Insecurity

I’m still making my way through Frank Schaeffer’s Patience with God. Last night, I read Chapter 9, “So Naked Before a Just and Angry God”, which is about Frank’s experiences at a boarding school when he was young.

Frank talks about how he and a friend, a stocky boy named Nichol, liked to agitate an emotionally volatile and unpopular boy named Higgins. One night, they did this once more and got into trouble with the headmaster, a level-headed and formal evangelical named Mr. Parke. (Picture Mr. Hundert on the Emperor’s Club.) Mr. Parke made them wait a few hours for their punishment, to induce in them the same sort of insecurity about the future that they liked to induce in Higgins. Mr. Parke then told them the lesson he was trying to teach them:

“Now you know how Higgins spends his days. You see, you chaps are happy boys. When you get up in the morning, it isn’t with a sense of dread. You’re expecting a pleasant day. When Higgins gets up, he’s expecting unpleasantness. He knows that chaps like you think it’s funny to wind him up, to take advantage of the fact that he loses self-control. Well, for him that is a sort of hell…”

Frank says that he learned about God from Mr. Parke’s example. But this passage made me think about my attitude when I get up in the morning. When I was in elementary school, I’d get up with an attitude of eager anticipation about the day. Some of that ran into my Junior High and High School years, especially if I had a crush on a girl and was hoping she would notice me. When I had friends, I was happy to see them after my summer vacation. Late in High School, however, I developed a sense of dread about each day—maybe because by that point I was uncomfortable being around people, not that I was really bullied. And that’s the sort of attitude that I have nowadays. Instead of saying “Good morning, Lord”, my attitude is usually “Oh Lord, it’s morning”. One thing I like about my current job, however, is that it’s predictable and runs smoothly, plus the people are friendly, and that helps me.

At Harvard, I knew an old woman whose husband had passed away, and she was having a hard time getting over it. She told me that her husband used to wait for her after her classes, with a big smile on his face, ready to drive her home. Now, as she deals with her husband’s absence, she’s lucky if the cab driver is even friendly!

I watched Stephen King’s It last night for the umpteenth time, even though I saw it a few weeks ago. (I noticed different things in my viewing last night, however.) One of my favorite scenes occurs right after Beverly Marsh fights back at her abusive boyfriend and leaves him to reunite with her old friends in Maine. A cab driver asks her which flight she’s going to, and she replies that she wants to go to Maine. “Okay, then we’ll find one that goes to Maine”, the cab driver responds. “What’s in Maine—family?”

I like this scene because the cab driver is hospitable. He creates an atmosphere of security, in a world that is often insecure.

Extreme Examples

Randy Olds told me today about an excellent article on things that Christians and atheists can agree upon. See here. It’s lengthy, but it’s well worth the read. I identified with the author’s statement that Christians and atheists tend to defend the extreme version of their positions when someone from the other side gets in their face.

For example, if an atheist tells a Christian that the Bible is a bunch of fairy-tales, the Christian might respond that every word of Scripture is true—no ifs, ands, or buts. The Christian will act like she has never had a doubt in her life, when she most likely has, since she’s (well) human. If a Christian gets in an atheist’s face, the atheist might reply that Christians are stupid and are looking for a security blanket to get through life. The atheist may sometimes see value in religion—or at least understand why there are people who are religious. But if he’s confronted by a militant Christian, his understanding attitude goes out the window.

This describes how I have been in the past (“past” meaning up to right now). In rigidly liberal environments, I tend to be a firebrand conservative, even though I personally may see value in all sorts of perspectives, on the left and the right. But there have also been times when I have agreed with people to keep the peace. And then there are times when I feel as if I have to stand up against a person’s beliefs, because that person is being a bully. I may see some value in that person’s viewpoint, but I feel that appearing open-minded will show weakness, or allow the fanatic to shove her ideas down my throat. And so I act more dogmatic than I actually am.

