Undeception

Sunday night I felt privileged to attend the gathering of bibliobloggers attending SBL.

Joel Watts, who as the highest ranked biblioblogger I met all evening, was suitably the first person I encountered and one of the most personable fellows I met; Bob Cargill, who was as friendly and engaging as he is on his site; John Hobbins, who made me feel short; James McGrath, Thom Stark, and Chris Brady, who cheerfully greeted us as Joel and I met them at their booth (I hope I appeared more bright by standing so near all that Wattage); I also met the super friendly Chris Tilling, the super Catholic Jeremy Thompson, and the impressively cordial Bill Heroman and Joseph Kelly. Among others. Unsurprisingly, few of these were familiar with my blog, but that’s ok.

Chatting with Joel, Bill, and James Spinti at our booth while munching on my fish and chips (and one of Joel’s cheesesticks) was utterly enjoyable. Things got even more interesting when Thom Stark pulled up a chair; the opportunity to quiz Thom and James about their similar but slightly nuanced understandings of henotheism in ancient Palestine was a special treat!

After dinner, Thom and I went over to the Hyatt, where we stepped into Durham University’s reception room to see what we could see; e.g., I saw Walter Moberly across the room, and of course James McGrath was there, with whom I regret not to have had a chance to really chat for a bit. After Thom introduced me to a few of his colleagues there and in the Johns Hopkins room, we made our way upstairs to the Duke University room, where we glimpsed Daniel Kirk heading out the door (missed him by that much) and Stephen Carlson chatting away. We were both gratified and a little speechless to meet Richard Hays, and then, as he apologized for Duke’s extremely strict admissions policy, I noticed Mark Goodacre (who is considerably taller than I expected). I got to speak with Dr. Goodacre for a few minutes, and despite his understandably being only marginally familiar with me, I was gratified that he, like everyone else I met, treated me like someone worth talking to!

Not long afterwards, I bade Thom and his friends adieu and began the drive back home. St. Polycarp texted me as I was on my way and offered me a place to stay, which I much appreciated but could not take him up on.

Biggest regret: not having a name badge. People kept asking me who I was and where I was “from”, by which they wanted to ascertain which university’s program I was a part of. I gradually grew more amused seeing people trying to figure out why I was there. “Well, I’m not really academically involved with biblical studies…I’m not even registered for SBL. I’m just a blogger, you see, only hardly considered a biblioblogger. More of a theoblogger, I guess. My field of study, historical Germanic linguistics, is at best tangential to your work here. But I do try to keep up!”

To all I met, and those I didn’t get to, thanks for your continuing contributions to this discipline of yours and this more-than-interest of mine. Thanks especially to my new IRL friends Joel and Thom, who both went out of their way to make me feel a part of the something greater in which I am confident they are both destined to make waves.

Conversations with some of my closest fellow sojourners (such as Mike, Cliff, and Matthew) have often included a discussion of the following question: given our radical departure from many tenets of evangelical orthodoxy such as our rejection of inerrancy and acceptance of critical scholarship of the Bible, the theory of evolution, etc., why does our faith remain strong despite the many (if not the majority) who go along similar paths and end up losing their faith? What makes the difference?

There’s no easy answer, of course. Performing an autopsy of another person’s faith is tricky business, and will certainly require more “inside” details than our armchair analysis will be able to provide. So we usually pursue the least assuming and more promising line of inquiry, which is to examine the commonality of the experiences of those of us who hang on to faith despite its dramatically changing shape under serious scrutiny.

This is more of a “journal”, “web log” kind of post than an exposition. The following will in no way give you a complete picture: chances are that if you’re expecting this post to be an apologetic, you will be significantly underwhelmed. Nevertheless, while I was thinking about it I decided to jot down some of the factors that have contributed to my faith’s thriving (and I think many of these go for the friends I mentioned above as well, but you’ll have to ask them).  I focus here not on what makes me a theist, but what makes me persist as a Christian specifically.

