In a divided country, being right is infinitely more important than truth.

We’re emotional, especially when it comes to politics, least likely to consider the idea that we might’ve got something wrong. When we see an article, a meme, or a social media post that supports our way of thinking, we’re in.

As such, we’re quick to report the facts without taking a deeper look to see if they might be worthy of public dissemination, turning our social media feeds into a junkyard of misleading information, often referred to as “science.”

We don’t do it because we’re bad people, and we’re far from being a nation of idiots. In our anger and desire to be right, we’ve become suckers for whatever we can find that says something akin to “You’ve been right along,” least likely to fact check the facts that everyone within reach so desperately needs to consider.

Moving forward, we’re all in need of what this author refers to as “forensic scatology.” Amen, brother. Following are my still-in-process reflections on how best to make that happen. If you have any additional thoughts on how to flatten this curve, or critiques, please share them below.

Emotional? Anybody?

If you reject the idea that we’re in the middle of a pandemic, that the need for social distancing, masks, staying home, etc. is still crucial, you’re a threat. On the other side, if you’re in favor of action that threatens the health of our economy, you’re a threat.

From here, it’s easy to get angry. This is my country, these are my friends, all put at risk by people who have the wrong perspective. Why wouldn’t I get angry?

But, in this former pastor’s opinion, that’s not why we’re angry.

99% of the time, anger is a symptom of emotional hurt, an unresolved something that happened long ago that rears its head whenever we experience relational tension. So, typically, what we think we’re angry about isn’t what we’re really angry about.

I might feel like my political anger is righteously motivated, like I’m posting a meme in defense of America, in defiance of unjust thinking that will certainly lead to unjust action. But it’s more likely true that my social media adversaries have rubbed their finger in something I haven’t yet managed to let go of. It hurts, so I hurt back, posting things that are little more than retaliation – typically far from truth.

Why wouldn’t I? Aren’t we fighting?

Angry people have stifled access to truth because truth isn’t the goal of anger, anger is the goal of anger, and it wants little more than to spread itself as far as possible. It feeds on people who say, “Oh, yeah, you’re totally right,” and unleashes itself on anyone who doesn’t. It leaves us feeling betrayed and marginalized, forcing us to scour the internet for “acceptance” and “validation,” belittling anyone who gets in the way.

Before we post our truths, we’re compelled to ask difficult questions about the emotions we’re feeling as we reach for the send button. I might feel more “right” than someone, but do I feel more “righteous?” Do I feel better than the people who don’t agree with me? Am I merely feeding into my anger, and the anger of others.

The best way to insulate ourselves (and everyone else) from this scat is a good dose of homework; scouring the internet in defense of someone else’s opinion.

The Other Story

As someone who leans heavy towards the liberal side of truth-finding, I don’t have many conservative friends who can articulate the reasons why I’d prefer our current president to not be our current president. Lacking the proper information, errant conclusions are drawn about why I haven’t managed to accept the truth. I try to explain myself, but end up being accused of watching too much CNN and mindlessly lobbing senseless attacks at a good leader.

Same goes for me. I don’t understand how anyone can support this guy, but I don’t have meaningful conversations about it, and I’ve never asked my conservative friends, agenda free, why they’ve landed on their current planet. I don’t want to know, I’m angry, and I need to be right, just like the rest of us.

It’s too much work.

I’d wager, though, that a face-to-face encounter, where I become a student, asking questions and giving my “adversaries” an open forum, would be game-changing for my understanding. I can almost guarantee that I wouldn’t walk away a Trump supporter, but I can find compassion for their point of view, and for them. I’d also wager that I’d hear a few things that I haven’t yet considered; facts, opinions, and perspectives that are fundamental to a deeper understanding.

There are two sides to every story. I haven’t found the truth until I understand – and can defend – both sides, regardless of where I land.

