AA Post

A story that really affected me in a profound way and something that I think of pretty often is one of the stories behind the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is an organization that I find heroic and miraculous.  It is a story about part of the experience of Bill W., who had terrible problems as an alcoholic, and who one day reportedly said, "If there is a God, let him show himself."  And soon after that, Bill W started Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped thousands of people overcome addiction and find support during tragic suffering.  People in the group rely on their "Higher Power," and while many people take a conspicuously great effort to point out that Alcoholics Anonymous is not the church, it seems pretty obvious that God himself has intervened continuously through AA from the very beginning.

    That utterance or something like a prayer that is so out of bounds for most people is so amazing to me, and the story inspires me, because it seems just like God to answer just that kind of "prayer," and maybe even to wait for that kind of request that so much reflects the desperation of someone suffering from alcohol addiction.  I could go on and on about it and I am tempted to just translate all my prayers into that format.  Like... if God wants me to do my impossible chores, let him show himself.  And if God wants me to stop cursing at people, let him show himself. 

    But this blog post is about something entirely different, and it is a topic where I really have decided that I might adopt that Bill W prayer mindset about something that has been driving me crazy quite literally for many years.  It has to do with Presbyterian Theology, and how much I do and don't believe it, and what exactly I am supposed to take into the world as a mission when I can't quite be certain of almost everything anyone has ever said to me. 

    I said in another post that I have some Catholic leanings, and some of that is from wanting to believe that there is a more specific application of an all inclusive mercy and justice for people and an ongoing opportunity for anyone to know God personally instead of an all or nothing theology test where if you pray a certain prayer then you escape eternal torture.  I change my mind a lot and actually have learned to just keep myself from obsessing about it and try to be productive in other ways, but I can't quite ever fully escape the ideas I have been taught, and the belief that it must be resolved and might even be the only thing that matters for anyone. Even as I say that, it sounds so absurd, and yet many books in the New Testament support some of that teaching, along with the idea that everything has been predetermined with a good God behind everything that happens. I do find myself thinking that people are pretty stupid to try to do everything good except ask God for Christ's forgiveness.  I mean, how insulting to someone who died to save people from their sins.
    But I still waver all the time and thought recently that I might be able to find some temporary peace and another segment of time where I can keep living life without all the answers if I officially shrug off the burden of being responsible for everyone else, and if I shrug off the pressure of having to believe something that I can't go that long of a time believing.  I think that Bill W's prayer could be the key, and I could just say even after all the revelation from church and time, if the Presbyterians were ever right, let God be the one to say it, and let the Protestant theology show itself. God can make the sky plaid if he wants, or drop a stone tablet on my head that has the Westminster Confession carved into it, or drop stone tablets on the people who are mean to me at the grocery store, or send an alcoholic missionary to help me decide that I do not have to be the one to save everyone.

Disclaimer

I feel like writing a little disclaimer on this blog, because I have recently ventured into theological territory that really does matter for people and can be controversial not in a random political conversation way but in a way where I really don't want to mislead people about stuff that can affect their whole lives. So my disclaimer is to say that I really think some sermons and ideas from the Bible are medicine for people's souls, but that this blog is really more like food and not medicine.  It is a leftover squash casserole from Thanksgiving, and not a potent dose of healing medicine which people might really get from a church with people who have not had as many thoughts so muddled by entire bookstores of other ideas and conversations with people who believe other stuff and who I wanted to like me.  I called this blog the Worldly Monk Theology Blog because my life is a mix of very strict religious loyalty and prayer but also a very liberal participation in a messy world and a filthy, lost, abused and abusive culture.

The Twelve Doofuses

Sometimes when the disciples of Christ messed up in the Bible, Jesus would say stuff like "Are you still so dull?" and the equivalent of "How can you be so stupid?" and I think a lot of people see it and find it to be a surprisingly gruff manner from someone who would eventually forgive people while being tortured on a cross.  In fact, I even read a book where an important theologian practically called Jesus a jerk for talking to people that way.  But we know that he wasn't a jerk, so what does it all mean?  Well I had an idea yesterday while imagining myself helping people not miss out on Christianity which is that his emphatic rebukes to people who were already so rich as to be in the company of Christ himself and have since then inherited an eternal honor almost beyond comprehension is that one of the reasons he was tough on people is because the stakes were so high and there was a great reward that he did not want them to miss out on.  And it is an indication to everyone, including people now, that we should not be stupid and constantly promote our own greatness in a way that makes us miss out on greater glory and love. I also think that it is an example of how to live, much in the same way that all his kinder words were, and that when we think things like, "Why would anyone do drugs instead of working?" or "How can people be so stupid to think all the planets just appeared out of nowhere and all the animals invented themselves through mutation?" that there may be some occasions where this exasperation should be expressed in full.  And that the main goal is not our own vain desires to be known as people who are generally right about everything, but that there is some blessing available that we would not want anyone to miss out on, especially if we have any influence over them, even as persecuted people who don't have the greatest media power.

