Faith After the Diagnosis, Before the Worst

 

As I set out to write this blog, I thought, at first, that I could compare my loss of faith to losing my wife, Irene.

She died on May 8, 2024, not six months after she was diagnosed with glioblastoma—terminal brain cancer. In the end, she chose to receive medical assistance in dying. On the chosen day our kids, grandkids, and siblings—sixteen of us—gathered on our lakeside patio. It was an unseasonably warm, sunny day. We should have been kayaking.

Each of us took a few minutes to tell Irene why, and how much, we loved her. We listened to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the latter because Irene was that bridge for us. Irene turned to me and said, simply, “I’m so curious about what’s next.” Finally, the drugs were administered. And so, she died in my arms.

On our last vacation before Irene's
diagnosis we visited Geneva,
birthplace of our tradition.

More than two years later, I still find myself surprised by tears. Sometimes in bed, when I reach over to touch her, but she isn’t there. Or when her portrait shows up on my screensaver. I weep when, putting down the phone, there is no one to talk to about our kids. We were such a team. I feel like a caboose that has been severed from its engine and is careening the wrong way down the tracks into an abyss.

And I suppose there are comparisons to be made between my loss of Irene and my loss of faith, though I have not actually wept for that. The loss of faith actually feels more like what I felt in the months that led up to Irene’s death.

On one level, after her diagnosis, life just continued on. Mundane matters still needed to be looked after: watering the garden, getting groceries, feeding visitors, paying bills, and servicing the car. But then, on top of that, there was all sorts of unfamiliar, very hard stuff, too: brain surgery, chemo and radiation, hospital stays, waking up multiple times during the night to help Irene get comfortable, and ultimately, watching her slowly decline, both physically and cognitively.

But there was something else, too. It was probably invisible to most people, sort of like the distant approach of wildfire smoke from over the horizon. After Irene’s diagnosis I was depressed. I walked under a cloud, trying to comfort those I loved, to be hospitable to everyone who cared; trying hard to be the lover Irene needed when neither of us could see the way, clearly. It was exhausting and disorienting. I worried about the future, about life without Irene, and then felt guilty about that. It wasn’t me who was dying, after all. Irene was busy fixing old relationships, closing her business, laughing with old friends—all while being intensely kind and supportive for me. I was profoundly despondent and anxious and trying hard not to show it.

My loss of faith makes me feel similarly despondent and anxious. Living without faith, I feel like a toddler looking up from where I’m walking, in a mall, and realizing I can’t see my mother. 

Here I need to be clear about something. Though I sometimes speak of my loss of faith as a loss of God, it isn’t as if I ever felt or believed I had a personal relationship with God, like I might have a personal relationship with someone I know. I’ve never heard God whisper in my ear. I’ve never had a phone call from God or shared a glass of wine with God or Jesus. I never felt like God was a friend, like say Nick or Nandy are friends.

No, my faith was communal and intellectual. I adopted it because I was lovingly nurtured into it by my parents. I warmed to it because it was the faith of a community that really was a whole village raising me. I loved the part of my faith that was figuring out how things like the Trinity or atonement or the ordo salutis worked. I loved that it gave me a vision for what life meant, and it was full of people excited to work with me, usually in Christian organizations, to make that vision come to life. I loved faith because it made sense of the world—of both its beauty and its failings—for me.

And then, after years of inner wrestling, faith wasn’t helping me make sense of the world anymore. I lost the thread. I’ve written, in my blog, about some of the stumbling blocks to traditional faith that I’ve run into. More is coming in a book I’m writing. But the bottom line is that when I quit struggling with faith, when I simply accepted that I could no longer credit it, it was depressing. As with life after Irene’s diagnosis, I carried on with all sorts of mundane and meaningful—even lovely—parts of my life. But when it came to the meaning of it all, I was under a cloud.

I know that a lot of people who don’t believe in God don’t suffer much on that account. Many atheists have worked out thoughtful worldviews that inspire and guide them through life. And many people just never think about God or faith. Perhaps they have unknowingly bought into the subliminal gospel of acquisition, or some part of the experience economy, or maybe even in nothing much at all. They just go along and get along. They’re not wired for God, and it doesn’t bother them.

Even other ministers who have left God behind and describe what that is like in autobiographies seem quite content. William Lobdell is typical: “I like my life on this unexplored shore. It’s new, exciting and full of possibilities. I wouldn’t have predicted it as a Christian, but I now feel wonderfully free—not to go on a binge of debauchery like the Prodigal Son, but to stop wrestling with the mysteries of Christianity. I can stop dreaming up excuses for the shortcomings of my faith.” (William Lobdell, Losing My Religion. New York: HarperCollins, 2009, 279).

