EA2: The transcendent is scary

In Sunday's New York Times, Samantha M. Shapiro writes about the students she met while visiting Biola University, an evangelical school that began as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. "All God's Children" is an insightful, sympathetic piece, and Shapiro's fondness and sympathy for these young people is clear.

The article is also noteworthy for an accurate and fairminded assessment of this particular slice of the evangelical subculture. Shapiro describes Biola well and provides context for showing how it fits in with the rest of evangelicaldom.

She begins with a scene from the Intro to Mass Media class taught by Craig Detweiler, whose book A Matrix of Meanings is subtitled "Finding God in Pop Culture." On this particular day, Detweiler's attempt to introduce his students to the wonders of Bjork collides head on with a crippling example of evangelical anxiety:

Detweiler fiddled with his laptop, and an image of Bjork appeared on the projection screen. The music switched to a soothing Bjork ballad called ''All Is Full of Love.'' He turned up the volume.

''What do we think of this?'' he asked. ''Is God in it?''

''To be honest, I have a hard time with that,'' a student offered tentatively.

Adam, a skinny mass-communications major with dark, shaggy hair, said: ''I like the music. It's ethereal and beautiful.''

''What's that she's singing?'' Detweiler asked. ''All is full of ... ? All is full of ... ? All is full of what?''

No answer.

''Love!'' he shouted triumphantly. ''All is full of love! Anybody in this room with that?''

Tracy, a polished journalism major in the back of the room, shot up her hand and asked, a little indignantly, ''Isn't that just back to the everything-is-love fun, happy relativism?''

Then Christina spoke up. She agreed with Tracy. She allowed that the Bjork song reflects ''the concept of common grace -- that everyone has a taste of God's goodness,'' but she pointed out that common grace ''is not enough for salvation.''

Detweiler had an hour's worth of songs and slides stored on his laptop. He clicked through the Klezmer Conservatory Band and ''The Best of Tito Puente.'' He suggested that a recent concert in Los Angeles by Sigur Ros, the Icelandic postrock band, created a ''sacred space of beauty'' that might be a contemporary ''site of general revelation.''

The students, all evangelical Christians, were skeptical. ''It's hard to think the artist is completely in the right if they don't say the truth -- that Christ is the only way,'' one remarked.

''This music leads to more music, not to people finding Christ,'' another said.

Detweiler seemed agitated. He kept raising the volume louder and louder. He banged his eraser against the dry-erase board, where he had written ''truth'' and ''beauty.'' He told the students that creative people who start with a message are propagandists, not artists. The teachings of Jesus, he said, weren't straightfoward moral lessons. ''People had a hard time following Jesus,'' he said.

There is a Liliputian quality to evangelical faith. It seems to imagine God lying on the beach of our little kingdom, bound up with the cords of our propositions about him. That which is transcendent -- truth, beauty, goodness, Bjork -- is too large for our categories and propositions. Too large for our idea of God.

The idea that God might be bigger than we think -- bigger than we can know or imagine or explain -- can be terrifying. What if God should arise from the beach, shrugging off our tiny chains? Then we would no longer be in control.

What I'm calling "evangelical anxiety" is all about this fear of losing control. The nagging sense, lurking just below the surface, that we are not in control after all, no matter how much we insist we are. One result of this anxiety is a reflexive need to reassert that control, to interpret the world and respond to it in a way that reinforces the illusion that such control is possible.

Detweiler is trying to remind his students of something that C.S. Lewis, the British popular theologian so beloved by American evangelicals, repeatedly wrote: "He is not a tame lion."

The students' reluctance toward big, messy transcendence is particularly sad in light of something else Shapiro observed while visiting Biola:

The emotion that is most strongly manifested on campus is longing. The worship music at the Thursday night coffeehouse and at chapel often sounds like an angsty Top 40 guitar ballad. Students sing along to lyrics like ''Lover, love me'' with eyes closed, arms raised, shoes off.

A Liliputian God affords a Liliputian basis for hope. Deep down, I think, these students are longing for something bigger. Something wild.

Comments

[Peatey]

I too thought the article was fair and balanced. I had a chance to visit The King's College (located in the Empire State Building!) the Friday before the article came out. The growth of these evangelical colleges are amazing.

