Clumber at Barkings of an Old Dog started me off with a link to a blog post by a woman, a former member of the Episcopal Church, who has now withdrawn from the church. I will not name her, nor will I give a link. If you want to read her post, Clumber has a link at his site.
She said this:
The Gospel of the Church of Self Affirmation just doesn't make sense to me. At some point, if you're an average priest or church leader or social activist in a church like TEC, do you reach the bottom of yourself and find that there's nothing there? That there's not enough? And when you get there, what do you do? More work?
You look inside yourself, honestly find that you fall short, that you have a dark rotten mess for a heart and guts, throw yourself on the mercy of God, find that he forgives you, covers you with his righteousness and gives you the Holy Spirit. So that the next time you look down into your heart, you might still see the dark rotten mess, but you also see the power of God making it better. So when you come to a point of not having Enough, of not being able to Save yourself, God gives you the measure that you need and you actually get to rest, not do more work.
But since this isn't available to so many clergy in TEC, having to be good on their own power, in themselves, what takes them that extra distance?
Other folks left comments and then my friend Jane left a comment"
Jane R said...
Where in the world did you get the idea that people in TEC don't believe in grace? (I'm not being snarky.) We might not all have a Calvinist understanding of it, but I haven't run into any lay or ordained people who don't have a sense of God's gracious initiative. I do think TEC and the Anglican Communion have within them some significant divides, and some of them do involve soteriology, but I think that is different from what you are saying. Are you saying TEC leaders are all Pelagians? Or don't pray? (Actually, Pelagians and semi-Pelagians do pray, but that is another conversation.) Or don't rely on God in their daily lives?
And then other comments came in culminating in the seemingly inevitable conclusion that Bishop Katharine is a heretic. Discussions so often seems to end up with that conclusion. And then I left a comment:
Grandmère Mimi said...
...I know that I often fall short, and I know that I am in need of God's saving grace every single day of my life, but, honestly, I don't look inside myself and find "a dark rotten mess for a heart and guts". Jesus became man and lived and walked among humans just like us. He taught them and healed them and loved them. Then he was nailed to the cross and died and rose again giving to them and to us who follow him the victory over sin and death. I am redeemed by Our Lord Jesus Christ. I am God's beloved. How can I look inside myself and find what you describe? What is redemption, then? What does it count for?
Do Jane's comment and mine sound like the Gospel of Self Affirmation? The two of us say grace is vital to our lives as Christians. Do we, indeed, all of us in TEC, fall outside the bounds of God's grace? Do we reach for the gift of grace only to have it withheld from us? Do we reach down to the bottom of ourselves and find nothing there? Must we be good on our own? In a word, no.
Indeed, God's gift of grace is given freely; it is lavishly bestowed, poured out in abundance, before we even ask. If we quiet ourselves and center ourselves and reach down inside, we will find not a "dark rotten mess for a heart and guts", but the very presence of the living God, the same God who is always present, if we will only take note.
Amen, Grandmère. If nothing else she whom we are not naming did an amazing job of stimulating responses affirming a wide variety of experiences of grace. Tandaina at Snow on Roses was also quite eloquent. So glad you and Jane R spoke up. I simply could not go there.
ReplyDeleteI really have no idea where some of these fictions arise; the most "liberal" clergy I know all have faith in God and rely on grace all the time (and I come from the SF Bay Area and am still canonically resident there, so probably as "left coast" as one can get). They do tend to have a happier vision of God and very different take on what it means to be human, but they certainly do not think we make it on our own.
The gentlewoman in question has just posted a new post in answer to "all of us lovely liberals" and I read it, kept my mouth shut, and came straighway over here for a whiff of fresh air.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the snarkiness over there (when did we all start using the word snarky?) --or the title of the blog for that matter (since when is "hostility" the behavior of those who try to walk with Jesus?) and I think Mimi and I were in fact perfectly calm in our answers. I was trying to engage in conversation and no one answered my questions about spirituality and prayer, only the one on doctrine, and that one went directly to the topic of the Presiding Bishop, which was not the point of the original conversation. (Eileen, you may be right, it may be hopeless to engage in conversation, but as a Christian I live in hope, and once in a while I engage in foolishness for the sake of the kin-dom.)
