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ericrigney
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Name: leif
Birthday: 8/14/1971
Gender: Male
Interests: William Faulkner, Van Morrison, quirky politics, reading, acting, writing.
Expertise: Grammar, American Lit, and many other things arcane.
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
9/30/2004
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| Much to my surprise, some of you have actually asked when I'm going to post on my experiment again.
The truth is, my wife has a very stressful and painful back injury, and the whole mess has got me down and wrecked my writing inspiration. If you're not married, know before you get into it that seeing a spouse in pain is one of the hardest things to endure (right below seeing your child in pain). And not being able to do anything about it compounds the issue. These are the times when real love makes itself known -- if you ain't got it, this kind of thing will crush your marriage. Thank God that is not the case here.
Anyway, the experiment continues, just silently for now. Those of you who pray, throw up one for DeAnna. Oh, and me too, if you've got an extra one to toss up. | | |
| Had an interesting conversation with my mom and step-dad about religion the other night over dinner. A bit passionate at times, but friendly and pleasant. My step-dad is very liberal in his theology, to the point of refusing to label almost anything as immoral and believing that there are multiple paths to God in addition to Jesus. My mother attends a very emergent church, but is very conservative in a lot of ways, although loving and for the most part live and let live. Me? I don't know where I am, although I found myself agreeing with both of them in turns, while disagreeing with neither very much.
The curious thing: this was certainly a discussion about all things "Christian," yet the word was only mentioned one time. I waited for it to come up more, and I waited for my step-dad to chuckle and for my mother to challenge me about my casting-off of the word; but its sole mention initiated a debate between my mom and step-dad, over the fact that my mother said someone's actions were not "very Christian-like." I thought that might lead into a discussion of what something "Christian-like" looks like, but the conversation went elsewhere. And since I have decided not to force a discussion of the word, I went along with it.
But I do find it interesting that two Christians can enter into a debate about what "Christian-like" is, which is really a debate about what "Christian" really means; and when the debate is through, to have reached no kind of concensus whatsoever. Yet neither seemed to consider that since we can't decide on what it is perhaps we should take a closer look and re-evaluate the word.
My point? It seems to me that almost everyone has come to accept as a given that much of the population have different -- sometimes starkly divergent -- ideas about its very definition. And yet some of my friends still persist in saying that the meaning is set.
Not proof of anything, of course. But I am finally going to reference CS Lewis on this, because I don't see how I can hold off any longer. I have avoided doing so until now because I did not want to imply that my unscientific, lame-o experiment is in the same league with the thoughts of one such as Lewis. But all through dinner the other night I kept thinking of Lewis, in Mere Christianity, saying:
“A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand, if anyone (say in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose...Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening,' the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and we are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word.” (bold type added)
I think perhaps we have reached this point. | | |
| I have not abandoned this experiment -- I have been out of town for a
conference and have to get caught up on work stuff, etc, before I can
get to another dispatch. Thos of you still paying attention,
don't feel abandoned 
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| Again, not much to report today. Not many people around me bringing up religious beliefs around me: they either already know or don't care.
One thing that's interesting to me to think about in all this is that I consider myself barely a Christian anyway (when I was considering myself that word at all, that is). I sometimes miss my old, evangelical, Independent Baptist self -- but not much. Usually just when I meet someone who is still in the middle of all that but is not a weird-o or a jerk. Then I think, Maybe there was something to all that legalism and structure and surety and certainty.
But then I remember how it almost drove me away from God, and I consider the effects it still has on me to this day: the doubts, the messy spirituality, the theological skepticism, the spiritual cynicism. And when I think of those things, I feel pretty content to be just me, certainly heretical and almost surely apostate, by religious standards--but clinging to Jesus like a rat to the only piece of flotsam in the murky stream.
Thoughts on the "experiment" itself:
People seem to almost willfully miss a couple of my repeated points consitently, so I guess I will repeat them again, since I come from a family of addicts and thus have trouble learning from my mistakes.
First, I keep having people insist that any new label I come up with will eventually have problems too, even though I have repeatedly said I have no desire to choose a new label.
Second, some people seem to find it very hard to resist seeing this in terms of my disappointment in and disagreement with and embarrassment at certain other Christians. And while I can be as sarcastic and eye-rolling as the next person at other Christians' screw-ups and flagrant silliness and even deviousness, when it comes down to it I know I am no better than they are, just in my own ways.
This is (I say AGAIN) not primarily about any of that. This is about the lack of definition of the word. For me, that is the most disturbing thing about it -- it shape-shifts all the time, and is used to mean so many different things that I can't center in on a single meaning anymore. That presents a jost of problems, one of which is that it disturbs me to associate myself with a word that could be taken to mean anything, barring a whole passel of explanation. My experiment is an exercise in skipping the label and jumping right into the explaining part. Maybe not very much more economical, in practical terms, but who said I was practical?
