he acknowledges we’ve all been there. We’ve all shared that feeling, that our fellow travelers don’t represent our beliefs. But quitting is a feeble choice, sundering communities and discouraging deeper spiritual thought. Surrender solves nothing.

Instead, Thielen insists, religious communities must recommit to principles that nourish believers’ joy. We become believers because religion prompts action, challenges evil, strengthens bonds, and encourages creativity.. Briefly, converts accept their faith and practice their religion because they want to improve this life. Blessings of heaven and terrors of hell have their appropriate place; but we believe because believing provides architecture to this life, not to the next.

Therefore, Thielen prompts, with solid Biblical backing, that we constantly revisit our choices, as individual believers and as congregations. He provides benchmarks for which behaviors uplift communities, which tear them down. We must, Thielen says, expunge arrogance, negativity, and partisanship; we must promote love, service, and forgiveness. Only those religions which hearten the soul and guide the life will survive the buffets of today’s negativistic, increasingly factional society.

Besides this book itself, Thielen has also released a Leader’s Guide and Outreach Kit. Coupled with his very short chapters, these indicate Thielen intends this volume for small-group study. I endorse and embrace this purpose, because a collection of church leaders, interested volunteers, or spiritual seekers could correlate this book to existing Biblical and denominational principles. One hopes such students, collaborating closely, could renew the religious virtues Thielen extols.

Not that Thielen’s exegesis is perfect. Indulge my recurring peeve, but Thielen’s examples run very, very short. Because he expects readers to consume each chapter essentially separately, few illustrations exceed few pages. Thielen avoids the two worst manifestations of pastoral brevity, the transcribed sermon and the moral list, which pleases me; he spends time on his examples. I just wish he carried examples beyond one chapter, avoiding the patchwork texture.

Midway along, Thielen quotes Oxford’s Cognition, Theology, and Religion Project, an interdisciplinary venture that has demonstrated humans’ innate religious inclination. If we believe the CRT Project, we must accept that not everyone shares that inclination. Thielen doesn’t attempt to ultimately prove religion or foreclose on unbelieving worldviews. He simply strives to create an intellectual space where rational belief is possible. If that is your goal, Thielen clearly succeeds.

Barukh Atah Adonai

Rabbi Ted Falcon and David Blatner, Judaism For Dummies

Until recently, Jewish people and their faith were lumped into two categories in the public imagination: either stereotyped lawyers and entertainment executives, or abstract cultural “heroes” like Anne Frank. That is, when they weren’t hated for centuries-old fictional slurs. But recent trends have moved Judaism to a central position in public discourse, without necessarily answering important questions in outsiders’ minds.

Rabbi Ted Falcon and David Blatner come from a background in multi-faith outreach and cultural clarification. They have experience answering queries, some of them quite naive, and know what doubts and misinformation linger most in outsiders’ minds. They spot the gap between reality and what people think they already know. That makes them good choices to write a “For Dummies” book about the faith that founded the Abrahamic tradition.

If you’ve ever read a “For Dummies,” this book’s format is familiar. It’s designed to read out of sequence, dipping into the reference as questions arise. But it also rewards conventional reading, as the authors progress in inquirers’ most common sequence, from broad strokes of belief, through the people’s history, into brass tacks of practice, finishing with fine detail about what makes Judaism unique.

In their introduction, Falcon and Blatner say they write for two audiences: non-observant Jews interested in rediscovering their heritage, and outsiders curious about one of Earth’s oldest continuously observed religions. As such, the text is essentially bilingual. It gives a plain-English survey of Jewish religious precepts, then for those who want it, proceeds to a detailed investigation of exacting practice. The authors are good about defining terminology.

Jews have maintained their identity as a people over centuries of diaspora, in largest part because they have retained their traditions in ways other scattered peoples have not. Their elaborate mix of written history and oral tradition, bound in ritual that gives observant Jews a body of shared experience, preserves their mutuality. This includes their tradition of controversy, which outsiders have long mistaken for disunion.

Falcon and Blatner do a remarkable job keeping the balance between Orthodox and more Liberal traditions, especially considering that some parties in such divides consider their opposite numbers apostate. Controversy is at the heart of Judaism, as any Talmud student knows. Our authors carefully recount such debates as influence readers’ understanding, while remaining studiously neutral themselves—sometimes, the debate matters more than the solution.

