One day, listening to a show on NPR, I learned of a fascinating study someone had done on how we make moral choices on a biological level.  They had done scans of the brain while asking morally ambiguous questions.  What they discovered was that it appeared the choice to choose one option over another wasn't a centrally located buzz of activity, but rather several locations battling it out for the correct choice. For instance, one zone would win over another in the choice between saving five people versus one.  But that same zone would lose the battle if that one person was your child.  It was as if every choice being made was a debate of options, even at the most fundamental level.  The conclusion was that there is no centrally located "judge" in our brains that does the choosing.  In fact, the more they study the brain, the more it seems like a collection of partial persons who somehow work together to form a single person greater than all of them.  We are Legion.

And as these things usually do, I began to wonder what this means and how it fits with what I believe about God.  And it was especially challenging this time because this idea of decentralized organization has shown itself to be amazingly efficient in all sorts of systems.  Planetary environments, biological bodies, economics, governments, the list goes on and on.  It has even been proposed that one argument against the existence of God is the simple fact that things left to themselves without management naturally seem to organize themselves in some fashion!  Even a pot of boiling water forms hexagonal columns of circulation.  Liquid hexagons!

But if God is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, if he is the mover and Shaker of all things, why is our universe, even ourselves, arranged in such a way that precludes the necessity of Divine central control?  How is God's "eternal power" and "Divine nature" clearly seen through what had been made?

You know that feeling you get when you pull out yet another loop of tangled headphone wires and suddenly the whole knot comes lose, the wires falling straight and the loops opening up?  The separate voices in my head clamoring for the answer had finally reached a consensus.  And here is the conclusion they came to.

God's eternal power and his divine nature are summed up in his divine love.  His selfless, gracious, merciful love.  God himself is the source of all being and holds the universe together in his hand.  And yet, he seems to have done everything possible to create a universe and people that operate apart from him.  We can explain the things of nature without mentioning God.  We can make decisions for ourselves, for better or worse, without God.  In fact, unless you get down to the very basic philosophical questions about the source of our existence, God doesn't seem to be necessary. 

What kind of person writes himself out of the story?  A selflessly loving person, that's who.  Only selfless love is capable of creating another being capable of selflessly loving it back.  And a group of people, selflessly loving each other doesn't require a centralized organizer of that love.  As a young twiterpated couple doesn't need one of them to be superior to the other, as a brain doesn't need one lobe superior to the other, as a government doesn't need one branch superior to another, when selfless love is the foundation of all things, they organize themselves into something greater than themselves.  This is the Glory of God. 

In the end we realize that he didn't write himself out of the story after all.  As it happens, he is the story.  For he is Love.

Prescription Strength

The stories of my faith tell of many men and women who stood before the "face of God". Not just in front of Jesus, who, being truly human would normally just appear human, but before the Father himself, maybe even the entire trinity. Elijah, Moses, the disciples to whom Jesus revealed his true self during the transfiguration, all of these stood face to face with God himself. And we often think that if we could have such an experience, then maybe our faith wouldn't be so hard. It would be so much easier to believe in God if he were standing (or floating or whatever) right there, right?
This is a challenging time in my life. After losing my job and my home at the same time, my family and I have moved into the home of a gracious and generous family in our church. The house is plenty big enough for both of our families--would we choose to use the back door instead of the front we would never even have to see them. But we do use the front door and for various other reasons (for instance we do not have an oven of our own or even all of our dishes), we share both of our spaces to a limited extent.
For the most part, this setup is working just fine. But one of the main areas of tension always brewing just under the surface is over cleanliness. Now, I have never thought of my family as being dirty. We have four small children and tend to leave a lot of clutter around, we never take the time to organize toys that are just going to be dumped out and stirred up again the next day and often just getting out the door is much more important to us than making sure the last of the peanut butter and jelly is removed from the table (or couch or wherever it was smeared). Our host family, on the other hand is amazingly tidy and clean. It is almost to the point where there is rarely any evidence that they live upstairs at all if they are not actually present. They make dinner without a mess. They eat dinner without a mess. They free play all over the house without a mess. They too have small children. They are never messy. I have decided to just leave the dirt on my two year old's face just so people will recognize him because it is rarely not there. Their children sometimes have frizzy hair.
I am continually in awe of this. And, because in my new life situation I am now the stay-at-home parent, I am seriously intimidated. The other day, my host found a roach in their area of the house. The same plea was repeated. "Please please watch the food and be careful". Now I know that roaches are just a fact of life and do not necessarily indicate filth. Honestly I don't even know if it was a roach at all (as an outdoor education instructor for fifteen years, you must earn a certain level of respect from me before I believe you saw anything in particular beyond the standard pets). But the shame hit me hard. I remembered that they had walked through our area earlier that day as I napped on the couch, the table littered with the sticky remains of the PB&J my children had just slaughtered and consumed. How lazy and disgusting must I have appeared?
It gets worse though. Because in my attempt to relieve my shame, I begin thinking of all the ways our family is in fact superior to theirs. And then I realized that not only am I a slob, but I am also a judgemental, arrogant (and let's be honest a little lazy) slob. And I just want to crawl into a hole.
Which brings me back to my original (and somewhat aprupt) introduction. If this is how I feel in the presence of someone who clearly has (at least part of) their life together far more than me, how would I feel before the face of God, the creator of said life? Those stories also speak of men falling down on their faces in the dirt, begging God to go away. People who got too close to him, too familiar, and would just drop dead. How can we not feel some level of fear before a God who is so Good, so Loving, we cannot stand it?
Maybe it is a great mercy that God hides himself from us. That we only experience him in measured doses: the kindness of a stranger or even worse, a friend; the beauty of a sunrise; the giggle of a little girl. I can barely stand it when my daughter smiles at me. My heart would surely explode were I to see the smile of God.
I have spent much of my life seeking after God. Desiring to know him more and more fully. But I have not spent nearly enough time working on my own self, practicing the kinds of things that would make me slightly less ashamed to stand before him. I know he loves me. But I think I am becoming more thankful that he reveals that love in measured doses. I do not think I could handle much more than I am getting right now. There is just too much peanut butter smeared into my beard.

