Perishing for Lack of Communication

Grading the students’ reading journals is something I both dread and enjoy: dread because of how much time it eats yet enjoy because of how candid many of the entries are and how revealing: I learn so much when I read them. It is perhaps my one chance to best see what goes on inside their heads and into the worlds in which they live, for the journals are not graded on grammar and as long as some attempt is made to tie it into the text and the length requirements are met, full credit is readily granted; this way, even the poorest writers in the class have an opportunity to make at least one good grade. Then too is the sense of personal validation that comes when a student writes that he or she has finally “gotten it” or feels that for the first time he or she is coming into a new awareness of reality that had never been realized before. In fact, much of current college education focuses on what we might call “critical literacy”: not taking things at face value (particularly in regard to the media or to the books, articles, and magazines we read) but seeking out underlying assumptions and learning more about the background and setting in order to better glean the truth.

It is also interesting to see the diverse range of opinions expressed within the journals. One of the more heartening included these two lines: “I think that school teaches you to think for yourself, not to regurgitate a bunch of useless information that will never be helpful to you. This journal, for example, is teaching me how to take a stand for what I think, without care of it being right or wrong.” Certainly no one is suggesting by such a statement that there are not moral values that are important. Rather, it is a recognition that we all at some point have to decide exactly why and what we believe and then learn the skills to defend those beliefs. The latter skill acknowledges the dialogical nature of knowledge and discourse—the social dimension to personally held beliefs. Both individualism and democracy are factors traditionally prized highly in the United States with its emphasis on freedom and liberty for all and the journals encourage that to some degree by allowing the students the freedom to voice their opinions while simultaneously knowing they have an audience. From my experience in writing these newsletters, I can assure you that having an audience in and of itself goes a long way in both self-discovery as well as fostering a sense of responsibility in regard to communal involvement and interaction.

Just as these students learn valuable personal and social skills in the classroom by both learning to frame their thoughts and recognizing that they are communicating to an audience, it strikes me that a good many of our fellow believers would benefit from a church environment that allowed—actively encouraged—greater independence of thought and that recognized greater freedom of opinion, particularly about matters dealing with one’s social and political views. My desire is not to campaign against Christianity as it appears in much of the United States, but it does seem like in mainstream Christianity, there is far too little of this element encouraged and I believe it is a serious inhibitor to our spiritual growth and formation, both corporately as well as privately. For myself, I am increasingly drawn to what seems to me a more mature form of the Christian faith (which ironically is far more formal and liturgical), while simultaneously growing apart from many of the mainstream approaches to Christianity that have characterized much of my prior Christian experience. That might seem odd that in one breath I would encourage freedom of thought and the next speak of liturgical worship known in large part for its lack of spontaneity. As we highlighted to some degree with our examination of Anglicanism in Ordinary Selves and the New Creation, the paradoxical nature of this fact can be explained by the recognition that while the side of the Christian spectrum to which I am drawn tends to be more formal in its approach to worship, it is nevertheless more flexible in its recognition of the many and varied opinions believers may in fact hold while still being united in Christ. By contrast, much of the mainstream Christian world tends to be highly flexible in terms of its worship structure—think, for example, of the so-called “seeker-friendly” churches—but much more inflexible in its accepted range of political and social views: factors that have little to do with Christ, at least in the overt and explicit way such believers would have us all believe. I would describe this approach as being inflexible in ways that simply do not matter, or at the least, matter a great deal less than we might like to think.

Another paradoxical factor includes the fact that while many of the mainstream churches place a premium on the Bible, more traditional churches often incorporate a great deal more Scripture into the liturgy in any given week than is heard from even the most hammered-upon pulpit. So then, to the degree that a liturgical church is more rigid, it is more rigid in its use of Scripture and in its judicious handling of wisdom that has been handed down for generations: wisdom embodied in some of the finest sights, sounds, colors, and words that could ever stimulate the human mind or heart. Perhaps its apparent inflexibility is wiser than it might initially appear. Certainly its approach may take a bit longer for the neophyte to warm to, but the end result tends to be much more holistic, washing over the total person in a way that would be difficult to explain to someone outside looking in. And it is only my opinion so take it at that, but there is just something to be said for wine and wafers during the Eucharistic ceremony that leaves grape juice and crumbled crackers seem just a little impoverished: again, only my opinion. However, at least for me, it helps further the sense of Father Freeman’s words we cited in Ephemeral Reflections on Eternal Realities: “We are saved because we receive the life of Christ. His life becomes my life, I live because He lives. He is my life. I don’t just want to ‘believe’ in God in the reductionistic terms of many modern evangelicals, I want to eat Him!” If Christ be life itself, then Father Freeman wants to gobble Him whole! (At this point, I am reminded of the seventh saying attributed to Jesus in the controversial Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said, ‘Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human.’” Take that however you will: smile.)

