Not Sure Dedication & Acknowlgements

         Publishing a book is very exciting. The process is also complicated and busy. Sometimes stuff gets lost along the way. When Eerdmans published my book, Not Sure, somehow the Dedication and Acknowledgements were left out of the book. Eerdmans has promised to include them in future printings. For some reason it occurred to me today that I could at least post these items on my blog. I always find dedications and acknowledgements interesting, because they say something about the author's universe not directly addressed in the book. They are a peek at what Nick Wolterstorff once called "the world behind the work." So, here's a list of some people who matter in my life!

Dedication for Not Sure: A Pastor's Journey from Faith to Doubt

For William Suk, David Suk, Mariya Meskienyar and Gillian Kupakuwana.

Acknowledgements.

            I first thought I might write about how faith changed through history while I was editor-in-chief of The Banner, magazine of the Christian Reformed Church. My time there was intellectually stimulating, but also very instructive for me as a writer. My friends at The Banner were great critics and encouraged me to keep on writing after I moved on. They were a delight to work with. I wonder what I would have done without Joyce Kane, Jena VanderPloeg, Malcolm McBryde, Gary Mulder, and Tim Postuma.

Since then many people offered their support, insight, and helpful criticism. A few people, however, stepped forward to help in ways that were especially gracious and wise. While completing my PhD at Wayne State University, I commuted from Grand Rapids, MI to Detroit, and often stayed overnight with Don and Elaine Postema. We talked a lot about my studies, about the church, and about the heart of faith, usually over a glass of good sherry. I miss those days. They were more than just friends, really; they were wise surrogate parents. Lou Smedes met with me several times during my tenure as editor. His gift was being able to read between the lines of my editorials. He recognized my struggles and reached out to me with empathy, which was wonderful--but also with understanding, which I did not expect. He was a wonderful guide to the world of both doubt and faith, and encouraged me to make my own journey part of the story. Mark and Lori Vermaire are great friends who were very hospitable to Irene and I when we were far from home and I was struggling with the issues raised in this book. Bernard Brock, my advisor at Wayne State University, became a good friend and confidant. I last met him, before he passed away, in Denver while Irene and I were on our trip around North America. Our discussions about Kenneth Burke's ideas about the rhetoric of religion were very formative for this book. While I was president of the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, I sat in on a seminar on Charles Taylor's book A Secular Age that was taught by Ron Kuipers. I learned a lot that was helpful for this book.

            Several people read partial or complete drafts of this book and offered helpful advice. One of them, Sophie Vandenberg used to write me long letters at The Banner in which she always asked me how the Reformation was going in Grand Rapids. She read an early version of this manuscript and helped me clarify my thinking a lot. Richard Middleton also read a few early chapters. While he commented on quite a few matters that were helpful, he saved me from making mistakes related to Canaanite and Persian religion. The proof of that is that I took all that out!

Nick Overduin is my best friend and so the fact that he was not only willing to read my book, but offer honest advice was a great gift. But we have also talked about the issues in this book a lot over the past few years, and those conversations helped crystallize my thinking and get it down on paper. Nandy Heule read a late version of the manuscript from the perspective of a pew-sitter who loves the church, and she saved me from many infelicities.

            My mom, Jane Suk, taught me a lot about how to hang on to what is important while letting go of what hinders.

My sons William and David offered me encouragement the whole way through. Faith has played an important part of their lives, too. I credit their honesty with me about their faith journeys, and their continual willingness to talk about their doubts, as well, for the get up and go it took me to finish this book.

Finally, Irene Oudyk-Suk, my wife and the love of my life, listened to me read chapter and verse of this book at least twice. She offered many suggestions along the way, argued with what I wrote when it was the right thing to do, and has always put up with my wavering faith and wanderlust.

While all of these friends and family members helped me, each in their own way, to finish the book, none of them are responsible for any of its weaknesses or errors. Those are all mine.

