Contested Shots

My bracket is busted all the way to the Bad Place. How’s yours? I know I brought it up, but can we talk about something else?

I also brought up Kris Kristofferson’s name last time I was pouring liquor. Between then and now a friend bought me a copy of his new CD, This Old Road, first in forever. He is my new point of fascination. I can’t help wondering if the current political line-up, which choose to start the war in Iraq, flushed Kristofferson out of retirement. Neil Young is also back, belting out fine anti- war tunes. Good to see ya, boys. Just in the nick.

For his part, Kris returns in all his glory, singing in that whiskey-strained voice of his, funny, pissed-off, wise, self-aware and mortality-aware. And there’s oodles of theological reflection. Some is in a song called "Pilgrim’s Progress" that includes:

Am I young enough to believe in revolution
Am I strong enough to get down on my knees and pray
Am I high enough on the chain of evolution
To respect myself, and my brother and my sister
And perfect myself in my own peculiar way

I get lazy, and forget my obligations
I’d go crazy if I paid attention all the time
And I want justice, but I’ll settle for some mercy
On this Holy Road through the Universal Mind

I think the man is a believer. The kind you admire, that you’d like to know personally. I’ve been re-discovering John Prine lately, too. He shares some qualities with Kris Kristofferson. Both are story tellers, with an intelligent lyric, an appreciation for irony and all that. I like Prine considerably, but I feel he’s still in the skeptical phase. It’s a sophisticated, worthy skepticism, certainly witty. But Kris has grown past that phase it seems, to embrace faith in spite of all the reasons one has to be doubtful. From "In the News:"

Broken babies, broken homes
Broken-hearted people dying everyday
How’d this happen, what went wrong
Don’t blame God, I swear to God I heard him say

"Not in my name, not on my ground
I want nothing but the ending of the war
No more killing, or its over
And the mystery won’t matter anymore"

If I’m right about Kristofferson’s belief and Prine’s skepticism (and I may not be; I’m not on the speed dial of either of them), then the two pose an interesting way of talking about faith and doubt. I’m of the opinion that a strong faith emerges when it has weathered honest misgivings. It’s tougher, grizzlier, more real. Many of our people--but not all--appreciate hearing that we too have wrestled with doubt. God knows there are plenty of buffoons in the zoological garden of the church that cause thinking people to save themselves by running away from their squirrelly image of Jesus. We understand if they can’t believe in the church, but hope that they can believe in one God, and that the real Jesus can make a proper introduction.

Do we also hope that they can one day return to the church, with their skepticism fuelling a richer, more resonate faith? We put up a big banner in our church front yard announcing the time of our Palm/Passion Sunday and Easter Sunday services. Deborah, my long-suffering wife, asked if it was because we need more people to fill the sanctuary. No, I answered, and I think without defensiveness, we hung the banner because the passers-by need to be in our sanctuary. Upon reflection, I would say that passers-by need to be in our sanctuary (or any half-way decent sanctuary) on days like those during days like these.

We sometimes say that Christianity is impossible to practice all alone. That it takes a community. Does that mean, then, that, as Catholics and some reformers say, that there is no salvation without the church?

I like mature skeptics who finally yield to faith. That’s what I want to say. The late M. Scott Peck, despite his outsized ego, said it better. Karl Barth, though, adds a cautionary tone. He describes two kinds of doubt, one probing, sharpening faith, recognizing that all theological shots should be contested, for nothing can be taken for granted in such an important field of knowledge. But there’s another form of doubt, which he names as dangerous, as a swaying and staggering between Yes and No, a fixed uncertainty, a perpetual "perhaps this, perhaps not."

This form of doubt is "…altogether a pernicious companion which has its origin not in the good creation of God but in the Nihil -- the power of destruction… There is certainly justification for the doubter, but there is no justification for the doubt itself (and I wish someone would whisper that in Paul Tillich’s ear). No one, therefore, should account himself particularly truthful, deep, fine, and elegant because of his doubt" (Evangelical Theology, Eerdmans, 1963, p. 131).

So I am warned. I guess I’ll say that as long as skepticism (is that the same thing as doubt?) circles back to faith, it improves faith, or maybe it improves the faithful person, gives him or her an edge, a texture, some substance he or she wouldn’t otherwise have. I heard Jim Logan say one time that we minister types should preach our convictions and teach our doubts. Maybe there is something to that.

And maybe there’s something to this verse, again from Kris K.

The truth is a highway
Leading to freedom
All is forgiven
Love is to blame

Ain’t that good?

Dee