book club - week 1

for several weeks/months gabriele and i have both noticed that we've been having the same conversation with several of our friends, colleagues, and clients regarding the face of the Church in our world. we're almost never the ones that have brought up the topic, and sometimes we haven't even really said anything at all before the conversation turns towards it, but it is increasingly apparent that we're not the only ones dwelling on the issue.

we thought it might be cool if everyone got together and had the conversation together, in the same place, at the same time. and so, last week we started meeting with some friends to continue the discussion. since we had recently read rob bell's book velvet elvis: repainting the christian faith and felt like it was also saying the same sort of thing, we figured a good way to start would be to have a little book club.

our first time together was simply four of us eating chips and guacamole and queso, telling stories about college pranks and laughing and complaining and struggling and sharing our experiences in the church. after about three hours we actually started discussing the book itself. it was a wonderful time.

the essence of the conversation the first night was largely about how the Church has really messed things up for jesus. he came preaching a gospel of love and it's been turned into a gospel of rules; selflessness and humility into selfishness and piety. and to make matters worse, it seems the church knows they've done it. they (we?) have knowingly drawn divisive lines in the sand and said "we're over here and they are over there."

and so, whoever may be reading this, please see the hurt in the world - the poor, the rich, the hungry, the glutton, the innocent, the guilty... and see that things need to change. be thankful that love is more healing than ignorance is hurtful. be inspired by grace and love, and believe that things can return to being collaborative and unified. i know that things can be better again.

rogerian theology

i have a great deal of respect for carl rogers, the american psychologist credited with developing the person-centered approach to psychotherapy. rogers was raised in a devout christian family and he began college with at least some intent of entering the ministry. along the way, though, something in rogers' experience caused him to shift his career path away from the ministry and toward psychology.

therapists-in-training love rogerian therapy because they believe that it's a technique that's not a technique. while rogers did outline specific techniques in his description of the person-centered approach to therapy, the true benefit of his theory is its broad applicability to all therapeutic approaches. as a colleague of mine once said, "all good therapy is person-centered."

one of the best known aspects of rogers' person-centered theory is the idea and practice of "unconditional positive regard," often simply referred to as "UPR." through his research, rogers discovered that the relationship between a client and therapist has more of an impact on the client's healing than any particular therapeutic technique.

i'm convinced that rogers' theory has application beyond the field of counseling. the core tenets of his theory - empathy, unconditional positive regard, the power of relationship, genuineness -are all terms and ideas i have often heard in the church. heard, but rarely seen or felt or experienced. why is that?

i'm curious what a church would look like that actually embraced values like acceptance, empathy, and "unconditional positive regard" in their approach to ministry. they'd have to give up some things, though, like judgment and comfort. they'd have to get used to being in a boat that rocks rather than one that just quietly floats. once word got out that a church was like that, no doubt it would attract an interesting crowd. there's a lot of people who feel that the church has a closed-mind and closed-door stance regarding their decisions and/or lifestyle, and so they don't feel welcome. it's terribly sad.

i know that there are some churches that are trying to more fully embrace the practice of acceptance and empathy and unconditional positive regard, and that's wonderful. it's the fact that more churches aren't doing it that concerns me. i can't remember the last time i heard the word "persecuted" and it wasn't referring to the church.

sometimes i wonder what the world would look like if i heard as many sermons about loving my neighbor as i have about the sinful nature of tattoos, rock music, and sex. are we really more concerned with punishment than we are with helping those in need?

lottery jesus

my morning commute takes me past a billboard that displays the estimated powerball jackpot for the upcoming drawing. the sign is in a prime viewing location; it sits on top of a slight topographical rise just off the highway, and there aren’t any buildings around the billboard to distract from the view. i’ve often wondered how much the oklahoma lottery commission has to pay for such a premium advertising spot. it’s probably worth it when compared to the amount of revenue generated by the billboard. it’s a very noticeable billboard.

