It was a week that drove me to chocolate in quantity, up until Thursday evening when I left work behind to head over to Harvard Yard where Harvey Cox was celebrating his retirement after 44 years. Harvey exercised his ancient cow grazing rights as Hollis Professor of Divinity, by bringing a lovely Jersey cow to the yard, named Faith.
Harvey asked our church choir to sing Robert Louis Stevenson's poem The Cow (set to the tune of Amazing Grace) and then one verse of Amazing Grace as the benediction to the event, so I was part of the event, as well.
Harvey was also celebrating the publication of his latest book The Future of Faith, and I took the opportunity to get an autographed copy. This is an important book, perhaps a necessary one for people of faith, as a guide to what lies ahead in the Age of Spirit, as we leave behind the Age of Belief, the Christian era since the Emperor Constantine's takeover of Christianity in 355 CE.
Harvey emphasizes that beliefs and faith are not the same thing, and that we are leaving behind the Age of Belief where a list of items that we must believe was enshrined in our religious lives. Rather, in the Age of Spirit we have increasing numbers of spiritual, not religious people, who do not believe in all/any of the items in the creeds, but instead understand that practicing our faith is more than reciting a litany of what we believe. Actions speak louder than words, and doubt is perhaps a necessary part of the way of faith. For Harvey this was highlighted when an acquaintance described himself in conversation as "a practicing Christian, not always a believing one." (p. 16) I've only had time to read the first thirty pages, but recommend this book to you.
In Harvey's speech at cow/retirement celebration event, he said the arguments about science versus religion are dead (or at least need to be). His perhaps prophetic look at faith (like all prophecy, we'll have to wait to see) dovetailed nicely with the second profound event of my week—an outing with friends to see the play Truth Values by Gioia DeCari at the Central Square Theater. It only has one more week in the run, and I highly recommend it. It is a one-woman show, an autobiographical look at the actor/author's years in trying to make it through the math maze as a Ph.D. student at M.I.T. She captured in her writing and in her acting the essence of the time and place, and of the dilemmas and sexism facing women in math and the sciences.
In one early scene DeCari attended the Good Friday service at the MIT Chapel and is struck by a mathematics professor's reading of Pilate's question to Jesus: "What is truth?" That reading spurred her research about truth values. But what are those? Not what we unsuspecting lay people would think. In one interview about the play, she said,
I especially liked the idea of using the math research I was doing at the time as a central metaphor. The title, “Truth Values," is a technical term for the notion of true vs. false. My research examined the consequences of adding other values between true and false, sort of a formalization of the idea of nuanced choices. This resonated with the choices I was facing in my life at the time…
The common theme in both Harvey's celebration and book and in DeCari's work is that a binary, black/white approach to human behavior and motives, to passions and faith, to truth and beliefs, and human relationships with creation, is inadequate. Asking if you believe in one creedal statement as a litmus test of Christianity is as untenable as asking if, because you are a woman, why aren't you at home raising babies rather than learning math.
DeCari's play reminded me of how much I don't want to be put in a box because someone has a preconceived notion about who I am, or should be. I suspect and hope that Harvey Cox's book will help us find a path out of the belief boxes that Christianity has been trying to maintain for the past sixteen hundred years into a faithful and faith-filled life.
Moral: Faith and art (with a side of chocolate) are better than just chocolate for a tough week.
I made these notes several weeks ago, but am feeling prompted to reflect further on how and when we tell the truth in a church. Rather than just hit and run preaching, how do we tell or live the truth, or open the door for the truth? When Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, the life," what does that truth look like lived out in a community of believers? When I was an adolescent, one of the philosophical questions I wrestled with was whether it was better to tell the truth or to be kind—the assumption being that one precludes the other.
In Back Talk! Women Leaders Changing the Church, Susan Willhauck reports on five areas for change in churches that she uncovered in a qualitative study, really a long series of conversations along with some surveys, with people involved in churches. Those five areas are:
• Honest ways of talking to ourselves and to the world: truth telling
• Affirm women's leadership, especially of women of color
• New organization/open structure: alternative ways of being and doing church
• New lay leadership
• Biblical and theological reflection
So this is what she says about Truth Telling:
"The lack of honesty sometimes takes the form of backstabbing or competition or out-and-out lying."
"Dishonesty can be a means of protecting the hierarchy." (p. 36)
"Sometimes the dishonesty takes the form of not telling someone the truth they need to hear simply because it is easer and more politically advantageous to keep quiet."
"The church often postures itself as being unconditionally accepting, but it is not."
"Being honest means that sometimes we express anger. Yet anger has been forbidden to women, who are supposed to be nice and suppress it." (p. 37)
"Many of those I have talked with say we must uphold honesty and in so doing find more ways to heal conflict."
"We have to call people to be Christ-like. We have a moral obligation as Christians to tell the truth, to love one another and to tell the truth." (p. 38)
I had a conversation yesterday with the denominational representative for placement and when he asked what I'm looking for, one of the things I mentioned was a healthy church. Now, exactly how I will define or know that is a question for further discussion, but the capacity and propensity for truth telling is certainly a part of being a healthy church. Willhauck has noted some of the things that get in the way of telling the truth. What else would you add?
In Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Frederick Buechner writes this about Truth:
When Jesus says that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, "What is truth?" (John 18: 38) Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat. Instead of Truth, Pilate has only expedience. His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient. Pilate views man as alone in the universe with nothing but his own courage and ingenuity to see him through. It is enough to choke up anybody.
Pilate asks What is truth? And for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him. The sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the cellar stairs.
Jesus doesn't answer Pilate's question. He just stands there. Stands, and stands there.
How do we stand for truth? This past weekend we decided to play a board game on Sunday evening and I rummaged in the bin and pulled out Scruples—which surely must date from the eighties, if not seventies. The questions are various ethical dilemmas: someone gives you the wrong change, do you tell them or return the change; you hit a car in the parking lot, do you leave your name. You read the question and try to direct it toward the person whose answer will match the Yes, No or Depends card that you hold.
One of the difficulties in playing this game with a group of people with good ethical values was matching the question with the answer—I knew which way they would answer, but that wasn't the answer card in my hand. I remember playing this game with a group of people when I first got the game, and it was not as clear that people would answer truthfully or ethically. Frankly, as a parent, I was delighted at my daughter's answers, and at the resulting conversation we had about some of the gray areas in making decisions and the pressures that people might feel.
Having worked in situations where not telling the truth might be "easier," I think that I have finally come to realize that most often the truth told with compassion is also kinder than not telling the truth, certainly in the long run. Not confronting the issues only comes back to bite me later. What is truth? I think that Buechner's example is apt. It is not so much in what we say, but as where and perhaps how we stand. It is walking the talk, and walking the walk too.
May we each be open to the truths of the day, with compassionate hearts. May we be able to hear and tell the truths that we see and know with kindness and courage.