And sure, there is a part of me that gets this. My last congregation blessed my uncertainty about God, and invited me to explore it from the pulpit and in the classes I taught. That was life-giving and freeing for me.

Still, perhaps because faith for me was always so intellectual, I struggle, existentially, in my bones, with how, in the absence of God, life can have any ultimate meaning at all. For agnostics there is no providence—no “almighty and ever present power of God, by which God upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” 

I have no deity to watch over me or anyone I love. Everything is contingent, as in Bryan Walsh’s book, End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World. He describes the many ways human civilization might collapse. He lists things like another asteroid, perhaps as large as the one that killed all the dinosaurs. Or a volcanic eruption, like that of Toba, 75,000 years ago, that almost led to the extinction of Homo sapiens. Or maybe nuclear war, or climate change running amok, or a pandemic, or AI—all endings that seem plausible given recent events.

What meaning there is, we have to make on our own, without divine intervention. Looking to the future, I have no comfort in life and in death. I sometimes feel like a wounded soldier dragging himself home after surviving a lost battle.

God has disappeared. And yet, I am haunted.

My Agnosticism: Longing and Thirst

 

         In 2012 I interviewed for the position of minister at Lawrence Park Community Church (LPCC). Along the way one of the search committee members asked me if I believed in God. Belief in God had become a talking point at LPCC since the previous minister had been a post-theist. That is, he thought that at a minimum God’s time in the church was up, and that this was a good thing. He leaned to thinking there was no God at all.

         I answered the committee that I wasn’t really sure.

         LPCC hired me. I served that congregation for nine years—the richest years of my career. It was a big-tent church. We were made up of people who liked the community but maybe not orthodoxy tests, people who did and didn’t believe in God, and people who just were not sure. We tried to think of theology as a playground rather than a battlefield. We tried, together, to figure out what a good life was, how we might live such a life, and how we might spread our privilege around by doing good works and seeking justice. All of us were impressed by the example of Jesus.

         And I was their minister. When pressed—and sometimes when not—I admitted to my congregants that I did not know whether or not there was a God. I was agnostic.

         What did that mean? Well, ironically, the person who best summed the matter up for me was someone trying to explain his (mostly) Christian and (partly) Jewish faith—the New York Times columnist David Brooks. He described what William James called moments of “an ineffable joy and exultation,” numinous experiences in the mountains, and on subway trains, that ultimately convinced him that there was a God. (See “The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be.” Dec. 22, 2024). 

         I have not had such experiences, something that I have written about in my book, Not Sure: A Pastor’s Journey from Faith to Doubt, and in articles published in Christian Century and other journals. I do not doubt that Brooks was deeply moved by such experiences to change his ideas about faith. But I can’t personally identify with them myself, in spite of having sought them for years at silent retreats, through searching of scripture, in worship, and by practicing spiritual disciplines such as prayer and fasting. 

         So, over all, I do not identify with Brooks’ personal story. However, along the way, Brooks makes one claim that resonated with me. “The most surprising thing I’ve learned since then is that ‘faith’ is the wrong word for faith as I experience it. The word ‘faith’ implies possession of something, whereas I experience faith as a yearning for something beautiful that I can sense but not fully grasp. For me faith is more about longing and thirsting than knowing and possessing.”

         And that is exactly what agnosticism is for me—that longing and thirsting to understand what I cannot fully grasp—love, or beauty, or the meaning of life. But whereas Brooks a turns to religion as the explanation for what he cannot grasp, I have learned that what is just beyond the rim our understanding is mostly what scientists are working on, with quite a bit of success.  There is no God of the gaps, no God of the numinous, for me. 

         From here on, however, as much as I respect Brooks, I think he gets faith, spirituality and religion mostly wrong. He quotes Rabbi David Wolpe, who denigrates spirituality and celebrates religion: “Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world.” 

         Such broad generalizations not grounded in evidence. Spirituality is an emotion? So what? Are emotions somehow less valuable or beneficial than religious obligations? Do emotions require less work to understand and integrate into your life? And is spirituality just an emotion? Is it not far more complex, emotions being just one facet? And as for religion being obligation, yes, we’ve all heard of Calvinistic or Fundamentalistic legalism, of women’s so-called obligation to obey their husbands, or gays’ obligation to never love. Remember Julian Barnes’ warning. “Religion tends to authoritarianism as capitalism tends to monopoly.” Sure, religion is obligation, but the obligations are often horribly misplaced. 

