What we read tonight is the most edgy of all the edgy stuff I've written. It challenges the very basis of what the Christian Church has 'believed' since the 4th Century. It is as theological as I get. I'm fascinated by theology but I'm more interested in people. Which comes out in this chapter, in an odd way.
The people at the group didn't blink an eye at what, in lots of Christian Circles would be thought of as dangerous and heretical.
But it was a good conversation and I thought I'd share that writing here for those who weren't there and didn't even know it was happening or where Higganum, CT is, for that matter.....
The
truth (as
best I know it…)
The
final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to a
fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know it
is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly. --Wallace
Stevens
Now
we come, at long last, to the part that could get me defrocked, even
a humble retired priest like myself. I actually don't “believe”
much of anything besides what Wallace Stevens, of all people, wrote.
The whole Christian enterprise, as it were, is a 'fiction' to me,
albeit a 'fiction' I believe in willingly, passionately and
profoundly.
A
joke would be in order. This is the best theological joke I ever
heard besides the one about the Pope and the Jewish tailor back in
the distant past which I will tell you presently. This joke is about
Pope John XXIII--”the last good
Pope”, {I wrote this before Francis was Pope--so John XXIII was the last 'good Pope' before Francis, ok?) I call him, and the seminal Protestant theologian of the
20th
century, Paul Tillich.
One
day a Cardinal answers the phone in the Pope's residence. John XXIII
is writing a letter but overhears the troubled, almost hysterical one
side of the call.
“No,
that can't be true! ...It is impossible!...I can't believe it!...Of
course I will tell his Holiness immediately....”
The
Pope looks up and asks the Cardinal, who is ashen and shaking,”bad
news I suppose....”
“Your
Holiness,” the Cardinal begins, “that was our archeologist in the
Holy Land. He called to tell me they have discovered Jesus' body.”
The
Pope finishes his letter and gathers his thoughts.
“There
can be no mistake, I take it?” he asked.
“No,
you Holiness, it is the body of our Lord.”
John
XXIII takes a deep breath. Then he speaks, “We must make this
information public. We cannot cover up the most disturbing discovery
of this or any other time. But before I make an announcement, I must
call Paul Tillich....”
{Tillich, just by
way of information, was the theologian who referred to God as “the
Ground of Being”. A rather ontological and obscure way of referring
to the Deity. Tillich's wittier students used to joke that Jesus must
be 'a Chip off the ol' Block of Being.'}
The
phone rings in Chicago. Paul Tillich is understandably surprised to
be called by the Pope, but they greet each other with respect and the
Pope says, “Dr. Tillich, I needed to tell you, the most respected
Protestant theologian, that our archeologists in the Holy Land have
found our Savior's body. There is no mistake and I will announce it
to the faithful of the world. I just wanted you to know beforehand.”
There
is an inordinate pause. The Pope thinks the connection has been lost.
“Professor
Tillich...?” he says.
Tillich
finally responds, “My God, he really lived....”
I
do some teaching about Mary Magdalene, because after The
Da Vinci Code
was published people had interest in the whole history and I did some
serious research into the era and the legends of Mary Magdalene. I
tell that joke before introducing the Gospel
of Mary of Magdala
because anyone in the room who has only a church-taught concept of
the early church risks being shocked and having their 'belief'
knocked off its moorings by what we are going to discuss.
I tell the people,
“if you are not shocked and offended by that joke, we can
continue....But if it seems too irreverent, you still have time to
leave.”
The
Gospel
of Mary of Magdala
and all the other gospels that didn't make the cut by the boys at
Nicaea, throw a monkey wrench into the narrow and dogmatic way the
'church' teaches us about the earliest church. Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John aren't the only stories around and certainly aren't 'the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' by a long shot.
This whole Christianity thing is a little suspect given the
alternative options to what is doctrine and dogma for the modern
church we have made 'orthodox'. Had the 'heresies'--Gnostic and
otherwise—prevailed instead of the Nicene model of Christianity,
how different the church would have been! I think it is problematic
for a lot of Christians to reflect on and ponder that possibility.
My
basic problem with all this is that I'm not sure what people mean
when they say 'do you believe'
this or that. As I understand it, the Greek word translated
“believe”--pistevo,
from the noun pistis—means
something like 'to trust in', 'to rely on', 'to cling to'--or as I
once heard it described: 'to live as
if'.
That doesn't seem to
be in the same hemisphere as what most Christians mean when they ask:
“do you BELIEVE Jesus is your Lord and Savior?” (Well, of course,
a lot of Christians never say anything like that—but whatever
'believe' means in that context is had more to do with 'knowing it is
True' than trusting in, relying on, clinging to and 'living as if' it
were true.) And most of what gets paraded out as “Christian Belief”
asks us to, in a real sense, 'intellectually assent' to the Virgin
Birth, for example. That 'assent', it seems to me, means thinking
that if only there had been a camcorder around, we be able to
actually see the Red Sea parting, Lazarus coming forth and Jesus
walking on the waters.
