coming of age . . . deferred

Existential crisis:  how am I not myself?

So, the other day my boss, who is slightly crazy yet I still respect her, took it upon herself to psychoanalyze me.  Her main points were as follows:

- I still haven't found myself

- I have no idea what I want to do with life

- I have commitment issues

- I think women are evil

- I cater too much to my parents

- I value my freedom above anything and everything and everybody

For a while now I have habitually avoided asking myself deep questions about myself.  I think this is due to a sort of rebellion against the relentless inwardness that serves as the core of evangelical Christian culture.  I've dealt with God knows how many years of being told that you have to dissect yourself at a "soul level" in order to sift the wheat from the chaff etc. etc.

I am fully convinced that this is crap.  I think it is an ideology that paralyzes people in a myopic spiritual narcissism that merely allows preachers to reign in their purity and maintain a salary.  So, I decided around a year ago to quit.  And, I've been floating along now for a year; sometimes I merely tolerate my life which isn't the one I've always dreamed of, and sometimes I've still found myself pleasantly content.  But, one thing I've noticed, I never feel stagnant, which I remember feeling constantly when I thought that I should aspire to constantly hold my soul under a magnifying glass.

I actually feel quite the opposite of stagnation, lately I've felt as though there is never enough time to reflect or consider.  I've felt that I am perpetually in motion even when I forget what that motion is taking me toward.  Basically busyness has occupied the void left in my life which was formerly dedicated to hours of wondering whether my intentions were of God or of the devil.

And so, in the middle of work the other day, when I should be diligently driving towards results in the holy cause of staying busy, my boss gives me her diagnosis, and it really threw me off.  I mean, I was really bothered by it, and couldn't get what she said off of my mind.  This unfortunately informs me that there must be some truth to what she said.  

So having given it some thought, here's what I think:

true, false, true, false, probly true, and true.

So, moving on.  I think I'm more and more of an anti-essentialist.  This presents me with a problem in the "search for myself" since I'm not really convinced there is a "me" out there waiting to be found . . . by me that is.  I really think we, and the communities we are part of, decide or create the people that we are.  So, for me, I feel it's less a matter of finding myself, and more a matter of deciding who I will be, which I find to be infinitely more challenging.  I would love to believe I could simply stumble upon my own essence, but unfortunately I feel pretty certain that Plato was full of crap.

I do know what I want in life.  Though the picture in my head is always a vague blur, I still feel certain about the big pieces of it.  I think that this is what should inform me of "finding" who I want to be, since that's actually part of the picture.

And, so, I've returned to a place in my life where I need to start asking tough question of myself.  The things we avoid are most often those which we most need to address.

I talked with a friend the other day about the odd concept of adulthood, which we are technically a part of, but only technically.  Both of us are over half way through our twenties and still found it odd to think of ourselves as being "a man" or "a woman".    I think maybe that's what my boss in all of her clairvoyance was getting at . . . I have a lot of growing up to do.  Not something that I haven't heard before, but maybe something that for the first time I agreed with upon hearing.

Sophia

As I've said previously, I think that the New Testament's primary mode for expressing the value they found in Jesus is to transpose him onto preconceived categories.  Thus Jesus is expressed as the 'new Moses', the 'new Elijah', a prophet of old.  Often these concepts applied to Jesus are an awkward fit.  Jesus lines up with such molds in some places, but in others couldn't be further away from what those ideas expressed.  

This is why calling Jesus the Messiah is only partially applicable.  There were several lines of thought as to what the Messiah would be.  Jesus obviously was a better fit for the idea of the 'priestly Messiah' who would liberate the people by leading them into a new spiritual depth where God himself would be moved by their purity to come and save Israel.  The problem was, that this view was a minority view.  Most people who expected a Messiah, expected a military general to drive Judah to triumph.  When they referred to the Messiah as the "Lion of Judah" they weren't just giving lip-service;  they believed the Messiah would make Judah into Rome and Rome into their slaves.  Thus, Jesus was a horrible Messiah.  Quite literally, as a Messiah, he was a complete failure.  Still, the NT gives him this title with frequency because it is a means to express what they have failed to find a good way to articulate.  

