crisis and the pursuit of truth

Written on January 12, 2011 in thought

Darrin, who I met through this blog, commented on this morning’s cartoon “Goodbye?”:

Honesty is a lonely trail sometimes. Keep up the good work. And you do go too far sometimes! LOL. So do we all though! Maybe for many people in the church Dave you simply pronounce shibbóleth the wrong way and they then won’t let you cross into places they don’t want you to be. But those places are home for you and where your voice is most authentic. You have to be true to you. So thanks.

I’m going through another crisis lately. It is a very melancholy and lonely time. This is the darkest path yet. Here are just a few of the most important things that are vexing me:

I’m getting older. I switched streams so late in life. I left the church in April 2010 and have no intentions of going back. What do I do now that is meaningful in this world? Which will also earn me a living? At my darkest moments, even though I know I had to do what I did, I find my terrified self asking, “What have I done?“
Although I am not intentionally, in a reactionary way, distancing myself from Christian theology or those associated with it (the church and its members), it is happening anyway. Actually, I feel I am being distanced from. Although I believe my pursuit of truth could be embraceable by authorized truth, I suspect it won’t be.
I am finding stimulation and serenity in philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Derrida. To me, their philosophy is, in biblical terms, a crucified philosophy because it carries within itself the seeds to its own humiliation. Somehow this seems most true to me.

I am pursuing truth without permission from an institution I served for almost all of my life. I have to be true to my own pursuit of truth. Otherwise I would live a lie. I began my journey in the institution. Now I continue it outside of it. But perhaps in the end I will have served all people.

That would make me glad.

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23 Comments - Leave a comment!

T.

Funny, you’ve helped me feel a little less lonely, and given me great insights to keep soldiering on. A friend of mine turns to Kierkegaard for the same thing.

Life is full of irony I guess.

Peace.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

T.: Yes, Kierkegaard is very very great. I’m just not reading him right now. But he’s certainly on and off my shelf a great deal!
Nancy T.

I’ve been trying to live with more intention. I’ve come to a point where I need to make some decisions. I’m on the presipice of giving up a lot of things… not just ‘de-clutter’ but going for the much larger ‘simplify’ to a degree of practical/need and not a lot else. It’s kind of terrifying in its own way, as well. So, I’ve been re-visiting a lot of theology/philosophy that has helped me clarify my thoughts and beliefs.

I mention, because some of what you’ve been writing about lately, seems to be in tandem with things I’m delving into deeper at the moment. (To the point that I’ve just been dipping my toes in some Wiggenstien, and had reminded myself that I should reacquaint myself with Derrida). I’ve had a real appreciation for the change that the ‘liberal’ theologians brought forth from the 30s to the 60s…especially in light of the Calvinist theology that has been predominant for so long.

“Letting Go” is probably one of the most terrifying things for people, but usually also one of the most liberating and fufilling. When it is done responsibly and with integrity, then really it doesn’t really matter what other people think.

Go back to one of the lines you wrote, “Otherwise I would live a lie”. It seems to me that is the truth of the matter. If one denies the truth they already have found, then it is a form of invalidating themselves, and their experience/life as they know it. Whether one tries to live a life they don’t believe in, or, conversely to not live a life they do believe in, the result is the same, a fragmented person.

Don’t let your current situation colour ‘authorized truth’… yes, in many cases, your pursuit won’t be embraced, but, you as a person may be. The number may be small, and the embracement may at times be limited, but where there is love and integrity within ‘the institutions’ there will be those that will touch, and be touched, by you.

Final thought…skip the ‘all people’.

You have, and do serve those that let you minister unto them… be glad!
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

thanks nancy. good advice.
AMissUnderstdoodMe

I can’t lie, honesty and truth and the pursuit of it is SCARY, especially for one such as myself who has a friend who just declared herself an atheist and started off asking the questions I’m asking now…I’m thinking “wow, is that my future? And if it is, would I be okay with it?”
I do believe in God and I believe in Christ so I’m not so sure I’d ever find myself an atheist but who’s to know for sure? So yes, I’m a tad younger (in my mid-twenties) but it’s still scary for me and lonely too because everyone at my age is quick to label themselves when I’d rather keep it a little ambiguous until I know enough about said labels before I apply them to myself. However, that leaves me often lonely because I don’t know anybody personally questioning like I am. I just know that for now I’m not ready to quit the institution, just the kind that I was raised in…and all the rules and craziness that came along with it!
Don C.