Rabbi Ted Falcon

Not that they are completely impartial. They say some controversies aren’t worth having. They completely exclude Messianic Judaism, as even the Israeli Knesset does, saying it constitutes a wholly separate religion. Also, though they address humanist Judaism briefly, they preponderantly assume Jews share belief in God, while they admit the word “God” admits multiple definitions. “Israel,” after all, means “he wrestles with God.”

The authors include glossaries of Hebrew and Yiddish terms, useful in understanding Jewish thought, and several standard Orthodox prayers, including the ritual blessings, famed for their salutation: “Barukh atah Adonai.” Because Judaism, like any religion or philosophy with a long history, has its own vocabulary, these glossaries help readers understand more, better, faster.

I initially felt frustrated that the authors didn’t cite sources for some of their claims, especially for important rabbinic controversies, which they report in a “some say... others say” manner. But Appendix C cites several valuable books, magazines, websites, and organizations for readers wanting in-depth study. I still wish the authors integrated their citations, but they do pave the way for readers who’ve had their interest piqued.

Christian readers will especially enjoy this book. Our Sunday School history of Judaism often stops in the late Second Temple period, ending when the Gospels diverge from the Talmud. But Judaism, like Christianity, is a living faith. We need to understand where it is, now, if we want to understand where we came from ourselves.

As inclusive as this book is, readers should remember what it is not. Falcon and Blatner craft a synoptic introduction to the Jewish religion, not the Jewish people; you’ll find nothing about Jewish art, culture, or non-religious history. It’s also a layperson’s overview, not a rabbinical textbook, and will make nobody more spiritual, or more Jewish. Remember, this is Judaism for Dummies, not Judaism for the already learned.

But for non-observant Jews seeking a connection to their heritage, or Gentiles wanting deeper understanding of Judeo-Christian roots, this book makes a good primer. The authors’ plain English explanations, laced with gentle but pointed humor, keeps the reading brisk. Any readers interested in browsing Jewish beliefs have here a good reference to begin their research.

The Christian Counterculture, Part Three

Mark Batterson, Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

This review follows A Manifesto for a Christian Counterculture and The Christian Counterculture, Part Two

As important as Christian knowledge is to developing our long-neglected counterculture, any culture relies not on what its members think, but upon what they do. As people called to the Kingdom of God through the message and person of Christ, we are defined by our beliefs, but known by our actions. Thus, to become and remain a Godly, unified people, we must spend time with the God who claims us as His own.

Like many Christians of his generation, Mark Batterson started out pursuing the love of God, but eschewing the trappings of church. When he founded his metropolitan DC parish, he held services at a movie multiplex, courted the media, and addressed lively current issues. But he did so from the conviction that Christians must live our beliefs, not just talk about them. He worked hard to make his church a real community of active, doing believers.

This latest book is part of Batterson’s Circle Maker curriculum, a positive way of “doing church” together even when we’re not seated in the same room. Nevertheless, it permits separate reading, and is intended as a daily devotional for a forty-day prayer vigil. Each chapter runs four to six pages, combining strict scriptural declarations on prayer with Batterson’s enthusiastic homiletic style. You won’t want to limit yourself to just one chapter per day.

A Protestant minister I know admitted that his seminary education included almost nothing on prayer. Churches place such emphasis on preaching and teaching—on knowing about God—that prayer, the act of knowing God, goes by the wayside. Not surprisingly, many Christians admit they spend little time actually praying outside church. We treat prayer as something we fling ourselves at, like bear wrestling. How discouraging.

By contrast, Batterson would rather help us approach prayer as a growth process, an act of developing our God-sense. Just as we struggled to walk, until we did it, we struggle with prayer, until we realize we’re talking directly to God. That’s why, like Jesus in the wilderness, he wants us to spend forty days on the process. Whether individually or as a body of believers, Batterson wants us to grow in our love of God, not succeed or fail all at once, right now.