[sophia8]

If these students cannot allow themselves to enjoy music that doesn't have an explicitly Christian message, then how do they handle other forms of beauty? For instance, what happens when they are enjoying a georgeous sunset, or lying in a sunny flower-filled meadow, or strolling through an old-growth forest, or walking along a deserted beach, or seeing the view from a wild mountain-top, or looking into their lover's eyes? Do they tell themselves "I cannot enjoy this - it's not telling people to come to Christ"?

[Adam Kotsko]

If a church managed to get Sigur Ros to write a mass, then the Music Question that has bedeviled us for lo these many years would be finally and decisively resolved.

[carla]

This made me really sad. Perhaps you can answer a question for me, and I'm not being flippant: What is the point of finding christ? I'm really quite serious; what's the point? Is it to change behavior so that we're all more christ-like? One doesn't need to know christ for that to happen. Is it personal salvation? Some kind of life after death or resurrection? That seems far-fetched to me. Is it worship for the sake of worship? I really don't know. I'm hoping that one or more of you can explain this to me . . .

[Stacy]

carla: According to the way the Evangelicals interpret the Bible, one has to believe in Jesus Christ as their personal savior in order to be saved (aka go to heaven). They further believe that all those who don't, even if they call themselves Christians, go to church every Sunday, and are otherwise very good people, will go to hell. The Evangelicals generally do not believe that good works (anything other than this belief in Christ as their savior) will save them, however, they do interpret the Bible to say that it is their duty to spread the word of God and get other people to also accept Christ.

Serious question: is God in ugly things as well? It's not hard to believe that God is in a sunset, but is he also in a bullet wound?

Perhaps you could ask: It's not hard to believe that God is in a sunset, but is he also in a crucifixion?

Humanity tends to look for God in Beauty, but I think the message of the New Testament is that God has revealed himself to us in Suffering. If Jesus is the true image of God, the face God has shown us, then you're probably more likely to find the real God in a bullet wound than in a sunset.

[carla]

So if one does not believe in heaven/hell, then the whole point of the evangelical interpretation is flawed, no? The other thing I find most disturbing about this mindset, as I implied above, is that it tells us very little about how we ought to treat each other. If being saved is the necessary and sufficient condition for heaven/hell, then one can be evil in behavior--I'm thinking of the TXU post, as well as the current administration--and it makes no nevermind at all. Of course, I'm probably missing a whole bunch . . . I'm also thinking about a post I saw yesterday on Killing the Buddha about the Lutheran evangelical types (I'm blanking on what the sect is called) and the "bible porn" the author read to his campers.

[carla]

And speaking of suffering, the buddhists have some thoughts on that, too. But I don't understand the phrase "God has revealed himself to us in Suffering." Can you expound on that, please? I'm clueless about what that means.

[Stacy]

Well, if one doesn't believe in heaven or hell, then the things that really matter to Evangelicals are completely irrelevent for the most part.

Conservative Christians (the ones who are honest and sincere, like the ones in the article) obviously wouldn't say that evil behavior is OK, and most of them would say that someone who is truly evil[*] wouldn't be able to accept Christ, since Christ calls on them to lead a godly life, but yes, you have touched on a point that is often overlooked. Also, many Evangelicals find themselves ignoring or poo-pooing issues like in the TXU post. Greed (which the Bible pretty emphatically denounces) sadly doesn't get much airtime compared to abortion, gay rights, and premarital sex.

[*] One person's idea of "truly evil" is different from another's, but for simplicity, let's say the Evangelicals would consider mass murderers and rapists truly evil. Those people could be saved, according to them, but then they would stop doing the evil stuff. I don't want to get into what evil consists of, here.

[straight]

I'm not sure exactly, but here's part of it: God's response to human suffering is not to say, "Oh, but look at all the beauty in this world, doesn't that make it all worth it?" Rather, God responds to suffering by suffering with us.

Humanity tries to ignore the consequences of our sin, but Jesus' crucifixion exposes how evil sin really is. Sin leads to gunshot wounds and crucifixions.

However, I believe God raised Jesus from the dead, and that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is given to God's people so that they may confront sin and the suffering it causes and overcome it.

That's a brief and incomplete explaination, there's much more to it. And this is not meant as an alternative to the basic Evangelical formula that Jesus died for our sins, but rather an expansion of it.

