And the Winner of the Presidential Debate Is…. Big Bird!

Here are the results of tonight’s debate, via my facebook feed (combined with my husband’s so as to inflate the numbers):

Anti-Mitt: 31

Anti-Obama: 13

Anti-Obama’s awkward pauses: 3

Anti-Moderator: 26

Pro-Big Bird: 15

Big Bird is a one-percenter whose empire will survive being cut from the government dole: 1

Suggested Drinking Games: 2

Candidate Mash-Up Cartoons: 2

Fact-checking questions offered for crowd-sourcing: 8

Pro-Third Party Candidates (not counting Big Bird): 2

Debates were high entertainment: 10

Debates were a snooze: 7

What debates?: 3

By my count, Big Bird is running a close 3rd-party candidate race……..

From my hubby’s wall:

Winner of the debate: Mitt

Winner of the night: Big Bird

Loser of the debate: Obama

Loser of the night: Lehrer (the Moderator)

Candidate who most resembles Guy Smiley: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney! Er, sorry – Guy Smiley!

French Honeymoon Day 11: In Which We Continue to be Lazy, and Also Try Sheep Cheese.

Things I accomplished today:

1. Finished The Silver Chair (by C.S. Lewis) for the 30th time or so. Started it yesterday….P.S., if you happen to be a Narnian nerd like me, or if you enjoy archetypal literature in general, or feminist reflections on archetypal literature, PLEEEAAASE check out my friend Maureen’s blog Lucy’s Dreadful Thought. Most excellent. (Hint: at the time of this writing, the title of her most recent post was “Little Sexist Bible Devotionals?”)

2. Tried sheep cheese at the weekly Villemagne market. Excellent. I bought two little wheels: a soft, brie-like cheese, and a harder, smokier cheese. Both completely delicious.

2. Painted this:

My rendition of one of the houses off the town square.

3. Ate once again at Le Villemagnais. Duck, quiche, a perfectly ripe slice of cantaloupe, and molten lava cake again. And I finished all that AFTER having had a very late lunch. Accomplishment, indeed!

Canard.

Fondant du Chocolat – this time with lemon sorbet and glazed apricot.

And G-d Spoke Through the Atheist (Part 1)

Despite my commitment to doing as little as possible at the Wild Goose Festival, I did find myself at two actual intellectual talks, both of which were extremely excellent and deserve their own blog posts. The first one that I’ll write about (though it was nearly the last thing I attended) was Chris Stedman’s talk, “Faitheist,” which is also the name of his forthcoming book. Stedman is an atheist who works with the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard as an interfaith resource for students who are seeking spiritual connection. He is also an outspoken activist who believes that it is important for atheists to be involved in interfaith work, and for interfaith and religious groups to actively cultivate relationships with atheists. His talk was awesome. There should be more non-combative atheists and agnostics talking at Christian events – they ask a lot of the right questions. Even when they might not intend to (although he probably did – he’s pretty sharp).

There were two questions that I took out of Stedman’s talk, both of which were only mentioned in passing, that I think every person should ask themselves, regardless of their belief system. The first one was a question that someone asked Stedman on his journey. He was in his Christian phase, studying religion at college, and someone asked him, “Why are you really a Christian? What motives brought you into it?”

This is a fundamental question. Everyone should ask it. This question isn’t academic – the answer isn’t “Because it says in John 3:16 that G-d so loved the world….” (if you’re a Christian), or “Because science tells us that life evolved on earth from proteins animated in the such and such epoch…..” (if you’re that kind of atheist), or any variation of “Because it’s the RIGHT belief, and I know because……”

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you actually have THE “right” belief, perspective, or idea, out of the probably millions of different forms of belief, perspective, and ideas, on the earth. Even if you possess the singular truth of all human existence, I hate to break it to you, but you probably didn’t get there just by being your awesome, perfectly perceptive self. Probably your parents handed it to you. Or a favorite professor. Or author. Or your friends. Or perhaps direct revelation. I’m not judging, I’m just saying you probably didn’t get to your beliefs in a vacuum of influence. And just because you were influenced, probably deeply, by outside forces, also doesn’t make your belief wrong. It’s not that you should have no influences, or that they will always lead you astray, but that asking yourself a good, honest “How did I arrive here?” can be extremely healthy spiritually.

For example, when Stedman asked himself this question, and I mean really really asked it honestly, he discovered that he’d become a Christian because he felt a deep need for an ethically grounded community. But he found that the whole Invisible Being idea really didn’t work for him at a core level; he was just going along with it so that he could be in the community. This realization was a water-shed for him, and he started to step out of what was, for him, a false religion. So claiming his atheism, which he sort of had before anyway, just not outwardly or consciously, was a step towards honesty, integrity, and wholeness for him. I’m totally paraphrasing, but I hope I did some justice to his story.

