[+/-] Undisciplined

Two things:
1) December's up on my journal.
2) I've changed my email address. psalm13@hotmail.com got a buttload of junk mail, so I've switched to gmail. (Note that it's 13thpsalm this time, not psalm13, because some other punk has psalm13@gmail.)
And now for the main event:

"If you're not reading your Bible daily, you're not giving yourself much of a chance as a Christian"

That's an approximate quote from the speaker at the camp I attended last weekend. Statements like this always bother me. I don't read my Bible daily. I used to - I dutifully read 2 chapters a day, every day upon awaking, for maybe a year and a half once. Never really got anything out of it. Well, I'm sure I gained knowledge about what the Bible says, but I never enjoyed it and I never noticed any effect it had on my life. It was just something I made myself do because I was supposed to. It was pure religion.

These days I read my Bible in little spurts. I haul it out when I want to do a study of some doctrine or understand some difficult passage, but there are weeks when it never leaves my bedroom floor. When I do read it's far more often with an intellectual focus than out of some desire to "grow closer to God", whatever that means.

I have trouble thinking of good reasons to pray. Quick story: I once spent a day talking with a homeless guy in Vancouver. At the end of our talk I asked him if I could pray for him, and he said yes. I asked him what I should pray, and he said that it would rain money. ("Small denominations are ok - tens and twenties.") That wasn't what I was hoping for, but I told him I would pray that for him, and I have. Infrequently. Awkwardly. Briefly. But whenever I think of that guy I pray that God would make it rain money for him. If you ask me to pray for you I will, sporadically yet dutifully, but I have a suspicion that the encouragement brought by saying "I'll pray for you" does more practical good for a person than any amount of prayer.

I used to think that it was bad for me to stand in Church and sing worship songs if I wasn't thinking about the words. These days I often try not to think about the words I sing because I disagree with so many of them. I look at worship (meaning singing) as something I do for God to show my devotion to him. It's far more about the act of acknowledging God's existence and presence (or my belief therein) then about affirming any kind of doctrine in the songs. And it certainly has nothing to do with any emotions I might feel.

I've tried fasting maybe two or three times, and never for more than a couple days. The result of depriving myself from food is that I become really miserable and grouchy and all I can think about is food. Some people say fasting removes distractions and allows us to focus on prayer. Maybe for some of you, but not for me. For me there are few things more distracting than fasting. How am I supposed to focus on praying about stuff when all I can think about is food? Other people say depriving ourselves of food shows the ugliness of our true natures. Well ya, because my body needs food to survive. Try depriving me of oxygen and I'll become pretty miserable too. Would suffocation reveal my "true nature"? I honestly think that banging my head against the wall at regular intervals, cutting myself with knives like the prophets of Baal or any other method of self torture would accomplish just as much spiritual good as the "spiritual discipline" of fasting.

I have no idea what "listening to God" means. To me this is on par with Hindu ideas about reaching higher states of reality through meditation. I'm not going to go around telling other people they can't listen to God or transcend the physical world or whatever, but I have no idea how or even if I could achieve something like this myself.

My intuition and experience tells me that I'm naturally different from other people and I can't expect what works for others to work for me. I've found some things that do work for me and I should be happy with doing those things. Maybe it's just jealousy that makes me wish prayer worked for me the way it worked for Brother Lawrence or Jim Cymbala or that reading my Bible could become something that I'd cherish and that would bring me closer to God. But on the other hand maybe these things will work for me, and I just gave up too soon. Maybe if I could somehow force myself to pray more or if I just kept fasting long enough, then maybe there would be some kind of payoff. Ok, I don't actually believe that, but I do feel uneasy just shrugging off the tried-and-true methods of godly old preachers. I'm cautious of saying, "Ya, I'm not like you. I've got my own stuff that I do; yours doesn't work for me." I don't want to miss out on the obvious answers because I'm so busy being special, and I don't want to tell some guy three times my age that he doesn't know what he's talking about. What do I know anyway? Bah, I'm silly. A reed swayed by the wind.

[+/-] Happy Birthday Jacob

Hard to believe it's been a whole year since I started this blog. And at the same time it's hard to believe it's been just a year. One year, nigh 50 posts, and an unknown number of words. (Unknown because my profile's user stats froze at the beginning of November and has yet to unfreeze. Join me in a rousing chorus of boos for the people at Blogger, who have failed to fix my little stats-counter thing for going on seven months.)

