The More Things Change

Have you ever sat at your dining room table and looked at the things on it and wondered... wondered what the archaeologists are going to dig up in 500 years?

I may, admittedly, spend too much time in museums or at King's Landing – but I am forever thinking about what people will think in the future. Why Tupperware, for example. I can picture it now, “they made this throwaway material and then stored food in it” “What, there are so many better ways to store food.” “I know, right!”

Imagine the fun someone is going to have figuring out just what the hell a Keurig is.

It also may be a product of being a little older when I ended up with young children. I get asked on a daily basis questions such as did they have cars when you were little. People tell me I should answer honestly, but I find it more fun to describe in great detail the horse and buggy I supposedly owned and how when I was little the world was black and white because they had not invented colour yet.

But you can see it right? Whether you are 15 or a hundred you can see how much things have changed, can you not? In university I typed my assignments on a typewriter. I first learned to dial on a rotary telephone. I did not even hear of the internet until I was in the workforce. I can name a hundred things I had, or did, or ate that people no longer do. And my kids cannot even picture some of what I am talking about without an example.

The above five paragraphs are a metaphor – an example – that I want you to keep in your mind because it is very visual and very true. We can all imagine how much the world has changed in terms of what is physically in the world.

Now, take one step to the left and ask yourself, is that not true for how we think and feel as well?

When I was growing up I knew for certain that I would get a job. Hell, I could get any job I wanted. When I grew up it was expected that you were going to fall and break your arm. No one was going to stop you from getting on that damn spinning death trap on the playground. When I grew up I never met anyone that was not Caucasian. I may have never met anyone who did not have Scottish blood in their veins somewhere. Whenever an adult talked I listened and did whatever they said. I was out from dawn to dusk without my parents even asking where I was.

But there was more to it. Men and Women did different jobs. Your type of job was determined by what class you belonged to. Everything from swearing to j-walking was so taboo that you felt as if you were a gangster when you did it. Only men and women fell in love with each other. You had kids. You belonged to the boy scouts, the PTA, the Rotary club, the masons or a bowling league. There were not a whole lot of surprises waiting on the horizon – or at least, that is what you were led to believe.

We knew what we owned and we knew who we were. Believe it or not, it was more black and white. Now... take one more step off of that track to the left and let's think about God.

Within the last forty years, within the last 10 years, within the last 2 years, a lot has changed.

Why is it we are so sure that whatever it is the church and God were about 2000 years ago has not changed? Why do we think that the faith that was good enough for my grandfather is good enough for me? The television he had is certainly not good enough for me. His attitudes towards women and sexuality are certainly not good enough for me. Why is his faith good enough for me?

Everything evolves. Our understanding of the universe and of society. I just think we should be more willing and open when it comes to how the church and faith and our relationship to God evolves. What would happen if we just let go?

WHY IS IT RAINING

As I write this I am finishing all of my work for the week. It is Weds morning. My kids are with their grandparents for the rest of the week. My significant other is off work. What a glorious time it would be at Kouchibouguac frolicking in the waves and reading on the sand...

But it is raining. People say it will rain all week. These people have no souls.

Do you, like me, ever find life not working out how you planned? Ever wonder if the universe has it in for you? Have you ever wanted to go to the beach without your kids for once and had it rain all week? Sure you have. Were you ever disappointed by it? Sure you were. Ever wonder about the ontological significance to whether predestination or omniscience is to blame for the rain fall? Sure you have... you just didn't realize it.

Why is it that we spend so much time worrying about why things happen, especially the things that are so out of our control that we cannot possible affect them? That big sentence up there, it means, did God do this or was it supposed to happen this way for a reason, and we all say that from time to time. We all ask, Why? But seriously, how am I going to answer the question as to why it is raining this week, and why do I bother struggling with it?

So, for just a second, allow me to play the part of the universe, of God, of the one on the other end of this questioning and ask you a question. Is the beach the only thing worth doing? Why for once don't you just roll with the punches?

How is this for a twist on the book of Job or on Jesus famous speech about considering the flowers of the field – those passages intended to get across that old chestnut of wisdom, you have to roll with the punches.

You might recognize here that some of us have bigger problems than rain on a beach day. Some of us have very real problems like lightning striking the house and burning it to the ground, or an inoperable tumour, or the sudden downturn of the economic picture making your job redundant. In those cases we usually ask the same question – why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why would God allow this? I think you understand where I am going.

If I could only impart one bit of wisdom on my children, this is it... Roll with the punches. If you want to be even cuter about it, then if life hands you lemons go ahead and make lemonade. If I wanted to be more philosophical about it I would offer this:

There is no pattern to the universe except the natural unfolding of events. Nowhere in the Bible, Qua-ran, Wisdom of Buddha or anywhere else does it suggest that the book of life is written from the beginning and ever unchanging. We made that up. Sure, there are short term plans in those books, God decides the save the Israelites from Egypt and raises up Moses to be a leader, so the story goes. But that is a 40 year sequence, not the point of the universe.

What matters is that random things happen and faith, courage, and sheer force of will are required to roll with the punches. Not only that, but we should stop making so many plans. Wake up in the morning, see what happens, and do what feels right. If we lived that way then the rain would not matter nearly as much.

It is not raining today for any divine reason. It is because of air currents, the moons pull on the oceans, the circulation of water vapour around the world; and that system does not care one whit whether I want to go to the beach or not. Of course, it is good for the flowers.

- Brett Anningson is the Protestant Chaplain at the University of New Brunswick, a freelance writer and blogger, editor of Arabella: Canadian Art and Architecture and is passionate about finding ways to understand faith in modern culture.

Invitations

Let’s talk about determination. Or perhaps causative affect. Make that free will. So many ways to talk about one thing... do things happen for a reason?