A Unitarian with Trinitarian Tendencies

           I’m getting used to being a pastor in the United Church of Canada. This denomination is clearly much more liberal than the Christian Reformed Church I spent most of my life in. My particular congregation, Lawrence Park Community Church, sort of puts an exclamation mark behind the “more liberal,” by describing itself on its webpage as “united, unlimited, and unorthodox.”

            Being “un-,” has had a bit of traction for a while now—at least since 7 Up branded itself as the Uncola, I suppose. I’m reading a book, now, entitled, “Unmarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging,” by Scott Stratton. Still, before I joined the United Church, it was a stretch for me to think of myself as unorthodox.

            Then, a few weeks ago, someone asked me about the Trinity. What did I think of the Trinity? How would I explain it? And—a bit to my surprise—I answered her, “Well, I’m not sure anymore. I guess I’m a Unitarian with Trinitarian tendencies!”

            I’m not sure where that came from. The person who asked me wasn’t having heart-to-heart conversation. We were playing at theology. But there it was. Very unorthodox. Maybe my church’s billboard fits!

            I don’t mean to be flippant in my comments about the Trinity, even though I do think that theology ought to have something of a playground feel to it. But usually, people take getting it right when it comes to theology much too seriously. Or they want to get it right for questionable motives. Take, for example, Constantine, the Emperor of Rome, on both counts. He convened one of the earliest worldwide councils to settle the question of the Trinity. Christians had been talking about the concept for three hundred years, and had not come to a consensus. The discussion got a bit heated and threatened to split the church into competing camps. Constantine, who became a Christian in large measure in order to unify his empire around religion, didn’t want to see a schism lay his plans waste. So, to keep the peace in his empire, he insisted on a single definition. Constantine then used his political power to force the answer he liked best and got the political result he wanted. Most of the church has held that answer sacrosanct ever since, even though the Empire for which the answer was crafted declined and fell sixteen hundred years ago!

            Anyway, as I was driving home after my friendly discussion about the Trinity, another related question occurred to me. Why, exactly, is it so critical that we get this concept right? The church got by just talking about it, rather than insisting on an answer, for more than 300 years. And what could it matter to God—especially a loving God, if we didn’t get it exactly right? To use an analogy (talk about God is mostly analogical, after all), if someone mistakes me for the father of a young man who is actually my nephew; or if I mistake someone I’ve just met at my Rotary club for another person altogether when I meet her on the street, what real harm is done? None. In both cases, having made a mistake about someone’s identity, we act like adults. We smile, correct each other, make small talk, and go our separate ways.

            What is more, we’re talking about God, here. Mistakes are expected. I learned early in seminary that even if the word isn’t very familiar to us, God is, in important respects “ineffable,” or unknowable. Considering that humans are a single species of life among as many as eight million other species on earth; given that the earth is a tiny speck of a planet on the edge of an unimaginably large cosmos; given that that cosmos is some ten or twelve billion years old and God has presumably been here and there the whole time; given that by most accounts God set all this in motion, and is eternal and omnipotent and omnipresent and on and on, how are we ever going to “get” God "right" anyway?

            So we speak about God using analogies we find in scripture or make up ourselves. He is like a rock, or a mother, or a shepherd, or a burning bush. Or we know something of God on account of the things that scripture tells us God has done.

            But let’s face it. Scripture doesn’t take a keen interest in helping us understand who God is in and of himself. We don’t get much by way of divine ontology. In philosophy, ontology is the study of “being.” It is a big deal. Ironically, most philosophers can’t agree with each other on human ontology. Makes trying to understand divine ontology seem like aiming high.

            Nevertheless, we insist that God is three persons, but only one God. Like a church is many persons but one church. That, at least, is the “social trinity” explanation. There are many others, most judged heretical: monarchianism, adoptionism, Arianism. Even a brief description of these views would involve saying much more about them than the Bible says about the Trinity in any one place (or altogether).

            The Bible, however, doesn’t spend much time on any of this. When it comes to whom he or she (both are anthropomorphic analogies, of course) is, God says, enigmatically, “I am who I am.” Or something like that—the Hebrew is hard to translate.