most days i take note of the sign and the jackpot amount. today it was $57 million, which is $7 million more than wednesday, so it appears that no one won the jackpot this week. every time i see the billboard i start to daydream about what it would be like to win. not just what i would do with the money, but what it would actually feel like to win. i imagine a warm feeling would come over my body, my breathing quicken, my hand holding the ticket would start to quiver, my cheeks would begin to burn from holding up the enormous smile on my face. it would be a glorious moment of revelation as i embraced the freedom that i assume such money would permit.

it's interesting to observe those who play the lottery. for instance, my dad only buys a ticket if the jackpot gets really big, like $150 million, as if the prospect of winning that amount somehow justifies spending a dollar for a ticket, whereas playing to win only $50 million would be a waste of money. on the other end of the spectrum, i once knew a woman who would call in to the local convience store to order her weekly lottery purchase, typically totalling around $250. many more people opt for consistently playing one or two dollars each week, rationalizing that if they buy a ticket for each drawing, then sooner or later they're bound to win, right?

i think that many people view prayer like they're playing the lottery. some only pray for really big things or when they feel like they "really need it." others may pray everyday, perhaps even because they have become habitual about "praying without ceasing," but their motivation isn't because they truly believe that their prayers will be answered; they may just believe that if the pray enough, eventually one of those prayers will be heard and be answered.

despite my agnostic leanings, every now and then i whisper a few words up to God/gods/universe/Flying Spaghetti Monster/whatever. it usually feels like i'm just throwing a hail mary (pun intended) and hoping that it gets answered. sometimes i wonder what else i should do to boost my prayer to the top of god's list - as if i could do some kind of rain dance and make god hear me. i'm afraid of being one of those people who is completely convinced that god will hear their prayers and heal their sick child, only to have the child die. there are millions of devout and holy people out there who have prayed incessantly for years without receiving the answer they were looking for.

the problem is obvious, of course: we're all looking for a particular answer from god. we want to have god wrapped around our little finger, like we're alladin and he's our genie. we want to be able to pray a certain way and have god "give in" to our big puppy dog eyes and pouty lip and give us all the desires of our heart.

various versions of me

i've often attempted to be a hipster, though without much long-term success. i nearly always fail at being a hipster, though. it's not because at my core i'm not a hipster, but more likely because i am lazy, and achieving the hipster's effortless look is such hard work, and i never seem to know about any unknown bands worth bragging about.

in these moments of post-hipster failure weakness, i usually settle for simply being a "professional," which i suppose is appropriate seeing as i have a graduate degree and usually work in an office. in my heart, though, i feel that i am "just" being a "professional," and that i am not "being true" to "who i really am," and other phrases that necessitate the use of excessive punctuation to set them apart as important lables of distinction, even when they're not.

countering this drab exterior of being a professional usually takes the form of jeans, t-shirts, and flip-flops (or, occasionally, cowboy boots) whenever i have the chance, or more typically, whenever i can rationalize that the [closet] post-moderns in the oklahoma city are open and accepting of casual dress for nearly all occasions. i then try to pair my appearance with appropriate theme music, which could be anything from red dirt to pearl jam to frank sinatra.

today, however, i wore a suit. early this morning i sat alone in my car in the parking lot of a salvation army thrift store, sipping a starbucks house brew and listening to a staccato-voiced NPR reporter (markedly distant from any of the aforementioned theme music), my mind awash in economic and political news and dreaming of who i wanted to be when i grew up. as if i still hadn't decided on embracing the hipster, the professional, or the weekender persona, but believing that at some point i would have to choose just one, and that whatever i chose would then be "me" forever.

of course, the reality is that i am always "me," no matter how i dress or speak or act. we choose to express and portray ourselves in different ways in an effort to represent all the different facets of our personality. this behavior is fascinating, and it is one of the primary reasons i chose to study psychology rather than finance.

is there anybody out there?

while some of my friends are having a comment-aquisition war, i'm over here blogging for peanuts with nary a comment to be found. no worries...like so many before me, my greatness will likely be unappreciated until years after my death.