         To continue, does spirituality merely soothe while religion mobilizes? Do not both religion and spirituality both sometimes soothe, or sometimes not? To suggest soothing is bad, or that it belongs primarily to spirituality but not religion, or that spirituality can’t mobilize while religion can—well, all of these ideas are just silly and not borne out by experience. And as long as we’re talking mobilization and religion, let’s not forget the Evangelicals and MAGA and Christian nationalism, or the Southern Baptists and Presbyterians and slavery, or the role religion has played in harassing gay people, women, or promoting the worst kinds of colonial empire building. And all these are just for starters. Mobilization can be good or bad.

         And why would anyone say that spirituality is merely a matter of self-satisfaction? Again, this is a claim without any justification, and self-evidently false if you think about it. Whether Ghandi or Einstein, Seimone Weil or my one-time neighbour, Sarah . . . there are plenty of spiritual people who are not satisfied with the status quo, who seek justice, who engage in (sometimes at great personal cost) uncomfortable and self-sacrificial acts. And yes, religious people are often dissatisfied with the world, which might explain the crusades, or 100-year religious wars in Europe, or the inquisition, or the persecution of Jews (who have always been scapegoats for all sorts of worldly dissatisfactions). 

         So, what of Brooks’ former agnosticism? I will not claim that it is the best option or only option. But for me, personally, agnosticism baptizes my longing to know more, to seek out strange new truths and let go of unconvincing myths. In most religious people’s eyes, agnosticism might make for a poor spirituality and religion both. But it is what I’ve got.

I suppose, at this point, I could write a tome about how matters such as the evolution of the God Yawheh from an ancient tribal God to the one and only God of the universe, in Judaism left me doubting that this is the one and only God. (For more on this, see the Aug 18 and Oct 15, 2022 posts in this blog.) Or, I could explain why the problem of evil leaves me doubting that possibility of a good God. And there is even a little part of me that argues I should go back and reread some of Nick Wolterstorff’s or Alvin Plantinga’s books. I admired them a great deal, so shouldn’t I give them another chance? And then there is my personal agnosticism abyss—the many joys and comforts I have foregone now that I have left behind not only God, but the church I grew up in, its community, and my place in it. Changing one’s mind isn’t always easy or cozy.

As a half-way measure, by way of avoiding agnosticism, I’ve even tried on different kinds of Christian religion, ones that would give me room to embrace God while not being tied down to some narrow dogmatic confession about who this God is or what the actual truth about this God is. I went from mainline theologians like Douglas John Hall or Walter Pannenberg to more radical theologians such as Richard Kearny, John Caputo, or Catherine Keller. However, I found much in their works to be so complex, so full of “just so” arguments when it came to unique descriptions of God, as to be both unappealing and unconvincing.

In the end, I was reminded of something Malcom Muggeridge once said. "One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God, they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse; they believe in anything." Perhaps so, at least sometimes. But in light of a fantastic variety of Christian sects and radical theologians, it is worth asking why Muggeridge didn’t think Christians are the credulous who will believe anything. Now, my old religion seems to me to be much like a very impressive cell phone without reception. It was always in airplane mode, if you will. The infrastructure, coding, icons, and algorithms and are all there, but there is no signal to enliven it all.

Ultimately, agnosticism is a refusal to be credulous. It is an attempt to keep an open and searching mind. Agnosticism is not doubt, which, after all, belongs to faith. Agnostics simply admit a truth they may not much like, namely that they, even after much effort, do not know. I am agnostic.

          This is not decision by indecision. It is, rather, the difficult decision to admit to one’s own limitations. My agnosticism creates a longing and thirst to explore life’s mysteries rather than a belief that I can know and can possess ultimate truth.

Wish I Could Be Afraid

            I wish I could be afraid. Like Peter was afraid, once.

It happened this way. One day, after a fruitless night of fishing, Jesus told Peter to throw the nets out on the other side of the boat. Peter thought, "No way. Wrong place; wrong time." But to humor Jesus — who had, after all, just healed his mother-in-law — Peter did as he was told. And according to the story Luke tells, Peter caught a huge load of fish. It seemed a miracle.

The next thing Peter knew, he was stepping out of the boat and falling on his knees before Jesus. Something about what had just happened — something about Jesus — terrified him. So, Peter said, "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man."

