Laurie Kendrick (and God) Come to Therapy

 

 

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          For those of you who don’t already know, Laurie Kendrick is the author of my favorite existing blog.  She never fails to make me laugh.  I asked to interview her, expecting to get more than a few chuckles, some downright guffaws, and, as they say in lesser circles ROFLs (mark this – I will never again use initials to communicate sentences).  Instead, Laurie had much deeper things on her mind.  What follows is an exchange of several e-mails we shared one Saturday afternoon.

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LK:  Jesus and the concept of Jesus is a conundrum for me.   Make no mistake, I am a theist.  I believe in an almighty God, but for some reason, the Jesus part of my Christian upbringing stymies me.  Please understand that I’m not asking for clarification, Pete.   I’m not asking for dissertation, merely stating my case..  I know emphatically where your belief system is centered, but I’m not sure about mine.

PP:   For me, Jesus has never been a concept.  Always a person.  A person who stood up for me when the church kicked us out because my parents got divorced.  A person who protected us when my dad shot a hole through a glass door.  A person I yelled at when a good friend’s father died.

LK:  The issue here is that I was perplexed by Jesus, even as a child.  There was something incredibly implausible about what I was told about what he did and the reasons why he should be revered.

PP:  Ah yes, the willing death on a cross.  Tough one.  I had a college professor who challenged us by saying, “What loving Father would let His Son die on a cross, even if the Son wanted to?”  Being the professor, in sort of a power position, nobody dared challenge him.  Now, though, I just look at Jesus as a big brother who pushed me/us out of a line of traffic and got run over doing it.  A bit simplistic, but it works for me.

 

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LK:  Christ’s voluntary death isn’t part of my conundrum. I have no problem with him dying for a cause.  Again, it’s the hocus pocus of his life that boggles my mind..  Faith isn’t magic.  What I’m talking about is the belief in the magic.  The turning water in to wine principle.  Believing in Christ-like miracles.  Believing in that which is intangible…not palpable.   We pray to an invisible force…no matter how you slice it, it’s invisible…but palpability doesn’t matter to those who have blind faith.  In some ways, I admire the oblivious nature of those people who can believe so earnestly.   Faith is believing that something is there,  even when there’s no empirical proof that it exists…or ever has…or ever will.

 

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PP:  I heard a good preacher once say that the things we call “miracles” (parting of the Red Sea, walking on water, etc…) were little more than God’s special effects to get people to pay attention.  If you’ll notice, it’s always the teaching of God that follows the miracle that is the most important thing.  I accept that God can work within or beyond “natural” laws (which are only natural because that’s all we’ve currently figured out),  At the same time, if God hadn’t performed a single miracle, I would still believe.

LK:  I’ve asked about modern day miracles…where they are and I’ve been told that heart transplants and Sulfa Drugs…and the Hoover Damn and the architectural feat of the worlds tallest towers in Kuala Lampur  are all miracles.   To me, that I’ve lived to see another day is often the miracle I seek.   But we need to believe in grandiosity.   

 

 

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PP:  Personally, I would agree with you.  I don’t need grandiosity at all.  In fact, I don’t trust it (my grandiosity has done a bit of damage in the past).  The miracle is in what we view as ordinary.  It’s a miracle that you are somewhere in Texas and I’m on Long Island and we’re talking together about God.  It’s a miracle that the Oak Ridge Boys are singing “Elvira” through this same computer and countless people like me are singing along.  It’s a miracle that I could pick up my cell phone anytime, anywhere, call my wife and she would come to get me.  Amazing.  Seriously.

 

 (The Oak Ridge Boys)

 

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LK:  I was raised  Catholic in South Texas which meant a tremendous infusion of dogma (mostly Hispanic and uneducated Polish and Czech).  I’m not sure what, if anything all of this superstition did to me, but I know it didn’t help my rationale when was bombarded with stories and imagery of Jesus as more  of a magician than what I thought would be the man I was to believe was the Son of God.

PP:  It seems Catholics (like you were) and Fundamentalist Baptists (like I was) are big on dogma.  Even when I studied theology in college and seminary (and now – I’m part of a blogging community that loves to talk theology) I take it with a grain of salt.  I’ve found it much more helpful to just read the Bible (especially Luke) and focus on the human compassion of Jesus.  There are some good authors out there you may (or may not) like such as: N.T. Wright, Max Lucado, Philip Yancey, Kathleen Norris, but I’d say just read Luke.

(Kathleen Norris) 

 

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LK:   It was the God in three persons equation that got me.  If I believed in God, wasn’t I covered?  I was taught it was God and in God there existed three entities that made one entity–God, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  But simply believing in God wasn’t enough.  I ALSO had to believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and if I didn’t accept him as my personal savior, I would be condemned to the fires of Hell along with most of the global population of the world.

PP:   I cringe when I have to teach the Trinity to my confirmation class.  Typically, I talk about them as three separate persons, with separate functions, and just mention the whole one/unity part.  The problem with focusing only on the one God (theist) part is it can become sterile (like a great big watchmaker who made the watch of Creation, set it in motion, and now sits back to see how it goes.)  The key, I think, is to get past dogma to the person of God (Father/Son/Spirit) – doing various things: creating, healing, inspiring.

 

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LK:  This has NEVER made sense to me, Pete!   Why would a merciful condemn most..the bulk of his children to the fiery depths of Hell?  I’ve asked this before and I’ll ask it again…what about the souls of babies who die en utero?  Or children who die at three or four?  What about all the people who lived on this Earth well before Jesus walked it?  What about the tribal members of Guinea and parts of Africa who’ve never seen a White man, much less know a damn about Jesus?  Or our version of God? Do they get a pass? Or are they in Hell?