i wanted to follow up on my last post regarding the future of the church and its ability to remain relevant in our culture, but i'm not exactly sure where to begin. i suppose my original intent was to enter into a pseudo-intellectual discourse about goal and purpose again, but after giving it some thought, i'm not sure that's the direction i want to go.

instead, i want to be a bit more transparent and acknowledge that i'm developing a blister in my spiritual life, caused by the constant friction i feel between church doctrine and the essential nature of christ's teachings. to prune that down, i'll define the "essential nature of christ's teachings" in his own words: to love god with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself. "church doctrine" is simply all the other stuff that the church holds dear, for one reason or another. if you've been around the church for much time at all, i'm sure you can likely identify several issues that fit into the latter category.

there are rules, and there is The Rule, and i'm tired of the the rules being held as prerequisites to the kingdom. membership to the church no longer hinges on a belief in christ, but rather rests on our willingness to adhere to a set of doctrinal views. the idea that "we are all brothers and sisters in christ" does not extend as well from demonination to denomination as we like to believe. we make rules to define ourselves as a group, to create a sense of belonging to those inside...and too often forget that we may also be creating a sense of exclusion to those outside.

i grew up in the church of the nazarene, attended a baptist church with my grandparents when visiting them, and spent several years in a state where nearly all of my friends were lutheran or catholic. my wife was raised presbyterian, and we're currently attending a nondenominational-ish church with baptisty leanings. it would be impossible to follow all of the doctrinal rules for the different churches - issues like alcohol, tobacco, gender roles in the church, and sexual relationships vary widely enough, and if you add in more "religious" issues such as the nature of our relationship with christ, grace, and sanctification, things get more tortuous than my stomach can handle.

i've had religious leaders tell me directly: that the church is more forgiving of someone driving drunk than they are of two unmarried people living together, that alcohol is okay but tobacco is not, that female clergy are sinners, that god could strike a child dead for acting up in public, that without the church you cannot have a relationship with god, that you don't need the church to know god, that once you're forgiven you're always forgiven, that you can never be totally forgiven, and that if you are a good enough christian, you can reach a point where you never need to be forgiven because you no longer sin.

it's no wonder more people say they believe in god than believe in the church. only one of them can be infallible, and it ain't the church.

so what's a person to do? there's three options: (1) attend a church (2) don't attend a church, or (3) start your own church. they all have respective drawbacks: (1) limitations on your involvement and risk of being socially isolated, (2) loss of opportunities for fellowship with other believers and coporate worship, (3) being labeled a cultist and risk of recreating the same problems, among others. you lose regardless of your choice, but thus far i've opted for #1, as it seems to have the least number of drawbacks...or at least its drawbacks are the most comfortably familiar. it's shameful that we are comfortable and familiar with the church having shortcomings.

i don't really have any answers, just more questions. i am, however, thoroughly convinced that striving to embody love to others each day is not only the best way to live, it's the way of life that christ modeled for us. i'm less and less concerned with doctrine and more and more concerned with love. so, take all your rules, write them down, hang them on the wall, and try your hardest to follow them. i'm going to try my hardest to follow christ.

love

i suppose this is somewhat related to my marital manifesto that i posted on my [former] myspace blog (and recently copied to this one), though i feel this is of infinitely greater importance, for it is this upon which a marriage should be based. also, i realize that my beliefs are likely in opposition to those by whom i am employed. i can't help but feel that they're missing something.

i was asked how this relates to marriage, to how i see god being invovled in marriage. to answer, my reply must begin with my conception of god.

i maintain a belief in some sort of higher being, though i readily admit that i relate to this greater reality in many different ways, because i feel that we cannot adequately describe whatever he/she/it is with even the most eloquent language. because i was raised in the southern united states, i have been taught to describe love in terms of the Christian God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and so that is the default method of how i relate to this...presence, being, whatever. for me, god is love.