Batterson is direct in addressing what lacks he thinks we believers suffer, which keep us from achieving our prayers. Small visions, timid voices, and the love of our neighbors’ good opinion prevent us from fully opening to God. To his credit, Batterson does not exempt himself from this criticism. Where many Evangelical leaders hold themselves aloof from criticism, Batterson turns his own fears and failings into object lessons for us.

If we believe, as Gabriel said, that “With God, all things are possible,” why do we limit our prayers to the mundane and the ordinary? Why do we ask for what we could get ourselves, while taking God’s tasks on our shoulders? As Christians, we have internalized the world’s definitions of busy-work, forgetting that the One within us is greater than the one who is in the world. So we neglect spending time with the One who has already won the greatest battles.

Not that prayer always needs to be profound, and demand that mountains move. Taking a cue from Brother Lawrence, Batterson reminds us that every act we perform daily—washing dishes, nurturing our kids, earning a living—can be a form of prayer. And asking God to keep a hand on our children, leading them home when their spirits stray, is not a small request. Indeed, intercession may be the biggest prayer a believing Christian can make.

I especially appreciate Batterson’s statements on the limitations of prayer. We must not give into magical thinking, expecting that if we don’t receive our requests, that God has turned away from us. Sometimes what sounds like “no” to us may be God saying “not yet.” Even more important, that apparent “no” may be God telling us that through faith, we are made strong; we cannot let prayer justify our own refusal to act on the mission God lays before us.

Batterson intends that small groups, or even entire congregations, should undertake this prayer challenge together. But he does not exclude the likelihood that, at some point, we may have to take his prayer challenge alone. Whether on your own, or as part of a mission revival, Batterson’s devotional can help Christians with possibly the most overlooked aspect of their faith journey. I intend to keep using it on my path.

For a prior Mark Batterson review, see:
Three Books for a Christian World

Gillian Philip's Bleak and Godless Fantasy

Gillian Philip, Firebrand

Headstrong Seth MacGregor, bastard scion of a great Sithe captain, and his idolized brother Conal have come into inheritance of their father’s fortress. But the Sithe queen, Kate NicNevin, has strange ambitions that extend beyond her domain. When the brothers MacGregor cross their queen, they find themselves exiled to a land more strange and savage than anything their undying eyes have ever seen: Scotland.

Gillian Philip’s first novel, published in Britain in 2010 and now making its American debut, reverses the expectations of urban fantasy. Instead of the fantastic intruding on ordinary life, the banalities of human life intrude on the Sithe (pronounced “Shee”). By changing the direction of the portal, beloved of writers like CS Lewis and Madeline L’Engle, Philip creates a fantasy world not vast and prodigious, but cramped and limiting.

Because they are long-lived, Philip’s Sithe rely on politics and trust in a way humans cannot. They have built a long-standing and elaborate system of mutual debts that keeps their people stable, if feudal. But it also keeps them completely unprepared for contact with humans, who think in what they consider short terms, and who die so easily and love so little. These Sithe are not the fae and sprites of myth, but very human, and shackled with human limits.

Philip’s otherworldly domain is at once innately Scottish and historical, and modern and transnational. Because her setting is specific, and not some ill-defined fairyland where everything is vague and equal, her words convey more power, and her ideas resonate across cultures. Her use of specific terminology of the Scottish Reformation gives her setting a concrete structure that is truly universal. It is true, as she proves, that only the completely specific is truly universal.

The story divides in three parts: in the first, we learn of the Sithe’s elaborate system of prestation, honor, and power. Queen Kate is absolutely reliant on her subjects, and does not have absolute power; but she is the lawbringer, and as such, has the power to set the tone for any discussion. The careful balance between the bold queen and the powerful MacGregors drives the novel. She is not necessarily “in charge,” in the autocratic sense, but she certainly runs the show.

In the second part, the Sithe come in contact with humans. Because the humans are riven by factions, they are vulnerable to fear. They also possess death—Philip does not share Tolkien's sentimentality regarding mortality. She sees death as a source of fear. Because humans fear death, and strangers, and anything that upsets their prior expectations, they are prone to witch hunts. And a Sithe among the people will inevitably look like a witch.

In the third, the Sithe return to their people, only to find that the structure has been upset in a fundamental way. By playing the system, Queen Kate has garnered to herself a strange new set of powers, and a bizarre new arrangement of loyalties that resemble humanity. One wonders if somehow mortality has set its fingers in the land of the Sithe. Future books will tell, but I suspect we will find that the Sithe know they are dying, their time drawing nigh.

