david hayward. artist. cartoonist. teacher.

In his excellent essay, “This Is a Religious War“, Andrew Sullivan argues that it must be acknowledged that religion is responsible in some way for the events of 9/11, and that we must try to figure out how and why. He continues:

The first mistake is surely to condescend to fundamentalism. We may disagree with it, but it has attracted millions of adherents for centuries, and for a good reason. It elevates and comforts. It provides a sense of meaning and direction to those lost in a disorienting world. The blind recourse to texts embraced as literal truth, the injunction to follow the commandments of God before anything else, the subjugation of reason and judgment and even conscience to the dictates of dogma: these can be exhilarating and transformative. They have led human beings to perform extraordinary acts of both good and evil. And they have an internal logic to them. If you believe that there is an eternal afterlife and that endless indescribable torture awaits those who disobey God’s law, then it requires no huge stretch of imagination to make sure that you not only conform to each diktat but that you also encourage and, if necessary, coerce others to do the same. The logic behind this is impeccable.

You see, this is what I was addressing in yesterday’s post. Even though Sullivan is not a fundamentalist, he is able to articulate in a fair manner the fundamentalist’s position. He doesn’t agree with the fundamentalist. But he understands that from within the logic of fundamentalism, the fundamentalist’s ideas, attitudes and actions make complete sense.

One of the things I don’t miss at all about being a clergyman is the tempest in a teapot syndrome. Looking back now, I can see that a lot of the things that were argued about, fussed about, and complained about were silly, insignificant and unimportant. Much ado about nothing.

In 1977 I read a line in a book by Easum and Bandy called, Growing Spiritual Redwoods:

We found that thriving churches shun codependent relationships.

I remembered how that shocked me. I agreed with their conclusion. But I was overwhelmed by how entrenched codependence is in so many systems, including the church. This was going to be an impossible challenge.

It amazes me now how clever codependence is. Spirituality is sly and tricky. Codependence finds subtle means of expression, all cloaked in piety and devotion. Karl Barth as a young pastor was frustrated by the church’s mentality, which he wrote was:

on the one hand characterized by rationalistic ideas of progress and on the other by a sentimental pietism.

Things haven’t changed. An authority structure such as the church is the perfect culture for codependence. I see how complicit I was in its vivacity. I know people depended on me to make decisions for them in every sphere of their lives, from financial, to relational, to spiritual and everything else. And even though I resented it, I did allow it to some extent. The necessity of the urgent!

I always made it a point to focus on the development of our roots, trusting that when the roots were healthy the good fruits would follow. But we are not interested in the roots, but the fruits. We want immediate results and gratification, and will usually settle for superficial adjustments over total transformation. We prefer plastic surgery to heart transplants.

One of my favorite spiritual writers, Tozer, says,

Preoccupation with appearances and a corresponding neglect of the out-of-sight root of the true spiritual life are prophetic signs which go unheeded.

Again, things haven’t changed. And even though I agree wholeheartedly with Tozer, I also know how tempting it is to succumb to the pseudo-pressures of daily church life. When you are in a teapot and a tempest starts, and the teapot is your total world, it is convincingly overwhelming.

Drowning men grab at straws.

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This sign says, “Village Petit Paradise” (“Little Paradise Village”). It is a complete hell-hole. Little paradise. No paradise.

Quite frequently in our conversations we discussed how insignificant the skirmishes in our churches back home seemed. Not just insignificant. Stupid! I think of all the crap I was going through. Nonsense.

The Haitians are barely alive. There are days some don’t eat at all. And disaster approaches with the coming rains. Nobody in Haiti seems worried about how right or wrong their theology is. Theology is important because I believe it shapes our actions. But if the work of our actions is hatred, what good is our theology?

In my Z-Theory I talk about the Spirit as not being a separate entity anymore. It isn’t something “out there”. Rather, where there is love, compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation, that is the Spirit. Unity and community is the Spirit. Love and the unity it manifests aren’t just something the Spirit creates, but something the Spirit endows, for lack of a better word.

So when we delineate ourselves then separate ourselves according to our theologies and opinions, usually with spiritual zeal, we are in fact denying the Spirit. So even though to the eye Little Paradise Village is a hell-hole, where there is love there is paradise.