As clear as it gets

 

What are we looking at in the picture? Two representations of the same thing. The real thing most likely lived on a farm somewhere in some place the puzzle maker and the person who assembles the puzzle have likely never seen. 

In this humorous meme usually entitled "Finished it!", I'm reminded of how our pictures of life are created on the move, in concert with others who are also creating alongside us, and, as a result, sometimes have a very loose connection with "the reality".  By the time it "gets to us" our picture may be distorted.

Most of us have never seen things we know or assume to be real: a duck-billed platypus, the rotation of the earth from space, Abraham Lincoln, Moses from the Bible, and so on.  We've seen pictures or representations that others say are real or close to accurate that they've received from others, etc.

In other words, we take a lot on faith - we trust those who've gone on before us accurately and without bias, received information from others that was good info, and so on for as far back as we can imagine.  We've been told roaches have been around for hundreds of millions of years, but we've not seen it.

A lot of people I grew up with took their picture of "Bible events" and people from movies and TV. Some people can't imagine Moses without seeing Charlton Heston's version in their mind even though his version was made up by someone who had no idea of what they were talking about or creating.

When Daniel Day Lewis portrayed Lincoln in the movie by the same name, he researched what Lincoln sounded like when he spoke and his portrayal surprised people because they'd expected a deep resonating voice and instead, Lewis used a high, nasally sounding voice as he'd learned was more historically correct from people who had "been there" and actually took time to describe his voice.

I read just recently about how the white, alabaster shaded, plain marble statues we have often seen from ancient times were actually painted back then, potentially with many different shades, over time - and that by the time we "discovered them", the paint was worn completely off, leaving the white stone that we've assumed the original artists intended for us to so, but it's not quite so - it's just what we've assumed.

And you can walk through history, both recent and ancient, finding story after item after idea that are similarly shaped through the passing of time, the sharing of incomplete or incorrect information, and occasionally the weight of the thumb of the writer on the scale of history, "helping" us see what they want us to see for their own reasons or beliefs.

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That is a terrifying and demoralizing exercise for many people to engage in. I remember a grad school professor talking about this very thing in relationship to the topic we were studying in his class that semester - a history of religious thought.  

He shared how some students would pack up and leave the class at some point in the semester, never to return, because what they were learning was just too much to take in - it was shaking up their very-well-put-together world of church and faith to the point that it would be hard to go on if were shaken anymore by a different history or worldview than they'd had given to them before.

Some people need to know just a few things to get by in life and cannot bear the cognitive dissonance that is served them by learning more - just turn the channel to something else, believe what you've always believed, have another scoop of ice cream, listen only to people who make you feel good or right, remember the good old days, have another drink, complain about the weather, etc - sometimes information is just too much to deal with and people have to do what they can to get by.

And their situation is an understandable one. What else are they supposed to do? We have to work and make money to pay the bills to buy the stuff so we can continue to be motivated to go to work, make money, etc.  We can't sit around and ponder everything and research where all our ideas and ideals come from and where they're taking us.  Sometimes we just have to go with the flow and hope for the best.

I 100% get that. Not everyone can be a philosopher/historian. Somebody has to restock the shelves so the customers can get what they need. We've come to believe there is not much middle ground between those kinds of options.

It's too bad that we've made it that way - that we've not encouraged people to continue to grow, but instead to pick a place to turn off their minds and motivations and do what they're told and buy what they're sold.

It wasn't always that way.

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That's kind of some of the inside of my deconstruction and rebuilding processing. 

We all start somewhere in life and then, as we interact with new people, situations, experiences, and other information, we have to decide whether all that "new" will just inform us or have the potential to change our directions and not simply give us something to think about as we continue down the same path, never veering.

For me, church was a foundational thing in life.  It initially carried the answers for everything and carried me and my family over some very tumultuous times.  I wanted to know more about that excellent, though sometimes puzzling collection of people and the one who made it possible.

As I began to study it, formally at times and less so at other times, I realized there are different paths of study - here's at least two of them: 1) listen to what the people in/from the church has to say about the church and God and drink deeply of it or 2) get outside of it and learn about where it came from, what other "outside" variables influenced its development, and, at least potentially, how it got to be where is as you know it.

Obviously, there are other options or paths that a person can take, potentially, to study something; each with its own nuances, strengths, and/or weaknesses.  Those were just the two that surfaced regularly for me.  

Anytime I tried to bridge them with a middle ground option, it felt as if someone from one camp would decry the other camp and tell me I needed to decide between the two.  "Drink someone's Kool-aid, but don't make mixed drinks."  I thought and still think that's just a stupid and dishonest approach to anything.

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I do believe in God and that Jesus Christ was/is his Son and that His Spirit lives within and walks alongside us, if we choose to invite him to do so.

I do believe that God puts us into his family and calls us to love one another, serve one another, grow together, and so on.

I don't believe that the church as I grew up with it was a great picture of that.  It certainly had some features of what God calls us to, but like any manifestation of his family over time, it became just another kind of social organization, saying that it was speaking for God, but actually just keeping itself afloat.

Like the platypus, or the horse puzzle, or the idea of Moses or Lincoln, it was a picture of a picture of a portrayal of an interpretation of someone's idea of what they'd heard from someone they had learned from someone else who had heard about...you get the idea.

Sometimes, that's as clear as it gets.

Learning to be okay in that "place" where that's all the clarity you have for the moment and still be able to go grocery shopping or fill up the tank on your car or enjoy a movie or laugh with your friends or talk about what you believe in with your family with what you know at the moment - that's still doable and very possible.

I don't have anything against people who like to "go to church and not think about why it's there or what the leaders did - just want to go and get some good things and enjoy what's there, etc".  

I get that. I like to go shopping at the big box stores and buy food and other stuff without thinking about the supply chain and where it was all "sourced from", ethically or otherwise - whatever that means.

I have a sense that a day will come for some of them when it's not "satisfactory" anymore and/or their kids or grandkids or spouse or friends or whoever has a moment of "not for me anymore" and they don't know what to say to them or even how to talk with them without making things worse.

I hope to be able to help some of those conversations in sharing a little more openly over the next 25 days about the inside of the process for me.

If you have questions or need more info about any of it, feel free to PM me and I'll see where I can fit some of that in and/or answer you directly.  Many thanks for the prayers, encouragement, and curiosity.

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Grace and peace to you all.  

For real.  

In the true sense of those words.