Farah Mendelsohn notes that Western fantasy, whatever its religious motivation, owes a debt to Christian cosmology. Gillian Philip acknowledges that, somewhat, in her use of priesthood and auto-da-fé. But for her, this is nothing beautiful. In her world, when characters have an eye on something beyond this life, they lose sight of what it means to be human. Like Camus, Philip suggests that people who believe in God lose sight of their shared humanity.

One gets the feeling, reading Philip, that she may have intended this book, the beginning of her “Rebel Angels” series, as an answer back to CS Lewis. When the creatures on the far side of the wardrobe cross into our world, the result is far less magical than Lewis implies. Humans are small in her eyes, and the Sithe who encounter humanity return to their transcendent land stained with fear, torture, and the lingering taint of human ambition.

Philip creates an interesting conflict of characters, a struggle between the continuity of the past and the onrush of the future, for which an essentially deathless race is unprepared. Because the Sithe live so long, their world resists change, at least in their own eyes. But change comes inevitably. Even the deathless will face the end of what they think they know. And the change for them will not be pretty.

The Christian Signal and the Worldly Noise

Johnnie Moore, Dirty God: Jesus in the Trenches

Broadcasting professionals speak of the “signal-to-noise ratio” to describe how much information reaches the receiver, and how much vanishes into static. We can think of today’s media-saturated world, where we’re bombarded on all sides by constant static, as the noise. This would make any message we must urgently convey—political, social, religious—the signal. And it’s getting hard these days to push any signal through the noise.

Christian academic Johnnie Moore attempts to recast the often sanitized Christian story in terms accessible to modern seekers. In some ways he resembles better known writers like Shane Claiborne and Rob Bell, who dare suggest that Biblical Christianity little resembles the rote observances in modern churches. I agree with Bell, Claiborne, and Moore. But Moore uses bland language in mundane ways. His signal would never penetrate the noise.

Moore’s thesis, which any Bible-believing Christian would accept, contends that the Christian message provides a powerful counter to earthly narratives. In a world enamored of human power and earthly glory, Jesus chose a path of humility and poverty, leading to his own death, so that he might ennoble ordinary people like us. If we trust in Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection, we can know the honor once reserved for priests and kings.

Again, I agree with this message. But Moore pitches it in “seeker-friendly” language designed to not scare off spiritual hopefuls. Though I understand this motivation, Christian language is so innately bound to Western society that I doubt many people really don’t know what core doctrinal language means. By stripping away even elementary terminology, Moore reduces his otherwise admirable signal to the level of the surrounding noise.

Consider these representative examples:

What I like best about the narrow way of grace versus the wide way of works is that all along the way are massive billboards that say in every language of the world: “You’re not guilty! You’re forgiven! You’re healed. Things are okay!” (56)

Jesus can hold the universe, which he created, in the palm of his hand. Even so, Jesus comes to us totally differently from any other god. He entered history as a God who looked more like man. (33)

Grace is unorthodox. When it is a part of someone’s life, it should cause others to wonder why this person is behaving this way. Someone who lives a lifestyle of grace should seem to live out a different ethic. (121)

[Early Christians] thought of Jesus the way we think of a fireman rescuing a child from a house crackling and exploding in flames. They thought of Jesus the way we think of a lifeguard pulling a drowning man from the tumbling ocean. (105)

Understand, Moore says nothing I dispute. Despite his unorthodox use of the word “unorthodox,” in terms of Christian belief, everything he says is spot on. It’s also ordinary. Christians and non-Christians alike have heard this static for most of their lives, and it’s banal. Spiritual seekers want a compelling counter-narrative that speaks to their lived situation, not Sunday School pamphlets that repeat pedestrian slogans they’ve heard since childhood.

For instance, what is a “lifestyle of grace”? Moore talks about it in broad, sweeping terms. But his only concrete example is the radical forgiveness the locals extended following the school shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. While I like that example, it contradicts Moore’s point, because Moore claims Christians should embody Christ in ordinary circumstances. Nickel Mines, and its school, are Amish. Moore doesn’t comment on the gap.