Enduring interest
Obviously, an important component is that I am comfortable with (enthralled by, even) many of the teachings of Christianity, although I have since discarded so many of what more orthodox believers consider essential that they would roll their eyes to hear me say that. I have come to understand God primarily in terms of the message of Jesus, rather than Jesus’ purported actions (miracles, etc., even the Resurrection) or even in specific formulations of his message in the Gospels. In fact, I have accepted the revelation of modern scholarship that the Gospels actually represent the message of Jesus as interpreted by different and varied first century “Jesus communities”; especially considering their relatively late date (30+ years after Jesus), we have precious little reason to expect that they directly present Jesus’ message, but are, rather, later interpretations of his message.

Yet I’ve still not encountered anything that convinces me that the Gospel writers’ presentations of the man’s central message were really far afield. Indeed, despite the many differences between the Gospels, the distinctives of Jesus’ message are actually unmistakably close to one another: the first Gospel to be written already has Jesus framing his mission as the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, and as MacDonald points out, what that kingdom looks like is remarkably consistent over all four Gospels (italics original, bold and bracketed remarks all mine):

What is the kingdom of Christ? A rule of love, of truth—a rule of service. The king is the chief servant in it. “The kings of the earth have dominion: it shall not be so among you.” “The Son of Man came to minister.” [both from Mark] “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” [in John, of Jesus' healing of the sick] The great Workman is the great King, labouring for his own…The lesson added by St Luke to the presentation of the child is: “For he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.” And St Matthew says: “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Hence the sign that passes between king and subject. The subject kneels in homage to the kings of the earth: the heavenly king takes his subject in his arms. This is the sign of the kingdom between them. This is the all-pervading relation of the kingdom.

Many now say that the Jesus of the Gospels was effectively created out of whole cloth by writers well removed from him. But this begs the very serious question never answered: why then did they all create specifically the Jesus of the Gospels? Oh sure there are differences, sometimes dramatic differences, in the Gospels’ portrayals of Jesus, but that makes similarities such as Jesus’ preoccupation with and characterization of the Kingdom of God all the more significant. One must posit a source for these traditions, and we’ve certainly no better hypothesis than that this source was someone actually teaching these things — at very least planting the seeds among his followers. Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God, which is at bottom of willful servanthood, stands as what I consider the greatest and most important philosophy in history, inspiring me and countless others to be his disciple. As I have said before, even if I found out by proof positive that Jesus never rose from the dead in any sense, I would likely still consider myself “Christian”, at least in a philosophical sense (like a “Kantian”).

Decisive experience
Ok, so I like Jesus’ teachings — so do many people of other faiths and of no faith whatsoever. Still, I consider myself a “Christian” in a more spiritual sense than that.

My childhood faith, bolstered by a community of faithful believers (and particularly my parents), was delightfully rich. Although I’ve never been one to feel or talk as though “me and God hung out today,” I have always felt “connected” with Him in a mystical sense. Somehow, He’s a person I feel I’ve met and come to know better and better, and in actuality I always feel like I’m delusional for trying to deny this even in my thought experiments, like trying to convince yourself you’re not married when you have clear memories of your wedding and subsequent marriage relationship. My experiences with God, which comprise not only emotions but also consistent and lifelong observations of positive effects of belief in myself and others I know well, have been persistently profound even though somewhat intangible. I have seen no reason not to continue using them as something of an anchor.

Intellectual disposition
One more I’m going to mention here is the influence of certain personality characteristics which may help explain my upbeat attitude toward an ever evolving faith.

An extremely important factor for me was that my experience with faith and Christian belief was always one of discovery. So when the data started coming in that convinced me of evangelical Christianity’s flaws and errors, apart from a feeling of growing isolation from my community I was more than happy to glom onto that data not so much as a challenge to but as an expression of my faith in God.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that the following never applies in the lives of the de-converted, but I know for a fact that it has influenced my lack of de-conversion. It is this: I never trusted easy answers to begin with, and so it wasn’t such a shock to have my evangelical faith overhauled by my close scrutiny. An unshakable uneasiness with simply accepting whatever was handed to me and the above mentioned thrill for the truth hunt have been prominent ever since my discovery as a seven-year-old of the discrepancy between what Genesis 1-2 says and what my book about prehistoric science said.

