I Believe, Help My Unbelief

I am jumping the gun a bit in considering the doubting of Thomas.  He is the one who demanded proof of the resurrected Jesus.  However, as we enter the season of the resurrection, I believe it is worth considering doubt and Thomas who might be considered the patron saint of doubters. 

I checked on-line with the “Google machine”, as someone has called it, but couldn’t find any good quotes about doubting.  It doesn’t seem to have a lot of good press―at least at first glance.  Thomas didn’t do a lot to give it a good name.  He believed in the risen Christ only when he had physical proof that Jesus was not a ghost.  However, he did believe in the end.  Jesus acknowledged that Thomas did believe but Jesus held that it is better to believe without demanding proof, “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’”

So, those who do not require proof and yet believe are upheld in this mini beatitude.  Where then does it leave those of us who have doubts at least some of the time?  I include myself as I tend to doubt at times and yet am able to believe much of what is in the Christian Creed(s).  Although, I must confess that I do have my own understanding of what it means that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” among other statement contained in the creeds.

In my times of doubt or unbelief I often fall back on the biblical passage, “I believe; help my unbelief!’  Faith does seem to be a God given gift so what if that gift is not as fulsome as we would like it to be?  Perhaps we should re-frame doubt so it doesn’t get such bad press.  I can think of the fairy tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes in which the child sees the proof that the Emperor has no cloths and has the naivety to simple wisdom to call out a fraud.  If the child had had blind faith that everyone else was correct in their assessment of the emperor, the truth would never have been revealed.  Certainly there are no shortage of emperors of various kinds today that need to be exposed for what they are.  Doubt can play an important role in bringing light on to a situation that desperately needs it.

Anglicans have three pillars on which their faith rests; scripture, reason and tradition.  I have found this to be a strength of my Anglicanism.  We need to balance faith so it can be informed by these three pillars.  I am not going to check my God given reason at the door of the church or my life.  My understanding of scripture is going to be informed by my education using my reason to help me understand how God is working in my life and in the world.  This does require work and can be messy at times, just as it must have been rather messy for Thomas to put his fingers in the holes in Jesus’ side.   However, I have faith that God in all aspects of the Trinity understands my doubts and unbelief as well as my belief.  I can often come to believe in time so I hope I am blessed in this as Jesus states. 

Blessings on your journey.

Jesus the Scapegoat

Rene Gerard, the great French philosopher who died in 2015, develop the theory of the scapegoat.  Gerard identified the process in human history and psychology in which someone or some group was made to carry all the problems of a society, or to put it in religious terms, the sins of that society.  The classic example of this is the literal “scapegoat” described in Leviticus 16, in which the sins of the people accumulated in the past year are placed on the literal goat by the priest.  The goat is then driven out into the dessert carrying those sins.  The fate of the goat is sealed by this act and its fate could be in the hands of God.  The people are then temporarily relieved of their sins.

Girard identified this process as the organizing principle for most societies throughout history which is, of course, still in operation today.  It is not a problem to identify this process in recent history with the Jewish people fulfilling that role in a special, some might say chosen way, by the Nazis   Today, it can be seen wherever antisemitism raises its evil head.  However, there are countless more examples of people or groups who have been victims of this phenomenon.   The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide was marked earlier this month in which an estimated 800,000 primarily in one ethic group, the Tutsis were massacred by another ethnic group, the Hutus, in an ethnic cleansing. 

The scapegoating mechanism operated on a personal level as well as on a group level as detailed at great detail by Girard in his ground breaking work Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.  In effect, Girard has identified a meta-structure on which human culture operated.  

Turning to the personal aspect of scapegoating, I am sure that no one will have a problem coming up with examples of people who have served as a scapegoat for others.  I dare say that if we are honest, we can identify times when we have scapegoated someone else for our failures.  It is, apparently human nature to try and blame others for our shortcomings not wanting to admit or even recognize them in ourselves.

As we approach Easter the great example of Jesus as scapegoat looms ahead of us.  The scapegoat mechanism was fully on display yesterday in the Sunday of Palms and the Passion.  We Anglicans celebrate both the triumphant entry of Jesus in Jerusalem as well as the Passion of the cross.  The foretaste of this event was seen in Jesus being driven or led (depending on which Gospel you read) into the wilderness to face the temptation offered by Satan.  Unlike the situation in the Jewish tradition where the scapegoat dies, Jesus survived the dessert experience and returns to bring the Good News to the world.

In a similar way Jesus defeats the power of sin and death and is resurrected on Easter Sunday.  Unlike the all other cases of scapegoating, the willing sacrifice by Jesus defeats the power of the scapegoat mechanism.  He is a guiltless victim just as the scapegoat in Leviticus is guiltless.  However, the scapegoat mechanism is overturned and defeated by the triumph of Easter.  For Christians and the world this frees us from the chains of sin which imprison us in the need to blame others.

