Skeletons in the Closet: Reflections on Rites and Community
Before I begin on this erratic and perhaps erroneous venture, I feel it necessary to explain a bit of background, firstly, by apologizing to the illustrious Jonathan Pichot. The poor man has been trying to pry this article from me since its original publication in the Pacific Union College Campus Chronicle in the fall of 2007. But I would not, could not, give it to him, for reasons which I will make clear below.
In the meantime, here, in its original, unedited form, is an article published in the 2nd issue of the Campus Chronicle’s 84th volume.
*****
A Change of Clothes: Reflections on Week of Prayer
The speaker paces back and forth erratically, his voice crescendoing and falling, a constant rhythm like the incessant waves on an uninterested beach. There is the rustle of a thousand notes being passed, the gentle breeze of five hundred whisperers as five hundred heads incline to hear. Silence for a moment as the speaker reaches a climax point; he winds back down in preparation to gear up once more, and disinterest returns to the inattentive audience.
This is last week. This is last quarter. This is last year. This is every year.
We’ve heard it all before. And we’re bored. We’ve been bored.
I am an Adventist. Had you asked me this question last quarter, even three months ago, I would have given you a different answer. Of course, I am a sixth generation Adventist by ‘blood.’ My great-great-grandfather graduated from Healdsburg, and every generation since has been a PUC grad. Nevertheless, I went through that time of the Everlasting No that we all will someday encounter; simply put, I put my beliefs in the blast furnace of doubt and cranked up the knob, not just to see what would happen, but because I needed new clothes. Now begins the explanation.
Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle formed a metaphor in Sartor Resartus comparing religion to clothes. We cannot fully understand God (or whatever you’d like to call your transcendental signified), and so we must put on the clothes of religion to try to make Him (or Her/It/Them) more understandable. We know it’s not the best way, but we make the clothes fit our idea of God. When that idea changes, grows, evolves, we clearly need to try on new clothes. I’m six and a half feet tall—it would be ridiculous for me to still wear the clothes that I did in eighth grade, when I was 5’ 8”. The point can be made that religion is divine, above change; pause a moment and consider the following:
We, as humans, are beings of lack and desire. This is always, always, evident, in everything we do. We have gaps, we strive to fill them with what we know will turn out to be what we need, and once we get there … it’s not so great anymore. So, we need something new. This, despite what one may wish to believe, is healthy; it’s what keeps us moving as a species, as a people, a society. We lack fulfillment, be it in terms of our major, our *cough* cafeteria food, our boyfriend or girlfriend (or lack thereof), so we desire and seek. We try on new clothes, we take them off, we move on.
And there’s our problem. This is why, when a passionate, if sometimes immature, speaker like —— —— screams out his point into the church, the echoes of his point are smothered in the whispers of the audience (myself included, trust me): our clothes are old. Perhaps to grandpa Carel, way back in Healdsburg, Week of Prayer was a highlight, a time to engage in monologue about God. But we, in our postmodernist bubble, need more than that.
How many times have we heard a sermon about David? Too many. And how many times has the moral of the story been that everyone can be a hero? Every time. Spice it up with surfer lingo and pop-culture references, throw in the occasional sexual allusion, and what do you have? The same story, the same clothes, with ugly patches sewn on. I’m sick of it. And most of you are, too.
Before you start heaping kindling on the stake and sent out the villagers to drag me from Stauffer, please keep in mind these two words: praise music. Hymns, which were songs of devotion to our parents’ generation, don’t cut it for most of us. So what do we do? We throw away the old clothes of the hymnal (mostly), and try on the new clothes of modified rock music. It’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do; obviously, not everyone is going to be thrilled, but that’s the price we pay for progress.
Way back in the 90’s, the Sabbath school David was great. It met us where we were, with absolute truths and clear-cut morals. But, as we are plunged into this mess that is postmodernism, absolutes are outdated. Society evolves, ideology changes, people change – but religion insists that it doesn’t need to. We get the same David story, the same take on the same parables of Jesus, the same “You’ll never walk alone” mantra that we’ve been fed since Kindergarten at ____ Adventist Academy. Week of Prayer has become Week of Bordem, Colloquy has become Hear-basically-the-same-story-oquy.
We are continually told to be “in the world, but not of it,” but there is a problem with that idea, other than the fact that it is a Sufi saying applied to a Christian Bible text: we too often forget that we are “in the world,” and the world is changing. As we consider our plans for how our generation will define worship, starting here, at PUC, it’s time to face the facts: the clothes are old, they don’t fit, and they’re starting to smell bad.
So what are we going to do about it?