Jacoba Bassano's The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1545)

I wish I could be afraid like that. Even if only once, for a minute, I wish I could feel the breath sucked out of me like Peter’s must have been, when he guessed, before he had words to say it, that Jesus was the Messiah, of God (Luke 9:20).

            This is why: my life is all about Jesus. I have gone to church all my life. I spent twenty years going to Christian schools, including seminary. I now preach about Jesus weekly. I pray to him daily. He is rarely far from my thoughts.

            Yet I have never held his hand. I have never laid eyes on his face. I have not put my hands in his wounds. I have not heard him preach. I can't get him to slap me on the back or pass the wine or even to tell me where to fish. He seems distant — almost unreal. Just once, just for a moment, I'd like to taste that mysterious, awful, painful, fear that seized Peter when he guessed who Jesus really was.

I don't know how exactly to say it. I think this would be a good fear, even if I could only hold onto it for a minute or two. A good fear — maybe like the longing fear a virginal bride and a virginal groom have at the foot of their wedding night bed as a whole new world of intimacy and trust opens up to them. 

I think Peter's fear must be something like that of a teacher facing her first classroom alone. She trusts her training and doesn't doubt her skills, but she is terrified by the enormity of her job and all the kids she'll help shape. She's just one, all alone, at the beginning of the rest of her life. 

I think this fear is something like the fear that those who love extreme sports look for. They want a rush, a brush with death, the exhilaration of being on the verge of losing it even as they know they will make it to the other side. 

Such fear is deeply spiritual. It is rooted in wanting more life than a body can stand, in wanting to look around the corner, at death, maybe even touch it — without having to embrace it.

Some Christians claim to have encountered Jesus in this way — to have tangibly felt his immanence and the holy fear that it inspires. I can’t speak, of course, about the truth or falsehood of anyone else’s claim to have experienced this kind of fear. All I know is that I’ve never felt it. Not the way Luke suggests Peter did.

            But as I carry on in faith, which for me includes this persistent struggle with doubt and uncertainty, I wish I could know — even for a moment — what Peter felt that day, and what Jesus' words cured.

The Gospel According to the Blue Jays

(So I wrote this sermon for fun, during the Blue Jays American League Pennant series with Kansas. I got the idea from John Van Sloten, who did the same in Calgary--thanks. Naturally, I wore a Blue Jays uniform to church that day. Several people requested that I post it. So here it is!)

I wrote this sermon on Thursday (October 22), as I almost always do. However, since the theme of the sermon was, “The Gospel According to the Blue Jays,” I was at a bit of a loss as to how to proceed.

That Thursday, after all, the Blue Jays were merely behind in the series with Kansas, three games to two. I didn’t know—as I do now—whether they would win the last two games in Kansas City or lose one of them. I didn’t know, as I sat down to write, whether I would be writing about a World Series-bound team, or merely a runner-up for the American League pennant. (Of course, I know now.)

            As I was thinking about my conundrum, I came across a Facebook post that was all about Blue Jay faith. Listen:

             

I have seen a man come back from season ending injury to dominate in September. (Stroman)

I have seen a bringer of rain end a 22-year old playoff drought. (Anthopolous)

I have seen a .500 team fight back and win a championship. (The Jays)

I have seen two 11-game win streaks. (Jays again)

I have seen a 20-year-old rookie shut down some of the best. (Osuna)

I have seen two of baseball’s greatest talents pull on my jersey. (Price and Tulo)

I have seen the 7^th inning of game 5. (Bautista, mostly)

I have seen the bat flip that electrified a country. (Bautista, totally—let’s take a look at that, in fact)

I have see a team come back from a 3-1 deficit. Kansas City did it to us 30 years ago. A little payback is in order.

I have seen an incredible team play an exciting season and I am grateful to have experienced the 2015 Blue Jays.

And it’s not done yet!

Believe!

            So, as I sat there at my desk, on Thursday, I tried to believe. Bautista will come through again! Tulu shall keep hitting! I thought maybe I could make such belief the point of this sermon. Faith should be strong even when times are tough, you know? Believe enough in the Jays and that will make it so. The trouble was, I didn’t believe, whole-heartedly, at least. What if the Blue Jays didn’t win? What if I came to the pulpit with a sermon that insisted, “believe,” but that faith turned out to be totally misplaced? Does God award the pennant to whichever team has the most believing fans? Probably not.

