So I haven't posted a blog in a quite a
while. My earlier “commitments” to be more diligent not
withstanding. The problem I face is that I am often stymied both by
the sheer number of things going on in the world about which I am often tempted to comment and a serious doubt that I have anything really
worthwhile to contribute to the noise on the internet. That being
said, a series of events in the news of late coupled with an
interchange I had with some friends on another list-serve have led me
to this moment of commentary.
The events are the TEC General
Convention during which the leadership of that once great and
faithful part of the Church treated the last vestige of orthodox
belief like a vampire and drove a stake through it's heart. Then
there was the crescendo of noise surrounding the “civil rights”
of gay marriage. To even question the practice is to be immediately
labeled a hater. Take the controversy surrounding Chik-Fil-A and the
statements of the owner of the company's simple adherence to biblical
norms. It seemed an unquestioned foregone conclusion that any company
that had any association with a someone who held to a biblical
standard regarding sexual morality is “clearly” a bigot and must
be punished for his “alternative” view. All of these things
remind me of my own first encounter with this kind of “thought crime”
logic.
In the late 80's I was an Undergrad in
the University of Houston Honors Program (now the Honors College).
Near the beginning of one semester it was announced that we had a
visiting lecturer coming from Oklahoma to teach a senior seminar
level class on comparative religion called "Dialogue Among World
Religions". We were encouraged by the head of the program to
sign up, if our schedules allowed, for what was to be a guaranteed
stimulating intellectual experience. Sounded interesting and I had
that slot open in my class schedule so I signed up.
Now it must be strictly understood that I really did not have in any way a living faith. I was not a part of a church, let a lone THE Church, at best, I questioned almost every central tenet of the Christian faith's claims. I was not raised in the Church in any way, nor could I have honestly given any assent to the most basic Christian doctrines. Although I had read the bible and was familiar with its contents. Its message and meaning were lost on me. I could not even have articulated any significant difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants except one group drank alcohol and the other forbade it. On paper I was a perfect fit for such a class.
On the first day of the class we were greeted by a warm and gracious man in his mid-fifties or so ( I was in my twenties then so anyone older than me was lumped into only one or two age categories = older and older-er:) He dressed in casual clothes and sported an interesting silver ring with a cross shape cut into it. He said he was an Episcopalian. Which meant about as much to me as if he had said he was from Lilliput. I simply had no context. It turned out during our class conversations that he was some kind of minister and was on staff in some capacity, I did not really understand, on the campus of OU.
The class was small. We had a couple of young men who were Muslim, a couple of Americans who thought they were Buddhists, some agnostics, one person who was an avowed atheist, a practitioner of the Baha'i faith, a couple of annoying folks who kept referring to themselves as "evangelical" (which I of course equated with the dudes and dudettes with big hair on television and thus steered clear of them after class), a really intense but seriously nice guy from some local campus ministry who was the neatest dresser I had ever met, a couple Roman Catholics, and me. I was just there out of curiosity.
Oh yeah, I was also studying Plato's Republic that semester in a Political Philosophy class.
Well to make an already too long tale a bit shorter let me say, I made every class (class discussion and attendance were to count for 90% of our grade and 10% on a paper in which we explored a faith not our own (which of course left the door wide open for me:)
I received an A+ on my paper on global Islam. I was an active participant in all of the in class discussions. At the end of the semester when I received my grades I was shocked to see that he had assigned me a grade of A-. Surely this was an error. I made an appointment with him to discuss my grade. During said meeting he explained my grade. It was the result of one statement that I had made during one of our in class dialogues. I had not even thought about it since making it. What disturbed the professor/priest so much was that I had concluded on the basis of reason that there was a possibility of an absolute truth somewhere in the cosmos. That's it. Not that I knew what the absolute truth was, I would never have claimed such a thing. But I was willing to grant that there just might be one and if there was such a truth extant in the universe, it was worth seeking. He explained to me that since the whole point of the class was that it be a "dialogue" among world religions, having such a position precluded my ability to engage in real authentic dialogue with other religions or worldviews.