for me, the description of god and the description of love begin at the same place. i'm convinced that if all languages had a singular term for love (or equally different terms for different types of love), and that all the terms for love and for god or gods or supreme being or great spirit or enlightenment or allah or greatest whatever were replaced with this term that crosses all geographical, cultural, and religious barriers, that the world would look at their religion, at the key tenets of belief in humanity and everything else, in a considerably different light. it would cease to become my god vs. your god or my beliefs vs. your beliefs, and would shift to my love is your love is also how we all know and experience and share love.

as a child, my family would convey love by saying things like "i love you thirty bushels" or "i love you a million billion trillion bushels," with the intent to try and top the other person's concept and amount of love. similarly, i have a dear friend who speaks love with her child by comparing it to numerous things in nature, such as "more than all the grains of sand on the earth" or "more than all the stars in the heavens." the truth is, our attempts to try and imagine all the love in the world, to feel its height and width and depth and density, is an ultimately futile endeavor, because the love of god (that is, love itself) is far greater than our minds are capable of imagining. picture the largest thing you can imagine, and love is still greater than that. makes your brain hurt.

love is. it is the life-force that exists within every person, between every person, in the air and water and land around us. i suppose i crudely equate it with the idea of the Force on star wars, in that love is in an around everything, and that for some it is stronger than for for others. and we all experience love (and if you will, god) in different ways. i have a very difficult time imagining that god is limited to merely the ways christians experience god - i personally feel that i can equally experience god through a traditional christian worship service, buddhist meditation, laughing and playing with children, song and dance, helping the poor and needy, and reading the stories of humanity's past that have been enscribed as sacred texts for many different religions. who am i to limit the way god reveals himself to humanity? love crosses all borders.

can you imagine if everyone embraced love with the same fervor? if everyone embodied love to each person they interacted with each day - imagine what it would be like to feel safe when you were vulnerable, to be transparent with others and let the know the true you without fear of judgment or retribution or obliteration! imagine what it would be like if even every person took this approach with just one person in their life! what if everyone truly loved just one other person?

and so, i suppose this bring us to marriage. in my observation of humanity and interpersonal interactions, it is hard to not acknowledge how some people seem to just fit together better than others. (i have often debated the idea of the soulmate, and i am still undecided on the issue, but have new thoughts on it.) for me, marriage is a wonderful institution; it is a sacred union between two people who are best suited for helping one another experience love. it needs to be the combination of two whole persons, both of whom are filled to the brim with love, perhaps even overflowing with it, so much so that their union produces a third aspect of life, a whole 1+1=3 phenomenon, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. this is the true experience of love in a marriage! - where both people are so deeply committed to embodying love to humanity as a whole that their combination creates an outpouring of love to all they encounter, both individually and together. it's like little individual all-star teams, where both parties work so incredibly well together that they enhance each other's ability to perform. (this compounding effect of love is explained very well from a christian perspective by rob bell in his video flame. definitely worth a look. you can also look at his nooma website for additional videos; rhythm is incredibly appropo as well.)

for some (we often refer to them as saints in the catholic church), this union need not take place with another human, but with love (god) itself. and really, i'm increasingly convinced that it should be the realization that such a union would be acceptable and agreeable and beneficial that is the precursor to even considering marriage to another human. if we cannot be whole and filled with love on our own, how is it that we are able to give it to someone else? i feel far too many people enter marriage with the expecation that the other will complete them somehow, and this is unhealthy. we need not complete someone, they need to complete themselves, and then are capable of rolling alongside us.

for me, marriage is peace, not chaos. marriage looks like deep green grass blowing in the breeze; it is dark hardwood floors and neutal colored walls, lots of windows with sheer curtains, contemporary leather furniture, clean lines, soft linens. it has lots of mirrors for good self reflection, and it also has bright works of art on the walls that puncuate the peace by which they are surrounded. marriage is not a cluttered apartment with red walls that are splattered with orange and yellow paint; where tables and chairs must be cleaned off in an effort to create a momentary spot of peace in an otherwise chaotic space. marriage is refuge, marriage is rest, marriage is love.