Of course we pray, of course we rely on God, of course we throw ourselves upon the mercy of God, daily. As Paul said.
Which does not mean that we all believe in substitutionary atonement. We're getting down to the bottom of things here and this atonement question is exactly the issue that a very reasonable, learned fellow who is closer to the StandFirm folks than most of us here spoke of at the seminary in Berkeley a few years ago. For him the bottom line was a particular view of the atonement. And this ultimately is where the whole Anglican split was for him. He wanted everyone to sign on the Anselmian dotted line. (Sorry to get all theological. Anselm is the man who gave us one of the most prevalent --and cruel-- views of atonement. He predates the honorable Calvin by five centuries.)
But that is not the only, or the only valid, or the only orthodox, Christian view of salvation and redemption. (Someone bring on the Eastern Orthodox, they of the most ancient of Christian faiths, and their understanding of "divinization.")
Fortunately a couple of people have answered the latest post over there very nicely and I will probably leave it at that. My energy needs to be in other places right now. It's also interesting to me how my and some of our levels of defensiveness and hostility go up (I have been monitoring myself internally and watching the dynamic inside me as well as the ones outside) in response to some of those posts and how one's energy then gets taken up in that rather than being in mission in the world or praying and contemplating the goodness of God -- and that rise of spiritual blood pressure is not a sign of healthy interchange, nor, dare I say (I do dare, I am not inexperienced in spiritual direction and discernment, so I'll go out on a limb, Godde help me and protect me), of the Spirit whose fruits are gentleness, kindness, self-control, etc. Oh my, I am quoting the Epistles! Someone send me to bed!
(Mimi, this was not at all a criticism of your posting about this, just in case you wondered. It was self-reflection and reflection on the dynamics of conversation and debate at Anne's and elsewhere. All this is as much about process as it is about content, really. Perhaps it's about personalities.)
Anyhoo, I have just spent half the weekend writing a tribute to my mentor the wonderful, holy biblical scholar and bishop (who according to some folks' standards will go to hell for supporting the ministry of lesbian and gay people, and yes he was a happily married very heterosexual white European man with a strong theology of grace) together with a colleague-friend who in her part of the essay makes a fine point about the relationship between justice and grace. As she notes, and as our beloved teacher noted, only the privileged think these two --justice and grace-- are separate! Which is why the individualistic Jesus-paid-for-my-my-my-sins theology is incomplete. Christians proclaim that Jesus is savior of the world, and that saving, in his Jewishly rooted tradition, means making the world whole.)
By the way, you will be able to read that whole essay of ours in a couple of days. Stay tuned.
Godde is so much wider and deeper than our understanding and so is Godde's grace. So let's live in it and not try to capture Godde inside our narrow certainties. Godde will laugh and have the last tender and glorious word.
And now it's time for bad little radical girl theologians to get some sleep.
Thank you, Grandmère Mimi, as always, for your hospitality, your irenic spirit, and your theological reflections. (Yes, Mimi, I insist, you are a theological thinker. Don't sell yourself short.)
Over and out. Love you all.
Well done you for taking up the challenge.
ReplyDeleteToo often, though, it is a dialogue of the deaf.
Mimi, I left a comment on this at Clumber's last night which I think supports your point, so I will repeat it here:
ReplyDeleteI ponder with sadness the apparent symmetry between, on the one hand, a person feeling herself to have a dark rotten mess for a heart and guts, and on the other hand her judging others to be guilty of all sorts of vileness, in a category with the Gestapo, and probably beyond the reach of salvation. These seem to be two faces of the same coin.