I actually went through a similar process in reverse. I spent ten years as a Dawkins-style atheist, and when, after 10 years, I finally took a good long look at where I was, I realized that I was mostly an atheist because I wanted my Dad (who was an outspoken atheist) to like me more. It’s such a cliche, it’s embarrassing, but there it is. And I had built up all the intellectual props around my atheism to hide the truth from myself. When I actually broke it open, I realized that atheism had actually made my life smaller – every choice I made was wrapped in the fear of my dad not liking me. And I found that empirical explanations for life didn’t satisfy my need to understand my experiences. This is not true for all people, but it was true for me. I totally believe in a world-behind-the-world; I did as a child, and I do now. For me, the Christ story gives the most satisfying explanation of my experiences with the Divine, and the most beautiful vision for what a human life can be. It’s true that I enjoy Christian community (probably more than half the time), but given some of my deep-rooted issues with the church as a whole, I don’t believe that the whole reason I’m in Christianity is for my family or friends. The vast majority of my closest friends and family aren’t Christian anyway, so if I ever decide to leave the church, I’m not going to be suffering from lack of community as much as some might. So when I ask myself, “Why do I identify as a Christian?,” I find myself on pretty solid ground. For now. I don’t see myself leaving soon.

But what if, when someone asks himself why he really sees things the way he does, he discovers that the answer is “Because my parents told me it was the only way and I don’t want to disappoint them.” Or “Because all my friends are doing it and I don’t want to lose my community.” Or “Because this religious world is the only thing I’ve ever known, and I’ve never questioned it.” Or “Because I’m afraid that if I don’t believe, I’ll go to hell,” or “Because I need to prove that I’m smart/worthy, and this stance is the best one to argue,” or “Because I feel great guilt about something I did, and believing this allows me to do a kind of penance and feel better.”

I’ve known people who believed doctrines, Christian and non-Christian, for each of these reasons. I myself have believed doctrines for some of these reasons. But could we call any of those a sincere expression of belief? Notice that they are all a little mercenary in nature – “I believe because I’m getting something out of it.” Or, stated negatively, “I believe this because I’m afraid of what I’ll lose if I don’t believe it.” It’s not quite….honest, is it? There’s a little bit of manipulation there – I believe this so I can have this, or feel safe in this way, or belong to this group, or whatever. That’s quite a bit different than “I believe this because I almost can’t help but believe it – all my experiences, thoughts, and perceptions add up to this.”

It’s the difference between believing and just fronting.

Discovering that I’ve been fronting about some particular belief or doctrine is never my first choice for how to spend an evening, but the question “Why do you believe?” is worthy to be asked.

I’m not accusing anyone of harboring false beliefs. Very often when I ask myself why I believe something, I come up with very good reasons for where I’m at, and see no reason to move on from a particular idea. Just because I ask myself the question doesn’t mean I’m going to find something out of kilter. It is also entirely possible that me and Stedman and maybe like one other person are the ONLY people in the history of thought to have professed a belief for the wrong reasons. So I’m not saying you have false beliefs. I’m just saying that asking the question can yield some healthy and interesting results.

I’m also not asking anyone to throw out their whole religion or philosophy or belief system. I am still holding strong to a belief in the risen Christ, but I have let go of some of the more tangential beliefs that I thought had to go with that. When I really looked at them, I only believed them because I was afraid G-d was going to punish me if I didn’t. They didn’t actually match up with my experience, my conscience, or even, in some instances, my intellect. And let me tell you – if, in your heart of hearts, you don’t really believe, Jesus already knows. So does the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And Cheesus, for that matter. For real. And He hasn’t punished you yet, so relax. Be not afraid. There is enough space here for questioning and doubts. You are where you are for a reason, and that alone deserves respect and dignity. Your journey is sacred. Asking “Why do I believe?” can sometimes open up the next step on the path.

Response to a Response to “Late Night Theology”

A friend posted this response to “Late Night Theology:”

“I just think it is important to remember that God is Love but love is not God. Our society places love above God and makes love God but we have to remember that everything God has given us in the scriptures, rules included, was out of His amazing love. Rules, too, are not God, and it is not our place to wag our fingers unlovingly at those who don’t follow God’s rules. Heaven knows we “All fall short of the glory (perfection) of God. But if, in the name of love, we watch carelessly as our dear ones walk straight into traps of sin even hold their hands and encourage them along the way, we are putting “love” above God. We have a responsibility and that is to put God first in all things. If there comes a fork in the road where we have an opportunity to share God with someone or “lovingly” just let them remain lost…we HAVE to choose sharing God. Trusting that the fact that He IS Love will win the day, even if to our limited human minds, pointing someone toward Christ does not feel like love in the moment.”

Friend – I’m going to enthusiastically agree with most of what you just said.  God is Love but love is not God (esp. when you define love narrowly as Hollywood-style infatuation and saccharine ever-after endings). Yes. Rules come from the amazing love of God, which seeks harmony, not chaos. Yes. Rules, too, are not God, so we should not wag fingers. Amen, sister. We have a responsibility to put God first in all things. Absolutely.

And here’s where we start to diverge.

First, I question your use of the word “carelessly.” I don’t think it’s careless to let someone choose their own path, I think it’s reverent and trusting – trusting that they are a fully-functional human being with a brain and conscience and intuition, trusting that God has their path in His hands, and that His Holy Spirit will be there IF and when they need re-direction. I think too often we are in a rush to fix someone’s situation, make them better, improve them, or otherwise interfere because WE are uncomfortable with their situation, not because they actually need our advice. How do I know what God wants to do in someone’s life at this moment? I hardly know what He’s doing in mine!