I know people who’ve mastered this, and they’re not posting false/misleading things on Facebook. They’re actually not posting anything on Facebook, but that’s a different blog post, one I’ll probably never write.

Two things need to happen before I can grasp a deeper truth. First, I’m forced to listen. Asking questions, giving the other person an open forum, and stowing the temptation to accuse, belittle; in general doing everything in my power to excuse my jackassery from the table, all come part and parcel to good listening.

Second, I’m forced to ask difficult questions about my own perspective. In the soul of someone who has a deep emotional need to be right, this hurts. Many of us will avoid it, but this is the path of wisdom, and the only trajectory towards truth. It’s also the reason why you won’t see many retractions or admitted mistakes on social media. We don’t do that.

Before we post our next inarguable fact, we’re again compelled to do some homework, to hear from qualified people who’ve done more homework than we’ll ever do, to not only read it, but study it to the point of a deeper-than-normal understaning.

We don’t have to agree with it, but if we can’t defend it, we haven’t understood it.

Unsubstantiated Sensationalism

A friend of mine recently posted a story he’d heard from a friend who works as a nurse. Apparently, a patient who’d been decapitated in an a car accident was coded as a COVID-19 death because he was carrying the disease when he died. My friend followed this story with “See? COVID-19 deaths are woefully miscounted.” The comments section was full of “I knew it!” sorts of things, with only a few people asking for data.

There’s some evidence to support the belief that deaths are miscoded. My state of Colorado recently announced that their count was off by almost 300 cases, one in which a death believed to have been caused by ethanol toxicity was coded COVID-19 because the victim was a carrier.

But there’s a ton more to the story, so much homework to be done if we’re to gain a deeper understanding of this particular issue. If we’re not willing to commit to a deeper curriculum, let’s not post, especially the sensationalist stuff.

YouTube recently pulled a popular video produced by two urgent care owners/practicing docs claiming that, “based on science,” America was overreacting, that this current pandemic is no worse than the flu, and that it’s time to reopen the country. I watched the entire video, found it compelling, and did some fact checking which opened my eyes about the myriad problems associated with our first round of antibody tests.

The video was chock full of misinformation couched as inarguable, obvious truth, and was shared millions of times. YouTube has since inacted a campaign against coronavirus misinformation and has been removing any material found to be non-compliant.

A good-sized cross section of America called “foul!” many leaning heavily towards the “coronavirus is the flu” side of things, ironically, posting ad-nauseum that censorship has been laid on our porch, suggesting that we need to fight back.

But YouTube and other social media outlets operate on private servers. I appreciate the freedom they give me to post my thoughts, but this isn’t an inalienable right. How we came to believe that it is baffles me. Nonetheless, my facebook feed is full of people trying to convince me that this is the beginning of the end of free speech in America!!! simply because an organization seeks to control what happens on their privately owned hardware.

Unsubstantiated sensationalism is lazy, irresponsible, and serves as little more than another wolf-cry that chips away at the bearer’s credibility for some, for others, it drives a deeper wedge between us.

We can’t afford that right now.

Before we post, we need to ask two questions: is it sensationalist, and can we back it up with hard data from qualified sources. Epidemiologists, virologists, biological statisticians, folks who work in the field of infections diseases, etc are all qualified to speak on our current situation. If I want to post something that compares coronavirus to the worst flu epidemic of all time, I’ve got some homework to do.

If we can’t back it up, we shouldn’t post it, regardless of how much it might feel great to do so.

We all have a platform, i.e., a group of people who trust us and listen to what we have to say. We’re also in the middle of a difficult situation, full of anger, finger-pointing, conspiracy theories, and political nonsense all having misinformation at their core.

Flattening this curve is something we can all do, but it will require time, work, and some emotional heavy lifting that doesn’t pair well with Amercian culture.