The factor that troubles me most is not that this change in my perspective of Christianity in the large is taking place (for I believe it healthy), but rather that at times it seems that as the old ways of looking at the faith fade away, so little of value rises to take their place. I do not attribute that to the sides of the Christian spectrum I am currently enjoying, of course: no, much of it can be attributed to the merely pragmatic considerations of a very busy life and the relative lack of connectivity that tends to engender. But then too, when we grow into a new area, we are strangers in a strange land—even if we are surrounded by seasoned veterans, the landscape is still largely foreign to us. That is true of the transition from child to adult; that is true of all new ventures in life. It always takes time to grow into new areas and become acclimated to one’s surroundings and in many instances so much of the old ways linger on and to some degree perhaps always will. One can only hope that those elements that linger longest, linger for honorable reasons. In the case of the adult, let us hope that the wisdom of the child yet remains even as the immaturity increasingly vanishes away.

In one of my graduate courses this semester—a course explicitly devoted to critical literacy, no less—we are being asked to reconstruct the role that literacy has played in our personal lives. Literacy is not being defined in the narrower senses only of being able to read and write, but in terms of having various skills that allow us to “read the world.” Toward this end, we are asked many questions, some obviously probing, others apparently more superficial: “What was your favorite television show growing up? Was this family representative or not representative of your family? What would you describe as your race? What are particular phrases your family members used to say (and still perhaps do)? Did you family ever take a dismissive stance toward any types of persons, whether racial, political, religious, etc.? When and how did you learn the power of words?” These and several dozen more like them have served as prompts. The idea behind all of these questions is to determine what role, if any, genealogy and ethnicity played in one’s assumptions of literacy, what the influencing socio-economic factors or religious or anti-religious forces might include, whether different types of prejudices found expression within the home and have a lingering influence either retro- or proactively, and a wide variety of other factors one would not automatically associate with the formal definition of “literacy.” Yet who would deny that our experiences shape us, that the way in which we read the world carries echoes of all the voices from our past in addition to those we hear at present?

The skeleton of my personal life history is not particularly difficult to resurrect; writing the autobiography some of you have read online already made me very conscious of many of these factors. In brief, I grew up in a rural atmosphere, not an only child but a child so much younger that in many ways my life resembled that of a single child raised by grandparents. Church was always a major part of our life and we always lived in the country. I spent a lot of hours alone, playing, exploring, reading, riding a bike. I did not mind the aloneness so much and to this day still find the sound of silence incredibly sweet; I still need to pull away to hear myself think. The flip side to that, however, is that my social skills still sometimes wear thin, not always reaching much further than a surface charisma. In fact, my one great longing was for companionship, connectivity, belonging: I had few friends. My adolescent years were devoted to various experiments to attract friends and when I finally gave up trying so hard to fit in, friends emerged naturally: an even split between male and female, all lower middle-class, all quite bright—and all with a greater than average propensity for partying. My friends and my music became my world, and I played lead guitar in a high school band and took Vo-Tech courses my junior and senior year in high school to learn to become a disc jockey. But alas, my long-sought popularity went to my head: I had not acquired the social skills to handle it and alternated between seeing myself as a demi-god and a dung heap.

Immaturity notwithstanding, my friends did teach me a great deal about social interaction and what it meant to “be there” for someone and to be part of a family: we even called ourselves “The Family” and clearly saw ourselves as united by a bond thicker than water or blood. In any case, the DJ’s voice attracted a wife (a fellow DJ no less); the couple had a son. The DJ was more in love with the life of the party than his wife and his son; the DJ lost his wife and his son and became heavily involved in drugs. After a series of hair-raising adventures and mishaps during which he was miserable beyond mention, he had a forty-day mystical encounter that transformed his life, but was left with a myriad of intellectual questions concerning his newly found Christian faith. Many of those questions were answered, some no longer matter to him, others probably never will be answered, and a great many more will remain active questions for as long as he walks the surface of the earth.

