This I Believe....

It’s Easter, arguably the holiest day of the Christian calendar, and I’m at a bit of a loss: while so many with whom I ostensibly share a faith celebrate the claimed physical resurrection of Jesus Christ two millennia ago, I can no longer do so. While so many consider this particular day to be especially sacred, I can no longer concur (as I believe that every day is sacred and should be celebrated as a gift from God). While Easter is a huge holiday for so many, I can no longer celebrate it as such. What’s happened to me, the toddler who was baptized Presbyterian, raised Baptist, educated in Lutheran and Catholic schools, friend of WASPs and Jews alike and now a confirmed Episcopalian for decades with Buddhist-Taoist leanings?

Ah, yet another blessing of middle age: I find life has changed dramatically in yet another way, but, truth be told, I’m a bit surprised where I find myself: now standing squarely outside the mainstream of a faith community in which I’ve always preferred to be at least along the periphery. How did I get here?

Though I tend to use this day annually to reflect on my beliefs, today’s exercise therein was prompted by what might be considered an ironic source: Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, which I’ve been reading in bits and pieces for some time now. Suffice it to say that it, like its predecessor Sapiens, it’s a revelation, jam-packed with staggering insights into human history, thought, belief and behavior. Every time I open it, I come away murmuring “Damn, that’s deep!”, and usually on multiple occasions during each sitting. Today’s experience was no different:

In his chapter entitled “The Human Spark,” the author parses what makes our species unique, including in our self-conception, especially as this has led us to become the dominant animal on our planet. It’s heady, masterful stuff. Continuing on a theme that traces the roots of our species’ superiority to our ability to cooperate flexibly at scale, in the subchapter entitled “the Web of Meaning,” Harari considers the impact of “intersubjective” realities on our species and our history.

What’s intersubjective reality?

Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans. Many of the most important agents in history are intersubjective. Money, for example.…

He goes on to detail how money is a shared fiction in which we’ve all chosen to believe. Though, technically, it “has no objective value.” “Yet as long as billions of people believe in its value, you can use it to buy food, beverages and clothing.” In other words, the “green pieces of paper” have no intrinsic value, only that which we as a species have assigned to them. To put it more bluntly, while you can’t strike a deal with an orangutan to accept payment in dollar bills, you can with another human.

There are many other intersubjective realities that have had defining influences on the human experience over time, including what we consider bedrock concepts like religion or nations or values or.… And yet history is the record of these “webs of meaning” ascending and then fading into oblivion.

For example, two millennia ago, the Greek gods had great influence over human life and one of the more vibrant and impactful society/empires that the world had yet known. This being said, today:

Most people are happy to acknowledge that ancient Greek gods, evil empires and the values of alien cultures exist only in the imagination. Yet we don’t want to accept that our God, our nation or our values are mere fictions because these are the things that give meaning to our lives. We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.

He goes on to point out that:

People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.

 Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unraveling of these webs, and to realize that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.

To reinforce his point, he then goes on to examine the circumstances that led to the Third Crusade in the 12^th century … and, true to his assertion, a modern view of this history would find it largely if not utterly incredulous. After all, it’s a story of two groups who see God differently but are willing to kill each other to establish who’s right. Sound familiar?

He considers the perspective of a metaphorical young English nobleman named John, who goes off to fight in the Crusade to defend his faith believing that, should he succumb, “after death his soul would ascend to heaven, where it would enjoy everlasting celestial joy.” Yet, from a more modern, scientifically-based view, our John would be “horrified to learn that the soul and heaven are just stories invented by humans.” Of course, “John had a very strong faith in all this, because he was enmeshed with an extremely dense and powerful web of meaning.” Further, “it was inconceivable to John that all these stories were just figments of the imagination.” Yet there are ‘true believers’ on both sides of this religious divide who either accept or reject this premise even today.…

But more and more of us don’t, considering the very concept of a religious crusade to be an insane construction in the modern world, which reflects Harari’s observation:

And the years pass. As the historian watches, the web of meaning unravels and another is spun in its stead. …

 That’s how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. With hindsight, going on a crusade in the hope of reaching Paradise sounds like utter madness. … A hundred years hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look equally incomprehensible to our descendants.

Hmmm….

I couldn’t agree more with Prof. Harari: the concept of a religious crusade – and, more broadly, that of believers killing each other over their differences in how they see the ultimate Source of Life – strikes me as insane. For most, it would seem, it’s a construct that has rightly been assigned to the dustbin of history, and yet we are threatened today by small minority of zealots who wish to continue this fiction to our collective detriment.