            So perhaps we ought to take a hint from the Bible on this. It isn’t that important that we get it right. If it was, God would have given us more than sporadic clues—God might have actually given us a book or two or at least several chapters that nailed the matter. But God didn’t.

            So, I’ve given up trying to convince people that the Trinity is exactly this or that. I’ve not given up on the Spirit or on Jesus or on God. But when I talk on how they are related to each other I’m going to give the dearth of scripture and its ambiguity on this topic a lot of respect; I’m going to take a hint from scripture’s lack of interest in the matter. And I’m going to go easy on strong assertions; I’m going to enjoy my conversations rather than pick a fight. I’m going to reread Boethius and Augustine for the fun of it. I’m going to smile at assertions, based on otherwise outmoded classical philosophy, that God consists of substance or essence. I’m going to wonder aloud rather than define terms.

            And when people ask me about it, I’ll say I’m playing at being an unorthodox Unitarian—that is, a Unitarian with Trinitarian tendencies.

Remembering My Boer Relative's Execution

            This past Sunday my church commemorated Remembrance Day, and that brought a story to mind.

            Many years ago, a relative of mine—my grandfather’s cousin, and so my first cousin three times removed—enlisted to fight in the Boer War, in Southern Africa. The Boer War was the first war that Canadians went overseas to fight. They did so for patriotism, for Empire, and for King, though probably not so much for Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Canadian Prime Minister at the time. Laurier would only send volunteers to South Africa because he didn’t want to offend Quebecers who thought fighting a war for England halfway around the world was just plain stupid. Maybe my fellow Canadians were right.

            The thing is, my grandfather’s cousin didn’t fight for the Canadians or the British. Pieter Schuil was a Dutchman who volunteered to fight for the Boers in a fit of righteous indignation at what the British were doing to the Boers. Tragically, Pieter was ultimately executed by firing squad. I have a letter written to Pieter’s parents, in Dutch, by the English Chaplain who prayed with Pieter on that last day, both on bended knee, Pieter with a Bible in his hands.

            There is more to Pieter’s story. It seems that he may have been unjustly executed, though this is disputed. The British claimed that while carrying a white flag, he came toward the British lines, and then suddenly lowered the gun and started shooting. At his court marshal hearing, Pieter claimed that it was no flag of truce, but just a hankie tied to his gun for no reason in particular, and that he never approached the English lines. He had been unhorsed, and was simply caught up in the British advance.

            And there is more yet to the story. This was a war for empire in its worst sense. The Boers had set up two small independent countries to get away from British rule in the Cape. What is more, they didn’t ask the Africans, whose land they conquered, for permission to set up those countries. After gold and diamonds were discovered in the one of little Boer states--which had made peace with Britain earlier--the British attacked in order to add the Boer territory to their own. It was an imperialistic land grab for the empire. Again, no one asked any Africans for their permission.

            When the British regulars defeated the Boer armies, the Boers refused to surrender and engaged in guerrilla warfare. The British responded by pretty much burning down every Boer farm they could find, inventing concentration camps, and then filling them not merely with soldiers but with women and children from the burned out farms. At least 20,000 Boers and an equal number of Africans charged with feeding the Boers died of hunger and disease in the camps. Pictures from the camps look eerily like pictures from Nazi concentration camps 40 years later. It was a dirty war that brought no honor to England, the Boers, or Canada.

            An interesting personal footnote is that forty years later, after the Second World War, my Shona daughter-in-law’s grandfather, a wealthy African cattle rancher, had all his land expropriated by the British so that they could give it to returning war veterans. Without land to range and feed his cattle, he sold most of his heard at a huge loss and became a refugee in what was then Rhodesia. No one ever asked him what he thought of the Boer War or the two World Wars. His descendants mostly grew up poor and landless and angry that white invaders had dispossessed them of everything they owned.

            War is an ugly business. So what do I do on Remembrance Day? Should I remember my family members who died at war, even if they fought on the losing side? Or when they fought for mistaken ideals? Or should I remember only Canada’s heroes, young men and women who fought with honor and courage, even if the wars they fought were sometimes unjust? Or should I have preached a sermon on how all war is hell and how we all ought to work like angels to make sure we don’t fall into another? After all, as Jesus once said, those who live by the sword will die by the sword, and “Love your enemies,” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

            And, by the way, who exactly is calling Christians children of God these days, anyway?