As Cliff is keen to point out, certainty in either direction is simply not in the cards. The dichotomy is not between doubt and faith — doubt is the qualifier that distinguishes a reasonable faith from an altogether blind faith — but between acknowledged and unacknowledged uncertainty. Christians and avowed atheists alike are simply going about their delusions of certainty in a different way. Christians who refuse to peek under the cover are not exercising faith but fear: fear of having to deal with uncertainty.  When former believers who embrace a thorough atheism as though it were the only option other than fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity, they are not exercising healthy skepticism but cynicism, or laziness at best.

In any event, when I reached the fork in the road at the end of the evangelical path I had been led down, I had two choices: I could take the path of hopeful uncertainty or continue on another (very different) path of imagined certainty. The sign over the first path said, “I’m not certain it’s true, but I love it,” and the other said, “I don’t love it because I’m not certain it’s true.” For reasons such as those described above, I chose the former, “and that has made all the difference.”

As I said, this is not meant to be persuasive but as a window into some of my musings of late. Take from it what you will.

As my 200th post, I’m going to give you a little insight into my background, how I think, and what led me to where I am right now. Of course I don’t think I’m really all that “screwed up”, but for those who do think I am, I thought I’d give you a bit of an explanation.

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While growing up in three different Southern Baptist churches, being involved mostly with other Christians living the Christian life, I saw little that made me think anything was missing about my own faith.

In high school I recognized the dangers of Fundamentalism (proper) through experiences with one of my school curricula, the Independent Baptist-based A Beka Book Publications. There writ large I saw a host of devout, well-meaning Christians who believed things that I found wholly incredible, despite the fact that by normal evangelical standards my church was quite conservative. I was amazed to think that this type of self-described Fundamentalists would think that I was teetering on the edge of damnation for believing the way I did. I knew that I, at least, was sincere and well considered in my beliefs, and that my relationship with God was as authentic as it could be and none the worse for rejecting what these sincere Christians believed.

As I got older and started jobs outside that tight-knit faith community, I began to see what “outsiders” thought about that community. Naturally, as someone genuinely sold on the faith as it had been presented me, I was defensive of what I thought was valid, yet I just couldn’t cook up enough hubris to simply chalk up everything the world thought about Christians to unregenerate, unenlightened, truth-despising nonsense. I stood firm on the general fabric of my faith; the enticements of the life of my unbelieving peers couldn’t sway someone who had so long enjoyed communion with God and seen His provision in the lives of his community. I remain a believer in the Christian God. But because of some intrinsic desire for intellectual honesty, possibly to distance myself from the dangers I was spooked by in Fundamentalism, I realized that those bedrock beliefs were not enough to sell me on everything else that my faith community had assumed to be true, particularly as I came across other sincere believers pointing out what they saw as errors in the stereotypical evangelical mindset. For instance, despite my highly entertaining Chick Publications’ magazines and tracts telling me otherwise, I personally came to the conclusion that Roman Catholics are not indirectly worshipping Satan with an entirely separate religion; Catholics do not even, as many Protestants believe, spit on Jesus’ sacrifice by worshipping Mary or deny the grace of God in favor of works. These sorts of things helped acclimate me to being at odds with many in my own community.

I went to a conservative Christian school for college. After a short stint in the music department, I was inspired by a teacher who brought out historical-grammatical aspects of the Old Testament. Looking back now, I see that these aspects were, as ever in the evangelical community, carefully selected so as to complement or bolster rather than refine or revise the typical conservative understanding. I switched my major to Bible and Theology. I learned the stuff they taught me, but I didn’t adopt much of it as my very own; nor, I should say, did I find overmuch at this time that I discarded outright. I put everything on the back shelf, and scrutinized it as I had the time.

