On The Virtue Of Knowing Nothing

For some reason, today I remember M., a college acquaintance who years ago talked to me in my dorm room late into the night. You see, M. had just completed a semester at The Oregon Extension (OE),† a sort of academic retreat in the southern Oregon mountains, where students live in cabins while exploring their Christian beliefs in an open-minded yet academically rigorous community. Upon his return to our New England campus for the spring trimester, M. sought me out, eager to report on his experience in Oregon.

M. was not the first OE alumnus I knew. I had already heard back from several other alumni who found the place all rather magical. OE had provided a truly transformative experience, at least for most folks. However, one of my friends, a man I had known since middle school, was not as taken by the OE curriculum.

But M. was taken, completely. He had sought me out with an almost furious energy; there was an urgency in his tone. And so, as I reclined on my bed, my back against the wall, M. gave me his impassioned report on what he had learned, and what he had learned could be boiled down to two things: He had learned that Christianity is all about grace, and that he knew absolutely nothing.

I recognize that this is hardly news that suggests epiphany. But for M., well, he had been transformed. He waxed on about Karl Barth and presuppositions; he mentioned paradigms. And he could not reiterate often enough that what OE had given him was the liberation that can only come from great insight: He knew nothing at all.

What M. was not saying was what Socrates may have said, namely, that in order to learn a man must first admit that he does not know what he claims to know. M.'s sort of doubt wasn't even Cartesian, for Descartes at least landed on something relatively familiar: his own self. What M. was really saying was that he had found a new virtue; that not knowing anything, at least anything certain or foundational, was a glorious gift, one wrapped and tied in bows of God's abundant grace. Ignorance was a liberating virtue.

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I recall overhearing a psychology professor at my thoroughly Protestant college tell a colleague that he "love[d] shattering the presuppositions of the undergrads." I am sure this professor's pleasure was rooted in love, or so one should infer within the context of a Christian institution of higher learning. But what I noticed then, and notice even now, is that many so-called "Christian intellectuals" seem very much interested in the demolition of their students' presuppositions, but have little interest in renovation, which seems a rather limited view of things. After all, it is all very well and good to knock down walls, but if the building is left razed, is this pleasing and wise?

When I told another OE alumnus about the psych prof's pleasure in dismantling, he opined that he felt the prof's words encapsulated what his experience at OE had been: professors delighting in deconstructing without taking to time to help rebuild.º

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So why do I think about M. today? Maybe because, in part, I am thinking of some of the "new virtues" before us: tolerance, multi-cultural empathy, open-mindedness, are forerunners of the new virtues, but they seem almost antique by comparison. No, there are even newer virtues, like "multi-tasking," flippancy, and maintaining a vital Internet avatar, to name a few. But the one virtue that I believe M. and his peers presented far ahead of their time is this necessary and seemingly humble admission that each of us knows nothing; that each of us must admit that we not only could be wrong, but we are wrong. To such humble folks, a sophisticated mind is a ceaselessly nuanced one; every answer, if one can be found, must be hopelessly complex, or complicated by the never-ending deferences that such a mind makes in the face of a problem, or in reply to a question. The truly smart person thinks, without necessarily ever landing on a solid answer; the inquiry is all that matters, complete with certain prescriptions against appearing too certain, too provincial, too anthropocentric or patriotic or partisan or American or patriarchal. An intelligent person is a cosmopolitan one, where everything bears equal moral and intellectual weight; where no one wants to land on one idea, even if it is demonstrably right, for fear of looking like that immodest man who decides, who prefers one country or region over all others; that simpleton who prefers Tuscany to Campania.

No, the intellectual is a person who believes in process, in pursuit. Actually landing on an answer, well, that is for those who possess a fearful mind, full of anxiety; an intellectually incurious mind that clings to God and other soothing constructs. The true intellectual is too democratic to have an answer, even a conviction, that is not arrived at by consensus, collaboration or roll call.

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In reading G. K. Chesterton's glorious Orthodoxy once again, I find that in 1908 Mr. Chesterton was already aware of what would perhaps become the 20th- and 21st-centuries' most pervasive intellectual movement (or mood). And it appears that M.'s insight is really not that new at all, at least to Chesterton:

"At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he could be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. ...Scoffers of old were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced."

The new virtue, this humility and modesty of which M. seemed so enamored, is the result of upending the very meaning of humility:

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. ... But what we suffer from to-day is a humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly that part he ought not assert -- himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt -- the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from nature. But the new sceptic is so humble he doubts he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that kept him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."

Chesterton is quite clearly on to something here, while I am most likely not. Clearly, I am struggling towards something. I want to know why many of those folks who most often tout the virtue of "thinking for oneself" seem to think for themselves the least; and why what appears to be an intellectual trend toward solipsism, where the self can only know its own claustrophobic self, instead trends towards the fad, the popular, the consensus. Why do those who tell me that I must find my own truth -- a truth that is binding to no one but me -- always seem to fall back on what everybody else thinks -- what the committee or voters or members or citizens or consensuses or Europeans think?