*****
Initial reactions to this piece were, to put it mildly, rather hostile in nature. And with valid reason, I suppose. One of the major criticisms voiced was that I posed questions without answering them, poked holes where they did not belong without filling them, and fired bullets unabashedly without bothering to clean up the mess. For this reason, and this reason alone (other than time constraints), I held back this article from publication with Spectrum.
With delusions fitting to an idealist of my age, I felt that I would not republish this article until I had answers to my questions. Now, ten months older, and of course, much wiser, I see the folly in that desire, but I do feel that I have dug deeper and unearthed … more questions. Which, let the reader understand, is not a negative occurrence in the slightest.
The question I posed, as I would learn in Dr. Greg Schneider’s Honors class, was one of rites. My article called into question the perceived time-transcendent nature of rites, specifically rites of worship, which, naturally, upsets those who feel that the rites of Adventism are proper in all circumstances. According to Emile Durkheim (and forgive me, o ye masters of sociology, for this abhorrent summarization), religious sentiment is a result of a sense of community. Would it not then naturally follow that rites of worship are those which evoke that communal effervescence, those comings-together from which emanate a feeling of belonging, and of something greater?
It was unknowingly on this basis, therefore, that I posed my question: Do our rites fulfill their function? Does Week of Prayer still evoke a sense of community between students, between Adventists, between us and God?
My answer, obviously, was an everlasting no. But before I could settle with that answer, because God or whatever force is in charge has a sense of humor, I posed another question to myself: Does Adventism—or Christianity, for that matter—serve its function? Do the rites of Adventism, the nature of Christianity, the essence of institutionalized religion, still serve their purpose?
Let it not be thought for a moment that I feel original in the ‘discovery’ of this question (as a student of Literature and History, I know that none of my thoughts are ever original), but I do feel that time is cyclic, and that these cycles are eternal and valid. This question is, obviously, still as relevant now as it was when Luther pounded his theses into the door. We find ourselves drifting in the wake of modernism and postmodernism, floundering in the sea of plurality, torn between the lands of intellectual atheism or agnosticism and emotional, faith-based theism.
Increasingly, there are those of us who, as another Spectrum writer stated, declare ourselves ‘cultural Adventists.’ Adventism itself is a community, an enveloping bubble, and one in which we feel safe. The question with which we must wrestle, however, is whether or not it is acceptable to be a cultural Adventist without being a religious Adventist. This is a problem which has plagued me way back since Winter Quarter this last year.
And, surprisingly, I bring an answer. It may not be a right answer, certainly not the answer, but definitely an answer.
If rites and religion stem from a desire for and a sense of community, so long as Adventism will take us sans seven-day creation, sans sanctuary doctrine, sans whatever dogma we choose to reject, so long as the bifurcation between fundamental and progressive Adventism (or Christianity in general) remains one of theory only, perhaps there is no difference between being a religious Adventist and a cultural Adventist. If religion is community, and we find our Adventism in our community, is there, in fact, any difference?
If there exists no difference, if we really can find our communion with God through our brethren and sistren, then I say Amen to Adventism (but I won’t clap). However, I fear, rites all-too-often develop into traditions which take precedence over the participants. Irrelevant rites, forced on individuals or groups resistant to those rites—be it the actions or the theoretical reasons behind them—break up community.
In the end, appropriately, we come full circle. If we are to retain community, we must ensure that our rites do, in fact, create that effervescent bond. And I will take a stand on something (which is quite un-postmodernist of me) and say that we, Adventism, as a whole—fundamental, conservative, liberal, progressive, radical, even Southern Californian—need to take a good, hard look at our rites, and decide how many of them are worth losing community.
Of course, we must not forget our history. Transient community, the kind which dies every generation, cannot provide that effervescence with the same power. It is for this reason that institutionalized religion is so attractive; the rites and dogma we hold our not just ours, they have been ours for centuries, millennia, and will continue to be. Even if this sort of attitude is a bit narrow-minded, it is a valid point: rites which connect only to the present are, in reality, not much of anything. The line we walk, then, is the tremulous line between the fixed system and the deviation (tip of the hat to Edmund Burke). We must keep our rites relevant, yet reiterate their retention of past community.
To keep community, rites must be relevant, and secondary to the communal spirit itself. To maintain their validity and potency, rites must connect us with the past. One could hammer out a list of any number (say, 28?) of criteria by which these two factors could be judged, but I will leave that to another individual and/or article. I will say that it is only by fulfilling both of these principles that we will retain both our rites, and our community. Week of Prayer, whatever its original intent, is but a metaphysical drop in the cosmic, transcendent pool of Adventism, Christianity, religion. It no longer signifies, it no longer connects, no longer invigorates, no longer ties. It is, to put it bluntly, dead.