Spiritual Warfare? No!

           Not so long ago, a colleague of mine told me that his congregation was marching around their church’s neighborhood to claim it for Jesus, by prayer. When I questioned him further, he suggested that some demons were pretty territorial, and since the devil can’t stand up against prayer, the best way for his church to get a foothold in the neighborhood was by praying the demons away.

            Other Christians see a host of immoral activities—lying, cheating, bitterness—as evidence of demonic possession or oppression, rather than as acts for which one is personally responsible. In some Christian circles such problems are dealt with through exorcism or “binding of demons” rather than repentance and sanctification—Christian lingo for facing up to the wrong you’ve done and deciding to do something about it.

            This is the language of spiritual warfare and it is everywhere in Evangelical circles. From the demon-under-every-bush-fiction of Frank Peretti to the slightly subtler Nicolai of the “Left Behind” series to books on exorcism such as Francis MacNutt’s “Deliverance From Evil Spirits” or C. Peter Wagner’s “Supernatural Forces in Spiritual Warfare,” contemporary evangelicalism is awash with fascination for outsize evil spirit’s below and battling angels above.

            This sort of preoccupation with spiritual warfare seems, to me, to be very dangerous. I think it rooted in a kind of pride in one’s own religious correctness that can—especially under the influence of the language of warfare—become destructive of others, whether locally or globally.

            It isn’t that you can’t find language that resonates with warfare images in scripture. Of course you can. Though not very commonly, the writers of scripture did sometimes use military images of the Christian life as a struggle against evil—even though more often, they wrote of Jesus as having decisively defeated Satan. Scripture certainly suggests the creature called Satan ought to be resisted—but that is a far cry from suggesting he ought to be warred against. Even the famous spiritual armor described in Ephesians—a breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith and even, somewhat ironically, feet ready to move in tune with the gospel of peace—all this armor seems better suited to turning the other cheek as the Christian way of resisting the devil than taking him straight on.

            But contemporary Christians persist in allowing the language of spiritual warfare to be one of their guiding metaphors. It reminds me of how the language of jihad has taken on a powerful and dangerous life of its own, too. In the shadow of 9/11’s destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, few words are so misunderstood and scorned in the West as “jihad.”

            The most common sense of the word “jihad" in Islam, has to do with the religious duty to “struggle” to become a better Muslim. In this sense “jihad” is similar to the Christian concept of engaging in spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, and study.

            But this most common sense of the word “jihad” has been eclipsed for us in the West because a misguided, militant minority of Muslims, who even call themselves jihadists, think of jihad as a struggle against the thrones and dominions, principalities and powers of the “Great Satan,” by which they usually mean the United States and the West in general. This minority of militant Muslims now uses the primarily benign concept of jihad as a religious cover for terrorism.

            Talk of Spiritual Warfare has the same potential for spinning out of control. In fact, in the history of Christianity, we have often channeled our spiritual energy into physical destruction of others who did not agree with us. Consider the crusades, for example, where hordes of Europeans trampled over the Near East carving out kingdoms for profit and spiritual indulgences. In the Salem Witch trials, the overwhelming sense that life was a spiritual struggle with Jesus on one shoulder and the devil on the other led to many innocents being killed in the name of spiritual warfare. More recently, preacher Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations movement used their twisted interpretation of the Bible to invite race war against people of color. And genocides against Jews in WWII or Muslims and Christians both in the former Yugoslavia were fueled by in large measure by spiritual pride that found expression in violence. Christianity has a long history of taking the offensive in the mistaken belief that the other side was demonic.