And why is it that M., who claimed to know nothing but the grace of God, knew enough to tell me that knowing nothing was liberating? And why, in the end, is God always reduced to either His ferocious law (ostensibly by those absurd conservatives) or His judgment-free grace of which M. so passionately spoke?

And I wonder why my more religiously liberal peers believe that there is at least one thing God damns: the self who dares assert that something is absolutely true.

Food for thought, or not.

Peace.

†Please note that I am not interested here in besmirching what others have found so helpful. I am merely using OE as a springboard, though not entirely. Alas, there are some things I must keep to myself.
ºI recognize that the goal of many Christian educators is to knock down false idols, and then cultivate in each student the necessary skills and passion so that he or she might erect a faith and Christian worldview that are self-determined.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

An Appeal To Men: Let Us Be Slaves No Longer (Redux)

[In light of the very harrowing tale about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's (alleged?) involvement with prostitutes, I feel compelled to replay a Contratimes essay. The Spitzer story provokes in many of us men the humbling thought that, but for the grace of God, there go many of us -- into the very pits of hell. Sexual addiction is no joke, nor is it victim-less. The pleasures of the flesh are more often than not harbingers of death.

Moreover, witness today the disgusting and prurient media interest in the prostitute involved. The world seeks to exploit her anew. Such sorrow! May God have mercy!- BG]

From February 11, 2006:

I wept last night, several times. You see, I was watching television, which is not usually my habit (particularly on a Friday night), and I found myself weeping as I watched the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, particularly when the 9-year-old Italian girl sang the Italian national anthem; or when Pavarotti closed the show with transcendence. The pageantry and pyrotechnics were brilliant; and the Peace Dove, formed by white-clad humans scaling a vertical netted wall, was mindblowing (though the dove looked a bit hawkish, if you ask me). But I also wept when I jumped to another program, 20/20, which featured a segment by John Stossel that included film footage of the killing of African elephants. I cannot tell you how this vulgarity slays me. It is an abuse unconscionable. (I am not referring to bona fide hunting of elephants as a vital natural resource by indigenous peoples.)

I am glad for channel-changing remote controls.

__________________

But something else really tore me up last night. Something that caused me to rend my garments; to rend my heart. It is the sort of demonic reality that should set the world afire with outrage. I am referring to slave trading, sexual slave trading. I urge my readers to watch PBS's Frontline documentary Sex Slaves; and I urge you to help fight the abuse of women (and children) in a trade that is, in fact, only a few mouse clicks away from this site. In fact I urge you men, particularly, who, like me, struggle with even the casual visit to porn-sites on the WWW, to at least fight the darkness by refusing to click on a JPEG or MPEG that will cost a woman her soul. For it is all linked: prostitution, pornography, abuse: it is all part of the degradation of womanhood, of personhood, and, perhaps most of all, motherhood.

Men, lest we forget, are also victims of sexual degradation, in myriad ways. Battered women come to men in all forms: many of us are married to them, our wives having been victimized by fathers or brothers or former boyfriends (the worst culprits, usually), or the culture that begs women to throw their virtues to the wind. But we also, as men, know our own exploitation: We are told everyday in advertisements, books, magazines and porno-promos that sex is ALL we really want; that we are nothing but sex objects too, hungry with lust; that THEY know what we really, really need.

My conviction is that we men must stop the demand for the consumption of women by refusing to participate it in any form. Moreover, I believe we men must begin, perhaps in grand over-reaction, to honor women, elevating them if we must, by viewing their bodies, not as playgrounds, but as cathedrals, as sanctuaries, as temples of holy life. We must stop the tyranny, even if that tyranny turns a profit through increased ad revenue, circulation, retail sales, or web-traffic.

I confess that I am guilty. I have looked at photographs (many!) that are indeed indecent, photographs presented in ostensibly up-scale magazines like Playboy, Penthouse, or some such 'proper' website. I apologize to the women that I've exploited, unwittingly perhaps, with each mouse click. I stand ashamed.

But I will fight nonetheless for the souls of women. I cannot express to you the horrors under which many women (and children) are living right now. As one woman said, a former sex slave, she did not know "that there could be places on this earth that could be so evil. ... I kept waiting for one of my clients (pause) to help me. ..." There are women abducted and sent to foreign soil, chained in rooms, serving up to sixteen men a day, sexually, perversely, in abject decadence worse than Dante's lowest tiers of hell. Governments and legal authorities turn blind eyes towards these obscenities; men and women participate in luring and trapping vulnerable girls in schemes that are nothing short of sick.

I weep today, and I pray my tears are not for show, are not in vain. There is no hope for this planet if we do not honor women; if the womb is reduced to a commodity. I beg you to pray for me, and all earnest men, that we will fight, genuinely, for the glory of mother, daughter, sister, wife; that we will honor our wives; that we will heal our women; that we will heal ourselves, by refusing to countenance this evil any longer. Let us stop the evil; humans are not objects for sale.

Men, wake up and repent with me. We are needed.

©Bill Gnade 2006/All Rights Reserved.

[I have written a poem addressing the struggles men face with sexuality and pornography which is available here. Please note that the poem is unflinching in its use of language. I wrote the poem several years ago, and it was presented in workshop at a writers' conference at Colgate University. The leader of the workshop skipped over it for less controversial material. It's not that bad, but it is serious.]