The reason that I find it necessary to describe the death of this rite in more than two-thousand words can be put just as bluntly: we must make Adventism signify for all Adventists, cultural, religious, whomever. Without signification, rites will die, and without rites, there will be no community. And I want to believe we can all agree that we would much rather deconstruct and reconstruct our rites, and thereby keep our community, than let Adventism molder with the old clothes.
------
Peter Katz is a third-year student at Pacific Union College, where he is majoring in British and American Literature (BA), European History (BA), and Music (AS), as well as studying in the Honors Program. Peter hopes to go on to a PhD in 19th Century British Literature, become a published essayist and poet, and teach English at the college level (possibly at PUC, if they would take him back).
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Comments
Peter,
I found many interesting and good aspects in your artical. You bring up issues on both sides of the coin which is good.
I would like to ask you a question and then tell me how it would play out in your thinking in light of what you have said here.
If worship or religion is about God and not us, and God does not change, that is to say, not a creature of fashion or current fad, how much would worship/rite change?
I know many times fads come and go, but they were always based on what we liked.
How would you discribe "rite" and its relevance and appeal/unappeal to community in light of the fact that those rites are sometimes not based on us or what may entertain us?
The diffrence between rites and traditions often has more to do with peoples motivations/perspectives than whatever the rites themselves are.
If a Husband lost his wife and because he and his kids missed her so much they went and placed flowers on her grave every month there would be no sense of obligation or tradition to do it.
But if the kids grew up and they had kids and they took their kids to grandmas grave every month pretty soon you would see the grandkids playing hide and seek amongst the grave stones instead of remembering grandma and what she stood for or meant to people.
Would the grand kids question the sense of community the family shared on these monthly visits? Probably so. Would they start calling it a family tradition? Probably so.
But, that isnt how it started or its significance.
The problem or disconnect would be that they didnt know grandma in the same way their parents or grandparents did.
I suppose that the question regarding the direction of worship (whether it be for God or man) is a fundamental principle which may inspire almost irrevocable conflict in this debate. As you seem to imply in your question, if one believes that worship is for God, and God is unchanging, then it would logically follow that rites and worship would be unchanging.
If worship is for God, and one prefers to ascribe to the sentiment that God reveals himself increasingly, or in different and relevant ways, then it would make sense that rites should evolve with this revelation; I will posit that the direction of evolution might be far more nebulous and impossible to fully articulate in this sense, however. My bias, if it is not clear, is that religion is, in fact, for man. On the days that I believe in a consciousness that is God (which are frequent), I feel that he-she-it-they probably would not *need* us to worship [pronoun] to know that [pronoun] is God.
What makes this issue so potentially volatile to constructive discussion is that if I believe that God is a result of effervescent community, and you believe that God is conscious, unchanging, and should be worshipped, we may reach an impasse. What *is* pragmatic (and therefore discussable) is that we can see the communal effects of worship in ourselves and one another; this does not mean that God does not see or appreciate it, but we cannot really know.
Thus, my answer is that to assume that worship is for an unchanging God, and should therefore not change, is an incorrect assumption. Worship, as far as I can tell, is for us. I do not advocate 'just doing what we like,' because it is, of course, necessary for our rites to be meaningful, and fads are exactly not that. Our rites must be relevant to ourselves, but remind us that we come together for something greater--whether it be effervescent community, transcendent principles, or a conscious deity.
Hopefully, this answers your question regarding the relevance of rites if they are meant only to entertain us. Far be it from me to complain that anything is not 'entertaining'; entertainment has little to do with rite, for the most part. Rite is something that draws together, and lifts the self beyond the self; entertainment, if it is a result, is perhaps just an additional positive (though that seems to trivialize both rite and entertainment in one fell swoop).
"The difference between rites and traditions often has more to do with peoples motivations/perspectives than whatever the rites themselves are. [...] The problem or disconnect would be that they didn’t know grandma in the same way their parents or grandparents did."
I do believe you've just summarized my article in two sentences. By your definitions, rites are what we should have, and we should avoid tradition, in my mind. Tradition would be sacrificing a lamb in our sanctuaries; it once meant something powerful, but to us, would have little, or deferred, meaning.
We do not know God the same way our parents or grandparents did. So, I challenge myself, you, and the rest of us to find a way to know God in a way that reminds us of our past worship, but keeps it relevant, and meaningful.
~j p katz~
Dear Peter,
Thank you first of all for the wonderful piece and the two following comments.
I find this forum quite refreshing, as a second generation Adventist who treads the fuzzy borderlines of faith.
Rites, as you said have taken precendence over the participants of the community.
Though we want God to be 'verb' we acknowledge him/her only as a 'noun'.
