Think. Hard. Questions. God.

I woke up this morning to CNN's homepage with a shining article by Christian author Karen Spear Zacharias entitled, "My Faith: What does God sound like?" Good question, Karen.  What does God sound like?

I found the faith article interesting, if a little weightless, and decided to poke around CNN's faith section a bit.  A few days ago, Becky Perlow wrote a summary about a recent publication in Science magazine about the inverse relationship between analytical thinking and belief in God, called "Analytical Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief" by Gervais and Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia.  You have to pay to read the full article, but Perlow summarized it here: "Study: Analytical Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief."

I want to honor the attention the article gives to critical thinking and religious thought together because too often they are seen as exclusivities.  However, I want to offer a few critiques, particularly of the authors' description of religious thought as 'intuitive.'  Really?  It's intuitive to believe without question a poor servant carpenter man rode into town on a donkey and saved the world by raising himself from the dead after being crucified?  Really?  It's natural to think that the first will be last and the last will be first?  It's easy to believe that that special joy that passes through even the most trying of circumstances comes from a life a selflessness and possible/probable danger and uncertainty?  It's intuitive to believe that we possess the power (through the Holy Spirit, which comes with belief and submission to Christ) to heal the sick and the make the lame walk?  Maybe that's easy and natural for some... but it isn't intuitive for me.  My faith is really freaking hard work (perhaps because I secretly and pridefully want to be an intellectual snob, too).  Walking through this life of faith has been an extraordinary intellectually challenging endeavor.

Most of my hard questions start with prayer and some Bible study.  Here are a few:

• What exactly does salvation mean?  Is it the prayer you pray asking Jesus into your heart?  (If yes, then what about Catholics?)  Or is it some period of time later when you've better understood the transformation that happens when you choose to follow Christ and his ways?  
• Can you lose your salvation?
• Why are 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' listed as two separate religions on the demographic information section of most forms?
• Is there an unpardonable sin? 
• Why are some people gay or transgendered?  Is it possible that they were born genetically pre-disposed to be that way, and if so, then what?  Is it wrong/bad to think they should be allowed to get married? 
• Why don't people (including myself) ask these questions in church/ Sunday school class?   
• What about the people in the faraway villages of the interior of Africa (or anywhere else) that haven't heard about Jesus?  
• Is it possible to believe in Intelligent Design and/or evolution, and also in the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
• Since "accepting Jesus into your heart" and "praying the Salvation prayer" isn't in Scripture, where does that language come from? 
• What does it mean for a Christian to be culturally relevant in the 21st century?  How can we reach our generation without compromising our faith?  
• Does God audibly converse with us today?  If so, how can I hear Him, also?  If not, what do people mean when they say they were talking with God? 
• What about Love Wins?  What about what Rob Bell has to say?  Can any piece of it true? 
• Why does it sometimes feel like a cop-out to say that God is bigger than all of this, and hey-we'll understand-someday-when-we-get-to-heaven? 

~
God is not afraid of hard questions, nor is He offended by them.  Let's ask more hard questions.  
~
At the end of the day, I hold onto the sentiment behind this quote from one of my favorite movies, Rudy:

"Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard, incontrovertible facts: there is a God, and...I am not Him." - Father Cavanaugh

Dream Job

This could be it:

"Vice President of Aftercare, Kathy Stout-Labauve, shares stories of hope restored to sex trafficking survivors. She explains how IJM social workers begin caring for the young women even before they are rescued, learning their names and preparing to walk beside them as they heal. Learn how IJM is providing hope to trafficking survivors in Cambodia, India and the Philippines."  Click the link to watch.


[ Because No One Should Wait for Justice ]

Old Rag

Greg, Caleb, Megs, and I hiked Old Rag at Shenandoah today. It was a blast, and I'm so glad I let myself go, even though it means I'll need to stay in and stay up tonight to work on the portfolio.  Thank you, Lord, for your beauty and your creation. 

"He looked out of place for this part of the city."