Needless to say I was flummoxed as I wrestled with that little bit of logic.
I lacked the context to associate his own worldview with the Episcopal church at the time and did not really think about that connection until years later when I was for a short period of time a part of the Episcopal Church. It was during my discernment process for the ministry that the connection was made for me and I realized that what I experienced with the professor/priest was not an anomaly at all. I was the anomaly for holding a belief, however tenuously, that threatened his own. And in the brave new world people like me are a problem for people like this teacher/priest.
Now it must be strictly understood that I really did not have in any way a living faith. I was not a part of a church, let a lone THE Church, at best, I questioned almost every central tenet of the Christian faith's claims. I was not raised in the Church in any way, nor could I have honestly given any assent to the most basic Christian doctrines. Although I had read the bible and was familiar with its contents. Its message and meaning were lost on me. I could not even have articulated any significant difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants except one group drank alcohol and the other forbade it. On paper I was a perfect fit for such a class.
On the first day of the class we were greeted by a warm and gracious man in his mid-fifties or so ( I was in my twenties then so anyone older than me was lumped into only one or two age categories = older and older-er:) He dressed in casual clothes and sported an interesting silver ring with a cross shape cut into it. He said he was an Episcopalian. Which meant about as much to me as if he had said he was from Lilliput. I simply had no context. It turned out during our class conversations that he was some kind of minister and was on staff in some capacity, I did not really understand, on the campus of OU.
The class was small. We had a couple of young men who were Muslim, a couple of Americans who thought they were Buddhists, some agnostics, one person who was an avowed atheist, a practitioner of the Baha'i faith, a couple of annoying folks who kept referring to themselves as "evangelical" (which I of course equated with the dudes and dudettes with big hair on television and thus steered clear of them after class), a really intense but seriously nice guy from some local campus ministry who was the neatest dresser I had ever met, a couple Roman Catholics, and me. I was just there out of curiosity.
Oh yeah, I was also studying Plato's Republic that semester in a Political Philosophy class.
Well to make an already too long tale a bit shorter let me say, I made every class (class discussion and attendance were to count for 90% of our grade and 10% on a paper in which we explored a faith not our own (which of course left the door wide open for me:)
I received an A+ on my paper on global Islam. I was an active participant in all of the in class discussions. At the end of the semester when I received my grades I was shocked to see that he had assigned me a grade of A-. Surely this was an error. I made an appointment with him to discuss my grade. During said meeting he explained my grade. It was the result of one statement that I had made during one of our in class dialogues. I had not even thought about it since making it. What disturbed the professor/priest so much was that I had concluded on the basis of reason that there was a possibility of an absolute truth somewhere in the cosmos. That's it. Not that I knew what the absolute truth was, I would never have claimed such a thing. But I was willing to grant that there just might be one and if there was such a truth extant in the universe, it was worth seeking. He explained to me that since the whole point of the class was that it be a "dialogue" among world religions, having such a position precluded my ability to engage in real authentic dialogue with other religions or worldviews.
Needless to say I was flummoxed as I wrestled with that little bit of logic.
I lacked the context to associate his own worldview with the Episcopal church at the time and did not really think about that connection until years later when I was for a short period of time a part of the Episcopal Church. It was during my discernment process for the ministry that the connection was made for me and I realized that what I experienced with the professor/priest was not an anomaly at all. I was the anomaly for holding a belief, however tenuously, that threatened his own. And in the brave new world people like me are a problem for people like this teacher/priest.
Little did I know, at the time, the
path God had started me on. What Socrates accepted as a possibility I have come to know in a living way. Now I know that there is not only a
chance that there might be an objective absolute truth in the
cosmos... I know who He is. I know His name and so, it seems, does Mr. Cathy of Chik-Fil-A. And the name is Jesus.
IHN
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