The Bible as a Story

A long time ago I used to really really like Madeleine L’Engle.

So much, I wanted to name my first daughter after her (and nickname her “Maddy” and hope she was a tomboy who played baseball and…)

My first exposure to her was Walking on Water, a book of meditations on the intersection of Christianity and art. She cites all kinds of ideas and stories from philosophers, artists and theologians and brings them together in the context of her own writing. Among the ideas she introduced was the idea that the Bible was a story.

Now, it’s important to differentiate what L’Engle means by story and what a fundy would mean. To L’Engle, stories can be true, even fiction ones. Especially fiction ones. And trying to figure out whether the details actually happened (how many people were in that army, what happened to the sun in that battle, how many animals, how big…) is a waste of time. If you open yourself up to the story, you will see part of the deeper truth that it is trying to reveal.

The Bible, for her, is not the definitive and authoritative Word of God, but an icon, and a very good icon. She spends a whole book (Penguins and Golden Calves) talking about icons, and icons taken too far (idols).

Icons are like windows. You look through them to see what’s outside, but you only ever get a piece of what’s outside. And what’s outside when you look through icons like the Bible is God. When you read the Bible, and you open yourself up, you see little pieces of God. Horribly incomplete pieces, but more than you had before.

The Bible isn’t the only icon for God though. Nature, good art, and even some bad art are all icons L’Engle uses to see a little bit more of God. It’s all about being open.

I used to read the Bible all the time. It’s been almost six years since I’ve actually sat down and read it, and probably longer than that since I’ve been open to seeing a little bit more of God through it, or anything except an ancient text which has had a huge impact on Western Literature and thought.

Part of that is because, when I’m open to see pieces of God, I have other familiar places I go: outside on my deck to sit in the sun, to read The Sun Magazine, to John Coletrane or Bach, and to a candle (though it’s been a while for that one as well).

It’s also partly because I’ve been less open, period. It’s hard giving up the notion that I have to be sure about God before I try to initiate any kind of spiritual experience that may or may not be related to some kind of divinity. So what if it’s all a bunch of chemical, emotional and sociological responses that have nothing to do with a “non-existent spiritual realm.” When I do open up in this way, ever so rarely, my life seems a little less chaotic, things seem a little less pressing, I gain some sort of blurred perspective where as before I had none. I finally can make out that there is something beyond what occupies my time, even if I can’t quite make out what it is.

Maybe it’s time I read the Bible again.

The Bible as the Infallible, Literal Word of God

The slippery slope began with a religious studies class that Optimus Prime took in University. He learned of alternative ways of interpreting Jesus and His death. And he stopped believing in atonement.

He shared this with me one evening during a youth group meeting. Pointed out things in the Bible, but I couldn’t accept what he was saying. If I did, it would start to unravel everything.

Prime also began taking on Fundamentalist Christians who believed that the Bible was the unfaultable, authoritative word of God. He did this mostly on the internet. He had excellent arguments, but when it finally came time to talk to his family about it, he relented. He was better than I, in that, he actually talked to them about it. Used the same arguments he did with the nameless, faceless internet people, but he didn’t push as hard and gave up when he saw his parents and siblings becoming upset.

Then I took my won class. The Bible as Literature. We looked at scripture through the eyes of an English student. Point of View, language differences, theories on origin, stylistic difference… and all of a sudden it became impossible for me to see the Bible as fact.

I think the kicker was the stuff about Abraham and Sarah. There’s some verses in there about what Sarah did in her tent, alone, and didn’t tell anybody. How did the author know for sure what happened in that tent if Sarah never told anyone?

Sure, you can use the argument that God revealed it, which is always the fall back. But put it together with certain inconsistencies in the Bible (numbers, geography, etc.) and it is hard to believe that God revealed everything and that it was recorded perfectly in the Bible and handed down to us through the generations.

When I mentioned some of this to my father, his response wasn’t to argue the reasoning behind continuing it to believe that the Bible was the infallible Word of God, but to point out the consequences.

If I didn’t believe the Bible, my faith would unravel until there was nothing left.

And that’s almost what happened.

Unexpected

Optimus Prime disappeared when he started dating Bumblebee.