Currently, I’d rate myself a solid “C” in all of this, with vast room for improvement, hopefully bumping it to a “C+++” in the coming months. We’ll see how it goes. Thanx to the many people who respectfully engage my social media rants, and who challenge me to think beyond my biases, who’ve helped me to become a bit better. You know who you are, because it’s been painful.

Scripture calls us to a high degree of things that don’t play well with mortals. As we attempt to comply, we come face-to-face with a difficult proposition: the rules of a good life are extremely difficult to follow.

In part, that’s the point. St. Paul said that God’s rules were given so we’d come to understand one of humanity’s greatest limitations – we can’t follow the rules. When it comes to compassion, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, self-control, justice, peace, morality, etc., we’ll all fall short. Desperately so.

That’s supposed to humble us, opening our hearts to the other part of the gospel, the good news – God’s answer to our frailty. It’s also intended to draw us together, to get the rules out of the way so we might see past the shortcomings of others, into their true worth and beauty. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to easy to go the other way instead convincing ourselves that we’re doing a great job, or at least a better one than all those poor, spiritual failures who can’t seem to get their shit together.

Enter the spiritual caste system that’s prevalent in so many religions: a person’s worth, and place within the system, is based purely on their ability to follow the rules.

Christian community will always struggle here. We’re dying to find some kind of redemption that might cancel out the personal faults and failures swirling around in our minds. In New Testament thought, God has offered just that; a redemption that has nothing whatsoever to do with rule-following, but we struggle with solutions that don’t come at our own hands – a salvation story where we don’t rescue ourselves. If God has to do this work for us, doesn’t that make us weak? Though we confess otherwise, we see ourselves as warriors, overcomers – we’ll handle our own redemption, thank you very much.

In all of this, the rules of our religion become the point of our religion, giving birth to a system by which we find our worth, and measure the worth of others.

From here, things go tribal, fast. Our theology (thoughts of God and humanity) is quickly overthrown by not-so-biblical speculations on “who’s in?” and “who’s out?” We reject those who don’t follow our rules, or value our values, seeing them as some kind of threat, distancing ourselves and re-interpreting the scriptures that command us to do the exact opposite.

It’s easy to get sucked into the belief that God’s endgame is to turn people into us – people who value what we value, believe what we believe, vote how we vote, church how we church – live how we live. The legions of those who aren’t interested have rejected God Himself, and aren’t worth our investment. We have bigger fish to fry than the ones who don’t want to jump into our frying pan, so we turn to other, much more benign pursuits, making our religion one of the most boring, self-serving propositions on the planet.

Then we complain that nobody wants to listen to us.

New Testament Christianity, on the other hand, calls us to “the ends of the earth,” proclaiming a message of forgiveness, hope, compassion, and an big dose of unconditional human worth. It paints the picture of a God who is overthrown by all of humanity, right down to the worst sinner. But our worship of rule-following, paired with our tribal urges and bullshit politics, compel us to reinterpret our sacred scriptures into a document of isolation and self-defense.

It’s easy for our theology to become propriety; a system of thought by which we are the sole beneficiaries of God’s blessing, where the only worthy people are, go figure, us.

Who’s In? Who’s Out?

The religious elite of Jesus’ day were very clear – only the wealthy, devout Israelites were “in.” The rest of the world; sinners, sufferers, poor folk – anybody who’s life seemed “cursed,” couldn’t possibly be the beneficiaruwa of God’s blessing. Jesus straightened a bunch of that out, thank God, clearing the way for us to dig a bit deeper when it comes to issues of wealth, suffering, misfortune, etc.

But, not unlike those who got it wrong so long ago, us modern God-folk think in terms of “in” and “out” when we consider how God’s world works. Some people will spend an eternity in heaven, some won’t. The “in” people did something right: believed the right things, did the right things, avoided the wrong things, or some combination of the three, and hell will be full of those who didn’t make the right choice.

