(no subject)
So I got an MA. So that happened.
Was about as awkward as I was expecting it would be, and it consisted of my mom getting indignant about the Rapture in front of my advisor--she's a bit of a theologian and finds the whole thing really obnoxious--as well as me having to buy a stole at the absolute last moment, and my graduate director, who is an absolutely lovely man but who has a slightly twisted sense of humor, claiming to have never seen me before and not to know my name when I hit the stage.
But hey, if it had all gone smoothly it would have looked horribly out of place with the rest of my life so far.
Other things:
I know that people must be sick and tired of Rapture stuff at this point--I'm swinging back and forth between weariness and morbid interest in what Camping will eventually say in response to the fact that everyone is still here--but one thing I've been thinking about a lot is what I see as a real lack of compassion for Camping's followers from most quarters. I think it's important to remember that these are people--not bad people, just badly misguided and lost people--and many of them had given up on tomorrow. They have left jobs, stopped making mortgage payments, given away possessions. Many of them have children. I read an article about a young couple who were deep in prep-mode for being caught up in the air with Christ; they had one small child and another one on the way--a child who, bear in mind, they honestly believed would never be born. And my heart just broke for them.
Those people are all going to have a very hard time tomorrow. I'm worried that some of them might attempt suicide, and some of them might succeed. We shouldn't mock them. We should have compassion for them.
As usual, Fred Clark puts it pretty well.
Fortunately, Camping is not as widely influential as LaHaye, so we’re talking about only thousands of followers, not millions. But that’s thousands of people, thousands of families experiencing one kind of trauma now and due for another, existential, shaken-to-the-core trauma come Saturday. That some of this trauma is self-inflicted or that, like most victims of con-artists, they are partially complicit in their own undoing doesn’t change the fact that we’re still talking about thousands of people in pain, fear and despair.
It may take a while to help them pick up all the pieces after the great earthquake that never happens, and I’m not even sure how to help them. But I want to try - partly out of pity, partly out of duty, but ultimately out of love because, after all, they’re family.
Along those lines, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my own frequently rocky relationship with religion and the church and all the things that go with the two that make me distressed and angry and frustrated. I've also been thinking about my own faith and my constant working through questions and doubts, and how I continue to deal with reconciling living as a believer and my tendencies toward skepticism and rational inquiry.
I've come across a new favorite blog, and one of the posts in this dude's "Voices of Doubt" series has really nailed where I am at this point.
I still pray, but not as much for faith as I do for the wisdom to make sense of the knowledge I accumulate, and for the courage of my convictions to live out the life of advocacy for social and individual justice that we are called to pursue. And it is on this point - the pursuit of a life of service to others - that Theists and Secular Humanists, Christians and agnostics agree. For the sheep were not separated from the goats in Matt. 25 because of their correct beliefs, nor as a result of their orthodox theology, but because of their service to others. They fed the hungry. They clothed the naked. They visited the sick. 1 Cor. 13:13 does not say, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is doctrine,” but “love.” It is love that separates the true believer from the unbeliever, the faithful from the faithless. Love is faith made manifest, fertilized by doubt.
In the end, what you believe is simply not as important as what you do for others. If Christians are saved by faith, it is obedient faith in a Messiah who commanded us to serve others. And if they exist, heaven and hell will take care of themselves if you do what you’ve been asked to do. Stop worrying about life after death and live the one before it. Live a life of service. And in the mean time, ask the hard questions. Doubt everything. Challenge those in authority, respectfully, but directly. Demand explanations and require others to cite sources for all claims made. Embrace science and understand myths for what they are: early attempts to explain a world before science while communicating cultural ideals. And remember: true knowledge is the result of doubt, not blind faith, for “only the one who knows nothing doubts nothing.”
At this point I'm just way more worried about being kind, being honest, and being good than I am about being right.
I pretty much suck at all of the above. But I'm working on it.
And because I can't stand to end on a serious note, here's Macho Man Randy Savage saving us all from the Rapture.
This entry was originally posted (with
comments) at my Dreamwidth.