As the son of an adventist pastor, who now works in a Buddhist environment now, the bible often proves to be a touchstone, sometimes questioning my faith in the church and sometimes affirming certain portions of my faith.
All the while, the 'invisible church' pulls you into the rut of guilt for abandoning the remanent.
This, i feel, is a crisis faced by most 'cultural' adventists, if that is the right word.
And regarding the first part of your post, i feel, you neednt find answers to all qustions..
Finding answers have always been a liberal humanist requirment that has been religiously followed by theologists and academicians. I feel that, sometimes, the questions itself are answers and that servers the purpose of our search.
Peace within
Aby Tharakan
bluezebra@gmail.com
Peter,
I appreciate your call for us to experience God in the context of community. I believe that one of the greatest tragedies of the church in North America is our refusal to be vulnerable enough to enter into genuine community.
And yet I seem to have run into the impass you refered to in your previous post in regards to the nature of worship. Although I have seen and experience the value of community in my personal faith experience I believe that effervesent community is a result of the divine other working in us as individuals. Therefore God does not come out of community but rather compels us to enter into community.
It is our response to God's divine promptings through acts of love and compassion that, in my opinion, define worship. Therefore worship can never be viewed as "for me". It must always be "for God" and "for others". It is the lack of self conciousness that makes worship authentic.
Peter,
I really enjoyed your response. You have a fine ability to harness the language and communicate.
I hold a view similar to the one expressed by Angelo Grasso on the meaning and purpose of worship.
Lets spend a moment getting into cultural Adventism. In many ways we can say that their are diffrent levels of cultural Adventism cant we? At 1 degree of seperation it may discribe a faith/relationship in atrophy or inactivity. At 2 degrees it may represent Adventism with 1 point of contention, and so on to the 6th degree being what we might see here in Spectrum. 99% opposition and yet in the thick of it saying how simple minded and un-learned fundamentalist's are.
If a man was a Jew and went to all the functions ect until through some life changing experience he came to believe in Naziism.
But instead of becomming a Nazi and going to marches ect he keep's attending all the Jewish functions and meetings.
Is he a cultural Jew? Does his cultural Judaism benefit either him or the Jew's?
Or does it do nothing more than provide a opportunity where he can criticize others while holding himself up as the enlightened intellectual one?
What "stage/stages" of cultural Adventism were you refering to in your comments about cultural Adventism.
Thanks
Peter,
One other question to ponder.
I found your discription of the continuum of Adventism insightful.
"Adventism, as a whole—fundamental, conservative, liberal, progressive, radical, even Southern Californian—need to take a good, hard look at our rites, and decide how many of them are worth losing community."
Your humorous mention of Southern California last is a recognition at some level of the bent down there. After all, it is the truth in something that makes the joke funny right?
Anyway, since in this example, Southern California would be a region, can we say it is a community too? In the context of your artical, how do other communities we are in affect our Adventist Community?
Thanks
"if one believes that worship is for God, and God is unchanging, then it would logically follow that rites and worship would be unchanging." The logic is wrong: rites and worship are human endeavors, and as such, they will always be changing. God and rites should never be confused.
That God is unchanging is most difficult to determine if we rely on Scripture where he has been described as loving, repenting, angry, and wrathful.
Pete, this is a beautiful article and so descriptive of what has been occuring for too long: the yearly (is it?) Week of Prayer has always been dreaded by most SDA students for as many as 60+ years (some of go back that far!).
The almost mandatory or expected "testimonials" the long-drawn out stories repeated ad nauseum for what? Did it really change hearts and minds?
What was its purpose? And was it only tradition?
The illustration of taking flowers to a gravesite is very illustrative. To keep the memory of a loved one alive is impossible for more than 3 generations. Only the stories that may be passed down, and even then, they, too, will eventually die.
Questions are always more important than answers; and the only method toward discovery. Questions are never "right" or "wrong." Answers have no such assurance and are only opinions for such religious ideas.
Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher, said:
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Reflect upon that as perhaps describing Adventism.
Thank you all for your feedback.
Mr. Grasso: I would not be so certain that your view is so fundamentally incompatible with the nature of the question. Whether or not God inspires community or comes from community (and that, my friend, is a much larger and more impossible question to prove), the result is the same: transcendence of self, and assimilation into a collective unit. Chicken or egg, so to speak, matters not. I agree wholeheartedly with you that worship should never be about 'me.' Even so, if rites become inadequate or meaningless to a collective of individuals, do we both see a problem there? I do not advocate worship that makes 'me' feel good, but that makes 'me' able to become 'not-me,' and I feel that a good deal of rites get in the way of that self-transcendence.