I can pretend the Bible tells me, but the Bible is full of universally true generalities (God is Love, love your neighbor, remember the poor, etc.), and sometimes-true, culturally specific weirdness (do you cover your hair or speak in church or wear polyester?), and archaic, barbaric examples of human behavior (do you keep slaves?). And sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other because a loving action is always situation-specific (handing someone a warm brick is loving to a cold person, but deadly to a drowning one). How do I know that what I perceive as “sin” in their life isn’t something that God is perfectly happy to let them hold onto while He works on other things? Or even something that He wants them to go through in order to heal something else? We do, after all, cure cancer with poison. How do I know that what I perceive as sinful isn’t THE thing God is actually trying to DO in someone’s life? I have certainly had instances in my life where I thought God wanted me to “behave” a certain way, and it turned out that he was trying to do something much bigger in my life. For which He actually needed me to fully commit to the very actions that I had considered “sinful.” Once He had accomplished the bigger soul-surgery, the behavior that I was so concerned about just went away, and I found that I had been freed of a much bigger oppression than my behavior was causing me. If I can’t always discern in my own life which behaviors are detrimental and which are God-sent, how on earth am I supposed to judge whether someone else is walking into a “sin trap,” or just taking a different path after God than I am?

God’s work is always much deeper than our outward behaviors and beliefs, and so I think that walking beside someone, listening, and allowing them to work through something careFULLY is not only loving but holy. It leaves more room for the Holy Spirit, Who is the one charged with convicting people of sin, not me. If there is immediate and observable harm, like if someone I know is abusing his or her child, then on a case-by-case basis, there will be times when it is appropriate and important to step in and set boundaries. But I find that more often than not, when Christians are talking about saving someone else from “sin,” they’re talking about much grayer areas, and trying to impose standards and boxes on people’s lives that might not be from God at all.

I also think that very often, when Christians say “sharing God,” what they end up meaning, intentionally or not, is “conforming you to my subculture,” which may or may not have anything to do with what God is trying to do in someone’s life. If, in fact, I interfere with God’s work in someone’s life because I am anxious to fix something that I perceive as wrong with their life, then I am inflicting soul-violence on them. When the Holy Spirit “convicts of sin,” it feels like liberation. When people do it, it often just feels like shame and oppression. It can be much more difficult to heal the wounds inflicted by the religiously zealous than those inflicted by the world, because wounds inflicted by the religiously zealous have all the (false) apparent weight of God behind them. There are reasons why Jesus exhorted people to remove the planks from their own eyes first. Ask me about my personal experiences with this sometime.

More coming on this topic when I finish the Stedman post about totalitarian religion…..

Late Night Theology, Brought to You by Facebook Chat

I’m working on some more reflections from the Wild Goose Festival, but in the meantime, here’s a convo I had with my dear fiancee this evening. Errors have been preserved, although names have been changed. I apologize for the crappy formatting, I couldn’t get wordpress to separate the lines more clearly for some reason. It started like this:

My fiancee (B) posted the following status:

” ‘Unless your worldview loves all of humanity, it doesn’t represent the creator of all of humanity.’ – Donald Miller.

I agree. Now let’s show more love to believers of non-Christian religions, gay people, immigrants, atheists and agnostics.”

One of his uber-conservative friends posted this response:

“Love is not love if sinners ate not told that repentance is possible because forgiveness is possible because a loving God paid the penalty for our sin.
The result of being forgiven is not to go on sinning, but to repent.
So, I suspect Miller’s comment sound cool, but may not tell the whole truth.”

And this is what I wrote to B afterward in a private chat:

Me: I’m resisting the urge to write this under [uber-conservative friend's] response to your quote:

“Which is why it’s so important to point out to self-righteous religious people when their judgment is a stench in G-d’s nostrils, and a plague to their fellow travelers. How else can they repent of the planks in their eyes?”

Sheesh.

B:  Well, they are part of that church group I told you about that turned very conservative and rightward. You keep telling me to stop watching Fox News, but I don’t have to, because I get the talking points through them. You can post it if you want, just expect an cranky and unhappy response.

Me: yeah, I know, that’s why I don’t really want to. i’m not in the mood for a catfight.

B:  yeah

if you’ve noticed, i’ve kept myself out of any skirmishes today

i think my little message yesterday helped

Me:  yes, i did notice

your little message?

B:  about not commenting on the presidential electio

it was a disclaimer for me

Me:  ah, now i see it.

i’d missed that one.

B:  now that we’ve experienced progressive christianity, it’s hard to go back to that judgmental sin and shame based faith, eh?

Me: hell yes.

btw, i’m working on my blog piece about stedman – looks like it’s actually going to have to be two blog posts.

turns out i have a lot to say about this.

B:  [uber-conservative friend]‘s post REALLY turned me off and if i weren’t a Christian, i’d really think that christianity is the last religion I’d want to practice

as it is, i might already feel that way.

Me:  i completely agree.

i at least don’t want to practice it that way.

which is why i’m still tempted to post that response to his comment, even if it unleashes a firestorm.

just so other people who read the thread will know that that’s not the last word on Christianity.

but i’m still not sure i’m up for a flame war on your wall.

B:  we’re trying to build bridges and really welcome those different from us, and he has to chime in with that?

with ‘friends’ like these who needs enemies?

Me:  right?

B:  any progress i might have gotten with my non christian fb friends was probably lost

Me:  ok, maybe i should post my response then.

B:  maybe you can word it so it’s less provocative

Me:  hehehehe.

