Why "rewire" the church? Church has been at the centre of my identity. It’s formed me, frustrated me, deeply angered and hurt me, guided me, and protected me. Some of the most challenging ideas I have ever met, far more radical than the lawn meetings of my student days, have come from the theologians of the church. There has been a sense of connection to the tradition and wisdom of millennia. And, inevitably, the frustration of tradition hide-bound. I remember singing the words of a hymn one Sunday morning, “nothing changes here...” and one of the youth group muttered sotto voce to his girlfriend, “God, you can say that again!” What worked for our parent’s church doesn’t necessarily work for us. I notice it often doesn’t work for them anymore, although older people are sometimes more gracious about their frustrations! Life changes, we change, and constantly need to reassess where we are going.
This little church on the web is modelled around the metaphor of an old and treasured house. It's the house our parents lived in and inherited from someone we never knew. The house is strong and robust, but needs rewiring. Our ways of thinking and being need to change to make the house liveable and practical. Otherwise it will be a burden, not a base camp for life.
Living with "pointlessness"
Living with pointlessness and the loss of meaning
One of the great issues I hear people struggling with, if they begin to question their world view or theology, is that they will lose the certainty of their faith. I also hear statements like:
"But if we don't believe 'A'... then we can't know anything."
Or "... then there is no basis for faith."
Or "... then we can't trust any of the bible."
There is a great fear of the loss of certainty. This essay seeks simply to deal with living the inevitable loss of some certainties that must occur if we grow up.
This is the key point: there is a loss of some old certainties. But we grow up to a new freedom.
Some people are apparently aware of the tenuous nature of our knowing, but are not greatly worried by it. My wife is like this- "How could you not have some sense of purpose... how could you say you can't see the point of anything?!" She accepts a person could feel like this in theory, but she can't really imagine it.
Others of us are aware of the very tenuous nature of our knowing because sometimes we feel it with a great certainty! We don't imagine it, it is our reality. I know it from experience. For me, life is ultimately about finding a point to things... and a good deal of the time, I can't.
This thing we might call pointlessness has various flavours. It ranges from the acceptance of the basic inescapable uncertainty of life, through to an extreme and crippling "utter pointlessness." At a time of utter pointlessness the question "Why... what is the point? (of anything) is simply unanswerable.
Basic uncertainty is what we all live with, along with our basic aloneness. In the end, we are alone... no one else can actually know us... we cannot ever fully describe to them who we are and what we feel. We are ultimately alone. And ultimately, we cannot know what life means and where it is going. There is a basic uncertainty of meaning, let alone uncertainty about what might happen tomorrow, and transform life from relative comfort to a great grief.
Some people deny the basic uncertainty of life, and manufacture an hermetically sealed world view, which pretends there is certainty. They elevate some contingent thing to the level of the ultimate. Christian fundamentalism, for example, makes its scripture ultimate by claiming literal historical inerrancy for it, thereby appearing to guarantee God and claim certainty. Of course, this elevation of a mere book, whatever insights and power it carries, is arbitrary, and the "certainty" is false. Fundamentalism betrays a lack of human maturity which still lives out of fear. It shys away from freedom, rather than seeking the freedom, albeit fearsome, which comes from seeking to live according to what is. It is a fundamental lack of courage.
Even in non-fundamentalist Christianity, the idea that "life after death will compensate for all our hardship, and make everything worthwhile," is elevated beyond validity. (This usually includes excusing God from the arbitrarily unjust and indefensible nature of this creation, if 'he' were truly omnipotent.) The idea of life after death is made into an ultimate, along with the notion that following Jesus will get us into heaven. It tries to do an epistemological conjuring trick to remove the basic uncertainty around us. It is only a trick, and all it does is put off the horrible moment when we find we are alone, and must die alone, and have no comforting scientifically verifiable idea of what existence is all about.
Knowing the basic uncertainty and aloneness of life is not a bad thing. It is the acceptance of what is. Basic uncertainty is merely the backdrop of all life. One still goes about seeking to make sense of what is, looking for reasons to live, for good things to do, and enjoying creation. As children, we discover that Father Christmas is not real... and then after that first sharp grief, find life still has fun, and some purpose to it. This basic rite of passage ought to be reflected in people's religious-faith-cum-human-maturity journey, as they discover God is not Father Christmas either, and then after that first sharp grief, find life still has fun, and some purpose to it. This seems a more basic insight than the literal Father Christmas,and we put a lot more energy into denying it.
I reckon that finding durable fun and enjoyment in life involves some seeking, and choosing, of a Divinity for life; seeking and choosing an ultimate around which to base life. Otherwise, we simply drift, driven by the whim and circumstance of the moment, and then when "utter pointlessness" strikes, we find we have no foundation. In Western culture of course, the immediately obvious divinity, is the god called Consumption; the meaning and purpose of life can be found in Consumption, or so the television tells us. When people get seriously sick, they are inclined to abandon this view, and seek some more ultimate meaning in relationships with those close to them.