The article also notes that Christians and atheists tend to attack the extreme examples of their opponents. For instance, Fred Phelp’s church is small, including primarily his family and friends. Yet, atheists act like Fred Phelps is the official spokesperson for Christianity.

I wonder myself if I stereotype. When I criticize the behavior of certain Christians in my “Oh Brother” posts, don’t I realize that there are good Christians in the world? Yes. But the behavior I’m criticizing pops up on numerous occasions, so I feel a need to mention it and express my disapproval (as if anyone cares).

Disagreement and De-Humanization

I’ve been reading Frank Schaeffer’s Patience with God over the past month. There are several things about his book that I appreciate: his belief that art and literature should be honest rather than one-dimensional Christian propaganda; his point that medieval churches were built to outlast their builder, indicating that Christianity back then didn’t have the sort of personality cults that afflict modern evangelicalism, at least not to the same degree; his statement that he dreads his elderly mom’s passing, even though he found her annoying throughout his life; etc.

I flinch, however, at some of these statements that he makes:

Page 86: But back to [Christopher] Hitchens: What no one knows, including (I suspect) Hitchens, is whether Hitchens is serious, or just a Brit former-lefty version of Ann Coulter, cashing in on the American market and dedicated to entertaining (and making a great living off) those of the godless marshmellow of the American left who will tolerate him, instead of entertaining (and making a good living off) the God-fearing even-lower-Neanderthal-brow Americans of the right who mistake Coulter for a serious (or even decent) person.

(BTW, I do enjoy Schaeffer’s discussion of Hitchens. I once criticized a Christian who said that he doesn’t find anything in atheists that he would like to emulate. While I consider that to be too broad of a statement, as there are good and bad people in all sorts of camps, I wonder why anyone would consider Hitchens a hero!)

Page 94: These authors (all of whom are studied at Wheaton and some of whose papers are enshrined there) would have shot themselves rather than be condemned to attend, let alone teach at, Wheaton College or any other evangelical/fundamentalist backwater institution like it.

The context here is that C.S. Lewis smoked and drank, so he probably wouldn’t be allowed to teach at Wheaton were he alive today, even though Wheaton idolizes him as a great Christian thinker.

Pages 100-101: And woe betide [Rick] Warren if he expresses any truths about his doubts or failings or, worse yet, casually mentions that he’d rather be, say, a secular Jew free to say or do what he wants without a gaggle of low-IQ evangelicals parsing his every move.

I can somewhat understand where Schaeffer’s coming from, for he’s probably encountered a lot of Christian fanatics in his lifetime. I have too, but not to the extent that he has.

But I’m not big on calling people stupid. I don’t like to dehumanize people (even though, as a sinner, I have done so in the past).

Intelligence is relative. I may be smart in a particular area, but there are people who are smarter than me in that area. And those people can be on the right, the center, or the left of the political or religious spectrum. Then there are people who aren’t as knowledgeable as I am in that area, and yet they’re intelligent in other areas. I know this one right-wing fundamentalist lady who strikes me as a scary fanatic, yet she ran her own small business. I’d struggle to do that!

Some Christians have claimed that Anne Rice dehumanized Christians when she made her recent statement against Christianity. But I don’t think that’s what she did. She didn’t call anyone stupid. She just stated that she had problems with things she has observed in Christianity, and so she’s leaving. There’s disagreement, and there’s disagreement that overlaps with dehumanization. And yet, I’m sure there are Christians (especially in America) who will call any disagreement with them “persecution”.

Latin Mass: the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector

At Latin mass this past Sunday, the priest spoke about the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector, which is found in Luke 18:9-14.

Often, people say that the Pharisee was proud and that his mind wasn’t on God when he prayed, but rather on himself. Yet, the Pharisee thanked God that he was righteous. Still, he didn’t have much humility, for he looked down on the tax-collector.