            So as I sat at my desk I was a bit sad that I hadn’t chosen to write a sermon entitled, “The Gospel according to the Liberal Party of Canada.” By last Thursday I knew how that one turned out. I wouldn’t have needed any faith for a sermon on that theme.

            Anyway, this back and forth got me to thinking about being a sports fan—or, at least, what it is like for me.

            The truth is, I’m a bit of a fair-weather fan. Not because I don’t love baseball all the time, but because I can’t stand dramatic tension. Not in movies, not on TV, and certainly not in sports.

            So, for example, if there is a TV-show or movie where the guy is getting up the courage to kiss the girl, I have to leave the room. I can’t stand the tension of “maybe-yes,” and “maybe-no.” Or, if there is some dramatic irony that suggests the hero is going to do something stupid, like make his girl-friend mad, or miss meeting her for dinner—well then, I leave the room. I can’t stand the tension.

            Baseball is full of this sort of tension. I love watching a home run. I love watching the bust-out inning. I love a Tulowitzki-Goins-Smoak double-play. But I can’t stand to watch a game where Toronto is one run up and Osuna is pitching in the ninth. I turn it off. Too much tension.

            So when it comes to the Jays, I’m always on the knife-edge. I can’t stand it when they’re failing, or threaten to implode, so much so that I turn my back and try to ignore them.

            And living with this uncertainty, this ambiguity, this two-sidedness is really what faith is all about.

            Do you remember that Facebook post I read at the beginning of this sermon? It finished with one word, “believe.” It was almost as if the post was saying, “if you have enough faith, good things are going to happen. Just believe harder and the Jays will go all the way.” But that is exactly what faith isn’t. It isn’t a tool for getting what we want.

            Real belief, real faith recognizes that there are some things we cannot know with certainty. Faith recognizes that there are some umpires who will make lousy calls, that there are some days the bats will go cold, there are some days that pitching arms turn to rubber—and we can’t change that. Faith recognizes that life is lived on a knife-edge, where both good and bad things happen to people who may or may not deserve it.

            So faith—even large amounts of it—can’t make the Blue Jays winner, or Kansas City losers. But then, what’s the gospel according to the Blue Jays if it isn’t “have more faith if you want to win?”

            Well, I think I’d put it this way. Baseball is a spectator sport, mostly. There are only 25 guys—they are all guys—on the Blue Jays playoff roster, but 49,000 fans in the stadium, and millions more in TV and Internet Land. It’s a spectator sport.

            And, we can actually learn good things from watching this sport. We learn about teamwork, as in a double play; about sacrifice, as in a sacrifice bunt or fly. We learn from watching baseball, about leadership, about taking hiring risks, and about what it takes to succeed at something we love.

            And while we watch, we have fun. We cheer and laugh and groan and do the wave and jump in our seats and shout while, hopefully, not throwing beer cans on the field.  But it’s a spectator sport. And there is nothing wrong with that.

            On the other hand, life itself, a life of faith, is not a spectator sport. It is, rather, a long race, one for which the Apostle Paul says we need to train to succeed. He uses very strong language to describe the race of life: “So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disquailified.” Life is a race, full of any race’s uncertainties, something we train for, that we spend ourselves on, that we work hard at in order to win. Baseball is entertainment, but life is not a spectator sport.

            So what is it that we’re really training for? Well the Bible—and every religion, really—is absolutely clear on this. The game we play is love. The purpose of our lives is to love neighbours, fellow Jays fans, even Kansas city fans—but more to the point—the least, the last, the most needful in our society: our children and parents, our first nations and immigrants, our nannies and environment. Life is not a spectator sport—it consists of loving others whenever we can, whatever our job is. That’s real faith, lived on the knife-edge. We don’t know whether or not what we do for others will make them winners or not, but we do it because Jesus said this is what we do when we really live, rather than watch from the sielines.

            So the gospel according to this blue Jays fan, is this: believe, as the Jays poster says—but don’t believe by sitting in a recliner in order to be entertained. Believe to do, do the right thing, by way of your neighbours.  

            And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying so to take the fun out of life. You see, the secret of the gospel according to this blue Jays fan, is that if you live like Christ and for your neighbor—well, it’s an adventure. It’s a blast. There’s no life like it! Even given the uncertainty.