Together

Yesterday, at break, one of my coworkers made a joke about something our new president had tweeted. Instantly my blood pressure rose and while I continued to banter along with him, I struggled to keep it civil. These days opinions are just as divided as ever, but there seems to be a greater chasm between them. What unites us appears to be less and less important this year as what divides us. And tensions are running high, as I can attest to personally.
This idea of how people get along when they believe very different things about how the world works is not a new subject to me. I grew up in a protestant church, so focusing on what divides us comes very naturally to me. Protestants have traditionally dealt with differing opinions in one of two ways.
First, they have taken the easiest route and simply left to form a new church. This is pretty much the way protestantism started actually. Martin Luther fought against very real abuses in the catholic church of his day. Eventually he gave up trying to change the church from the inside and left it entirely, forming his own church to stand in contrast to it. His example was followed by many others: Calvin, Zwingli and it seems like every protestant name you'd recognize since then. I believe I heard recently there were over 2,500 different protestant denominations in the world today. And considering how many opinions even the least opinionated of us have, I imagine that number will continue to grow.
What is sad about this state of things is that the only unity a church has is only temporary. It can honestly be said that the only reason they exist is because they haven't yet figured out why they shouldn't. Is this really the way humanity was meant to function? This fracturing of society on the basis of opinion can be seen in our politics, or neighborhoods, even our families. There are clear lines drawn in the sand and if I happen to share a space with someone that's only because we have't yet gotten around to dragging our stick between us.
The second option seems better. There is a movement in protestantism towards more unity. Maybe its not new, I've only recently become aware of it. Unity is important--so important that we should pursue it whether we agree or not. In a recent conversation with a friend, he told me that he is fine if his pastor follows a different theological path than this own as long as it lines up for the most part. He knows what he knows and he is willing to accept that others may not be as far along the path as he is. And so, in "love", he accepts his less "immature" brother, hoping that one day he'll agree with him.
This isn't just my friend. Whole denominations have been built on this premise. And in the short term it works pretty well. Maybe some of those "immature" people even end up changing their minds and coming around to someone else's version of truth. But in reality the only way this can work is if everyone just stops talking about anything of any importance at all.
In Orthodoxy, which I will admit I am a part of so I may have some bias, they have a different approach to unity. The Unity of Acceptance and Tolerance looks to them like a whitewashed tomb. It is pretty on the outside. But in the heart, from which all things flow, there is pride and arrogance. In the Orthodox approach, unity begins and ends with humility. What I think about anything is not as important as what we think about anything. The rule of thumb is "all believers, everywhere and at all times". When it comes to theology, nobody gets to be creative, at least not outside the bounds of tradition. I am right to say that I live 2,000 years after Christ, I know him only through what has been taught to me by my church and what I read in scriptures written in a different language and culture than my own. And so my opinion does not actually carry a lot of weight.
As an American, that is a painful thought to bear, at least at first. We are taught from birth that our opinion about everything IS everything. I was asking my baby boy what he wanted to wear as soon as he was able to gesture towards one shirt or another. Why? Can it be possible that his thoughts about what onesie to put on that day has any bearing on what he actually should put on? Can my opinions about the deep things of God be any different?
Unity isn't a pipe dream. It is real and it is achievable. But it is also costly. It will cost every one of us our very lives. It is not an easy thing to consider another's point of view. It is risky. They may actually be right. Which would make me wrong. It would make me the less "mature" one. Maybe maturity isn't about being correct as much as it is being humble. Maybe unity isn't as much about not-fighting as much as it is about submitting. Maybe what our country needs from its churches is an example of actual unity. Of loving submission and care. Of humility.
For my part I will continue to say "I don't know" to nearly every political thought thrown at me. I will continue to play devil's advocate and stand up for the side that isn't present to defend themselves. And that's hard because I really do have an opinion and I really do think I'm more mature than you. But I also know that that kind of thinking isn't going to get us anywhere. And so I shall submit as best I can in the name of love. It is the only thing I can think of that will save us.