College followed and over time—between his studies and his growing newsletter base—he began to realize that much of the Christian world that supposedly exemplified this Christ that he still strives to follow was polarized, politicized, and badly flawed. Yet he also realizes that at least a part of the problem with the Christian world around him is that he is still to some degree that young man seeking intimacy and belonging and finding very little of the same: those who would initially seem to most embrace him so often have ideas antithetical to those he believes to be true. It may fairly be said he feels that he does not quite fit in with anyone. He is also aware that many of the issues others take with Christianity—the chronic dissatisfaction they feel, he feels—can often be traced back to secondary issues: financial concerns, long hours, constant fatigue, romantic complications, family problems: whatever the many real world cares and concerns may be that can suck the life out of a person and leave him or her questioning both God and Christianity. But he also knows that as true as that is—and not to be dismissed lightly!—there really are some serious problems with Christianity at the institutional level. Or, a more modest claim, he is coming to believe that there are and what is more, many of the most apparently pious seem to him to be the most guilty and not at all in the way he would have expected. That, however, is the topic of another newsletter.

I spoke of reading student journal entries; another student, the daughter of a missionary family, writes the following:

My emotional reaction was mixed upon reading her words. I had to admit that to large degree, I found myself agreeing, not just in terms of how I once felt but in terms of how I now currently feel. I too “often struggle to find the enthusiasm” and often the “Jesus this, God that, salvation . . . heaven, hell” aspects of the faith polarize me rather than build me up: I cannot always tell you why. It is truly “an on-going process,” and one I do not always understand. However, if there is a point to be gleaned from these thoughts, it is that it is far better to have the freedom to allow these thoughts to come out into the open where they can be examined, critically, in the light of day. We could attempt to censor such thoughts, but given that they already exist, that is merely being dishonest and if it does work, tends only to work for so long before we become neurotic wrecks. Rather, I think it far more important to let the thoughts out and examine what they may have to say to us. Why do we feel this way? Is it because Christianity is not true? Or is there some other reason? We are probably not going to dismiss Christianity quite so readily, yet something obviously is not working. There is some point of disconnect. What is it?

I mentioned that this student is an MK—a missionary’s kid—and like PKs (preacher’s kids) and many others who have been “spoon fed . . . from the womb,” there is a strong tendency to become disillusioned with the faith. I too have felt this way. I guess I was an SSTK—Sunday school teacher’s kid—and I certainly was no stranger to church: at least three times a week and generally more than that if the doors were open. Then too, my mom frequently listened to a Christian radio station and Christianity, thus defined, was as common in our home as the air we breathed. If this be spoon feeding, I am not certain it is the spoon feeding itself that is the problem, or, rather, there must be some reason that we feel the need to describe it in those terms: “spoon fed.” Why not the term “nurture” instead? That would appear to be true from the parental point of view.

It seems to me that at least a part of the apparent disconnect between the communication of Christian values and the disillusionment of children is that the parents feel they can never be honest about their own feelings of inner poverty. They believe that they have to be strong for their children and set a Godly example. They too experience doubt and misgivings; they too desire for their lives and their work to have lasting meaning. But they feel that to express any doubt or disillusionment on their own part is to be weak and to be less than Godly. But if these natural doubts and misgivings are not addressed but simply covered over with a veneer of dogmatism and piety, the result very often backfires. In an atmosphere in which people are free and open, in which honesty and dialogue are encouraged and communication is taking place, a natural unfolding is allowed to develop much more gracefully. The truth, in such a setting, is evident and obvious simply because it is evident and obvious.

But when truth has to be force fed and helped along or where guilt looms larger than love, that is suggestive that maybe there is a problem with this apparent truth. Again, there is a disconnect of some sort and dishonesty is inadvertently being promoted. If Mom and Dad really believe what they are saying, why are they so insecure that they have to ladle it on by the spoonful? Do they care about me? Or do they care far more about their dogma, a dogma that even they doubt at times? A dogma that has in many ways become a spiritual crutch that cripples rather than promoting even a faltering walk on two legs? For Christianity is a religion in which the dead come to life, not in which the living are forever crucified. Mom and Dad have merely transferred their insecurities on me and saddled me with a fanaticism that further alienates me from other people. What good is religion if that is all it affords? No, people not only perish for lack of vision, but for lack of honest and effective communication as well. We must first die, then live. To extend our metaphor, we must fall down before we learn to walk; we admit the painful truth before it can ever hope to set us free. But much of the time, Mom and Dad are not ready for that: they would much prefer to pretend both to live and to walk rather than admit to falling down and dying, hence baby Phoenix finds no feathers of his own, her own.

