interview with a seminarian

My wife works with a lady that is enrolled at Dallas Theological Seminary and, as part of her coursework, she is interviewing a number of individuals with various worldviews and religious values to write a paper on the findings. This person asked my wife if she or I would be willing to answer a few interview questions and help contribute to her research. After reading over the questions, I thought it would be a fun exercise in reflection and contemplation and wrote down my answers for her. I also thought it would be interesting to post those questions and answers here. 

As a note of disclosure, I would like to say - up front - that the some of the statements expressed here are facts, some of them are my own inferences from the facts, while others still are simply opinions.

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1. How would you describe your religious background and church involvement?

I would describe my religious/church background as both long and complicated. From a very early age I was exposed to the Christian tradition from a variety of different denominational perspectives - mostly Protestant in orientation - ranging from Four Square to Baptist, Methodist and Non-Denominational, Charismatic, Word of Faith and Reformed (Calvinist). I have some firsthand experience with Catholic liturgy but my experience
with the more traditional or orthodox (i.e. Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Eastern Orthodox) is very limited beyond that. My involvement in those churches has also ranged dramatically from one-time visitor to full covenant membership.

2. To you, what is God like? Describe God. (and if you do not believe in a [god], what is important in life?)

 
I imagine that this is difficult for anyone to answer outside of a traditionally dogmatic worldview, but I have to confess an ambiguous and ill-defined relationship to the divine. In other words, I'm still answering this question for myself and would suggest, perhaps at some level, that we all are regardless of the level of comfort we have achieved with our
conceptualization of God. In my own conceptualization, I might be most comfortable coming to an understanding of the divine that does not exist wholly outside of the natural Universe. I am not only comfortable with this idea of the divine because of my skepticism about the existence of the purely metaphysical (i.e. the realm of the supernatural), but also because of the implications of seeing the divine as removed from the physical
world. Perhaps too often our appreciation of "heaven" and "hell" have led us to neglect the "here and now". Moreover, the fundamental Christian fascination with the "hereafter" seems altogether incompatible with both the narrative of the Gospels as well as the apocalyptic visions formulated in the aftermath of the - alleged - Ascension. Simply put, every time I read the Bible Jesus seems to be talking about the Kingdom of the Heavens being established here on earth. Furthermore, outside of a few vague and ambiguous
references made by Paul in his letters, I see very little evidence of this "rapture" and "going to heaven" when one dies. I see a Resurrection that happens on earth (presumably on earth because it happens after his "return"), talk of "thy Kingdom come" (again, presumably here), a "New Jerusalem" descending from the heavens to earth, etc.

In my days of heterodox Christianity (and some might say "heretical") I visualized an idea of the divine as more akin to how the Hindus understand the Brahman, or akin to how Spinoza described the ocean of the divine and our individual selves being absorbed back into it after death. I am also comfortable with a thoroughly non-metaphysical understanding of the divine with respect to the Universe. Perhaps our eternal life is evident in the cyclical and recycling nature of the Universe with regard to matter. The atoms that make up our bodies assemble and disperse, never being "created" anew nor destroyed... simply changing form and phase forever. It seems more likely to me that the God so many of us were raised to believe does not exist - or exists in such a way that is so radically different from our traditional understanding that we - were we to ever meet "him" - would wish that he did not exist at all.

3. What do you think is important or unimportant to God?
This question relies, perhaps unjustly, on the suggestion that the divine has any kind of will at all. A will implies a need - or, at best, a want - and it seems to be that the God of the Christian tradition is so perfect and so satisfied that he has no needs or wants, thus no will either. I had considered, for a moment, that perhaps what was important to God is what
is important to all living beings: to continue existing. But, again, this is incompatible with the Christian understanding of God since God is incapable of losing his existence. What I imagine is unimportant to the divine is less contingent on what/who God is since I believe it would be true in any case. Whether God is the Christian God or a natural phenomena or non-existent, I do not believe that the divine concerns itself at all with our social convention: language, custom, law, morality or religion. To suggest that the
divine has "a dog in the hunt" among human customs is - at best - superstitious and - at worst - dangerously narcissistic.

