Freedom in Contradiction

So, as I posted recently, I got a tip about the Divine Office website, DivineOffice.org, that I can use as a daily meditation, if I could just be so sacrilegious about it, a daily tool to use, to connect with God and to connect with reality.

And, you know, these types of things, kind of, you know, especially given that this is just Scripture, there’s no commentary, it’s all just Scripture.

And it goes back before even the, the tradition here, this is a post-Vatican II accessible Divine Office, but it goes back supposedly before the church, it reaches back into the Jewish tradition and emerges with the church.

But, you know, I do the morning Divine Office and, you know, it really spoke to me in a way that told me that, you know, this is the path, this is a deep well that you can draw from and that you don’t have to use your critical thinking skills all the time in the way that you would have to if you were reading something written by one human, one modern human.

But, you know, I read, I poked around a little bit on some of the other tabs, you know, the mid-morning prayer, the midday prayer, even the evening prayer.

And, you know, I have to say that, you know, it’s this weird dynamic with God, right?

So it’s like, you know, I’m looking on the midday prayer and it says, they are happy whose life is blameless, who follow God’s law.

They are happy who do His will, seeking Him with all their hearts, who never do anything evil, but walk in His ways.

And that’s Psalm 119.

And that’s complete utter bullshit.

zeitgeist

YouTube just served up to me a video from a Catholic priest, and I don’t disagree with what he is saying.

I don’t think I’d say it quite the same way, and I don’t think that I would be saying it from a place within the institution.

He was all decked out in a priestly costume.

That term “costume” may be offensive, but frankly, every time I see a Catholic bishop, what comes to mind is pedophile.

I know that the Catholic Church, they call it the crisis, and there’s a whole army of explanations and consolations and justifications that laity who are addicted to the institution, make to themselves, but the priest, and by the way, the final nail in the coffin for me about not becoming Roman Catholic is when I looked at just a few pages from the grand jury report.

I think it was Pennsylvania.

The crimes that I saw, clergy using the imagery of the nativity as part of their sexual abuse of minors, they had a completely systematized process to cover up these crimes, and they would actually circulate the priests to different parishes after they had abused everyone available in the current parish.

That’s a slight exaggeration, but they may have abused everybody that was potentially abusable, but they did a lot of damage.

I’ve even heard that they had in some places special crosses and special regalia or something you can wear as part of your clothing that identified the children that were the most vulnerable and therefore the easiest target.

That was the last straw for me, but as I’ve said many times, I do get a lot out of the Catholic tradition.

The Catholic lectionary is kinda my way to stay close to the tradition and to get myself centered every day.

I pray the rosary, and I stay close to the sacraments in the Anglican tradition.

Before I lost my ability to drive a car due to my epilepsy, I used to go to Eucharistic adoration and they had holy water there.

I think all that stuff is real.

I think that the physical world is a sacrament.

Getting back to the YouTube video, the priest was talking about the first thing you have to do if you’re going to follow Jesus is to get over your fear.

I understand what he was saying.

He was trying to say, and he did say, if you’re going to follow Jesus, you have to jump in with both feet.

You can’t hold back.

That is true in the sense that, as I’ve said before, if you’re drowning and somebody throws you a life ring, you have to grab the life ring.

If you just grab the life ring a little bit but don’t hold on to it, it’s going to be pulled away from you and you won’t be saved.

As I wrote a whole post recently on St. James, and St. James was warning against doubt, not intellectual doubt, but about a lack of commitment.

If you’re going to follow Jesus, you’ve actually got to follow him.

You can’t just one foot in, one foot out because, again, Jesus is not being a prick.

Jesus is saying, hey, you’re sick.

I’ve got the medicine.

You have to actually swallow the medicine completely.

You can’t just put it in your mouth and then spit it out.

You’ve got to take the medicine.

If you’re going to be pulled out of the pit, you’ve got to hold on and be pulled out.

If you don’t hold on, then you’re going to stay in the pit.

That’s just the way it works.

The purpose of this reflection is to say that I wanted to speak directly to the priest in his costume because he’s right that following Jesus requires total commitment.

That requires commitment to Jesus because Jesus is truth incarnate, at least in our tradition.

If you look at I think 1st John and certainly the Gospel of John and probably 2nd and 3rd John, if I remember correctly, he’s the one that really thinks about this the most in my understanding.