With a Vengeance

    Ok everyone, I thought of a theological question that I think is one of my most interesting wonderings.  You know how people always say that one of the reasons to forgive and not seek retaliation about things is because God says "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."  People quote that a lot and sometimes use it to encourage people not to seek some kind of justice or revenge, and people make it sound like those are the same things.  But yesterday I was thinking about it and don't people also spend their whole lives trying to be "Godly" and do everything according to how God himself would do it?  That is the idea of following Jesus Christ, and of being "imitators of God."  So my question is this: wouldn't that mean sometimes saying "Vengeance is mine, I will repay?"  I just know everyone is saying, "Of course not," but isn't the real answer "Of Course?" I am genuinely wondering because I definitely in recent years have found more of an appreciation for people who stand up to evil and abuse and make reputation sacrifices to be the ones to say we are not going to tolerate scams and abuse. 

    I think that is really almost enough to say but it makes me pause to think about the cross again, which is such a symbol of forgiveness, but also was a deliberate act that was defended by the presence of swords in the garden of Gethsemane.  Why did the disciples have swords if it was all about letting people abuse Christ?  To me there is a case that Christ went to the cross deliberately for a lot of reasons, and there might have been more of an offensive (like basketball offense) strategy not just against evil itself but against specific evil people throughout all of history who have been and still are very defeated by the cross and by all of the believers who learn to literally fight for all kinds of salvation and freedom.

A winning war strategy is to have already won.

    There is a verse in the Bible that I think Jesus says, which is to be "shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves." It is a clear instruction for everyone to think smart and deliberately participate in the outwitting of the demons. However, I think that in a society that is even remotely fair, people should not have to be geniuses to do what they are supposed to and live a decent life. If basic honesty and kindness are thwarted at every step, then the bad people's evil schemes are embarrassingly complicated and they are the ones with the problem. In situations where a general and faithful goodness is not allowed, then a certain martyrdom or partial martyrdom will characterize the lives of those who are disappointed to not be their best selves, and we will be surprised at the end when the blame we expect turns to credit.

    Another thought I have about how much strategy it should take to obey God is that when people do what they are supposed to and live according to the Holy Spirit, then our normal actions and words become apt and fitting in a way that is backed by God's authorial genius and take on a quality of cleverness that can be a thousand times what we would imagine on purpose. With all of God's literary devices and engineering of physical laws, when we tell the truth and merely agree to follow the command to "let your yes be yes and your no be no," our simple words can instantly be the wittiest sayings imaginable and our deeds become part of an unstoppable and unprecedented master plan.

Ideas

    I think that when things really get bad in a country, and there is mass stupidity on a scale that threatens to take the whole country down, one option is for the country to divide itself into two countries and let people choose whether they want to be in "The Good Country," or "The Bad Country." Well who would want to be in a bad country?  Only stupid people. So they can make their choice, and our work is done here.  That is kind of how heaven and hell works, and the strategy might work well on earth sometimes, too.

Stages of Faith

    I think some people think that to be religious at all is to automatically be a hypocrit, and there is just no such thing as true Christianity and a good person who has faith.  But a lot of the people who promote those accusations are often the people who have created a culture so vile that basic human decency and honesty might really become impossible standards, and where the people who have Christian morals aren't allowed to follow through on their beliefs and therefore are constantly tempted to pretend to achieve Christian ideals anyway. A lot of people who call us hypocrits have truly made it impossible for us to succeed at our faith by deliberately corrupting every system that we have to be a part of to stay alive. So we are stuck with a choice to either be honest animals or fake saints, where we at least give some kind of shout out to what we were striving for by doing some pretending here and there.