As it would happen, a profound love for the Bible that I nurtured since early childhood continued to encourage me to understand it as well as I could. I certainly didn’t want to be wrong about what it actually is, and I had as yet been unconvinced, disappointed, and disgusted by some of the attempts at harmonization of niggling Bible conflicts that I had run across. But my encounters with Fundamentalism taught me that if you can find one flaw, you couldn’t trust that there weren’t more.

In a vital turning point for me, I ran across C. S. Lewis’s views on Scripture. Any longtime reader of this site will notice his influence, particularly in some cracking good quotes of his, all of which opened my eyes to how human the Scriptures were — were intended to be — and that they should be embraced warts and all; that to despise the Scriptures for being human is to reject God’s plan for those Scriptures.

This wasn’t the end of my journey, of course. I flirted with that realization for a few years, keeping it in the back of my mind as a back door I could use were I to run across any errors in Scripture that couldn’t be explained. But before I came to the point of admitting outright errors, I came to understand the vital importance of determining genre, which soon affected both my eschatology and my view of Genesis.

Please note: I’ve been accused of taking my stances on the nature of Scripture because of a desire to compromise for science. But It wasn’t until my view of Genesis changed somewhat late in the process that I really looked into evolution. Even though I had become skeptical and even critical of some creationists like Kent Hovind (of whom I must admit to being enamored when in high school), I was shocked in my Christian college that my biology professor taught the entire course without mentioning creationism once, explaining then-current scientific understandings of abiogenesis and evolution without so much as a disclaimer. It wasn’t until after I graduated from my undergrad college that I really settled down to look at the science/creationism debate with my new understanding of Scripture and Genesis in particular, under the influence of fellow believers who, like my biology professor, accepted evolution.

Anyway, that’s a start. And if I haven’t told you personally, I’d like to thank you warmly for reading this blog of mine.

First of all, I have decided to try to use this blog as something other than a distraction from my doctoral work. Specifically, I’m going to try to figure out ways of including aspects of my research for my dissertation here (but not so much that I get ripped off, of course). For those who don’t know, I am ABD in a PhD program in historical linguistics at the University of Georgia. My dissertation involves translations of the Gospels into a few languages for whom those translations are among the earliest attestations. It’s more interested in linguistic aspects of those translation languages than the Gospels qua biblical literature, but my interaction with them is bound to bleed over, at least in my understanding and familiarity with them. So we’ll see how that goes.

I also wanted to take an opportunity to give a shout-out to my man, Y6P5QSETK3RE. You know who you are.

What an…honor(?) to be tagged with the Honest Scrap Meme by one Joshua Cecil Horne at the Smoak House.

Honest Scrap Award

I’ll let Josh tell you about it:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it (hence my over-the-top cocky title for this post), including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to said person so everyone knows he or she is real. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have 7 friends. Show the 7 random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Weblog.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!

So without any further ado, here I go…

1. I kinda hate memes a lot. But I also kinda like them a little. I’m a bit uncomfortable with talking about myself so much since people don’t read this site to find out about Steve. But the blog’s been quiet lately, so I welcome the chance to break the silence.
2. I talk a lot about things that are controversial to my evangelical background on this blog. By my reckoning, there’s only one major departure from my base that I haven’t come clean on. Like to know what it is? Sorry, not yet.
3. My most annoying habit: my annoyance at annoying habits. It’s usually my dear wife who gets nagged, although the things that annoy me aren’t unique to her.
4. I am a picky eater. Among the common foods I hate: onions, tomatoes (although I will eat ketchup and tomato sauce in limited quantities), and nuts. I also hate almost anything slimy, but I do love cooked Brussel sprouts.
5. When I was a kid — ok, even when a young teenager, I used to — well, ok, probably even when I got to college (you happy?), I used to pretend my life was fully televised. This began years before The Truman Show, so it was an independently created psychosis.
6. I am a musician. In order of proficiency, my instruments are piano, clarinet, trombone, and bagpipes. Seriously.
7. For the first couple years of my adolescent period, I wanted to be Benny Goodman. That morphed into wanting to be a band teacher; to that end, I memorized the ranges for all kinds of instruments, studied how they were played, etc.
8. When I went to college, I started off as a music major because of the band teacher thing and also because I wanted to learn about composing instrumental music, something I played at all through high school, and less frequently since college. But the college didn’t have such an emphasis, so I had to become an instrumental major; I auditioned for piano, but quickly washed out and became a clarinet major for my second semester. Turns out, that year was wasted, as my sophomore year I switched to Bible and Theology.
9. I served as one of the original officers for my college’s opera club, “Aria da Capo”. I didn’t then, nor do I now, care for opera.
10. Although I can read (with varying proficiency) six dead languages, I still don’t know Latin! Major weakness for an historical linguist, that. However, I’ll be learning Latin along with my children as I start teaching my daughter next year for second grade. Of modern languages, besides English I can only read a bit of modern German, and I speak even less — which is an even more major weakness than no Latin.