B:  still firm but less in your face

know what i mean?

if it turns in to a flame war, i’ll moderate it

Me:  i know what you mean, trying to think how to word it…

B:  i’ll hand out warnings

Me:  hehehe

B:  make sure it stays civil and doesn’t get abusive

but you argued with [uber-conservative friend] before in that complementarian vs egalitarian thread

just keep in mind that it might go the way of that thread

Me: Erg.

i can’t seem to make it less offensive without taking the bite out of it entirely.

B:  but i say you should say what you must

if you can’t change anything, then just post it

Me:  “Yes, exactly, and let us not forget that the only sins that really got Jesus riled up were self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and profiting from religion.”

?

So therefore, brothers, let us exhort one another not to be prats.

?

B:  hehe

Me:  is that less inflammatory, or the same?

B:  still inflammatory

Me:  dang.

what if I change it to “giant prats”?

B:  lol

i was just going to say that love we show the non-christians should not be conditional

only if you repent

that’s not love

Me:  that’s a much nicer way of putting it.

you should write that.

B:  only if you remove your sin

that’s not love

Me: i also just feel like the huge emphasis on sin takes away the emphasis on love.

not that the idea of sin is unimportant, but it’s hardly the main component of the message [and I feel like it's a largely misunderstood concept, so we should just stop using that word entirely because it's so loaded, but that's a whole blog post in itself. Maybe several blog posts].

B:  yup

but for righty evangelicals, it is the main message

Me:  and to your idea, the “christian” response is “but we don’t only love you if you remove your sin, it’s the love that enables you to overcome your sin”

the effect, though, is still to keep the focus on someone’s self-improvement rather than on the story of fierce love.

B:  another thing: i thought that [uber-conservative friend]‘s post was irrelevant for atheists and agnostics. they don’t believe in God, so they don’t believe they need to repent

heck, i believe in God and most of the time i don’t think i have to repent.

Me:  oh i don’t know – i felt the need to repent as an atheist – there are things every person does that they’re not proud of.

B:  well, i’m talking about the repentance in the mind of the conservative chrisitian

Me:  but this whole framing misses the larger meaning of repentence anyway, which is to “turn around” – it essentially means to have an “aha!” moment and break through into a new viewpoint.

not just to stop doing certain specific behaviors that others have deemed inappropriate.

B:  it’s about changing your path

Me:  exactly.

B:  another thing that bothered me was that [uber-conservative friend] was making the assumption that to love these people one has to proselytize them.

i’m thinking no, we just have to love them where they are right here, right now.

Me: hear, hear.

Since when does loving someone mean exercising thought-control over them?

B:  yeah

well, hence why so many of [a mutual friend's] old friends can’t be friends with him now

Me: what’s the phrase – when you love someone, you have to set them free?

it’s so sad.

and really, they’re the ones who are trapped.

they don’t even realize they’re prisoners.

B:  they can’t be friends with him as long as they feel that they have to change him and they feel he has to comply

Me:  yeah.

B:  that’s also the name of a song by sting

hehe

Postscript: I’m SO glad I’m marrying this person.

Things I Learned While Doing Nothing at the Wild Goose Festival

I got to shake Pete Rollins’s hand! But that’s beside the point.

Yesterday I finally peeled off my neckerchief (whose ice had melted hours before), rinsed off several layers of dust and sweat, scrubbed the sticky out of my hair, and lay down in air conditioned luxury for the first time in four days. Today, sandal-tanned feet still a little dusty, rainbow yarn bracelet still wrapped childishly around my wrist, good friends further and further behind us, I am making the long trek north toward home.

This was B’s and my second trip to the Wild Goose Festival. Held on the Shakori Hills festival grounds near Durham, NC,  it’s a mostly Christian, mostly progressive festival of music, art, spirituality and justice. You can check it out here. Last year, during the inaugural Goose, B and I were very ambitious – we scheduled ourselves for something nearly every hour of every day and were haunted by a continuous feeling of missing out. Until I suffered heat stroke on the third day and had to lay down and sip water and munch cheerios for 11 hours. Thus chastened by the limits of my body, this year was a much different, much lazier, and much more satisfactory Goose. I committed myself to putting forth the least effort necessary to feel that the trip had been worthwhile. The result: a little art, a little dancing, a little music, and a lot of long, meandering conversations. I feel that I came out very much ahead.

Here are some things I learned while doing next to nothing at the Goose:

1. You can never have too much bug spray.

2. Cookies and beer make a really excellent communion.

3. Rock-Paper-Scissors is so much more interesting when it encounters gamma radiation and morphs into Rock-Paper-Scissors-DoubleClaw-Meercat:

Epic. Even we couldn’t figure it out.

4. Dance might be the most purely incarnational of the art forms.

5. Being an Honorary Queer at a Queer Party is fa-habulous.

6. I really really really really need to learn how to fire dance:

7. Pimento Cheese (it’s a Southern thing, if you’ve never encountered it) is so divine that when you put it on the table, you have instant church. Cheese Church. Come worship at the plate of Cheesus. We are radically inclusive.

8. Painting your arm is more awesome than painting on paper.

I managed to avoid all activities that require hand washing for several hours after this just so I could be badass for a little longer.

9. Sometimes one is forced to make compromising moral decisions. For example: DEET is very bad. But ticks are so much worse. Therefore, you can never have too much bug spray.

