"I had never experienced such encounters or visions or too-crazy coincidences." Not even "a discreet miracle."
No miracles for me, either. But I have had visions. Visions which don't technically require a supernatural explanation, or any explanation beyond "Midge has an active imagination, and needs to think without words sometimes."
I hate being expected to have a story. I say I have no story – that since reality isn't narrative, my life isn't a narrative. But human cognition *is* narrative. Especially human memory.
I feel like visions are an escape from human narrative. But no human can escape narrative bias and remain human to other humans. As you say, we take "strands of nothing that our human brains—biologically hardwired to make connections, find patterns, doggedly tie things up in bows—" and turn them into "grand narrative and woven tapestry" to communicate.
My parents weren't Christian, more like vaguely deist, but sent me to a liberal-protestant Sunday School for moral instruction. Somewhat to my family's chagrin, this turned me Christian.
One thing Christ has liberated me from is the need for my specific life to have some specific narrative that satisfies our biases. Someone wants a "story of my life" from me? I'll point to Christ's story instead. It's a big-enough story for anyone, including me.
As theologian DB Hart puts it, "Easter is an act of 'rebellion' against all false necessity and all illegitimate or misused authority, all cruelty and heartless chance. It liberates us from servitude to and terror before the 'elements.' It emancipates us from fate. It overcomes the 'world': Easter should make rebels of us all.”
If that's what Christian faith is, it's too weird for the polite company of hypersocial narrative bald apes like ourselves. It lacks a rational explanation for evil and neat little boundaries between human will, human nature, and the rest of nature. It only asserts that the cosmos is a good gift, but a gift plagued by evil which a redeemer came to set aright. It doesn't have a convincing logical argument for why a good gift should be plagued by evil. Just acceptance that it is, and a yarn about a public execution and an empty tomb.
I'm a sucker for that yarn. I live most of my life as if it's true. I don't secretly harbor a confident belief that it's rubbish, but glorious rubbish worth preserving (the Nat Geo approach to religion). But is my Christianity "true belief"?
Shrug. That depends on the onlooker's standard of "true belief". Does that standard matter? Should it?
"...since there's light,
"why let the light-source matter?
"Say it doesn't matter. Say
"only that it is cold and night:"
And that we have need of light in the cold and night even if we're unsure of the light source, or whether it meets others' standards.
Less poetically put, I've come to believe that practicing the tenets of Christianity is a radically irrational and comically absurd way to go about life. But I've decided to commit to the bit.
I doubt there's any way to live life that's not absurd. Finding some way to live our absurdity *well* seems the challenge.
I wasn't exposed to Evangelical culture until college, and Evangelicals at my college would already be atypical Evangelicals. Even there, the big-E Evangelical emphasis on personal narrative baffled me.
If I had any concept of testifying back then, it was to general truths about the human predicament and what a Biblically-described redeemer-God might mean to that. My embarrassingly personal sentiments about this predicament might be illustrative, but not dispositive. And if those parts of the Bible, like the Psalms, that feel (at least to modern readers) like introspective personal narrative are anything to go by, feeling God more by His absence than His presence is normal. That would make my feelings of godforsakenness normal Christian feelings expressing the human condition, compatible with Christian hope, rather than signs I wasn't saved enough. (What mere mortal *is* saved enough?)
Relating what God was *doing* in my life or of a clear time before I was saved and after, puzzled me. Who could possibly know such things with any certainty?
Back then, I thought of Evangelicals as probably better Christians than me, and was willing to grant that my puzzlement at the importance of this kind of testimony was maybe just my personal stumbling block, but my puzzlement was my first inkling of how much of Evangelical culture isn't about the discipleship it says it's about. (No culture is exactly what the culture says it's about.)
Attaching so much importance to personal narratives "proving God" isn't necessarily prosperity theology, but makes prosperity theology (more about American New Thought than creedal Christianity) harder to avoid.
I would wholeheartedly agree that if you come from a tradition where the liturgy heavily incorporates psalms, the idea of having a happy-go-lucky personal relationship with the almighty creator is very foreign.
In retrospect, one of the things I appreciated about my Catholic upbringing is that doubt was considered an acceptable part of the human experience, and that you were allowed to have a "dark night of the soul". Excepting to feel good about something all the time (including the almighty) seems like a culturally specific phenomenon, which may we while Evangelical Christianity is started as a specifically American phenomenon, that is successful being exported to countries with rapidly rising standards of living (Latin America, Korea, Africa).
Speaking on the atheist friend, I've had a similar feeling when an old classmate posted a report about a near-miss wreck she was in.