Let us, for a moment, imagine that the "glory of God" is reflected in his creation, as so many texts in the Tanakh suggest. I would ask, then, where one might find evidence of God's premium on morality and obedience to "his law" in the behavior of his creation? Does any natural behavior suggest that there is a moral imperative inherent to us? Does Hurricane Katrina apologize for murdering so many people, destroying so many homes? Indeed, do we even call it murder when nature steals life from humans, animals or plants?
Indeed, do we even suggest a theft of life as though nature has no superseding ownership of it? The natural world acts without regard to Christian morals and, in the aftermath of breaking those morals, it continues to act with impunity! We call these things tragedy, but we do ourselves a disservice: nature's behavior is just. Yet it is not just because it does what it *should* do (as though it is ordained by the divine), but it is just simply because it does what it does. The world builds up energy, stores it and releases it as it requires. This, too, is how humans are. We build up energy, store it and release it. Whatever conventions we decide upon about an equitable or "ethical" way to go about this business is ours alone. To interject the trump card of divine imposition onto these ethics and conventions is inappropriate and counterproductive.

4. What do you think it takes to be straightened out with God?

This, again, suggests a Christian supposition that "we" are not already "straight"; that there is some kind of a "should", a metaphysical ideal, to which we do not adhere to. This may be the case, but it also may not be the case. The tension built up in the dialectic between determinism and free agency is not a settled one, but even if it were, we cannot suggest that God "is in control" and yet free him of his responsibility for our "sinful" state. In other words, God cannot receive all of the credit and none of the blame. He must be blameless of our sin - and yet admit to limited or no control over the world we live in - or claim control and be blamed for it! Or, at least, this is what the non-contradiction of Aristotelian logic insists on. Heraclitus might suggest differently.

It may very well be that our existence alone is what is required to be "straight" with God. Perhaps he has ordained our condition and confined us to a physical world to quarantine us from the rest of the supernatural realm? Perhaps you and I are those rebellious spirits that the Revelation speaks of and we have been cast to the earth - as though the earth was
God's washing machine - to be laundered and made wearable again by the divine? Perhaps you and I are the "devil". If we are to believe the Bible, we must already consider that we are the "Satan", since - as Paul reminds us - we are the enemies of God and, even in this condition, God saw fit to leave his place in "heaven" and inject within us the cure for our sinfulness in the form of Jesus. These ideas might seem outlandish and heretical, but they
must be considered and explored as diligently as the apostles explored the heresy of a transcendent YHVH made immanent in human form. To suggest that God does not want the mind to ask questions is laughably absurd! If God is who the Christians say he is, then he is undaunted by ontological investigation. If he is threatened by it, then he is not God and you needn't fear him.

5. Describe what the term "Jesus Christ" means to you.

Jesus Christ or, more appropriately, Y'shua HaMashiach conjures up a number of images, ideas and emotions in my imagination. Because of the cultural context in which I was raised, the personage and the narrative of Y'shua is - at some level - inescapable. I think that this must be true of most people that share our culture insofar as we all are forced to come to some kind of comfortable understanding of him. I have two distinct modes of reference to him: 1. The devout and reverent child and, 2. The classically skeptical historian. The first mode of reference should be fairly obvious to understand. The second may require some explanation. As a historian, I get no mileage out of the traditionally reverent attitude that used to define my relationship to Jesus so acutely. I am unable to look past the blatantly obvious holes in the narrative that forms the synoptic gospel tradition, nor lay down the methodological and disciplinary perspectives that challenge (for me, successfully) the Gospels' credibility.

It would be a cliche to refer to Jesus as a "good teacher", and I hate cliches as much as I hate platitudes (which are related but different). In the historical perspective, Jesus was a teacher - obviously. He taught... that's what he did. I do not, like some, believe that I see any kind of morality in the teachings attributed to him in the gospels. He gave almost no direction on questions of either absolute or relative morality. What I do see in his teachings is a particular emphasis on the creation, maintenance and reparation of ethical relations between people. One needs look no further than Matthew 5, 6 and 7 for a robust synthesis of these ethics. I believe that he also provided the oppressed peoples under his ministry a
path to assert their dignity and value without resorting to violent behavior (which, he rightly understood, would only worsen their situation both in the short and long term). His, mostly misunderstood, directives on "turning the other cheek", "giving the coat as well as the shirt" and "walking the extra mile" are historically specific teachings on how to endure the Roman occupation in a Jewish cultural context. Treating these teachings as ahistorical and removing them to the realm of universally divine truths only obscures his intentions in teaching them - while also opening them up to grave misinterpretation.

