Every day I converse with people who have left the organized church. They are very spiritual people interested in living authentic lives of integrity, justice, love and vocation. But they are turned off of the institution we call church. I understand.
I had squirrels in my house once. Do you know how impossible it is to catch a squirrel? If they smell anything human on the bait, you won’t catch them. Same with my children and so many, many of my friends: if there is any sense of a trap, they won’t even come close. They can smell control and manipulation from a mile away. Even if the control is minor and sincere, they won’t take it. Not even a nibble.
Let’s look at the difference between a family and an institution. The problem with an institution is that it requires the sublimation of individual freedom to some degree. I think a healthy family is otherwise: it promotes individual freedom, nurtures it, encourages it and allows its expression. (Now, when it comes to hurting other people or themselves, then it needs to be addressed. Of course.)
Many of my friends and my own children want to be free. They don’t wish to sublimate their own freedom for the sake of an institution’s security or success. How is the church today different than Molech in the Old Testament that required the sacrifice of our own children for its existence? Can we be a collective, a community, a church, without requiring people to sacrifice themselves for it? Can individually free people gather together without allowing the principalities and powers to subtly take precedence and erode their own freedom for the sake of its own life?
My readers, these are serious questions for serious times.
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One of the greatest enemies of the church is fantasy.
Just like fantasy is one of the greatest enemies of a marriage.
Dissatisfied with reality, we create a fantasy of what we desire. The greater the fantasy, the greater the gulf between reality and the fantasy, the greater the dissatisfaction. It eventually ends in fracture, divorce, neurosis, spiritual death, all wrapped in a candy coating of quick recovery and delicious denial.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on our reality. Last night our church had an Open Round Table where we discussed how we are doing. Lisa and I, at times, need to sit down and ask ourselves if our marriage is healthy. Are we spending enough time together? Are we communicating? Is there anything we are overlooking? Are we being truthful to who we are, with ourselves and with one another? And these are questions we really do ask ourselves. But the worst thing I could do is to say to her something like, “Can you be more sexy, like Rachel McAdams?”
Fantasy is common fare. It is the air we breathe. And I find the church the perfect breeding ground for its propagation. We are aswim in fantasy and don’t even know it.
Prayer, bible study, worship, fellowship. It doesn’t get any better than that.*
But we wish it would.
(*Some might wonder where “mission” is. In my opinion, if we did these four things, our mission is accomplished. Being is doing.)
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I have never seen a miracle!
Having said that, I believe in miracle. I believe that there is wonder and beauty and the divine all the time. I live in miracle. What we call a miracle is the intersection of God’s activity and our perception of it. “God” is always active but we are blind to it. We don’t perceive it. But there have been times in my life when I have perceived it. Not just when the right amount of money shows up in the nick of time. Not just when something someone prophesied comes to pass. I believe these are miracles. But you and I both know that these can all be explained away. I’m talking primarily about the miracle of forgiveness and reconciliation, perseverance in the midst of suffering, the sunset. the flower, the river, the stars that fill the night sky. Miracle is all the time everywhere. I swim in miracle. Just saying.
But I have to come out of the closet and admit that I’ve never seen a “miracle”, like someone’s sight restored, or a limb replaced, or cancer cured, or the lame walk, or someone brought back to life (I’ll have to tell you the story some time of a guy who tried to get me to sneak into the back room of a funeral home just before the funeral was about to begin to pry open the coffin and raise the man from the dead. I weaseled my way out of that one!). Not that I don’t pray for these things to happen. And I will continue to do so. I am human and in times of great love or fear I cry out for any help at all. But I have never seen it happen. And I’ve talked to other pastors and believers who say the same thing. I’ve heard stories. I’ve read accounts. I’ve been at tent meetings and rallies and conferences where some claimed it happened. But I’ve never seen it. Just saying.
I prefer to deal with reality. I know I don’t always. But when I’m at my best I prefer reality. And I’m sick of the miracle talk that goes on, all in an effort to attract people and get them to sign up or give money or convert or commit. Or even with the misguided but good intention of trying to cheer someone up. I’m just tired of all the empty promises of always feeling God’s presence and increasing in his favor. I think it’s all a crock. I think it’s a desperate and deliberate dishonesty to allay fear and increase our sense of entitlement and security in what most people feel is a meaningless and frightening existence. As a pastor I feel enormous pressure to keep up the illusion. But I can’t. I won’t. Why? Because, all in an effort to trick ourselves into seeing miracles we blind ourselves to the beauty of miracle that surrounds us already. Just saying.
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Well everyone. I want to thank you all personally for following and reading nakedpastor. I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, and there’s something I want to share with you.