And his suggestion that “the soul and heaven are just stories invented by humans” also ring true to me today at a level of depth that I couldn’t have predicted earlier in my adult life. While they may be core concepts in the faith construct of most self-considered Christians today, for me, they are no longer persuasive … which is why I’ve decided to try to identify what I’ve come to believe at midlife. I offer the following without the egotistical presumption that it represents The Answer for anyone else but me; I hope only to encourage a dialogue that will expand and enhance our understanding of how our fellow human beings construct their faith, express their spirituality and/or see (or don’t see) God.

This I believe:

I.              God is a verb, not a noun.…

II.            Our ‘soul’ is a reflection of our unique human personality, but it’s only as eternal as we make it

III.         The Kingdom of God (or of Heaven or Paradise or Nirvana) is not someplace we go after we die, but a present reality that reflects how we live.

I have other, less central tenets of my personal faith, but the above is sufficiently significant that I’d prefer to start here before addressing the others (likely in a future piece).

I find it a bit ironic and mirth-inducing that I’ve actually come to conceive of God as Joan Osborne sang of Him/Her/It in her 1995 song:

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on a bus,

trying to make his way home?

For me, now, God is in each of us and therefore immanent not transcendent: She’s not ‘out there’ up in the sky watching over us, but each of us has a spark of the Divine in us and the reality of God becomes more or less real/evident depending upon our behavior.

I’ve come to this place after years of reflection and study – in this regard, especially of Tillich and Spong – and I have to say that though I’m comfortable with this formulation, it’s so different from what I was raised to believe that I occasionally find myself questioning it because of a faint trace of guilt from my Baptist-Lutheran-Catholic upbringing.

And it’s also a scarier concept to hold: the belief that there’s some benevolent Spirit up there watching out for us is far more comforting and, truth be told, less demanding of us, because if God’s not up/out there but in us, it’s incumbent upon us to act in order to feel Its impact/presence. In other words, to make God real in our world, I have to take the responsibility to act in ways that make this world a more benevolent, beautiful and loving place. And if this premise becomes more widely shared and more of us realize this opportunity for positive, contributory agency and act on it, this world would indeed be a much better place. But if we’re waiting on some old white guy in the sky to save us, we’re lost.…

Truth be told, I struggled with Tillich’s conception of God as the Ground of Being for many years. When first exposed to it, it rang true, but it was so different than everything that I’d been taught or to which I’d been exposed that I just couldn’t quite get there for some time. And then, when studying Bishop John Shelby Spong, it clicked: God isn’t some anthropomorphic spiritual entity apart from us, but that Divine Spark at the core of our very being.

What crystallized this belief was my reflection on the reality that there are times in our lives when we make conscious choices to elevate our behavior, to be more generous and to take more risk in being loving with others – though most often this is restricted to family members and friends – and in those moments we experience transcendence, not in some future, heavenly way but as an elevated, enlightened and enlightening dimension of life right here on earth.

In other words, when we choose to rise above ourselves and behave in ways that are the most genuine and profound expressions of the depth of our very humanity, we create the Kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke as a present reality, to be experienced and reveled in in the here and now, not after we die.

And then the real world intercedes, reminding us of the risks of being so open and we close up to protect ourselves, returning to a far more mundane, ephemeral and dangerous ‘real world’ in which we live our daily lives.

But what if we choose to take this risk to live transcendently continuously, always and each and every day? Truly, how different would our world be?

So, for me now, God is a verb.…

I do believe that humans have a soul, but not that it’s eternal: it dies when we die. And yet, our soul can continue to influence those we touch in life long after we leave this earth physically. This is how I conceive of eternal life now: the quality of how we live resonates in the lives of others with whom we interact, and the profundity of that impact will be our legacy and be reflected in how our story is told after we’re no longer around to tell it. In other words, the impact that we have in our earthly life will determine how the spirit of our time-bound personality resonates in the future, which, for me, is the only ‘eternity’ to which we can aspire.

For example, I am named for my maternal grandfather, Dr. Walter Ellsworth Johnson, who lived from 1909 to 1986. I had the privilege of knowing my grandfather for the first two dozen years of my life, but his impact has been so profound that he’s still very much with me dozens of years later. So much so, in fact, that when my own first son was born two dozen years ago, I named him as I was, after his great grandfather. Along with conducting my life in alignment with his example and in accordance with what he taught me, I considered it at the time to be the highest honor that I could pay him.

But there’s not much of a trace of “Dr. Johnson” (as he was called reverently by friends, colleagues, students and community members) in Columbia, South Carolina, anymore. The world has moved on since his passing, and but for a few plaques on the walls of various buildings at his beloved Benedict College (where he taught for decades and molded young lives), his history has become more personal and invisible.