Lastly, too many people seem to think I am doing this to achieve "relevance" or some such emergent nonsense. Trust me, I have no illusions about my relevance, at least in the Christian world, and I have no desire to change the body of Christ in any way. It's just not my calling. I have no plans to start a "post-Christian Outreach Ministry" or go out to people on the street and grab them by the shoulders and shake them and saying, "Have you heard about the latest revelation God has for His people!?!?!? It's called 'The Prayer of the Guy Who Used to Be a Christian!' Pray it for ten days straight and you will see your own label slip away and God will do a mighty work in your life too!"
Ick. I'll just swim around out here in the deep end by myself, thank you.
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| Not much unusual to report today. Mostly goings-on in my mind, turning over this whole thing to see if maybe I'm crazy.
And though I may well be, I'm still firm in my resolve.
I do need to address a comment or two though.
First, Michael Spencer posits the scenario of someone asking, "'What�s the difference between what you are and a Christian?'"
And then Spencer asks, "Is there a difference?"
Some have supplied their own implied answers to Mr. Spencer's question, and the assumption seems to be that I will say, "I don't do that bad stuff they do. I am a true follower of Christ, not like those imposters."
But I assure you, this would not be my answer at all. For a couple of reasons.
First, such a response would be pretty presumptuous and arrogant. God knows (literally) that I have done my share of "bad stuff" that could bring shame to the name. Also, I am no one to determine who is a "true follower" and who is not. In fact, I believe in a very wide tent when it comes to who's in and who's not--sometimes maybe too wide. Some days I am so close to universalism it scares me, although I never quite get there. But one should not get a mental picture of me standing over in the corner shaking my head and "tsk"ing at those other people in the room and saying, "I'm not one of those."
So what would I say? Well, if someone asked me "What's the difference between what you are and a Christian?" I'd have to say, "I'm not sure what a Christian even is anymore, which is why I am hesitant to call myself one. If by someone calling himself a Christian he means 'one who has put his faith and trust in Christ and endeavors to follow and worship Him,' then there is no difference, except he chooses to use a name for it and I don't."
Not a snappy answer, I realize, but one thing I think this is all about, at least for me, is stepping away from brevity for a while.
Other comments from friends and observers seem to imply that I am on some sort of crusade to change what followers of Christ call themselves. I assure you, I am on no crusade to get anyone to do anything. This is very personal for me -- the only reason I am doing it so publicly is that a few people seem interested in how it will all work out. I don't even know how it will affect me or what those affects will be, so I am certainly not interested in changing all of Christendom.
Still others have suggested that what I am doing may give an impression of dishonesty, but here I must vehemently disagree. As with anything, I can't control what people think of me or what I say/believe. But I do know that the nature of this experiment does not lend itself to a perception of dishonesty, if for no other reason than that I plan to discuss what I am doing with anyone who asks. In other words, I don't foresee any of my conversations going like this:
"So Rigney, what do you believe about God?"
"Well, I believe God exists, and I believe He came to earth as a man to pay for my shortcomings, since none of us can please God on his own."
"So, you're a Christian."
"Well...no."
"Oh. Well, what you're saying sounded an awful lot like a Christian."
"Um, nope, no Christian here."
*person walks away scratching head, coming to the conclusion that I am either "off" or dishonest.*
No. More accurately, it might go something like this:
"So Rigney, what do you believe about God?"
"Well, I believe God exists, and I believe He came to earth as a man to
pay for my shortcomings, since none of us can please God on his own."
"So, you're a Christian."
"Traditionally, yes. But I have decided not to use that name, at least for a while."
"Why?"
"Frankly, I am embarrassed by some of the shenanigans of people who call themselves Christians, even though I am not going to say they are not. But also because I think the word Christian has lost its meaning -- it has come to mean so many different and often unrelated things that, in my estimation, it no longer means anything."
*from here the discussion could take any number of turns, all of them (at least in my imagination) interesting and thought-provoking, both for me and the person I'm talking to.*
Both of these scenarios are over-simplified and invented out of whole cloth, of course, to make a point, and only time will tell how such conversations will actually go. But I talk like that anyway (people either think I'm quirky or full of shit), so no one will be surprised; and my point remains: I am not acting like the word never existed, or that I am in some kind of different "club."
To further illustrate: When I put bandages over my eyes in college to see what it was like to be blind (naive, I admit), and people asked me, "Why do you have bandages over your eyes?" I didn't say, "What bandages (we don't need no steenking bandages)?" or "I put out both my eyes bobbing for marshmallows at a bonfire." Instead, I said, "I am doing an experiment to see what it is like to be blind."
Similarly, I plan to make discussion of the word Christian a part of this whole experiment -- a discussion won't be a treatise on how I'm not like "those other people."
And to be honest, I am curious to hear what my lost friends and associates have to say about the experiment. If they are put off by it, I will be surprised.
Well, off to bed. More as it occurs.
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