He also misses the contemporary implications of Christ’s social message. He notes, correctly, that Jesus preached against religious leaders of his day. But he elides the fact that the religious leaders were also political leaders, and that the Temple priests appeased Rome to retain their earthly power. Moore teaches and administers at Liberty University, which has allied with the Republican Party and U.S. nationalism. The parallel goes unheeded.

Throughout, Moore’s reliance on second-person-singular language bugs me. Jesus came for you. Jesus’ blood sets you free. Moore occasionally says “we,” but not very often. His message lacks the community spirit of the Book of Acts, or the Hebrew urgency of culture-wide prophetic awakening. Again, Moore isn’t wrong; his signal just gets lost in the noise.

Our world suffers unprecedented vulnerability to religious extremism, woowoo cults, and existential despair. Many people desire spirituality, but Christianity offers sweeping bromides to people seeking a real, substantive counternarrative. Moore never says anything out-and-out wrong, but he reinforces my recurring frustration with current Christianity’s biggest failing, its appalling vagueness.

On a related topic:
If God Is Awesome, Why Is Christian Lingo So Tedious?

Contemporary Christians—Red Letter Daze

Shane Claiborne & Tony Campolo, Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said?

Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne need a new name to explain what kind of Christianity they believe. “Evangelical” and “fundamentalist” have accrued political baggage outside the faith. So they’ve selected “Red Letter Christians,” to emphasize the primacy of the words Christ spoke about how to live in the world. And they back that new moniker with a manifesto which I fear will talk past those who most need their message.

Conventional churches have hemorrhaged members for two generations now, as Christians, particularly young Christians, note the gap between the gospel message and how churches run. Youth admire the church of Acts 2 and wonder why it resembles so little the way we do church today. Some have responded by organizing their own intentional communities outside the standard denominations, to live out the words of Christ they so treasure.

Throughout his career as a public Christian, Claiborne has repeatedly quoted the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians... pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” This has been the cornerstone of his public ministry. And he doesn’t just speak the words; they define his daily living.

Campolo, a scholar, and Claiborne, a community organizer, have gained acclaim from audiences who love Jesus but are bored of church. They have both garnered recognition for living out the Gospel: Campolo has challenged his church hierarchy by taking unpopular or controversial positions, while Claiborne has been jailed for feeding the hungry in violation of the law. I expected this book to be as robust as their reputations.

Instead, this book is really, really talky. Considering that these authors are famous for bold stances and undaunted actions, bolstered by their faith in a Christ who makes all things new, their exchanges in this book come across as windy, full of circumlocutions and intellectual jargon. Their strong actions don’t suit their prolix language. (Claiborne was Campolo’s undergraduate student, and this book has a distinct student-teacher texture.)

Not that they ever say anything out-and-out wrong. Time and again, I felt the surge of recognition when they voiced a concept I’ve long nurtured but couldn’t quite enunciate. They frequently put their fingers on the pulse of some omission I often excuse, or some justification I make to vindicate my sins. In terms of what they actually say, Claiborne and Campolo are not just right, they pierce my pretensions and hold me to account.

I just wish they offered the Reader’s Digest version, then explained what that means on the street. Reading this book, compared to Claiborne’s prior titles, feels like abstract criticism instead of lived theology. Up to now, he’s been all about how we live out the principles Jesus teaches in the Gospels. This time it feels like a question of how we talk about Jesus’ teachings, and the talking never quite resolves into anything concrete.

If I had to name the problem, I suspect this book lacks unifying vision. Yes, Campolo in the introduction holds forth on the importance of living out Jesus’ words, which I appreciate. But as a thesis, it’s thin. I don’t want to know how somebody, somewhere, could live out Jesus’ words. I want to know how I could live them out, on the streets where I live, in today’s world, without compromising Christ’s mission.

Claiborne has written extensively about Christianity as a lived principle. Books like The Irresistible Revolution and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers took me by surprise, forcing me to reevaluate dull theological precepts I’d long taken for granted, emphasizing faith as action, not intellectual precept. These books shook me to my core, which explains why he’s so popular with Christians my age and younger. (Campolo I know only by reputation.)