But if you want to be saved from the lies of the world, you have to encounter the truth of Christ.

We can talk about Karl Rahner and his concept of the anonymous Christian and we can talk about interfaith dialogue.

I’m just speaking in the Christian tradition right now, and if you’re going to be saved, you’ve got to cling to the truth.

I think part of the problem people have is that let me see if I can make a metaphor that doesn’t fail.

You have to grab on to the doctor’s medicine, not to the doctor.

I know that the Roman Catholic Church has built an entire intellectual scaffolding upon intellectual scaffolding upon intellectual scaffolding about how the institution is critical and is essential to salvation.

I’ve called bullshit on that.

I’m calling bullshit on it from a place of I have found peace and I’ve done it, although I’ve dialogued, I have a lot of Catholic friends.

I’ve looked very closely at the Catholic tradition, but there’s lots of holes in it, but even if you set aside the intellectual squabbling, I have found peace and I did it without becoming Catholic.

I can even give you an anecdote.

I used to go to Eucharistic Adoration and then I would go to Eucharistic Adoration.

If you don’t know, that’s when you go to a special room at the church, it’s kind of like a chapel, and they have the host, the sacred bread, the Eucharistic communion bread, and a monstrance, and then you’re supposed to sit there and be in Christ’s presence.

I did feel Christ’s presence when I went to Adoration, and when I went online and started looking at the Eucharistic Adoration online, I felt it there too, and I felt a longing to reach out and come to this Eucharistic Adoration, and I felt separated from Christ, but then at a certain point, when I would look at Eucharistic Adoration online, I felt the peace internally, whereas before I was feeling like I was cut off, and the Adoration, Christ’s presence was in a monastery a long way away, and I could only look at it through a camera on the internet, and I couldn’t get to it, and I couldn’t become Catholic yet, but at a certain point, when I look at the Eucharistic Adoration, I feel the peace in my heart, like the peace has been transferred from the Adoration to my heart, and again, set aside Luther, set aside existentialism, at the end of the day, I can’t trust the Catholics with my kids, and I don’t need to go into all the stuff, but there’s this thought out there that all this stuff happened, and all the priests that did that, they’re all dead.

I know that there was some prominent Catholic bishop that got busted at some point in the past 10 or 15 years, but anyway, there were cases that I had looked at in that grand jury report, I think as recently as 2003 or even later, and I know that’s been what, 20 years or so, but still, you know, I just, you know, to me, I could have talked myself in to become a Catholic, I could have talked myself in to their theological tradition, and I still get a lot out of it, and I’m really grateful for it because it’s, you know, the Protestant scene is chaos, which can be good, I mean, the Catholics make the point, if I can think of the name of the, I think it was a German, I don’t know, there was some big shot, you know, Catholic, no, some big shot, I think Lutheran, he’s a Lutheran theologian, [Wolfhart Pannenberg] he made, he was a big shot in the 20th century, and the back of the book, you know, the Catholic perspective was like, you know, this is really important, it needs to be reviewed even if it doesn’t agree with that tradition, but one of the things that the Catholics make the point about is like, the Protestant world requires these big name, at least according to this view, like, you know, the Protestant world requires these big name theologians to crop up every now and then, that everybody can rally around, whereas the Catholic view, whereas the Catholic church in their view was more stable, and it didn’t require these big names, but anyway, that’s one of those intellectual parlor games that, to me, is a distraction from the fact that life is hell, I’m in a pit, Jesus is the way out, grab on to Jesus, you know, unite my sufferings with his sufferings, and have them transfigured, and be able to have interior freedom and joy, even if coming with pain, and the everyday life, and the reason I started this reflection is because, you know, it was like a 20 minute, it was a 20 minute video, I only watched about four or five minutes, so I had time to watch the whole thing, but you know, I think that the Catholic guy, and his white clothing, was saying the right, he was saying the right thing, but I think that, you know, I think Luther, and I’ll say that The Wound of Knowledge by Rowan Williams had some language on Luther in that book that were, you know, may have been the most important thing I’ve ever read outside of Scripture, because Williams explained Luther’s views in a way that really, and I want to be careful here because I hadn’t read this lately, I’ve read it many times, but basically, if I remember correctly, Williams on Luther was basically saying, look, you know, all the scaffoldings fail eventually, and that the strength of Christianity is that at the core of our tradition is a failure, is a woundedness, is a cross, and he talks about the secret joy in that, and when I first read that, I was like, I want that, like I’m trying to follow this, like I understood the argument intellectually, but I wanted that joy, you know, and, you know, I think today I have it, and, you know, part of the way that looks is, you know, my life is chaotic, I’ve got appointments here, appointments there, looking for a job, kids, and, but I’m able to just roll with it, you know, I don’t, I’m not trying to, you know, I’m not trying, you know, good things happen, I mean, you know, something popped up on LinkedIn about a job opening where I have a friend, it was a perfect opening for me, you know, but I wasn’t like, you know, they just popped up, you know, and I’ve, you know, I’m doing things, but I’m not trying to, like I had alerts, I’m doing things that I understand God wants me to do, and I’m, but I’m not trying to project manage the outcome or the timetable, and I think that’s what, you know, Williams on Luther was talking about, you know, the secret joy that even if my life is being, even if my life is a complete wreck, according to the world’s standards, or even according to my own inner critic standards, which is probably the more important thing, you know, I can still rely on Christ, and I can still say, hey, you know, at the end of the day, Jesus’ life was a wreck too.