Utter pointlessness, I was going to write, is the extreme where we simply cannot make sense. But while this might be so, we may actually make very clear sense of what we see. Suddenly, our constructs of the world, and its purpose, become plainly and only what they are; ideas... They lose the power to sustain us. They lose that appearance of reality they normally have, which allows us to function. Maybe we find we can make no sense of things, but maybe we find we see with utter clarity, and the clarity is that there is no point to anything.
Why keep working for good, when we will all die, and when evil will always abound?
Why keep going? Why?....
Oh- so don't worry about being good and just live for myself then? Like; the one who has the most toys when they die wins... Yeah right... and they still die.
Why keep going? Why?
It's not as though we forget the answers that sustained us yesterday. It's not that we do not know answers, it's simply that nothing works, and for a few seconds, or hours, or even months... there is nothing. There are no answers which have any power, and hopelessness drags at us, draining the joy of life, even drowning our ability to function, driving some of us to suicide, and drawing many others of us to consider it.
I want to say that if none of this makes sense to you, because you do not ever experience it, don't ridicule the person who does feel this way. What they are feeling is real. Just because it makes no sense to you, does not mean it is not real. You need this person, because they will understand, and be able to listen, when your time of "utter pointlessness" comes. They will be able to guide you through the dark places. They are of the brave who face the areas of life that you have not been called into.
For those who know utter pointlessness, I want to say do not be ashamed. What we feel is real. There is not something wrong with us. We have seen something more of Reality. I am glad of it- I want to be real, not living under an illusion. The closer I can be to what is, the better.
Utter pointlessness is also a freedom from fear. It is freedom from the idolatry that demands we maintain control of life, with a dreamed up ideology which explains away the scary stuff. It is the beginning of a new walk to freedom, because we can see with great clarity, the emptiness of so much which people lust after, and devote their lives to. And we can also see more clearly, the few things really worth seeking, and find the few things which will remain true for us. We are not like the hero in the old cowboy film, who takes cover behind a picket fence, and imagines he is safe.
The world needs people who are living in the real, and who are brave to face the real. It is the people who live in the real- who can see clearly- who help us survive the stupidities and fear-full-ness of the un-real ideologies like the religious and scientific fundamentalisms of our time.
How to survive
For all this, utter pointlessness is hard to live with. I find there are some good things to do to help survive the bad times.
- Let's glory in who we are. We can see the real. This is good. Let us be clear on what we see. If we work up a theology/philosophy/world-view that acknowledes, and lives with, the uncertainties of life, then we are less vulnerable when bad times come.
It's like knowing about the grief curve... we can't avoid the grief, but it can help to know that this is common, and that there will be an end. And "honouring and cherishing our grief", a phrase I think I first heard from Andrew Dutney, somehow (sometimes slowly) enriches it and disarms it. Sterile suffering is replaced by something with colour. I can only explain it in terms of going from numb, inarticulate heart-crushing pain, to a kind of pain that lets me cry. It's not some perverse enjoyment, but I can grieve, rather than the grief being an external thing hammering me. Understanding who we are, rejoicing in it, and seeking to live it to the full, may not decrease the pain, but it removes some of its power.
I find the same when "utter pointlessness" rolls over me. - When "utter pointlessness" envelopes me I remind myself it will pass like all the other times.
- Ritual and regularity help. It is easier to live through the darkness when there are regular habits and tasks we can undertake. They at least fill the time and blunt out some of the pain, as our minds are diverted somewhere else. This is not denial; trying to blot out the reality is foolishness, and will fail. It is having a routine to follow despite, and through, the pain.
- Obligation helps. We know that sometimes our employment helps... weekends can be horrible as the pointlessness rushes in to fill the emptiness. Without being foolishly over-committed, we can help ourselves by building obligations that again blunt some of the pain, as our minds are diverted somewhere else. Being obligated... I promised... sometimes provides that final bit of motivation to keep us moving. The obligations need to be "good"; obliging ourselves to be a doormat is also pointless. But some good obligation to people helps with the living through.
Loving someone else is a particularly potent form of obligation. Seeking the best for a person focuses us on them and away from our pain. It also seems to have its own healing. Gazing on my baby daughter, remembering her and the pain that would follow my not being there, always cut into the power of "utter pointlessness." Relating is one of the most basic things, and helps herd pointlessness back to its proper place. - Worshiping Divinity is important. It is a way of seeking truth. I am not speaking of the easy denials of popular religion, which are a substitute for truth. I mean the struggle to understand, to find what is ultimate, and to live to the best of who we can be. Perhaps this is just another way of saying "glory in who we are" as I did above.
I understand worship to be the exercise of ascribing due and appropriate worth to all we see, and seeking the divine; that is, the most worthy. It builds a strength of character in us that thrives on all that is good about being able to see utter pointlessness, and protects us against its dangers. - Health and exercise are useful. Walking, gardening, swimming, running, and contemplating the beautiful, all help keep us in balance, and keep the knowledge of utter pointlessness in its proper place.
- Let us be gentle to ourselves. Utter pointlessness can develop into depression. Not the "depression" of a bad day, but the illness that means we cannot regain our function. This is not a thing of shame. It is an illness. It happens. It could even be one path of progression to health as we deal with the life draining futility, or the abuse of our situation....
(This series on Depression is reprinted, with some editing, courtesy of One Man's Web)
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