Yay!
I just got an email from Brad. He's doing really well. It was awesome to hear from him.
For any of you who can't immediately place the name, Brad was the "bad boy" in the boy band that was Daniel, Brad, and me, for all of high school.
Okay, now you want to know the rest. Daniel was the "ladykiller," and I was the "one who's not really in the band, but always hangs around."
Glad to hear from him. Life is good, even through a hangover. Latah!
There's this proposition that...err...proposes... that all Men are created equal. I am dedicated to this proposition. Now, when, in the course of human events....
Beh. Whatever. Here's the point: every person has within him the ability to become anything any other person can become. Yes, that includes Wolverine, but if you really think about it, really, would you actually want to be Wolverine?
But that's beside the point. Every person has within him the ability to become anything any other person can become. And, as we have seen in history and legend, a person can become some pretty damn impressive things.
More importantly, people become pretty impressive, over the course of time. Here's a thing: two people can do more than one person can. Again, more importantly, two people working together can do more than two persons working individually can. That's an important distinction. The very foundation of all Society, all Community, all Civilization, is that a group of people banding together becomes more than just the sum of its parts.
There's a reason for this. While every person has within him the ability to become anything any other person can become, most don't. That is, we all take our beginning, our infinite possibility, and through environment, education, training, and choices, we all tend to become somethings unique. When we pool our resources, then, those who have trained for physical strength can offer their physical strength to the community. Those who have trained for mental prowess can offer their mental prowess to the community. And lazy bastards with a knack for spelling can get a surprisingly high GPA pursuing an English Major. Har har.
But I'm working my way toward a point, here. Gar, and it's going to sacharrine, so there's your fair warning. It's the differences between people that make communities stronger than collections. It's the diversity of a community's membership that provides the community's strength.
I think this is one of the reasons families work so well. Bruce and I have discussed the...unfairness of the way families work. That is, without choice, without apparent reason, by an accident of genetics you are irrevocably tied to a particular group of people. Nothing you can do in your life can change who your family is. However, families remain an incredibly successful and powerful social structure. I think the "accident of genetics" is a very important reason for this.
Friendship communities, and even professional communities, will tend to bind together because of shared traits. Naturally, there is a significant degree of deviation from person to person even within a similarity-based community, but within a family you're going to get a significantly greater degree of divergence of interests and specializations. The family bond itself binds these divergent elements together, and allows them to become the sort of successful, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts community I'm talking about.
So. That explains families, but we really do have little control over the shape and membership of our family, so through life we create other communities around us -- we bind ourselves to other folks, adding our resources to theirs (and theirs to ours) and all of us growing together.
And here's how relationships work (from a pragmatic standpoint): Similarities create the bond that keeps a community together. Differences create the strengths that make a community effective.
Remember what I said earlier, that two people working together are stronger than the same two people working individually? This is only true inasmuch as there are differences between them. Two people, perfectly identical in ability and disposition, would work as well apart as together. There are some flaws with that claim, but on close consideration I think it really holds. The significance of a relationship comes from its diversity.
What, then, is a marriage, but a constructed family bond? That is, the whole point of a marriage, as far as I can see, is to create a community of two bound together for the sake of becoming greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts. There's the strong force and the weak force, though. The very thing that lends significance to the relationship (difference) creates a constant pressure forcing the people apart. It takes something stronger than that to bind them together, so that the individuals can act as a community. In blood-relationships, it's the genetic bond that overcomes the repulsive force. In made friendships, it's similarities (and often these similarities have to be so overwhelming as to practically smother the differences, limiting the ultimate effectiveness of the relationship).
I can't quite seem to get to my punchline here. It sounds something like this: "irreconcilable differences are what make a marriage worth having." I'm not trying to be trite. Sincerely, if a couple could reconcile its differences, it would cease to matter as a couple. It is the difference between who you are, and who I am, that makes us, as a couple better than just a couple of people.
