Those Guys

I've always had an issue with Biblical Authority. Part of me has no problem accepting the Jesus narrative as accurate and dependable and by that I mean, Jesus healing lepers, saying "blessed are the poor in spirit," and raising from the dead. None of that bothers me in the least, it's when I get a shout out from the sidelines that I get annoyed, especially with John.

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was God..." Wait just a darn minute, Johnny boy, I know you walked with Jesus, heard him speak, saw him ascend into heaven, and for that, you're a reliable witness, but now you mean to tell me the metaphysical narrative as well? The story you weren't alive for and did not see with your own eyes?

"Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. [ok, no problems there] But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name [gar!]" I would like the facts without the embellishment, thank you very much. Tell me what you saw and I'll decide if Jesus was the Christ.

On Radio Lab a few weeks ago I heard an episode about the Milgram studies, the well-known psychological experiments where individuals were asked in a laboratory setting to administer electrical shocks to another individual. The shocks were increased to possibly life-threatening levels, and, to the surprise of the western world, many individuals obediently carried out their instructions. Luckily the victim was only an actor, and the button administered no electricity.

The immediate shock value of the base test was that normal U.S. citizens were capable of such heinous acts against their fellow man, and the conclusion was that people ordered to kill were very much willing to go along with the program. This conclusion, however, was false! In studies after the base study, Milgram tried using different words to motivate the shock administers to do their duty and when given direct orders to shock the suffering human, the administering volunteers would stop and walk away 100% of the time.

I'm pretty sure I know why I have this aversion of the humanity of the Biblical writers. I remember learning from Baptist friends growing up that you must be saved in order to go to heaven, and to be saved was to be "born again" (the minuscule foundation  from the Bible that all this crap hangs on). Being saved was as certain a concept as Jesus saying "I have come to declare the day of the Lord's favor" and there was no arguing with it. You might as well have told them to destroy the church. It was jarring for me years later to learn that people have wonderfully fulfilling lives in Christ without ever having said the word "saved" and that made me angry. And like a father who knows better, I take my anger out on those who least deserve it.

So I have a problem with John or Paul or whoever else telling me who Jesus is, but you know what, the truth is none of that matters. It doesn't matter what I think about the Bible, the people who wrote it, or their agenda. There's a trust issue that the Biblical writers have no obligation to correct. I've been warped and deceived in my little life and that's something I have to overcome, not something the Bible has to address.

Taking the First Step

A journey is a baffling thing. You start somewhere and end up somewhere, yet you can only occupy the space you are presently in. A journey, like a song, has a particularly elusive kind of being. Unlike a painting, or a barbecue grill, or a glass of water, a journey has no particular point at which one can say, "see, this is my journey" because it exists as an event flowing through time. You can't pick up a song and show it to someone. The only way to share the experience is to play it for them, which requires stopping, listening, and feeling the music with undivided attention.

Unfortunately, a journey is not a song, either. At least, not a recorded song that can be replicated time and time again in nearly the same way. After days of travel, you find yourself a changed person standing in a new place and to replicate the spontaneity, difficulties, and discoveries of a particular journey is not humanly possible.

I think the journey analogy is quite apt when talking about faith. To think of my days hating and memorizing  Bible verses in a musty Baptist classroom, or praying a fearful prayer of repentance to gain salvation, or growing close to other boys my age after living in a cabin for a week, or seeing Jesus' love for the poor and broken jump out from the Bible for the first time, or through friends who have loved and changed me, I cannot think of a way to systematize my experience and present it in a neat and orderly fashion to help guide others on that same path.

Simply put, I'm not in the same place I started in. Much of my journey I look back on with bitterness and contempt, even though it was all part of the journey and no parts were any less essential, I still take parts of the journey personally as things I would never wish on others. The pain and anger I have toward those parts, especially the fundamentalist parts, has often led me to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That being said, this blog is going to be my attempt to go back and find that baby. I'm doing this blog as an exercise to find the God I love and find out how I can bring something like the gospel to the students I serve as a youth director. Wish me luck!