The priest presented humility and confession of sin as a pathway to spiritual renewal. Maybe it is, if it’s done right. Personally, I’ve not found beating myself up because I’m a flawed human being as a pathway to spiritual-anything. At the same time, I do wish that I could be more polite to certain people, even when I feel agitated. I wish I had inner peace. And I have to try consciously to help others, when I’d rather be in my own little world.

I don’t see repentance as ceasing to do evil, and doing everything right—even if that’s the definition that crops up in the Bible every now and then (though, to its credit, Isaiah 1:17 says we should cease doing evil and learn to do good, which implies a learning process, not having our acts together right now). But I do hope to become better. And I look to a higher power to remove my character defects, which is a gradual process. Will he do so? I hope. In the meantime, I don’t beat myself up for my imperfections, but I try to do better.

Some may think that the tax-collector was beating himself up, for he hit his chest. But, as the priest noted, the publican was hoping for something good: God’s mercy. A better life. There’s a degree of self-love that comes with a relationship with God, for people who seek God desire something good for themselves, even if they don’t deserve it.

The priest also said that he used to swear up-and-down that he’d never become like his father, and yet he finds that his father’s personality is a part of him, and he’s happy about that. I found this interesting, even if I didn’t understand it completely. Was the priest glad that his father was a part of him because his father had passed away, and the priest is happy to have something that reminds him of dad—even if it’s his negative personality traits?

Not that my readers would know the answer to this question. It just interested me.

Should Anne Rice Go to Church?

Should Anne Rice go to church? On the one hand, by not going to church, she's missing out on learning to love unconditionally the self-righteous, narrow-minded jerks she despises (not that all Christians are like that). That means she's missing out on some character development. On the other hand, not everyone is strong enough to be around self-righteous, narrow-minded jerks, and to be pushed to endorse stuff with which he disagrees. Did you watch Joel Osteen last night? He talked about "toxic relationships".

To satisfy a lot of Christians, you have to not only attend church, but also fellowship and be a part of a community. That's pretty taxing! And you have to be zealous and enthusiastic about "what the Bible says". Well, accepting "what the Bible says" is one thing. Actually liking it and being enthusiastic about it is another thing entirely.

I don't believe in hating Christians, for, at the very least, I should view them as people, with the same struggles that everyone else has. That's why I pray for Christians on prayer boards, even though I disagree with their beliefs, or how they express them.

But, unfortunately, I'm finding that I am just as I was when I was criticizing liberals. If a liberal would talk about something bad a conservative was doing, I'd point out examples of prominent liberals doing the exact same thing---as if that actually vindicated conservatism. Well, when one woman I know was criticizing Anne Rice for being self-righteous and judgmental towards Christians, I was about to say that Christians themselves can be self-righteous and judgmental. But where does pointing out double-standards really get us? It raises defenses.

And yet, I'm glad that Anne Rice criticized Christianity, because I hope it leads to reflection within the Christian movement. I may not care for Christianity, but perhaps I think that it should be tough enough to absorb criticism and to reflect on it. For some Christians, it does; for others, it doesn't.

Comp Consolidation: Greco-Roman

This post links to my past posts on books and articles that I read for my Greco-Roman comp. I read stuff outside of the syllabus, but I won’t link to my posts about those readings here. In this post, I’ll just focus on the syllabus.

Section A: Greek and Latin Versions

E. Tov, “The Septuagint.” Part 1, Part 2.

N. Fernandez Marcos, The Septuagint in Context. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21.

J.D. Bathelemy, “Studies of the Text of the Old Testament” (french). Part 1, Part 2.

B. Kedar, “The Latin Translations.” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

R. Loewe, “The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate.” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Section B: Greek and Latin Biblical Exegesis

L. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 .

D. Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha.” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

P.W. van der Horst, “The Interpretation of the Bible by the Minor Hellenistic Jewish Authors.” Here.

F. Siegert, “Early Jewish Interpretation in a Hellenistic Style.” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

L. Feldman, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15.

E. Earle Ellis, “Biblical Interpretation in the New Testament Church.” Here.

W. Horbury, “Old Testament Interpretation in the Writings of the Church Fathers.” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

M. Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25.