Specifically, he exists now only in the hearts, minds and memories of those whose lives he touched while he lived. And as long as I’m alive and can tell his story, especially to my own children, he’ll live on by name. I suspect that a few generations from now his name will be lost to history, but his influence will continue largely without attribution. Many years from now, my descendants will be raised in certain ways that reflect the lessons that their then unknown ancestor imparted decades and perhaps centuries before.

A hundred years from now, will anyone know that Dr. Walter E. Johnson lived? Consciously? Probably not. But could his influence still be being felt? I think so – or, at least, I’d like to think so – and this is how I now conceive of the possibility for eternal life. No, not as some supremely joyful experience of the greatest place ever, but as an anonymous guiding spirit contributing to the potential of successive generations living more abundant and contributory lives.…

(I’ll also note another, related observation that I’ve come to at midlife: we only get to tell our own story during our earthly life, so our legacy – what transfers of us into eternity – is actually determined more by what others remember and/or share about us. In other words, for the most part, it’s not us who get to determine the enduring meaning of our lives, but those who experience us in our earthly time and live beyond us.…)

Combining these first two tenets of my current faith – that God is a verb and that we are eternal only inasmuch as we impact the lives of others during our earthly journey – I am led to a third: that the Kingdom of God is indeed real, but rather than being something we experience after we die, it’s an exalted dimension of our life right here on earth that we create in our own time. In other words, it’s our responsibility to create transcendence in our lives, and, in so doing, we also create our legacy.

For example, how often do we live as I described earlier, consciously taking the risk to be more open and present and loving despite living in a world full of ugliness and pain? In my experience, the answer to this query is “occasionally at best,” but it doesn’t have to be. We could choose to be more courageous in our daily life, and, should we make this choice consistently/continuously, our lives – as well as those of others whom we touch – will be immeasurably more resonant and fulfilling.

How different would your life be if you chose to be loving without fail? To overlook the pain inflicted upon you by the vagaries of fate, by strangers and, too often, by loved ones, choosing instead to radiate love, compassion, understanding and forgiveness always?

The answer, for all of us, is “very, very different.” And what immeasurably better, more meaningful and transcendent lives ours would be if we would but make this choice. But most often, we don’t: we’re rightfully scared, and the world can indeed be a very painful, dispiriting place far too consistently, so most often we choose to live within the protective shell that we’ve constructed for ourselves, telling ourselves that it’s more prudent to live in a safer way rather than to risk the likely harm from making the contrasting choice.

But isn’t this the exact choice that our ostensible Patron made? Isn’t this the example that we’re called to emulate as Christians?

I think so. Scratch that: I now believe so … but I understand just how challenging this beguilingly simple opportunity for choice truly is. There’s a reason that G.K. Chesterton’s observation – that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” – rings true: the world can be a cold and harmful place to such an extent that the choice to live transcendently can appear potentially (if not likely) suicidal.

And yet, every day I pray – not in the sense of petitioning an external God, but in the sense of a thoughtfully challenging and reflective dialogue with myself – to evidence the courage to make this choice. Some days I do, even if only for brief moments or for an hour or two. But in those moments, I feel an indescribable connection to the (eternal) Source of Life from which I believe we all emanate. These are the moments of love and wonder that comprise my happiest and most cherished experiences of and memories in life.

And though they may be transcendent, most of them are not particularly grand, and experience that has led me to another profound revelation: we can live transcendently not just in the ‘big moments’ of life, but especially in the small ones. Although we’d like to believe that, like Jesus, we can make transformative impacts in the lives of those around us, truth be told, I’ve come to suspect that the transcendent (read = well-lived) life is really all about stringing together a succession of smaller moments of meaning and contribution consistently.

For example, how committed are we to being kind without fail? For most of us, I suspect, we generally consider ourselves to be kind, but we’re most likely to hold ourselves accountable to reflecting this primarily with loved ones and friends – people whom we already know and about whom we care – more so than ‘strangers’ (who, truth be told, are just fellow human beings we’ve yet come to know). But what if we chose to be kind every day in every moment and in every way?

The profundity of this opportunity was actually imparted to me as a teenager, though it’s taken me decades to appreciate it fully. To put a finer point on it, I don’t know where Karen Jeffries is today, but I do know that my single experience of her father some 40 years ago has never left me, so her suggestion that I patronize his barbershop – a most modest contribution on its face – has actually turned out to be one of the more important blessings in my life.

You see, Mr. Jeffries’ barbershop was a prototypical – and almost stereotypical – cultural experience: while we were all there ostensibly to get our hair cut, truth be told, the majority of the experience was actually centered on the alternately ish-talking and profound repartee that’s the unique province of the Black barbershop. To put a finer point on it, some of the most profound and/or godly conversations that I’ve ever had in life have occurred in such environments, occasionally in stark contrast to many of those that I’ve had in more overtly religious venues.