That goes beyond marriage, obviously, but marriage is the most powerful illustration of this basic core of all human relationship. Marriage is the idea that a custom, a ritual, and a vow can create a strong enough tie to overwhelm that repulsive force. There are, naturally, other elements at play, but in the end, it is staying together that makes a marriage work. Every relationship is constantly under pressure to fly apart. Always. All the time. Staying together is the ultimate, constant challenge of any relationship, and it's the only thing that makes the relationship matter at all.
This is a bit of a puzzler....
Y'see, I'm a fantasy writer. I write fiction. Not, y'know, professionally, because apparently it's not good enough. Pah. But deep down, that's who I am. A storyteller. That's quite apparent to all of you, of course.
And in the course of becoming that, you have to confront the possibility that making up stories is the same thing as lying. In fact, that's a popular way of describing little children who tell lies -- "he's telling stories again."
But at the heart of all good art is a lie. Every piece says, "The world is this way." And the world is not that way. The world is more complex, or uglier or, in some cases, much prettier. Art is not reality -- it's an expression of reality.
And unless you're growing up in an extremely fundamentalist household (which I wasn't), it's pretty easy to realize that our culture recognizes the value of a story as literature. So that little moral qualm quickly passes.
(Note that this hasn't always been so. You may be aware that theater still has a lingering reputation of being a little skanky, for some reason. There was a time when the Church -- and, for reference, this was a time when the phrase "the Church" could only refer to one institution -- made it very clear that telling fictional tales was the equivalent of bearing false witness, and pretending to be someone you weren't was nearly as bad. Morality plays got by, because they were a method of teaching Bible stories to the illiterate masses, but drama was strictly forbidden.)
Anyway, the point I'm getting at is this: from a very early age, I've been wrestling with the difference between truth and honesty. And I've generally been losing that match, too. When I was in middle school, I told some laughably ludicrous lies about my own past, about who I was. It made sense to me -- I had just moved to a new state, and a new school, and none of these people knew my story, so when they started asking about it, why tell them a boring tale? Y'know? So I made up something with some flash and dazzle.
My whole life I've lied, to be perfectly honest.
(Yeah, that line made me smile.)
And this post comes from several discussions I've had with all of you, and those with Daniel and Toby particularly. There are clearly times when telling not-truth is okay. There are times, at least according to social convention, when it's actually good. But, clearly, there are times when telling not-truth is quite destructive.
What's the line? When is honesty right, and when is it just anti-social? Daniel and Toby have both, at some point, come to the conclusion that our society is far too comfortable with untruth -- that what we need in our lives is a great deal more honesty. Instinctively and intellectually, I disagree.
There's a thing I know. I'm not quite sure where or when I learned it, except that it would've been sometime before high school. See, the Ten Commandments include that one rule, "Do not murder." Well, in Aramaic (that's right, isn't it?), there are several different verbs for "to kill." There is a generic word that means to end another person's life. There is a word that refers to killing in battle, and another that refers to a judicial execution. And, finally, there is the word that we would translate "murder." It doesn't necessarily imply specific circumstances, but it states that this killing is socially and legally forbidden, and therefor a criminal act.
The commandment against murdering is precisely that. I know people who are against the death penalty on the grounds that the Ten Commandments forbid killing. That's what I'm getting at. The commandment specifically doesn't forbid execution, it forbids the act that the person is getting executed for. (And, since I'm here, I should pretty much state that I don't think the Ten Commandments should be considered the primary deciding factor in decisions concerning present-day American judicial policy. Just that I know people who do.)
But, back on topic, I wish that I knew the relevant Aramaic to let myself off the hook for the lying thing. That is, I kinda wish I could appeal to some higher source, and get those boundaries of what's wrong, what's okay, and what's right.
I guess since we're at the Ten Commandments, I'll glance at them real fast. The phrase there is, "bear false witness," and I get that the phrase is not just referring to witnesses in criminal proceedings. However, it does imply a certain degree of specificity that I'm comfortable with. Telling a story for entertainment purposes is not the same as claiming, "and because Superman did that, you have to vote Republican." That is, claiming that the implications of a fictional story impact the hearer's (or reader's) life in a compelling way.