This was particularly disturbing considering I had sort of started dating her first. I say sort of because it never really got off the ground. A coffee or two, some phone conversations, that was all. I was still hung up on another girl. So Prime moved in.

But I also missed hanging out with Prime, the little that we did. Actually, just before he started dating her, we seemed to be in the same place a lot and hung out a lot. Then it all stopped.

So while their relationship flourished, I got more and more pissed off. I distinctly remember having a fight with Prime, over the phone, while the New York Rangers were winning the Stanley Cup.

The solution was I hung out with both of them a little more. It was still very rare. They tried to set up a few double dates, but nothing materialized for me.

Then one day, Prime told me Bumblebee was pregnant. I didn’t believe him. It was April Fool’s day, after all. He picked April first to tell me his girlfriend was pregnant. I listened to him asked him questions, and waited for him to break and say “April Fools!” and I periodically reminded him that I remembered it was April Fools and that I didn’t really believe him.

Eventually the reality set in. Prime was going to be a Daddy.

This had serious implications. We were, after all, good Pentecostal boys, and Bublebee’s pregnancy meant that they had clearly had pre-marital sex. This was a big deal, considering Prime and I were both on the leadership committee of the youth group.

That sounds much less important than it did back then…

In any case, Prime resigned and explained the situation to the whole youth group. A very emotional time. Some of the kids were disillusioned because Prime and Bumblebee were the very example of a good Christian couple.

Prime’s mom, meanwhile, went into damage control mode.

“Oh they only did it once, and they were on their knees right afterwards, begging for forgiveness…”

Prime confirmed that it was only once BEFORE they got pregnant… and few times after…

It’s funny though, the way the church protected its own. Nobody talked about it except his mom. It was swept under the rug, all the while, preachers condemning the promiscuous generation that we lived in. And later that year, everyone was all smiles and tears when a big bellied Bubmblebee walked down the aisle in her wedding dress.

Not the first time an extra martial pregnancy had been ignored in our church, I learned. Several couples in the church, now older, good, upstanding supporters of the church, had conceived out of wedlock.

I want to call it hypocritical, inconsistent with the morals the Evangelical church tries to promote. These people had sinned, and a sin that was condemned all the time. But everybody pretended like it didn’t happen.

I also want to call it a perfect example of the way a church should be. Loving, forgiving, understanding.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t either of those things. It was decorum and embarrassment. It was social faux pas and false acceptance.

And it played a part in the escape Prime, Bumblebee and I eventually took from the church.

Worst Birthday Ever

Optimus Prime has a history of crapping out on me. The best example was when I was seven.

I was only allowed to have one friend over for my birthday that year. My parents said they couldn’t afford a party every year, so this was the compromise. Of course, I selected Prime. We were, after all, best friends.

On the day of my birthday, we were waiting for him to arrive. My parents had supper ready, and my cake sitting in the other room. My presents were there too, all that was missing was Prime. It started to get late, at least, later than we normally had supper. So I called.

Prime told me he wasn’t coming.

There’s this photo of me on my seventh birthday, looking up from my birthday cake with the most awful look of disappointment. In fact, I didn’t even have a piece of cake right away. I just went to my room.

This wasn’t the only time in our long friendship that he has done this. Many a time we have planned things only to have him crap out at the last minute. It is at times irritating, and at times depressing. We have argued about it, joked about it, but it really hasn’t changed much.

There is a slight variation now. It arose in the past eight years or so, around the time he was getting married. He just doesn’t commit to doing anything, and often outright turns me down.

Part of me understands. A wife, two kids, one brand new, a house, one car, a suburb far away from my apartment. It all makes it difficult.

But part of me thinks he’s a huge dick. I didn’t see him once between the time Wilma told me she was leaving and the time she left. That was two months. The night she told me, I called him, delirious, begging him to come and get me to do something, to talk me down. From a pay phone I called him. He didn’t. He said he couldn’t leave his wife with the kids. He tried to talk me down from the payphone, and it worked to a certain degree, but I still feel like he was a dick. For fuck’s sake, if you can’t come to the aide of your best friend when his fucking wife is leaving, when can you come to his aide?

It wasn’t until I talked to Minako about this that I saw another dimension to this whole thing. I could go to him. I know, it sounds stupidly obvious, but I always waited for him to invite me and when he didn’t, I invited him over, but he couldn’t come. So when I suggested I come over, on the bus, he agreed. He could drive me home, but he didn’t have to worry about juggling after-school pick-ups and car negotiations, etc.