10. Hummus-munster-tomato-avocado on a challah roll is my new favorite summer sandwich and deserves its own blog post (stay tuned).

11. Despite recent loud protestations to the contrary, it turns out that I still enjoy hanging out with children. As long as I’m not responsible for improving them in any way.

Caution: Hanging out with children can lead to pick-up games of Rock-Paper-Scissors-DoubleClaw-Meercat.

12. Faith takes many, many forms.

13. Face painting is much more difficult when you don’t have a brush.

14. There are Bloody Mary’s, and then there are Bloody Mary’s from Provence, which had to be re-named and classified as their own super-species. Thus: The Provence Fainting Mary’s.

15. “Provence Fainting Mary’s” is a bookable band name.

16. So is “Whiskey Tango and the Leftover Unicorns.”

17. So is “My Asian Hillbilly.” You’re welcome.

18. Ticks suck. Literally.Therefore, you can never have too much bug spray.

19. The older I get, the clearer it becomes that hippie communes and carnival freak shows are probably my natural habitat:

20. The People’s Mic is alive and well in progressive Christendom.

21. Beer and Hymns should be a monthly institution. Everywhere.

22. You should never be afraid of the truth.

23. Spiritual directors with tangerine hair and tattoos give very sage advice.

24. “Faitheist”  is my new favorite word.

25. Hot buttered biscuits are my new favorite breakfast.

26. Really, truly, you can never have too much bug spray.

It’s really amazing how much I got out of doing mostly nothing for four days. Praise be to Cheesus!….(Biscuits, anyone?)

Because Friends Shouldn’t Let Friends Play with Objectivism*.

At least not without close supervision. Prolonged or unchallenged exposure to objectivism can lead to all kinds of nastiness, often against yourself, close friends and loved ones, or your entire facebook community.

I’ve been off of blogging for a while because of engagement and wedding planning and moving and the working two jobs thing  (this is my busy season), but when I see friends quoting Ayn Rand on facebook, I just want to seize them by their virtual lapels and shake them awake.

I had one such experience today, so I’m going to pick up where I left off so very long ago with my “Atlas Revisited” project. (See here.)

Wait, I think I vaguely remember promising in that post that I would refrain from snarky and smug comments. And I will. Starting now.

So far, I’ve read most of the preface to the 35th Anniversary Edition (the one my dad bought for me when I graduated from high school, with the inscription “May this book inspire and sustain you as it has me.”) Already I have enough notes in the margins to start a book, and it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll focus in on one passage for the sake of trying to keep this blog post readable.

As I believe I sort of mentioned before, one of my main areas of bafflement with the whole Ayn Rand movement is how many professing Christians have started adopting parts of her philosophy as their own. Ayn Rand herself claimed that you could not be both a disciple of Jesus and a disciple of her philosophy.  I even understand some of the psychological appeals of objectivism (wasn’t I a disciple myself for 10 years?), but they are vastly different from the rigors required of a serious Christian faith, and I’m puzzled at how many people don’t seem to see how obvious this is.

In the preface to the 35th anniversary edition of Atlas Shrugged, Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand’s “intellectual heir”) mostly quotes from the journals in which Ayn was working out the premise and relationships driving her book, and he quotes this passage, straight from Ayn herself:

“Therefore, while a creator does and must worship Man (which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural self-reverence), he must not make the mistake of thinking that this means the necessity to worship Mankind (as a collective).”

Let’s start here. In one sentence, Ayn has inverted the entire central message of the Bible. I don’t think I’m overstating the case. Consider this passage from Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV):

” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Emphasis mine.

In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition, the first and primary commandment is always to love G-d first. Or, as it’s translated in the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Or, from Luke 4:8, “Jesus answered, ‘It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ ‘ ” (He was quoting from Deuteronomy).

Ayn makes the case for worshiping “Man” instead of worshiping G-d. And specifically, worshiping the best in yourself but not in others, the very opposite of treating others as yourself. She’s not subtle about it. And who is this “Man” that Ayn has set up as a god? She calls him “the creator.”

“Man, at his highest potentiality, is realized and fulfilled within each creator himself….He alone or he and a few others like him are mankind, in the proper sense of being the proof of what man actually is, man at his best, the essential man, man at his highest possibility. (The rational being, who acts according to his nature).” Emphasis hers.

So there it is. The god-Man is a rational creature, apparently the only creature that properly falls under the category of mankind. Emphasis mine. I could go on at some length about how our rational faculties are only a small percentage of our brain, and that denying the rest of the human experience, the full range of human emotions for starters, creates a false expectation of reality, not to mention two-dimensional characters and wooden fiction, but I’ll save that for another post. Reigning in the snark beast.

Practically speaking, what does such a rational creature as Ayn’s god look like? In her own words, “I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being. Anyway, this should be my lead for the character of John Galt” – {her hero in the story, ‘the ideal man – the consistent, the fully integrated, the perfect’ – I couldn’t make this up if I tried.} – “He, too, is a combination of an abstract philosopher and a practical inventor; the thinker and the man of action together…”

I’m sorry. I have great respect (truly, no sarcasm) for anyone who can type out a 1168-page work of fiction and then get it published. And then spawn a movement that lasts for decades. Let me not diminish the magnitude of Ms. Rand’s achievement in this respect. But does anyone else find it incredibly convenient for Ms. Rand’s philosophy that, aw shucks, her ideal Man, her god, looks just like her?