It's been an interesting year. I just skimmed through a few of my old posts, and it feels like I wrote most of them yesterday. But I also feel so different now. Nothing has changed; everything has changed. I've always hoped that God would do something amazing to shake up my world and keep me from becoming what I've become. I've always hoped I could become a good conservative again and believe everything the Bible says and have a great story to tell about how I fell into the dark, slimy pit of cynicism-and-liberalism and God called me back. Actually my ultimate hope was always that God would open the heavens and reveal himself to me, and that I'd be able to become a good Charismatic and be emotional and passionate about everything and have a great story about how I called out to God from the dark, slimy pit of luke-warm intellectualism and He raised me up. (The band would play softly in the background as I gave my alter-call - eyes closed, one hand raised, cheeks streaked with tears - telling the thirsty and the broken about the abundant life available to them in Christ, and how all they have to do is pray right where they are to accept it.) But here I am, some kind of liberal intellectual, and I'm ok with that. (Not ok with the labels maybe, but ok with who I am. Labels are sucky, but you can't really communicate without them.)

I never thought I'd be happy again - not without being called back to Conservativism or into Carismaticism. I never knew people like me could be happy. And I certainly never imagined that becoming the way I am could take me from depression to contentment. I never thought this would be the testimony I'd have to tell.

One thing saddens me: where could I tell it? Not at any camp I know. Not at my church or in my youth group, or any of the places I've volunteered. And I don't want to make it sound like I've found The Way and everyone needs to start believing what I believe (may it never be!) but I'm ok with who I am. And those of you who have known me for a while will know how unusual it is for me to be at peace with what I believe.

Dear reader, smile for me today. Today is my birthday (ok fine, my blog's birthday), and I'm happy. Share in my happiness today, and tomorrow we can talk about theology and orthodoxy and inerrancy and whether I'm going to Hell. Love to all.

[+/-] Why Everything You Believe is Probably a Lie

Just for fun, here's little bit of philosophy for you:

I've decided that the physical world is probably an illusion. Like the matrix, maybe, except that if you were to somehow "wake up" you wouldn't still be in a physical world like this one. You probably do not have a body. The basic laws of physics and everything you've come to believe about the world is probably false. You are probably being deceived.

How do I come to this belief? I'll take you through three steps. First, let me explain how it is at least conceivable that the physical world does not exist. To do this, we must simply imagine a possible explanation for how this could be the case. There are several possibilities, but the simplest is that there is a greater being who is deceiving you. This being could have any number of motives for presenting you with the illusion of a physical world, some benevolent, some malevolent, some that have nothing to do with you. If we cannot prove that a being capable of deceiving us in this way could not possibly exist, we must allow that it is possible that the physical world is an illusion.

Second, let me claim that this scenario is more than just an obscure possibility. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's at least as likely that the physical world does not exist as that it does. Do you disagree? Can you explain why it is more likely than not that the physical world exists, or to put it another way, that a powerful deceiver does not exist? So far as I can tell, there is no compelling argument against the existence of the deceiver. Since most, if not all, of our knowledge is derived from our experiences in the physical world, I cannot imagine an argument for the physical world's existence that does not presuppose that it exists. (All such arguments would be circular reasoning.) If we can make no arguments either for or against the existence of the deceiver, we cannot attach a probability to it's existence. All we can say is that to the best of our knowledge, it is equally possible that the deceiver does or does not exist.