Hmm...I think I'm back to Christian Leadership here, in a way. I guess I feel that the difference between a story and a lie is that a lie is forced upon the hearer (or, presented in such a way that it will be taken as forced), whereas a story is presented as an opportunity for the hearer, to take or not at his discretion.
That's a fairly vague line, though, and it doesn't cover nearly enough of the ground I need to cover. What about self-image? People have this amazing tendency to become what they believe they are. Tell a child that he's a genius, and you'll be surprised how smart he turns out. Tell a child he's an athlete, and he'll be incredibly apt. Tell a kid he's an idiot and a bum, and he will be. There are limits, naturally, but a person's self-image clearly and consistently guides his future development.
Given that, there is value in telling un-truth for the sake of growth. It's what our myths are all about. We say, "a man can be like Hercules," not because anyone ever particularly was like Hercules, but because focusing on that potential encourages us to grow toward it. That's the beautiful value of ideals. Ideals are not real (and therefore not true). They are better than true. They are honest.
Then again, a dishonest person could use that very line of reasoning to destructively conceal his own failings -- to justify a lie, in fact. Sure, I'm an alcoholic (not me -- this is just an example), but I don't want to be an alcoholic, I know I shouldn't be an alcoholic, and so I will claim not to be in the hopes of growing into that potential. I will sneak and hide what I am, telling a lie for the greater good.
How is that different from telling your child that he's a genius, in the expectation of him becoming one? To bring it into closer parallel, let's talk about playing along with someone who's pretending not to be an alcoholic. Believing that he can become sober, you pretend, with him, that he already is. How is that different from encouraging your child toward a potential he has not yet indicated? How is it, fundamentally, different from saying, "No, honey, that outfit does not make your butt look big"?
Honestly, I don't know. I recognize that it's a real problem, because a broken person's best hope of getting fixed, is in his recognizing the break. However, I also believe that a person's best chance of becoming something incredible, is in convincing himself that it is perfectly credible.
Hmm...I've come to no conclusion here -- just raised some issues. Please feel free to carry on the argument. I look forward to the discussion.
I've got two words for you: "oxymoron."
Now, admittedly, that comment is going to get me a lot of flak ("flack"? whatever) from everyone who read Christian Leadership and thought about those retreats we went to in youth group and the really eloquent speakers you've heard at a workshop or lectureship. That's not really what I'm thinking about here -- I'm thinking about Christianity in government -- but some of the same ideas apply.
Listen, before Jesus died, he spent a lot of time talking. A lot of people miss out on that, especially because, later, Paul spent a lot of time writing, so he kind of eclipses a lot of what Jesus had to say.
But Jesus had a lot to say about leadership and authority. He said most of it (that is, the most important bit) when he wrapped a towel around his waist, got down on his knees, and washed his apostles' feet. We all know that story so well, and what it represents, y'know, metaphorically, that we kinda disregard what he was saying there. That is, we focus on the theological aspect of an act that is, first and foremost, a political one. Whereas, in Christ's teaching, he chose instead to put forth the political lesson, and let us derive the theological.
Hmm...that might sound like I'm saying the same thing. The problem here is that we, as Christians, are reading the New Testament in exactly the same way we get so frustrated at scientists for telling us to read the Old Testament. (That sentence might be grammatically correct....) The thing is, something can be metaphorical or figurative and still hold literal meaning. In fact, a good metaphor ought to be wholly accurate on both levels of perception: the literal and the figurative.
So when Jesus said we ought to wash each other's feet, and what he meant by that was that we ought to serve one another's physical comforts, and what he really meant by that was that we ought to serve one another's spiritual comforts...we follow that line of reasoning, and teach our kids that Christians should look out for each other's spiritual comfort. And how can you tell? Why, because Jesus himself said that we should look out for each other's physical comfort.