            I wrote this sermon on Thursday night. I didn’t know how the Jays series would turn out. But in a way, that’s how it is with life. We’re all in the middle of the series, and we don’t know how it is going to turn out, humanly speaking. But unlike fans of the Jays, who can really make very little difference in the outcome of the Kansas City Toronto plays by believing, we can all make a huge difference for how our lives—and the lives of our neighbours—turn out. Because when it comes to Biblical faith, we’re not spectators, we’re in the game, however it turns out. We’re lovers.

Is God Disappearing? And Is that All Bad?

I think it is fair to say that God has mostly disappeared. And maybe that isn’t all bad.

I was struck by this thought while listening to a new song by Portugal. The Man (Yes, no period. The punctuation is odd). It’s entitled “Modern Jesus.” As I listened the first time, I expected the song to offer up some sort of humanistic alternative to faith but I was struck by the fact that that band didn’t even try. After a rather maudlin swipe at preachers, (“we may be liars preaching to choirs”), all they have is, “the only faith we have is faith in us” and “who cares if hell awaits? We’ve been drinking at heaven’s gate.”

Well, I guess it isn’t so surprising that a group of young men with (as far as I know) no formal education other than some college and no serious history with church or synagogue or mosque doesn’t have anything deep to say about faith, hope, doubt, or God. But their song got me to thinking and so I googled “atheism” and “songs,” and discovered that atheism has just about as many hymns as Christian Contemporary Music does. It’s a popular meme. Religion apparently still has plenty value for those who want a can to kick.

But it goes to show that atheism is a definitely a thing. There’s the music. On the more scholarly front, we have the new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, doing a reprise of themes from Time Magazine’s 1965 “Is God Dead,” cover. Nearly a quarter of Canadians (slightly lower in the States) won’t list a religious affiliation when asked, and I’m guessing many more are practical atheists—baptized Catholic or United or something like that, and happy for the church’s help when it comes to weddings and funerals, but mostly, they never, ever think of religion.

CNN is also taking note. It ran an interesting article about an atheist family entitled “The Friendly Atheists Next Door.” It’s good because the article tries hard not to caricature the people it highlights. They’re good citizens. Really nice. But don’t believe in God.

All this hits a bit close to home for me for a couple of reasons. I have personally struggled hard—and sometimes still do—with faith. I’m not sold on God, even though I know and understand most of the philosophic and theistic arguments for God’s existence. The only reason I can offer for hanging in there (besides being a pastor) is that it seems to me that God won’t let me go, which is as close as I can get to saying I have a personal relationship with God. So I try to make the best of it—while remaining honest, and seeking, and trying to sort out what in scripture (or other inspired writing) will help my parishioners live a good life, and why. I’m glad to be in a congregation that wants this sort of approach.

While I’m on my church, I can’t help but be aware of the fact that the previous pastor was a post-theist. Not for his entire run, but the last few years. He was done with a sovereign God keeping watch on how everything turned out according to his divine purpose. That, in turn, attracted a few new members who were curious—or convicted—about this approach to Christianity. It’s a complicated story, but the bottom line is that when I preach, I do so knowing that there are people sitting in the pews who, while they understand I am a theist, are thoughtfully critical about a lot of my preaching. When I preach, I constantly need to keep these people—and their agnosticism or atheism—in mind. You may want to know why they go to church at all—but they have their reasons and maybe that’s a column for another time. But they are welcome, involved, and interesting.

All of this reminded me of a book I read a few years ago, and have since dug up. It’s by Richard Elliott Friedman, and entitled, The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery. This Jewish author notes that in the Old Testament, the nature of God’s presence slowly diminishes from beginning to end. He walks and talks with Adam and Eve. By the time of Noah, and the patriarchs, he only makes special appearances, often veiled in fire or confused as encounters with angels. Moses gets to see a burning bush and the back of God, and all the people see a pillar of fire and cloud, and they don’t want to see more. When Miriam and Aaron ask if God has only spoken through Moses, God answers from a column of smoke and says that in the future he will make himself known to prophets in visions. The last persons the Bible says God “revealed” himself to are Samuel and Solomon. The last great public miracle happens on Mount Carmel when Elijah calls down fire from heaven. Excepting Daniel—problematic on many accounts—for the rest it is all visions and dreams.

In the New Testament God reveals himself in human flesh so ambiguously, so mysteriously, that many who met Jesus, even among his disciples, did not believe he was God. It took the church several hundred years to come to a consensus decision that he was. And as a Unitarian with some Trinitarian tendencies (Check it out here), I’m not sure what I can say about the nature of Jesus’ revelation.