I respect and admire Jesus and he stands out in my historical imagination as a paragon of human ideals - whether real or fabricated by tradition. To the best of my abilities I try to remember that he was a historical figure that was wrestling with a complicated social situation on the ground. To the extent possible, I try to remove the mythological aura that surrounds him, an aura that - I believe - cheapens him and his contributions to human
development. His beauty, to me, derives from his humanity and the brilliance that is attributed to him, not the suggested divine narrative that is superimposed over his collection of teachings. To this perspective, many Christians have answered that - as C.S. Lewis once brilliantly summarized - "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." What I mean to say about this argument is that it is a brilliant syllogism: the truth of this claim relies totally on the assumption that Jesus *actually said* that he was/is the Son of God, which cannot be verified (independently or otherwise). The credibility of the passages that suggest he claimed this, within the oldest copies of the
Gospels, is also suspect with respect to literary device, epistemological analysis and historiotextual evidence brought to light by the discovery of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. In other words, we can't be totally certain that Jesus claimed to be the "Son of God", no matter how much we want to believe it. And because we can't be certain, the possibility of
who/what/how Jesus is/was is as open-ended as any other question of significance.

6. From your perspective, what are the major problems of churches
today?

Where to start?! I might say that the largest problem of "the Church" and individual churches is the unwillingness to entertain, sanction or explore heterodoxical interpretations of Jesus and the divine. Many of the ideas I've expressed in the previous questions would be - at best - unwelcome at church and - at worst - would be treated with hostility (and, in some extreme cases, with violence). Churches, from my experience, rely too much on dogmatism, assumption, indoctrination and hierarchical reverence for authority and the authoritative treatment of source material. Partly because
of the nature of church leadership - and partly due to the rich abundance of churches in America - there is no avenue for respectful dissent within a church. If you have a doctrinal difference with the leadership, you are expected to either change your beliefs to match those of the leadership (and the church's statement of beliefs) or encouraged to leave fellowship. For most churches, it would be wholly unacceptable to challenge the
interpretation and doctrine provided by the pastor and the elders (if elders exist). Most programs funded by the church are intended to reinforce the doctrine of the church - none funded to engage the doctrine in scholarly criticism. This, also, I believe comes from an epidemic of insecure pastors, many of whom treat their churches as capitalistic markets and fear having any shadow cast over them that might insinuate a lack of divine
discernment. Simply put, if anyone successfully challenges a pastor's interpretation of scripture the people may think that he doesn't have the Holy Spirit leading him and may leave the church and take their tithes with him. Furthermore, the superstitiously false belief that one can have no education, no understanding of Hebrew/Greek (and not seminary Greek, which teaches a bastardized form of Greek that intentionally dismisses any pre-Christian meanings to the vocabulary and relies too heavily on ultimately
insufficient Latinisms to provide directional quality to definitions), no highly
rigorous historical/literary training, or a broader knowledge of anthropological and sociological research, and can interpret the texts of the Bible without any error via the "Holy Spirit" is both ridiculous and, to me, disgustingly outrageous. In other words, interpretation by revelation is no interpretation at all... it is ignorant opinion masquerading as exegetical discipline and has produced some of the most mind-numbing and repugnant doctrine ever conceived.

Moreover, American churches have become too invested in the socio-political framework of American culture. Advocacy on social issues, translated to political activism, has become the modus operandi of more churches than not, particularly evangelical churches in the so-called "Bible Belt". The perpetual harping from the pulpit on "issues" such as abortion,
homosexuality, immigration, healthcare and the laughably alleged "moral decline" of America is a major problem for the church-at-large. While individuals such as Pat Robertson or Jerry Fallwell may immediately come to mind in the imagination, they are simply caricatures of a much more pervasive and entrenched attitude among evangelical ministers and their congregants. The credibility (say nothing of its relevance) of Christianity
is in a crisis phase, whether Christians want to acknowledge it or not. In generations and centuries past, the institutional quality of churches (particularly among denominations) was large enough to steer Christianity in one direction or another and navigate it into evolving cultural relevance. Now, in the aftermath of a democratization process in America, churches are so isolated, fragmented and generally unaccountable that the cultural compass is no longer in the hands of capable, august and deliberate leaders but the vulgar mob. Doctrine is not judged on the merits of the scholastic rigor that produced it, but by its popularity and exposure on Fox News. This is another degenerative issue for the church to address.

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Feel free to ask questions or comment as you see fit.