    I also think in times that Christians fall short and truly do show some hypocritical tendencies, like when we choose to use people and "turn in" unbelievers to churches by showing everyone how we are reaching out to people, that this kind of unacceptable behavior is often just a phase or stage of growth on a path that in the big picture is actually very glorious and the victims of our two-faced double-dealing are actually still indebted to have any inkling at all of the mere existence of church and Christian truth.  I mean I say that knowing full well that stench is stench and people are right to be disgusted by fake friendship and condescension, but we should protect ourselves and everyone around us from the lies of the media, or literature, and of academic people who invest so much effort in trying to convince people that Christians are the ones who are perpetually dishonest.  I hope that maybe somewhere quiet in people's minds, they have the strength to do the math, and to think to themselves, "okay, what is really suspicious here? Is it the people who praised sobriety but couldn't help but party a little too hard with people they love? Or is it the people who brag about reading Lolita and mock autistic homeschool children because they said they are thankful to be forgiven for their sins? I think in the end, it is most questionable to try to block a door to heaven, and quite hypocritical, too, since it is impossible to close a door held open by two hands that have nails through them.

Christian Agnosticism

   I have been thinking about converting to Catholicism lately, but can never quite let go of being an Evangelical, and then other feelings of confusion kick in and I am left with the same exasperation where I feel responsible for sharing all my faith but don't know what that is. I mean the gospel as I know it is now a fifty volume mess of thoughts from reading a thousand books and learning from hundreds of friends who believe different things. And the gospel as I don't know it is a million books plus the religion I was taught by people who turned out to be chronically wrong about many important things that it is really not okay to still be wrong about.

   So I am wondering if I should just continue my constant obsessive code cracking and say whatever happens to be my belief at whatever time, or if maybe I should simplify things and give myself a little label like Christian Agnostic. I probably shouldn't, since people might think I do not believe in God and Jesus, when really, I feel very thankful to not just believe in God but to know him personally and be one of his friends.  And I know all along the way that God has wanted me to do things the way He would do it, and one of those things is being friends with agnostics.  So maybe that means God might want a little friend who doesn't know everything, and maybe that person is me.

Ironically

Well everyone, in this blog I have repeated some of my ideas that I have used before in poems and sayings, but I think it could be good that I keep coming back to some recurring themes.  That could be how I know that I am onto something important. This particular thing that I want to mention has to do with some of my thoughts about staying alive, and what to think when life becomes a lot about endurance instead of blessings or even service and productivity. I have been truly miserable sometimes with no end in sight, and it made me wonder what the purpose of living is.  I mean why should people be able to take away my Christian martyrdom AND get away with torturing me.  It seems like it should be one or the other.  Like you can't make my life meaningless and purposeless and be allowed to hurt me on purpose.  And yet I have found myself in situations that seem like that.  I have tried to handle those situations by praying more, thinking that maybe my prayers would count for more since I did not feel good, but it is hard to believe that kind of thing when you feel like your life is being wasted.  However, after years of doing what therapists call "Opposite action," where you just keep building a life when you don't feel like it, I have concluded that the very times that most seem like lose-lose situations are actually part of a life that has a bright side on every side.  I have concluded that if I am expected to keep living with unbearable suffering, then my existence must be very important and every second that I spend on earth is crucial. And then the other bright side is that if people, including me, really are allowed to ruin my life, then that must mean that the most important stuff is in heaven, and I can accept extreme losses here with infinite hope. It is kind of a luxury to write about this stuff now that some of my suffering has eased up and I don't have to be using all my might to get through each day, but I think there is a reverse alternative to thinking okay, people are allowed to take away both my temporal happiness and my eternal reward. It's more like all the swindling and adversity can both confirm the once-in-eternity nature of this opportunity to live, and still suggest that there must be some kind of consolation so great that people can take it all and they have taken nothing.

Just Like in the Cartoons

   One of the most interesting and important ideas of Christianity and really a moral law of the universe, is that "He who loses his life for Christ will save it, and he who tries to save his life will lose it."  It is something that happens in big and small ways and could be part of scenarios like letting someone have the last piece of dessert and then that is right when someone brings out a better dessert that you get to have.  That is kind of a stupid example but there really are ways that unselfishness pays off in little moments and in great spans of history or just across a lifetime.  It has kind of driven me crazy to try not to be on the losing side of that principle, but I think letting my OCD kick in to obsessively try not to lose anything actually would be one of the instances where I end up losing instead of gaining.

