Week 3: Jesus is Everywhere, Man

“Nowhere man, please listen.”

-The Beatles

“And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.”

-Common phrasing during church communion ceremonies

A few items about my Sunday morning before we get to the church.  I began by lying to my brother.  He was visiting for Thanksgiving, and I have not yet told my friends or family about my little project, so I couldn’t tell him the real reason for my going to church.  He had to leave to drive home, so I knew he wouldn’t want to go along, so I was able to say I’ve been looking around at churches, conveniently leaving out that I was doing so as an atheist researcher-critic-spy.  I’m not exactly “out” as an atheist—not entirely.  When the subject comes up among my co-workers or friends, I’ll express my skepticism, or depending on the company, my outright disbelief.  But the family is a different issue.  Most of them are believing Christians.  I’ll have to confront that down the line.

Second item from Sunday morning: as I was lying to my brother, I was watching Fox News Sunday.  I had the pleasure of listening to former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee talk about health insurance as though he cared about logic and reason.  He will attempt to use logic to fight against the Democratic initiative of providing health care to the poor.  However, he will reject logic if it runs counter to the creation story in Genesis.  I fondly recall the presidential debate in which he said that he didn’t know about evolution because he wasn’t there when God created the heavens and the earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BFEhkIujA). It’s funny and terrifying to me that this kind of thinker is shaping millions of opinions.  But I’m not too worried about another Huckabee presidential run, because a majority of the nation, I trust, realizes it would be a mistake to elect someone who’s an even bigger religious nut than Bush.  Also, coincidentally, at the very time I was watching Huckabee on Fox News, four police officers were being shot in Washington State by a career felon that Huckabee had granted clemency to and released from prison as governor of Arkansas.  This tragedy will stick with him, I suspect.

Third item from Sunday morning: apparently WCMF does “Breakfast with the Beatles” on Sundays, so my stumbling upon the Beatles three weeks in a row is not divine providence.  It’s just a program I was unaware of since only recently have I started doing something on Sunday mornings other than sleep, watch political talk shows, and play video games.  (I did those things for years on Sunday mornings before I became an atheist, so don’t be too quick to blame the atheism for my laziness.)  Today’s show presented me with “Nowhere Man,” and I think the Beatles’ exhortation to “please listen” is apropos for this morning’s trip.

I was hoping to hear some speaking in tongues, frankly.  The website said that the this week’s church (a different Reformed church from last week) has a healing service in the last Sunday of each month, and those who wish can have hands laid upon them for healing.  I wanted to see that in person, because when I see it on TV (Sunday mornings, surfing channels during the commercials) it seems staged and unbelievable.  Unfortunately, nothing remotely like that took place, so I was confused and disappointed.  I intend to seek out and find some faith healers before this project is over.

I was hoping to hear some good Christmas music. I used to genuinely look forward to Advent services; Christmas music really does move the soul.  But for the first Sunday in Advent, this was one lifeless place.  Yes, they sang some hymns and played the organ, but there was no joy.

I was hoping to hear a sermon with a little more substance than last week’s.  So I listened, and determined the truth or falsity of some of the snippets. 

This is what I heard.  “Jesus was one of us.”  True.  This was the theme of the sermon, which the pastor repeated to emphasize Jesus’s humanity. Jesus was indeed human.

I also heard this: “Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit?  Yeah, right.”  My sentiments exactly.  Here, the pastor was conveying the attitudes that must have confronted the young Joseph and Mary when it was discovered the unmarried couple was going to have a child.  He avoided coming right out and saying the virgin birth was true or untrue; I couldn’t tell what he believed about it.  I imagine he wanted it that way, since it is indeed a touchy subject for any liberal-minded religious leader.  Even the Bishop of Oxford admits that it’s not essential for Christians to really believe in the virgin birth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S--X7n3TxI).

I also heard this: To merchants, Christmas is an opportunity to fill their registers.  True.  The pastor took the first Sunday in Advent as an opportunity to remind people of the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season.  I, too, am somewhat turned off by the rampant materialism in our society, and I don’t mind if churches combat this.  Family, fellowship, and a spirit of giving make Christmas a holiday worth keeping.

So there were some parts of the sermon I agreed with.  But…

I also heard this: “Satan said ‘yes’ to death, and God said ‘no’ to death.” False.  I think this was to illustrate that Jesus rose from the dead, but the speaker introduced Satan out of nowhere at the end of a meandering sermon, so I’m really not sure what this was supposed to mean.  Since both are fictional anyway, I’ll move on.

I also heard this: “To many of us, Jesus is a brother and a heartwarming friend.”  Perhaps true in people’s minds, but false in reality.  We should have relationships with real people, find inspiration in learning, and find comfort in truth.