But if we can't develop an argument for the physical world existing, maybe we can develop an argument for it's non-existence. We could do this is we could find an inconsistency in our belief that the physical world does exist. Let me tell you about the mind-body problem. Most people believe that there is both a physical world and a non-physical world (I'll call it this the spiritual world). The spiritual world we know very little about. Some believe that it contains God or gods, angels, demons, ghosts, etc., while others believe that the spiritual world is limited to our minds. Our minds are distinct from our brains. Our brains are the physical stuff - neurons and whatnot - that control our bodies, and our minds are the conscious part of us - metaphorically "the ghost in the machine" - and contains our conscious minds, our spirits or souls (if you believe such things exist), and possibly what we call our hearts. It seems to us that mind and body (or spiritual and physical) are distinct substances. Our bodies exist in space, have mass, and are perceptible by various senses and instruments. Our minds are totally different - they are not perceptible by any physical means - and yet they seem to interact somehow to our brains. (For example, willing my fingers to move affects my body, and drinking alcohol affects my mind.) And this is what really stumps philosophers: how is it possible that two totally distinct substances (mind and body) causally interact? Many people have suggested solutions to this problem, for example that our brains somehow generate consciousness as a side effect of , or that we are entirely physical beings and the mind is an illusion, but all such theories are flawed or inadequate. However, the theory that the body is an illusion solves the mind body problem nicely. To put it another way, the belief that you have a body which is of different substance from your mind is flawed. Unless we can explain how the mind and body could interact, the weight of evidence is against the existence of the physical world. Interesting, eh?

Disclaimer: My philosophy text tells me that this view is called idealism, and that it has "few if any serious defenders" today. I don't see why it's not a good theory (except that it's a little counterintuitive) but I suppose the fact that all the smart people who think about such things disagree with me suggests that I'm likely wrong. (If you can explain to me why I'm wrong, please do.)

Oh, and I'm really not sure what the applications of this belief would be, if any. Just so we're clear, I'm not saying that if you put your "body" in front of a "bus" you won't be "killed", I'm just saying that your pain and death (along with anything you may experience afterwards) would also be illusory. But I don't know what you should or could do differently if you were to adopt the belief that the physical world probably doesn't exist. Well, maybe I do, but my thoughts aren't fully formulated, so I'll leave that part for another day.

November's up on my Journal.

[+/-] Consistency

"Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her."

But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Isn't that beautiful? One of my all-time favorite passages. Ruth = da bomb. Imagine being so loyal to someone that you would stay with them until death, living where they live, dying where they die, believing what they believe... oh wait. Do we admire that? Do we think God admires that? What if you met someone who said "I'm devoted to this person. I follow their religion for that reason alone, not because of (and if necessary, contrary to) any intellectual or spiritual conviction." Say you have a friend who's a Muslim or whatever. You're praying for her that God would show here the error of her ways. You've got all your scientific proof that your religion is better than hers. You've got a strategy to become her friend and be nice to her so she'll be interested in the beliefs you're selling. At the right time you broach the subject of faith and she says "It doesn't matter what you say. I am loyal to my mother in law/husband/family and I will believe what they believe." Would that warm your heart?

I often feel like Christians apply a double-standard when evaluating people's actions. Never mind Old Testament genocides, barbaric laws, racism and hatred, there are plenty of examples in our day-to-day life. If you admire Ruth you must also admire anyone who adopts or sticks with the religion of their loved ones out of loyalty. Long ago (years before I became a heretic) I became convinced that if I was going to ask non-Christians to subject their current beliefs to scrutiny, I must be willing to do the same to mine. I wasn't worried, of course, because I knew that my own beliefs were true and thus impossible to prove wrong. But I thought then (and still do) that I can't ask someone of another worldview to think critically about their beliefs if I was unwilling to do the same. (If you disagree, please explain to me why.) If you admire a Christian for refusing to question their faith, you must also admire a non-Christian who does the same. If the non-Christian ought to think honestly and critically, so ought the Christian. If I'm going to ask a Mormon to consider the possibility of his book being fallible, I must do the same for mine.

Just in case you agree with me so far, let me get a little radical. If I admire a person with whom I agree for acting on her convictions, I cannot also condemn someone who acts of very different convictions. If I admire a Christian martyr for acting on her faith I cannot condemn a suicide bomber for acting on his. To be consistent, you cannot praise some who boldly stand up for their convictions in spite of intense societal opposition if you demonize others (say, Fred Phelps). I'm not sure who my readers are, but this cuts both ways. Do you love or hate James Dobson? George Bush? Osama Bin Laden? Mother Theresa? Mao? The Pope? Unless you can show me otherwise, I think all are people who follow(ed) their convictions. Either you must accept them all as good people on that grounds, or you must find something other than personal convictions on which to base your judgments of such people. And if you choose the latter, you must explain why a good God (if such a being exists) would allow some to be convicted of things for which they will later be condemned.

