Why I'm emerging

Before I continue on my stated quest, an aside about the emerging church, which has made this journey possible . . .

For the first time in my life, I am part of a church where I feel wholly comfortable. I never feel the need to be any different at church or with church friends than I am anywhere else. My church is part of the "emerging church" movement. This describes a diverse group of churches that are Christians as part of the postmodern world. There is no way to comprehensively describe the movement as a whole, but this article in Christianity Today is one attempt: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

Not all the things in the article describe my church, but it's a start at getting the idea. The one biggest reason I think my church is great is that no one is treated as a second class citizen. I can question Christian theology or even God without any putting me on some special prayer list. My church is a good supportive place to do this where people will engage me and make me think. Everyone's dignity in their spiritual journey is respected, not just on the surface, but really. This has made me comfortable enough to be honest with myself about what I believe and what I'm really not sure about. It's helped me start the journey that I'm documenting in this blog.

As with all new and interesting things, the emerging church movement is controversial. There is no better way to express the controversy than in the Poster Wars. The first link below goes to a series of spoof motivational posters that are critical of the emerging church. The second link goes to a set of posters that was created in response, and is more supportive of the emerging church. I think being self-critical is the only way for good churches to avoid getting off track, as so many have done in the past. So I embrace both sets of posters, not as "wrong" and "right", but as a great way to provoke thought about what we should really be about.

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/posters.htm

http://emerginggrace.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-generous-view.html

Jesus as our morning coffee (August 13, 2007)

Explaining their enthusiasm for prayer time, some women at my church recently said, " When I spend time with Jesus first thing in the morning, I just feel better and more focused the whole day". My husband criticized them for using Jesus as their morning coffee. I'm not sure I agree with his negativity here, but it made me think -- what are we hoping to get from religion?

I can think of many possibilities - a sense of affiliation, justification for self-righteousness, a purpose for life, a way to explain the world, comfort for painful times, a connection to historical and family tradition, a community of friends, or a way to get energized in the morning. Does it matter what we're looking for? I think it does. The way we approach our spiritual journey depends on what our goals are. If what we really want is truth, then our exploration of faith will be full of open-mindedness and critical thinking. We won't be afraid to consider alternatives to what we are used to, because we will only be concerned with discovering what is true. If our primary motivation for being involved with religion is something else, however, we may feel threatened by different possibilities. This is not to say necessarily that the other reasons are bad, only that our spiritual journies will be very different if seeking truth is not foremost in our minds.

How do we know things? (August 6, 2007)

My pastor said something earlier this spring that has stuck with me. He said (possibly quoting someone): "Faith is not believing despite the evidence, but believing that we are part of something bigger than what we see before us". I've encountered this concept in different forms over the years and have always found it to be powerful. I'm totally comfortable with the idea that there could be more to life than what is readily apparent, and I'm okay with not having concrete evidence for every detail. But I'm not sure that it makes sense to believe with no evidence. So as I start on this journey it seems important to me to reflect on ways that we know things. If I want to evaluate the evidence, what kind of evidence is out there?

Lots of philosophers have reasoned against the existence of God based on a priori principles. I think it's reasonable to accept that God can not be proven by logic alone, in a vacuum. Christians often argue for the existence of God using the historical record - primarily based on the scriptures. This seems to me another legitimate, but insufficient, type of evidence. (In addition, the origin of scripture is often not carefully examined - I'll take that up in another post.) In addition to digging into logical and historical evidence, I will also consider biological, chemical, and psychological evidence about the nature of our world, the nature of humankind, and what that says about God and religion.

Once I've weighed the evidence, I'll be ready to face the question I really struggle with - where does faith fit in?

What's in a Name? (August 1, 2007)

I have to give my husband credit for the focus on Solomon. He is a great admirer of the philosopher king who had many wives, lots of money, and a rather dark outlook on life. (I tell Doug that he, too, would still be unsatisfied if he had lots of money and many wives, despite what he might think!)

A while back, we led a small group at our church that studied the book of Ecclesiastes, purportedly written by King Solomon. Both of us appreciated the fresh (though very old) take this book has on life. Nothing new under the sun. My interpretation of this is not that nothing is worthwhile, but that we should not expect from things what they cannot give. Doug and I both thought that Solomon had a fairly realistic and well reasoned view of life, not a God-challenged one.

Earlier this summer Doug returned home from church frustrated (I had to miss church that morning). Our pastor, Ed, had preached about Ecclesiastes and concluded that Solomon was off track. His problem was that he had forgotten God. If he had gotten back to a focus on serving God, he would not have been disillusioned with so many things in life. Money and power had distracted him from what was truly satisfying. Doug and I both agreed that we don't think Solomon was off track in the first place. Why should following God mean that you have a rosy view of everything? We deemed Ed's take as a rare cave-in to sappy happy Christiandom. (Sorry, Ed -- we usually think you're right on target, but I've chosen one of our few disagreements with you to broadcast over the web!) Thinking back, all of the sermons I've ever heard on Ecclesiastes have sided with Ed.

After this message, Doug renewed his vow to never, ever give in to the sappy happy pressure in the Christian world. And I renewed my vow to make a concerted effort to dig deeper into all the things about my faith that I suspect might have seeped in from the same place the sappy happy came from. Solomon was known for his wisdom and he had no need for sappy happy. So that's why this blog is named for him.

Welcome to Solomon Wisdom (July 30, 2007)

I have always been a Christian. At different points in my life it has been more or less central to my sense of purpose and identity, but it has always been there. Although there are things about Christianity that I struggle with, there are also many things that resonate strongly with me. Overall, I've found it a relatively satisfying groundwork in my journey through life.

In addition to being a Christian, I am also a statistician. I work with research scientists and I spend a lot of time helping people interpret and present things objectively and accurately. I firmly believe in the idea of randomness, and the implication that "coincidences" happen with predictable frequency. I also know that humans tend to find an interpretation for everything, even chance events, and that we prefer interpretations that support what we already believe. As part of a statistics training course I developed, I've presented the misleading human thinking patterns from Thomas Kida's book Don't Believe Everything You Think: Six Basic Mistakes We Make In Thinking (Number one: we prefer stories to statistics!). This is part of my case for the necessity of statistics in keeping us from making wrong conclusions.

Lately, when I'm thinking and talking about my faith, I hear my own voice in the back of my mind telling me that I'm not being objective. That many of the ways people interpret God acting in their lives are bunk. That I'm only a Christian because I grew up in a Christian country in a family of Western European descent. That I'm just believing everything I think.

So I'm starting a new phase of my journey. I'm going to let myself consider the possibility that nothing I believe is true. I'll consider that God may not even exist. I'll contemplate other religions and try to give them a fair shot. I'll consider psychology, biology, and neuroscience and what they tell us about who we are. I'll read books, talk to people, try stuff out, and think about my life experience. I'll search for truth and the meaning of life, and not be afraid of where it takes me. I'll admit that I hope I'll end up back at Jesus in the end, but not if it's just because that's what makes me comfortable.

I'm hoping some other people will participate, too. I'd love to hear from people with many different points of view -- anyone who is being honest with themselves about what they think is true.

Let the journey begin.

Resurrecting Solomon Wisdom

As I've been inspired by several friends' blogs, I have decided to bring my neglected blog back to life. Step 1: Re-post my old entries!