Because I Care About Your Joy

I pray that you saw this little video. Enough to make the oldest heart young again.

The Church Is A Very Idolatrous Place

[This rather lengthy essay is solely for the Christian reader who lands on Contratimes. Surely non-Christians are invited to read it, but I think it might be rather tedious for an outsider. But I might be wrong.]

I was asked last week by a Contratimes reader whether I would be writing about the unfortunate scandal which is the resignation of Rev. Ted Haggard, (former) president of the National Association of Evangelicals (USA). I replied that I was unsure. This morning, I am no more certain about that sad tale, but I am approaching certainty about things that have led to so much disappointment in not merely the evangelical church in America, but in the Church everywhere else. Not being a man of temperate mind who might reasonably restrain himself from over-reaching, I rush toward those things from which even the devil flees. It might be either a fool’s response or the mere motto of a common hero, but I have only one reply to those who might question my ambitions: ‘Well, someone’s got to do it.’

Prologue: Who Are You?

Remember the very first question God asks in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve flee the scene of the crime. The First Question is not about identity; it is not about who one is. Instead of being a question that might pique the interest of a mere existentialist, it is one that a rescuer or cartographer might ask: Where are you? It is about location and position, it is not about why or when. The question implies relationship: Where are you so I can BE with you? The query implies all the wonders of help and aid, succor and salvation: I need to know where you are so that I might give comfort. There is not even a what or when. Just a simple question about placement.

Please recall the devil’s slithering statements in the garden. Notice that they are all directed at sowing seeds of status: the serpent attempts to inflate Eve’s sense of who she is. He doesn’t care about where she is, he appeals to her sense of identity: “You will not surely die ... for God knows that when you eat of it [the forbidden fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” No doubt these words insult the God of the universe, and Adam as well, for the serpent implies that neither can be trusted (particularly Adam). God is keeping something from you, and you will be all the greater if you ignore what Adam and God have said. The serpent directs his comments directly at Eve’s ego, at her sense of self-worth. His goal is two-fold, like the fork in his tongue: to sow doubt and distrust between Eve and Adam, and to cause the eyes of Eve to swell wide in lust for something that will give her an advantage, an edge. It is, for a moment, all about Eve.

To what does the serpent appeal when he tempts Jesus the Christ after our Lord is driven into the desert moments after baptism? Does he not appeal to Jesus’ sense of identity, of self? “If you are the son of Man, then ...” The temptations flow like a poet’s triplet, shaped in well-metered and seductive phrases; conditionals unconditionally stated: If this, well then, of course THAT. There is nothing here about relationship, or position or place (at least not directly). It is about identity, about pride and self-esteem: If you are the son of God, then surely you can seize the kingdoms of the world. But if you don’t, surely you are a rather insipid and pitiable God. What, pray tell, is there to envy in all that fussing about obedience? Even a clod can be austere; it takes a real God to create. Create, or be damned by the blandness of your humility.

Think of any prophet, any man or woman of God. Think of Jesus Himself, or some apostle or saint of the Church. What is the most common retort against the prophetic message? What do the people say who despise the word of God preached in Palestine, or in the courts of Corinth? Is it not always something like this: Who are YOU to speak such words? Was not Jesus rejected, not because of WHAT He said, but because He, a mere Galilean, a mere son of Mary, presumed to teach the qualified, the esteemed, the wise? There was no real trial held against the man who stood as God before the Sanhedrin, for in a trial testimony would have been heard against what the accused said. Debate would have ensued. Instead, we find mere gossip, mere ad hominem attacks dripping with sarcasm: No man of this stature, of this position, could be the messiah, the God of Israel in human form: this man is not good enough to be God’s Son, born of a mere woman, the son of a mere carpenter. Jesus’ nature, not His words, was attacked; His character was impugned. As His accusers spat on Him and struck Him on the face, they taunted Him, keeping up the tempter’s cruel insinuations: If you are truly the Son of God, then tell us who strikes you; show us your power by coming down from this puny cross! The attack is always to sully and berate the character and reputation of Christ and His prophets. It is never to engage in what He said, or the message proclaimed. It is all about casting mud, stones; about striking with the scourge of cords knotted at the tip of the tongue.

The messenger is indeed always shot. But he is not shot for what he has said. He is shot for daring to say it.

The Idols Of Christianity

When a pastor presides over a church that contains over 10,000 members, I think it is prudent to ask if something has gone terribly wrong. This might just be my own quivering insecurities wondering aloud, but I have never shied away from my own self-doubt, so I see no reason not to ask such questions. But when a single man is shepherd over ten thousand sheep, surely there is something amiss. For isn’t it part of the pastor’s mission to tend such sheep until they can begin to care for themselves? Is it not the case that the best leader, or the best exemplar, leads his followers to be better leaders than himself, and better exemplars? Does not a good shepherd find other shepherds, or, at the very least, wise sheep, to help protect and nurture a flock too large for one good shepherd?