Michael: I fear that I do not quite follow your 'degrees of separation,' and exactly how it relates to my questions. If I may conjecture in the general direction of your point (so far as I see it), it is my prayer that relationships between 'progressive' Adventists and 'fundamental' Adventists can transcend differences in dogma. A community in which there is a plurality of voices is a stronger community than one in which there is a singular voice. Thus, no matter what 'degree' of separation one has from rites, rituals, or rules, relationships right transgressions of traditions.
As for the Jew and Nazi bit, I find myself, unfortunately, unable to move beyond your metaphor. I find it a bit cliché, and being Jewish by birth, I find flaws in the fact that I am 100% a cultural and ethnic Jew, but not a religious Jew, and that is *not* such a nebulous concept in the world of Judaism. Could you rephrase your metaphor?
Sorry to disappoint, but I am from Northern California, and it is only mandatory that I insert at least one snide comment about Southern California. There is little-to-no meaning intended behind that statement other than that. As you state, however, it is indeed a community, and certainly region and the collection of individuals which, for whatever reason, gravitate to specific regions will shape the path of community and religion in that area. I feel that is, in essence, a given.
Ms. Nelson: I agree that the logic is wrong, *if* one allows that rites are a human construction, as you did. I was attempting to operate under the paradigm in which rites were dictated by God's mandate, and therefore, would be unchanging. I apologize if that was unclear.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- The unfortunate cycle of institutionalization, I suppose. Perhaps this is why Thomas Paine, William Blake, and the like felt that institutions should either die completely, or die out every generation--a lovely theory, but I am not so sure that it is practical.
Thank you for your kind words and support.
~j p katz~
Peter, could you amplify your statement of which rites are dictated by God? There were certainly many that were established by God for the Israelites in their worship, but those are not the ones you meant? Which ones do you believe are still dictated by God and should be observed?
Peter,
I am sorry I dont possess more of your gift in writing.
As to the degrees of seperation thing.
We may need to start by you giving me your definition of Religious Adventist and Cultural Adventist. It may be quite different than mine.
Cultural Adventist, at least to me, contains elements of a facade of the real thing. A part or a dilution of the original. You say,"sans seven-day creation, sans sanctuary doctrine, sans whatever dogma we choose to reject..", which seem like no small theological points.
If indeed a cultural Adventist is someone with many wildly opposite views of the original, then what is the benefit to the cultural Adventist or to the church?
I am just considering how wide a gap evolution and "whatever dogma we choose to reject" might/could be.
As to the imperfect metaphor. Sorry again.
I was trying to imagine or understand why someone would have a desire to believe only a fraction of a certain belief system and yet not gravitate to, and become apart of whatever belief system does attract them, rather than stay a part of whatever they reject.
They serve no useful purpose to themselves or the church. They are constantly negative and often irritating to be around or read. The word whiner comes to mind.
Am I doing any better here?
Thanks
"They serve no useful purpose to themselves or the church. They are constantly negative and often irritating to be around or read. The word whiner comes to mind." Oh, isn't it nice to be loved.
Think about it, many Adventist communities are pretty insular. Growing up in one you go to church on Saturday, probably don't eat meat, might not eat dairy, probably attend pathfinders, and church school, and church academies, etc all your life. Most if not all of your friends grew up in this culture too, with distinctive Adventist influences in everything from food to dress to speech patterns and such. In interactions with people from the "outside world" you may come across as a foreigner in your own country.
Thus, it is not surprising that persons who have entirely intellectual and academic disagreements with the church, rather than those relating to bad personal experiences with legalistic church leadership (which generally ends up with people leaving very loudly), may not decide to leave in a huff. There are probably very many who choose to stay quietly within Adventist churches and enjoy the familiar atmosphere and style of Adventism without holding to its doctrinal pillars.
This is where I personally fall. I do not complain, or whine, in my church. I listen quietly and disagree totally. You would never be able to pick me out of the congregation as being different, but I do not even believe in God, much less other doctrines. However, there *is* a very distinct culture to the Adventist church, a particular style of living that differs in many points from the larger society. That to me is what "cultural adventist" means. I do not know where you originally got the term. Which spectrum blogger were you referring to? I think I missed it.
Perhaps someday things will change and I will leave church as quietly as I attend it today. Who can say? But my life will undoubtedly permanently be colored in choices of food and clothing, for example, that reflect my Adventist roots. (And yes, I'm not quiet on Spectrum. But this isn't church now, is it?)
Michael, Jemand has spoken just as I could. We have such deep roots in Adventism, that although we disagree on most, if not all of the doctrines, I, too, attend an SDA church weekly, contribute to its local budget, attend and discuss in SS class and few know that I do not at all agree with the positions of some (but not all by a long shot) of the beliefs. Nor do I whine about anything with the members.