I also heard this: “Jesus is one of us.”  False.  Jesus is nowhere, man.  This was the dramatic climax of the sermon, in which the speaker transitioned from past tense (“was one of us”) to present tense.  His point was to emphasize that Jesus is alive in people’s hearts and minds.  Yes, people may believe in Jesus and that might make him real in a metaphysical way, but it’s wish-thinking, so we should ultimately reject it, even if that belief itself does have some positive results. 

…Or maybe this is true.  Jesus’s molecules may very well be part of us.  Mathematicians have estimated the number of molecules that will be part of a given individual’s body and the likelihood that those atoms might be recycled by the environment and end up as part of us.  I am not a mathematician, and I don’t necessarily trust all the assumptions made in this calculation, but if it’s anywhere in the ball park, then it’s quite likely that we all contain some atoms that once belonged to Jesus.  So I guess Jesus isn’t the nowhere man—more like the everywhere man, though not in the way my church told me when I was little.  And now that I think about it, that bread we eat might actually be Jesus’s body.  (Judge the math for yourself.  It was done for Shakespeare, but the same reasoning would apply to Jesus. http://www.jupiterscientific.org/review/shnecal.html).

Since I was listening so closely, I’ll end with some commentary, not about the substance I heard, but about its presentation.  Why do religious leaders need to speak in such an unnatural way?  OK, I’m fine if they speak slowly.  That’s good practice when speaking publicly.  They want people to really hear and think about their words.  Good.  And I get that they’re impassioned, so emphasizing words and taking dramatic pauses is part of the passion.  There’s an element of entertainment in what they do, and they need to keep people listening. 

But there are aspects of the speech I’ve heard recently that are just obnoxious.  They leave pauses in random places: “This is the (pause) day the Lord (pause) has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad (pause) in it.”  It’s difficult to recreate in text, but anyone who’s been to a church probably knows what I’m talking about.  It’s as though religious speakers need to give additional weight to their words with an affected style of speech.  The quotation at the start of this entry about breaking bread is another example.  The speaker uses the archaic “brake” for the past tense, rather than “broke.”  This is the wording in the King James Bible.  I would not have an issue with this, except that nowhere else in the service did he use a King James translation.  It’s as though the formal sound of the archaic word “brake” somehow adds extra importance to the act.  (Though many people probably thought he was speaking poor English: “He break the bread…”)

I think there’s probably a very logical explanation for the value religious speakers place on an elevated tone. Our brains learn to process language in different tones differently, so a police officer or business executive or salesperson uses a tone suitable for his/her specific purposes.  (Can you imagine if your waiter spoke like your priest?)  Speech about religious material is sacred by nature, and a tone of high reverence has probably always helped to lend the appropriate weight to those words.  I suspect a particular manner of speech has evolved during the thousands of years humans have been telling sacred stories.  The extent to which some speakers take this, however, is ridiculous, such that the manner of speaking obscures rather than enhances the meaning of the words.  It becomes a distraction.  It is a tool by which religious speakers convey that what they say is deep and profound and listeners have been trained to process the tone of voice rather than process the meaning of the words themselves.  Caveat: this is certainly not true for all religious leaders.  I was married by one who gave intelligent, eloquent sermons in speech that was engaging and unpretentious.  But during my first three weeks of the Churchgoing Atheist project, I’ve noticed the affected speech a lot—from the pastors in weeks 2 and 3 and many of the lay people reading prayers or Bible passages.  

Thanks for sticking with me on this entry.  When you really listen, there’s a lot to talk about, and I intend to keep listening.

Week 2: The Puppet's Message

"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory..."

-The Lord's Prayer

"Love, love me do.  You know I love you."

-The Beatles

The Beatles are on the radio again.  I’m driving to church, and I realize that the famous Beatles lyric doesn’t really make sense.  Sounds good, though. 

My second outing in the churchgoing atheist project takes me to a Reformed Church.  The Reformed Church is the Dutch equivalent of the Scottish Presbyterian Church that I knew growing up, so once again this week’s service is familiar.  I’ll broaden my horizons as the project continues.

Familiar it is, but looking at the ritual with fresh atheist eyes still yields a great deal to write about.  The best part of the service is the children’s sermon.  There is a puppet theater standing at the front of the sanctuary, a tall wooden box with a window and curtain.  The children walk up front (there are a handful of children at this church) and the puppet show begins.  It consists of a single Sesame-Street-looking puppet saying The Lord’s Prayer.  But as she begins, “Our father,” the voice of God responds over the sanctuary’s PA system: “Yes?”  And in the conversation that ensues, God explains to little Suzie what the prayer means.