I am not one to recoil in fear that my sins might be made public. To do so is to idolize pretense, the artifice of etiquette and propriety erected around far too much of our lives, insulating us from the unseemly fact that we all are messy with sin. Somewhere along the line the Church accepted the broader culture’s sneering remarks that the Church was the household of the holy. Oddly, the Church has idolized this in forgetfulness, for it has forgotten that the Church is not the household of the whole but the hospice for the broken. And it has been held hostage to this idea, an idea which leads to all sorts of vicious disappointments. Christians too often recoil in shock that they should be called “hypocrites!” by their less-devout peers; but both critics and criticized have forgotten that the Church is the very place one would most expect to find hypocrisy. Sinners -- though this side of heaven redeemed by Christ through confession, grace and sacrament -- are not suddenly raptured out of the consequences of their own sin, nor are they given a magic key that locks away the sinner that lives in the crawlspace of each human heart.

I have written here -- with tears and righteous rage -- about the distortions of women depicted in the pornography industry, and the great evil of prostitution and sexual slavery. And I have confessed my sin, for I have participated, as a mere voyeuristic consumer, in the industry of pornography I so thoroughly despise and damn. Nearly every man reading this, I am sure, understands my confession; and for some of them, the mere mention of pornography has already lured them away from here to search for salacious images on the internet. That pornography is an addiction is a bit like the sun being hot: it is made to be that way. And those of us who have been caught in this or any other addiction know that there is no deliverance to be had from the self that dragged us into addiction’s hell in the first place. Deliverance comes from outside -- in confession, accountability, discipline, grace, sacrament, and the calming Spirit of God. But even all these things do not themselves deliver: the thorn of the flesh will have to come out later, burned away in the fires of purgatory, where there will be loss.†

All this to say that we should not ever be shocked when our pastors or priests fall into sin. We all fall into sin. Moreover, let us jettison this idea that a person of faith falls into sin. A man does not fall into sin the way a climber falls off a ladder. A man falls into sin the way a carpet falls onto the floor: he’s already there.

But why this fascination with holiness? Simple, really. It is our futile attempt to make ourselves impressive: we are trying to raise ourselves above criticism. In other words, we are trying to rebuff the scoffers who shout out “Who are you to talk about morality?!” We put on airs, we surround ourselves with the finery of moral rectitude in order to stand above the (moral) mêlée, and above the riff-raff. As literacy, wit, pedigree, wealth, education and claret separated the aristocracy from the rather uncouth servants in the wing, so vestments and austerity and impressive Christian credentials separate the saint from the sinner. Or so it all goes. We are in love with the accoutrements of proper behavior, though not because we are in love with morality, but because we are in love with being above reproach. But we forget that the poor will always be with us, and that we are the poor. There is no one who is whole in the church or out. But we all too often try to pretend that we win the fight over our accusers by showing them that we are indeed WHO we think we are.

But these are not the only idols we embrace. Yes, too often we worship moral posturing. Yes, we are much impressed by well-credentialed men and women who, in the parlance of the street, have 'real cred.' We love to show off our great churches with grand boasts that God MUST have anointed the pastor of the 12,000-member parish (or how else to explain the pastor’s success unless he is a “mighty man of God”). Many early Christians fought against the printing of the Bible in the vernacular, the common parlance, for fear that such accessibility would make every reader a Pope, a master of theology. Proponents of the popular pressings declared that it would bring the Word of God to the masses. But in sad irony we today have well-credentialed men and women, some standing on the left side of the church and others standing on the right, who constantly remind us that we cannot read the Bible for ourselves at all without their keen insights in ancient history, early Christian psychology and sociology, or semitic linguistics. Idols abound.

There are idols of liturgy, there are idols of simplicity. One church is better because of its stained glass, though the absence of such excessses makes a different church the truer Christian witness. There are idols of worship: one group pits its worship against another’s. There are idols of music, with the Grand Choir of Perfection at The Church of the Heavenly Voice elevating souls in a cappella bliss, while the praise band at the converted movie theater down the street cranks out praise choruses that can’t be heard without electricity. There are idols of spiritual gifts, or the lack thereof. Some Christians adore their erudition, rightly dividing the word of truth; while others adore their intuitive grasp of God’s inner voice, whispered in angelic tongues. Some Christians worship conversion stories, even their own. Some follow Christ in order to be the next C. S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton, Billy Graham or Mother Theresa, imitating, not the steps of Christ, but the heroes that get all the attention. Some worship prophecy, posturing as prophets, the ones hallowed and praised during Bible studies or Sunday School flannel-graph presentations (no doubt there are men bound to an idol thinking that they are one of the forthcoming two witnesses described in Revelation 11). There is the idol of aesthetics, where Christians insist that more is less or less is more; when beauty becomes the fine line between faith and heresy. There is the idol of place, where Christianity is believed to be more powerful in an ancient British chapel than it is in a new geodesic dome in northern California; Christ is more real in the Holy Selpucher than he is in the basement of Pine Street’s Household of Power (or vice versa). There are idols of ministry, where sharing the gospel with prisoners, or cannibals in Papua New Guinea, is deemed greater than breaking bread with one’s neighbors; or where inner-city work with gangs is more courageous than sharing Christ with middle-class white males at a golf course in suburbia. And there are idols of experience, where supernatural visitations by Christ in the dark trump a plain faith, or that speaking in tongues more than Smith means Jones is all the more anointed.