They transposed the person of Jesus onto the concept of the Messiah, and for those who came to understand Jesus, the concept was redefined.  And, this is what I believe to be the foremost method that the NT uses to teach the identity and importance of Jesus to people who had never met him.  So, moving on . . . 

It's funny that we pay so little attention to the 400 year gap that is present between the Testaments of the Christian Bible.  We treat that period as a boring era when God was taking a breather getting ready to send/become Jesus to fix our problems once and for all.  That attitude is one of the peaks of Christian idiocy.  

There was an astounding volume of literature produced by Jewish culture during those years.  Much of it is included in the Apocrypha which we have conveniently excluded since Bibles are heavy enough as they are.  The problem is that the Apocrypha and many of the books that didn't even make the cut to be considered  Apocrypha-worthy are the very books which set the tone for the culture that Jesus and his contemporaries lived in.  Jesus and his friends knew those books almost as well as they knew the Hebrew Bible.

One prominent feature of that time period was the emergence of Sophia.  The Wisdom of God stepped out in that culture as a mythic figure which delineated new ideas about God and his relation to the world.  Nonetheless Sophia was controversial, since she was . . . well, a she.   Sophia was in many ways separate from God, she acted on her own, and yet she was also a part of God.  It was possible to see her acting on her own, or, in her actions, to see God himself taking action.  Sophia was supposed to be an eternal aspect of God.  There was never a time when she was not with God, and a part of God.  She was there when God created the world, and by her God created all things.

If you've ever read the New Testament the parallels become staggering.  It becomes readily apparent that Jesus is not just a prophet of Sophia, but actually in the earliest contexts Jesus' disciples saw him as Sophia incarnate.  In fact, most of the hyperbolic claims of the New Testament concerning the ontology of Jesus, the Son, originated with the idea of Jesus the embodiment of Sophia.  

Notice this, no Jew would cry blasphemy at the equation of Jesus with Sophia, but unilaterally Jews and Muslims would anathematize the equation of Jesus with God.  The difference is subtle but infinitely important.  

God is active in Sophia, but in the context where Jesus lived, Sophia did have an identity of her own.  Thus, when Jesus is understood as the incarnation of Sophia, the same concept applies:  God is active in Jesus, but Jesus is also his own.  

There was a problem with this transposition:  Sophia is feminine.  Around Jesus' own time Jewish society was shifting from a period of being more egalitarian to one which was more patriarchal.  Under the influence of Greco-Roman culture the feminine was increasingly relegated to a place of inferiority, and so the equation of Jesus with a feminine expression of the Absolute God was feared to be distasteful for Greek Christians.  A slow process of repression began.  So, during the years of writing the NT we notice the idea of Jesus as Sophia fading from the scene.  By the time John was written the idea of Logos was preferred over Sophia to express that Jesus was pre-existent without the disgrace of assuming he was inspired by God's feminine side.

This understanding of Jesus reconciles claims of his pre-existence and clarifies how Jesus "came" from God.  I also find that it offers hope that our basic doctrines don't automatically put us in enmity with over one sixth of the world population (Muslims and Jews), and don't make us look like fools to the remaining two thirds of other faiths.  It also restores some of my respect for the Gospel of John trying to find a new way to express an idea that was causing a lot of controversy . . . only I think his solution leaves us with more problems than it fixes.

The main people currently trying to lead the resurgence of Sophia theology are Christian feminists like Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza.  I feel though that ecumenical Christians also have an important stake in reclaiming the role which Sophia played in early Christian faith, since Sophia helps us to reconsider the dogmas which have long lead us into exclusiveness and misunderstandings about the very man that we center our beliefs around.

Of Late . . .

As of late, my thoughts regarding any topics that might be of interest in blog form have been tragically limited.  So far this summer I've had precious little time for theological reflection.  Woe is me.