She was at a light for a very high-speed intersection. It turned green, she started to go, her passenger screamed and she hit the brakes. A pickup came roaring through and hit the car next to her, who'd gone ahead and proceeded into the intersection.
So in the comments, one of her friends said "God sure was watching out for you!" and the classmate replied "He was! But pray for the woman in the other car, the ambulance had to take her out on a gurney!"
Which was... just... yeah. Obviously I didn't go stomping in and start and argument, but the entire proposition was just mindblowing for me.
So the deity was sitting up there, watching the situation. Could've tapped the driver who was coming through on the shoulder and made him aware of the light and avoided the whole thing. Could've alerted both drivers at the light and spared them both.
But this classmate was presenting herself as being very sure that the almighty had selected her and her friend to be safe, but was apparently just fine with letting the next car over take the hit.
Now me, I'm atheistic in that classical sense, a-theist, which simply means I have no compelling evidence for any specific theology. But if I were inclined to believe in a supernaturally-directed universe, the conclusions it would lead me to aren't pleasant ones.
Exactly. My former evangelist self would say something like, the accident wasnt part of one journey but was part of the other, to bring each to where they need to be. But so many lived have no redemptive arc, and bad fortune just spirals. Seems unbearably cruel. I think whatever we believe we should all be outraged at the unfairness.
It is hard to believe that God intervenes in an individuals life when so many really wonderful people are victims of such horrible events. How does he choose? Praying seems like a weak answer. Another observation is that the Bible is absolutely full of contradictions. Evangelicals are free to pick and choose which verses they want to apply to which situation. For me personally, the Old Testament is built around a God of rules and punishment. The new Testament is built around a God of love, tolerance and forgiveness . Jesus was placed on this earth to revise God's message and to give salvation to sinners. I choose to ask myself WWJD in every conflicted situation. The conclusions that leads me to are very rarely in synch with the right wing evangelical position. I am deeply saddened to see Christ's work twisted so violently by the Christian right. David and Nancy are to be commended for having the courage to speak out and be ostracized but their positions on many issues are still at odds with mine and with my conception of Christ's example.
At 73, I now see all my experiences as stories that are told for effect and vary with the audience. Not quite miraculous, but the memories are much better that the real life way.
We posit God as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. Therefore, as you say, we are obliged then to also credit God not only for seeing to an individual’s successes and fortunate near-misses, but also for seeing to their opposites?
Then “Thank God!” can be shouted with equal fervor and opposite meaning by the mother of a child cured of cancer and the mother of a child with terminal cancer.
Is the person who reads God as omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient not obliged to give credit where it’s due all the way around this weary world?
Holly described her friend as “not religious,” but you’ve changed that to “atheist.” Different beasts, no?
I am a friend of Holly and while “not religious,” I don’t embrace “atheist” as a self-description. How could I when, just like everyone else, I KNOW nothing?
Oh wait. I do know something. In fact, quite a few things. But they’re not about God. As Wittgenstein wrote: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
I don’t have to be silent about being a fan of Jesus. And Shakespeare. And Gertrude Stein. And Mozart. And lots of other people, places, things, creations and ideas. Actual beacons in the dark.
Thanks, Holly. Well written, and I feel confident given what you said that this isn't a book for me. Sometimes you can just tell, and kindness for everyone is to not engage, at least for the time being.
I think I would have agreed with you if I had read this post before reading the book. However, being an obedient subscriber, I bought the book when Holly first instructed us to (and, yes, I do find it difficult to completely let go of my former evangelical do-what-you're-told mindset).
Anyhow, I've read her husband's work, and I wanted to hear hear about them being canceled by their church, particularly inasmuch as they were effectively bounced from the denomination in which I served as a ruling elder. Reading about miraculous recoveries from deadly illnesses (& other sundry supernatural occurrences), however, was not what I was expecting. But, being an exvangelical with 60 years of listening to these stories, I did what I did for a lifetime whenever I heard or read them--shrugged and said 'yeah, maybe. Whatever.'
The book's title was the subject I was interested in and when relating that part of the narrative, Nancy writes very well about a depressingly and dismayingly regular feature of white Christian nationalism: Finding yourself outside the parameters of the community you gave your life to, and wondering what the hell you did with your one wild and precious life.
Wow, so honest and profound. Your last sentence hit hard. Thank you for sharing.
You should always feel free to ignore my recommendations and suggestions. I hope i never give instructions. And always be free to share another point of view.
Re being 'instructed', I was just having a little fun. Plus, why follow you if I'm not going to at least pay attention to your recommendations and suggestions?
