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Exploring the intersection of sacred and secular.
I’m at the (interminable) stage of writing The Myth of a Dying Church that’s editing, narrowing the scope, and filling in gaps. The current chapter ponders human nature, how we think we’ve changed, and whether or not the idea that we have changed is true at all. I introduce Wolf’s Theory of Everything in Chapter 6, the internal framework I’ve developed over the years as a tool to dismiss false boundaries among the various disciplines seeking to reveal deeper meaning and discern what is Real — science, religion, sociology, philosophy, and so on.
Modest Proposals
My thinking always begins with beginnings, and this excerpt picks up around there.
This need to connect everything to the beginning, or at least our own, is why I claim to be more of a metaphysician than a theologian. Theology isn’t a broad enough discipline to describe my core conviction that existence itself is something sacred — nothing is mundane — at least not solely. The entirety of existence is its own vast mystery, and though theology dives into a lot of persnickeneity about a great many orderly topics, I find a lot of it ends up amounting to some premodern version of old people yelling at clouds on their version of social media, not only that they’re right, but also about what it means to be right.
I’m so different. I yell at clouds that relate to how our beginnings relate to our present, captivated by the persistent human capacity to remain fundamentally unchanged throughout the centuries, despite any number of scientific discoveries or technological achievements.
Shaun McCoy, a devout atheist and an old friend who likes to yell at similar clouds, once said, “I can’t believe you think a book written by and about superstitions held by Bronze Age human beings should influence us now! We’re way more advanced than they ever were, and we’re so different now that we need newer thinkers!” My initial answer wasn’t that great because it’s really not a bad point. In any case my response at least rhymed with, “Oh yeah? Well — I think you’re wrong! Phbbbbt!”
Having thought about it a lot over the years, my finalish answer is, “When we start acting observably different, making observably better choices, I’ll believe you.”
When you sit down to think about it, we are — depressingly and decidedly — not at all different.
I’d love this to be false — but here we are living in this dumpster fire of a timeline.
So it goes.
Death & Consequences
As any of my 3.14 avid readers know, any time I see a pot I think it needs stirring — though in my defense, that is how people typically use pots. Knowing this, it may not surprise you to learn that I’ve always been more of an instiga — leader than a follower.
When I was in thirdish grade, I was playing with a friend from school named Vinay Nagaraj, whose family was surprisingly Hindu. As we were playing, I suggested that we should do something typically third grade boyish and probably bug-related. He said with a worried expression, “I can’t do that! I’ll come back as a cockroach!”
“Come back from what?”
“In my next life.”
“Next life?”
“Yes! You know that if we do too many bad things we have to spend time as a lower life form when we’re reincarnated.”
Or at least, he gave the thirdish grade version of this response, and it’s a wonderful illustration of how little humanity has changed. We can’t imagine heaven of any sort without hell of some sort, and apparently God is required to be just as vindictive as we imagine we would be.
Everything Old is New, But Still Old.
Hinduism has seen more than its fair share of reformations and reconsiderations, being the oldest practiced religion, yet a core of what remains is present in just about every human religion I’ve ever encountered — the assertion that what we do now matters because our present choices shape our eternal future for good or for ill.
It doesn’t really matter what, if anything, happens after death for this to be an obvious truth.
What we do now affects our options. A moment of monumental stupidity can shape our eternal future, afterlife or not. This idea takes aim at the persistent question of whether any of us can life a life that matters, since it’ll all become dust anyway no matter what I build or accomplish — and then a lot of other really hot things after the sun enters its curmudgeonly geriatric phase, expanding into a red giant to consume the closest planets as it and the universe careen toward the inevitable ultimate heat death — which may make you, like me, feel mildly existentially feeble, yet oddly free.
Our capacity to drastically influence our life for good or for ill is the conundrum of salvation. Just because a person doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean they necessarily have any real faith in our own free will, so the question of how much influence or agency we really have over our lives and choices remains a sticky question.
While it’s true that no number of industrial or technological revolutions over a handful of hundred years can overcome our evolutionary realities, the fact that a five thousand year old religion wrestles with the same questions as we do offers a clear perspective that there’s something essentially human about our existential angst. It makes me wonder — if it’s true that we haven’t really changed, then what hope do we have for the future?
Something in this persistent capacity to imagine a better future despite any evidence to the contrary inspires hope, and therefore kindles my faith. After all these years, my definition of faith is choosing an openness to hope.
It’s not because we’re smart or know how to share — it certainly isn’t because we know how to share. Whether we have control or not, whether we can do anything truly lasting or not, we dream of better days together — and it’s not because we’re foolishly optimistic, but because hope is not fragile.
Hope has grit and substance; offers endurance and purpose. At the end of the day, this is why I continue to believe that to be human is to engage in faith of some sort — when what we know might tell us to give up, hope tells us there’s a chance. I’m convinced of very few things, but at least today, I’m convinced that as long as we’re open to this chance of something better, hope just might pull us through together.
Eric Wolf is a local Lutheran pastor, and he’d love to buy you a coffee, tea, or beverage of your choice to tell him about your faith, your ideas about meaning, or whatever “sacred stuff” means to you. Reach him at [email protected]! To learn more about Eric and his writing, visit his blog at Love Sees Color.