Trusting, relying
and clinging don't come from the intellect. The realities 'trust'
refers to can't be proven or seen. 'Relying on' and 'clinging to”
are, ironically enough, given this discussion, the 'art' to belief's
'science'. Take the Creationist debate (as Heni Youngman would
say...”Please...”). There is a lot more artfulness in a God who
works through the Laws of Nature than one who worked six days and was
finished. The people who object most strenuously to the Theory of
Evolution want to replace evolution, which is and always has always
been 'theoretical', with something writ in stone, hard,
factual...well, what I'd call 'scientific'. When someone says they
believe in the story of Creation 'in the Bible', I always ask, “which
one?” A lot of people who 'believe in' Creationism, don't seem to
realize the story in Genesis 1 is a lot different from the story in
Genesis 2. I can't get my mind around why it matters so much 'which
is True'--Evolution or Creationism. What gets thrown around as
capital T Truth causes a lot of mischief. Like Aryans being being a
superior race—that, many people saw as True, true enough to try to
exterminate whole ethnic groups.
Truth will get you
in a world of hurting. Fiction, on the other hand, isn't anything to
either kill or die for.
There's a story
about the Pope and the Jewish tailor that comes in handy here. It's a
story usually told with signs and hand movements, but I'll try my
best to describe those in words.
A new Pope had
been elected to replace the dead one, and the Cardinals who were the
Pope's advisers, told him, “Your Holiness, your first act as
Pontiff must be to expel the Jews from Rome.”
The new Pope was
startled by the suggestion. “Why should I do that?” he asked.
“Because,”
he was told, “a new Pope always
expels the Jews from Rome.”
But he was not
convinced. “I must have a conversation with one of the Jewish
leaders,” he said, “before I exile a whole community.”
The Cardinals
objected, but the Pope was firm...and what the Pope is firm about
happens....
The message was
sent to the Jewish Community that the Pope wanted to interview one of
the leaders before determining whether to rid Rome of the Jews. None
of the rabbis wanted to go—what good could come of it? But there
was a tailor named Jacob who volunteered and was taken to the Pope's
rooms in the Vatican.
Since they shared
no common language, the Pope conducted his interview in sign
language.
The Pope held up
one finger and Jacob held up two.
The Pope made a
large rotating motion with his arms and hands. Jacob pointed to the
floor.
The Pope took an
apple from a table and showed it to Jacob. The tailor took a piece of
matzo from his pocket and showed it to the Pope.
The Pope
dismissed the tailor with a message, translated by one of the
Cardinals, that the Jews could stay in Rome.
The astonished
Cardinals asked the Pope why he gave the Jews permission to stay.
“The
Tailor is an orthodox Christian,” he told them.
They all cried
out, asking how the Pope could make such a outlandish statement.
“Well,”
the Pope said, holding up one finger, “I said, 'there is One God',
but the Tailor replied by holding up two fingers: 'but there is the
Son and the Holy Spirit as well.”
The Pope made his
broad motion for the Cardinals. “I told him God was 'omnipotent',
everywhere and he correctly replied, by pointing at the floor, 'God
is also imminent, present in our midst'....
“Finally,”
the Pope told them, “I asked, 'is the earth round like an apple as
the heretics claim?' And the Jew replied, demonstrating with their
unleavened bread, 'No, the earth is flat as the Church teaches.'”
The Cardinals
were all stunned.
Back in the
Jewish ghetto, Jacob told his people to stop packing, that they were
staying. “But how,” they all asked, “did such a thing happen?”
Jacob shook his
head. “I'm not sure,” he said.
“But
what happened between you?” they clambered to know.
“It
was very odd,” the Tailor told them.
“First
the Pope said, 'I'm going to poke you in the eye' and I told him,
'I'll poke you in both eyes'.
“Then
he motioned that all the Jews should get out of Rome and I told him,
'we're staying right here'.”
“And
that was it?” they asked, incredulous.
“No,”
Jacob said, “then we showed each other our lunches....”
This brings me to an
important distinction I want to make which has a profound bearing on
“believing”.
Here's the
distinction: Something Happens AND then, We Say Something About What
Happened. That's the distinction.
(I'll
pause a moment while you think about that and say, either out loud or
to yourself: “Well, duh,
of course there is a difference between What Happens and What We Say
About It....So...?”)
Here's
the “So”: What Happened in that story about the Pope and the
Tailor is that two men stood in the room, made gestures to each other
and then showed each other a piece of fruit and a piece of bread.
That's all the Cardinals saw. That's What
Happened.