   But anyway the thing I want to mention about it is something that I had to learn pretty early on in my life, which is that things can be confusing when there are situations where you really do need to save your life or someone else's.  That is what happened to me when depression threatened to win out and made me suicidal.  I abruptly had to stop looking for opportunities to suffer on purpose and started having to do everything to hoard as much happiness as I could find.  It changed the way I interacted with people and looked at friendship, and ironically, I think that it helped me be a truer friend instead of looking at people as potential good deeds.  Probably that whole idea of going ahead and losing some Christianity points and choosing some kind of authentic life actually is just another basic example of saving your life by losing it, but it is disguised, because didn't I save my life by saving it?
  God is very clever and He is the one who saves with all of his laws of nature and with all of his intervention beyond those laws. Everyone who trusts in him is guaranteed to be in what basically amounts to a Scooby Doo episode where at the end the villains will say, "Curses, foiled again."  Even those of us who start paying attention to all the patterns around us and trying to deliberately beat the system are like simple Looney Tunes road runners who just go where we are going while all the evil coyote plans backfire all around us.  And in the end, we will be winners, diving into piles of gold like Scrooge McDuck and his nephews in the Ducktales cartoon.

Because or Despite?

This is a post that could go on my mental health blog and I might do another one like it for that list of posts. I am just thinking about friends from a long time ago who were there for me, and I have to say that church people have really not let me down, even after sometimes being taught that people like me are bad people. It is common for people with mental illness and problems like that to be misunderstood and rejected for bad reasons, which has happened to me and a lot of other people, and has happened in church settings.  But literally hundreds of church people have come through for me and included me in their dearest groups of friends.  There have been times where I could barely have a conversation with people and could barely even sit up or hear what other people were saying.  But some of the greatest people in the world became my sincere friends.  I have tried to do that for others, and I would say that friendship with me is not usually complete charity.  But when it has been kind of like that, people did come through.  There is still no excuse for pastors to teach that mental illness is sin, or that people who take medicine for depression might not be real Christians, but the consistent help and "inclusion anyway" from their congregations is not something to be overlooked when looking at how the church treats suffering people.

What if I did say this?

Something I have been saying lately is "I did not do or say that but what if I did."  It is a little something that I thought up because people try to get on everyone's case about every little mistake, and I am saying what if I do say the wrong thing and even what if I do have some character problems?  You know, what if I do?  Everyone has to get out and live their lives without being perfect and it is a brave thing to do.  And as the flaws increase, the courage to face the world anyway increases, which is not something to feel bad about.

The miracle of suffering

   I have realized sometimes that my survival in life has been somewhat miraculous, and have even had to think about whether there can be such things as twenty year miracles.  I mean in the Bible some of the miracles just took a few minutes and then people enjoyed their health.  But when you have a chronic condition and survival really isn't a given, finding yourself to be alive after twenty years of daily suicidal ideation or some other dangerous symptom is really cause for thankfulness and reason to be certain that God has helped you.

  But that is not what this post is about.  This post is about something else that I don't always think about and will probably immediately retract next time I feel awful.  This post is a reflection about what might also be a great miracle, which is the suffering itself.

   I am only speaking for myself, though other people might have similar stories.  There are mysterious reasons for suffering, and there are benefits that affect other people and can do things like help people know God better or have more compassion.  For me personally, I think that some of my suffering has helped me with some of my hypocritical tendencies, and I think that some of the extreme humiliation I have experienced has some kind of value as a Christian witness.  Most importantly, I feel securely able to pray to God as much as I want and have gotten to know him better.  There are probably other benefits, too. But even that is still not exactly what I am saying is a miracle.

   What I am really saying is that it is a miracle that someone like me could suffer at all. I just grew up in a great environment with awesome friends and cash for great grocery stores, and parents who cared and provided for me, but who weren't necessarily eager to support me as some kind of life-risking Christian missionary.  When you have blessings and resources like I had, which included getting to go to college and having a lot of opportunities and good health, then it really usually is morally questionable to just waste that stuff for suffering's sake. I wouldn't be allowed to go to some dangerous place to live for a worthy cause, and it would be an intolerable offense to try to replicate those conditions in my own life, so what are my options? Well good service and giving for other people are great options.  They really are and I will always tell people who feel happy and well to make the most of their blessings and don't underestimate what people can accomplish by helping others and being honest and good.  
   But for me, I was interested in some of the more extreme messages about the cross of Christ, and it seemed like that kind of adventure might have been intended for other people. However, I think that is not what happened. I have had a great opportunity to feel worn out, to forgive, to show up and be a part of other people's lives despite pain, and, well, to wish I was dead for years at a time. And how stupid to call that a miracle, but how stupid not to, because God has been good to me, and though I deserved to be treated better in life, I got better than what I deserved.