[January 2005 journal entry]
Two ways to treat others – (1) harshly, followed by intermittent expressions of regret and with excessive expressions of love/respect, or (2) consistently courteous, gentle, respectful. I try to be the latter. I too often fail.
[January 2005 journal entry]
A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter and I had a dinner conversation about the Broadway drama Miss Saigon. As I reconstructed the Vietnam War/era for her, I found myself thinking “What if . . .” when I recalled that my lottery number re the draft was the number ‘365’ (i.e., the last birth date that would have been used for the draft into the military).
[January 2005 journal entry]
An earthquake that measured 9.1 on the Richter scale occurred on the ocean floor off the north corner of Indonesia 26 December 2004, sending a devastating tidal wave throughout the Indian Ocean region. Victims and damage resulted as far away as 3000 miles to the African coast. As of 4 January 2005, the death toll had reached 155,000+, with several million others missing, injured, and/or dislocated. Such carnage and destruction are beyond measure. I feel helpless, stunned. We sent a $300 contribution to Doctors without Borders to support that organization’s relief efforts. I find the ‘God’ language I have heard/read within the ‘religious’ sphere re the earthquake – on the theological spectrum from fundamentalist/evangelical across to liberal – predictable and disturbing. How can a thinking/reflective person say what a college football player said about his game ending interception the night after the December 26 Indonesia disaster – “God put me in a position to make the interception”? The fundamentalist/evangelical insistence that “God has a reason for all things” has resulted in offensive attempts to extrapolate meaning from the earthquake tragedy. I was disappointed in an Episcopal priest’s homily I heard on January 2 in which the priest told the hearers they have “more solid theological footing” if/when they shift their attention from the earthquake itself to “Where is God now”, suggesting that ‘God’ is present in the humanitarian responses and avoiding the seemingly obvious point that the earthquake was an overwhelming ‘now’ when it erupted. I wanted to stand and ask firmly, “Where was your ‘God’ then?” The Episcopal priest also encouraged his hearers to ponder the beautiful moments/“miracles” in life, with the reassurance that these “experiences of grace” will offset or outweigh the disturbing experiences in life. The flaw is twofold – (1) in the instruction not to ponder ‘face to face’ the disturbing experiences in life and (2) in promoting this grossly inaccurate estimate re the proportion of ‘beautiful’ experiences to ‘tragic/grim’ experiences in reference to the incalculable suffering/misery from the December 26 earthquake and tsunami.
[November 2004 journal entry]
On a local news broadcast, a segment was devoted to a child abuse/neglect case. I am chilled every time I think of the report that the child has permanent hearing loss due to roaches having embedded in her ears.
[November 2004 journal entry]
The Ecclesiastes author and the composer of the story/play Job seem to take suffering very seriously, to see the profound depth/breadth of suffering. Who/where else in Jewish scripture or Christian scripture does so? Can it be deduced from any/all of the four Gospels that ‘Jesus’ did so to the same degree as the Ecclesiastes author and the composer of the story/play Job?
[November 2004 journal entry]
One consequence of my ‘historian first, theologian second’ methodology has been that, with each new layer of ideas to examine radically (i.e., to the root), fellow searchers fall back. When do they fall back? When they reach limits beyond which they cannot and/or will not go – e.g., limited by intellectual gifts, training, time, relationships put at risk, work, energy, motivation, personality type, lack of insight into the questions, lack of information, the ‘play out the hand’ stage of life, a retirement mentality, inability to multi-task (simultaneously act and reflect), . . . . Most individuals settle for minimal (if any) radically critical examination of the ground on which they stand, the foundation on which they build their lives. They are willing to depend on and to follow others who appear to have looked more carefully, who reassure them that the ground and foundation upon which their lives are being built are sound. Some among these leaders can be prophetic in the sense of stirring those who listen to action. Others among these leaders make careers out of pastorates or faculty positions for schools supported by constituencies with settled/comfortable experience on the ground/foundation that the career pastors and faculty members confirm/protect. I have found the number of individuals who persist in radical/unrestricted questioning of the ground/foundation on which they stand to be few.
