What is Faith at Praxis Asheville?
25 March 2007 - 7 ניסן 5767 by Huw
We left off with “Trinity” and me asking “What do you believe”?
The pastor shot back with “what is ‘believe’?”
Is it possible for real love to be shown by non-Christians?
Of course.
Is it possible for real Charity to be done by even atheists?
Of course.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
I was surprised by the Latin quote. “Where there is Charity and Love, there God is.”
For Praxis, she explained, the only thing required of a “believer” was what Jesus asked: to let one’s good deeds shine before men that they might praise God in heaven. Good deeds were defined as showing love to God and to one’s neighbour as one’s self. It had nothing to do with “accepting Jesus as ‘personal’ lord and saviour.” It had nothing to do with checklists of doctrines and everything to do with charity and love. It was loyalty to this that defined the Christian faith for Praxis. Whatever else a person might imagine - Arianism, Trinitarianism, various soteriologies, ecclesiologies, sacramentologies: all of this was but dressing on the windows of the church. Some of it might be true, some of it might be false and you might or might not get there from the scriptures, depending on your exegesis or eisegesis,
I ran my favourite parable past her - the sheep and the goats. Certainly that was part of it, she said. But she would never interpret that as a literal Judgement Day. Jesus himself said that God had given him all authority to judge - and that he would judge no one.
Why should she take one verse literally and another not? She shrugged and uttered a truism: “That’s what the Church has always done anyway. Just trust God and go.”
It came back to Authority, I told her. What? I said, why should I accept your word over and above John Chrysostom or Seraphim Rose? She said I shouldn’t. If the Holy Spirit was still speaking to me I should listen. Why would it say something different to me than to her? Why would it say something odd to one sect and not to another? She shrugged hard. She wasn’t God, she said. She just wanted to follow him. But she was certain that Holy Spirit didn’t stop speaking, guiding each to salvation. What is salvation? Wholeness: the same world used for “healing” and for “Saving” in the NT.
I noticed that she wove in an out of the sort of official vague of Praxis and her own Theology. Given what I’d heard about preaching here, what everyone told me about the services, I recognised that was ok. I was coming from a place of hardness: of black and white thinking. She was not. My premise that it might be possible to teach a falsehood was not hers: she clearly believed that if she said something I disagreed with, I would tell her. I might offer a correction and, indeed, it could be the Holy Spirit speaking to her. Or maybe not.
That faithfulness - that desire to keep listening, that loyalty… that was what God desired: not to imagine (ie “believe” like one believed in Santa Claus) that he spoke 2000 years ago or 1500 years ago… but that he was present now calling us into communion with him. That faithful heart that waited for the “still small voice” over and over again, waiting not for a once in a life-time quest, but for an ongoing dialogue that called love out of your heart for those around you. That was faith.
So, take us back to the begining of this conversation, I said. What has any of this to do with “Can an Atheist show love?”
It is possible for God to be active even when everyone around denies that he even exits, she said. Can an Atheist love his wife, lay down his life for his friends, show compassion for the poor? Then God is active in his life - not because in doing those things he earns salvation but because he couldn’t do those things without God being present. Where love is, there is God because God is love. There is no love that is not God. (Although many people invoke God without love or confuse love with other things.)
Just as it is possible to speak 100% of the Truth and do so in a judgemental manner, with no love and no grace - and so be telling lies; so it is also possible to show all the love and grace in the world and not know the first thing about God: to deny him, even. There is no checklist: there is only love - at which we might fail or succeed.
We covered one other place in these discussions: me letting her ask questions about Orthodoxy as I understood it and getting her feedback. I don’t think my good or bad understandings of it are as important as her replies… but that part of the conversation seemed to return to that one place in this post where I asked “Why should she take one verse literally and another not?”
I have to admit to being a bit at a loss over your account of Praxis and your conversation with the pastor. Not being much of a black and white thinker myself, Praxis strikes me perhaps differently than you. (Or at least differently than you communicate in these posts.)
Praxis is infuriating to me, and I think not just theologicaly or religiously.