[straight]

Another way to put it would be this: When God became a human being, he did not become an artist, but someone who said his mission was to "bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the opressed," who lived with the poor and ourcast, healed the sick, and was unjustly tortured and killed.

So if we want to find God we might should start where Jesus spent his time, with those who were suffering in body, mind, or spirit. And we may discover that in giving to them we are giving to and receiving from God (see Matthew 25).

[Beth]

I've never understood how anyone could believe that the Creator and Lord of the Universe could be so small-minded as to put so much stock in what people call him. If someone truly loves me, appreciates my creations, and cares for my children as if they were their own flesh and blood, what do I care if they call me "Beth" or "Bubba" or "Hey, you"? What if I let Jesus Christ into my heart, but instead of calling him "Jesus Christ", I call him "Buddha nature" or "Love" or "the spirit of Truth?" Will I be denied salvation because I got the name wrong? What if, on the other hand, I let hatred and judgementalism into my heart, but call it "Jesus Christ"?

By the way, nothing is really beautiful or ugly in itself. If we see something, whether a sunset or a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk, and are filled with joy and wonder, it is beautiful and it connects us with God. It's easier for most of us to experience the beauty of a sunset than a piece of gum, but both are beautiful in the right eyes. Suffering, too, can waken in us a sense of compassion and transcendent love, and to the extent that it does that, it too, is 'beautiful'.

p.s sophia8, beautifully said.

[straight]

Problem is, filling my heart with Love and Truth and concern for others is hard. Not that it can't be done, but few are successful.

But, what I think is exciting, is I believe that the Creator has actually done something to help us love others, something more than just give us advice and good rules. I think God became a human being and died and rose again in order to give us the power to love.

Even if following Buddha's teachings is helpful to you, I'd think the whole God-becoming-human would be worth paying attention to and maybe even taking part in. Just trying harder to love people isn't enough for me.

[Daniel Lewis]

I identified myself as an evangelical until happening upon one of the earlier posts (in evangelicals) that said that evangelicalism lacks metaphor. But I am full of metaphor, and I want to sing a new song. I hate crappy art made to "bring souls to God", at the same time as I love beautiful art presenting God in a fresh way.

"What is the point of finding christ? I'm really quite serious; what's the point? Is it to change behavior so that we're all more christ-like? One doesn't need to know christ for that to happen. Is it personal salvation? Some kind of life after death or resurrection? That seems far-fetched to me. Is it worship for the sake of worship?"

Different people will tell you different things. One person will say that we are rips in a great garment and Christ sews us back together, so the whole is beautiful again. Another, that we are grim-faced soldiers torturing innocent people; we want to be transformed inside and out, so that we drop the whip and take the blows instead. Another, that we are rotting on the inside and must catch the "good infection" to be made well. Another, that we are falling down a hole with no bottom and need to learn to fly. Another, that we are foreigners here, and seek our true country. Another, that we are defined by desires that are not worthy of us. Another, that we were made for love.

Sin, death, beauty, desire, love, the world, heaven, humanity... these are all fruitful ways to consider the story of Christianity. Some Christians don't understand these new words because they have been taught to look at God a little, and have since grown comfortable seeing him in the same old way.

I like what Detweiler was doing at Biola. Jesus is a surprise, and so should be Christianity.

[carla]

First of all, thank you guys; I appreciate your patience in explicating the belief systems, even if I don't share them. One of the things that troubles me, Daniel, is the (apparently) inherent assumption that we are flawed beings who require the intervention of a deity. The intervention will cure or fix us in some way. I think it's the assumption of pathology that makes me a little nervous--kind of like some (but by NO means all) recovering people I've met who claim that everyone is addicted and in need of a 12-step or other recovery program. The other thing, straight, and I've mostly seen this in the protestant sects, is that it's hard to think of oneself as having filled one's heart with love and truth, etc.; one will always feel as though one has Fallen Short, and will therefore internalize the guilt in a way that's compatible with the pathology I mentioned above. It's an interesting contrast to catholicism, and to judaism, for that matter (I know much less about Islam on these matters). It's also an interesting contrast to the Quakers, for that matter, who (I would argue) are closer to Buddhists than to evangelicals or other protestants. (I feel like the Sorting Hat here . . .) But thank you all again. This is fascinating.

