When Lack Becomes Loss

Peter Rollins continues to be a thinker that challenges me beyond what I am capable of thinking. While I listen or read him I feel like I understand in the moment, but as soon as try to explain it I fall apart. Not unlike when I walk confidently into a room only to enter that room and instantly forget what I came into that room for.

Rollins mentioned that there is “lack” and “loss”.

Both lack and loss are about an absence in our lives. Lack is about an absence that was never present, loss is about an absence that was present. I lack about a foot in height and overall skill to play basketball well. I never had that height or skill to begin with. However, I can loose my car keys that I thought were in my pocket.

The Bible speaks of humans created with lack, not loss.In Genesis at creation it is said that when God blew into the nostrils of the dirt, the dirt became “nephish.” Nephish means a bundle or collection of desires or appetites. The human being has appetites not because we lost something (like food) but because we have a lack that drives us (hunger drives us to find food). We can address the lack with healthier or non-healthier things, but the lack is not something that can ever be extinguished.

Someone can lack acceptance, and no matter how many awards they receive there is never enough. This person never received acceptance to begin with, it cannot be lost because it was never acquired in early life.

The problem is when we think our lack is a loss. That is to say, if we think that there was a time when humans were once complete, whole and without lacking anything, but then we lost it - we are mistaking our lack for loss. If we think that we can go back to another time (Eden, 1950’s, 1990’s, etc.) and “rediscover” what we lost - we are mistaking our lack for loss. If we think that our individual lives was without antagonism at some point in our past - we are mistaking our lack for loss. We have not loss anything, Jesus reminds us the Kingdom of Heaven is here and to come (unfolding). We never lost it, we only lack it.

Treating our lack as a loss means that we live our lives seeing the lack within us is a problem to resolve, rather than a source of energy. If we were to resolve our lack, it might be the most miserable thing we could do. As it is said, the only thing worse then not getting what you want is getting it. Because once you get it you realize that “it” cannot meet the lack within and you will be crushed. It is crushing to discover that the thing that you want, that you think will fill the lack, does not exist. The quest of life to fill the lack is revealed as a sham and so we fall into dismay.

Like the end of the movie The Graduate. The two went through hell and back in order to fill the lack in their lives. Then as they sat on the bus with the one they thought would fill the lack, they discover the lack is still present (“Hello darkness my old friend…").

Be mindful of the preacher or prophet who preaches that your lack is a loss and that they have what you have lost. You will not find it, because it was never lost to begin with.

Theology as Fixer, Breaks the Church

Shelly Rambo writes the following in her book Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining and Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma:

The experience of trauma dismantles notions of theology as a fixer, a provider of solutions. A move to “fix” things may interfere rather than assist in the process of healing. Theologians who have learned from trauma theology emphasis the importance of accompaniment, truth telling and wound tending. Acts of witness and testimony acknowledge the reality of traumatic experiences that can never be fully brought to the surface of consciousness. This posture is not focused confidently on conveying theological or moral certainty. Instead, its confidence is in the healing power of giving witness to suffering.

I find this to be a helpful description of the tension within the in the UMC right now. The tension is not over one person or issue. The tension is rooted out of a collective trauma that the denomination has had and has inflicted. The different plans moving us forward, the different caucus groups and advocates, if they are anything, are different approaches to trauma.

Some believe that we can get past this trauma with a proper doctrine. Some believe if we remove certain teaching. Some give the subtle impression, that their plan or their position can “fix” the trouble we are in. In all these efforts to “fix” the problem we often discover, as Rambo says, that we interfere rather than aid healing. There is a feeling that if we could just “get past this current hurt” that we would come out on the other side with blue skies and smooth waters. That this one matter is albatross around our denominational neck and when freed from it we could “make disciples”.

So we try to fix it with theology, plans and positions. We send delegates to vote in the hopes that there will be a solution found in Minneapolis this May.

There was theology that was generated to “fix” the problem of slavery. Others created to "fix” the problem of female ordination. Still other theology to “fix” how we treat Native Americans, our international sisters and brothers, and even the ecological crisis. The truth is that the longer we approach “theology as a fixer” the longer we delay in healing these traumatic wounds.

I wonder if the UMC will discover in Minneapolis not a theology to “fix” us but a theology that take seriously wound tending, presence, truth telling, forgiveness and mercy? Frankly, these are not “fixes” but, again echoing Rambo, postures. These are not the ways we will solve our antagonisms, but rather are vessels to hold them.

Theology that “fixes” (Ironically) breaks the Church. Theology that tends to wounds, heals.

Theological Orientation of the UMC, great. Tell me about Samaria

This report has been making its way among the internet the past several days. The two main talking points are from the opening line of the report which reads:

“The United Methodist Church is a big tent theologically, and people with conservative or traditional religious beliefs make up the largest group under that spreading canvas.”

This has been used to augment different arguments around the denomination about different positions. Conservatives/Traditionalists (C/T) argue that this is proof that there are more C/T and thus the church should move lightly if embracing anything that is progressive. Progressives/Liberals (P/L) say that this study also shows that we are a big tent and majorities are not always the measure of what God desires.

Of course we forget that the average age of an United Methodist is 57 … and this was in 2014 (which was the latest that I could find in the time that I allowed myself to research this question). At the same time the clergy are getting older and there are fewer younger people in the pews and pulpits.

All I want to point out is that it is far more interesting (and relevant) to the future of the church to determine the theological orientation of non-members of the UMC.

Who really cares what the self reported theological orientation of those already in the Church is? If scripture has shown us anything it is that the theological orientations of the people of God are often wrong, misguided and susceptible to sin and corruption. One might imagine the people in the desert identifying as traditional as they desired to go back to Egypt. While others might have self identified as progressive as they melted down the gold to form their idol.

If the church of Jesus Christ is to go to “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth”, then it is of greater interest to know what those in “Samaria” believe so that the Church can reach to “the ends of the earth.”

Even Satan Knows He Does Not Exist

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Pastor Brian Zahnd was explaining Satan to those of us who do not take the Satanvery seriously. Generally those are the people who are in the west, highly educated, wealthy, “rational” and suspicious of those things that are unscientific. A decent sized group of people.

In his efforts to explain the Devil, Zahnd described the way meteorologists would describe a hurricane. Hurricanes are powerful, destructive and are even given anthropomorphic names. But even as we name a hurricane, we know that the hurricane is the result of complex systems intermingling and colliding with each other. The hurricane cannot exist on its own.

Likewise Satan is powerful, destructive and given a name. We know that Satan is the result of complex systems intermingling and colliding with each other. As such, Satan cannot exist on its own. Satan is the result of the most complicated systems interconnected with the most complex animal on the planet.

Those of us who have read Stanley Hauerwas may recall how he wrote in his book Matthew, “That is why the devil is at once crafty but self-destructively mad, for the devil cannot help but be angry, recognizing as he must that he does not exist.”