And I finally got to see his brand new baby.

Sometimes I think I should just explode on him and call him a fucking dick for all the times he has ditched me all the way back to when I was seven, but then I think that I just have to accept things the way they are. I wish Prime was there for me when I needed him, I wish that we hung out more, but in the absence of that, I’ll take what I can get: an occasional lunch conversation, brief phone chats, and a rare visit to his house to play with his kids.

Critibot

I have a habit of being too critical. But it’s not because I think I’m better than everybody else, or think everybody else sucks, it’s because I’m worried about what other people think.

For example, my frequent critiques of Wilma were supposed to help her avoid the distain of her peers, not damage her self-esteem. I thought she was good at (most of) what she did, but I was worried what other people would think, so I constantly pointed out how she could improve.

This wasn’t restricted to my marriage. As far back as I can remember I was doing this.

I have known Optimus Prime since I started school. I criticized his singing, the jeans he wore, the way he talked to girls, the way he played baseball. Basically everything.

He remembers. Especially the jean thing. We were in my parents car, still preteens, extra sensitive about just about everything, and I told him that he should get some new jeans that were a brand name, like Levis or something. Mostly because I was extra paranoid about my own clothes. People made fun of my clothes when they weren’t brand names, so I begged and pleaded and cried with my parents to get brand names so people wouldn’t make fun of me (of course, back then, I didn’t cop to the last part). My Mom looked through second hand stores because she said she couldn’t afford brand name clothing (NOW I believe her).

Optimus Prime reminded me of this story when we were in University. He was crushed, but tried to shake it off. It hung over him for a long time.

The ironic thing is that he was the more popular one. He was charismatic. He had more girls pursue him. He did things I would never do because I was worried about what other people thought. And I could see flaws in what he did. But everybody else loved it. They lavished praise and affection on him. Of course, I was horribly jealous.

I have gradually learned that people are more forgiving and accepting than I gave them credit for, especially in social situations, especially if they like you. I have also learned that lots of people generally like me. Not quite the lavish affection and praise that Prime received, more like “he’s a nice guy” and occasionally “he’s a nice guy and he’s cute.”

Yet, every once in a while, the worry rears its head. Usually with hot buttons. I start to perceive strangers, others as threats, social threats, people ready to judge and damage and hurt. I clam up, and I try to take people I like with me. Try to protect them from the doom. Wilma seemed to excel at hitting those buttons.

It’s amazing how rarely they get pressed now that she’s gone…

Charismagic

Optimus Prime’s sister-in-law, Starscream, is getting married this spring. I used to have a crush on her (like every female I mention in here, it seems… I have a crush on every girl…) but Prime says I would no longer. Apparently, she is very very evangelical now. Into the whole Blessings thing. Not the Toronto kind, the self-help get-rich kind. He says she believes that if you pray a certain way for a certain amount of time, God will bring you blessings. Never mind trials and tribulations. Never mind the sick and the hungry. God just wants to bless people who pray the right way with material goods. That sounds about right.

But this brought up a deeper issue. Prime feels that the whole Charismatic movement is close to woo-loo-loo magic bullshit. Just like all “supernatural” experiences.

See, Prime has theory: if God exists, there is no reason for Him/Her/It to interact with human kind. God either created the world in such a way that it is already exactly as He (excuse my lapse into Pentecostal notions for the sake of brevity) wants it to be. That any interaction with human beings is more like a beacon God has set up. It send out the same message over again, and if we’re lucky, we catch bits and pieces from time to time. God doesn’t care where you go or what you do specifically. She (mixing it up) just knows the general guidelines for the best way to live since It created the Universe in the first place.

Or, Prime’s other theory is that God is not all powerful, and is someway prevented from intervening with the everyday life of human beings. This means that God is restricted by some higher law that He didn’t create. Raises a whole new series of interesting questions.

I'm not sure I buy either of Optimus Prime's theories, but I'm a lot closer to accepting them than I am to the idea of a God who sends encoded messages to people through animal noises or different languages.