Little Suzie doesn’t want to hear it.  She tells God that she just says her prayers because it’s routine.  She doesn’t know what it means, and it doesn’t matter.  It makes her feel good just to say the words, even if they don’t mean anything.  God explains to Suzie that it’s important to think about the words in prayer and to actually mean them when you say them.  And God has hit the nail on the head. 

I don’t believe most Christians listen to the words of the prayers in church.  Now we can never know for sure what’s in other people’s heads, so maybe I’m just assuming that because I spent years not listening to those words myself.  But I’m pretty confident in this belief, partly because the words of those prayers are pretty bizarre when you do actually think about them.  Consider the prayer of confession that is printed in this week’s bulletin: “We confess that we have not bowed before Jesus and are slow to acknowledge his rule.  We give allegiance to the powers of this world and fail to be governed by justice and love…”  If people actually listen to this, they will realize it promotes Jesus as a ruler in this world.  It is not a metaphor; it explicitly says that Jesus should be crowned ruler in place of the governments of this world.  It ends with the idea that people should “obey the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  If people actually obeyed those words, they would invite the poor and the blind to feasts (Luke 14), or if they really obeyed, they would sell everything they have and give it to the poor (Luke 18).  I’ll resist the urge to pursue this line of thought further at this time.

Returning to my belief that Christians don’t actually listen to the words of prayers in church, I need only look to this children’s message for proof.  The church leadership is aware that people—children, at least—don’t think about what they say.  I would extrapolate this to the bulk of the people.  They read the prayers like automatons, performing the weekly, mindless ritual of recitation without reflection.

The lesson from little Suzie isn’t over yet.  God has some moral teaching for the little ones.  He explains each line of The Lord’s Prayer, and when he gets to “lead us not into temptation,” he must explain to Suzie that he’s aware she sometimes tells lies.  Sometimes she watches things on TV that she shouldn’t.  She has friends at school that do bad things.  And God explains that Suzie shouldn’t put herself in situations that will make her do bad things.  God will “deliver us from evil” if we do not put ourselves in positions to be tempted.  While on its face this is good moral advice to give to young people, it is a logically twisted explanation that is typical of Christian attempts to explain religious beliefs.  If it is our responsibility to avoid evil, then what are we asking God for?  I’m sure this fits into the whole “free will” thing—it would be too easy for God to just deliver us from evil, so he puts evil temptation in the world and puts the onus on people to avoid it.  If they do, chalk it up to God’s guidance.  If they don’t, chalk it up to individuals’ weaknesses.  This is a nonsensical explanation to give to children under the guise of logical moral advice.  It’s provided by a voice in the sky (the PA system), which also gives children the bogus idea that God listens to their prayers and responds in personal ways.  Anyone who really believes this is sadly misled.

Although the structure of the service looks exactly like the Presbyterian services I’m used to, there’s one unusual addition.  Early on is an “Exhortation to Self-Examination.”  I’ve never seen this before.  It’s self-explanatory, though: it was simply a call to the congregation to think critically about their own behavior.  This is consistent with God’s message to Suzie in the children’s lesson.  It’s ironic that the service seems to emphasize this need for people to actually think critically about their religious lives.  I appreciate that idea, but I find that that kind of reflection about religion only leads away from the groundless superstitions of church.

Having written way more about the children’s lesson than I’d intended, I’ll keep the rest short.  The sermon was given by a guest pastor.  It was about the kingdom to come, in recognition of the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  The speaker attempted to reconcile Jesus’s statements that the kingdom was at hand with the obvious fact that it is not here, even 2000 years later.  I’ve read and heard many attempts to explain the “kingdom” that Jesus refers to.  The bottom line is that nobody knows what the kingdom means, and there is a wild variety of interpretations of it.  This particular speaker argued that we continue to wait for the kingdom, and that we must avoid the “secular despair” that we are tempted into by its absence. He claims that we can’t even imagine how God’s kingdom is going to be when it happens, and all we can do is “bear witness” as we wait for it.  We must create pieces of that kingdom in Christian communities here on earth, so that what God has promised will be visible.  This will make it so that people will not be justified in their disbelief.  We won’t know when or how God’s kingdom will come, but we are assured that it will.

If people indeed think critically about this, they will realize it is a devious trick.  It is a logical trap.  The pastor argues that it is impossible to know when or how God’s kingdom will come, or what it will look like when it comes.  If these are necessary components of the definition of God’s kingdom, then Christian communities are tricked into forever waiting in ignorance.  Theologians have gotten away with this cruel game of blind anticipation for 2000 years.  I do wish the parishioners and leadership of this church would listen to the puppet’s lesson, because the advice to actually think about what churches say is the most intelligent thing I heard in this building.  

"Love Me Do" doesn't make any sense.  It sounds good and means nothing, just like today's sermon.  The difference is that the Beatles don't claim any special insight into God's plan.