This confuses me:
I think God became a human being and died and rose again in order to give us the power to love.

Surely we had the power to love before Jesus died and rose again. Surely Abraham and David and Moses loved God. Surely Jesus' disciples loved Him. Surely Jesus' teachings opened people's hearts. He did not go around preaching, "I'm going to die and be reborn," but "God loves you perfectly and completely. Trust in Him. If you love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself you will attain the Kingdom of Heaven."

Maybe Buddhism wouldn't work for you. It has its own practices and heart-stirring stories -- as do all religions -- but maybe they'd be too strange and foreign to your particular mindset and worldview, just as the Christian view of an external, anthropomorphic god who once took human form is too strange and foreign to my worldview to work for me.

[straight]

Maybe a few people have had the power to love the way we ought to, but I think if you look around, watch the news, read history, it's pretty clear most of us don't. Maybe that's just pathological thinking, but it seems to me more like honestly facing the facts.

The idea of God taking human form may be strange and foreign, but I think it really happened, and that's what I think is so interesting and powerful about Christianity: news that God has actually done something about all the evil and suffering in this world beyond giving us some inspiring teaching.

[Patience]

Carla, in reference to your 4:23 point, speaking as an Episcopalian, here's how I see it: everyone is flawed. (Do you know anyone who isn't?) I don't think God's grace "cures" or "fixes" us for all time; Christ's intervention was a sign that God believes that we perfectable... personally, I don't expect to be perfected in my lifetime, and I'm beginning to feel as though it doesn't even matter if I go to heaven when I die and become perfected there. Just so long as I know that I can move towards perfection while on Earth (which, in my view, most simply stated boils down to the Golden Rule), I feel as though I am living out God's plan for me and repaying the debt I owe for Christ's redemption of all sinners. So when I take Communion every Sunday I thank God for seeing me through the week just past and ask Him to watch over me in the week to come, as I try to become a little more perfect (and fall flat on my face, generally... which I think God expects to happen; just look at how Jesus related to the apostles).

Anyway, getting back on topic, I can see how Detwiler might have been frustrated by his students' unresponsiveness to Bjork; I felt much the same way when I was trying to explain to my atheist boyfriend how "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" could be read as a Christian parable.

[Daniel Lewis]

"One of the things that troubles me, Daniel, is the (apparently) inherent assumption that we are flawed beings who require the intervention of a deity. The intervention will cure or fix us in some way. I think it's the assumption of pathology that makes me a little nervous"

If you have cancer, the word is diagnosis, not assumption; in that case, you would be pleased that the oncologist thought you were sick and treated you accordingly. I'm not playing semantic games. Are people flawed? Is that an assumption that cannot be questioned, or a fact that may be argued? The second, I'd say.

Jesus says something on this point, in the Gospel of Mark:

When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
(Mark 2.16-17)

The healthy and the righteous don't even have a spot at the table. Christianity doesn't go anywhere for people who don't need to be changed; CS Lewis invited people who thought they were perfect to stop reading his explanation of Christianity (Mere Christianity).

If you can entertain the idea, just for argument's sake, that there is something wrong with the world, with people, even with you, Christianity will become much more interesting to you.

[carla]

Don't get me wrong, Daniel; human beings are obviously not models of peace, love, and understanding--not even me. But why expect us to be? I certainly believe that we should try to live by the golden rule; I think a deep (or even shallow) consideration of that single teaching provides a very useful guide for behavior. I also recognize that we don't always succeed. But I just don't see what a deity has to do with it.

If the belief system helps you make sense of the world, helps you to be a better person, helps you live a christian life in the deep sense of that, that's all good. I'm certainly not trying to convert anyone. I think one way to explain it is that my world doesn't have gods in it, so, when I get into these conversations, it's like there's an extra being being squeezed into the cosmos, disrupting the pattern rather than completing or augmenting it. I understand THAT other people's worlds have deities in them, however, and I try to understand how that deity/those deities operate and why, as best I can. That's why I ask for explanations (and thank you, Patience, too)--I'm trying to see what your world is like, what its operating principles are, etc.