            So no more “Onward Christian soldiers as to war,” and no more talk of spiritual warfare or demons or even Satan. What should we focus on, instead? Well, that Christianity is really about trying to overcome every form of verbal or physical violence by “not resisting an evil person,” and “turning the other cheek” (Luke 5:39). Not spiritual warfare, but giving the coat off of one’s back, forgiving seven times seven, and refusing to judge others. Jesus adds that it is the meek who inherit the kingdom of God and peacemakers who are called children of God. Not spiritual warfare, but walking humbly with God. Not spiritual warfare, but self-examination as to whether or not the light of Christ lives in us.

            Faith has to be immunized against violence in word, deed or intention. Such faith ought to avoid the language of spiritual warfare.

Doubt Is a Road Less Travelled

         I’m a pastor who has changed denominations. And what I’ve learned along the way is that while certainty is easy, doubt is difficult.

         Certainty is easy because certainty is a child of the status quo. When you go along to get along you don’t have to entertain doubts. When we believe what everyone else in our community believes we are on the path of least resistance. There are no arguments, no conflicts over values, no disagreements about priorities. Such certainty has the added benefit of not requiring self-examination.

            But certainty is not merely a child of the status quo. It is also the psychic space all humans crave. No one wants to be put in “fight or flight” mode; being sure is much more relaxing. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow,” argues, in fact, that the brain will even make up “just so” stories to confirm biases and that it often makes quick intuitive judgments based on far too little evidence. To make matters worse, the slower, rational, deeply informed part of the brain that is supposed to keep odd beliefs and intuitions in check is usually far too slow and lazy to do so. Brains usually handle difficult or mysterious ideas by ignoring their inner complexities. No wonder Malcolm Muggeridge, a famous BBC host, once said: “The trouble with people who stop believing in God is not that they become atheists; it is rather that they believe anything."

         Doubt, on the other hand, is difficult. Doubt is restless. Doubt dwells on the complexities of life, gnaws at them, and is unsettled until they reveal themselves. Doubt takes issue with the status quo, and so doubt often leads down paths less travelled. It’s lonely. When I began to doubt the things I had been taught growing up, very few people were willing to completely open themselves up to my struggle—though I thank God for the few good friends who did. But I quickly realized that when I spoke of my doubts, most people reacted by minimizing my doubts while suggesting that the issues I had with my tradition were actually not as deep as I myself thought they were.

         Eventually and inevitably, I found that I couldn’t keep up doctrinal appearances without feeling hypocritical. This led to anguish and anxiety. At what point does one submit to one’s doubts? At what point do you actually say, “I can’t go along to get along anymore.” At what point does one go public, and in doing so, part paths with a community one loves?

         I couldn’t dismiss my doubts. I tried to bury them. I tried to address them. I prayed about them. Along the way I remembered how my brother, who died of ALS after a short and intense struggle, used to say to me, “every morning, when I wake up, I have this terrible moment when I realize it isn’t all just a bad dream. I’m really dying of ALS.” Well, doubt isn’t nearly as tragic as ALS, but I’ve often woken up to the disappointing realization that I’m still wracked by doubt.

         I do not mean to suggest that every certainty is misguided or every doubt is worth embracing. Nor am I suggesting that the certainties of conservative or evangelical Christianity ought to be doubted. I’m sure some—like Malcolm Muggeridge himself, or more famously, C.S. Lewis—have travelled the path of doubt the other way. My journey is my own.

            But as I go on, I cannot shake doubt. So rather than fight it, I have decided to try to make the best of it. And as I do so, I’m encouraged by Canadian Margret Avison’s poem, “The Swimmer’s Moment.” In it Avison describes swimmers who refuse to contest “the black pit” of the whirlpool. These swimmers, says Avison, will also never find, "The mysterious, and more ample, further waters."  That’s the trouble with choosing certainty over doubt.

Avison goes on to write, however, that a few swimmers “who dare the knowledge” plunge into the rapids and actually win “the silver reaches of the estuary.”

That’s what I’m shooting the rapids of doubt for. I’m not sure I’ll make that far shore. Avison points out that many don’t. But I’d love to set my heart at rest, some day. And in the meantime, for all its difficulties, the road less travelled also turns out to be a fascinating, illuminating adventure.