For quite a while now I have struggled with the domain name, nakedpastor. It is a great and memorable name! It sticks in the minds of so many people, for good or ill. It has gotten the blog to where it is today. It captures so well one facet of who I am: a pastor who bares his heart, mind and soul online. I am introduced to complete strangers and I sometimes get the reaction, “Oh! You’re the nakedpastor!” Sometimes pleasant. Sometimes not.
However, there are two major problems with the name nakedpastor. One is: it is not a friendly name. For anyone who is in a public library, a university or college, at their place of work, or at home behind any kind of porn or accountability filter, nakedpastor is completely access denied! I want my blog to be accessible. So I’ve had a growing discontent and even frustration with the name “nakedpastor”.
Secondly, as a friend of mine put it, “David, one thing I have found when I switched to my own name as my domain name is that I forgot all about trying to tie into an identity that I had made up and I started being more … myself.” I am not only a pastor, but a cartoonist, a musician, and an artist. I believe in authenticity and in the freedom to integrate who I am in one person and in one place. I don’t want to divvy myself up into different personalities and sites. I want to give you all of me.
So: I have purchased and activated davidhayward.net. What do you think? I would love your thoughts on this. Reactions? I will always be nakedpastor. That is definitely a part of who I am. But what do you think about me eventually switching over to davidhayward.net? Will you still love me? I know it will take a few months to regain my footing, but is it worth it in the long run? I have in the past been accused of self-sabotage. Is this another case in point? Or is davidhayward a friendlier and more accessible name? Let me know what you think.
And, with affection I say, thanks again.
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We are all fundamentalists at some time or another over certain issues. It is just the intensity of fundamentalism that varies. So, if I was a fundamentalist (not the extremist kind), how would I want a non-fundamentalist to converse with me?
- You must realize from the beginning that I don’t require scientific proof to believe something is true.
- Respect me me a person. I am not stupid. You can disagree with my ideas, but don’t think I’m an idiot.
- I will try to be gracious, even in my inflexible insistence upon certain truths.
- I would appreciate finding areas we can agree on before we debate things we disagree on.
- If we do disagree on what I think is a foundational issue (what I would call a fundamental truth), I will still try to be gracious even though I think you are gravely and perhaps even foolishly mistaken.
- If you try to change my mind on a fundamental issue, it would be dishonest of me and naïve of you not to expect emotions to become involved in the discussion.
- Even though I may vehemently disagree with one of your fundamental truths and even consider it foolish, I will not hate you for it.
- Even if I believe you are going to Hell, I will not treat you as an inferior person. My beliefs are mine. They are not your problem to try to fix.
- Some of my beliefs are offensive to you. I understand that. But you need to understand that I could find some of your beliefs offensive to me.
- Compassion would demand of me that I desire you to believe as I do.
The cartoon today was inspired by some thoughts I’ve been having about the “other”. I’ve been thinking about this mainly because of the discussions we’ve been having here about fundamentalism. In spite of some skepticism concerning my sincerity in saying that we all have elements of fundamentalism at some time or another over some issue or another, I still would assert this point. I think we can agree that we are all narcissistic to a greater or lesser degree. The same goes for the fundamentalist mindset.
But how can we believe something to be true and still hear the other who’s opinion differs? When we look at the other, do we only see how the other is similar to us and is therefore attractive, or how the other differs and is therefore undesirable? Can we even perceive the other beyond these categories of similarity and difference? For only then are they truly other. Can we even recognize the truly other without our categories? Or, as if like a monster in our nightmare, are we afraid of something we do not recognize and reject the other altogether? Are we able to behold the wonder, the terrible beauty, the sacred in the wholly other? Can we love and respect this? Only then might we learn to commune with this other.
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I don’t at this time want to divulge all the abuses that has happened to me in the church from the hands of its leaders and members. For many reasons. One is that those experiences carry a significance for me that is sacred. To tell you about them diminishes their gravity. Perhaps one day. But another reason is that I don’t know how to do it in ways that wouldn’t inflict the same harm upon the perpetrators. They are still within the church, the same universal tribe I am still a part of, and to broadcast my experiences could become a form of vengeance I am not willing to exact. Perhaps one day, when all the poison has been lanced, I will be able to tell you my stories completely free of malice.
So on the one hand I am vague. I don’t name names unless I am sure I am not harming someone, even if you might think they deserve it. Because I have experienced it in full measure first hand, I am extremely sensitive to abuse within religious structures and organizations. This is why, on the other hand, I am considered ruthless in my critique of the principalities and the powers. Because they can be abusive in such subtle, illusive and even unconscious ways, I seem unforgiving in my analysis of the church, religion and spirituality. I and my family have been tortured by very well-meaning and sincere Christians who still don’t comprehend the wounds they have inflicted. But it is because I believe in people, their well-being, rights and freedoms that I do what I do.