N.R.M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

S. Hidal, “Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Antiochene School with Its Prevalent Literal and Historical Method.” Part 1, Part 2.

Section C: Pagan Backgrounds: Grammar, Rhetoric, Philosophy

H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23.

R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15.

D.A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12.

R. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

G.A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

S.E. Porter, Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

M.B. Trapp, “Philosophical Sermons: The ‘Dialexeis’ of Maximus of Tyre.” Part 1, Part 2.

G. Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy III-IV. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23.

John Dillon, The Middle Platonists. Part 1, Part 2, ,Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21.

H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Profound in Any Stage: Anne Rice’s Spiritual Journey

As several of you may know, Anne Rice, the writer of vampire novels (including Interview with a Vampire, which was made into a movie) and books about the life of Christ, has officially left Christianity. Here are some quotes from her:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

At the same time, she has not given up on Christ: My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

I found wikipedia’s discussion of Anne Rice’s spiritual journey to be illuminating, especially the powerful quotes from Anne Rice herself. When she was 18, she left the Catholic Church:

I had experienced an old fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940s and 1950s… we attended daily Mass and communion in an enormous and magnificently decorated church … Stained glass windows, the Latin Mass, the detailed answers to complex questions on good and evil—these things were imprinted on my soul forever… I left this church at age 18… I wanted to know what was happening, why so many seemingly good people didn’t believe in any organized religion yet cared passionately about their behavior and value of their lives… I broke with the church violently and totally… I wrote many novels that without my being aware of it reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God.

How did her vampire novels reflect her “quest for meaning in a world without God”? She explains:

My vampire novels and other novels I’ve written… are attempting to be transformative stories… All these novels involve a strong moral compass. Evil is never glorified in these books; on the contrary, the continuing battle against evil is the subject of the work. The search for the good is the subject of the work… Interview with the Vampire… is about the near despair of an alienated being who searches the world for some hope that his existence can have meaning. His vampire nature is clearly a metaphor for human consciousness or moral awareness. The major theme of the novel is the misery of this character because he cannot find redemption and does not have the strength to end the evil of which he knows himself to be a part. This book reflects for me a protest against the post World War II nihilism to which I was exposed in college from 1960 through 1972. It is an expression of grief for a lost religious heritage that seemed at that time beyond recovery… One thing which unites [my books] is the theme of the moral and spiritual quest. A second theme, key to most of them, is the quest of the outcast for a context of meaning, whether that outcast is an 18th century castrato opera singer, or a young boy of mixed blood coming of age in ante-bellum New Orleans, or a person forced into a monstrous predatory existence like the young vampire, Lestat… In 1976, I felt that the vampire was the perfect metaphor for the outcast in all of us, the alienated one in all of us, the one who feels lost in a world seemingly without God. In 1976, I felt I existed in such a world, and I was searching for God. I never dreamed that the word, vampire, would prevent people from examining this book as a metaphysical work. I thought the use of the word was a powerful device… The entire body of my earlier work reflects a movement towards Jesus Christ. In 2002, I consecrated my work to Jesus Christ. This did not involve a denunciation of works that reflected the journey. It was rather a statement that from then on I would write directly for Jesus Christ. I would write works about salvation, as opposed to alienation.

She returned to the Catholic church after she eased her religious struggles with the idea that God knew what he was doing:

In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from [God] for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I’d been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him. The reason? It was magnificently simple: He knew how or why everything happened; He knew the disposition of every single soul. He wasn’t going to let anything happen by accident! Nobody was going to go to Hell by mistake.

Now, she has left Christianity because she sees its fruits, and she does not like what she sees.

All of these quotes are powerful and thought-provoking, regardless of where Anne Rice was in her spiritual journey when she made them. They deal with such profound issues as alienation, the quest for meaning, our battle against our sinful urges, moral people who aren’t believers, when we should question and when we should just trust God, and how we should respond to the bad fruits of Christianity.