Vineyard/Barnyard

Back in the early to mid 90s, something happened in Toronto that was a little bit different. At the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church, people started to do things like bark, cluck, roar, groan, laugh hysterically, squirm on the floor, all “in the Spirit.” Apparently, this was accompanied by a more intense interaction with God. It was labelled “the Toronto Blessing.”

People started to make up meanings for the different sounds. Like, if you roared like a lion, it was the lion of Judah, and if you clucked like a chicken, you were giving birth to something spiritually new. These sound extreme, but they were serious interpretations of what was going on. There were more moderate ones, but those ones didn’t get the press.

And there was press. The National, Time, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, and many more did stories on the Toronto Blessing.

My Pastor at the time wasn’t impressed. He did a four part series on why the “Toronto Blessing was inappropriate, citing verses from one of Paul’s epistles and using, what seemed to me, very faulty logic. After all, how can a church that believes in Speaking in Tongues and being “slain in the Spirit” have such a problem with these other things? My pastor did his best to base his argument on the Bible, and while I certainly wasn’t into the Toronto Blessing at the time, or any time, his arguments failed miserably in my eyes.

Meanwhile, across town, another church belonging to the PAOC was immersing themselves fully into the Toronto Blessing stuff. IT was know, to us, as the church people went to when they were pissed off at us. There had been a long, terrible relationship between the churches stemming all the way back to it’s beginning, and this only served to drive the wedge further between us.

Eventually, the Vineyard itself had enough. It booted the Toronto Airport Church out of the denomination, but it was careful not to discredit the supernatural happenings. It simply stated that the Toronto church was putting too much emphasis on the manifestations of the Spirit, and not enough on the other aspects of Christian life (ie. The Bible, fellowship, etc.)

By then, I was in journalism school, and I wanted to be a religion reporter. I trekked down to the local Vineyard church to get a local reaction. Most of them didn’t care. One person was particularly dismissive. This was Rock Zilla, and when I met him again a few years later we developed a strong friendship.

What I took away from the whole experience was this: unless you believe in the Bible as a literal, exclusive account of how God can interact with people (or some other document/credo), there is no concrete way to decide what is a spiritual experience and what is craziness. To make it worse, the experiences often seem to send contradictory messages or no message at all. So what you’re left with is a big jumble of different experiences that may or may not be spiritual, that may or may not have something to do with God, that may or may not mean something, and may or may not be a representation of a person’s loose grip on reality.

And since I have no firm theology or ideology with which to interpret them and sort them out, I have a “what the fuck?!” attitude toward all spiritual experiences now, including my own.

The Power of...

I have stood at an altar and been prayed for, one man in front and two behind. I have felt something well up inside me. I have felt my knees weaken and give out as I fell into the arms of those behind me.

I have stood at the altar alone and felt the same feeling well up inside me, and felt my knees buckle, and fell to the floor with no one to catch me.

I have lain on the floor for 45 mins, whispering secret prayers in a language unknown to me.

I have stood at the altar and felt someone push me more than once. Sometimes, a hand on the forehead, lightly, other times jerky. Still other times, I have felt someone push my shoulders back. And I have resisted and remained standing.

I have resisted the draw to go up to the altar in the first place, both before and after I gave up on Pentecostal Christianity because I have recognized the manipulative altar calls designed to guilt people into coming forward.

I have preached a sermon to a youth group and issued an altar call that would lead to several people coming forward, possibly employing the same guilt trips I later learned to despise.

I have prayed for a young man and felt something pass through me into him, and watched a feeling well up with in him, and his knees buckle as he fell into the arms of my best friend and my brother who were standing behind him. And I have been overwhelmed with the idea that God used me to give someone else this kind of intimate spiritual experience.

I have seen visions, or at least, imagined things that I thought were visions while kneeling at the altar and asking God for direction.

I have felt something on my forehead as I prayed at the altar, when there was nothing and nobody around, and have interpreted it as the finger of God touching me in some way.

I have watched people jump up and down as high as they can, spin around in circles, laugh hysterically, roll and moan on the floor. Sometimes I have laughed. Sometimes I have looked on in wonder. And sometimes I have looked on disapprovingly.

I have listened to several people who have told me they have had a word from God for me. Sometimes I have been humbled and encouraged. Others I have been confused and amused.

I have issued warning to specific people that I believe came from God.