The easy way out is to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is acting against their convictions, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. I used to believe this, until my convictions started to lead me away from the beliefs of my friends. I have a hard time believing that every conservative Christians I know is acting against their convictions. Some of them maybe, but not all. Once you know the people on the other side (so to speak) it's a lot harder to dismiss them as depraved.

(Btw: October's up on my Journal.)

[+/-] The Limits of My Submission

Check out my new blog. Ok, it's not a new blog, it's my old journal. You may or may not find it interesting. (Great sales-pitch, eh?)

So I started reading this little book by Erwin McManus called the Barbarian Way. I'm not sure what I think of it yet, but it did get me thinking about something. He tells the story of John the Baptist questioning whether Jesus was the Christ while in prison. He says that John's problem here is he expects that the man who could make the blind see, the lame walk and the dead return to life could also get him out of prison. John was Jesus' earliest believer, his cousin, and apparently the greatest human being in history. If there was one person on earth that Jesus might go out of his way to help, you'd think it would be John. If there was one person that Jesus would have benefited from helping (considering everything he'd done for him so far), you'd think it would be John. John lived in the scorching desert for Jesus. He ate bugs and wore gross clothes for Jesus. He fearlessly stood up to the religious and political elite, and was in prison at that moment as a direct result of his uncompromising zeal for truth and morality. And yet at that moment it seemed that Jesus couldn't be bothered to help John out. Jesus didn't even contact him - John had to send his disciples to ask Jesus what was going on. John had reason to be miffed. McManus points out that it wasn't the absence of miracles that caused John to doubt, it was the fact that the one who performed so many other miracles seemed unwilling to provide a miracle for John. Jesus doesn't make it easy for John either, in fact he almost seems to be rubbing it in:

"Jesus replied, 'Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.'"

Jesus is effectively saying "Ya John, I'm doing a lot of miracles out here, and yet none are coming your way. But don't abandon me just because I've abandoned you." That's got to be tough to hear.

I've said before that I'm not comfortable making promises about what will happen to people who become Christians. I can tell you nothing about how God operates, except that he is unpredictable. I can tell you nothing about what your life as a Christian might be like, except that it won't be like anyone else's. I'm not convinced that any of the promises in the Bible translate into real, bankable guarantees for today. I'm not convinced that God wants to save you from a crappy life, monotony, or depression, or that he will to give you hope, strength or joy. But I've always clung to the belief that whatever God does to me, even if it seems unfair, unreasonable or counterproductive, is ultimately for my good. My good. Suddenly I'm wondering if I've been wrong.

I've always known it's not about me, but what if I'm not even important? What if God's got a plan, and I'm a part of that, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with me being blessed in any way? What if I'm collateral damage? What if God's plan involves dragging me through a whole lot of shit - not for my ultimate betterment, but as a means to a greater end? Paul went through shit for Jesus and found contentment. John went through shit for Jesus and died alone and confused.

I'm not saying that my life will suck, or even that my life sucks right now. But what if it's God's plan for my life to suck? I guess what I'm asking is what am I willing to let God do to me? I've told God countless times to do what he must to make me what he wants me to be. (Not that I'm always ok with what happens to me after I pray that.) But there's a big difference between praying "God, do to me what you need to to make me awesome" and praying "God, do to me what you need to to accomplish your will". I've always assumed (or hoped) that at the end of my life I'll be able to look back and say, "That was rough, but I'm glad God put me through what he did because it made me a better person." Now I'm just imagining saying, "That was rough. God's taken everything from me, and even now it's all I can do to not fall away."

One of my all-time favorite songs is Refiner's Fire. I love that imagery: Purify my heart. Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy. Every time I sing that song I think about how I'm asking God to burn away my sin in a furnace, and how painful that would be, but how it would be so worth it to be holy. I imagine myself as one of those old men in the church who everyone's a little bit in awe of because of what they've done for God. I imagine myself being set apart for God, doing his will, maybe even feeling close to him. (Dreams die hard.) It's never occurred to me that doing God's will might mean unrelenting, undulled anguish, and that the ultimate result might not be me becoming an amazing man of God, but me dying a friendless failure - broken, bewildered and alone. Am I willing to give my life to God not for my own betterment or purification, but merely to play a brutal bit-part in plan I'll never know? Am I willing to have everything taken from me by a God I'll never see or hear, at his discretion, without understanding, without joy or hope, only pressing on, following my convictions and steadfastly refusing to fall away?