But then the Pope interpreted “What Happened” as the Tailor
passing a complicated theological test and the Tailor interpreted
“What Happened” as cowering the leader of world-wide Christianity
into allowing the Jews to remain in Rome.
See what I mean yet?
For
the Pope and the Tailor both, What Happened became
“what they said about it.” There was NO distinction between the
pantomime they carried out and their interpretations.
For both of them “What Happened” became “what they said about
it.” The event and the interpretations collapsed into each other so
completely that each walked away from the moment of their encounter
'believing' it WAS what they “said about it”.
As far as I can
tell, “belief”--at least the 'final belief' Wallace Stevens
suggested exists purely only through of the distinction between the
event and whatever it is we say about the event. Lose the distinction
and what we call 'belief' is hopelessly muddled in the collapse of
the events into the interpretations.
Another
story: The
popular cosmologist, Carl Sagan was giving a lecture in an auditorium
about the nature of the Universe. During the question and answer
period, a little old lady stood up, fairly shaking with anger and
said, “Dr. Sagan, you might believe what you said about the
Universe, but I know different. The earth isn't
floating
out in some vast, endless space. The earth is resting on the back of
an enormous tortoise.”
Sagan, used to
nay-sayers, courteously asked the woman, “well, Madam, what does
the tortoise rest on?”
She harrumphed
and responded, “an even more enormous tortoise!”
Sagan paused a
moment and then asked, “and what does that one rest on?”
The
woman snorted at his ignorance. “Dr. Sagan,” she said with pride,
“don't traffic with me. It's tortoises all
the way down!”
Here's
what I think, so far as 'belief' goes, it is 'interpretation' all
the way down.
Something happens—a
child born in a city named Bethlehem under less than optimum
circumstances over 2000 years ago. That certainly happened. In spite
of the joke about Paul Tillich, there seems to be ample evidence from
all that is know and agreed on, that a child named Jesus was born.
That is the event. That is What Happened. The rest, all the rest,
beloved, is what people have over 20 centuries Said About that birth.
The miraculous insemination, the understanding of poor Joseph, the
difficulty of the journey, the angels and the shepherds, the star and
the Magi, the scientifically difficult assertion that Jesus' mother
was 'ever Virgin', the barn and the creatures therein, even the
little kid with his drum. Let's make a distinction between What
Happened and What Was Said About It, painful as that distinction may
be. Let's begin, at least, with this: the miracle and wonder of a
birth—any birth. That, in and of itself, is worthy of pondering and
acknowledging. A child was born. A son was given.
Birth
is an event, a 'what happened' that should, standing alone, be cause
for celebration and gratitude and not a few tears of joy. However,
people have literally lost their lives over their disagreement with
or even questioning “What Has Been Said” about that particular
birth on that particular night in that particular year in that
particular place to those particular parents. C. H. Dodd, a great New
Testament scholar from the early to mid-part of the 20th
Century, called the whole thing “the scandal of particularity”.
Dodd, it seems to
me, understood the distinction between What Happened and What Was
Said About It. He thought that “Universal Salvation” wrapped in
the particularity of a moment, an event so odd, would be thought of
as a 'fiction' by a multitude of people. He was correct. Ogden Nash
went further back into the fiction when he wrote:
How odd of God,
To choose the
Jews.
But
my point is simple. It is not only alright, it is most likely a piece
of 'salvation' to believe in a fiction, so long as you can
acknowledge, without losing faith, that it
is a fiction and you believe in it willingly.
After all, what is
there to 'believe' in but fiction. The danger comes when people
forget it is a 'fiction' and construe it as a Fact. That is the stuff
of “separate but equal”, gender bias, religious persecution,
drowning of witches, lynchings, inquisitions, Red Baiting, ethnic
cleansing, Holy Wars, Holocausts.
Don't
forget, I'm an English major. I've read all the literary criticism
anyone should ever read and I know there is “no agreement” on
Interpretation of Fiction. Ask a dozen so-called experts about Joyce
or Hemingway or Dickens or Shakespeare or Chaucer or Beowulf and
you'll get a remarkably wide variety of interpretations. It truly is
'interpretation all the way down'. Imagine poor St. Paul, how he has
been 'interpreted' over the centuries to defend slavery, suppression
of women, hatred of homosexuals.... Paul, I believe, would be both
astonished and horrified to know that his writing (what happened with
his words) was so twisted and perverted and used for more than one
evil. He was just 'making stuff up' to tell these troublesome
churches he had founded and left behind. He was creating a body of
'fiction' for them to 'believe' in willingly. And for all the
centuries “what happened” in Corinth became
what the interpreters of Paul SAID it was. The 'distinction' was
lost. 'What happened' BECAME 'what we said about it.”
People
who believe in a fiction willingly don't have an issue with the
fictions other people believe in. And here's where the 'distinction'
I suggested comes in powerfully--'believers' of whatever ilk, believe
in the collapse of What Happened with What We Said About it. That's
what they believe in and they also believe 'what they believe in' is
capital-T-True, to the exclusion of what everyone else believes in.