I started college algebra last week, and came down with a horrible sore throat the next day.  Coincidence?  I think this once I'll stake my hat on anecdotal evidence and say that it's been proven that math results in sickness.  Therefore its nuisance as a requirement is unethical, and I am demanding exemption.   . . . Alas, I don't know who to send such a complaint to, so I'm writing it here.  If you know who the person responsible for such outrageous expectations is, send me their address and I will write with fervor and fury!   

My apologies:  that rant was due to having had my first test tonight.  It really had nothing to do with the aforementioned illness.  I probably did fine.  I just find it lame that I'm getting off work and driving back to school to take exams.  Ridiculous.  

In between an endless inundation of articles about neurological disorders which I am reading for work, I've managed to read a couple short books.  One was on the figure of Sophia in the Bible which very well may have solved most of my problems with the pre-existence of Jesus, and the Gospel of John in general.  I might write more on that later.  

I've also been working on Mill's essay on Utilitarianism, which I'm finding fairly interesting.  I was telling a friend the other day, science has a way of making pragmatism and utilitarianism quite palatable.  

The highlight of my evenings lately is getting to read Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.  I love it.  Marquez has sealed the deal as my favorite, and therefore the best, fiction author of all time.  His style is the best descriptive prose I have ever read by far.  I cannot recommend him highly enough.

It is now officially 9:12 PM and I'm going to bed.  Good lord, who ever thought a summer could be this lame!  Seriously!  9:12???

Work

I have returned to the world which begins daily with that annoying sound of beeping in triplicate, gradually increasing speed every 20 seconds to remind me that I need to pull the covers off and stumble into wakefulness.  I began my job this week.  I'm immensely grateful for it, yet no amount of gratitude truly prepares one for the stark reality that is 7:00 AM.  

I spent my first two days looking for wallet-friendly routes to make it from point A to B.  Point A being my suburban refuge.  Point B being my lab at an illustrious academic island in the middle of the ghetto.  On both days I spent 40 minutes stuck at lights before taking recourse to the the tollway just to make it to work on time.  Now I've conceded to the inescapable fact that the powers that be will charge me three dollars to leave the suburbs and make it to the ghetto in less than two hours.  

I'm working with some pretty cool people, doing some pretty cool things.  We're hoping by the end of the summer to cure several forms of epilepsy, MS, arthritis, and a few other diseases that I can't spell the names of.  At least that's the goal.

Today I got paid to sit around, reading papers about said diseases and try and wrap my mind around the most up-to-date understandings of how they work.  

I really enjoy it.  I'm convinced this somehow evidence of insanity, since when I simply glance at the papers I'm reading, I cannot fathom anything more boring or esoteric.  Nonetheless I got excited today upon understand how the immune system captures and delivers antigens to cells that then kill everything that presents the same protein.  I started drawing pictures on my lab-book and then found myself drifting through delusions of finding miracle cures based on knowledge that took me one hour to obtain from multiple doctors who spent years researching.  It's kind of ridiculous. 

My lab is amazing.  I'm on the 7th floor.  I sit next to a window with a phenomenal view of the Dallas skyline.  I watch herons and hawks catching the updraft off the building, hovering effortlessly 30 feet past my window.  The rolling clouds today caused the light to catch the angles of the skyscrapers and I thought briefly of how beautiful a place Dallas can be.  

Tonight I'm going to a jazz club, just on the opposite side of my view.  We're dressing up, which is a horrible idea that I am in favor of all sober-minded adults abandoning.  But as I doubt that anyone will pay mind to such objections, I've resigned myself to partaking in the charade.  Small price to pay I guess, to be with friends who I'm truly coming to love.  

A friend of mine got on to me the other night for complaining.  This is nothing unusual; most of my close friends do so with frequency.  I've never been able to pin it down.  I think it might be that optimism just seems awkward to me.  I've got natural talent as a cynic . . . were it a sport I might be eligible for professional play.  The other day, though, I found myself thinking that I was exactly where I wanted to be.  This exact time in my life.  There are all kinds of things that I could desire right now, but I don't really care.  I'm headed where I want to go, and I'm surrounded by everything that is indispensable.   I'd be lying to say I was living in a state of contentment, but I feel it quite an accomplishment to say that I at least have realized that I have every reason to be content.