[November2004 journal entry]
The small inner-city congregation I served part-time as minister (1976-79) while completing my doctoral course work and beginning my dissertation work -- became increasingly polarized. Most of the longtime members became more and more defensive as the number of new and untraditional members grew. Several friends were ready to lead the new and untraditional members in forming a separate congregation if I would make a long-term commitment to the experiment. My other two options – to finish my doctoral program with Dr. Hinson at Southern Seminary before going to Oxford University to do a second doctoral program with Maurice Wiles (a Patristics specialist with additional scholarly stature as an interpreter of the 1950s/60s ‘God is dead’ tumult within the ‘religious’ sphere) or to join the Harding Graduate School faculty in Memphis. I chose Memphis. What if I had chosen Louisville? What if I had chosen Oxford?
[November 2004 journal entry]
“The village took pride in his decline” (re ‘old Mephistopheles’ in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats).
[November 2004 journal entry]
I wrote this poem in response to well-meaning individuals who have asked if I am depressed --
If I seem despondent, I am thinking about . . .
the loneliness associated with persisting in weeding out weak ideas
or
how hard existence is for the vast majority of people
or
the haunting faces of severely damaged sufferers
or
the shift toward and momentum for the United States to be a theocracy and a ‘religious’ state
or
how institutionalized uncritical thinking and injustices are
or
how my affluence implicates me in the inequities and injustices that victimize the powerless
or
how doubtful it seems that I am making any sort of lasting difference
or
. . . .
To have your eyes open indiscriminately to ‘life under the sun’ is to be near despondence.
To learn to ‘see from below’ is to be near despondence.
To be ‘with the word face to face’ is to be near despondence.
To be near despondence is not to be without hope or humor.
Listen with me to ‘the blues’.
[November 2004 journal entry]
After a recent conversation with a high school teacher/friend, he wrote – “ . . . A subject was brought up that I would like to ask your help in probing further. I think I heard you say once that we should be present in a way that honors our past and at the same time respects our neighbor. Will you help me develop that idea? I am thinking that it just might be where I am most static at this point.” I responded by e-mail as follows --
“ . . . Three texts came to mind as I read your note – i.e., the Good Samaritan story (Lk. 10:25-37), the ‘love your enemy’ text (Mt. 5:43-48), and the ‘sheep/goats’ parable (Mt. 25:31-46). The Good Samaritan story raises a crucial question about what might be called the life situation for which I consider myself accountable. The ‘love your enemy’ text exerts significant pressure against the tendency to restrict my life situations to individuals most like me, to individuals friendly to me, to individuals who will not threaten me (philosophically as well as physically). The ‘sheep’/‘goats’ parable proposes what to me is the most radical approach to how/who to be in ‘the world’ in that the parable detaches a life of caring from any ulterior, self-serving, or deity-driven motive. I try to remain true to the resolve to keep my ‘aim eye’ on and in search for individuals for whom life is hard, tragic, broken, deprived. A corollary to this resolve is that I must be ready/able respectfully to put at risk (including losing) any association or idea – past or present – that would distract from or in other ways discourage the resolve.
[October 2004 journal entry]
‘Epileptic’ or ‘demon possessed’? – this either/or choice illustrates/clarifies the divide separating ‘pre-modern’ and ‘modern’ mindsets re science, medicine, and ‘religion’.