I believe in academic circles, you would call this anthropomorphism – the creation of gods who look like (and act like) people. Often some narrow, idealized aspect of what a person is. In Christianity, we call it idol worship. Ayn liked to think that she was doing something unprecedented in the history of humanity, and while she has achieved some very notable worldly success, let it also be noted that creating gods in your own image is as old as civilization itself. We used to make them out of bronze or gold; now we craft them from words.

Here’s something that I actually really appreciate about Ayn: she understood that your basic assumptions about life, death, and morality have very practical consequences for the way you live your life. I don’t have a direct quote for you on hand, but this theme shows up a lot in her writing – the consequences of belief. In this, she is actually in agreement with Jesus (“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”) Both Ayn and Jesus understand that what you believe is not necessarily what you say you believe or even think you believe – words and thoughts can lie. What you believe is what you do. This also sheds light on Jesus’s admonishment that “the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (Jn 6:29)- if your true beliefs always show themselves in your actions, then excavating your real beliefs and holding them up for examination and submitting them to G-d for the renewing of your mind is truly work. And our behaviors betray our true beliefs more reliably than our words. Peter Rollins has a very challenging piece along that topic here. Anyway.

So when Ayn says that the proper object of worship for man is Man, she understands that this has very practical consequences in real life. Or, as Richard Rohr (a Franciscan monk) puts it, “Your image of G-d creates you.”

This is why it’s so important to me to tell people why I think that Ayn Rand is dangerous. I spent 10 years letting Ayn Rand’s conception of perfection shape me, and I grew smaller. In soul, spirit, and courage, my life got smaller. In some ways, I was lucky – my innate gifts are so unlike those worshiped by Ms. Rand that my spiritual failures were acute, and I was forced to address the inconsistencies early. I could have languished for years longer if I’d had a little bit more of a “rational” bent. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a rational nature; somebody has to keep us dreamers tied down to facts and sense. Even for people who are more rational by nature, though, Ms. Rand’s philosophy is ultimately limiting. While some rational types find a kind of affirmation in Ms. Rand’s writings that they struggle to find elsewhere, this intoxication (and Ms. Rand’s insistence that they are already superior to their lesser, less rational, brethren) can dissuade them from seeking to understand and celebrate human expression in all its forms.

I have tons more thoughts on this, but for now, here’s the take-away: If you’re in need of a Higher Power, don’t look to John Galt.

*[I am stupidly happy that spell check informs me that "objectivism" is not officially a word.]

My Prayer for the Occupy Wall Street Day of Action Tomorrow (11/17)

I’m deeply uncomfortable praying out loud. Here goes anyway.

Father G-d,

You have always heard the cries of Your people, Your little ones, when they are in distress. You have always heard the cries of the voiceless when they have nowhere else to turn. It is You who delivers us from slavery, from prisons, both internal and external, it is You who frees us to be fully human, to act in dignity, open-handedness, and love. It is You who creates unity, You who softens hearts, opens ears, lifts burdens, melts opposition, and creates space even for forgiveness.

Your people labor under powers and principalities that grind down many, which create shame and suffering, which bring death to people in far places, which seem at times to be insurmountable.

You, G-d, hold all of history, past and future, in Your hands, and I cannot know Your will for tomorrow, but I know you honor justice and relief for the oppressed, and that You knit unity from division and order from chaos. You care about our cries, and You care about how we treat one another in our distress.

I pray for Your peace to reign over the city tomorrow, that Your Spirit would move among us all, protesters and bystanders and police alike. I pray You would move in our hearts as a people, that our eyes might be open to what You want to build. I pray that You would create dialogue in places where there was hatred or silence, I pray You would create delight in the midst of anger, and I pray that Your passion for people and for justice and for forgiveness and for compassion and for love would bubble through Your people everywhere, that we would see You in one another.

Help us to see.

Help us to hold steadfast to hope, for ourselves, for one another, and for the world.

Help us to remember that we are all Your children.

Help us to find some truth in the confusion.

Weave something beautiful for the world tomorrow.

The Miracle of Compounding Interest and Other Libertarian Folk Tales.

My dad, bless his heart, used to have this talk he’d give us at the dinner table periodically – an hour-long, rapturous monologue about The Miracle of Compounding Interest.

He’d start with the bit about how anybody in America could be wealthy if they worked hard, lived within their means, and knew about investing. Then his voice would get all thick with emotion while he got out paper and pencils and calculators to demonstrate -

“See, if you put $10,000 in an interest bearing account, and you get, say, 4% per year, then at the end of one year, your money has earned you an extra $400. If you earn 4% interest on that $10,000 every year, then you get an extra $400 every year. You’d earn $4000 in a decade. That’s simple interest.”

And, oh! the gleam would come into his eye, and we could feel the tension building towards catharsis. Simple interest was good – a smarter move than keeping your allowance under your mattress, but everybody in our house over the age of 4 knew that the real magic was in compounding interest. We sat with rapt attention as the pencil scribbled figures down the paper:

The Miracle of Compounding Interest, in graphic form

“But if you put your money into an account that has compounding interest, then after that first year, the interest you earned gets added back into the account, and so in the second year, instead of earning 4% interest on $10,000, you are now earning 4% interest on $10,400. So at the end of the second year, your money would have earned you $416. So you’ve received an extra $16 without doing a thing! Repeat that for another year, and you’ll get 432.64, again without doing a thing. After ten years, you would have earned [scribble, scribble, scribble...] $4798!”

