Oases and Idols

Truthful I call him who goes into godless deserts, having broken his revering heart.  In the yellow sands, burned by the sun, he squints thirstily at the islands abounding in wells, where living things rest under dark trees.  yet his thirst does not persuade him to become like these, dwelling in comfort; for where there are oases there are also idols.  

Hungry, violent, lonely, godless: thus the lion-will want itself. Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from gods and adorations, fearless and fear inspiring, great and lonely :such is the will of the truthful. 

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzche

"Do I really have to go back in there?"

"Yep, it's about time.  You've been out here sulking long enough."

"I don't really belong there.  They don't even understand half the things I talk about..."

"You're every bit as blind and mistaken about me as they are.  Besides, what gave you the impression it was ever about you?  Go.  :)"

Would you buy insurance from this man?

“As corpses the meant to live; in black they decked out their corpses; out of their speech, too, I still smell the bad odor of death chambers.  And whoever lives near them lives near black ponds out of which an ominous frog sings its song with sweet melancholy.  They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer: and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!”

Friedrich Nietzche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (The Portable Nietzsche)

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Romans 8:18-21

One of my beefs with contemporary Western Christianity is the way it often reduces the Gospel to only one domain, fire insurance.   The Good News is apparently only applicable to something totally unfalsifiable, the afterlife.  To quote Dr. John Macarthur, Jesus "didn't come to fix life here. He didn't come to eliminate poverty. He didn't come to eliminate slavery."  I remember hearing some of my pastors saying that Jesus was “born to die” and that his only purpose was to die for our sins that we might be saved. In short, apparently Jesus didn't come to change anything that can actually be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or felt.  He only came to save us from Hell, which none of us has ever seen, and send us to Heaven, which none of us has ever seen.

Here's where my skeptical brain kicks in.   How do we know we're not just being sold a bill of goods?  Snake Oil?  “The Balm of Gilead”? (a nod to my friend Little Miss Mortis) Do we just trust those that tell us we can be “saved” while life, our life, their life, goes on otherwise unchanged?  We still go to the same job, eat the same things, dress the same way, spend our leisure time on the same activities, but now we've got a really killer retirement package that we “receive by grace through faith”?

If this is only thing that the “Gospel” is about, doesn't that kind of make a good deal of Jesus' teaching kind of pointless filler?  If the Gospel, in it's totality, is about going to Heaven by appropriating God's grace by belief in Jesus' death and resurrection what the heck is the point of the parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matt 25:31-46)? Why worry about most of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) if I've already got all the Gospel has to offer?  Apparently, being a peacemaker (Matt 5:9) isn't actually what makes you a child of God. (To be fair, the text does say “Shall be called” not “Shall be”.  I guess you can be called one and not be one.  I wish Jesus was less confusing on this issue).  Are all the interpersonal, social, and moral aspects of the New Testament like optional equipment on a new car, nice to have but not necessary to get you from point A to point B?

I'm thinking this is where I kick the platonic assumptions to the curb.   I do believe that Jesus saves us from our sins, but I think He intends to do so in the here and now as well as the sweet by and by.  I believe he intends for us to be free from the bondage and consequences of our addiction to consumerism, noise, drugs, lust, the mindless consumption of electronic media, the economic ease and privilege of living at the center of the Empire, etc. now, as well as later.  

I refuse to serve a neutered Jesus that has been made in our image and is safe for mass consumption.  I don't need a smarmy platitude-spewing Lord that is simply there to give me an eternal pass on all my instances of wrath, greed, apathy, or elitism.    I want him to be fierce in my life.  Like Aslan in Narnia, I pray that Jesus is good, but not safe for me to spend time with. I want him to destroy my apathy and self-deception to reveal what His Kingdom, what His Gospel is truly about.  I want to see the Gospel, the declaration of the ascendancy of a new King, turn the world upside down again, to save people here and now.  I want to see Jesus save addicts, mend broken families, reconcile communities, and bring peace to nations. I just pray that I have the courage to walk into that new land when I'm given a glimpse of it.  Then, after a long hard fight, I'll take that retirement plan. 

I'm a gadfly.

"You should have eyes that always seek an enemy, your enemy. And some of you hate at first sight.  Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage--for your thoughts. And if your thought be vanquished, then your honesty should still find cause for triumph in that.  You should love peace as a means to new wars-- and the short peace more than the long." (page 159)

"In a friend one should have one's best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him." (page 168)

"He loves his enemies; this art he understands best of all whom I have ever seen. But he takes revenge for this on his friends."  (page 415)

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (The Portable Nietzsche)

Sometimes I wonder if I talk too much. I can remember, when I was younger, actually choosing to talk, not so much as to add to a conversation, but more to seem intelligent. I'm better at judging my motives now, but I don't pretend to be perfect. Now I try to weigh the actual benefit and necessity of my interjection of a new idea or perspective into a conversation before I open my mouth. There are times when, even if I disagree with what is being said, there is no net positive impact to be had from my questioning of or disagreement with others.

Lately I've been speaking up in various contexts a bit more than I have in the past. One situation that I was particularly worried about, actually turned out very well. I was in a group of people discussing church finances and participation in congregational life. When we began to discuss "Best Practices" in getting people to commit I was the final one to speak. I told them that for people of my generation (I was the only person under 40, and just barely at that) it was meaningless to speak of commitment to supporting the congregation outside the context of Mission (what does the congregation stand for and what is it doing in the community?). I was initially gently and gracefully deflected by the leader of the meeting, and then she had to step away for a few minutes. Others present then began to talk about Mission and when the leader returned she began to speak to it's importance as well. I was surprised. If I had done that in my previous religious context, conservative evangelicalism, it would probably have elicited a pretty lively disagreement.

There are those in my life that I do this with on a one-on-one basis, and I can be brutal in my deconstruction of sacred cows. One of my problems is that I enjoy the process. I like to analyze positions and see if I can find cracks in them. I then proceed to see just how big of a crack I can create. I also think turn-about is fair-play. I appreciate those that show me where my blind spots are, where what I have assumed was solid rock is nothing more than paper. A way I describe it to some is that sometimes compassion comes at you with a big knife. I will additionally purposely expose myself to views with which I know I will disagree. I'm not talking about watered down representations, but intelligent, educated, articulate proponents of positions that I disagree with. I figure that if my faith, or view on another topic, is really based on anything of substance it will stand up to the onslaught. I've seemed to survive thus far. I've had to jettison some minor pieces of my world-view that I no longer believed that I could in good conscience support, but I seem to be better for it so far.

When I provide this "service" to my friends I like to think I'm doing them a favor by showing them the weaknesses in their world-views. However, sometimes I wonder if I'm not just going into someone's house, the only place they have to live, and tearing down a few walls, some of them exterior, and then walking away. This is not to mention the fact that I might simply be better at rhetoric than some people, and totally lack the self awareness to know I'm dead wrong.

To speak, or not to speak...?  Am I contributing to people's lives, or am I causing destruction, either in self deluded compassion or for my own entertainment?  The tension can be taxing.  That being said, I think it would be more worrisome if I readily 'knew' the answer.