[October 2004 journal entry]
This past Tuesday evening, I learned my friend Charles had died that afternoon of a heart attack. Later in the evening, I spoke with Charles’ middle daughter who conveyed the family’s request that I give one of the eulogies during the funeral. Charles’ death has led me to think back across the nearly three decades since our friendship took such special form during my years in Louisville when I was a searching doctoral student. Charles – a highly respected lawyer who had remained in a small practice with his father to protect his professional freedom -- took me on as a project, I think. He was the first adult I knew well who had a wide-angle view of ‘the world’, who respected the complex textures of ‘the world’, who relished being in ‘the world’. On the eve of my departure in 1979 from Louisville to fill a graduate faculty position, Charles and I had a ‘David and Jonathan’ moment together. We looked back. We speculated about the future. We exchanged symbols of our friendship. I gave him a paperweight he kept on his desk all these years. The paperweight (which I now have) has the inscription – “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David. And Jonathan loved David as his own soul”. He gave me the replica of a turtle that has been on my desk now for twenty-five years. That turtle was his parting counsel to survive, to persevere, to know when to take shelter, and “to never let them see your hands sweating”. During the days since Charles’ death, I have again placed our friendship alongside the David and Jonathan story in Jewish scripture. The paperweight inscription comes in the story just after David defeats Goliath. King Saul prohibits David’s return to his home and instead virtually adopts him into the royal court. These are heady years for the young shepherd boy turned military legend. David and Jonathan – the king’s son -- share a vision of their ruling together, with Jonathan at David’s side. For this and other reasons (including symptoms hinting at psychiatric disorder), Saul turns against David. Jonathan finds himself in the dilemma of attempting to remain true to his friend and to his father. David eventually flees into the wilderness as a hunted/marked fugitive charged by Saul with treason. He lives among the Philistines. The story includes one brief meeting between David and Jonathan. Jonathan repeats their vision of ruling together, with Jonathan at David’s side. Otherwise, they live on in very different settings. Jonathan dies with his father in battle at the hands of the Philistines. David had offered to fight with the Philistines, but had been turned away by military commanders who questioned his trustworthiness in fighting against the Israelites. Among the speculations set up by the story – What if David had fought with the Philistines in the battle and faced Jonathan? What if Jonathan had survived the battle and come to David with the vision of ruling together?
[September 2004 journal entry]
Imagine: A teacher singles out for preferential treatment two students of the thirty-three students in his/her class. The reasons could be any combination of factors – e.g., ethnicity, intellectual gifts, familiarity with parents, gender, appearance, . . . . Or there may be no reason/s. The preferential treatment occurs unambiguously in front of the entire class (e.g., tutoring, seating, extra credit, field trips, . . .). The teacher simultaneously and intentionally discourages/deprives the other students of assistance/resources that would be beneficial to their education. The ignored/harmed students and their parents object to this blatantly unfair behavior. Ethics question: What should the two students singled out for preferential treatment think? do? Theological question: How can individuals who would object to such behavior on the teacher’s part use/approve/advocate ‘God’ language that is strongly similar to the imagined teacher’s preferential treatment of the students?
[September 2004 journal entry]
As a teacher/friend commented on what his year away from high school teaching had meant for him, he introduced the idea of ‘calling’ and asked what I think about the concept. Based on our previous discussions, he anticipated that I would have reservations due to the implied anthropomorphic image of a ‘God’ who ‘calls’. I introduced ‘accountable’ as the operative term for me. I explained that, as a starting premise, I consider myself accountable for all experiences however large or small. In reality, many experiences pass without much notice or reflection. I try hard not to miss potentially pivotal experiences. To illustrate, I reflected on several pivotal experiences for which I continue to feel accountable – e.g., the discovery of historiographical questions and source criticism, exposure to chronic illness through my first wife’s illness/death, ‘friendship in the singular’ with a small circle of physicians, openings into the medical education/practice settings, . . . . The point -- accepting accountability for such experiences alters/shapes the course my life takes.
[September 2004 journal entry]
Hurricane Ivan destroyed a Pensacola woman’s business she had maintained for fifty years. She said to a news reporter – “This is God’s way of telling me it’s time to retire.” Did she not see or care about the implications of this assertion for others?