And there it was. The golden truth. Without doing a single thing except keeping your money in the right place, you, the savvy allowance-saver, the shrewd mower of lawns, could receive untold riches through the Miracle of Compounding Interest.

Man, I love my dad. He’s a hoot.

Anyway, the whole reason I bring this up is because I want to explore in some more detail a point I made in another post  about unequal opportunity in America.

I think this idea deserves its own post because I keep having the same conversation over and over and over again with my libertarian/conservative/Tea Party friends.

(Yes, I actually have friends in those camps. Lovely people for the most part.)

The conversation goes like this.

I post a link about Occupy Wall Street.

My friend will insist that OWS has it all wrong in protesting rich people.

I will then spend a moment deliberating whether I want to make the point that Occupy Wall Street is not about protesting rich people in the first place (see here and here and here).

While I deliberate, my friend will say something like, “Taxes should not be raised on a particular set of people simply because they have more money. I don’t believe in taking from one to give to the other. Everyone needs to do their own part.”

Or, “Government is force: The ability to take money and redistribute it based on the whims of those in charge.”

Or, “When government acts beyond its legitimate grounds of defending people from force, this is the kind of thing that happens. And that’s true whether the government is targeting hapless progressive protestors or people who balk at having half of their peacefully-acquired income plundered.”

Those are cut and pasted from actual facebook threads.

Notice the key words: “taking from one to give to the other,” “to take money and redistribute it,” and “having half of their peacefully-acquired income plundered.”

My image of gov't when I was about 10.

Underlying most of the conservative arguments against government in general and social programs in particular is this idea that taxation equals theft.

Especially when the tax money is used to fund social safety-net programs for all those bottom-dwelling freeloaders who aren’t doing their part.

I might agree with this idea if I believed that a) poor people are poor because they are lazy, and b) I am well-off because I earned it through hard work.

But I can’t ignore the fact that my face to face experience with life says otherwise.

Take for example the fates of me and one of my oldest friends, J. We met when we were 9 years old.  In the immediate way of 9-year-olds, we knew we were kindred spirits because we both liked to draw horses.

J. has always been brilliant. She is at least as smart as me and twice as creative. She’s also a hard, hard worker.

And she’s a welder on food stamps, while I have a master’s degree, debt-free.

What happened?

Compounding interest.

Money isn’t the only commodity that works on the principle of compounding interest; opportunity does too.

The thing about compounding interest is that it only really works if the account is allowed to accumulate and re-invest in an uninterrupted fashion. If, every year, you debited out the interest you’d earned, it would never accumulate, and at the end of 10 years, you’d have the same 10,000 that you’d started with. Plus maybe some gadgets.

Worse, if you were to remove chunks of the principle investment, then you’d have to back track and play catch-up to build the principal up again before you could achieve the old level of interest. You’d have to work much harder to achieve the same result.

Opportunities wax and wane in much the same way.

First of all, if you are born in America, you already start with a bigger deposit in the Opportunity Bank than most people in most of the world. Even with all our problems.

If you are then born into a family that can afford to give you lots of personal attention and nurturing in your early years (when you are acquiring the most language), you get another big deposit in your account.

Go to a good school staffed mostly by well-trained professionals (either because your family can afford to live in a good school district, or because they can afford to send you to private school). Deposit.

Three square meals a day. Deposit.

Supportive family. Deposit.

Continuous good health. Deposit.

Music lessons. Deposit.

Culture-rich family vacation(s). Deposit.

Summer camp, after-school tutor, sports team – deposit, deposit, deposit.

Compound all of these together, and you get a hard-working, college-bound young adult. Probably going to a good school with at least some scholarship money, and headed for a productive career.

Ta-DA!

But what if those compounding benefits are interrupted? Debits in opportunity, like debits in banking, can send you backward, not forward, and leave you playing catch-up.

Mom works two jobs and can’t read you to sleep every night, stunting your early literary language acquisition. Debit. (Or at least a lower interest rate.)

Go to an underfunded school staffed mostly by overstressed and inexperienced newbies still in their first five years of teaching. Debit.

Don’t speak the “standard” American dialect of English. Debit.

Lose valuable study hours being hungry. Debit.

Lose valuable school hours being distracted because there’s no grocery store for miles around, so you ate M&M’s and Pepsi for breakfast (again) and you’re on a pure sugar high. Debit.

Lose a few weeks of school every year to hospital visits for your asthma. Debit.

Move schools several times a year because your housing situation isn’t permanent. Debit.

No quiet place to do homework because you’re sharing a tiny space with too many people. Debit.

Nobody ever told you about responsible credit card use. Debit.

Family illness, death, or divorce eats your college fund. Debit.

Emotional trauma from abuse, divorce, or neglect. Debit.

Rape, or assault, and the accompanying PTSD. Debit.

Lose a parent early to death, imprisonment, or abandonment. Debit.

One parent (or more) deals or uses drugs. Double debit.

Never being able to take your safety for granted. Debit.

What would the cartoon of your life look like?

The list goes on, and on, and on, and on.