'Ghosted' is a good read, and I am glad I read it, not least because it paints an accurate picture of what happens amongst smug, white, middle-class, polite, church-goin' folks who actually aren't as much into Christianity as they are into a conservative political ideology.
Well, my first comment went into cyber hell. I'm with you on being in the in between spaces. Beautifully written, you were generous to bring forward both sides of that rather warped coin. I lean more toward your views and experiences. Hearing from both you, Tim Whitaker et al both makes me want to cry, clench my teeth and throw whatever device I happen to be holding, never to be seen again. Not because I want to ostrich the whole thing, because we know it happens. It's so flipping hard to process at times, pfft... all the time. Thank you for writing this Holly. On a lighter note.
The art work was stunning and I may side with Kevin on the cow thing, I'd snag every bit of art I could. I hope your trip went well and hoping you got to Mt. Kenya. Stay safe.
Totally there with you in the middle as well. This was so well written and you were generous to tend to both side of the very lopsided, as I see it coin. I lean more along with you. Particularly after reading so much of what you share and the stories I've heard from Tim Whitaker. They both make me want to cry, clench my feet and fling my computer or phone into orbit, never to be seen again. Sigh.
On a lighter note, the art is stunning. I might be with Kevin on the cow statue but not sure how I could have resisted all those spectacular pieces of art. Hoping your climb went well. Stay safe Holly. Thank you for writing this.
I resonate so strongly with what you've written here, your experience in the church and after the church. The trying so hard, the praying and praying, memorizing scripture, looking for signs that didn't show up in the way that I'd hoped. I've mostly left it behind, but I'm also not quite at the point where I can say it never happens. Because, yes, some people - that I trust - have these stories! Some things can't be explained. So I am right there in the middle with you.
Karibu Kenya! Sounds like you've come just in time to escape the heat wave in the US for our lovely cool nights and sometimes sunny days! Enjoy! And yes, the art scene here is amazing.
I also loved Nancy's book and found it hard to read of some of the miraculous intervention stories. Because yeah, for so many (most) of us it doesn't work out like that.
"I had never experienced such encounters or visions or too-crazy coincidences." Not even "a discreet miracle."
No miracles for me, either. But I have had visions. Visions which don't technically require a supernatural explanation, or any explanation beyond "Midge has an active imagination, and needs to think without words sometimes."
I hate being expected to have a story. I say I have no story – that since reality isn't narrative, my life isn't a narrative. But human cognition *is* narrative. Especially human memory.
I feel like visions are an escape from human narrative. But no human can escape narrative bias and remain human to other humans. As you say, we take "strands of nothing that our human brains—biologically hardwired to make connections, find patterns, doggedly tie things up in bows—" and turn them into "grand narrative and woven tapestry" to communicate.
My parents weren't Christian, more like vaguely deist, but sent me to a liberal-protestant Sunday School for moral instruction. Somewhat to my family's chagrin, this turned me Christian.
One thing Christ has liberated me from is the need for my specific life to have some specific narrative that satisfies our biases. Someone wants a "story of my life" from me? I'll point to Christ's story instead. It's a big-enough story for anyone, including me.
As theologian DB Hart puts it, "Easter is an act of 'rebellion' against all false necessity and all illegitimate or misused authority, all cruelty and heartless chance. It liberates us from servitude to and terror before the 'elements.' It emancipates us from fate. It overcomes the 'world': Easter should make rebels of us all.”
If that's what Christian faith is, it's too weird for the polite company of hypersocial narrative bald apes like ourselves. It lacks a rational explanation for evil and neat little boundaries between human will, human nature, and the rest of nature. It only asserts that the cosmos is a good gift, but a gift plagued by evil which a redeemer came to set aright. It doesn't have a convincing logical argument for why a good gift should be plagued by evil. Just acceptance that it is, and a yarn about a public execution and an empty tomb.
I'm a sucker for that yarn. I live most of my life as if it's true. I don't secretly harbor a confident belief that it's rubbish, but glorious rubbish worth preserving (the Nat Geo approach to religion). But is my Christianity "true belief"?
Shrug. That depends on the onlooker's standard of "true belief". Does that standard matter? Should it?
"...since there's light,
"why let the light-source matter?
"Say it doesn't matter. Say
"only that it is cold and night:"
And that we have need of light in the cold and night even if we're unsure of the light source, or whether it meets others' standards.
Love this. It’s a big enough story… thanks for sharing
Less poetically put, I've come to believe that practicing the tenets of Christianity is a radically irrational and comically absurd way to go about life. But I've decided to commit to the bit.
Commit to the bit ha!
I doubt there's any way to live life that's not absurd. Finding some way to live our absurdity *well* seems the challenge.