I mean, just in terms of how it ended.

And, you know, and, and like I say, you can, you know, some people get all worked up about, you know, should I interpret the resurrection metaphorically or literally or somewhere in between mystically, I like to interpret it all, all the above.

I mean, you know, I talk about the faith, the faith of the martyrs for me is the ultimate evidence, because people were willing to die for Jesus rather than deny the resurrection.

But, you know, I don’t think that it’s merely a symbol, but I think it is a symbol, you know, and, and, you know, I don’t think that even if you just hold a conservative view, I hate that word conservative in the term, in the context of, of faith.

I think it’s just, it’s like, it’s like, you know, I think, I don’t know, it just, it just feels like almost like a, you know, we have these, we have these bugs here in Virginia right now, and they’re pests, you know, I can’t think of the name of them, but they’re, they’re these bugs that are pests, and they like destroy everything, and they’re like killing the farmers and all these things.

And I think they’re called lantern flies, lantern flies, lantern flies.

And they’re all these things as a community about kill the lantern flies, you know, and anyway, I don’t like to kill bugs, but they make a pretty good point that, and I’ve tried to kill a couple of lantern flies, but they’re so fast, I haven’t been able to do it.

But, you know, I think when you talk about a word like conservative or liberal, which we seem to live by almost like their scripture, I mean, I think those words are lantern flies in the tradition.

They’re destroying the tradition.

And you know, I got off on that because I was thinking about the idea of resurrection as a symbol.

And I don’t think it’s just a symbol, but I do think it can be a symbol.

And it can be a symbol in terms of, you know, if we, if we attach our, if we attach our suffering to Christ’s suffering, or as I’ve written before, realize it already is attached to Christ’s suffering, and then, you know, appropriating that insight, you know, and then coming to a place where we are our life’s chaos, because we’re being metaphorically crucified, but we feel joy because we have surrendered.

You know, I think that, that joy, that surrender can be, can be symbol, can, you know, I think you can see that as a symbol of the resurrection or the resurrection is a symbol of that.

And, and I don’t, I don’t think that means, I mean, there was some heretical Catholic big shot thinker who wrote a book, you know, that won a bunch of awards with the, the Catholic church condemned it.

And they were like, the Catholic church was like, don’t read this, don’t read this, don’t read this, which of course made me want to read it.

But I read part of it and it was kind of, you know, it was, it was kind of shallow, but it was called Jesus Symbol of God.

And, and this, you know, this theologian was, he was like the big shot of the big shot organization or whatever.

And I’m sure he’s much more holy than I am.

It doesn’t require a lot to be more holy than I am.

And he was trying to basically say that Jesus is just a symbol.

Like Jesus is only, only has ultimate meaning for Christians and not other faiths because he was trying to, I think he was coming from a good place.

He was coming from this interfaith dialogue place where he wanted to kind of remove the Christian, you know, triumphalist or whatever you want to call it.