Does that help explain why we do enjoy and contribute to this blog? Surely, there are few here who agree on all points, which is the reason for its success.
Ms. Nelson: None. I just prefer to do my best to allow all voices to have a bit of say in what I write. I try to look at the question from outside my own biases (as much as is possible), and at least give a nod to other opinions.
Michael: I appreciate your recognition of the need to define terms. In my paradigm, a 'Cultural Adventist' is someone who feels connected to the individuals and communities of which Adventism is comprised. I am a vegetarian, I set Saturday apart, I don't drink caffeine (except the occasional coffee), I think that family and education are vital components of a well-rounded human being, and I feel that health is an important aspect of life if one wants to be of use to society and/or God. All of these are, despite proof-texting, largely cultural rules, but they all stem from my Adventist heritage.
A 'Religious Adventist,' however, is much trickier; if one limits the definition of 'Religious Adventist' to someone who adheres to *all* Adventist beliefs and doctrines, I would feel it is safe to say that no one is a 'Religious Adventist.' For all have sinned, and the like. I do not believe in a seven-day creation, frequently question whether or not Jesus was divine, and think that the sanctuary doctrine is largely irrelevant; but I think that we are here for a purpose, and that we are to transcend ourselves and our own desires to help our fellow humans, in love, and that whether or not Jesus was divine, we should follow his words and example, anyway. So, am I religious? How fundamental are the fundamental beliefs? I believe in humanity, I believe in a higher purpose, I believe in love, and I believe in the death of the self out of love for the greater whole; is there anything more fundamental than that?
I apologize for that miniature tirade. What purpose do I serve, then? I seek the same as any other Adventist or Christian, I would hope: love and peace for humanity. Why am I, and others like me, drawn to the Adventist faith? Because I am a fifth generation Adventist, and this is where I belong. I am connected to everyone in my home church, everyone in every Adventist church, to you, and everyone on this website, because I choose to be. My purpose is relationship and camaraderie, support and love, as we all journey toward Truth, whatever that may be.
I apologize for those with whom you have come into conflict who stay a part of the institution, but seek only to undercut and bring down. Show them the love we are commanded by God, Jesus, the universe, and give them time. But do not disregard all who do not comply fully with the minutia of the system. We are all brothers and sisters in love, and I'd like to hope that, even if I walk cautiously toward Jesus with a question on my lips and a skeptical heart, he would open his arms just as wide to embrace me.
The church family should have the same openness and love, and *that* is why our rites must be relevant, and still inclusive of the past. We *cannot* lose community, or we lose everything.
~j p katz~
jemand
Thank you for your insight.
I enjoyed hearing your perspective. I understand what your saying as to the familiar environment aspects of church attendance.
If you would be willing, I would love to hear more of your story or reasons about the situation you find yourself in.
How would your situation change if you werent the quiet type. (sorry, I'm assuming.)
Do you consider your problems or disagreements impossible to be overcome?
I actually have a friend who has some of the same life experiences you mention. He values familiarity and doesnt look forward to change. He is content to have his social needs met with his church friends.
I also have family friends who have many if not more of the issues my friend has. The diffrence is their attitude.
The husband came to the point where he accepted his insoluable irresolveable position with the church and asked to have his name removed from the church books.
Many of us told him how he would be missed and he would welcome anytime he chose to attend.
His wife held the same viewpoints he did. Being lifelong family friends I knew this. Well, some well meaning person who found out he was leaving asked his wife if she was leaving too. She replied. "They will take my name off the church books over my dead body!" I knew this was her position, and I knew not to go there.
Since then the relationship with the husband and the church and church members has improved immensely. But the attitude the wife displayed answered in large part why she found relationships difficult in the church before that.
That same attitude has created many more difficulties since as you might have guessed, she is not a quiet person. She is ALWAYS mixing it up. She is not of the current generation but they will know what I mean when I say she was into drama.
Peter,
I appreciate your attitude in your writing.
I also believe that many of the issues that would devide some people are largely irrelevant.
I have also have gained a better picture through people saying they speak out in this forum but people would never know they are as doubting and conflicted in their home church.
That makes sense. Spectrum as some sort of cathartic therapy.
I feel I have a better grasp of the quiet or soft spoken side of cultural Adventism now. I still would like a better grasp of cultural Adventism relative to the outspoken critical side though.
" I still would like a better grasp of cultural Adventism relative to the outspoken critical side though."
Stay tuned.