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I created this chart today to help me get a better grasp on the essentials of fundamentalism. I don’t believe fundamentalism is reserved for the religious right or extremists. I believe it is a mindset that manifests itself in all kinds of positions. I am interested in how dialog and peace can occur between all parties, including fundamentalists. I hope this chart helps us to see that we are all fundamentalists when it comes to certain issues, and depending on the circumstances. I’m suggesting that we all can find ourselves somewhere on this chart. Please keep in mind that all these categories are not necessarily religious. Pardon the visual quality of the chart. It’s the best I can do for now.
Chris Hedges expresses his opinion on fundamentalism in his book I Don’t Believe in Atheists:
The blustering televangelists, and the atheists who rant about the evils of religion, are little more than carnival barkers. They are in show business, and those in show business know complexity does not sell. They trade clichés and insults like cartoon characters. They don masks. One wears the mask of religion, the other wears the mask of science. They banter back and forth in predictable sound bites. They promise, like all advertisers, simple and seductive dreams. This debate engages two bizarre subsets who are well suited to the television culture because of the crudeness of their arguments. One distorts the scientific theory of evolution to explain the behavior and rules for complex social, economic and political systems. The other insists that the six-day story of creation in Genesis is fact and Jesus will descend format the sky to create the kingdom of God on Earth. These antagonists each claim to have discovered an absolute truth. They trade absurdity for absurdity. They show that the danger is not religion or science. The danger is fundamentalism.
My question, and I think the urgent question is: How can fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists dialog? Harvey Cox, in his newest book The Future of Faith, suggests that the most important isn’t interfaith but intrafaith dialog, especially between the fundamentalist wing and the rest. It is the fundamentalist mindset that is his newest concern:
Of course in conversations between people from differing traditions, for example, between Christians and Buddhists, differences always come up. Indeed, that is one purpose of the conversation. But the differences seem to be at a safe remove, since the participants are not a part of the “family”. The can be registered and dismissed as “interesting”. This is not the case, however, with the discrepancies that inevitably arise when those in the interfaith wing of a religion try to converse on a serious level with those from the circle-the-wagons wing of the same affiliation. In these encounters, things get tense, tempers often flare, and people sometimes stomp out of the room. More seems to be at stake. Many people try and then just give up. But quitting merely propels the whole interfaith enterprise toward a dead end. It creates the unpleasant prospect of a future in which, while open-minded members in each religion enjoy cozy colloquies with each other, the ultraconservative wing in each becomes more isolated and truculent.
It has become apparent to me over the last few years of writing this blog that the critical conversation is between the fundamentalists and the rest. It is the fundamentalist mindset that presents the greatest challenge, in my opinion, to open dialog between all parties. Like Cox experienced and observes, as well as Hedges, and just as we do here at nakedpastor, if we all just agreed with each other, what’s the good in that? But when we enter into the foray of disagreement, that’s where the real possibilities lie. I believe it is urgent that we explore ways of dialoging. Love necessitates it.
(The title is inspired from Bruce Cockburn’s song, “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”).
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Jesus was in the garden facing torture and death. He asked God to let the cup pass from him. But he finally conceded that it was not what he willed, but what God wills. What his vocation cost him seemed more than he could bear. I identify with that. The extent of my struggle fades in comparison. But I understand what it means to do something difficult reluctantly, to do what I must rather than what I prefer. Especially when things don’t make sense.
I struggle with my call to pastor. I find it very difficult, not because I don’t love the people or the church, but because it hurts. There have been a couple of times in my life when a prophecy has come to pass for me. Once in a blue moon there has been confidence that things made sense. But almost all the time I walk in darkness. Only my next step is illuminated, and that only sometimes, and pale. I can’t find meaning.
I was talking with a friend today who had moved here with his family to be a part of our community. Just after they arrived and made friends, we went through a crisis at the church and much of what they came for disintegrated before their eyes. This has happened so many times and applies to so many people I love. When people move here to be a part of our church, I want them to be happy. I want things to go according to their hopes. I need to provide them meaning, especially when things get rough. But I can’t. I can only love them. I can care. I can be tender. I can be there. That’s all.
The main theme in Job is meaning. He was offensively transparent in his insistence that there was no meaning in his suffering. His friends claimed to have meaning. Who did God exonerate in the end? The one who was blind to meaning. And the ones who claimed to have meaning repented. I can’t find meaning for myself, for my friends or for my community. But, like Job, I have to trust that God has the meaning. The meaning is God’s. Occasionally, like once or twice in a lifetime, we get glimpses of meaning. But in the end we must simply trust that the story we are in is written with a compassionate hand. And all we can do in the midst of this is love one another. That is the best meaning I can give. For now.
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David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