There is even the idol of priesthood, where priestly duties become something adored: priests who elevate themselves -- or are elevated by others -- rendering parishioners nearly superfluous and dumb: we do not need to know or do such things because Father O’Malley takes care of all that. Sadly, Father O’Malley may very well permit, even foster, this sort of idolatry.

All of these, of course, are a response to one thing, and one thing alone: Who are you? Are you the great Christian man who writes books destined to be read for the next several generations, proving your merit, your anointing, your having been chosen? What -- Do tell! -- proves that you’re important in Church History? Are you the great prophet, hurling down corrections to the foolish and floundering, the cursed and disobedient?

Who, who are you - really? Who are you to presume to teach, to speak, to lead, to guide and rebuff and encourage, unless you are published, lauded, respected, honored and proven? Where is your great church, your impressive curriculum vitae? What Biblical language do you know? From where did you take your degrees? Are you a member of the true church?

Call it all a victory for the serpent. We are all trying to impress him without hardly a wonder whether we are impressing God. God wants to know where we are. But we like to show our brothers and sisters where we’ve been, impressing them: this is who I am. But God is not so impressed, nor is the serpent. The serpent snickers, for he has gotten us to pursue emptiness. God, of course, weeps real tears, and sheds real blood. Where are you? He shouts from Gethsemane. Where are you? He shouts from the lonely, forsaken cross. Sadly, Peter is not there, he is among the people trying to impress them with who he is: I am not one of them! But Peter finally got it: His Lord did not say, Whoever is like me is for me, and whoever is not like me is against me. No. Only those who are with Christ are for Him. It is all about being there. It is not about what you bring, or who you think you’re bringing. It’s about where, not who.

What I am not saying

What I am not saying in this essay is that I think there is no true Church, or that ministry is unimportant, or that speaking in tongues or singing praise choruses are bad things to do, or that being inspired by the saints is misguided. Nor am I saying that churches can’t be large or even gigantic. What I am saying is that the fact of sin is the egalitarian force in the church: we are all sinners and that makes us all the more equal. This does not mean that every person’s call or vocation or anointing -- or however one wants to name it -- is equal to everyone else’s. God knows we are all called. The point of all of this is that the very fact that we are called by God can become an idol: we can idolize our anointing, even WHO we have become in Christ. This is the great temptation of the devil offered to Christ in the desert: the devil asks Christ to worship His own self, His own gift and anointing. It is indeed possible to fall in love with love, to worship worship, to praise praise. And that is what we must fight against. For the fact is this: We are who we are not because of who but where we are. We are in a place, a position, and that position is all that ultimately matters, and that place is this: we are in Christ. Christ is the only who that matters. We just need to watch out for the idols that call us to come out of Him.

If there is one image that gives us a sense of what this all means, it is the shepherd and the sheepfold. The sheep are blessed because of where they are, behind the fence with Christ. They are not blessed because of who or what they are. And should one sheep separate from the flock, Christ the Shepherd leaves to find that one lost lamb. He does this solely because of where the lamb is, and where it is not. It has nothing to do with who that lamb thinks it might be, or even who it thinks it should be.

What a relief. It is not all about us.

Peace, in the sheepfold.

†1 Corinthians 3: 10-13

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Ted Haggard, National Association of Evangelicals, Idolatry, Christianity, Hypocrisy, Pornography, addiction

In Whom Do We Trust?

Some of us are afraid to leave the barn. We fear we may be led astray, or that some fox will rend us to pieces. Beware, of course, of the wolf dressed in shepherd's clothing. Beware, of course, of the fox and coyote just outside the fence, sniffing for a way in. There is indeed a warm barn; but don't forget that you have a warm coat. And there is a fence, a sheepdog keeping watch, and a real shepherd but one prayer away.

You may be a sheep, but you are never a sheep alone.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Comments On Comments

Last night I visited a blogger's safe pages to read a rather disconcerting essay on how she felt - at times - mistreated by certain other bloggers when she would leave comments at their sites. That this fine woman should experience this sort of thing at any blog is indeed disconcerting; but she wasn't talking about just any old blogs. She was talking about ostensibly Christian blogs. Sadly, she is not alone. There are too many cases where people are hurt by comments that are offered in the name of heaven yet surprisingly sting like hell.

I have promised here to be gentle with visitors, no matter what their worldviews. It is the very least I can do; and it is, at least to me, the very best thing I can do. Of course, I am aware that I do not receive loads of comments, though my traffic numbers are pretty good. I'd like to think this is due to my sticking to my guns regarding civility. But perhaps my vanity has things wrong, and I don't get long threads of comments -- usually -- because no one cares to disagree with me.