Theologians have spent a fair chunk of humanity’s existence thinking about who’s going to heaven and who’s not. As a culture, we’ve taken those thoughts, along with our tribal, proprietary urges, and convinced ourselves that we know who’s in and who’s out. You can guess where we place ourselves in this game, and where we place everyone else. We’re the ones who’ve thought the right thoughts, done the right deeds, the ones going to heaven, and we’re the ones planted firmly on the receiving end of God’s blessing – the recipients of His salvation because we made good choices. Granted, anyone can make the choices we’ve made, but until they do, there’s trouble in this life and nothing but hellfire in the next.

That might be right, but what bothers me is how that piece of theology affects the way we interact with the rest of the world.

We haven’t just labeled the non-Christian world as “out,” we’ve considered them to be cursed, in a way, and have come full circle with Jesus’ detractors who believed the same about the faithless minions of their day. God doesn’t interact with them as He does with us, so we feel uterlly uncompelled to interact with them the way we interact with each other. Cursed people, by definition, are not blessed by God, nor should they be blessed by us, so, our church buildings, worship services, financial endeavors, etc., are, for the most part, ours.

I’m not suggesting that church buildings, staff salaries, and funding missionaries is wrong, but if you follow the money, the vast majority of it is spent on the “in” crowd, or on those who might soon join us.

A very small percentage goes anywhere else.

Our churches are mostly white, our financial endeavors are mostly “Christian,” our politics are mostly conservative (God’s politics), and the community that we love and serve the most looks and thinks like we do. In our defense, it’s a human thing; we know where we fit in a world that most resembles us. We’re comforted by people who think and act like we do. But the Bible begs us to worship, invest, and live with a more “everybody’s in,” significantly less proprietary perspective.

I have to out myself on something that many of my Christian friends will be uncomfortable with (and maybe a few of my seminary professors). But hang with me here, there’s a compelling argument to be made, heretical as this might be.

These days, I lean heavily towards what theologians call “Christian Universalism,” i.e., the idea that everyone goes to heaven. I’m not completely there yet, as I’ll share in a moment, but this way of thinking has all but annihilated my proprietary predispositions.

Before you pen an urgent IM, begging me to repent, walk with me as I unpack  what Christian Universalism has in common with Orthodox Evangelcial thinking.

• • It has the person of Jesus at its core – everything revolves around Him.
  • It bears the exact same staurology/anthropology: humanity can’t stop sinning, but Jesus’ death on the cross has somehow gotten that problem out of the way. 
  • It confesses that scripture is the word of God, without error.
  • Most importantly, Jesus is personal, begging us to have a relationship with Him, to rely on him for strength, peace, and hope, especially in the moments where we can’t find it for ourselves. “Salvation” is now, and in eternity.

Far as heresies go, it’s not a bad one. I can believe what you believe about humanity, cross, heaven, Jesus, Bible, etc., and at the same time I don’t have to tell my friend that her father is rotting in hell because he died a Bhuddist.

But the issue of eternal damnation is where we might differ the most.

Reflections on the Other Place

Hell is referenced in scripture many times throughout the Old and New Testaments. Sure, there are times when these passages refer to suffering in the here and now, but others talk plainly about eternal damnation, which is why so many expressions of Christianity have a belief of hell at their core.

In my opinion, the most clear depiction comes via Jesus as He’s trying to unpack the inner-workings of God’s world to His disciples.

He first tells two parables, one about a group of women who were prepared for the return of Jesus, the other about the importance of investing what God’s entrusted to us. These parables leave us thinking, “How should one be prepared for your return?” and, “How do we invest?”

The next think Jesus says is the most clear depiction of judgment day (and what it looks like to be “prepared” and “invested”) that you’ll find anywhere else in scripture. I’ll share it here, though it’s long, just so we’re clear. This is from the book of Matthew, chapter 5, starting in verse 31:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This is difficult to reconcile with the idea that only those who think the right thoughts and/or avoid the right sins are “in,” and it certainly doesn’t jive well with my “everyone’s in” brand of thinking. It’s also fascinating that Jesus’ understanding of who’s “in” and who’s “out” revolves entirely around “social justice,” something that my bible-believing conservative friends have dismissed as a mindless liberal agenda.