Although I am a psychotherapist I don’t subscribe to a gospel of self-love or self-esteem, but to the traditional Christian doctrine that all have sinned and fallen short, and are saved by God’s overflowing Grace in his Son Jesus Christ. Is there vileness and rot in the human heart? Sure. Sometimes a lot of it. We all have big areas of unconsciousness and what Jung called ’shadow’. We are ethically compromised every single day, even if we are not working as guards in a concentration camp, engaging in the slave trade, neglecting our children, or manufacturing munitions. What concerns me is to see someone who apparently *identifies* with the vileness. This is not psychologically or spiritually healthy, nor is it morally and theologically sound. It sounds as though the only way [the person in question] can feel less awful about her own perceived rottenness is to see others as even more rotten (and as damned to perdition for not perceiving themselves as sufficiently rotten). These are not good fruits, but only productive of further hostility, polarization and schism. They do not build the reconciling community. They do not reflect the truth of our being created in the image of God, or of God’s love for us and all creation. Where Christ enters a heart, this sort of condemnation melts away.
As I just said at Clumber's...
ReplyDeleteSo often I take refuge among you all of TEC here in the blogosphere as I struggle with my own church.
Then I go read that drivel, written from a town not so far from here and I don't even know what to say.
Other than, suddenly my wacky RC church is not so bad.
I am being snarky there, of course.
As someone from the outside looking in, I truly am grateful to be around you all, with your knowledge, your passion and mostly all the grace and love I find among you.
Hi Mimi
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting me onto this issue. I've enjoyed the thoughful comments in this thread.
I popped over to Anne's blog and I thought you might be interested in the post I put there. This issue of 'what we see inside us' is, as you point out, not a universal phenomena. It's not one size fits all.
Anyway so I wanted to say something about that and I did!
" Dear Anne
Point 3.
When you (and the other types of people that you're pastoring) look inside, is it possible that what you're seeing and describing is filtered through the glasses that you've put on? How could it not be?
See I've met and talked with those same people and what you're describing is low self esteem, low self worth, childhood histories of rejection and personal suppression. It happens in the best of homes too by the most loving of parents, (actually the most loving are sometimes most at risk).
Similarly when people look into themselves and they don't see this (what you're describing) it doesn't mean that they think they are special or that they don't personaly need grace, it's just that they don't struggle with the types of personality issues that you're describing.
We all need grace, liberals and evangelicals.
One final point. When someone "comes to Jesus" and they are glad of all the counselling and pastoring that you've given, yes you can rejoice but remember sometimes people who feel horrible inside will do anything to keep the contact with you (with anyone) and sometimes they have just come "to you" rather than Jesus. Time will tell. We're all still hanging in there."
Thanks Mimi for induging me (I hope its OK) and allowing me to have my say -twice.
Paul, I shake my head at what they "know" about the beliefs of "liberals". I read Tandaina's eloquent, uplifting post at Snow on Roses, and left a comment there.
ReplyDeleteJane, I should not waste my energy, either. Don't forget that you sent me over there. In truth, I feel great sympathy for her. What a way to live a life. I saw her new post, but I left it alone. I wanted to say, "I am not a liberal; I am a radical," but I didn't. I won't comment there again. I noticed that everyone stepped around my comment as though it were a pile of shit. I know the root of the controversy is substitutionary atonement. Write your tribute to your friend. I need it.
DP, it's the dialogue of the deaf, indeed.
Mary Clara, it's the identification with the vileness that I find disturbing, too. "These are not good fruits, but only productive of further hostility, polarization and schism." Exactly. And she counsels others! That is scary.
I actually found the title of her blog incredible. I had to read it and reread it to make sure I had it right. Why would you want a title like that? Is the undercurrent of hostility coming from her direction, or is it directed toward her? Or both ways?
Fran, I don't have the knowledge of some of my friends, but the blogger's view is not my view. I am smart enough to hang out with folks who know more than I do, and I learn a lot in the process. Welcome, to the Piskie club, even if you're not Piskie.
Boaz, I like that you left your good words here - and there, too. Their view of what it means to be redeemed is so different than mine. And I am one who is quite conscious that I am in need God's saving grace every single day, which seems to me quite different from saying that I can do it all on my own.
Thanks all for the good words.
The statement attributed to Voltaire - "Dieu a créé l'homme a son image, et l'homme le lui a joliement rendu" - "God made man in his own image, and man has returned the compliment", holds good for the ideology of the minority group that is working to split and dominate the Episcopal Church, and for their overseas allies. Nervous, insecure, authoritarian folks need the certainties offered by a dogmatic, authoritarian God.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who gets tired of other people telling me what I really believe? I see posts like that and just roll my eyes.