In keeping with my general principle for memes, I’m not going to tag anyone specifically. There’s usually poor response among those I tag anyway. Anyone who likes can participate in my comments. Thanks for reading!

Looking through this site, you’ll probably notice that there is a minimum of personal info about myself. It’s largely unintentional, since this site is about ideas more than about me as a person living a normal life. I just don’t have much to say about me here on this blog.

One area of my personal life that I’ve purposefully let bleed over into posts and comments, mostly in attempts to explain my absence this last summer and the past few weeks, has been my request for prayer, but I’ve also been purposefully obscure about what exactly was going on. This reticence was caused by personal insecurity. Now that the storm has passed, I thought I’d share for the record what it has been all about.

Yesterday morning, I officially became a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia. Having completed all the coursework towards my doctorate (in historical linguistics), I was required to take a comprehensive written and an oral examination in order for me to be eligible to write a dissertation, the final step of the doctoral program. I have been studying for these exams for over a year now, and finally this Fall I took and passed both of them. The oral examination was yesterday morning, and upon my successful completion of that, I am now considered by the University to be a “doctoral candidate”: a more common, colloquial term for my current position is ABD, which stands for “all but dissertation” — a quite accurate description of where I am in the program right now.

Being ABD is a much better place to be. In the next few months, I will begin research on my dissertation topic (once the proposal is finalized), and as soon as that has happened, I am actually hirable by colleges and universities as-is, although I will not actually be rewarded the doctorate until the dissertation is completed and defended (this is still a couple years in the future). It is assumed by academia in general that, even though it might take a few years, doctoral candidates will eventually complete their dissertations, so that those still in the process of working on their dissertations are not necessarily barred from employment by prospective employers (once again, in academia, anyway). One possible contingent factor for me is the fact that I do not have an intermediate graduate degree (a Master’s Degree, for instance): I was accepted to UGA’s linguistics program with only a BA in Bible and Theology, but moved directly into this consolidated doctoral program. So as it stands, I have a Bachelor of Arts and almost a PhD; this will discourage some schools from hiring me because on paper, I don’t have any graduate degree whatsoever. However, sometimes an MA student who has not completed his/her thesis will be hired in a temporary status contingent upon its completion, which is analogous to my situation and so might apply.

That said, I’m not looking for new employment yet. For one thing, I still have some work to do in order to be able to demonstrate that I’m working on my dissertation, beginning with the dissertation proposal that kicks the whole thing off. But it’s a great feeling knowing that all those headaches and all that heartache has paid off. I’m actually looking forward to getting into the research and analysis that will go into my dissertation (whose precise subject is TBD and TBA).

