Overflow

I don’t usually read her, but this is a great op-ed from Peggy Noonan on the nature of time and the possible end of it. I’d have to say I agree with her. Chilling and inspiring.

Okay, it’s a small thing but I signed this petition. I was signature 84,833.

My current crisis of faith

Americans are packing the churches to pray. And for what exactly? Demographics tell me that most of them must be a flavor of Christian. But the drumbeat for war that I hear on the street gives me little reassurance that I am among people who share my faith.

And at a time when it is hardest for me to think like a real Christian, I need someone around me who is willing to say it with me:

We Christians should pray foremost for peace! Make Love, not War!

Jesus’ teachings are inconvenient at the moment, as they may be so for some time hence. Love your enemies? Turn the other cheek? Do good to those who persecute you? Yeah right. Jesus, we worship you as savior and Lord, but get *real*, okay?

In church we escape into prayers for the victims and for our country. Of *course* we should pray for the victims and our country, but noone breathes a word of the unspoken, difficult, and most important prayer
that looms in the air. Pastors hint at it, but they don’t dare say it. Maybe they realize it’s not the time. Maybe they realize that people are still too hurt and angry to pray for our emenies. As Jesus commanded us to do.

But will there come a time in the weeks and months ahead, as our country is making irreversible plans for the deaths of thousands of people, that we *will* hear peace preached from the pulpits across America? As Jesus commanded us to do?

I look to the Holy Father to provide such leadership. He’s good for that. He spoke out repeatedly against the wildly popular Gulf War. But American Christians, even Catholics, only listen to him when we already agree
with him. Like Jesus, the Pope is someone we admire and love, but not someone whose opinion will change our minds.

So where does someone go who wants to pray in public for peace? Where is the Church of common belief, of Christians who read Jesus’ words and take them not just to heart but to word and deed? I want to join that church. But as a follower because, God forgive me, I am not strong enough to be that kind of a leader.

The cycle of violence is harder to break when the cycle rests on you and you are the one to have to choke down your rage and choose peace over revenge. It can’t be done alone, or as a silent, intimidated minority.

I’ll admit it’s hard. I want to get the bastards too. I can understand trying to live the Gospel and failing. What is shaking my faith right now is that it seems we preach the Gospel but do not really *believe* it at all. Where are the believers? Am I foolish to believe in Jesus’ message of peace? Is all this Christian stuff worth believing at all?

I rather admire the Buddhists. At least the ones I know. They do much in their actions that we Christians say we believe — Practice peace, practice lovingkindness, the eightfold path. Maybe I’ll hide out as a Buddhist for a while. There’s room for Jesus there too.

Let me know when the coast is clear. Let me know when we can start praying for peace again. I know it’s cowardly to lie low and not stand up in public for your beliefs, but I’m not that strong of a person. I can’t stand alone. I’m too weak. I need company. How about you?

From the “I guess I should be offended but this is pretty funny” department: God Finally Gives Shout-Out Back To All His Niggaz.

A review of yet another one of those religion is all in the brain books. Have any of these guys thought about how, instead of somehow disproving religion, such evidence actually supports it? I am not surprised to hear that science is bearing out my belief that spirituality is wired into our brains. We are made specifically to love God and to do otherwise is unnatural. I guess if you are hooked on the idea of the supernatural as a separate, ghost-like, “spiritual world,” you might be threatened by such theses. But I see the supernatural and natural worlds as intertwined (or embedded for you mathematicians out there). Such attempts to debunk my faith just end up supporting it.

The reviewer agrees:

“Boyer’s neurological approach to the phenomena of religion is helpful, because it reminds us how deeply faith is conditioned by the bias of our minds. But it neglects our capacity to build on these to produce ideas and experiences that may not be supernatural but which are certainly transcendent. As an art form, religion at its best and most creative has exploited these innate natural habits, in the same way as poetry has transfigured our ability to speak.”

Here’s a good article about Richard Rorty and postmodernism from New Republic. I makes my brain hurt, but it’s a good beefy read. I’ll have to think a while before I can decide which side I’m on. I’m pretty sure I’m a Postmodernist, but not to the extent that I have solid replies to much of postmodernism’s critics. Being a bear of tiny brain that is.