ReplyDeleteGood on you for engaging them, but I think it's pointless. They really really want to be better than the rest of us - more godly, more faithful, more orthodox, more enlightened - and there is no way anyone will convince them otherwise. It's based on an emotional need and can't be debated out.
It's like the rabbi prayer thanking God for not being like the sinners. The Gospel was supposed to overthrow this worldview, but human nature often forces us into this double thinking.
And I should add that occasionally we are guilty of thinking that we are better than the "others", but a schismatic community is built on this worldview; that is why they split in the first place. So this thinking is encouraged rather than discouraged.
ReplyDeleteThey are first to admit they are sinners in need of grace, but they are much better and more enlightened sinners than others. ;-)
Dan, I find it gets tiresome, really tiresome. Usually, I just roll my eyes, too. I will go back to my eye-rolling policy now. I love the way her hubby so gallantly jumped in to finish her argument.
ReplyDeleteThey are first to admit they are sinners in need of grace, but they are much better and more enlightened sinners than others.
Let them think that, but why must they exclude us from the circle of God's grace? Well, they can't really do that, except in their misguided thinking and words.
Fortunately for all of us, in the end, they won't be separating the sheep from the goats.
Gallantly, right. Controlling is more like it.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Mimi. Off I go to take care of this day. Oh, and you will be amused to know that when I was doing archaeology in Israel as a wee baby college student, when we found bones of a certain sort, we (following the language of the professional archaeologists - I was just a lowly sifter of dirt) called them "sheep-goat" because you couldn't tell them apart!
Today is the feast day of St. Anselm. I find his proof for the existence of God unconvincing, too.
ReplyDeleteAnselm wrote some lovely prayers but years ago I consciously chose not to keep him on my personal calendar. By some (divine?) coincidence Peter Abelard, who represents the antithesis of Anselm when it comes to atonement, died on this day also (April 21, 1142). So for me, today is the feast of Blessed Abelard, a man persecuted by Bernard of Clairvaux (also banished from my personal calendar) and falsely accused by Bernard. Bernard told lies about Abelard because Abelard did not fit in with Bernard's positions. Plus ça change....
ReplyDeleteI believe that understandings of atonement do, indeed, lie at the heart of the whole storm, because that is where our understandings of God, creation, human nature, what is awry in the world and what needs fixing and how it's fixed all come together. One really needs an almost willful ignorance not to know that there has always been a variety of understandings about this throughout the history of the Church, and I don't just mean one orthodox and many heretical views but multiple views coexisting within mainstream Christian thought (just as there are so many metaphors for it within the New Testament itself).
Paul, from now on I will celebrate the day as Abelard's feast along with you. Anselm knew not what he was unleashing.
ReplyDeleteI read the same thread and I couldn't even begin to respond because the writer's theology comes from such a different starting point. I am with Paul and others though; I am fed up with the reasserters (is that what they call themselves?) telling me what I believe.
ReplyDeleteDan,
ReplyDeleteI too am reminded of the pharisee and the "pubican" (I think that is what the parable is called). I find that, in a bizzare way, it has been twisted. We are to be like the publican, conscious of our very real need for grace. And that is what the person who sparked this post is. But unfortunately, like the pharisee, they wear that condition with narrowness and pride. So although they say the words that Jesus pointed out they do it with the heart and intent if the pharisee - where they use their understanding of it as a tool of judgement on others.
I hope that at least came close to making sense. I know what I wanted to say but it came out rather convoluted. It may also be rather judgemental on my part.
Love and Prayers,
Ann Marie
Anne Marie, it makes perfect sense to me. If you're proud of how humble you are, then you're not humble. Pride is pride. And if you use your humility to suggest, "I'm so glad I'm not like them," then that's modeling the Pharisee.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very wise insight.
