The New American Faith

Reading scripture should disturb you.  Whenever I meet a Christian believer who is not struggling with their view of God, I can be confident that:

A. They have made peace with the Bible being a human product.

B. They do not actively read their bible or they read their bible through the filter of their church.

Whenever a believer tells me that the solution to my lack of belief is to read the Bible, I have to suppress a chuckle.  

I have read it.  Memorized whole books of it that still come flooding back to me with the right trigger.

I am fully aware of the twisted behavior of Yahweh in the scriptures. Behaviors that only get a pass because he is "God".  Otherwise, any right-thinking person would be horrified.

Of course, I am an old-school protestant atheist.  I like to dig into the nuts and bolts of theology and scripture.

But the new faith in America is a mere totem.  It has no systematic theology.  Faith only exists as a buttress to politics.  When I go to the social media pages of folks of my former evangelical tribe, they are not talking about Jesus.  They are raging against immigrants crossing the border.  They are calling on the names of their media hosts to inform and save them.  They post about all of their political fears and enemies.  They want Barabbas, not Jesus.

I don't think most folks claiming the name Christian nowadays would have any interest in discussing the moral implications of Romans 9.  They have a 2nd amendment rally to attend.

Once More With Feeling

I wrote this on the day my latest play closed back in May -

Here it is.  The day of our last show.

The cast and crew headed out to IHOP after the show last night for some good conversation.  As we were leaving, someone mentioned that we shall do the show “once more!”  Years of Bible Quizzing have conditioned me to reference keywords.  My mind instantly connected with a song by Crumbacher from 1988 and I responded to no one in particular, “with feeling.”

I asked Alexa to play the song for me on the way home… and I was a kid again, using my dual cassette deck to throw that song on a mix tape.

This morning, the song hasn’t left me.  I found myself listening to it out on my run. It is a Christian song back from an era when I was an enthusiastic evangelical.  But, I still get something from it.  There is a scene in MASH where someone said something off-color in the operating room.  Realizing Father Mulcahy was standing there, he apologized.  Mulcahy smiles, “I just translate things like that into Latin. Makes them sound noble.”  I do that with some of my faith-based music.  I translate some of the non-ecumenical stuff into something more universal.

As I ran, I thought of tonight while the song played-

“So with every ounce of strength I’m saving the best until the end, once more with feeling…”

The longer I ran though, the more I realized those words weren’t just about the show ending.

This is about my life going forward.  Nothing is static and the center does not hold.

What do I want next?

Whatever it is, it's going to be "the best".

I don’t believe the universe is conscious.  There is just you and me.

But, in case anyone is listening -

“with every ounce of strength I'm saving 

the best until the end

Once more with feeling,

and once more by your hand

And like a tune that's never fading, 

play through me again

Once more

with feeling”

It's All About Behavior

I posted a verse on Facebook from the book of James where the writer makes clear that if you want to be “saved” stop talking about your beliefs and do something worthwhile for others.

In my faith heritage, we were the direct opposite.  It was ALL about belief.

I think part of the problem is that the word “saved” is all tied in with Heaven and Hell theology.  But I don’t think that was even on the mind of the writer of James.  As I read through it all again… it is behavior, behavior, behavior.

He wasn’t trying to get anyone a Heavenly gates ticket… he was trying to get them to be good humans (at least as far as he understood it).

John the Baptist was doing the same thing.  When people came to him asking, “What should we do?”  He didn’t give them a list of postulates to believe… he told them how to behave.

“The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”

Tax Collectors? “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

Law enforcement? “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely.”

Not too long after John’s proclamations, Jesus went on to tell all the folks who thought they had the “god-thing” in the bag that it was actually all the outsiders who were entering the Kingdom ahead of them.  Why?  Because the outsiders were about the practice of being GOOD HUMANS.  

I know the bible has plenty of not-so-great bits… pretty awful bits honestly… but it was written by a lot of different folks.  In its best moments though, it calls us to be good humans.

I don’t hold any supernatural beliefs.  I am not trying to get out of Hell or into any Heaven. But I really want to be a good human.  I think it is in that space that Jesus, John, James, and I could have a conversation.

Save Your Soul

 The prophet Micah didn't know anything about Heaven and Hell.  It wasn't part of the Old Testament framework.

Yet, he went on to define what was good.  This is interesting to me because in my  Evangelical faith heritage, we didn't really talk about being good... we talked about having faith.  Pretty much the only time the word good came up was to remind us that nobody was any good.

So why did Micah tell people how to be good?

He wanted to save their souls.

Not some wispy energy that lives on after mortal life.

He wanted your heart and mind to be whole in this life.  For your benefit and the benefit of others.

How did he say to be good?

Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.

Sounds like a good way to save my soul.

Patriotism

I think it depends on how one is using the word.

I am proud of my school and want it to succeed.  But I have felt that way about every school I have worked at.

I love my neighborhood and I felt that way about my previous one.

I didn't become anti-Michigan when I moved from there to Utah.

I can love Utah while also recognizing the areas where it needs to do better.

When people view their country with religious zealotry and lack the ability to view it with a critical eye, that is a problem.

We need to have a collaborative mindset, not a competitive one.

Don't Assume

Here's the thing - Biden is a centrist.  Conservative, shock-jock, media has Grandpa and your crazy uncle from Thanksgiving thinking he is the Uber-Liberal... but he is a centrist.  Just a hip-bump to the Right and he could comfortably reside in former GOP territory.