No. I'm not willing. God is my lord, my purpose, and my obsession, but there are limits to what I am willing to do for him. I can't pray that God take total and unqualified control over my life because I'd be praying a lie. But maybe I can pray that he take me to a place where I can pray that prayer.

[+/-] My Defense of My Process

This is a little mind game from my psyc textbook. Each of these 4 cards has a letter on one side and a number on the other. Which two cards could you turn over to test the rule "If the card has a vowel on one side, it has an odd number on the other side?"

Did you try it? 'Cuz you're not allowed to read on until you do. Ok, here's the interesting thing: over 95% of people will choose to turn over the A and 7 cards. But this will not necessarily prove whether the rule is true or false. The cards you need to turn over are the A and 4, because they're the ones that can prove the hypothesis false. It's irrelevant what's on the other side of the 7 card, because the rule is not disproved even if there's a consonant, but a vowel on the back of the 4 or a even number on the back of the A will prove the rule false. (And if neither is the case, the rule is obviously proved true.)

This illustrates the confirmation bias: the tendency to look for evidence that confirms our current beliefs. You can see that it applies even to points where we have no prejudices or vested interests, such as the four-card problem - how much more so in matters of ethics, politics and religion! But if we really want to know if our beliefs are right or wrong, we need to look for evidence that disproves them.

This is what I've been doing for the past couple years, even if I wasn't initially able to explain it. Some Christians tell me I'm too critical of Christianity. Well, I'm interested in knowing whether my beliefs about God and morality (which have potentially eternal implications) are true. Rather than simply appease my skepticism with reassuring apologetics, I look for possible flaws in my beliefs, and then try to determine whether the flaws are genuine. If I decide they are, I alter or replace my beliefs until they are no longer at odds with the available evidence. If I decide that a belief fits with the available evidence, I hold onto it until such a time as it comes back into question.

Some will complain that I'm biased one way or the other - either that I seem to be trying too hard to poke holes in my beliefs or that I ultimately cling to beliefs that don't fit with what I discover. I'm sure both complaints are valid in some instances. All I can say is that I'm just a man - prone to both error and sin, often falling victim to (and sometimes courting) various errors and logical fallacies. It might be a lie to say I'm doing my best, but I'm trying.

Some will say that I need to decide what I believe and then just have faith. I confess that I don't have a really firm grasp on what faith means or when it should be employed, but I can tell you that I'm not a great believer in "seeking an understanding within my faith". I understand this to mean taking what you believe for granted, and twisting everything else until it fits with your preconceptions. I have no interest in a faith that limits my ability to think honestly and objectively.

This is how I understand faith: I am not omniscient, therefore I frequently need to make decisions based on less than perfect knowledge. In these cases I try to make a decision that fits with the knowledge that I have, and let faith make up the difference. I have faith in many things, from the structural integrity of the chair on which I'm sitting to the trustworthiness of a friend to the existence of a benevolent God. My faith in my chair allows me to type much more comfortably than if I were standing, but if circumstances arose that cast doubt on my faith in my chair (say it makes cracking noises and begins to wobble) I wouldn't seek an understanding of these circumstances within my faith, I would get the hell off the chair! I'm sure most people would do the same. There is nothing noble about continuing to have faith in an untrustworthy chair. There's certainly nothing noble about pretending that there's nothing suspicious about creaks and wobbles. My father will not come by and explain to me that "We trust that chair", nor will anyone try to reassure me that "everyone has doubts about that chair from time to time". No one will suggest that I listen to a speaker give arguments for the strength of my chair or remember all the times when the chair has held me up. I think we can all agree that if the structural integrity of my chair comes into question I ought to examine it carefully and objectively. If I determine that the chair is in fact still strong, I will continue to sit on it. If not, I will look for a new chair.

If my chair falls apart while I'm sitting on it, I may hurt myself. If my religious beliefs turn out to be wrong, I there may be more serious consequences. I'm not saying your faith in your chair (or any of your religious beliefs) is misplaced. But doesn't it make sense to think critically about your beliefs? I guess I just don't understand why some people get antsy about questioning their faith, or even about me questioning mine. Do they really think God's going to object?

(Ok, I've just got to throw this in: a hilarious satire of the conservative paranoia with intellecualism can be found here.)