Parable of man on an island and the UMC

There is a story that Peter Rollins tells in his book Idolatry of God and it goes like this:

There was once a man who had been shipwrecked on an uninhabited deserted island. There he lived alone for ten years before finally being rescued by a passing aircraft. Before leaving the island, one of the rescuers asked if they could see where the man had lived during his time on the island, and so he brought the small group to a clearing where there were three buildings. Pointing to the first he said, "This was my home; I build it when I first moved here all those years ago." "What about the building beside it?" asked the rescuers. "Ho, that is where I would worship every week," he replied. "And that building beside that?" "Don't bring that up," replied the man in an agitated tone. "That is where I used to worship."

While this story is not factually true, this is a True story. Anytime there is a quest to find the "perfect", "pure", "correct" church we will always be disappointed and leave. If we believe the Church we are in is not upholding the ideal that we believe it should be upholding then we will always be building new churches. 

Christianity: less building more erosion

As I listen to people come into the church I serve, there are reoccurring words that are used to talk about what they are looking for.  Most of the language is around building and growing. I hear a desire to develop faith, a church to help them build up their values, a community that can help their family grow in loving kindness, a place where they can develop, flourish and thrive.

We all need to mature and develop, but following Jesus leads to seeing growth differently. Growth in Jesus Christ means less building and more erosion. 

The process of erosion is slow and steady. It is a process of removing. It requires extended exposure to the power that is beyond you so to be shaped in ways that you cannot control or expedite. Erosion is a scary thing because it feels like we are becoming less, and you are right. That is the point. We decrease and Christ increases. We die to ourselves and are raised in Christ. It is no longer I that lives in me but Christ that animates me. 

Letting go of the facade and front; the traditional thinking of might and what strength looks like; the power and ego - this is what Christianity is all about. It is trusting that the Holy Spirit blows in and through and erodes away the very thing we have been told since our youth that defines us. It is about discovering the God we sought for all along is already with us. It is about living with less only to discover it to be more liberating and beautiful than imaged. 

Perhaps this is why so many of us, myself included, struggle with Christianity. It requires of me to focus less on building and more on erosion. 

Occam's razor, Hickam's dictum and Christianity

Occam's razor is that principle that is often understood being that "among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected." To put it another way, all things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones.

Needless to say, Occam's stranglehold on how we understand God is rather strong. It is how theologians talk about the mystery of something like the atonement but we teach it by way of 3-4 theories. Or we talk about the mystery of the trinity but boil it down to that like an egg or water (see here for a silly little video on why those metaphors are "heretical")

Christians try our very best to try to communicate to the world the vast mystery of the creator of the world can be understood and, the most simple explanation tends to win out because we all prefer Occam to Hickan.

"Hickam's dictum is a counterargument to the use of Occam's razor in the medical profession. The principle is commonly stated: "Patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please"." (wiki)

This sounds weird but the point that Hickam was trying to make is that patients can have many different symptoms that are unrelated and cannot be diagnosed under one simple, elegant explanation for instance Saint's triad.

Christians are not unlike other people in the world in that we desire a simple answer to the questions of the world. We long for someone to just tell us why something is the way it is or what we are supposed to do. We willingly accept someone citing scripture at us, giving us a response that is so tight that is might as well be a package tied up with a bow. The answer looks nice, it is elegant and makes sense. Classic Occam's razor.

The reality is, if Occam's razor does not hold for medicine then it surely does not hold for theology. No matter how elegant the answer may be, when we are talking about God - it is never that simple. Cite me the chapters and verses, point out the creed, quote the theologian, articulate the church council, all of these actions are efforts to prove the razor.

The preachers and teachers that give you a razor's answer provide great comfort. I am a razor pastor myself. However, in my more antithetic moments I will share that I don't have the simple answers. And in my even more truthful moments I will share I don't have the simple answers because no one has them.

Simple answers don't exist when we are talking about God. They never have.

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Hickam's dictum was introduced to me via this wonderfully fantastic podcast episode of "Reply All" - Boy Wonder.