Such was the case when I visited Mr. Jeffries. There was a lot of ish talked during my less than an hour in his shop … but there was also plenty of some of the most profound wisdom imparted of which I’ve ever been privileged to partake. And one particular such golden nugget lingers all these years later:

As is invariably the case when several adult men gather – in this case there were about a half-dozen adult patrons there in addition to three or four of us ‘kids’ – the conversation turned to relationships, in this case with significant others or spouses. After a period of the obligatory jive-talking, the conversation turned more serious and, so casually and effortlessly, Mr. Jeffries dropped some knowledge on me (and the others present) that haunts me to this day.

In responding to one of the other older gentlemen who’d been married for quite some time and was complaining that his wife was significantly less responsive to him generally of late – and especially so to his amorous advances – Mr. Jeffries stopped him mid-rant and asked a simple question: “Man, when was the last time you told her that you loved her?” After a bit of a (stunned) silence, the gentleman responded – conceded, really – that it may’ve been a while, to which Mr. Jeffries responded by sharing this observation: “I bet you used to tell her that a lot when you first started dating and were first married.” His interlocutor nodded silently, sensing that something profound and damning was coming. And then it did. Here’s what Mr. Jeffries said that rocked my world then and guides me to this day:

Man, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but this much I know: if you tell your beloved that you love her often early in the relationship, it matters but it’s also expected. But, after 25 years of marriage and life together, if you tell her you love her every day, it means a whole lot more because it’s been earned, and she appreciates it a lot more now than she did then.

How simple and yet profound an observation of human behavior: we tend to be more open and loving when it’s easier, especially at the beginning of relationships when everything’s going well, but we’re less likely to do so as time passes and the true costs of our loving commitment mount. Yet, in fact because of these very costs, doesn’t our expression of love mean even/ever more?

In essence, Mr. Jeffries was imparting an eternal truth: that the choice to be open and loving means more and has a greater impact over time, both in the moment and cumulatively. And it reflects my lived experience: it was easy to tell my beloved wife that I love her at the beginning of our relationship when we were in love and our relations were free and effortless … but,  as the years have passed and both the shared triumphs and tragedies of life have accumulated, it turns out that it’s even more important to do so now.

To put a finer point on it, one of the things that I’ve come to realize – especially after two failed marriages before this blossoming one – is that the secret to a rewarding, mutually beneficial long-term relationship is never to stop dating, to consciously choose to work to earn the right to be in relationship with your beloved every single day year in and year out. It’s when we give in to our natural human tendency to want to coast on our previous contributions that we sew the seeds of discord and potentially demise.…

So what does this have to do with making the choice to create the Kingdom of God in our daily lives? Just that it is, in fact, a choice and that making this choice continuously is ever more meaningful and impactful over time.

The best expression of this guiding philosophy that I’ve yet to discover is in the words of Bishop Spong (from his last book, Unbelievable), so I’ll close this piece by quoting my favorite passage of his that expresses virtually perfectly how I now see the essence and goal of Life:

I cannot tell you who God is or what God is. No one can do that. That is not within the capability of any human mind. All I can do is tell you how I believe I have experienced God. God and my experience of God are not the same. …
 

I believe I have experienced God as the Source of Life. … If God is the Source of Life, then the only way I can appropriately worship God is by living fully. In the process of embracing the fullness of life, I bear witness to the reality of the God who is the Source of Life.
 

I believe I have experienced God as the Source of Love. Love is the power that enhances life. … If God is the Source of Love, then the only way I can worship God is by loving “wastefully”…. By “wasteful” love I mean the kind that never stops to calculate whether the object of its love is worthy to be its recipient. It is love that never stops to calculate deserving. It is love that loves not because love has been earned. It is in the act of loving “wastefully” that I believe I make God visible.
 

Finally, I believe I experience God, in the words of my greatest theological mentor, Reformed German theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965), as the Ground of Being. … If God is the Ground of Being, then the only way I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that I can be; and the more deeply I can be all that I can be, the more I can and do make God visible. So the reality of God to me is discovered in the experience which compels me to “live fully, to love wastefully and to have the courage to be all that I can be.” …
 

To this mantra, I add one thing more. I am a Christian. I am a disciple of Jesus. Why? Because when I look at the life of Jesus … I see a person who was so fully alive that I perceive in him the infinite Source of Life. I see one who was profoundly capable of being all that he could be…. So I join with St. Paul in the affirmation of faith, “God was in Christ,” bringing oneness out of diversity, wholeness out of brokenness and eternity out of time.
 

This is the God to whom I am drawn and worship. This is the Christ that points me toward the fullness of God. This is the faith I seek to share with the world. To embrace’s life, to increase love, to have the courage to be – these, for me, are the doorways through which I walk into the mystery of God.

This I believe….

(Happy Easter!)