I have been driven home from the grocery store by an old, bearded stranger after I secretly pleaded with God to provide some miraculous way of getting me home with all the food I had purchased.

I have walked aimlessly more than once and ended up in an unfamiliar church where something has happened that seemed particular to me, something that made me feel like God was still around and interacting with me.

I have felt God in the wind, in the heat from a fire, in the warm rain of the summer, in the kiss of a girlfriend, in the emptiness of a black night and in the brilliance of a single flame atop a candle.

I have questioned all of this, endlessly and have reached no conclusions. I can see logically, natural explanations for each of these things. Yet in each case, they seem unsatisfying and incomplete. Still, I cannot give myself over to the notion that these were all the doings of the God Pentecostals believe in. Or any God, for that matter. I am rooted, firmly, somewhere in the middle. Unsure of what to make of all these experiences, and content to let the mystery remain a mystery.

My First Publication

It started off as a free writing exercise connected to my novel. My prof. read it and suggested I edit it and submit it to an anthology she was working on. And it became my first publication.

Speaking in Tongues

I Was a Pre-School Racist

In Sunday School, all the kids would get together and sing songs to start, and then we would break up into separate classes based on our age group. I used to love singing Father Abraham, probably because I got to punch and kick the person beside me (usually a boy, often Optimus Prime) and blame it on the actions of the song.

There were a few times when I was late (due to running the halls of the Church no doubt) and I would have to sit up front, beside almost nobody.

And near the only two black kids in Sunday School.

They were sisters, and had a lighter complexion, close to that of molasses cookies. So, for some reason, I decided they smelled like molasses cookies, and when I did have to sit near them, I held my nose.

I don’t remember my parents having a chat with me about that, probably because I never told them. Somehow I grew out of it, without somebody explaining it was wrong.

The only connection I can think of was, years later, when there were many more people of African decent at the church, and my Grandmother was complaining about the perfume a particular Lady was wearing. She said black people wear it to cover up their smell. Apparently, my Grandmother thinks Black people have a smell.

Now, I do know that many of the recent African immigrants in the church came from a place where deodorant really isn’t an issue. As a result, many of those who have recently arrived, or refuse to conform, have strong BO. They see no problem with body odor. To them it is natural, healthy, and not unappealing, but often arousing.

(I think this because a friend who moved here from South Africa frequently ranted about how North Americans try to hide behind deodorant and perfume instead of letting their real smell loose).

But this wasn’t the phenomena my Grandmother was referring to. She just thought the smell had something to do with the colour of skin, not different cultural practices.

I ran into these sisters years later. At least, I think it was them. I worked with both of them on separate occasions.

I wonder if my early racism had any effect on them. If it was just a drop in the bucket, or if they even noticed. I wasn’t self aware enough to notice their reactions, and it was so long ago I wouldn’t be able to remember if I did.

I don’t think I will ask though. Some things are better left in the closet.

Saved!

I can no longer consider myself saved.

I did have a conversion experience, back when I was three. I don’t really remember it. Back then it would have been inviting Jesus into my heart and accepting him as my personal savior. I was taught that everybody sins, and that unless they said the sinner’s prayer, they were going to burn eternally in Hell.

It took my brother longer. He was five. I clearly remember pressuring him, and somehow it doesn’t feel like it was out of concern. It was more like… impatience. I knew he was going to do it eventually, I just wanted him to hurry up and do it.

My desire to Evangelize pretty much ended there. It didn’t seem right to peddle Christianity as after-life fire insurance for those who prefer not to burn, but at the same time, I couldn’t accept the fact that being a Christian made my life easier.

Then things fell apart. With the help of the questioning of Optimus Prime, and a few University classes here and there, I came to view Salvation as either illogical or cruel. Why would God create people who are predisposed to disobey rules, which He also created, and then punish those people when they do what they are predisposed to do? And to solve this problem, God manifests Himself as a man and punishes Himself in place of everybody else (because according to His own law, someone had to be punished)? Oh, but there’s a catch: you have to believe, truly believe that’s the way it is. With only an ancient document to guide you. If you don’t accept it, then you still get punished, and not just a regular old punishment, ETERNAL punishment.

How the fuck does that make sense? Either God is cruel, or that’s just not the way it is.

I chose the latter option.