Now, if you're one of those trying to rush ahead of what I'm saying, then you're probably getting annoyed at my choice of passage, because this isn't a perfect one for what I'm trying to say. It's an excellent illustration of how we misuse Jesus' metaphors, though. Now that we've seen that, though, let's focus on another passage. There's a story in the New Testament where a couple of the apostles (I'm going to take a wild guess and say "James and John," rather than actually looking it up) ask Jesus if they can be first in the Kingdom of Heaven -- following him, of course. Jesus rebukes them, and the other apostles get in on the rebuking because, y'know, they should probably have asked, but Jesus calls them all down. Here's the passage:
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When the ten other disciples heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant. But Jesus called them together and said, "You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must become your slave. For even I, the Son of Man, came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many."
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Okay, we've all heard that, and we understand that this means Christians shouldn't be tyrannical. That's not the point, though. The point is that Christianity cannot be achieved through authority. It's earlier in that paragraph that Jesus talks about the Vineyard Workers (a parable I wrote on in an earlier post), and that parable ends with these words:
"And so it is, that many who are first now will be last then; and those who are last now will be first then."
We also have the passage where some trickster challenges Jesus on paying taxes, and Jesus talks about giving unto Caesar what is Caesar's. In that passage, Jesus clearly recognizes the temporal authority structure without participating within it.
And that wasn't a new attitude, when we saw it there. We'd already seen it in the desert, when the Tempter offered Jesus dominion over all the world. Jesus turned it down.
He turned it down, and then he didn't go to the politicians, to change the world. When he was brought before Pilate, he answered him in silence. In fact, we have no record of Jesus deliberately seeking out politicians or trying in any way to change world or national politics.
Jesus' message is one of a personal relationship with God. The lifestyle he teaches is a self-sacrificing one. It is not a message that makes for good government -- it's one that makes for good people. If people were good, we wouldn't need government. Got it?
I know my dad thinks there ought to be more Christians in government -- he'll vote for one any chance he gets. The problem is, a good Christian has to be ready to forgive every offense against him. A good Christian has to be ready to give more than he is asked for, to respond to violence with submission. These things will make a good person.
But they will only make a good governor when all the rest of the world's governors are prepared to respect like that. Or, alternately, when every one of the governed is precisely as devoted to the governor's Christianity as he is. In the first case, none will take advantage of the governor or the state he represents. In the second case, although others will take advantage of his state, the people of the state will accept it, as they accept the same within their personal lives.
Show me a world where all of the powers are Christians, and I will vote for a Christian leader. Show me a state where all of the citizens are Christians, and I will vote for a Christian leader. Otherwise, in any other circumstances, you are either willfully sending sheep among the wolves, without any sort of defender (note that we are talking temporal authority, which Paul claims God has put in place to serve its purposes, even as the Pharaoh who enslaved the Jews served God's purposes), or you are placing a Christian in a position that will force him to curb his own faith in order to fulfill his job. That is, a good Christian placed in a position of authority must, within that authority, be a worse Christian to properly fulfill his responsibility.
If you, as a Christian, decide to take on a leadership position -- perhaps you think that, by acting to protect the weak, you can do enough good to offset the evil of not turning the other cheek, for instance -- then you have made that choice for yourself, and power to you. However, I will not (or, to be more accurate, would not) advocate voting for you on the sole grounds that you are a Christian. That is because, inasmuch as you are a good leader, you become less of a good Christian. And inasmuch as you are a good Christian, you become less of a good leader.
Now, to perfectly clarify, I am talking about temporal authority. There are other forms of leadership than temporal authority, clearly. The foremost, with regard to this conversation, being that of a role model. Christ was clearly a leader, and his Christianity made him a better leader, clearly. That's the whole point of the washing of his apostles' feet. Jesus was not one to say "Go and do," and have others obey him on his authority. Rather, he was one who said, "This is what I do." And others could choose to be like him because they saw the effect Jesus' actions had in his life and in theirs.
And this all speaks directly to my opinion concerning elders within the church. I flatly stand against the idea of elders who meet, decide what the church should do, state their opinions, and then the church does it. Which is to say: elders.