Nancy,

I feel like I may be in a place much like yours. I can’t take any more of the evangelical circus, and I haven’t attended church regularly in over two years. I want to know Christ, and I still believe in Him, the Father and the Holy Spirit. At this time, everything else is up in the air.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

thanks AMissUnderstoodMe. We all need to be gentle and patient with ourselves without withholding permission to pursue.
Nancy T.

@AMissUnderstoodMe

You exude intelligence, honesty, and kindness from how you have written your post. You are very perceptive to be wary of labels, they often cause more problems than they solve, and most people I know that have pursued truth and honesty and love have found that it is a never-ending journey, and therefor can’t really be labelled anyway.

Don’t worry about where you will end up, and don’t let others scare, bully, or threaten you into not questioning or journeying.

Conversely, you don’t have to give up anything yo don’t want to.

This applies to all sides, not just ‘organized religion’. I know some atheists that would be horrified that an ‘atheist’ would go to church, as much as I know some christians that would be horrified that a ‘christian’ would go to a wiccan sabbat.

People often shore up their own sense of identity and ‘rightness’ by wanting everyone around them to believe the same thing.

Journeying is scarey and can be lonesome… look for love and kindness and truth, regardless of location. Some of the most evil people I know are ministers (not exagerating, they’ve ruined lives) and some of the most loving, kind and selflessly serving people I know aren’t christians.

Also, journeying can take you places you never thought you’d go… I’ve known of a Wiccan leader that ended up in a Roman Catholic monastary (without renouncing his past beliefs, just seeing them as steps along the way to where he currently is) and of Evangelical Fundamental Christians that have become Humanists. I know personally a lot of people that more less muddle along the path, often spinning their wheels, or backtracking, or going ‘off road’, etc. and are still in a land of ‘not really sure about things’. That’s an okay place to be as well.

Hey, and you found Dave’s blog…that is a wonderful gift in and of itself.
Nancy T.

Don C. and AMissUnderstoodMe…

You may want to take a look at “Finite and Infinite Games” by James Carse. Without promoting a ‘religion’ or even a ‘belief’ he charts out a way of looking at the world, that I think we all see glimpses of, but have trouble putting into words, or keeping coherent.

Basically, most of us who grew up with typical North American Christianity struggle at some point with the ‘good people who do bad things’ and ‘bad people who do good things’ dilemma. Carse puts this into a framework of Finite and Infinte Games. He starts the book stating that there are two types of games, Finite Games and Infinite Games. The purpose of a Finite Game is to win, the purpose of an Infinite Game is to continue the play. His purpose is NOT to say that all Finite games are bad or wrong, but he gives a very clear picture of how we confuse ourselves about what is important and how we make the choices we do.

/stops didactic rambling and being cheer-squad for one of my favourite books.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

another great book.
http://www.zazzle.com/atheist_tees The Godless Monster

@Nancy T.,
I enjoyed your first comment on this thread very much. Well said.
Crystal

I’m sorry that you are down right now, David. All I know spiritually is that whatever you happen to believe at this moment in time doesn’t change who God is. None of our doctrinal beliefs have the power to make God more than he is, or obliterate him from the universe. He is who he is who he is. Regardless of who we think he is. And he loves you.

That aside, take comfort in the fact that you have a beautiful family and a wife who is behind you ( I’m assuming ) and the rest will work itself out. Easy enough for me to say you think, but you need encouragement.

I always recommend that people who start out in a new direction think back to what they were like as a child before rushing headlong into something. When you were a child, you knew who you were better than anyone. You were attracted to certain pursuits and not attracted to others. You sensed what was right for you. You may have been pushed into things by your parents or simply from your desire to please those in authority over you, but deep down you had a sense that something else was waiting for you. Sometimes it takes a lifetime walking down one path to suddenly discover that it was the wrong one, and you have to either backtrack or step over to the path that calls you.

There is a special path for you, David, and when you find it, you will be truly fulfilled. I know you have bills to pay and your family to think of ( even when they are grown, they still need you ) but you mustn’t be too hasty in this decision. If by some fluke you were drawn back to your old job or one like it, it wouldn’t work.