I wasn't exposed to Evangelical culture until college, and Evangelicals at my college would already be atypical Evangelicals. Even there, the big-E Evangelical emphasis on personal narrative baffled me.
If I had any concept of testifying back then, it was to general truths about the human predicament and what a Biblically-described redeemer-God might mean to that. My embarrassingly personal sentiments about this predicament might be illustrative, but not dispositive. And if those parts of the Bible, like the Psalms, that feel (at least to modern readers) like introspective personal narrative are anything to go by, feeling God more by His absence than His presence is normal. That would make my feelings of godforsakenness normal Christian feelings expressing the human condition, compatible with Christian hope, rather than signs I wasn't saved enough. (What mere mortal *is* saved enough?)
Relating what God was *doing* in my life or of a clear time before I was saved and after, puzzled me. Who could possibly know such things with any certainty?
Back then, I thought of Evangelicals as probably better Christians than me, and was willing to grant that my puzzlement at the importance of this kind of testimony was maybe just my personal stumbling block, but my puzzlement was my first inkling of how much of Evangelical culture isn't about the discipleship it says it's about. (No culture is exactly what the culture says it's about.)
Attaching so much importance to personal narratives "proving God" isn't necessarily prosperity theology, but makes prosperity theology (more about American New Thought than creedal Christianity) harder to avoid.
I would wholeheartedly agree that if you come from a tradition where the liturgy heavily incorporates psalms, the idea of having a happy-go-lucky personal relationship with the almighty creator is very foreign.
In retrospect, one of the things I appreciated about my Catholic upbringing is that doubt was considered an acceptable part of the human experience, and that you were allowed to have a "dark night of the soul". Excepting to feel good about something all the time (including the almighty) seems like a culturally specific phenomenon, which may we while Evangelical Christianity is started as a specifically American phenomenon, that is successful being exported to countries with rapidly rising standards of living (Latin America, Korea, Africa).
“After all, life is more art than science.” ❤️❤️❤️
Speaking on the atheist friend, I've had a similar feeling when an old classmate posted a report about a near-miss wreck she was in.
She was at a light for a very high-speed intersection. It turned green, she started to go, her passenger screamed and she hit the brakes. A pickup came roaring through and hit the car next to her, who'd gone ahead and proceeded into the intersection.
So in the comments, one of her friends said "God sure was watching out for you!" and the classmate replied "He was! But pray for the woman in the other car, the ambulance had to take her out on a gurney!"
Which was... just... yeah. Obviously I didn't go stomping in and start and argument, but the entire proposition was just mindblowing for me.
So the deity was sitting up there, watching the situation. Could've tapped the driver who was coming through on the shoulder and made him aware of the light and avoided the whole thing. Could've alerted both drivers at the light and spared them both.
But this classmate was presenting herself as being very sure that the almighty had selected her and her friend to be safe, but was apparently just fine with letting the next car over take the hit.
Now me, I'm atheistic in that classical sense, a-theist, which simply means I have no compelling evidence for any specific theology. But if I were inclined to believe in a supernaturally-directed universe, the conclusions it would lead me to aren't pleasant ones.
Exactly. My former evangelist self would say something like, the accident wasnt part of one journey but was part of the other, to bring each to where they need to be. But so many lived have no redemptive arc, and bad fortune just spirals. Seems unbearably cruel. I think whatever we believe we should all be outraged at the unfairness.
And I’ll just live somewhere in between, pondering, weighing, wondering, trying to understand.
After all, life is more art than science.
SECONDED and AMEN, friend.
It is hard to believe that God intervenes in an individuals life when so many really wonderful people are victims of such horrible events. How does he choose? Praying seems like a weak answer. Another observation is that the Bible is absolutely full of contradictions. Evangelicals are free to pick and choose which verses they want to apply to which situation. For me personally, the Old Testament is built around a God of rules and punishment. The new Testament is built around a God of love, tolerance and forgiveness . Jesus was placed on this earth to revise God's message and to give salvation to sinners. I choose to ask myself WWJD in every conflicted situation. The conclusions that leads me to are very rarely in synch with the right wing evangelical position. I am deeply saddened to see Christ's work twisted so violently by the Christian right. David and Nancy are to be commended for having the courage to speak out and be ostracized but their positions on many issues are still at odds with mine and with my conception of Christ's example.
At 73, I now see all my experiences as stories that are told for effect and vary with the audience. Not quite miraculous, but the memories are much better that the real life way.
We posit God as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. Therefore, as you say, we are obliged then to also credit God not only for seeing to an individual’s successes and fortunate near-misses, but also for seeing to their opposites?