See, I was very much afraid and convinced that I had worse-than-average chances of passing my comprehensive finals. The biggest reason was that, rather than taking my comprehensives a couple months after completing my coursework, I completed my coursework in May of 2005 and just now took the exams. What this means is that I was practically out of it for two solid years. And do you know what “comprehensive” means? It means that I was responsible for knowing everything I was taught in my two years of coursework, plus material from about thirty books I had to read on my own. I forgot so much in that interval, but at the time, I had little choice but to get a job and take care of my growing little family. But after we found out that my wife was expecting our third child, I realized that I had to get busy and get this thing finished! By then, there was so much catching up to do — and I don’t have the best memory. I was faced with the very real possibility that I’d not pass my finals and get kicked out the program. How humiliating!

So that’s why I held this somewhat close to my chest when talking about what was going on this last year: flunking the program would have been embarrassing enough in front of all my loving family and friends, so I had no intention of suffering such humiliation writ large (i.e. all over the internet)!

But I passed. And believe me, I know more than ever that God guides the steps of the righteous. If God hadn’t put me here where I am, I wouldn’t be here – couldn’t be here – and that’s all there is to it.

To all who pledged their support and prayers, thank you. Your encouragement meant a lot to me.

My long-time friend Heather has tagged me with a meme listing my five favorite things (in no particular order). So here we go!

1) Receiving and spreading knowledge. I am an education nut (read: “nerd”); I love to receive it, and welcome opportunities to share it.

2) Discussing important topics. I want real back-and-forth dialogue on things that I’m interested in. I’m not much of a small talk guy. I like big talk: theology, politics, pressing interpersonal problems, anything that matters or strikes my fancy as unique. Discussion of sports does not qualify.

3) Studying origins. I’m not primarily talking about the evolution/creation controversy here: I like to know about the beginning of almost anything. This has led to almost choosing ancient history as my postgraduate field, and it did lead to my choice of Indo-European/Germanic linguistics, which seeks to uncover the details of the origin of each language family. I like visiting historical sites so that I can experience, as much as possible, times and circumstances anterior to my own – and the earlier, the better.

4) Experiencing nature. I have not had much luck at spending time out there in recent years, due to my young family, my schooling, and my urban residences. My ideal summer would be a hike down the Appalachian Trail or some other wilderness experience. For now, the occasional camping trip has to suffice.

5) Having a family. This is definitely my #1 favorite. I’m a husband and a father of three, and I can tell you with all conviction that, as a Christian, nothing else is nearly so fulfilling or important – even essential – as having a family. My life isn’t just about me, or just about a woman I love and enjoy during my lifetime, but about what we build together that will last. My wife and I will probably die within 60 years and everything I will have said or written will quickly fall away, but our children and their children will be our living, self-perpetuating legacy. More so than anything I believe or do while I’m here, what knowledge I gain, what great discussions I have, it will be how I perform as a husband and a father – how I mirror our Lord – that will serve as my greatest act of worship. My family is the treasure I will lay down at the feet of my God when I stand before Him. I married young and became a father young, which is countercultural nowadays; I am grateful that in so doing I didn’t have the chance to bury the money He entrusted me or squander it on self-fulfillment, but that I invested it early on in something that will grow and honor Him in ways that I will have ample opportunity to observe within my own lifetime. Sure, it’s been harder to perform by the world’s standards: I would have finished this degree long, long ago, could have already had a nice house of my own and lots of possessions to be proud of, would have already hiked the Appalachian Trail, etc. But when I look at eternity…who needs a degree? Who needs stuff? I have a family! Thank you for this blessing, dear Father.

Runners up:

Scifi/fantasy. Gotta love it. Don’t read much of it, but I like to see a good scifi/fantasy film or TV series.

Movies. Good movies. I’m picky, but I definitely appreciate a well written and well executed film, especially a well written and well executed scifi/fantasy film.

The internet. Yeah, this makes me sound like a hopeless, couch (desk?) potato geek (but see number 4 above). The thing is, it’s not the internet’s slant towards goofing off and time-killing that make me enjoy it: rather, it’s the currently unparalleled potential to aid me with favorites 1, 2, and 3 above.

If you read this, you’re tagged! If you have a blog and care to, do it there; otherwise, you may simply wish to list your five favorites in a comment below.