Was about as awkward as I was expecting it would be, and it consisted of my mom getting indignant about the Rapture in front of my advisor--she's a bit of a theologian and finds the whole thing really obnoxious--as well as me having to buy a stole at the absolute last moment, and my graduate director, who is an absolutely lovely man but who has a slightly twisted sense of humor, claiming to have never seen me before and not to know my name when I hit the stage.
But hey, if it had all gone smoothly it would have looked horribly out of place with the rest of my life so far.
Other things:
I know that people must be sick and tired of Rapture stuff at this point--I'm swinging back and forth between weariness and morbid interest in what Camping will eventually say in response to the fact that everyone is still here--but one thing I've been thinking about a lot is what I see as a real lack of compassion for Camping's followers from most quarters. I think it's important to remember that these are people--not bad people, just badly misguided and lost people--and many of them had given up on tomorrow. They have left jobs, stopped making mortgage payments, given away possessions. Many of them have children. I read an article about a young couple who were deep in prep-mode for being caught up in the air with Christ; they had one small child and another one on the way--a child who, bear in mind, they honestly believed would never be born. And my heart just broke for them.
Those people are all going to have a very hard time tomorrow. I'm worried that some of them might attempt suicide, and some of them might succeed. We shouldn't mock them. We should have compassion for them.
As usual, Fred Clark puts it pretty well.
Fortunately, Camping is not as widely influential as LaHaye, so we’re talking about only thousands of followers, not millions. But that’s thousands of people, thousands of families experiencing one kind of trauma now and due for another, existential, shaken-to-the-core trauma come Saturday. That some of this trauma is self-inflicted or that, like most victims of con-artists, they are partially complicit in their own undoing doesn’t change the fact that we’re still talking about thousands of people in pain, fear and despair.
It may take a while to help them pick up all the pieces after the great earthquake that never happens, and I’m not even sure how to help them. But I want to try - partly out of pity, partly out of duty, but ultimately out of love because, after all, they’re family.
Along those lines, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my own frequently rocky relationship with religion and the church and all the things that go with the two that make me distressed and angry and frustrated. I've also been thinking about my own faith and my constant working through questions and doubts, and how I continue to deal with reconciling living as a believer and my tendencies toward skepticism and rational inquiry.
I've come across a new favorite blog, and one of the posts in this dude's "Voices of Doubt" series has really nailed where I am at this point.
I still pray, but not as much for faith as I do for the wisdom to make sense of the knowledge I accumulate, and for the courage of my convictions to live out the life of advocacy for social and individual justice that we are called to pursue. And it is on this point - the pursuit of a life of service to others - that Theists and Secular Humanists, Christians and agnostics agree. For the sheep were not separated from the goats in Matt. 25 because of their correct beliefs, nor as a result of their orthodox theology, but because of their service to others. They fed the hungry. They clothed the naked. They visited the sick. 1 Cor. 13:13 does not say, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is doctrine,” but “love.” It is love that separates the true believer from the unbeliever, the faithful from the faithless. Love is faith made manifest, fertilized by doubt.
In the end, what you believe is simply not as important as what you do for others. If Christians are saved by faith, it is obedient faith in a Messiah who commanded us to serve others. And if they exist, heaven and hell will take care of themselves if you do what you’ve been asked to do. Stop worrying about life after death and live the one before it. Live a life of service. And in the mean time, ask the hard questions. Doubt everything. Challenge those in authority, respectfully, but directly. Demand explanations and require others to cite sources for all claims made. Embrace science and understand myths for what they are: early attempts to explain a world before science while communicating cultural ideals. And remember: true knowledge is the result of doubt, not blind faith, for “only the one who knows nothing doubts nothing.”
At this point I'm just way more worried about being kind, being honest, and being good than I am about being right.
I pretty much suck at all of the above. But I'm working on it.
And because I can't stand to end on a serious note, here's Macho Man Randy Savage saving us all from the Rapture.
This entry was originally posted (with
comments) at my Dreamwidth.