Sunday Night Live Focus- November 18, 2001

I was reading this week about the Templeton Prize. It's $1 million for whoever makes the most significant innovation in religion each year (since 1971). Mother Teresa got it the first year. An astro-physicist got it this past year for his scientific evidence that atoms behave "like active agents rather than inert substances." Why is Sir John Templeton giving such an award? Well you"ve got to go back to his younger days when he was on the board of Princeton theological seminary. For many, many years he studied the currents of religious thought and compared those with the scientific revolutions happening down the street at the Einstein Institute. He said this- "In 30 years on the board, very few new ideas came to us- (he goes on) "a doctor today would never prescribe the treatments that my grandfather used as a surgeon in the Confederate Army, but a minister says pretty much the same thing today that a minister would have said back then." The magazine article goes on to say that "Templeton has a humbling mix of theology and science which puzzles folks who know all about God and are sure He wrote it all down for us in the Bible."

Tonight I want to talk a little about "mystery." Its part in faith. Our discomfort with uncertainty... Our tendencies toward closure and answers at the expense of truth. Why we love that security blanket, and why we love it more some times than other times. I think it is an important examination in two respects. First how that need for closure is affecting the growth and integrity of religion in our times and second, how it affects one's a person's private spiritual journey and relationship with the being we call God. 

But, First a story about this word closure. Twenty years ago I was trying to buy a house- my first really big purchase. Huge, right? The more houses I looked at the more confused I became. And this was going to be my home- It was a biggie... Well I remember whining to my realtor, (Mary Lou) about not knowing how I could make this decision. And her response to me was "it all depends on how long you can withstand closure." I was confused. First of all the word closure lost me. And withstand was close behind it. She meant- how long could I stay comfortable with not knowing, not making a decision. If I needed it settled and over quickly, that would affect my decision. So how long you can withstand closure is important because it is in that thick dark gooey place of confusion that wisdom is born.

This week I met with two religion professors at UF. (And you all wonder what I am doing with time!) Here I had the two of them in a room with me for an hour. Talking the church, talking trends, talking the future. I wanted their perspective on things- as academics. As we talked, they both agreed that there was a trend towards conservatism in the church, and voiced some of the concerns they had about this. One suggested it was because of the break down of the family. He said, "fundamentalism will always be appealing to a person from a broken home." Hmmm- never thought about it that way. Maybe it does provide the closure and warmth they did not get at home. Sounds somehow too simple though... Karen Armstrong says its basically about fear. (which is maybe just a larger picture of the same thing) Her book "the Battle For God" is a study of the waves of fundamentalism that have appeared in history. She says that historically, when science has blown through with something new-like Galileo's observations from his telescope... or when there is a perceived threat to the status quo- we run for our blankets- and always have and religion has been that ultimate security blanket. It appears we are in such times right now. 

So... I"m thinking about all this, walking out of the professors office , and I literally bump into Zohara Simmons , the Islamic professor at UF. I introduce myself. She is really personable so we get talking. You know me, I"ve just got to know what its like to be her right now! Islamic, female and American. It was really eery to hear her talk. It was like I was back in the office with the two profs, cuz she was saying the same things we had been only substituting the word Islam for the church. "Oh, she said I am so worried about our faith. We are not looking forward. There is this movement backwards. I love my faith , and I so want to see it grow and mature in this century, but there is this trend even among moderates to shut down discussion and return to the fundamentals."  I told her that we had been sharing the same concerns for Christianity. She was surprised and said, " really? " and then we stood there wondered together in the hallway for maybe thirty minutes about the whys , and the what will be's... We had so much in common I think it surprised us. 

Closure is like a security blanket. We need it more when its cold- when the world threatens our beliefs and assumptions, either with new information , new cultures, new religions or new problems. 
How long can we withstand closure then? Sometimes not too long. Do we answer the closure question differently under different circumstances. You bet! 

Galileo came up against one of those times in history. Did you realize that Galileo actually took great pains to present his "Dialogue" in a way acceptable to the church? Do you know how he did it? Incredible. He had a conversation going on with three people about the idea of the sun being central or not. It was like reading a roundtable discussion and there was someone representing the old way of thinking and of course he was one of the parties and there was a more cautious but open member as well. And to be sure this was going to okay with the church, he sent a copy to the Pope's right hand man for his approval- Galileo edited it as asked and then promised to publish it only at the church's approved time. All of this he did. But it backfired. All his careful planning and consideration for the church blew up in his face, because it was a time of fear in the church and in the people. That word again- Fear- It always hastens our need for closure. A liberal climate of new thinking was blowing through Europe and from what I have read- it was politically expedient for the Pope to make an example of Galileo to come down hard on him- to prove that the church was still in control of science. He had to make a show of strength on this issue. His so-called friend in high places just slipped away and as the song says "Galileo's head was on the block- the crime was looking up the truth" . 
You may or may not know, that he was actually a rather religious man and this whole thing made him a little sick. He had wanted the church's blessing and did not mean to disrupt things. His assumption (albeit wrong in the church's eyes) was that truth sprang from one fountain. There was not secular truth and sacred truth- only truth. The telescope should not tell him something the church could not believe.