What do we make of the disappearance of God as a progressive diminution in scripture and/or as a cultural reality for us, at least in the West? Well, maybe this—one of the arguments that Friedman also makes. God wants us to grow up.

That is, perhaps God chooses to hide him or herself or itself so that we as humans will own a morality and a destiny that fits with being mature children of God. After all, it is “precisely when humans are closest to God that they rebel most blatantly” (101). Adam and Eve, as well as the Israelites in the desert, not to mention Solomon, all come to mind. For all their walks with God, Abraham and Sarah both laughed at God’s promises. Moses didn’t get to enter the Promised Land. “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be,” God explains. And Isaiah adds, “Indeed, you are a God who hides himself.” 

Why does God hide himself? Maybe Friedman is right. God’s desire—as the Biblical writers understood it, was ultimately that humans should grow up. “Gradually from Genesis to Ezra and Esther, there is a transition from divine to human responsibility for life on earth. The story begins in Genesis with God in complete control of the creation, but by the end humans have arrived at a stage at which, in all apparent ways, they have responsibility for the fate of their world” (30).

So maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that God is disappearing. But then, at the same time, a big responsibility too. It involves, whether you go to church or not, a commitment to doing more than drinking at heaven’s gate, here and now.

Twenty-Two Reasons Not to Give Up on My Church

I’ve read plenty of Internet stories lately that explain why fewer and fewer people--including one-time Evangelicals--go to church. In response, I offer a few reasons why you ought to consider going to (liberal!) Lawrence Park Community Church (LPCC) before you give up on religion altogether. 

• Yes, we think there is a gay agenda, and we’re for it. Gay—or trans, or bi, or whatever—all sexual orientations are definitely welcome at our shop.
• Not married? Living together? Nice. Welcome. 
• Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory. Get over it.
• Neither Eve nor Adam committed an original sin. And I am not guilty or condemned before God on account of any such mythic sin. This is as theologically dense as I’m going to get in this post.
• Most LPCC members believe in God. But all members of LPCC are deeply impressed by Jesus' life and example. We don’t know how God and Jesus are related, exactly. We do enjoy wondering about that question, however. 
• We don’t play any of that faux rock music known as Christian Contemporary Music. We do traditional church music with organ, piano, and an incredible choir. We mix in jazz, real rock and roll, folk, and even country and western occasionally. (Okay, country and western just once). 
• A lot of people at LPCC are pretty well-to-do. I don’t criticize them for being capitalists and then go ask them for money when we need it. Our well-to-do members, after all, are trying to figure out how to be authentically Christian just like everyone else. They merely have their own unique challenges. No need to scapegoat them for that.
• A lot of people at LPCC are barely getting by from paycheque to paycheque. Life in Toronto is expensive. We don't hound such people about tithing or anything like that. We do encourage everyone to be generous with both time and resources when they can afford it.
• Sermons are short. Twenty minutes max. You’re in at 10:30 and out by 11:30—maybe 11:35. Why? Because I never met anyone at the door, after church, who said, “I wish you had gone on longer."
• Still, lots of people come before 10:30, and stay long after 11:30. The coffee is good and the company is even better.
• We don’t insist that members attend every Sunday. We have a saying at LPCC that goes like this: “We’re glad to see you when you come. We bless you when you’re away.” 
• A lot of my preaching is about inspiring people to love their neighbours, doing social justice, and imitating Jesus. I’d love to see everyone plant a bit of Shalom whatever they do, wherever they go. At the same time, I try not to guilt members into it. 
• We’re curious about theology, and like to hear occasional sermons that explore the great themes of Christianity. We don’t shove doctrine down anyone’s throat. Theology should be fun, like a playground.
• We think the Bible is pretty neat. The Bible also makes us, at turns, angry, incredulous, happy, and confused. 
• Not all sermons are from or about the Bible. We have four coming up this spring based on Les Miz, for example. The choir will be singing the texts, too!
• Last Halloween about half the congregation came to church wearing costumes. The sermon was about death. I won't even get started on the Sunday we decorated the sanctuary as Oz, and I wore red slippers. Aunt Em's potluck, after, was delicious.
• Hockey hero and Evangelical Paul Henderson, who most certainly doesn’t agree with most of what passes for theology in our church, preached here last year. So did Maria Toorpakai, a world-class Muslim athlete. Both preached during a four-week series on Sports and Spirituality. This year we’re doing a January series on Social Media and Spirituality.
• Our motto is “United, Unlimited, Unorthodox.” We’re not really sure what “unlimited” is supposed to mean, anymore, but we’re having too much fun to worry much about changing our motto. Ambiguity can be good.
• The pope suggested this past week that birth control is really bad. At LPCC we don’t think so. And I’ve never warned members not to breed like rabbits. 
• The Youth Group is studying the Spirituality of Star Wars this semester. They go on retreats. Lots of pizza and fun.
• We support community causes with generous gifts and volunteer hours: Out of the Cold, New Circles, and Camp Lake Scugog come to mind. We encourage people to give time and money to other causes than just church.
• We had a three-day art show this past year that included a worship interview with one of the artists.  

