Notes on Trusting and Not Being Afraid

Imagine that you cannot swim. You are one of three people in a canoe that capsizes in the deep water, and you are the only one of the three that cannot swim. In the literal and figurative swirl of things, you see the two swimmers moving in on you, trying to rescue you. Can you in your wildest imagination picture yourself lying quietly in the water, all the while reassuring yourself by saying to yourself, "This, too, shall pass. I'll stay still and quiet and my friends will rescue me." Not likely.

Or, can you imagine your non-swimming self, in the midst of groping and gasping frantically for air and aid, coldly calculating, "Now, let me think; if I can get into position so I can push my friends' heads under water, I'll be able to keep my head up." I don't think so.

But anyone who has survived a life-saving class will tell you, you could very well, all pumped-up with adrenaline and with your life in the balance, automatically, instinctively try to compensate for your impending drowning by "oppressing" those who are only trying to save you.

In Psychoanalysis and Religion Erich Fromm tried to explain the dilemma of being human:

"Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the harmony which characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has made humanity into the freak of the universe. People are part of nature, subject to nature's laws and unable to change them, yet people transcend the rest of nature. People are set apart while being part of; we are homeless, yet chained to the home we share with all creatures. We are driven to overcome this inner split, for another kind of harmony which can life the curse by which we are separated from nature, from other people, from ourselves and from God. The human capacity for self-transcendence is both our glory and our agony. We are guilty not so much of trying to play God as we are guilty of not knowing how to be human. Simply hubris (arrogance) is the mask that fear wears."

I think we have missed the point for centuries, at least since the early Middle Ages. Classical theology argues that at the heart of our sinful brokenness is that we all strive too much, and that striving is ultimately our effort to try to dismiss God and be in charge of our own universe, and that that the ultimate idolatry to which you and I are inevitable predisposed. But all that misses the real human drama.

I think it's more like this: we have a sense that things aren't as they should be, and we try, like the non-swimmer adrift in the threatening waters, to use anything and anyone to compensate for whatever is wrong, and that at the source of all our idolatries is our inability to trust. And because we do not trust, we puff up with hubris and vainly attempt to mask our fears.

What if we are not so much bad or sinful or wanton or reckless or damned or doomed as we are crippled by our lack of trust. We are the non-swimmer in the deep water; we can see the shore, but we fear we will never be able to reach it. It is as if we have been cast into the deep, and we are afraid -- of drowning, of dying, of the possibility that our lives mean nothing and that we are all alone. And, even worse, we are easily convinced that we deserve to be that way.

Remember the woman who, having been caught in adultery, was brought to Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees? There, in the presence of the a mob who viewed themselves as legally and morally bound to stone this woman to death, Jesus invites any among them who have not sinned to take the first shot at her. And by doing so, Jesus shows love and mercy not only to the woman who was a stone's throw away from her last breath; he showed love and mercy to those lining up to pelt her as well. Jesus knew that they, and we, are not so much crooked as we are crippled, and that we need to be freed of our fear in order to trust the promises of God.

What Do You Want Your Religion/Your Faith/God to Do For You?

We are going to wander around a bit to get to the point (I know, I know, what's new about that?!), so hang in there with me.

I just finished reading Steven Levitt's and Stephen Dubnar's book Superfreakonomics, and enjoyed having my thinking provoked by it as much or even more than their earlier book, Freakonomics. In a fascinating discussion of the omnipresent conversations about climate change/global warming, they cite an article by a classically educated journalist who, among other things, became the mayor of London, Boris Johnson:

"Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods. And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful." (Boris Johnson, " We've Lost Our Fear of Hellfire, But Put Climate Change in Its Place, The Telegraph, 2006)

And then I revisited the "pre-reading" handout about "The Myth of Redemptive Violence" for our next Faith Journey gathering (January 26th, 6:30 PM, Room 1 -- if you haven't joined us, or haven't joined us for a while, why don't you?) that starts by citing something that Walter Brueggemann says in our Living the Questions videos:

"We are going to deal theologically with the problem of violence forever because it is intrinsic to our inheritance. The question for God for all of us who follow this God is is whether we can resist that stuff that is intrinsically present in our existence."

So all of that got me thinking about the question "What do I want my religion/my faith/ God to do for me?

Do I have an inherited, intrinsic need to be reminded of my imperfection? Do I want to be reminded how I do not measure up (the whole guilt and self-loathing thing?) Do I really yearn for an never-known and only barely imagined pre-existent perfect world from which, through no real fault of my own, I have fallen? Do I want God to reinforce the notion that I am somehow chosen because all those others are somehow so obviously not chosen? Do I want God to bless me and mine and by blessing me and mine, give me leave to not worry about you and yours, or more correctly, to not worry about them and theirs?

Or...

Do I want to be reminded from time to time that I am inherently, intrinsically self-interested, and so is my culture, and do I want to be reminded and invited and empowered to recognize God as the one who continually calls me away from that "intrinsically present inheritance" and toward the power and promise of love? Do I want to remember and revisit and recommit to the model for that kind of movement that Jesus continually, and sometimes surprisingly, offers? Do I want to be comforted and strengthened for the journey from intrinsic, inherent (and all too often violent?)self-interest to redemptive agape?

Hmmm.