Personal Statement: Three years later.

In four days I will officially have had this blog up and running for three years.  Crazy.  Honestly, when I started I don't think I had any intention of keeping it going this long, yet here I am.  And where exactly is that? 

When I started writing I was still well within the Christian fold.  Originally, as my faithful readers will recall (both of you), my subtitle was "a guy in Texas who loves Jesus".  And it's not that this quip no longer applies, only it long ago ceased to adequately express what it is that I want to offer people who would care to read this.  What I have always wanted to offer was honesty.  I go back and read my early posts, and though they in many way sound like someone else, I still find continuity in the hope to be authentic even (and especially) in my doubts.

I chose the title for my blog because at that time in my life I had come to two shocking realizations.  The first being that each of us has precious little control over what others think of us.  The second was that we are not any of the things which others label us as, unless we choose to adopt these things.  This blog has been my way of publicly thinking out who I am and what I believe . . often with blunt honesty.

Three years ago I was an aimless bachelor with a Bible degree, trying to figure out why the world I found myself in wasn't ever lining up with the world I was resolute to find.  I knew I wanted to seek truth, and do so with others; only I found myself seeded with a dissatisfaction for all the methods I had been taught to seek truth by.  I also wanted to find a way to live out the faith that I had dedicated my life to six years prior.  I wanted my world to be integrated.  I was tired of bifurcated life where the spiritual and the mundane were always intolerably distinct from each other.  I also found myself struggling with the hierarchies of authority that I saw everywhere, but most disturbingly among people who followed a man who said to call no man father.

So now, what would I say?  

I still believe in God, and I don't feel that I have ever actually ceased in this belief.  Yet, God's nature is something that has been a constant struggle in my mind.  The age old questions of evil and suffering, of injustice and God's silence have always, and will always bother me.  For the record, I don't believe in a God of ostentatious intervention.  I believe that if miracles occur in our world, they occur subtly.  I believe that our world is far too complex for us to ever understand and predict everything, and within that level of ambiguity I believe amazing things happen.  These amazing things have to be interpreted by people.  Those who are inclined to the myths of faith will explain them with such language, and those who are inclined to look to a natural order will use this to explain them.  I believe this is a matter of interpretation, not "faith".

I believe that the experience that humans know as "reality" can be perceived by humans to have a gestalt quality.  There is something transcendent in all human awareness, and this is something that I don't think psychology or neuroscience can adequately explain away (though that is not to say that they have no explanations at all).  This experience of reality as a whole is what humanity has sought in divinity from the beginning.  In premodern times it was hoped to control the world through this relationship, but modern understanding, I feel, has shown this relationship to be contrived on many levels.  We now know that rain is not magically produced by the prayers of the pious, but by atmospheric conditions.  Again, if prayers effect such things, they do so in subtle ways which always leave room for alternative explanations.

This gestalt quality of reality can be related to personally.  I think it is fully possible for the human psyche to interpret its interactions with 'reality as a whole' as personal/relational.  I think it is rather arrogant to think of such understandings as primitive or inferior, though I do think that if this is the only understanding one accepts then they are clinging to ignorance.  I certainly feel this applies the opposite way around, for scientists who would assume an atomized understanding of the world is the only acceptable understanding.

This experience of reality as a whole is what I call God.  This understanding is inherited from Judaism and Christianity (and informed by Islam as I grow to understand it).  Yet for me the (post)Enlightenment worldview critiques and revises this inheritance.  In Judaism and Islam, I find a relentless desire to preserve the sacredness of belief in the one God.  For these religions, God/Reality is one, and anything that even holds potential to compromise this belief must be anathematized.  This is quite the problem for me as a Christian, since the Christ I follow was wholly and completely Jewish.  In short, I cannot accept any doctrine that would equate Jesus with divinity, nor believe any document that would claim he proclaimed such of himself.  Historically and factually, I just don't believe it was possible.  This is not to say I don't perceive a relationship between Jesus and God (and the the Holy Spirit too).  Only I begin with the idea that however much acclaim we would give Jesus, he himself would not have supported our ideas that he is God.  However much we may see the actions of God in the actions of Jesus, we should still respect the distinction, as I'm sure Jesus himself would have.

Belief in one God has in a way served to reintegrate the world for me.  I no longer feel the world is divided between the material and spiritual, but that the material is spiritual and the spiritual is material.  I don't believe in a God seated above the clouds, but a God who pervades the entire world.  And, at certain points we discern him lucidly:  like Jesus.  As I have said at other times, what is convoluted amidst endless discussion of how we should live is made clear in Jesus' words and actions.  Primarily, that in others we find God.  Or, to return to my favorite quote, "God reveals himself by revealing man to himself".  If I want to care for God, I care for others; feebly, imperfectly, yet beautifully.  

For those who have followed this blog, that is why I randomly chose nursing (though I knew I wasn't particularly suited to it at the time).  And, that's why I've decided to give another 8 years to pursuing medicine.  This is my worship and my theology.  It is my attempt to take what I have come to think in honesty, and direct it towards the service of others.  It's where three years has led me to:  a way towards unity, and hopefully God.

connect the dots . . .

I have a friend who is teaching me Chinese.  At the rate I'm learning I'll be fluent in approximately 96 years.  I think I pick up about 2 new words a day, which I think amounts to 0.02% the rate at which small children can acquire new vocabularies.

Most Asian people, upon moving to the States, choose an "American" name, since Americans lack the capacity to pronounce unfamiliar names which require tonal precision.  Supposedly some Americans who dare venture to Asia to live do the same, adopting a non-alien name.  

The other day I learned the equivalent of my name in Chinese, and since I'm tonally retarded I immediately forgot it.  Evidently I could just stick with Joe, which, to my paltry knowledge, has two possible meanings:

1) Alcohol

2) Bridge

But which to choose!?!  

I had an interesting talk with some coworkers today.  We were discussing racism.  A few of them, being from other cultures, were telling me their first hand experiences.  We were also discussing our different religious backgrounds and how hard it is to really communicate with each other.  For years now I've been interested in inter-religious dialogue, but have been disheartened by how difficult it is to find adherents of other religions who aren't equally as close-minded as those of my own faith that I'd like to get away from.   My coworkers informed me of how asinine most public opinion of their respective faiths is.  

Supposedly we're all out to kill each other; at least that's what the media tells us.  I think part of the problem is that many of the dialogue friendly people don't actually attend religious gatherings.  All the sensible voices out there are too isolated to be heard.

I hate thinking that we're all xenophobic by default.

I'd like to be a bridge, but damn it can be hard.