When I visit another site, I admit that, if I leave a comment, it is usually a rather long one. I do this for one reason, and one reason only. I believe the long comment reveals that I am not a bombthrower; it shows that I am not baiting anyone. Long comments allow me to flesh out my position, making it utterly transparent, showing that I am not hiding behind either a pseudonym or some sort of veiled (or even obvious) set of barbs. Besides, a thorough defense avoids -- or so one hopes -- the confusion too often associated with those defenses which consist of a few parries and thrusts. Plus, a longer comment (this only counts if I am engaged and I have issues with a position, usually) permits me to show that I take my interlocutors seriously. Respect listens, but also respect offers thoughtful replies. I realize that this sort of courtesy requires more time (or even skill) than some folks have: I can type pretty fast and words come rather easily.

Mean-spirited comments are not, of course, confined to Christian blogs (and not all Christian blogs are remotely impolite). One can find mean-spirited comments everywhere. Some essayist might write about the jerkness of jerks and then, in the blink of an eye in the comments thread, unwittingly prove himself to be one such jerk. Some hate-monger shall damn hate-mongering; some egomaniac shall berate conceit with all due haughtiness. It is a sad world, often, that one finds in comment threads; and while I am not so squeamish to recoil from those who are abusive, I nonetheless wish I could find that everyone aimed for civility. But to all this I make this free confession: there are many people who think me abusive and uncivil. Perhaps I am. But I surely try not to be either. I may be tough; I may even be stubborn. But I certainly try to be as gentle as a dove.

SOME ADVICE (to myself)

When traveling out onto the blogosphere, keep several things in mind. First, know that there are many people lying in wait to pounce, to damn, to scoff and mock and ridicule. There are countless people who are indeed mean. But there are others who are thoroughly decent.

Second, there are countless people who do not understand what an argument is, or what one even looks like; and the vast majority of folks do not have a clue about the informal fallacies. You will see mere assertions, strung together with no evidence, passed off as decisive analysis or irrefutable arguments, when they are neither. (To some folks, arguing with logic and evidence suggests that they do not have the mastery over the topic they want readers to think they have: they know things with such obvious clarity that they need not stoop to explain what should be just so obvious. But this is only a great veil over insecurity and doubt.) Plus, you will meet many people on the web who are lousy readers: they will see in your words something you never even penned, or even dreamed of penning. Not paying attention to what one reads is merely a different form of the discourtesy of not listening when someone is speaking; people too often embrace conceit and think they've "heard it all before" or they "thoroughly understand" the point before actually hearing or understanding it at all.

Third, you must not take any of this personally. I know how this all feels. Trust me. But I have come to see, though imperfectly, that if I am fair to the facts and remain faithful to reason, that the attacks hurled my way are not really hurled at me. They are hurled at the facts and the logic. If my facts and logic are false and invalid, then I will concede that I have made a mistake. But if I am called a hate-monger by someone who has not understood a word I've written; if I am called a bigot by some guy who can't tell the difference between assertions and elbows, then so be it. The problem is not mine.

Lastly, never forget your sense of wonder, humor; or your gratitude for being. There is bliss all around; grace abundant is there to be received. After all, we all realize that the best way to protect onself from harm is to stay home with the ones who love us unconditionally. We need not let the spiders of the web entangle us; we need not venture out to become some meal for cyberpredators posing as intellectuals. We can always just hit the off key, and be free.

Peace, and mirth -- and all the gratitude that is joy -- to each of you.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

When Michael Helps Michael

His name was Michael Briggs, and he was 35 years old. I did not know him, but I wish I had. He was a good father of two boys; he loved his wife, Laura. And he loved to help people. In fact, he was awarded the highest honors for helping rescue normal folk -- as normal as you and me -- from a burning apartment building in the early morning hours in July 2004.

Michael was a police officer in Manchester, NH. He worked on what was dubbed the "Jeep Patrol," that late-night shift where cops tour neighborhoods on mountain bikes. He loved his job, his colleagues, and the neighborhoods he watched so carefully. Today, and tomorrow, and for days to come, those neighborhoods and colleagues will gather together in small clutches of grief -- candles and cards and flowers in shaking hands -- and they shall find solace in memory, and inspiration in courage.

Michael Briggs probably did not know that the man he was approaching at 2:45 in the morning was familiar to him, even intimately familiar. Nor could the man he was approaching, Michael "Stix" Addison, 26, know that the cop who came toward him was someone who had helped him in a moment of pain and panic; Officer Briggs had responded to a shooting at an apartment in March 2003 and, as the first officer on the scene, gave first aid to a wounded Addison, who suffered a gunshot wound to the collarbone in the incident. Neither man could have known the brutal irony of a hero cop helping a bleeding man more than three years ago as they now came within a few feet of each other on this early Monday morning, heartbeats still vibrant, a wedding ring round Briggs' warm finger.

Pain and panic had brought them together before; it would separate them now in a twitch of a finger on a trigger. One Michael would stand in the darkness; one Michael would collapse on the asphalt, blood pouring from his brain. A dying man who gave succor and aid to a man had in fact given comfort to his killer; Michael Addison would runaway, too selfish to return a favor.