PP:  I’ve done a few posts on hell.  I’m certainly not a Universalist (as in, everybody gets in). I’m more of a willfully ignorant Calvinist (God knows who gets in, we don’t.) My point is - we don’t know who is going to hell and who isn’t.  Children?  Pre-born babies?  Those living prior to Jesus?  “Unreached” people?  Who knows? God. And God alone.

          The Bible does indicate two things that should contribute to our uncertainty.  First, in Hebrews, it clearly states that some born prior to Jesus would be saved.  Next, in Matthew, it says some who expect to get in (professing Christians?) won’t and others who don’t expect to get in do (non-Christians?)  My major point, on which I am regularly challenged, is that it’s not my job to send people to hell or heaven, so I’m not going to worry about it.  I’m just going to tell people the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ and let God take care of the rest.  Me, I’d much rather motivate people with heaven than scare the hell out of them.

 

 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)

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LK:   Why 9/11? Why Virginia Tech or Columbine? Why did 24 people died in a a Mississippi church on Palm Sunday after an F-4 tornado levelled it? Why wars? Why Pan Am  Flight 800 that “exploded” over Long Island and killed almost 300 passengers instantly? Why Katrina?

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PP:  We have a church bookkeeper (who happens to be Jewish) who was walking into the Twin Towers minutes before the planes got there.  Right at that point, she realized her husband had forgotten to give something.  Cursing him under her breath, she left the building, walked down the street, then heard the crash. She knows many people with similar stories.  Her response is not to feel guilty (as some do), but grateful.  She sees it as God’s intervention.

          Why do evil things happen?  Certainly, I (or someone smarter than I) could offer a treatise on the nature of original (inherited) sin.  But that doesn’t really do it, does it? G.K. Chesteron turned the question around, “Why do good things happen?”  What about joy?  Love?  Pleasure?  Why should God provide these?  Did we ever do anything to deserve them?

LK:  Christians have a tendency to blanket things.  Having that almighty, encompassing “blind faith” covers a great deal when it comes to questions Christians can’t or won’t answer.   I believe in faith–I have it, but I’ve reached a point where faith and the fact that “Jesus baffles the intelligent (I’ve been told that umpteen times)  is no longer and adequate answer.  I just see it as an excuse.

PP:  I certainly know Christians who have blind (or clouded) faith.  I’ve also know well-reasoned Christians who are extremely intelligent, whose faith in Jesus is part of their brilliance.  Though I haven’t reach much of him yet, I understand Tim Keller (a pastor here in NYC) is being favorably compared to such giants of the past as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.

 

 

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LK:   I thought perhaps it was because when the concept of Christianity was being disseminated, perhaps hocus pocus and tales of great magic had to be told, because they were dealing with an incredibly ignorant people and they were limited intellectually.  And because of that, asking these people to have faith in what early Christians were trying to convey, was an impossible task.  They needed to hear about magic and miracles–the couldn’t or wouldn’t believe in a Supreme Entity any other way.

(Jesus on a Pancake)

 

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PP:  Funny you should wonder this.  In Acts (a book I’m now studying), there’s a story where the disciples were thought to be magicians because they healed someone in Jesus’ name.  There was even a magician who tried to buy their powers.  They refused, of course, and explained to him the difference between faith and magic.  I can see, however, how you could point out the similarity.  But, if faith were merely magic, would it have lasted so long and been embraced by so many different people?

LK:  I assure you, I am trying to make sense of this.  This isn’t some notion I  fabricated while sitting around other liberally minded eggheads, drinking beer and smoking a joint, nor was this derived during my halcyon, “mind exploratory” days of college.   This perplexity goes back all the way to age eight and it was completely self-derived.

PP:  I can sense your sincerity.  But what’s wrong with liberal egg-headed, beer-drinking, point-smoking, halycon, mind-exploring college days?  I had a number of those days and I’m no worse for wear.  Except, um.  Well, the few brain cells I have remaining are being destroyed by my psych meds.

 

 

 

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LK:  I’m asking questions of an assortment of very learned people…from rabbis to shrinks to Christian (priests and Protestants) all the way to Buddhists.   

PP: It can be good to get a variety of perspectives.  Two of my recurring commentors are an Iranian Muslim woman and a young Atheist.  I find it helps, though, to have a fairly firm faith stance first, in order to have a point of view from which to converse.  You may not be there, though.

LK:  My reality is that I ask eight people different questions, I get eight different answers.  Every religion things theirs is the only way.  But for me, the only way is to listen openly to all these concepts, then put them in a pot, stir them well, watch the concoction boil, then dissect it.   Extrapolate all the truths and see what happens.

PP: Interesting way to put it.  I’m not a cook, so let me use a different analogy.  When I write, I need to have a fairly firm concept and then, as I type, it (God) can take me in a number of directions.

LK:  I’ll have my answer soon enough.  I know I will.  I think about this a lot.  More than most people would believe, considering my brash, comedy-ridden, public exoskeleton.  Freedom of choice?  Free will?  Certainly you can see how those won’t be answers that will satiate my need to know.

PP:  I’m not sure God ever wants to satiate our need to know.  There is a Psalm that goes – “As the deer pants for the stream of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?”  God appreciates our longing.

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other friends in Therapy

“Hope in Therapy“

“A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy in Therapy“

“Shahrazad in Therapy“