So Galileo said what he saw, and I suppose believed his church would incorporate this new information into their thinking, but it didn"t go that way. The church had closure on this matter already. The earth was central. The Sun revolved around it. It said so in the Bible. (Of course many good poets speak of the sun racing across the sky but Biblical literalism is another earmark of fear.) Sadly, Galileo recanted and was put under house arrest. I think that is a curious punishment- symbolic- in a way- of mind arrest. 'stay at home do not wander, explore, or venture forth - DO NOT PASS GO." House arrest is life closure. (Actually we know that he did not close his mind in that little house. He kept writing and had he not written the progress of science would have been considerably slowed. 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House arrest-We still do it don"t we? You want to play video games? We"ll give you Christian video games . You want to sing rock n roll- we"ll give you Christian rock n roll. You need to learn science. We"ll teach you science in a Christian classroom. There isn"t anything Christian about house arrest. Jesus was a man of the streets, the bars, the people. 

In fact, Jesus is a big problem for people that love closure. I remember literally "waking" up one day in college and realizing that Jesus would be criticized for his theology- in my church. Why he never gave the same answer twice to questions about eternal life or finding the way. In fact he never once gave the one I learned in my youth group.  And sometimes he sounds like he is God and other times he definitely talks like he is not. What's up with that? Well after he left, the church argued about it for some 3 or 400 years. God / Man/ God / Man / God / Man. Trinity. Closure. Don"t you feel for the poor soul that died in the year 200 before the debate was settled? 

 We took the broad "way" of Jesus (that is sometimes confusing) and turned it into a singular, clear homogeneous theology because we needed the closure. We took one verse and labeled it the great commission and pronounced Peter as Pope because of a few verses from the book of Matthew. And the church was on its way ... feeling snug and tight and ready to face the future- but it was not as we have seen. 

I want to go back to Templeton who by the way is a religious man . He says, "The chief handicap of religious people, is that they tend to start with all the answers and don"t change them, while scientists start with questions." We begin with closure- they begin with curiosity. 

I would like to make the case that Faith is withstanding closure. It is being comfortable with the mystery. Beliefs on the other hand, have closure. Faith has uncertainty & hope. Beliefs get plastered on bumper stickers and printed on highway road signs. Faith is tucked away with our deepest sense of wonder and awe- of something more? It is about not knowing. And "not knowing" is withstanding closure, when everything inside you begs for it. 

The Bible says Faith is the 'substance of things hoped for (nothing solid about that substance), the evidence of things not seen." It is believing in a dimension you don"t and cant understand , but sense somehow? The best analogy I have heard on this and have used in Sonlight is the story of the flatlanders. I"ll make this brief but if you can imagine a world that is two-dimensional - flat land- that as the story goes... is intersected by a sphere ... How would it look to the people in flat land when that sphere intersects their world? They would see a dot that expanded to a circle that grew in size and then returned back down to the dot and then left. They would have experienced a sphere but would be able to explain it only in terms of the two-dimensional. They say if horses had a god , it would look like a horse. We can"t help but think about God inhuman terms. I have this sphere I keep on my prayer table to remind myself every morning of this story-- that God is outside the dimension of time and space and that frankly my two dimensional flatland brain cant conceptualize God- well I can, but that is not God. The ideas in my head are just that- ideas. 
We try with words because we want closure, answers. 

Probably the best "try" with words was made by Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian/philsopher. Did you know that at the end of his life he gave up writing about God? According to accounts he is said to have experienced something of the Divine while doing the liturgy and then felt like he could never write about God again. This silence went on not for months but for years. He said to a friend, "All that I have ever written about God seems to me now to be like straw." 
If God is a sphere intersecting a plane in flatland, Aquinas spent his life writing about dots growing into circles. 
The rock group, U2 says, 'she moves in mysterious ways- One day you will look back and you"ll see how you were held , how by this love, while you could stand there , you could move on this moment , follow this feeling." 
Words of truth from musicians that are not under house arrest. 

My favorite verse in the Bible is in Micah. It says "He has told you o human, what it is that the Lord does requires of you- to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Humbly- tread lightly- You do not know all. Jesus gave us two commandments- to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves. But when we say we love God what are we loving- our picture of God? And what is the difference between loving our picture of God and loving God? Closure. 
I believe bin Laden loves God with all his heart and soul and mind. Every Holy War and crusade in Christianity has been supposedly about "loving God" and doing God's will. But in all these cases they have closed down on a definition and picture of God that leaves no mystery- They know. And great destruction has been done by religious people that "know." When ideas have been made concrete about God we have made in effect an idol, and image. We have decided what God is in our mind and we are worshipping what we have concretized. 
Now in reality, we cannot help but create an image of God in our minds. And it is real progress to move from gods of clay to a God we cannot see, but I believe the next great step for human kind is to love a God we cannot define or understand, and definitely cannot speak for. (as on a highway road sign?) But when we are uncertain or feel threatened we want closure and we move from Faith to beliefs. (Catholic mystic Anthony De mello says) "Beliefs give you a lot of security. Faith is insecurity." 
 

So in closing, I say it:
God bless the 20th century the upcoming 21st, and God bless science. 
It has killed the small box-sized version of God we had. Good. 
We would have held onto that picture forever if we could, because we could. 
God bless Galileo. 
God bless the telescope that told us we were not the center of the universe!
God bless the fossil records that teach us that we are all interrelated. God bless the research that has taken the boogie man out of mental illness-- and the knowledge that race and gender are not determinants of intelligence. 
God bless Truth, which shall take us and set us free. 
 It is never, ever to be feared. 

I ask you and I ask myself....

Can you live without closure?
Can you stare into the night sky knowing how big this universe is and still feel "at home"? 
Can you love the mystery that is God? 
Can you sleep without a tight blanket? 
Can you open the door when truth knocks- even when it feels a little new, a little cold? 
Can you love a God that is not obligated to abide by your doctrine? 
And can all that uncertainty make you warm and give you peace? 

That is Faith.