The granite of our little state shakes beneath our feet. There are no gauges or seismographs to record the quake that courses from the tip of a finger to a head hitting the pavement, and then on through to the collapsing hearts of thousands. Sadly, these quakes happen all day long. But we cannot feel them all, too many waves coming from too many sorrows, but we strain to feel what we can. Some of us will feel this local sorrow, the sorrow of a family and friends that we have not met. But we know them nonetheless, because Michael Briggs is the sort of man we all meet everyday, in our homes, our churches, our synagogues; he is that man on the street who smiles and waves and will lay his life down for you and me and Michael Addison in a flash, in a final heartbeat. Knowing men like him, we know his family, we know his friends. We know their grief.

Tomorrow there is a funeral, a massive procession through crowded streets, perhaps thousands lining the route. Take a moment and pray for two little boys, a widow, and a man just courageous enough to kill the man who helped him live so he could think about what he has done, and what has been done for him.

Peace, at least for just one minute.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Michael Briggs, Michael Addison, New Hampshire, Police

Interceding On Our Behalf, With Groanings Too Deep To Be Uttered

There is a horse-and-buggy, and strange folks with black cloth and black hats, and some with beards, and a child running with flowers toward a deep blue dream. From some cold grey pasture (it was green this morning), with dirt on his boots and mud-caked cheeks, a man steps forward and, taking off his hat, bows before a weeping mother and father. He stands erect, though a little bent, and looks into their eyes, eyes filled with flowers and children and blue and dirt and the teary flash of a gun. He says, “We will forgive your son.”

A dog passes by, sniffing for a little girl whose last words of the schoolday were, “Please, shoot me first.” Mothers and fathers -- and several small girls -- collapse at such lessons.

But these strange images all look the same to us: black-and-white on a horse-and-buggy, a triangle flashing warnings. We barely slow down, unless we have friends visiting from faraway. That movie with Harrison Ford was as real as this: we are witnesses to the futility of innocence. And we drive home, thinking we got the picture.

The full moon falls from the sky with nary a word. But the internet and TV are all a-chatter. The world would do well to drape itself in black for a while, seeing in the dark fabric the brilliant tearing flash of forgiveness that cuts its way through an Amish field not far from Paradise. Forgiveness bearing glad tidings, once twitching with doubt on the tip of a trigger. The big, sad bang which started it all.

"Pray for me," he said†. We pray, irrespective of the time, or whether it's too late. And now Amish families gather coins and cans, raising funds, not for the victims, but for the murderer's own family, left shattered beyond imagination. The rest of us are just confounded by such grace.

Peace everywhere, if for just one minute.

[†"He asked the children to pray for him, and that's kind of interesting because he said he hated God," Rhoads said. "He must have recognized the faith in them, God in them." -- ABC News]

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

amish, murder, forgiveness, grace

Oscar Wilde, Seinfeld, And Peace That Eludes

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all, at least to each of you American readers out there.

I had a truly outstanding conversation the other night, as my wife and I were driving homeward. It was about getting to know people, whether we really ever want to know a person, what he or she really thinks, what he or she really believes. My wife suggested that we don't, for true understanding and intimacy are too difficult, carrying with them responsibilities and obligations. She even suggested that we are afraid to really know another person because then we are forced to choose whether we really like, love, or at least respect that person. It is easy to be superficial, we agreed, because the surface is always safe. Are we not after all afraid of drowning below the fine line between sky and sea?

I am often amazed how thin the line is between civility and incivility. Propriety, mores, etiquette; these are often a cheap veneer concealing real animosity, even, sadly, real hatred. I have attended symposia that give lip service to community and understanding and peace, only to discover that such lip service means getting a fat lip should one question the agenda that drives toward said peace. What is peace, anyway, but a veneer, even an abstraction?

Two Friday nights ago, I attended a concert and poetry reading on the human cost of war. It was a peace vigil, of sorts, complete with a chamber choir that managed to achieve the supernal glory of angels. That the event took place in a Unitarian church full of people that would disagree with me on nearly everything hardly mattered: I thanked the performers and the conductor (a man who had injured me greatly) with all my heart. They achieved something wonderful; and I made my peace with a man who once wounded me deeply.

But in that event I heard two things about peace, two poetic images: One was of a soldier who suggested that each fighter on the battlefied instead should be home cuddling with a loved one beneath silk sheets; the other was a soldier's contemplation of the songs of birds on the edge of the battlefield. Odd that both images, in fact, all images of peace such as these, should bother me. Why? Because they are vapid and untrue. For surely not all men can cuddle beneath silk sheets, since such sheets are the privilege of the wealthy. Besides, not only does some poor sap need to make those sheets, not all men can be coddled, for someone needs to do the coddling. The image of the sheets in fact might be the very sort of image that causes wars, wars between those who have, and those who don't; between the coddled and the coddler; between master and slave. Indeed, I know metaphor, and the metaphor of silk bedding fails to evoke the proper sense of real peace, simply because it neglects the facts of life.

The second image, that of the bucolic and pastoral; of the plangent peel of bells, the lambent light of moon, or the swaying softness of long grasses in the wind; these and many images like them are invoked to elicit a peaceful heart. Look! There is no war in poppy fields, no struggle in winter's solace, no fighting on the edges of heather downs and sylvan streams. Look at the deer, the rabbit, the undulating flight of the pileated across the sun-stained sky!