[September 2004 journal entry]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- with his decision to return to Germany in July 1939, his subsequent participation in covert/violent resistance against the Nazis, and his courage to begin radically rethinking his core ideas -- stood out for me in a singular way among the seminal thinkers in the Western tradition as I made the move into being ‘with the world face to face’. Going beyond either the ‘scrapheap’ Job or the Ecclesiastes author, Dietrich assigned “unparalleled value” to the experience of learning to see “from below” (i.e., from the perspective of the sufferer). His experience from the time of his doctoral studies through 1938 (by which time the Nazis had crushed the Confessing Church as a form of civil disobedience) and my experience from the time of my doctoral studies to the ‘imprisoning’ last three years of my first wife’s battle with multiple sclerosis (1984-87) differed in one foundational way – i.e., Dietrich during his university studies stepped back/away from Harnack et al and their participation in modern critical scholarship as he began to study closely and eventually came to collaborate with Barth (who, in the 1920s and in intentional contrast to Harnack et al, was attempting to recover as much as possible of the classic Protestant/Reformed ‘from above’ methodology/theology). I studied Barth carefully in a doctoral seminar and presented him (as I did all seminal thinkers) as forcefully as possible in the ‘Current (20th century) Religious Thinking’ graduate course I taught (1979-92). But in my personal spiritual and ethical journey, I had no ‘Barth phase’. To the degree that Dietrich drew from and aligned with Barth, he (1) neither would nor could consider himself to be a historian first, then a theologian, and (2) would not have felt pressure to engage radically (i.e., into the root) the implications of the ‘world come of age’ realization. His immediate conversation partners during his time as assistant pastor with a German-speaking Church in Barcelona (1928) and his time with New York City’s Union Seminary (1930-31) put no such pressure on him as far as I have been able to determine. The cultural/moral deterioration in Germany that resulted from Hitler’s coming to power seemed to reinforce Barth’s bleak perspective on ‘the world’. I suspect Dietrich’s valued place within his largely ‘non-religious’ extended family contributed directly and deeply to his having a wider, more complex, and more penetrating insight than Barth (who was in Basel after 1934) into the German situation during the Confessing Church pre-war years of resistance. Dietrich could have retained some variation on Barthian methodology/theology if he had remained in New York City in 1939. Instead, he returned to Germany after only a few weeks. His decision to return to Germany minus an intent to ride out the war huddled with the contained Confessing Church put before him in a new/radical way the methodological challenges associated with taking a ‘non-religious’ approach to being ‘with the world – come of age -- face to face’. I am not surprised to find him explaining his disappointment with and his distance from Barth in his prison letters to Eberhard and Renate. Nor am I surprised to find in his prison correspondence frequent requests for and reactions to books about science, philosophy, history, physics, . . . . I think Dietrich felt an urgency to deepen his understanding of ‘the world come of age’ free of a Barthian perspective on ‘the world’. The list I have kept re my reading since 1992 demonstrates that gaining the necessary orientation to be ‘with the world face to face’, to remain ‘non-religious’, and to keep seeing ‘from below’ requires an ever-deepening inquiry, self-examination, and re-thinking. This reading followed naturally for me from my years as a student and teacher of the history of ideas.