I don’t know what the, the in vogue word is today, but he wanted to kind of like lower the temperature a little bit on the intensity of devotion to Christ so that we could be, you know, have a better dialogue position with other faiths.

And that’s admirable.

But I think it’s not necessary.

I think, I think that we can, I think that we all can and should, and I’ve heard, I don’t want to try to recite all the different leaders I’ve heard that said this, there’s a Pope and some other people like, I don’t think, and then, and then there’s some people like David Bentley Hart and Lord knows I don’t want to get into an intellectual confrontation with him.

But I think he was trying to say something about like, he was, he was against the idea that all traditions were basically, you know, different versions of the same thing.

I think he was trying to say that like they’re all pieces of a puzzle.

He put them together, but obviously he’s probably the most intellectually gifted or one of the most intellectually gifted Christians alive today, which I think is probably a curse, but I think he’s, he’s dealing with it well.

But it’s, it’s, and I say that jokingly, but there’s something to it, I think, and I’m sure he understands that.

But, but anyway, to my mind, you know, not, you know, having discontinuity, like I think that’s a feature, not a bug.

I think that if we, I think that not only is trying to harmonize traditions, taking our eye off the ball, whatever tradition, like if a Buddhist monk is sitting around all day trying to try to synthesize Buddhism with Christianity, then, you know, he’s not doing whatever Buddhist monks are supposed to be doing in their tradition.

And I know I’m speaking as a completely ignorant, you know, bystander, but, you know, I know from at least my tradition, you know, if I, if I spent all these time, if I spent all this time with intellectual parlor games, then, you know, I’m not going to be, I’m not going to be, you know, eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood.

And I don’t think that necessarily just means about the Eucharist.

I think it’s, I think it’s a metaphor for, you know, I think it’s the life ring, you know, on steroids.

Like it, the life ring doesn’t do justice.

Like we literally can’t live.

We literally can’t live without eating and drinking.

And we can’t live without eating and drinking Christ.

And I think, you know, I think Jonathan Sacks, who I didn’t discover until after he was dead, unfortunately, who is like one of my heroes, you know, I think he said when it comes to interfaith dialogue, you know, let’s just drop all the theology stuff and focus on doing good.

I’m probably simplifying his position.

But I do think interfaith dialogue is important.

But I think the dialogue should be about like, you know, practical things like I have a neighbor across the street who’s, I think she’s a Muslim.

And we’ve had, we have a good relationship, you know, we don’t talk about faith so much, but, you know, maybe a little bit, but it’s more about just life, you know, and, you know, as Karl Rahner says, and his anonymous Christian concept, you know, this is my spin on it.

But if, if Jesus is Truth of the capital T, and you’re pursuing truth, you’re pursuing Jesus, whether you know it or not.

And that’s a Christian perspective.

And I don’t know how that will be perceived by other traditions, maybe a little bit chauvinistic or whatever the right word is.

But, but yeah, so I didn’t talk about the Protestants too much, you know, the Protestants have our own, we have our own issues about, you know, how to contain this message.

But, you know, I think the Catholic Church, the organization can be, you know, in the Catholic Church, the organization can be mistaken for the message.

But the organization helps preserve the message, at least in terms of the, the raw materials, the documents, the tradition.

And, you know, and that’s a nice thing to have, you know, the Protestant world, you know, we have to have, you know, whether it’s the celebrity theologian or the celebrity, you know, the celebrity pastor or, you know, whatever it is, you know, we have our own, our own issues, we can go the other extreme.

But at the center is the cross, and I hope that we can all start to gather around the scandal of the cross, our dead man on a tree, you know, beyond the Christian Industrial Complex, I think that’s where the reality is.

And I think maybe sometimes we forget about it and don’t recognize it because, as Williams said in that book, The Wound of the Knowledge, you know, there’s no, there’s no center of gravity, I think I remember him saying or something.

That’s not what he said, but there’s no, you know, our stability is in our instability, our our victories are in our failure.

And the fact that at the heart of our tradition is a dead man on a tree means that it’s scary, but it’s also good because no one can co-opt it, you know, a Protestant, you know, egomaniac or a, you know, an elaborate theological edifice by an institution at the end of the day, the cross is the answer to all that, it’s the answer to interior freedom.

And that’s what people need, not because we are some kind of zeitgeist chasers, but because they’re people and we’re people.