Trump isn't even a conservative... he is just a walking @#$%-you to liberals (who, again, aren't as liberal as MAGA imagines, they just have 24hr media telling them so).

I say that because I believe the reason most conservatives hate Biden so strongly (Let's Go Brandon!) is because he is the guy who opposes their candidate.  It wouldn't matter WHO it was, their reaction would be the same.

One might assume my hatred of Trump is based on a similar response... but then one would be wrong.  My hatred of Trump started long before he ran for president, long before he was saying crazy things about Obama, long before his attacks on the Central Park 5.  

In my twenties, I was buried neck-deep in religious patriarchy.  I had a knuckle-dragging view toward women and I was a classic homophobe.  Yet, when I clicked through cable one evening and watched Trump interviewed by Howard Stern on E! television I thought, "This man is a pig!"

I wasn't just conservative at the time, I was a fundamentalist... and even then, there was something in me that knew that Trump was a contemptible human being.

This is why I don't buy the argument made by many religious folks that they HAVE to vote for Trump because Biden is so much worse.

No.  Not even the same category.

At the end of the day, Biden is a pretty run-of-the-mill president.  If he weren't president, there wouldn't be much about him that stands out.

However, Trump would be an example of a failed human even if he never had political aspirations.

So, Trump-supporter, before you assume my dislike of Trump mirrors your dislike of Biden... no... mine goes much deeper.

Reading is a Worthy Use of Time

I wrote this observation during a 3 week vacation in Mazatlan -

I am going to spend a chunk of today reading the book The Enchanted April, which was the play I was just in. I have done a lot of exercising and put in way more steps in a day than I typically do and I have gotten a lot of sun... So I'm going to have a rest day. 

It occurs to me that I can count on one hand the amount of physical books I have read this year. I used to be someone who devoured physical books left and right. However, in the past few years I have found that I multitask. I listen to a book while I clean the backyard. I put on a podcast while I organize the basement. I stream something while I do the dishes. I have fallen into the habit and the mindset that just sitting and reading alone was somehow a waste of time. Even as I sat down here on the patio to read this book, I felt that I should be out doing something. Seeing the city, going for a walk, visiting someplace I haven't been before. I stopped myself realizing how backward this thinking is. 

In the book and play, the Enchanted April, two women feel guilty about wanting to take a vacation. They feel there should be more effective use of their time and money. Of course, they overcome this and have a life-changing experience. 

I don't know if I can blame this on my time in Evangelicalism, but there definitely was a message of "redeeming the time". Guilt was commonplace, particularly for anything that was self-indulgent.

So, I'm going to try to just sit on this patio and do nothing but read.

Winter Is Coming

People have some collective amnesia about Trump's term in office. If he gets a second term, it will be like the end of his first term, not the beginning. At the beginning of Trump's first term, he was careful. He brought in people in various areas who would be acceptable. We used to say that there were still adults in the room. 

Toward the end of his term, he had gone through a lot of folks. He had learned that his followers didn't care who he brought in, so loyalty became the test for anyone new.

Think of his choice of Mike Pence. Whatever else you may think of him, he was qualified. He fit the bill of what Trump thought he needed someone in that position to be like.  But in the end, Pence showed loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law. This didn't make Trump happy. He won't be making those mistakes in term two.  When he selects people this time, the only qualification he is going to be looking for is loyalty to him. 

Democrat, Republican, or independent - that attitude alone should chill us.

Time To Study

I am working on memorizing my lines this morning for a play I will be in soon.  Some of my scenes are now at a point of being “thought perfect” as we used to call it in my bible quizzing days. For example, I just said, “The Bacon-Cateses didn’t invite me for Madame Pompadore.”  It is actually “never invited me”.  

Not that big of a deal, but on stage that kind of flub sets off the lizard part of my brain that starts screaming at me that I made a mistake and it wants to address it… NOW!  It wants to figure out what the actual words should have been.  At which point an internal dialogue starts where I am trying to tell that part of my brain to shut the #$%^ up and that we can deal with this when I am off stage in a few minutes.  I do this while another part of my brain continues with the scene.

One would think that moving beyond thought perfect to word perfect would be enough.  But it isn’t.  You have to go further. I remember watching an interview with the music artist Mylon Lefevre.  He talked about rehearsing beyond getting it right to the point where it is difficult to get it wrong.

I love every part of a show- the rehearsing, the conversations, getting to know the cast, setting up, the production… but not the memorizing.  It gets so tedious.  I get to the point I would rather do ANYTHING than pick up that script again.

But this is a life lesson I learn again and again.  Pretty much anything worthwhile requires work.  Be it mental health, physical health, relationships, career building, education… there are parts that just aren’t going to be cookies and rainbows. 

So, if I want the payoff of all of the good times the memorizing is going to produce…

It is time for me to get back to my script.

What Works In Education?

I remember a study I read in grad school about which teaching methods were the most successful with students. The conclusion? Whatever method the teacher was most excited about.

States and districts are all about the latest gimmick method. They see a teacher or a district have some success with method X... and now they want everyone to replicate it.

The reality is this: if I have some success with an approach, that doesn't mean it will work for anyone else. It probably won't even work very long for me. What is working presently is something that can't be defined on a spreadsheet or within a bullet point. It is a mix of chemistry, personality, and creativity... that works in THIS moment, with THIS class, and THIS teacher, in THIS setting. Look at it too closely... and it's gone