Peter, could you as another option, attend another non-denominational secular school, attend an SDA church, get involved in Prayer meeting and other functions that would give you a sense of community? or you feel a necessity to double tax yourself for your education? however, this may not be as true at the undergrad and grad level as at the secondary school level, which my daughter did and has a great sense of community, albeit not SDA.
Michael,
I think I better understand where you were coming from now, "drama" is difficult to deal with in a close community-- as Adventist churches usually are-- and causes all sorts of trouble.
I honestly don't know what might change if I wasn't fairly quiet it most situations, I'm hoping E can give us both some insight into what it means to be a vocal "cultural Adventist"
You say:
"If you would be willing, I would love to hear more of your story or reasons about the situation you find yourself in."
Since you're interested, I'll share some of my story and how I've come to where I am now in my (lack of) beliefs. There were several different lines of thought and questions that eventually converged to an answer I was not at all expecting.
One devastating line of thought was the question of evil *in* the Bible itself. I never felt right reading about the genocide ordered by God, and there were laws in the Levitic code that seemed patently unfair. Why was it right for a master to make a slave choose between his family and his freedom? Why was an unbetrothed rape victim forced to marry her rapist, with no thought to her wishes? Why did Paul regularly seem to exhibit the misogynistic attitude of his time and culture?
These and other things grated against my conscience, and against my understanding of right and wrong. They did not at all fit the idea of a loving communication from God. If God was not powerful enough, or cared enough, to control what went into *his own alleged book* maybe in fact, God didn't have the qualities I had thought. Perhaps God didn't even exist. At the very least, the Bible no longer held any more intrinsic authority for me in spiritual matters or insight to right living than any other source I found. I would henceforth have to make my own moral decisions.
There were other questions, some involving Ellen White, others contradictions between Scientific evidence and Biblical claims, and others based on textual difficulties or contradictions that for time and space reasons, I have to omit. They also played a major role. Eventually it came to the point that I could no longer handle the cognitive dissonance that comes when so many different trains of thought all lead to the conclusion that all I had ever held to be true might not be so.
I had started by wondering "what if I'm wrong." When I started asking, "What unbiased evidence leads me to believe the Bible and Christianity are true?" I did not come up with enough to justify continued belief, especially given the logical difficulties. I did not come up with much evidence, period.
Given the lack of evidence, and the difficulties in “just believing” (for that argument could work for any number of belief systems), the most logical choice for me is to default to the “probably no god” position. Perhaps I am more agnostic than atheist, but certainly far from Christian. I doubt I will change my mind too much, but I suppose it is possible.
I know I'm not the only one to have grappled with these issues, and I have great respect for those who did so and yet remained Adventist. But yet personally I could not do so and yet remain intellectually honest with myself.
jemand
Thank you for your openness and sharing about your life.
Please say so if you do not wish any further discussion about it, but if you would allow, can I ask a few further questions?
I know you said you are unlikely to change your mind, but, do you consider your situation unresolvable? By that I mean do you feel there is a lack of evidence either way to come to a sure enough answer to satisfy you?
As life goes on there are many times when a person re-evaluates their life and their relationships. Divorce, Cancer Diagnosis, huddling in a foxhole ect.
Do you think at some point a life changing experience may filter and distill the important and nessisary from the confusing and nebulous?
I ask this not because I have been where you are, but because I have had cancer and chemo and done the whole 9 month recovery thing. There were nights when I was in the hospital in nutrapenic isolation because my white cell count was so low I had NO immunity. One cant help but hear the moans and screams of pain as people slowly lose their battle with lung cancer. It was on a night like this that distilled in my mind for all time what was important and what was essentially trivia. What the correct order of importance for everything in my life was.
I quess from my experience I am asking how many of your questions or doubts really NEED answers.
Thanks
Michael,
I am very glad to hear your cancer treatment was successful. I have had relatives who have battled cancer on and off, and can understand a little of how hard it must be to go through Chemo. I do understand how hard times like that can cause people to re-prioritize things, and that probably goes for everyone, religious or not. This doesn't mean all atheists or agnostics suffering trying times convert, nor does it mean that all Christians retain their belief in God, but it definitely does challenge assumptions of what is actually important in life, and probably highlights just how much there is to live for.
As for my life, I am comfortable with where I am, I no longer am troubled by pressing, unanswered questions. I have come to the point where I have decided the evidence I have so far indicates I need not spend any more time actively searching to convince myself of the truth of Christianity, or even Theism. In that conclusion I guess you could consider me quite "satisfied" with my current answers.
But by "needing answers" to doubts you probably meant what would it take to bring me back to Christianity. If there is a God, and if this God actually cares about my opinions, than it would be a trivial matter to toss a bit of evidence in my path I can't help but find. And in this case, God would know just the evidence I would need to convince me. I certainly don't expect this to ever happen, but hey, who knows?