So we have a planet full of people believing 'their fiction' is True
while everyone else's fiction is, well...a
fiction.
How
much better off would the planet be if everyone who 'believed'
distinguished between What Happened and the conversation their
particular community has been having over the centuries about What
Happened. Sometimes, when I'm talking with someone, I'll make an
aside and say, “well, that's a different conversation.” What if,
people of faith, 'religious' people of all brands, when confronted
with the Truth other people believed in, said, “well, that's a
different conversation,” rather than saying, “They are Wrong and
I am Right!” Can you begin to see the betterment of the planet from
that kind of distinction? What each of us believes in isn't THE
TRUTH.
What each of us believe in is a conversation about What Happened. And
our conversation about What Happened isn't any more True or False
than the conversations people of other persuasions are having about
What Happened for them.
I'm belaboring this
because I know fair well that most 'believers' believe they believe
in The Truth rather than a fiction.
It's all fiction.
It's all 'made up'. It's all a conversation about What Happened.
This isn't just a
Christian problem, although Christians have done most of the damage
along the way be believing that what they believe is TRUE. We've seen
in recent years the same failure to distinguish between the event and
the conversation by Muslims. But since I am a Christian—since I
believe willingly and passionately in the Christian Fiction—let me
not go pointing fingers at anyone who is having a conversation
different than the one I'm having about Jesus. It seems to me that
the conversation about Jesus is simply about a different conversation
than the conversation about Buddha or the one about Mohammad or the
one about Moses or the one about the Earth Goddess or the one about
the remarkably varied gods of Hindus or about the tribal gods of
people in Africa or the gods of Native Americans, the Aborigines
people of Australia or the odd gods of the Norse or the Greeks or the
Irish or the British, for that matter, from the distant past.
I
would hazard to say that all those conversations are about the same
Force, the same Being, the same Event: but that would be imposing my
'fictional believe' on the beliefs and conversations of others, so I
shouldn't
hazard that opinion.
There's been a lot
of hatefulness and mischief because of the various 'conversations' of
the different Christian denominations. And within each denomination,
there is invariably more than one conversation. In my particular
'tribe'--the Anglicans—there are a whole host of competing
conversations and each conversation-group believes their conversation
is the True one. The two major conversations across the spectrum of
the Christian Church are 'the Orthodox conversation' and 'the
Progressive conversation'. We used to call them Conservative and
Liberal before those words became so politicized. And before that, in
the Episcopal Church, we had the “High Church” and “Low Church”
and “Broad Church” conversations—though, the truth be known,
none of the 'conversations' were civil enough to deserve being called
'conversation' at all. Mostly it is about who can talk the loudest
and the longest. In the church, just as in personal relationships,
most of what we call 'listening to each other' is really just letting
the other talk while you plan what to say next.
Here's a final story
to illustrate a creative way of dealing with the reality that
competing conversations are just talking about different fictions.
Centuries ago
a new Bishop came to northern Scotland. He was told of a group of
monks who lived on a distant island who hadn't been visited by a
bishop for several decades. So the Bishop decided he should pay them
a visit.
When his ship
arrived, he was greeted with great joy by the little community. The
Bishop said to the monks, after the introductions, “Let's say the
Our Father together....” He started praying but the monks were
simply looking at each other in confusion.
“We
don't know that prayer,” the monks told him.
The Bishop was
horrified and decided to test them further.
“What
are the four gospels?” he asked.
“Mark,
I think,” said one monk.
Another
answered, “isn't John one, your grace?”
But beyond
that they could not go.
Exasperated
that they knew the Creed no better than the Lord's Prayer, the Bishop
ordered them to get the Mass book and he would preside at the
Eucharist for them.
After much
searching of the chapel, the Missal could not be found.
The Bishop
spent the day trying to teach them the Creed and Lord's Prayer,
rehearsing them on the books of the Bible and, after sending back to
the ship for his personal Missal, sharing the sacrament with the
little group.
He told them
he would be back in three months and during that time they needed to
learn all he had told them to study. When he returned he would decide
whether they could continue to be a monastery or not.
The Bishop's
ship was several hundred yards off the coast when one of the sailors
called to him and pointed toward land. The Bishop and all the crew
were astonished to see the whole group of monks running across the
waves toward them.
When they
arrived, the Bishop stood on the deck of the ship and the monks stood
on the water.
“Your
Grace,” one of them said. “We've already mixed up the words of
that lovely prayer. Can you tell it to us one more time?”
The Bishop
stared at them for a long time. “Never-mind about anything I told
you,” he said, “just go back and keeping doing whatever it is
you've been doing.”
Would that the
Church were so wise as that long-ago bishop....
