About that Fear and Trembling...

Yesterday, I alleged that underneath the conservative-evangelical surface of absolute certainty lies a mass of anxiety--mainly a never-to-be-completely-extinguished worry about whether or not one will be cast into hell for eternity. It's this fear/faith combo, I suggested, that keeps evangelicals going to church, walking tearfully down the aisles, evangelizing on the street and in their lives, and basically involved in their faith life.

Cathartic as it was for me to get all that out, it's all a bit too simplistic. I admit that I have a great deal of bitterness toward elements of my Southern Baptist upbringing. But I give the wrong impression if I suggest that evangelicalism is nothing but a dance of dogmatic certainty and agonizing fear.

Two quick side notes to yesterday's rant, then:

First, most evangelicals I knew and know don't think of their faith life as a miserable experience. Nor do they fit the progressive-secular stereotype of benighted dupe, naively following the awful dictates of a cultish ruler. I've highlighted some of the more painful or embarrassing moments from my childhood faith, but in truth there were many more times where my faith was a source of strength and comfort to me.

For all its faults, my church taught me the value of Ultimate Concerns. That is, I learned from an early age that there were dimensions of existence (ethical, spiritual, etc.) that transcended the immediate/material. I learned that part of seeing and evaluating the here and now--Where am I? Who am I? What should I be doing? How shall I live?--was putting the present into the perspective of eternity.

While my vision of that "eternity" has changed significantly, I still try to put the immediate into conversation with the transcendent. Sometimes that conversation moves me, makes me act in ways I otherwise wouldn't. Sometimes it keeps me from acting. Sometimes it simply gives me a sense of not being alone, a hunch that--as bad as things may be right now--they are small in the context of the Ultimate. My faith moves me beyond myself.

For the record: I don't necessarily think that Christianity or even religion in general is the only way to come to appreciate Ultimate Concerns. An atheist working for prisoners' rights, for example, may do so in the name of an abstraction--an Ultimate Concern--like Justice or Human Rights. Nor do I think that every expression of religion or faith necessarily leads to what I would consider a healthy conception of (or relationship to) Ultimate Concerns. The task of discriminating between healthy and unhealthy Ultimate Concerns is, well, a whole other ethical/theological/metaphysical conversation...

Second, I actually do believe in working out one's faith with fear and trembling.

Quick fact about me--one of my pastimes is listening to fundamentalist and conservative sermons on particular topics (evolution, gays, etc.). I just heard one last night about "Why Men Choose Evolution." (I'll try to get the link soon). The pastor's argument was that people choose evolution over young-earth creationism because they are so uncomfortable with a God who judges--a God who would kick humanity out of Eden, a God who would flood the earth for humanity's sins, a God who will come again in Final Judgment of all humanity.

He's right. I am uncomfortable with that kind of God. It does not follow, contrary to what this pastor argued, that I therefore prefer a God who makes no judgment, who has no standards, or who never expects anything of me beyond who I presently am.

A classic (read: nearly cliched) definition of a pastor's role is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted." I like the notion of faith and ministry as prods, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comforted. I would agree with my conservative evangelical sisters and brothers that there's something wrong with a faith that does nothing more than confirm, conform, and comfort.

There's a time for "the peace that passes understanding," and there's a time for being brought up short--convicted, unsettled, de-stabilized--by a holy nudge. I try to keep in mind C. S. Lewis's characters' warnings about Aslan the lion-that-is-allegorically-Jesus: He's not a tame lion.

Thus, I try to recognize and incorporate into my faith practice a degree of uncertainty about who God is and what I should do in light of that knowledge. I'm convinced by the example of Jesus in the gospels (and elsewhere) that one of God's favorite tropes is the surprise--Jesus doing something or acting in a way that disrupts or overturns conventions and certainties, especially certainties that derive from an orthodox faith or a literal reading of scripture. I no longer try to imagine exactly what the afterlife will be like, but I suspect much of it will be a kind of surprise.

So. Fear and trembling, uncertainty and belief--all of these remain vital parts of my faith. What, then, is my problem with the certainxiety of my childhood faith?

More on that tomorrow.

JF