So imagine my frustration when I opened this book, only to find two Christians of such storied reputation engaging in “dialogues” that consist mainly of them discoursing at one another. Their long passages, barely held to any recognizable thesis, read like rough drafts for dissertations they have yet to write. Though their theology is sound, it all feels very high-minded, without the lived practicality for which both authors are known.

I like this book’s premise. But Claiborne, at least, has done much better. Christians, especially young Christians, cry out today for a bold, muscular theology. But this sprawling would-be manifesto is flabby and vague. Check out Claiborne’s prior books, which fulfill this one’s promise.

RedLetterChristians.org

Rediscovering Faith In Life's Unexpected Corners

Tony Kriz, Neighbors and Wise Men: Sacred Encounters in a Portland Pub and Other Unexpected Places

American Christians have an earned reputation for only listening to each other. We are famed for brewing extreme agendas, often without consulting Scripture. Psychologists call this “group polarization,” when when we speak only to people we already agree with, and emerge believing a more extreme, intolerant version of our prior opinion. The military has an altogether more apropos term: “incestuous amplification.”

Tony Kriz grew up in a conservative Christian community, and fresh out of college, he thought he had faith sewn up. So he joined the mission field, becoming an early evangelist in the newly opened Albania. But in an environment perhaps best described as “high pressure banality,” he discovered that Christianity means more than doctrine. And he found that, to hear God’s voice, he had to listen to more than church insiders.

Kriz’s faith memoir resembles other recent Christian authors like Shane Claiborne and Donald Miller. (Kriz plays a supporting role in Miller’s Blue Like Jazz.) Like them, Kriz writes for Christians, about the importance of overcoming the cultural trappings we often mistake for a genuine relationship with God. He shows what he learned the hard way, that God unmakes true believers before remaking us in God’s image.

Albania made a harsh proving ground for a young evangelist. He entered dividing the world into “us,” Christians, and “them,” everyone else. Albania’s Muslim population was, for Kriz nothing but future proselytes. But time and again, he heard God’s word emerging from Albanian Muslim mouths. This was a hard lesson, that “we” have no exclusive claim on holy wisdom. The conflict between his learned expectations and God’s way left him burned out early.

Bounced from missions and believing he had lost faith, a theme he revisits often, Kriz returned to school in his native Oregon. But when school provided only more of the same he’d just fled, he started frequenting a crosstown British pub. There, conversations with ordinary drinkers, a rotating selection of customers, and anyone who would sit with him, led him to embrace the heart of Christianity, while discarding the trappings.

Tony Kriz

From there, Kriz spent time as unofficial campus chaplain at Portland’s Reed College, sometimes called America’s least religious college, before moving into urban missions. Time and again, his story turns on the conflict between his learned American Christian culture, and God’s true movement in the world. Like me, Kriz struggles to separate wheat from tares in his life. And in so doing, he calls me to greater diligence in mine.

We cannot have Christianity without Christian culture. Culture is the system of agreements and shorthands that let us communicate with one another. But too often, we forget that we create culture ourselves, laying it over Scriptural teachings. Like the Pharisees whom Jesus attacked so vigorously, we treat man-made rules as holy and inviolable. And in so doing, we miss “the least of these” whom Christ came to save.

Thus, Kriz thought he lost his faith. But time and again, God chose outsiders to remind him he only lost his culture. A Muslim grandmother, a Jewish pubgoer, an agnostic drifter, Portland’s gay mayor—all intrude into Kriz’s self-induced existential dramas, reminding him that God is so much bigger than his learned habits. Faith is so much more than the answers we memorize. Sometimes faith means asking honest questions.

Kriz unpacks a complex and sometimes contradictory faith journey, one that repeatedly reminds him that wisdom does not come with a degree, or intelligence with status. He sets out to teach, but learns the greatest lessons. He sees ways that life proves more important than dogma. Parables as intense as any from the Gospels unfold in the little ways people touch each other’s lives. God walks close, even when Kriz goes his own willful way.

I could wish Kriz was as forthright in his own suffering as in the lessons others teach him. Twice, when he felt adrift in Albania and again when he was coarsely ejected from Reed, he admits his own bad behavior, but only in sweeping generalizations. While I don’t want theatrical Augustinian breast-beating, I would like more detail. What does it mean for an American Christian to lose faith on foreign soil?