Everyone has been following the Trayvon Martin story, right?  If you haven't, get caught up on it here and here.  (Or, go to cnn.com and it's likely you'll see the latest updates.)  The case of Trayvon Martin and the issues of racial profiling, age discrimination, and gun laws are important to me primarily because of the students I teach - my students can relate to all of this and they have opinions about it.  I love my kiddos and I want to protect them.  But, I also care about this because I care about justice for Trayvon and for his family.  And I care about justice for Zimmerman.  (What does justice for Zimmerman look like?  What about mercy?  Is there room for forgiveness, room for racial reconciliation here?)

The quick version is this: Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old black teenager from Sanford, Florida.  He was shot and killed by a Latino man, George Zimmerman, who served on the neighborhood watch patrol. One of the controversies surrounding this case is Zimmerman's claim that he shot Trayvon out of self-defense, but in the investigation that followed, Trayvon was found to be unarmed - he was wearing a hoodie and carrying only a bag of skittles and iced tea.  Did Zimmerman feel afraid because Trayvon was a black young man wearing a hoodie and walking around at night, carrying the heavy burden of all the stereotypes that come with being born an African-American male?  I don't know, and honestly, I don't want to explore the details of the case or make a presumption as to what exactly happened.  That's for a jury to decide (on April 10th).  I just pray for the people in that court room, for the families, and for racial reconciliation and peace in our country.

I want to talk instead about something that happened a couple days ago in an affluent neighborhood in Washington, D.C.  I was sitting at a table at a coffee shop in Capitol Hill near Union Station with a friend, just chatting away and enjoying the afternoon.  I happened to glance to my left at some point, and I noticed a young African-American male with a hoodie over his head.  I remember him, I think, because it seemed a little warm outside to be wearing a hoodie.  Perhaps his image stuck in my head just because he just reminded me of the hundreds of images of Trayvon that had been flashed across screens in the past few days.  For a split second, I felt my guard go up, like I was somehow 5% less safe with him walking a few feet from me.  He looked a little out of place for 'this part' of the city.  After that split second, ... "Damn, Kelley. That's exactly what this whole conversation about the Trayvon case is about - you're judging this kid because he's black and you're white and he's a guy and you're a girl and you're afraid because he's got a hoodie on and that looks scary.  Who are you to feel unsafe?  Who are you to judge him and what he's about?"  A wave of self-loathing came crashing down in a matter of seconds.  I thought three years in a social work program (i.e. all my classes were about diversity appreciation and self-awareness and tolerance and empowerment) and another couple years living as a minority in my neighborhood and place of work - I thought that after all that, surely I wouldn't haphazardly judge some random kid who wandered into a coffee shop.  Besides, I don't feel unsafe when I see black or Latino teenagers and young adults walking along the streets of my neighborhood.  Why did I feel a little unsafe in the coffee shop?

Then it happened. The scream. She screamed loudly and I heard a bang. I didn't see it - my chair was facing the wall.  But my friend was facing the windows and the street and he saw it all. It couldn't have been more than a minute after I had racked my brain for an explanation for my judgment towards the kid that he lunged at the woman sitting at a table near the exit of the coffee shop and snatched her laptop and bolted out the door.  The bang was from him slamming his fists down on the table to grab it.  The scream was from her shock-- from her fear and her anger.  I think I stopped breathing for a moment. While my brain was trying to make sense of it all, the coffee shop employee jumped over the counter and sprinted after the hoodied-kid.  From our table, we saw the chase progress up F Streeet (right next to Union Station and the Capitol).  I don't know if the barista actually caught the kid, or if the kid thought it probably wasn't looking too good for him to be getting chased at full speed in this particular area of town and just gave it up. Regardless, the barista walked humbly back in the coffee shop with the woman's laptop not more than 4 minutes later.

The woman tried to catch her breath as she cried rushed, confused, scared tears.
The police arrived 2 minutes later.
The hoodie-kid got away, I think.
The barista was quiet. Humble. And he went back to work.
Trayvon was wearing a hoodie.
So was this kid.

What am I supposed to think? Feel?