This Easter season, I invite you to reflect on how you scapegoat others and who are the scapegoats around us. 

Blessings on your journey.

Letting Go

All great spirituality is about letting go. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection show us how to win by losing. (Philip Simmons)

The idea of ‘letting go’ is one that can be, ironically, hard to grasp.  To let go should seem to be easy as it shouldn’t seem to be anything that takes a lot of effort or be something that we resist.  However, it is all that and more.  The idea of spirituality being about letting go is also counter intuitive.  Spirituality is about developing and enhancing our relationship with God―or the divine if that is more compatible with your ideology and theology.

However, when you reflect on the idea of letting go, it becomes clearer what this idea is getting at.  How much of our attitudes and beliefs and way of being in life involves holding on to those things for dear life as hard as possible for better or worse.  Our beliefs and attitudes and perhaps philosophy of life―examined or unexamined―form our way of understanding and being in the world.  If these foundational issues are questioned and challenged, we will probably not react in a positive way―unless it is to be positively infuriated. 

When I read the statement which I lead off with, I was reminded of a little educational cartoon which was in a Tarzan comic book which I read as a child long, long ago in a land far, far away.  Tarzan comic books had these little educational addendums which were supposed to educate the young readers about the real Africa that the Tarzan stories were based on.  This one talked about the monkey traps which were used to do just what the name suggested, capture monkeys.  The monkey trap was a hallowed-out gourd with a small opening.  Inside would be treats that monkeys really liked.  They would reach their paws into the opening and grasp the treats.  The opening was too small to retract their paws while they grasped the treat.  They would not be willing to let go of the reward and so they were trapped between wanting the treat and their freedom. 

Here is a picture of a monkey trap I found on line:

To me, that is a perfect metaphor for the challenge of spiritually letting go.  It seems to be human nature to hang on to beliefs and attitudes that are actually keeping us trapped in ways that do not let us live life as God intended.  These attitudes and beliefs are based on things that may have served us well at some point to survive in life.  They can and probably are based on fears which may have been valid at some point. However, they quite possibly may not be appropriate or necessary in life today.  We can react instinctively like that monkey and hold on for dear life to something that is imprisoning us.  However, if we use our God-given gift of reflection and discernment, we can take the risk and let go of the ideas and beliefs that are entrapping us. 

In no way is doing that easy.  Letting go does require faith.  It requires faith that God is with you and that the fear that if you do let go terrible things will not happen. 

Richard Rohr sums this up well:

Only when we accept our present condition can we set aside fear and discover the love and compassion that are our highest human endowments. And out of our compassion we deal justly with those about us. Not just on our good days, not just when it’s convenient, but everywhere and at all times we are free to act according to that which is highest in us. And in such action we find peace.  Richard Rohr April 4, 2019

Blessings on your journey.

Being a Fool for Christ

I have now made it to the biblical three score and ten years.  My seventieth birthday was yesterday.  The biblical lifespan is set at seventy at least in this one reference:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. (Psalm 90:10). 

Given that, I can think of every day being a bonus and a blessing from God which is actually how we should think of every day regardless of our age.  However, that lesson is brought home more dramatically with this milestone.

This date is momentous for another reason.  April 1^st is, o course, April Fools Day which loomed quite large in my past.  People seemed to celebrate April Fools Day to a greater extent during my formative years but I don’t seem to hear as much about big April Fools jokes these days.  Our tenth province, Newfoundland, was supposed to enter confederation on the day of my birth, April 1, 1949.  However, apparently the leader and first premier, Joey Smallwood, changed the date to March 31^st as he didn’t want Newfoundland to be considered the perpetual April Fools joke of Confederation.  That may be more legend than fact.  

I have always been somewhat pleased to be born on April Fools day and have certainly played the fool more than a few times in my life which I won’t elaborate on here.  However, I do take some consolation on another passage from the bible in which being a fool for Christ is honoured, “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.” (1 Cor. 4:10) The Holy Fool has a place of honour in Christianity.  One source notes:

The fool for God's sake was a figure that appeared in both the Muslim and Christian world. Often wearing little to no clothes, this variant of the holy fool would forego all social customs and conventions and feign madness in order to be possessed with their creator's spirit.

I’m quite sure I don’t want to embrace this holiness to that extent but it opens up some interesting possibilities.  Another source seems to capture where I am with this ‘type’:

There is a Fool in all of us. Perhaps it only comes out once a year on our birthday or once a lifetime. For others the way of the fool is a path, a lifestyle – and lucky for them. Given this is April 1st, All Fools’ Day, I want to honor the archetype of the Holy Fool.

The world would definitely be a better place if we were all to take ourselves a bet less seriously.  Our journeys would certainly be more enjoyable. 

Blessings on that journey.