The bible’s reflections on hell weren’t written so that we’d craft for ourselves an understanding of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. St. Paul himself warned us against such endeavors:

“The right kind of righteousness says: ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?”‘ for that is to bring Christ down, or, ‘”Who will descend into the deep?”‘ for that is to bring Christ up from the dead.”

In my opinion, the bible’s hell passages were written so that we would reflect on the mind of God, asking deep, painful questions about where we stand with Him, not everyone else, driving us into humility and God’s overwhelming, unconditional love for humanity.

Theology that’s gone proprietary, in-and-out, and tribal is the farthest a thinker can get from the much bigger picture that God has called us into.

I recently watched a debate between New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman and Apologetic Press’ Kyle Butt, both arguing whether or not world suffering disproves the existence of God. Dr. Ehrman’s popular book, “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why Do We Suffer?” a New York Times best seller, says no: the suffering of our world is proof that God doesn’t exist.

Kyle had studied every scrap that Bart Ehrman had written, now face-to-face with one of the most renowned, erudite New Testament scholars of our day. He was dauntless, responding with courage, passion, and an air of disrespect.

This was a crucial battle, and Bart Ehrman was the bad guy.

While some of Kyle’s responses were downright insulting, I understand where he’s coming from. Us American God-followers place a high value on theological “right-ness;” when we interact with a lesser mortal, we’re tempted to downgrade, sometimes asserting our not-so-God-given right to be jerks as we exalt our beliefs over others.

I’ve done that.

Many would say that Kyle is a solid guy, theologically speaking, but I was left with the impression that his grasp of human suffering wasn’t tempered by the horrible things that so often attend humanity. At no time in the 2-hour debate did he acknowledge how dreadful things can be.

He offered a few seconds’ lip service in his closing argument but quickly spring-boarded into the idea that we’ll all end up in a place where suffering doesn’t exist. The fact that everything will ultimately be OK makes all the presently horrible things so OK that we don’t need to talk about them.

Add to that our Western way of life – safe, predictable, wealthy – and we find ourselves in a bit of an ivory tower as we ponder the Almighty’s ways.

The rest of humanity doesn’t live so comfortably, and doesn’t interpret as we do.

It might be that our relative lack of suffering has nurtured an understanding of God that’s just as disembodied from world suffering as we are.

Embracing Insanity

It’s impossible to wrap our heads around the issue of suffering without feeling like everything’s gone out of control. Things get really bad here. For us God-followers, an out-of-control world can only be presided over by an out-of-control God. But that idea frightens us: few are interested in one who can’t keep this place glued together. I need a God who acts as He should, who shares my values, my desire for personal safety, yearly vacations, etc.

Feeling out of control runs counter to everything within us. It’s as if we were made for a place where things are much more predictable.

NASA once used black box recordings to study what happens to pilots when they realize that everything had gone haywire, just before a fatal crash. The results were fascinating, and awful. Across the board, the initial reaction was to deny what was happening, or disengage completely. In one incident, just before his aircraft struck the ground, the pilot calmly uttered, “Mom?”

Maybe Kyle’s problem, and ours, isn’t arrogance, or a lack of experience with suffering, but a very human need to live in a place that doesn’t mop the floor with us whenever it wants.

That might have more authority over our theology than it should.

On the other hand, Dr. Ehrman asks questions about God and suffering that us believers don’t always have the guts for. He’s an honest, ex-Evangelical, somewhat punchy, agnostic scholar with no congregation to get angry if he says something wrong.

His questions dig at the truth of what we’re all feeling:

“Why does God allow some people to suffer but not others?”
“Why doesn’t God always intervene when things go wrong?”
“What should we do with all of the truly horrible scenes in the Old Testament, most of which came at the hands of God Himself?”
“How can a God who loves us without condition, who can do whatever He wants, allow this world to suffer as it does?”