I couldn't ever see myself returning to believing the Bible is the exclusive truth, or that all or even most of it were directly inspired, but I could see myself considering some sort of relationship with God-- if only I saw some reason to think that there actually WAS a God who was interested in human relationships. I wouldn't "need" anything more than evidence someone was there, but even if I had it I would never be a "traditional" believer. But that's ok.
I understand.
Thanks again for sharing and know that we who still believe will be praying for you to find your answers!
Jemand, thanks for your story. I too, struggle with many of the topics you brought up and though I do still consider myself a Christian, I am very aware that many of them would disagree :)
I want to loudly second your mention of the hiddenness of God. This to me is almost more of a problem then theodicy (though that is a biggie). For some of us, God does not tell us what to wear in the morning and does not hang out with us watching TV at night. It has long been a real puzzle for me why the world functions as if there was no personal God directly involved. For just one small example, as a behavioral scientist, I had to ask myself why the best way to change behavior is to pray and then do the same things someone who didn't believe would do. And if all you did was pray your chances of changing were pretty slim. And if you didn't pray, your chances were about as good. That's not to say that God doesn't function in the world, just that there is no good evidence either way.
It's like God set it up specifically to seem as if there was no personal God but then still kills those at the end who accept that it could go either way. It's like He's saying, "I'll make it look like I may or may not be real and I'll give them a book full of contradictions. Then I'll zap those who get it wrong." For some of us, faith is not clear-cut and we don't arrogantly reject a traditional Christianity so we can run out and be immoral. It's because it simply doesn't compute and that's even after long hours of asking God's guidance and help. If God is a God of love then I think this will all be sorted out in ways different from what many think.
I know people who have lost their faith, I spend time on the internet reading the stories of those who have lost their faith, and I understand why most of them do. It's not for the reasons we need to believe in order to make our Christian God reasonable.
It is difficult for most Christians to comprehend that there are thoughtful, all life's questions. We experience the same things: cancer, death, catastrophes, but turning to a god in such times does not lead to peace. Peace comes from the serenity of knowing that you really are not in control, and, to live by the prayer: "God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." So far, it's worked for me these 83 years.
Beth
When you said, "It's like God set it up specifically to seem as if there was no personal God but then still kills those at the end who accept that it could go either way. It's like He's saying, "I'll make it look like I may or may not be real and I'll give them a book full of contradictions."
Did you ever consider it wasnt full of contradictions? It's a matter of ones perspective's.
Maybe the problem is trying to understand God's mind with our limited ones.
A good example are the Nazca Lines which werent recognized as pictures until overflights of the first airplanes.
Even the creators of the lines never saw them in their full perspective. They must have used alot of faith and even more mathmatics to do them. This however didnt stop the scientists of the day from comming up with their own theories of why they were there. Everything from space aliens to geomagnetic lines to the way to water were said to be the reason for their existance. Sounds like Spectrum sometimes to me.
But verification by observation didnt happen till between 1600 and 2200 years later.
Just because we think something is contradictory does not always make it so. Just think about what happens to greek fire when you pour water on it.
Mark 15:25 It was the third hour when they crucified him.
John 19:14 It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.
I think it's a rather moot point to argue whether or not the Bible contradicts itself. It was written over more than a thousand-year period, by a multitude of authors from different backgrounds, in different situations.
~j p katz~
Peter,
The second quote says "about" and is a documentation from memory not an acident reporters play by play discription.
Also if this represents the average example of biblical contradiction then some of us are looking for problems where there are none.
Very good article, Peter.
I was choosing to stay away from theological/philosophical contradictions so as not to upset anyone or rehash some other argument unrelated to the discussion at hand. I apologize; I should have clarified.
The relevancy of whether or not The Bible is 100% accurate within its own context is nil. Current discussion on this article, website, and society should be beyond nitpicking, as I attempted to ironically portray.
~j p katz~
RDS: My apologies! I somehow missed your comment in the middle of the other discussion.
In actuality, it is the adcademic community which keeps me an Adventist. I no longer go to church, but I go to the Choir Room Sabbath School at PUC, where many professors attend. I find spirituality in vigorous philosophical debate, and in reading philosophy and poetry in my Literature classes.
I suppose I could find a similar thing, educationally, elsewhere, but it would be missing that communal tie. Church and prayer meetings are what I avoid; it is the academic community where I find my god.
~j p katz~
Michael, to answer your question, yes I have considered that the Bible may not be full of contradictions. I actually did believe that for most of my life. And then I tried to keep believing it for awhile longer. In the end, I couldn't.
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