[September 2004 journal entry]
Across the years since 1992, I have tried to handle carefully and thoroughly the question re what image (if any) of ‘Jesus’ is possible/legitimate outside the ‘religious’ sphere. (My prior years of rigorous consideration of the ‘historical Jesus’ question were useful but not sufficient as I engaged this question even more earnestly outside the ‘religious’ sphere. The same limitation was true of the attempts I had made prior to 1992 to critically test ‘God’ language.) By the end of my doctoral studies (1981), I was determined to be first a historian, then a theologian. Among the many implications, this methodological commitment meant that my theological efforts would be based on the results of an unrestrained and critical assessment of the resources – principally the ‘gospels’ of Christian scripture – for constructing an image of ‘Jesus’. During my graduate study years, my center of gravity re Jewish scripture and Christian scripture shifted to the story/play Job and to the Ecclesiastes essay because (1) neither depended on resolution of historiographical questions similar to the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ and (2) both focused on the core life-questions re suffering and integrity I was facing. This shift gave me (1) a position both in life and within Jewish scripture and Christian scripture from which to engage the historiographical questions prerequisite to imaging ‘Jesus’ and (2) an existential grid by which to sift through the sources re ‘Jesus’. These methodological decisions have remained matters of intense inquiry for me to the present. Not surprisingly, ‘Christology’ steadily diminished for me as ‘Jesus’ the human being became increasingly real to me. And as ‘Jesus’ the human being came into focus for me, his being a man of his time/setting (as Schweitzer argued, convincingly in my judgment, a century ago against the 19th-century ‘lives of Jesus’) became increasingly evident – e.g., his pre-modern/pre-scientific view of the world, his limited education, his lack of family responsibilities, his anticipation of a near end to history, his use of ‘God’ language minus reservations about the morphic (e.g., anthropo-, socio-, cosmo-) limitations of such language, . . . . I lost sight of ‘Jesus’ as a ‘lord’ or a ‘king’ with a final or authoritative word/path to follow. I gained sight of ‘Jesus’ as a possible example for the missing character in the story/play Job and as a potential conversation partner for the Ecclesiastes author. This ‘Jesus’ would have to set aside any ‘religious’ T/O paradigm ideas that would undermine his ability to be such. The ‘scrapheap’ Job and the Ecclesiastes author would have insights to offer him. I find the fact that ‘Jesus’ was seen/treated as dangerous and heretical by the guardians of the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm of his day a compelling reason to think (1) he would be seen/treated similarly by the guardians of the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm today and (2) he might be a candidate for the missing character in the story/play Job and a conversation partner for the Ecclesiastes author. This surviving image of ‘Jesus’ remains in my vision as I journey further and further away from the familiar (to me) shoreline of the ‘religious’ sphere and into the open seas of being ‘with the world face to face’.
[September 2004 journal entry]
My experience as the spouse of a multiple sclerosis victim put me in a position analogous to Job’s wife as I have studied closely the story/play Job since the early-1970s. My affluence (in the etymological sense of ‘flowing to’) – e.g., privileges and resources associated with being male, white-skinned, American, healthy, athletic, intelligent, with having opportunities to travel abroad, with never being uncertain about employment or my next meal, with . . . – has put me in a position analogous to the Ecclesiastes author’s deep existential turmoil once he had seen how exceptional his privileged life was when compared with what he saw of the severe want and suffering the vast majority of individuals were experiencing just beyond the edge (and perhaps due to) his affluence. When I began (1979) teaching graduate courses in history and theology, my lived connections with the characters in the drama around the ‘scrapheap’ Job and with the Ecclesiastes author (1) led to my introducing a human suffering course that was framed by and tied to a ‘scrapheap’ Job perspective and (2) led to the attempt to construct an imagined dialogue between the Ecclesiastes author and ‘Jesus’ as the format, essence, challenge of my systematic theology course (with whom in Jewish scripture or Christian scripture could the Ecclesiastes author have a dialogue?). The ideas tested in those two courses contributed directly and significantly to my loss of confidence that the ‘religious’ sphere can either produce the missing character in the story/play Job (i.e., a character representing a way to be with the ‘scrapheap’ Job without harming him further) or sustain a dialogue with the Ecclesiastes author that takes seriously and embraces his scrutiny of the depth/breadth of human tragedy/misery in ‘life under the sun’ (with the last paragraph in the Ecclesiastes text – which I view as tacked on by a ‘religious’ editor -- illustrating the ‘religious’ withdrawal from the dialogue on methodological grounds). My intent to seek a way of being that is a variation on the missing character in the story/play Job and my intent to test the credibility/integrity of ideas from the perspective of and against the reality of the depth/breadth of human tragedy/misery in ‘life under the sun’ meant I had passed the point of considering further or seeking to return to the ‘religious’ sphere as my spiritual and ethical ‘home’. By the 1991 resignation from the institution where I had been on faculty, my move outside the ‘religious’ sphere in order to be(come) ‘with the world face to face’ was complete. I did not seek another place (‘home’) within the ‘religious’ sphere. Instead, opportunities to live/work within the medical education and practice settings created ways for me to relocate where the depth/breadth of human tragedy/misery is seen ‘face to face’ and where there is no more crucial ethical challenge than to be near suffering patients without harming them further.