Most of us wouldn’t agree with “God’s Problem,” i.e., suffering is final proof that God’s not real. I don’t. But we’ve got something to learn from Dr. Ehrman’s honesty. We’ll miss the truth entirely if we fail to engage, much as we can, the tears, bloodshed, loss, war, disease, and general horribleness that are part and parcel to human existence.

But it’s scary. Honesty forces us to embrace the reality that our lives hang on the Almighty’s whim. Am I next? My wife? Kids for God’s sake? We say, “God is good, don’t worry, he’ll take care of you,” but honest people have a hard time with that one. I have a close friend who says, “As we speak, so many people are suffering. Why would God take care of me but not them?”

Pulitzer Prize winning author and psychologist Ernest Becker wrote long ago, “The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

I think the same is true for our theology. Thoughts of God get smaller when they shrink from the frightening realities of our world.

But to fully understand God, we’d need a full understanding of human suffering, something akin to the one He has, and nobody could handle that. A god-level cognizance of world suffering would destroy us. We’re forced instead to work with a scaled-down version, and we control the scale.

As such, American Christian theology doesn’t pair well with the painful parts of our world.

How many “positive and encouraging” sermons have you sat through? How many times have you left Sunday services in mourning? Our passion to fill the pews, entertain the devout, and surrender to a God who reigns over utopia has truly shrunken the way we think about Him.

Escape-Pod Theology

Much as I respect Dr. Ehrman, I don’t agree that the existence of suffering backs us into a corner where we’re forced to believe that God isn’t real. “Suffering proves that God doesn’t exist” is a proposition that offers an easy escape from the tension that good theology creates. It’s nearly the exact opposite of Kyle’s “It’ll all be OK in the end” remedy.

Between the extremes of “it doesn’t matter,” and “God doesn’t exist” is an ocean of things to discuss, ponder, argue, study, and pray about. Allowing a holy God to preside over a world in bed with evil will cause significant tension as we’re forced from simple answers into something deeper, more painful – closer to the truth and more able to change our lives.

When we hit the eject button, we miss out on too much.

Who could blame us? Relational tension, cognitive tension, physical tension, etc., all require discomfort and incite us to jump ship. But if we want good relationships, physical fitness, intelligence, wisdom, good theology, etc. we’re going to have to get used to tension and the pain that it causes.

The Biblical authors were big fans.

Take the issue of “salvation” for example (theologians call this “soteriology”). Some passages suggest that heaven is something you earn (Mt 7:21, Ro 2:6-8, John 5:28-29), while others seem to say that only those who believe in Jesus get in (Ro 4:4-5, Ro 5:1, Acts 16:30-31). Others suggest everyone gets in (Gal 2:21, Ro 5:8, Ro 5:18, Ro 11:6, 1Pet 2:24). Evangelicals are firmly set in the “believe it to get it” group, while Catholics tend to embrace the “earn it to get it” perspective. Neither really knows what to do with the “everyone gets in” passages. Rob Bell tried to clear some space there and we nearly crucified him.

But if we were to entertain the idea that God’s version of soteriology somehow espouses all three views, our heads would explode, unless we’re willing to give up our need for quick answers and instead embark on a journey of discovery, one that requires comfort with confusion, frustration, and humble ignorance.

Missing What Matters

In my early twenties, armed with some money from grandpa and a newly found confidence compliments of Top Gun, I took my first private-pilot lesson. Floating over the Fort Worth skyline at 90 mph with my instructor in a beat up Cessna, I decided to begin a career in aviation.

I was hooked.