Then “Thank God!” can be shouted with equal fervor and opposite meaning by the mother of a child cured of cancer and the mother of a child with terminal cancer.
Is the person who reads God as omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient not obliged to give credit where it’s due all the way around this weary world?
Holly described her friend as “not religious,” but you’ve changed that to “atheist.” Different beasts, no?
I am a friend of Holly and while “not religious,” I don’t embrace “atheist” as a self-description. How could I when, just like everyone else, I KNOW nothing?
Oh wait. I do know something. In fact, quite a few things. But they’re not about God. As Wittgenstein wrote: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
I don’t have to be silent about being a fan of Jesus. And Shakespeare. And Gertrude Stein. And Mozart. And lots of other people, places, things, creations and ideas. Actual beacons in the dark.
Well put.
Thanks, Holly. Well written, and I feel confident given what you said that this isn't a book for me. Sometimes you can just tell, and kindness for everyone is to not engage, at least for the time being.
I think I would have agreed with you if I had read this post before reading the book. However, being an obedient subscriber, I bought the book when Holly first instructed us to (and, yes, I do find it difficult to completely let go of my former evangelical do-what-you're-told mindset).
Anyhow, I've read her husband's work, and I wanted to hear hear about them being canceled by their church, particularly inasmuch as they were effectively bounced from the denomination in which I served as a ruling elder. Reading about miraculous recoveries from deadly illnesses (& other sundry supernatural occurrences), however, was not what I was expecting. But, being an exvangelical with 60 years of listening to these stories, I did what I did for a lifetime whenever I heard or read them--shrugged and said 'yeah, maybe. Whatever.'
The book's title was the subject I was interested in and when relating that part of the narrative, Nancy writes very well about a depressingly and dismayingly regular feature of white Christian nationalism: Finding yourself outside the parameters of the community you gave your life to, and wondering what the hell you did with your one wild and precious life.
Wow, so honest and profound. Your last sentence hit hard. Thank you for sharing.
You should always feel free to ignore my recommendations and suggestions. I hope i never give instructions. And always be free to share another point of view.
Thank you.
Re being 'instructed', I was just having a little fun. Plus, why follow you if I'm not going to at least pay attention to your recommendations and suggestions?
'Ghosted' is a good read, and I am glad I read it, not least because it paints an accurate picture of what happens amongst smug, white, middle-class, polite, church-goin' folks who actually aren't as much into Christianity as they are into a conservative political ideology.
Well, my first comment went into cyber hell. I'm with you on being in the in between spaces. Beautifully written, you were generous to bring forward both sides of that rather warped coin. I lean more toward your views and experiences. Hearing from both you, Tim Whitaker et al both makes me want to cry, clench my teeth and throw whatever device I happen to be holding, never to be seen again. Not because I want to ostrich the whole thing, because we know it happens. It's so flipping hard to process at times, pfft... all the time. Thank you for writing this Holly. On a lighter note.
The art work was stunning and I may side with Kevin on the cow thing, I'd snag every bit of art I could. I hope your trip went well and hoping you got to Mt. Kenya. Stay safe.
Totally there with you in the middle as well. This was so well written and you were generous to tend to both side of the very lopsided, as I see it coin. I lean more along with you. Particularly after reading so much of what you share and the stories I've heard from Tim Whitaker. They both make me want to cry, clench my feet and fling my computer or phone into orbit, never to be seen again. Sigh.
On a lighter note, the art is stunning. I might be with Kevin on the cow statue but not sure how I could have resisted all those spectacular pieces of art. Hoping your climb went well. Stay safe Holly. Thank you for writing this.
Still here! Mt Kenya starts July 6.
Will be living vicariously through you!
I’m right in the middle with you and I so appreciate your validation of my own journey.
I resonate so strongly with what you've written here, your experience in the church and after the church. The trying so hard, the praying and praying, memorizing scripture, looking for signs that didn't show up in the way that I'd hoped. I've mostly left it behind, but I'm also not quite at the point where I can say it never happens. Because, yes, some people - that I trust - have these stories! Some things can't be explained. So I am right there in the middle with you.
Again Holly, beautifully written.
Karibu Kenya! Sounds like you've come just in time to escape the heat wave in the US for our lovely cool nights and sometimes sunny days! Enjoy! And yes, the art scene here is amazing.
I also loved Nancy's book and found it hard to read of some of the miraculous intervention stories. Because yeah, for so many (most) of us it doesn't work out like that.
And yet, I still believe.
Oh you live in Nairobi? Im actually in addis. Will be flying to Kenya to climb mt Kenya July 4
I'd forgotten you were going to be Addis first. And yes, I live in Nairobi.
sooooo jealous.