Jesus was pretty consistent in calling for us to do things, not understand them. Feed, visit, heal, take, eat... I dare say if you asked 100 clergy what their understanding of the Eucharist and Resurrection are about, you would get a lot of different answers. Does that make them wrong or does it mean their Christianity is impaired somehow? This is all just fuel to get us to lead our lives the way God wants us to. Never did Jesus say "Fight about these things".
ReplyDeleteWhich brings me back to Seeking Authentic Voice's joke. You have Clumber++'
s permission to substitute "I have a dark rotten mess for a heart and guts" for the nobody line....
One day a rabbi, in a frenzy of religious passion, rushed in before the ark, fell to his knees, and started beating his chest, crying, “I’m nobody! I’m nobody!”
The cantor of the synagogue, impressed by this example of spiritual humility, joined the rabbi on his knees. “I’m nobody! I’m nobody!”
The custodian, watching from the corner, couldn’t restrain himself, either. He joined the other two on his knees calling out, “I’m nobody! I’m nobody!”
At which point the rabbi, nudging the cantor with his elbow, pointed at the custodian and said, “Nu, look who thinks he’s nobody!”
Clumber++, it's no wonder they made you a bishop. You are an awesome dog and an awesome bishop. All bishops should take lessons from you. Jesus was a doer, and he calls us to be doers.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I think that the words "a dark rotten mess for a heart and guts" will live on beyond her blog post and yours and mine.
Sorry if I double-posted, Mimi.
ReplyDeleteJohn, you didn't. This is all I have. What did you say?
ReplyDeleteMimi,
ReplyDeleteI posted a snarky reminder to all of you(us) that Viagraville will swoop down on us like a tsunami from Hell if it interprets
responses to the Lady of the Lake as threatening. The Young Father and Hey Sarah are forces to be reckoned with, and they don't cotton to messing with Calvinist Shame. Need I remind any of the tumult our friend E.Keaton+ stirred when she responded to a similar, self-demeaning post at the site-which-will-not-be-named?
I also added my testimony, which isn't about church politics at all.
It took me nearly thirty years and EFM to realize that my deep feelings of unworthiness had not allowed me to accept God's grace, "unearned and undeserved".
I am now passionate about preaching that grace, which doesn't deny, but, rather, redeems us from sin.
So, I pray that all the Calvinists obey my mantra as a physician: "first, do no harm."
It is Easter, and "dark, rotten mess" makes me want to cry Sarah Vaughn's "salty tears." G-d save us from the Puritans.
John, that's one reason I didn't link to her post. I don't see how they could find anything threatening here, but I suppose, to them, disagreement may be threatening. I believe that my being an old lady gives me some protection, since they may quickly be viewed as bullies if they attack me. Then, too, I have so many strong knight-defenders in the blogosphere to come to my aid. I don't think they believe that I'm worthy of their notice.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the meaning of redemption? It's not simply about the afterlife. It's for now. I'm glad you are out of all of that, but I'm sorry that you were so long in the grip of the "dark, rotten mess". It seems so very sad to me, and I was actually shocked when I read it.
I agree that "first, do no harm" is the very least we can expect of the church.
You see that I have Mencken's quote about the Puritans on my sidebar. It's not to honor the man, because he was something of a racist and anti-Semite, but he was right in his words about the Puritans.
Clumber, be warned. Jewish jokes are my turf. However, I will gladly cede dog jokes to you.
ReplyDeleteNow, on to the real topic of discussion.
Someone mentioned the Jewish view of redemption as being everything redeemed together. To me it's rathre like the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism--because if one thing is redeemed, then everything is redeemed with it, and that means until everything is redeemed, notihng can be fully redeemed. We can only get glimpses of it in the here and now.
And I've always seen Original Sin as being the same as what Buddhism calls ignorance. It's the condition of being human: a finite being. God is Infinite [the Infinite?] and therefore there is a gap between us and God. In the Christian formulation, Christ is what bridges that gap. The infinite becomes finite so that the finite can become infinite.
Someone mentioned the Greek view. The quote I always remember is "God became human so humans could become as God."
(And I can never remember who said it.) And, as Christ incarnated (made flesh) God so should Christians incarnate, to the best of their ability, and with help from the Holy Spirit, Christ.
Who did say, after all, Judge not lest you be judged.