The problem for me started in University back in the 80’s when I was studying Biblical History. The Bible is written, for the most part, as a time line going in linear progression from the beginning to the end of the world.

The idea that the people who were writing the Bible had was that God has a plan.

I had never thought of it that way before, like, a long term plan. Sure, God wanted me to be good tomorrow and to grow up and do something, but a plan for the universe?

When you think about it this is such a comforting thought. It is big, it is huge, God has a plan, who am I to think I can understand it... so when the river floods or the child dies, it is for a reason; God’s reason.; and serves a purpose.

See, on one level I understand this and have trouble coming up with working alternative ideas. But on the other... nothing makes me angrier than the sugary syrupy way we use this idea when talking to people in crisis.

Don’t worry, God needed another angel... really? God doesn’t have enough angels? God couldn’t “make” another angel? Angels are somehow composed of baby DNA? What kind of crap is this?

You have cancer? Don’t worry, it is part of the plan. It is? What kind of plan requires me to lose hair, get sicker than I have ever been, and statistically, probably, die a lot earlier than I expected?

So I know I have offended most people by now, but really, stop and think about it. The idea that there is a definitive plan in which everything fits just does not explain the reality we live in or adequately explain the pain and suffering. No being who is defined as love would use babies to make angels.

And it is not your fault. Even in seminary until recently, like I am trying to explain, that was the only conclusion which could be drawn.

So, religious studies in my undergrad was about time and plans but by the end of my grad studies it had started to be about relationship. Faith was about our relationship with God, church was about our relationship with God and each other while life was about managing all our relationships.

And for twenty years I have tried to put the two together, to varying effect. One of the places I got most often was to say, there is a plan, but stuff happens. That is a concept that works well with my observations of my own life, regardless of whether it is large or small. My plan for tomorrow is to go to the beach but it rains.

That is not really God, it is random. I get sick and lose a month of work it is not really part of the plan but a random piece of reality.

Then, this week, someone added a thought in a conversation that changes everything for me. I offer it to you now, knowing that I don’t really know how it is going to change my concepts, but knowing that it does.  God does not plan, God invites.

So life is what it is, and we are invited to see it differently. Pain is awful and we are invited to take comfort in God. Tragedy strike and somehow we are invited to have hope.

There is no forcing, there is no plan, there is a journey and we are invited to join with the holy that is around and within it and live.

And you know what? Your arm did not break so that you would miss the piano recital because God wanted you to be at the superstore when the guy had a heart attack so you could do CPR. All those things just happened, and the reasons were obvious, don’t stand on the rocker to change the light bulb, and you were hungry. But we are invited to see how to make the best of every situation.

That is faith.

The Times and Transcript has made its online copy a "pay to see" service. So I am going to resume posting my columns on this site after the fact.

FAITH TODAY - Times and Transcript - December 2011

Most of us self-identify in some way. We are happy today, or sad; we are young, or old; we are male, or female.

Some of those identifications get thrown onto us, like whether we are part of the lower economic trenches or the middle class, or wealthy. When people say someone is poor, they have an image in their mind, and whether or not you fit into that, you are labeled.

Some of them are classic genetic differences that we cannot really do anything about, like being left handed; or fitting more into the world as an introvert or an extrovert.

So you are religious or atheist, right?

The best line ever in my education was this story about one of our professors. He was teaching a first year religious studies class at university; those classes are almost always filled with hundreds of curious students by the way and one very angry young man confronted the teacher after a lecture.

“I don’t know why I’m even here,” he said, “I don’t believe in God!”

To which the wise professor replied, “Tell me about this God, perhaps I don’t believe in them either.”

This is what always gets to me when I read books like Christopher Hitchins “God is not great” where he argues against Christians as being silly. Well, I have been ordained for 16 years, I went to church for a couple of decades before that, and I have undertaken four university degrees in religious studies; and you know what, I think the Christians he is talking about are silly too.  

He picked one narrow definition of someone who is religious and attacked them as the stand in for everyone.

Pick any issue of the faith that you are concerned about – were we created or did we spontaneously erupt from protoplasm, for example, and there will be people in the church, the synagogue, the mosque or the temple who will believe every single scientific and philosophical variation of this issue possible.

In other words, religious people are just as human and just as different as anyone.

I guess I mention this for two reasons: the first is that when I say I am a Christian, I am often judged, and judged in a way that is not very accurate of who I am. Most Christians for example, seem to argue I am not. 

Which is neither here nor there, just that we do not all come from a cookie cutter mould.

The second reason is that one of the things that has brought religion to its cast off state is this precise problem. People in the church think everyone has to be the same, or think the same, and act the same. We assume when people come to worship they are all looking for one thing.

Think about it, for the majority of people worship is: 200 year old music, liturgical moments where the leader does something almost magical, prayers that sound the same as they always have.

Now, on the plus side, tradition evokes emotion and allows us to easily enter into the experience. On the negative side, they are all cookie cutter moments designed for one type of person.

Within the pews of my church as an example, I have six generations of people. Some of them grew up listening to swing music, some to hippy folk music, and some to techno pop. What music should I play to inspire an emotional response from them?

There are people out there who firmly believed that moral issues like abortion, divorce, homosexuality and the like are so bad we should not even talk about them; while the people younger than me cannot even fathom why these should be issues.

And when it comes to faith my parents grew up in a world where a Catholic would not talk to a Protestant; by the time I was maturing that seemed silly, but there was no way a Muslim or a Jew or Buddhist was right about anything. For those born today they will not be able to fathom why we thought there was such a big difference between any religions.

Whether we are talking about church or culture, the one thing we need to do as soon as possible is realize that almost everyone is different. So let’s respect that and incorporate it into how we do the things we do. 

Then, perhaps, we can turn this world around.