That is not what eldership has represented for the bulk of human history, and it is not what Christ called for. "Elder" is a name we use (not one the elders themselves use) to indicate someone who, by the evidence of his life, has established himself as a role-model and source of information, who we would like to follow. It is the very heart of Jesus' method of leadership and it is (this is the most important part) an entirely optional authority. That is, it is one that you can approach and say, "I choose to live like you." And if you do, so much the better, and if you don't, it in no way detracts from the leader's authority.
Ehff. I've gone on too long, and I'm onto another topic altogether now, but it shows what I'm getting at. In fact, it highlights it well. The very best I think we could hope for, in electing Christian leaders, would be to achieve something like the elderships we're all so familiar with. Imagine the board of elders from your congregation as the House and Senate of the U. S. That's the ideal of that system. That is the best that it could achieve and, honestly, it's not much different from what we already have. You could probably name nine key political decisions that would be decided, once for all, if that were the case. Other than that, replacing the Senate with your church's eldership would pretty much be the same as electing a bunch of Republicans.
And, no, that's not utopia. Honestly, it's not much better than everyday. It might be more comfortable -- that is, your personal opinions on some topics would be more accessible within the community -- but you can achieve that with a political action committee. And, if you think about it, that really just means someone down the street is less comfortable.
And none of that sounds like the kind of authority Jesus promoted. No, Jesus' solution to the world problems takes place inside individual folks, not in halls all made of marble. That's what it boils down to.
Those being the Julies and their sisters, inasmuch as they have sisters.
I noticed some discussion among you concerning "I Heart Huckabees." I wrote a post on May 22, after I watched it the first time. The post is mostly about my take on the relevant philosophies, not the movie itself, but if you think you might like to reply, I'd love any comments.
Now, back to business....
Okay, for several of you, about three paragraphs into this post, you're going to think, "He's talking about me!" And that "me," in case you didn't catch it, is shrill and outraged. Honestly, though, this is something everyone needs to hear, often. It's not directed at or wholly inspired by any one of you. (No, not even you.) But, if it happens to speak to your own life, now, take it to heart and be glad at the coincidence that placed words into your life right where they belonged.
I'm just sayin', is all.
But here's the thing: everyone you encounter in your life is a person.
I need some snappier way of saying that, a clever phrase that will stick in your head and pop into your thoughts right when it's needed. Maybe before this post is through I'll come up with one. For now, though, we've gotta settle with the boring, apparently obvious "everyone you encounter in your life is a person."
That's a big deal, though. We live our lives inside the first-person point-of-view that so many authors have discarded as being too limited in scope. Each of us sees his life as his own story, and all the people he encounters along the way are just characters, just plot developments that push his story this way or that. Some of them we love for the impact they have on our lives. Some of them we hate, for the same reason. And the named characters keep coming back, keep affecting our lives in different ways, so maybe our feelings about that person change, shift, over the course of the story.
Even so, making another human being into a dynamic character in your story isn't enough.
Because, behind his eyes, he's living his own story. He's got a whole world, a whole life of his own to live. He's conscious and aware and trying to live his life well. Where it intersects with yours, there is conflict. In writing, we refer to all of these intersections as conflict. It could be a fistfight or an embrace, but it's still conflict. It's two stories trying to come to terms enough for each of them to move on, in their own directions.
This post isn't about the story metaphor, though. In fact, my main point is that the story metaphor completely defines most of our lives, and it's totally wrong. Or, rather, dangerously limited in scope.
Everyone you encounter -- whether it's a friend, a loved one, or a perfect stranger -- everyone you encounter is living a whole life, is a person encountering you at the same time. And every one of us (I'm convinced of this) is trying to live a good life. What exactly that means changes from day to day, but every one of us is trying to live a good life.
I know you are. Right now, you are.
And yet, even so, you make mistakes. You say something offhand to someone you really care about, and it's just devastating to them. You've done that, without ever meaning to offend, and you've seen the impact it had on their lives.
You act, trying to do something good (or at least something pleasant), and years later you see how your own actions are impacting the lives of people you've met, people you care about. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, and you never really know which will be which.
Sometimes you just act like a jerk. I'm not accusing you, I'm just reminding you of something you know is true. Sometimes you're in a bad mood, and something touches you off, and you just act like a total jerk. It's a short-lived thing (because you're not a jerk), and next moment you're back to trying to live a good life.