In my classes, we have been gearing up for a textual analysis in which we critically examine a given text. For this unit, I had assigned about ten different readings, all of them in one way or another engaging in a formal argument: gender, war, religion, the environment, and technology being the dominate considerations. I passed out a handout in which various focus questions were presented, such as “What is the purpose of the essay? Why was it written and of what is it trying to persuade the reader? How does the author structure his/her argument?” The next to the last bullet was “What is the larger context of this essay?” We were covering this list together in class, me tossing the ideas to the students in a discussion format and the students tossing them back with additions. When we reached this point on the list, I asked the students to turn to section C5-a on page 37 of A Writer’s Reference. We read the first line “Arguments appear in social and intellectual contexts,” and I asked them: “What does it mean to say that ‘arguments appear in social and intellectual contexts’”? The answers were not certain, partly because we had not narrowed the word “argument” down enough to refer to controversial issues and their contention in professional, governmental, religious, academic, and social spheres. Once that point was established, I then asked them to list some of the current arguments that surround us in American culture. The list included abortion, gun control, homosexuality, euthanasia, the war in Iraq, separation of church and state and others.

I then asked them to consider if these questions would have been relevant four hundred years ago; if not, which ones no longer apply? We started crossing off items in a hurry; the first to go was war in Iraq. I then asked them to consider how valid these arguments would be in another country: would Egyptians, for example, be worried about the separation of church and state? This reinforced the idea of a social and intellectual context, dependent, among other things, on historical and geographical considerations. The idea is quite simple: truth not only is contextualized, but must be contextualized if it is to have any real significance. If a student asks how to complete an assignment and by way of answer I explain what gives the sky its blue appearance, what I have said may be entirely true but it is not the answer the student needs at that moment: the truth of my explanation is utterly useless for the present considerations. That is part of why we often say that it is more important to ask the right questions than to “have all the answers.” If we ask focused questions, the answers we are able to uncover will be directly relevant to the circumstances at hand. I see a real poverty of this approach, however, within much of the Christian world.

In conversation with another Christian friend recently, whose views are also changing though he resists to some degree and fears that something valuable may be being lost in the process, I said to him: “You are a thoughtful person who seeks the truth. Everyone who knows you knows that; no one would deny that fact.” And it is true: he is very much an earnest and sincere person who longs to serve God with all his heart, mind, and soul and is painfully aware of his own shortcomings. I went on to ask, “Don’t you think it odd that not only are your own views beginning to shift, but so are those of the persons around you, persons who like you also desire the truth and long for purity?” He resoundingly agreed and suggested that for him this factor was all part of his cause for alarm. He said, “It seems like nearly every Christian I know is beginning to feel the same way.” It is as though the climate of Christianity as we know it is shifting. We all held to the same basic views; we all believed that certain political positions were more tenable than others; we all felt that certain doctrines were indispensable. Now we are all questioning all of those assumptions, concluding that a great many of them do not matter in the way we wanted them to matter. But the thing that troubles us all—everyone to whom I talk and most certainly myself—is that it seems there is a vacuum now with little to fill it. We still do believe; we know that while we fall very short of the mark of Divine perfection, we still believe and desire to follow. But our lives feel empty much of the time and we do not have many answers. All we can do at this point is raise the questions.

What is the answer? Why do we feel this way? At least some of you, surely, have felt it too. Some of you are in the stages of growing disillusioned with many of the institutional aspects of the faith, though you may still embrace them. I would guess—and it is only a guess—that for many for whom that is true, you have been a believer for a decade or less. But there are many more who have passed far beyond this stage and feel that the whole aspect of Christianity in America is a travesty, at least as is played out in the large. And presumably, if the student’s response about her missionary parents is any indication, that does not exactly improve when we move beyond the borders of the American shores. Perhaps a few fortunate souls have passed beyond even this stage to a point where it no longer matters; would that I could say the same.

Archive note: See also Grow or perish on the discussion forum regarding this newsletter.

I have sought—and found—some consolation in turning back to the writings of the Early Church Fathers and reading the writing of the faithful from other times and eras in history. The times I have felt most sustained and most buoyed have invariably been through the insight of these persons who have gone on before. But where are the heroes for the day? C.S. Lewis might fit into that category: he certainly has been an inspiration to me and countless others. George MacDonald before him has been a real blessing to me. Father Ken and Father John at the church I now attend have often given me that extra ounce of “oomph,” that maybe there is still hope and a future for the followers of Christ in our own time. But I have to admit that much of what I see without seems grim to me and I find very little relief within either. I do not have many answers. All I can do at this point is raise the questions. But remember the student asking about the assignment and my answer of blue skies: if we can identify the right question for the right moment, we will surely grow in grace and understanding. We get nowhere, however, when we airbrush the questions and force fit the “answers.” There is nothing noble in that at all: it shows very little in the way of true compassion and insight, not to mention that it is patently dishonest. Perhaps we should take a lesson from pagan Socrates who was pronounced the wisest man in Athens precisely because he knew that he was not wise; perhaps the first shall be last for reasons we never anticipated.

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