Alas, any person with a smattering of knowledge knows that there is no peace in a meadow; there is no ease of life for the bird or bloom in the grasses. A deer is rife with stress; even its cousin, the moose, may have in its hocks the leeching mandibles of ten thousand ticks. The struggle of life, of prey and predator, of host and parasite, of disease and cold and wet and heat, that plays out in every single square inch of this planet gives no room for the romanticization of peace. An eagle on a branch is not a symbol of peace, nor is the owl hooting in the night wind. They are looking for victims, and are trying not to be victims themselves. Whatever one might say about the earth, peace is not one of its fundamental qualities. There is not a cell or fleck of soil that is not at war with something.

What then is peace but an abstraction of the mind? Why reify, why make concrete what is forever abstract? Why do we see peace in a calm sea, when we know that the ocean's surface conceals a violent surge of fin and fang?

***

You might recall a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry has a transformation, a sort of born-again experience. He is the new Jerry, the good Jerry. At one point, the new Jerry and George, his best friend, sit down for a heart-to-heart, with Jerry urging George to open up, to be vulnerable with his feelings. Later, when the camera returns to the scene, we find George on the edge of grateful tears and Jerry on the far edge of the couch, a look of horror on his face. He stands up, backs away, and says "Well, good luck with all that." In a moment of honest confession, Jerry gets to know his friend as he truly is, and he rejects him, put off by the enormity of the responsibility of intimacy: George's struggles would weigh him down, and Jerry is scared straight back into superficiality.

Oscar Wilde, a man imprisoned for his homosexuality and one of my emerging literary heroes (though not for that reason), wrote from Reading Gaol (where he served his sentence) that the "supreme vice is shallowness." Is he right? I think he might be. For we humans are shallow about what peace is, what it looks like, where it's found. We are shallow even about love, what it means, what it requires: sacrifice, grace, understanding, the carrying of burdens and the confronting of sin and its consequences, and the confronting of the sinful machinations erected to conceal human brokenness and guilt. It is easier if there is no sin, no guilt, no deep dark unknown beneath the veneer of our daily lives. It is easier for us if a loved one who ignores our warnings crashes to the ground and bounces up, like so many little children do, and declares "I'm alright!" It is easier particularly when we know that our loved one is not alright at all.

Someday, somewhere, I will learn how to live below the surfaces I polish daily.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Waiting for smoke

Deep in the heart of Christendom, in the core of the Christian legacy, an old adage will once again prove true: Where there is smoke, there is fire. Soon, in fact, there will be smoke drifting over St. Peter's Square and the Sistine Chapel. The fire of the new Bishop of Rome will be kindled.

It's amazing how fascinated the media are with this conclave, held above a false floor in Michelangelo's gallery; and with the group of religious gathered therein so wholly intent on maintaining tradition that counter-espionage measures have been taken to thwart that very techno-crazy media gathered outside. Have not the last days of Pope John Paul II and this present conclave all seemed so important to the media that it would be crazy not to suggest that the newsgatherers have proven the divine importance of the Vicar of Christ? Has any vacancy and succession of any office been more analyzed; more scrutinized to the very edges of sanity? Why this fascination?

Perhaps it's because the Catholic Church has for centuries stood in the way of human excess. Oh, sure, there are those who scoff at the Church's calls for sacrifice and humility when it is adorned with gold and encrusted with gems. But only the reckless speak thus, forgetting, or ignoring, the curious fact that even in the manger, the stable of the only royal birth, there was gold, frankincense and myrhh. Jesus was and is a king, and his kingdom will have no end. Truly it's OK to manifest the glory of God with the sacraments of art and craft; of precious metals and hallowed frescoes. What else to do with such things than to point heavenward?

But the Church's longstanding resistance to "progress", that ever elusive, seemingly capricious idol; and its criticism of "traditions" that debase and oppress others; give the Church's detractors much to decry. For Rome, particularly in the last papal term, has held firm ground against the spirit of the age, whether it be the inhuman optimism of utopian socialists; or the idolatry of unfettered capitalists; or the licentiousness of the sexually maniacal West. The Church has indeed fought against the idolatries of conservatives and liberals, of heartless moralists and snickering anarchists; and it has fought well. For this reason the world watches and waits; for this reason the media obsess and wonder, and in some cases, even worry.

Doesn't it strike you as strange how many papal "experts" have crawled out from under every rock and paten on the planet? Never before have there been so many experts. Even many non-Catholics seem infallibly articulate on what John Paul II's successor must do, and what he must be like as man and pastor. In fact, every one of these voices sounds, well, infallibly papal. The question thus comes to mind: with this many experts walking the streets, who needs a pope at all (a very liberal wish, no doubt)?

That liberals pray for a liberal, conservatives for a conservative, combined with the grotesgue democratization of everything in America (where everyone is equally expert); all make a fascinating and irresistable story.

But let's skip the punditry (its own sort of idol), and let's have faith (at least those who have it) that God will use men (yes, men) to bring to Christendom another bold and bright flame that burns the skin when held too close, and yet warms the soul when held close enough.

And may the Vatican religious choose another leader who can help guide us home when we have wandered far into those cold and lonely places where our idols love to dwell.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.