It seems more deep dense fog grey than an abundance of gradation and heus that one can distinguish. Philosophicaly it is horrid. I am not one to insist on absolute consistency, I read Derrida and I accept that a solid system is not possible otherness always invades. But this seems to be the systemization of inconsistency and contradiction. Somethings will simply contradict this God is Love thing, and then what of all that non-judgment?!
Artisitcally it is undisciplined. beauty in part is about contrast, not necesarily strark like black and white, but you mix all the colors together stop making destinctions and judgments, and one has just drab at best brown.
Praxis seems drab, sufficating, and mind numbing in its attempt to live open to everything.
And I haven’t even taken on the theological take on “God is Love”, in which Jesus and God then become amorphous without personality. It is so fascinating how Love when divorced from a God that is particular and about which one can believe true or false things, suddenly itself becomes inpersonal.
Love as a force or energy we all share is unintersting and philosophicaly without substance. I end here because I really think that (at least from your descriptions) one could find serious deficiencies with this group before even getting to the theological, or evaluating it according to the Tradition.
Of course Praxis may simply dismiss such as being judgmental. I would call it being discerning, taking seriously difference and valueing otherness for what it is and can be, ie. allow for the possiblity of radical contradition and incompatability between lifestyles, concepts and ways of life. And I can say this first as an artist and philosopher before even egaging the theological objections.
Larry -
First, this conversation is limited by a couple of things: 1) Praxis has no web presence, insisting, I think on person to person to the extent of avoiding virtual at all cost. 2) I don’t do this kind of writing very well (or so I think) so please allow that some (possibly all) of your reaction may be to my writing and not to them… if so, I ask forgiveness!
Just to understand you better, let me play back a conversation I had with another pastor (ECUSA in Richmond, VA). He wasn’t fond of the “progressives” and the “EmChurch” because he perceived in them an unwillingness to do the work of wrestling with scripture, especially in the hard parts.
Is that the same perception you are voicing here?
forgot to check back yesterday, but here are some more thoughts.
Hmm 1) that is very interesting: avoiding the personal without the virtual. Is that possible??!! Sounds so “Modernist” to this one who reads post-structuralists like Derrida.
2) fair enough, I will keep that possible deficiency in mind. However, your writting conveyed a perspective I encounter though I have never encountered it in a organized way like Praxis.
There may be something to the “Hard work” though I don’t think it is limited to Scripture. I did percieve a dislike for difficulty, especially the difficulty that leads one to make discerning and descriminating decisions. It is easy to just let everything be there is no work in that, it also does not produce good art or excellent thought.
Ah here it is, I actually percieved a philosophy of taste. Its all just taste its all in the eye of the beholder. I reject such a veiw of art and artistic judgment why would I find that appealing in Religion. Its wattered down (and possibly missapplied) Kant on the Critique of Judgement. Its sloppy.
I really think it more offends the artist in me than the my religious sensabilities though beauty and faith are closely linked for me, and why I began to study iconography and now write icons.
philosophy of taste. Its all just taste its all in the eye of the beholder. I reject such a veiw of art and artistic judgment why would I find that appealing in Religion.
Um… this is totally off topic… have you written about this? Because I’m confused: all critique of art is taste. that’s why it’s possible for me to like Giotto and my housemate to like hip hop.
Unless you’re implying that there is some Platonic Form of art someplace… in which case I don’t think my writing/reporting of these interviews was the problem!
No I don’t have anything written at least not in any cohrent presentable form. I gave a talk on it this winter at Tripp’s other church in January. I am working on it though. Watch my blog it something on this will appear there sooner or later.
Taste as like and dislike vs. Platonic form, I reject that dichotomy.
I don’t have to like hip-hop, I don’t particularly, to appreciate its artistry even enjoy it on occasion, and even distiguish between poor hip-hop and good hip-hop.
etc.
Art I appreciate and see as good art goes beyond my personal likes and dislikes.
If it was up to taste, I wouldn’t paint icons, my taste is much more in the realm of the abstract. Yet, the beauty of the icon has compeled me so much that my taste has become irelavant.
I don’t need platonic forms to explain that.
No its probably not your writing and may be that I believe in most things thier is bad mediocre and excelent(and gradations here), and this distinction has nothing do with taste.