That objection notwithstanding, Kriz’s faith memoir gives me hope that God can speak in any life, if we have the courage to listen. He reminds me that God’s life is not in knowing, but in living. And if as strong a man as Kriz has the grace to learn from God’s world, so can I.

Religion For Non-Religious People

Michael Neale, The River

As a child, Gabriel Clarke watched his father give his life saving a kayaker from certain death. The son and grandson of seasoned river guides, this tragedy leaves Gabriel terrified of his inheritance on the water. He endures a youth of timid choices and small accomplishment, colored by fear. But in little moments, if he’s paying attention, glimpses of his intended life peek out, calling him to face his fear and become the man he was meant to be.

Michael Neale’s first novel reaches for that market William Young cracked five years ago with The Shack: Christianity for people who dislike liturgical language. Neale goes out of his way to show divine providence opening doors for his protagonist and making his path straight, without mentioning God. Even leaving aside how milquetoast this sounds, I never wrapped my head around Neale’s episodic, low-stakes style and clunky prose stylings.

Neale’s prose unrolls in an inelegant, declarative style that reminds us we’re reading a novel. Events simply happen to Gabriel; he rides along, a mere passenger. Neale amplifies this by his tendency to simply assert things to be true. Consider his character note on Gabriel’s father:

“With shaggy blond hair in a shag cut and a swagger to boot, he was a man of few words with wisdom beyond his years.”

Really? What does that mean? Neale never says; he throws that out there and expects us to accept it. In the same manner, Gabriel’s mother:

“Maggie had grown to love her son with all her heart, and she would never give up on him.”

The stray dog Gabriel adopts after it saves him from a rattlesnake:

“Rio gave Gabriel friendship and strength. Everyone could tell his confidence had grown, especially the boys at the pond.”

I could go on. Neale introduces every character and situation thus, mere assertions, never backed with action. This crafts a story in which audiences don’t feel very invested, because we don’t undertake the journey with Gabriel. I wanted to grasp Neale’s lapels and shout: “Don’t tell me what I should think! Show me what happens and let me share the experience!”

In a similar vein, Neale wants us to simply accept his assurance that Gabriel suffers with the shadows of his past. Gabriel makes weak choices time and again because he can’t face his lingering childhood fears. Neale asserts that “the grief, scars, and rejections that plagued his childhood and adolescence had led to on-again, off-again friendships with the other kids, but no deep friendships to rely on at the brink of adulthood.”

Again, I don’t know what that means, because Neale doesn’t show me. Nearly every chapter begins with Gabriel acting long in the tooth; nearly every chapter ends with some vague but uplifting life lesson in facing fears and shedding the chains of the past. This supposed grief is mere background noise, not actually comprised of anything that happens in my view. Were I to judge by what I see, notwithstanding his father, Gabriel’s life appears pretty good.

What background Neale does give us is so slipshod as to approach comedy. Gabriel grows up in a rural Kansas straight from Norman Rockwell, populated by walk-on characters with stereotyped names like Thelma Lou Nichols and Naomi Ledbetter. He misplaces both the Arkansas River and St. Louis, Missouri. Gabriel’s bucolic boyhood interactions resemble nothing so much as an Archie comic.

Through it all, Gabriel feels the call of The River, always spelled thus, with caps. Whether the Colorado, the Arkansas, or Soco Creek, every stretch of moving water is The River, which both holds him captive and offers him redemption. For Gabriel, every river is the Jordan River, with the Baptizer waiting for him to step into the current and be washed clean. Gabriel just needs to take that first step.

Nothing ever feels very important in this book. Though I’m sure Gabriel’s struggles seem large to him, as mine do to me, Neale never convinces me anything particularly significant is at stake. Because I don’t really go on the journey with Gabriel, I reach the end and feel nothing. Nothing.

Neale, a Dove award-winning Christian songwriter, is now on tour with The River Experience, a multimedia extravaganza anchored by this story. Considering Neale’s background in music, I bet it isn’t half bad, and he means this book primarily as the take-home for his concerts. If so, God bless. But without that context, this book feels anemic. It only reinforces my apathy toward religion for non-religious people.