[Sophia8]

I'm not an atheist, but I agree with Carla. Some of these posters' efforts to make Christ fit into their world-view is bewildering to me.
Why put so much value, so much emphasis, on suffering? (Especially when 'suffering' can often be a subjective concept.) How will making suffering so valued, so prized, so Christ-like, encourage people to try to put an end to it?
Heck, it's possible to find spiritual transcendance and transformation through pain (or all kinds) - but don't assume that's true for everyone.

[pablo]

All Is Full of Love! Has he seen the video? It's weirdly explicit robot sex.

I was baffled by gay student there. My impression is that most of these kids beleive because it's all they know but if challenged out in the real world they might not keep the faith.

[bellatrys]

Carla, you keep talking about Buddhism. Are you familiar at all with Amidist theology? I find, from what I read of it, striking congruence with Christian mystical tradition on suffering. I find illumination of my own tradition, iow, by seeing how an entirely different tradition can come by a completely different approach to so congruent conclusions, and a strong influence on how I reapproach Christian moral life. The same with Hinduism and dharma. Like triangulation, or determining the value of pi.

Sophie8 - because suffering is *there*. It exists in the world, it always has. We all must go through it, many of us endure horrendous suffering every day. We do not *value* it as something to be preserved - we refuse to reject those who suffer as unworthy beings, or to pretend that it doesn't really happen by staying in a bubble of optimism and controlled experience, the way that is presented as ideal in the consumerist culture media.

[straight]

Carla, Christians believe that humans can and should be better than they are because we believe that the one who made us and knows us better than we know ourselves has not left us entirely to our own devices.

We believe God continues to care for and be involved with this world, that God has told us things about ourselves and what we were made to be that we could not have figured out entirely by ourselves. And most importantly, we believe God has done something, in a particular place at a particular time, to fix what is wrong with us.

I think I understand what you mean by "my world doesn't have gods in it," but from my perspective that seems as strange as (I'll choose an example from my line of work, Public Health) someone saying "my world doesn't have AIDS in it. I understand that other people have to worry about AIDS, but that doesn't fit into my world." The idea that you could get AIDS from that nice-looking guy from small-town Ohio may not make sense to you, but I've still got to make you understand that AIDS is real and quite possibly relevant to you.

[Beth]

straight, That's a terrible analogy. AIDS is a condition, a collection of symptoms. 'AIDS' has no objective existence. HIV -- generally agreed to be the cause of AIDS -- does.

I would readily agree that religious 'symptoms' exist -- in some people ecstasy and involuntary cries and movements, in others a direct experience of the essential oneness and goodness of all things, in still others a sense of comfort and being loved. Whether there is an actual, objective entity called 'God' behind all that, a 'transcendental HIV virus' which causes some or all of these religious 'symptoms', I really don't know. I don't believe that the entity you describe -- an super-being with basically human thoughts and emotions existing somewhere outside the known world -- exists. Not have traveled to all planes of existence, I can't be certain it doesn't exist, but like Carla's, my world(view) doesn't contain it.

[straight]

Sorry for the sloppy language Beth, you're right, of course about HIV.

My main point was, in response to the question, why do Christians think people should be better than they are, that we don't think so because we are reasoning from our personal experience, but because of a particular set of historical events which we believe took place and from which we believe we have received information about the human condition that we couldn't figure out all by ourselves.

The religious "symptoms" you describe have very bearing on my beliefs about God. Christianity is not an attempt to explain mystical experiences, Christianity is an attempt to explain the signifigance of what happened in Palestine in the first century.

[carla]

No, bellatrys, I'm not familiar with Amidist thought (except as it appears in Shogun :-) ); I know a little more about Tibetan buddhism, and I used to know a little about Indian buddhism--my master's thesis was about an Indian king (Asoka) who converted to Buddhism and who ruled a significant portion of the Indian subcontinent.

Note that one can experience a sense of comfort and being loved, to use Beth's phrases, or ecstasy, or oneness, without attributing it to a deity, or, indeed, without believing a deity has anything to do with it at all, and, in my opinion, without a deity actually having anything to do with it at all.

Amidist? Understand that the ground of being is nothing. Where's your god there? Learning to dwell without thought-coverings is a little different than ultimate sacrifice fantasies. You are nothing - experience that.