And that's okay. Life is a learning experience. You try to get better as you go along, which is the same as saying that, all the time, you're trying to live a good life.
Now...change perspectives. Think of someone you encountered yesterday. It can be a stranger, or it can be your spouse. But think of someone specific. Think of someone you encountered yesterday, and realize that that person was trying to live a good life. That person was an awareness behind his eyes, looking out on the world and making decisions about it. Maybe he said something that hurt your feelings. Maybe he acted, in a way that will impact your life down the line (for good or bad). Maybe he was just a complete jerk.
But he wasn't doing any of those things to you, y'see? He's living his life, just like you're living yours. He was making decisions, and maybe floundering and maybe just shining like the sun. We do that, sometimes, too. You do that, more often than you realize. You're just going along, trying to live a good life, and out of nowhere, BAM!, you actually do. You flare up like a nova, and shed beautiful light on the lives of everyone around you.
I've seen you do it. Otherwise I wouldn't have invited you to read my blog.
And think about your own life. Sometimes you're awesome. Sometimes you're horrible. Through it all, though, remember that you're a Child of God. You are this amazing thing, this beautiful, boundless potential, and you're living a life learning how to live up to that potential. Remember that you are everything that you could one day be. You are the brilliant, shining moments, and the cost of becoming that, the very process of becoming that, necessarily includes the sleazy, cruel, selfish moments, along with all the rest.
And that stranger who just cut you off in traffic? He's the same thing. That's one of his bad moments, but he's a Child of God, and you had better believe that there's times he glows in radiant beauty. The same is true of everyone you meet. Every person, every single person, is a little bit of divine spark trying to learn how to shine. And all of them are seeing the world through their own faulty eyes, trying to guess what it all really means (just like you do), and making decisions, and making bad choices, and stumbling through today because, please, maybe tomorrow will be better.
That includes people close to you. That includes your Mom or your Dad. It includes boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses and siblings and children who just won't treat you like you deserve. They're looking at a world they can't quite get, they're fending off frustrations and trying to find their purpose and wrestling with the injustice of it all, and when you cross their path, when you enter their life, they make a decision that will impact you.
And it may be good, and it may be bad. Switch perspectives again. You encounter someone in your life, someone important to you, someone you care about, and you make a decision that will impact that person's life. It may be good, it may be bad. You want it to be good, but you know from long, long experience, that there's equal chances something will go wrong.
All of us, every one of us, is trying to live a good life. It's fair to be hurt when someone hurts you. It's fair to be annoyed at someone acting like a jerk. But remember, always remember, every single one of those people is a little bit of divine spark, trying to learn how to shine.
I challenge you, personally, to try to see that in people. Try to see people as people, wherever you encounter them, not just as characters in the story of your life. Try to remember who they are.
And, in a very specific application of this, here's your homework. Think of someone you care about, and who you know cares about you. Someone who has hurt you so bad that you almost discarded them from the list when I said, "and who you know cares about you." Think about that person, and the thing he or she did to hurt you.
And think about a time when you made a choice about someone important to you, and you hurt them. Whether you meant to hurt them or not, you made a choice that hurt their lives.
Dwell upon these two things, and find the space behind this person's eyes. Find the space inside his or her own mind, where the offense happened. And try to recognize it for what it was, rather than what it became within your life.
Please? For me?
On the drive in to work this morning, the fog was incredible. Glancing out the window, even now, it still is.
Actually, while I was on the highway, I was thinking, "This fog isn't that impressive. It couldn't even cause an accident at 75 mph." Well, actually I thought, "at seventy-five miles per hour," because that's me.
But once I got off the highway, and down onto the streets, it was incredible. Maybe forty feet of visibility, probably closer to twenty. After that, a blank wall of white.
Driving through it, it felt like I was building a world around me as I went, forging a path through nothing, forcing memory and imagination into the shape of reality.
Too bad all that exercise led me back to work, but it was worth it for the drive. Beautiful.