Shortly after the FAA bestowed upon me the much coveted “Private Pilot” license, I realized that I was merely a fledgling in the piloting world; I couldn’t wait to fly bigger planes and one day land that left-seat, high-salary captain gig. For years I flew as much as my rotating credit line would allow and took a job as a flight instructor so I could build the experience needed to climb to the next rung. I was hired by a company out of Texarkana and flew occasionally as co-pilot on some of their bigger planes. It was one of the best times of my life; teaching hillbillies how to fly and occasionally co-piloting the big rigs, making my “baby” pilot friends jealous.

I was anxious to advance, always feeling like I was on the bottom of the food chain – even my girlfriend flew bigger planes than I did. I quickly garnered a reputation for being driven, which seemed like a good thing to me; up to this point I had always shuffled aimlessly through life. Aviation gave me a passion for career advancement and an overall sense of responsibility that I never had.

About the time that I was ready to advance, a close family member died. I went into a tailspin, re-thinking everything including my coveted career. A few years later I enrolled in one of the most renown, conservative Evangelical seminaries in the country and began a career in ministry leadership. The same thing happened on that journey – driven, only able to see what was missing, comparing myself to others.

Eyes on the prize.

I’ve lived most of my adult life like this – hopes, dreams, heart, everything tied to some future destination, all of my energy and attention expended with a clear goal in sight, unable to see anything else.

It’s like crawling through a steel tube. You can see just enough at the end to keep you going, but the beauty, weight, people, depth, and meaning that surround you are invisible, out of reach, weightless, meaningless.

It’s common to live this way in our culture, always hoping to “get somewhere” – a new relationship, marriage, salary, position, image, possessions. We’re so focused on the future that we miss out on the powerful things happening around us.

We’re tempted to do the same thing with theology. Too many times the end game of our doctrinal oddysey is propositional truth – straightforward, black-and-white solutions to the toughest issues.

Anything less is failure.

We see ourselves as leaders and teachers, seeking to set straight the atheists and other spiritual ne’er do wells or our world. Why wouldn’t we? The Bible is God’s word, anchored at the core of everything we do. We study it like no other contemporary religious expression and place immense pressure on ourselves to have all the answers. That’s our mission.

So we study, discuss, think, and pronounce in the steel-tub endgame of black-and-white propositional truth. We’ve been doing this for years and have created a culture of answer-people who tolerate neither the faithless hordes outside our camp nor the myriad points of tension that infest our sacred scriptures.

But in our haste to blow past mystery and tension, what are we missing? Just like the guy who dilutes his life’s endgame to an impressive salary and a vacation home – how are we cheating ourselves when the sole purpose of our theology is “right-ness?”

Who sits down to a movie and fast forwards to the end?

If you could turn water into wine, would you do it? After the nostalgia and whatever residual fame wore off, it would become just as “normal” as any other miracle in our world. Better to take the year-long journey from ground to bottle and all of the people, parties, setbacks, and victories that entails.

Maybe that’s why none of us get to do the magic stuff Jesus did – If we could work miracles, we’d be all about the destination at the expense of everything else. So He’s limited us to the “everyday” miracles of humility, sacrifice, mercy, compassion, love, etc.

In the same vein, the Bible isn’t an appeal for us to fast-forward to the final answer. It’s an invitation to dig deeper, to allow theological tension to bleed into all of our God-thoughts while denying the temptation to hitch a ride on someone else’s propositional-truth escape-pod.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the black and white stuff is important; our life with God relies on specific beliefs. I lean heavily on the idea that God is real, that He can do anything He wants, even cheat death. I believe that He is the embodiment of good, patience, peace, and forgiveness. He loves us without condition or limitation and I’m compelled to do the same. These are clearly laid out in scripture – inarguable in my opinion.

But so many other propositions lie in a different arena, full of tension, complication, rife with “contradiction.” Here, tension is good. Confusion is good. Rabbit trails, wrong conclusions, hours of reading, thinking, discussing, trying to live it all out – good stuff.

Throw in a cigar and a recreational beverage now and again – even better.

 

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash.com