And I’ve only just started. If you’re wondering about what you believe, if you want to be with other people similarly curious, if you admire the example of Jesus, if you want community, if you want great music, if you want people trying hard to be honest and good rather than hypocrites, if you want to go to a cool church, you ought to check out Lawrence Park Community Church, a United Church of Canada congregation that meets at 10:30 am on Sundays at 2180 Bayview Ave. in Toronto.

Blogging (Sometimes about Faith)

            I blog. In a way, blogging is, for me, an extension of the writing I did as editor of The Banner. I enjoy blogging in much the same way I enjoy writing my weekly sermon—that is, I don’t enjoy it much at all until I get to that ecstatic moment when I’m done. In the mean time, I have also learned a few things about blogging. I thought they might be worth sharing. I wonder what other bloggers—or readers—think.

            One: I wonder about my motivation. I think it is definitely a bit narcissistic—which also explains the time and effort I put into things like Facebook and Twitter. I like to see my name in print. I like to interact with people impressed by—or not—what I write. This is a confession. I think, however, it is a confession that many bloggers, if they were really honest, would make with me.

            Two: Which is not to say I don’t have some more altruistic reasons for blogging. I believe I have something to say. I want to promote discussion about important issues--especially the ones that interest me or that I know something about. I hope I can add to that timeless, unending conversation that theologians and public scholars and philosophers are having out there about the way the world turns. Or am I just being narcissistic again?

            Three: It is hard to find the time to come up with good, original material on a regular basis. Really. I’ve often forced myself to write something even when nothing was burning in my belly. Why? Well, the rule seems to be that if you don’t regularly update your blog, people stop reading it. And I want people to read my blog. Why? See number one, above.

            Four: One of the bigger challenges I face is staying real—writing in a way that resonates with what people are actually thinking. But to do this while also demonstrating that I’m aware of the many academic currents that surround my topic of the day is a real challenge. Balancing a plain-spokenness with depth is one of the hardest challenges a blogger faces. I often fail.

            Five: I find it much easier to “go after” someone or some institution than to express real delight in someone or some institution. I think, in part, this is so for the same reason that car accident stories are more likely to lead off the local news than “fund-raising goals met”stories lead off the evening news. People have evolved to focus on trouble and to relax when it is absent. Unfortunately, this tendency isn’t necessarily very charitable.

            Six: Just as I need to be careful about going after those I disagree with I need to relax about people who come after me. The truth is that I’ve changed my mind, and some other people who are threatened by that or angry with that or just sad that will never “get it.” I need to let them be angry or overly sympathetic or even pray for my soul without getting too upset.

            Seven: There is a whole side to blogging that I’m not very good at, but which is quite important if I want increase my readership stats. My webpage design has to be good. Old articles should be easy to search for and find. Search engine optimization should receive some attention. Pictures and other illustrations should abound. I’m thinking of plowing some money into this, but that old Calvinist taboo against self-promotion is pushing the other way. But, as I’ve noted, I’m also a bit narcissistic. We’ll see.

            Eight. Blog posts should be short. It is hard to read long blog posts on a screen in a way that it isn’t hard to read a long book chapter. Brain physiologists are starting to write about why this is—I’ve written about it in my book and in blog posts. But what is short? Less than a thousand words, for sure. Five hundred would be better. But then—how do you address topics with the depth they deserve? Interestingly, I always manage to keep all my written sermons to less than 1500 words and usually not more than 1200. I have a much harder time doing that with blogs. Today I think I’ll succeed.

            Nine. This may be related to the need to stay real. But the best bloggers know how to make strategic use of self-disclosure. Readers need reasons to identify not just with an argument, but with a person.

            Ten. Sermons—or revisions of them—can sometimes make it to the blog. But they don’t lend themselves to blog posts very often. Put them on your church’s website. Mine are.