Personally, I think you are in a unique position to start again, because you have done the job of raising your family ( they are hopefully living their lives ) and that’s the hardest job on the planet. Forgive me if this all sounds ridiculous to you. I just don’t want you to lose hope. What does David ( the young in heart adventurer want to do ) with the rest of his life? What would you do if you only had one year left to live? What is most important to you in this life? Is it your artwork or the writing you said you wanted to do? David, the man of many talents. You’ll get there…Crystal.
Elderyl

You helped me come back to the Church. A year ago I was being shunned by my pastor and fellow elders. It seemed a joke that only a few months before my friends repeatedly told me I had the gift of faith and then I was suddenly in a crisis of faith. I, too, felt distanced by the church and I also felt abandoned by God. Many of your cartoons seemed like they were drawn especially for me, that day, particularly ones like the “unsexy back,” and “thank God I have such a peaceful church!” Your cartoon stories helped me to feel understood and connected during a very lonely time. The cartoons as well a some dear people who appeared in my life after a long absence (after a move) helped me to see the bigger Church, the Church who first embraced me and raised me and nurtured me. I kept crying out, “what do I do? I don’t know what to do!” For so much of my identity is connected to Christ and being part of the community of the church.
One of my old friends, who had moved thousands off miles away, told me during a late night phone conversation, “you will go on doing what you’ve always done because that’s where your gifts are.” She was right. I am in a new, healthier church, and though I am still a little gun shy, I am finding myself slowly using my gifts and being asked to use them. I am an artist and this church appreciates art and beauty and wants to have a liturgy that is balanced with the mind and heart. It took me some time to realize the God I loved hadnt abandoned me nor changed but that old environment was unloving and lacked grace (it had lost love and grace in the pursuit of its new ‘vision’) and that I would never have left and found a healthier church if the situation had not become unbearable to the point where I could leave that which was familiar. This past year has been a fallow field year but now opportunities are coming that excite me and restore my spirit. I could not sere any of this a year ago.
BrianMpei

(I’ve tried to post twice but my post is getting zapped by internet gremlins. Here’s attempt #3)

Well, I haven’t distanced myself from you, but the geography between us is still a distance that keeps us from taking you and Mrs. NakedPastor out for the wine and dinner we’d like.

I read here all the time but don’t leave many comments these days because I’m not sure what to say or if I should say anything. I’m still doing what I do with many questions and (I believe) an honest pursuit of truth. And sometimes you write or draw things that roast the label I still wear in the context I’m still wearing it in and while I get what you’re saying I don’t recognize myself or the church I know. And I’m not sure how to respond or if…

And sometimes you write and draw things that express my own thoughts and experiences but my response path has been different than your own.

Either way, I love you just the way you are and keep hoping to save up enough money for gas bridge so we can get over and hang out for a while.

Peace of Christ to you!
Sister Marie

Dear Naked (may I call you by your first name),

Your words and cartoons capture the frustration that many of us feel about the church we grew up in. Coming here and reading what you have to say has provided validation for my own doubts about the phoniness extant in the churches. I’m on the far side of my 60s, just learned that I have cancer (for the second time). Keep writing and drawing.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

sister marie: sorry to hear about your health issues. i wish the best for you. thanks for your comments.
http://www.newlifesd.blogspot.com k8

Well, since you’re getting so many recommendations, I’ll through Gadamer in there.
JustInTime

As a young pastor of a non-denominational small church, who can sometimes be full of himself, I have to thank you David, you help to keep me honest. God Bless.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

thanks justintime!
Ed Heilman

David,

Rather than the God kills his son so that he does not have to torture everyone in hell because he loves us thinking, I rather like the God, the eternal heart of the universe, is revealed in the incarnation, liberation, confrontation, and vindication path of Christ.

According to Fowler’s stages of faith, about 8% of clergy become “Paradoxical-Consolidative” or “Conjunctive”. So you are there.

The problem is that cynicism and sainthood are before you now. Do you defect in place or head out into the wilderness? Are you looking for trouble or running from trouble?

Wherever you go you will be in the minority. But what is your purpose to your family, the body of Christ, the church, humanity, the biosphere, the eternal heart of the universe?

Good luck, prayers, and providence to you.

You are not as alone as you might think.
http://nakedpastor.com nakedpastor

thanks ed for visiting this blog and taking the time to comment. i’m familiar with fowler. studied him a great deal. i appreciate your kind words.
http://www.donbryant.wordpress.com don bryant

I find your desire to read some of the great questioners understandable. I am a rather conservative evangelical who teaches philosophy in college as well as pastors. In a counterintuitive sort of way I find great delight in reading Spinoza and others of his kind. Somehow I get to that rarefied atmosphere where the big questions surface and the mind is engaged. This in and of itself brings a satisfaction to me that I can’t find in the latest book from Moody Press. Somehow I find the orthodox answers appealing and satisfying but the level of questioning in these other books does more to engage me and help me live at more meaningful levels. It’s all very counterintuitive.
Kim

I wonder if you are familiar with Richard Rohr? His teaching on paradox and staying in the place of tension without trying to resolve it ourselves have rung true for me; I find that in sitting with these fears and panics God teaches me by showing himself. Because these are perhaps intellectual fears, and the deep mystery and being known will overwhelm them.