No one debit, not even a small cluster of debits, can derail a life forever. Everyone, including one-percenters, experiences hardship and tragedy. Everyone, including the poorest, gets second chances.

But in America, some people get many more second chances than others.

And some people need many more second chances than others.

And those two groups often fail to overlap.

J. and I, who are still good friends, didn’t end up in wildly different circumstances because I’m “doing my part” while she’s sitting around expecting handouts. We ended up in wildly different circumstances because she struggled through three times as many debits as I did. Even with my setbacks, the overall arc of my circumstances opened doors for me. J. got a PhD in the School of Hard Knocks.

Or, as my buddy Sebastian said at Occupy Wall Street, “I’ve worked with the homeless for years, and the things some of these people have gone through are just unimaginable to anyone from a middle class background. If someone pulls a knife on me in an alley, I don’t assume that they’re a morally deficient person who needs to be punished – probably that knife has been the only semblance of safety they’ve had for a long time.”

So, to go back to the original proposition: a) poor people are poor because they are lazy, and b) I am well-off because I earned it through hard work.

I think I made my point about (a).

Regarding (b), I say, of course I worked hard. I worked my ass off for both my degrees. But it would be a more accurate statement to say, “I am well off because I worked hard, and also because the privileges of my birth and circumstances gave me a huge head start.”

If you are also a hard worker from even somewhat privileged circumstances, then I applaud your discipline, and I invite you to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, there was also some luck working in your favor.

Libertarians love to say that government is force, and that the only legitimate use of a government’s power is to defend its citizenry from the use of force by others.

I think that a properly representative government can be used a little more actively and creatively than this, but essentially, I agree. Who wants more government than absolutely necessary?

Where I disagree with libertarians is in their assumption that government is the only institutional arbiter of force in America.

Consider this quote from Nikolai Berdyaev   -

“There is a still more deep-seated form of violence, and that is the strong hand of the power of money. This is the hidden dictatorship in a capitalist society. They do not use violence upon a man directly, in a noticeable fashion. The life of a man depends upon money, the most impersonal, the most unqualitative power in the world, and the most readily convertible into everything else alike. It is not directly, by way of physical violence, that a man is deprived of his freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, and freedom of judgment, but he is placed in a position of dependence materially, he finds himself under the threat of death by starvation and in this way he is deprived of his freedom. Money confers independence; the absence of it places a man in a position of dependence.”

Government is not the only agent of force acting in our society. America hasn’t been agrarian for several generations now. Gone are the days when being middle class meant having a homestead and raising your own food, relying on outsiders for the few things you couldn’t make yourself.

American citizens are deeply dependent on the systems and corporations that organize our labor and our supply of goods and services.

So when a few people at the top abuse the system, they are abusing all the people dependent on the system.

It is right, just, and appropriate for government to intervene on behalf of those who have been left behind, left out, and crushed by the powers of compounding interest.

What does it mean that we believe that all people are created equal, with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

If we believe that the poor are usually at fault for faltering in a system in which we participate, and which we perpetuate by continuing to buy, bank, and brand, if we believe that those who falter have earned their distress, that the price of faltering is to go hungry, fight for shelter, be denied healthcare, receive a second-class education that won’t prepare their children to rise above the circumstances of their parents, if we deny certain people the most basic economic security necessary to secure individual liberty, then what we really mean is that some people are created more equal than others.

Writer’s Group Prompt – Octopus Thoughts

We had a writer’s group meeting a week ago in which we read about and discussed writing as a child – uninhibited, free of categories and judgments, just you and the page and some naked, unashamed thoughts. Here was mine:

I never know what stories to tell; always I am reaching for some new moment, a new color, a glittering phrase. I chase after stories like a child after butterflies, never following doggedly to a destination, but ever distracted by some movement in the corner of my eye, and – [Look! FLASH!] – I am off again, running in yet a new direction, clapping and laughing and eyes wide open.

I am slowed up somewhat by certain habits, pedantic and stiff and linear and rational. Like leg braces, they were snapped onto my thought-legs to keep them reasonable – perhaps it was feared that my thoughts would jelly and twist like those of the octopus? [And, really, what is so threatening about an octopus that you need to make it stand like a man?!] They keep my writing knees locked and awkward sometimes, tensile steel marking the boundaries – “You cannot compare your thoughts to an octopus! ABSURD!“

Even this paragraph, brief and fluttering, is still tethered faithfully to an earth-rock, orbiting around a fixed idea, which will step predictably to the next idea. There they will sit, the Rational Ones, marching in a neat line, little bald heads rounding firmly above the water, saying, “Here! Step here! Don’t fall in!” [As if an octopus need fear the water!]

© Andrei Calangiu | Dreamstime.com

And shambling along I go, a hop-skipping after butterflies over linear thoughts on straightened octopus legs, made ever so slightly more awkward by the mirrors sprouting from my every appendage so I can see what you’ll see before you see it, forever checking to appraise whether or not this paragraph makes me look fat.

“Am I pretty yet?” asks the octopus hopefully, lisping through her rubber bands and braces.

The child awakens, ashamed and horrified, breaks the clonking contraption to pieces, pulls the cold, purpling, curling arms into an embrace, and places the octopus back in the water, where she need not stand, or walk, or jump, because in the water, she can fly.

[Look! Sparkly!]