[September 2004 journal entry]
“Many more Americans die each year from poverty, hunger, pollution, dangerous jobs, or poor access to high-quality health care than from terrorism. Who weeps for these people?” – Ralph Nader (speaking at a Philadelphia church on 11 September 2004).
[September 2004 journal entry]
The attempt within a theological or philosophical paradigm to make sense of an existentially threatening incident of human suffering is analogous to the attempt a physician makes in going through his/her differential diagnosis reasoning to make sense of a patient’s symptoms.
[September 2004 journal entry]
The ontological question shifted in subject/focus from ‘God’ to the ‘self’.
[September 2004 journal entry]
Is certainty ignorance? Yes. Does certainty lead others into ignorance? Yes.
[September 2004 journal entry]
Can justification/rationale for a modern/liberal approach to education be traced back into early Christian scripture/tradition? into Jewish scripture/tradition? into the life/teachings of ‘Jesus’ (seen independent from and antecedent to the guardians of the early Christian tradition)?
[September 2004 journal entry]
When the poor are assisted, the sick medically attended, and sufferers encouraged -- can such actions be understood within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm other than as implied indictments of ‘God’ and as implied corrections of the actions of ‘God’?
[August 2004 journal entry]
Eli Wiesel has asked, “What can he (i.e., the person who has seen into the darkness of human suffering and cruelty) achieve by making you (i.e., the reader/listener) sad?” (See After the Darkness: Reflections on the Holocaust, p. 9.) I would reword this question to say – “ . . . by possibly making you sad?” Not everyone who reads/listens will pause to reflect. Not everyone who reads/listens will be made sad. I think Wiesel’s question is especially serious when the witness to the darkness of human suffering and cruelty takes the initiative (in conversations, in presentations, in publications) to expose readers/listeners.
[August 2004 journal entry]
Have I later rejected an idea I had tested carefully/radically?
[August 2004 journal entry]
I was born into and raised within a way of seeing ‘the world’ that had a radius of 200 miles at most from/around my small hometown and that retained/assumed an essentially pre-modern paradigm. My first years of college came at a junior college within that radius that insisted on a fervent loyalty to an essentially pre-modern paradigm. My decision to complete college at a regional state university began a long and arduous educational journey that eventually repositioned me within a much larger ‘world’ and that challenged/dissolved my confidence in the essentially pre-modern paradigm from my upbringing. I became more and more aware that I was living within a modern paradigm.
[July 2004 journal entry]
References such as ‘the remains’ and ‘the body’ regarding a deceased person imply something ‘more’ about the person that is no longer present.
[May 2004 journal entry]
A congregation that takes seriously the rich variety of ways to use language for reflecting on human experience and the limits of language when ‘God’ language is attempted will intentionally guide children across the threshold from a simplistic/literal use of language to an appreciation for ‘story’ and for the morphic nature of ‘God’ language. Congregations toward the evangelical/fundamentalist end of the spectrum intentionally stand against this approach. I do not yet know of a congregation within the ‘religious’ sphere that incorporates this language growth/task in confirmation discussions (an ideal and symbolic time to do so). As children cross from elementary school to middle school, they are being introduced directly (as in literature studies) and indirectly (as in science, history, math studies) to the potential and the limitations of human language. Public schools and private schools not religiously affiliated/restricted do so more uniformly and consistently; religiously affiliated private schools do so less uniformly and consistently, depending on their position on the theological spectrum. A few home school curricula – e.g., the Calvert curriculum – do so in an exemplary manner, in sharp contrast to most home school curricula that are designed to protect a fundamentalist/pre-modern use of language.
