Waves and Culture

Waves and Culture

Frequently the events of the day cause my faith to sputter. My beliefs and my values clash with those of others in society. Someone once pointed out, “We live in a culture like a fish lives in the sea. We’re blissfully unaware of our surroundings.” But right now everyone is highly aware of their surroundings, and we are not very happy with them.

We are quarantined. I think, “I didn’t volunteer for wearing a mask, confinement at home, tracking the deaths of over 50,000 people, or wondering if there will be a repeat performance of Covid-19 six months from now.” Perhaps it has to do with my immersion in what is going on around me. Anxiety pervades our country; people are tired of being cooped up at home, many unable to work, restaurants closed, no amateur or professional sports, church on zoom (much better than no church at all). And that doesn’t touch on the tremendous challenges faced by critical care hospital and nursing home workers, nor the patients they serve.

I can imagine culture in the form of a landing net on a WWII troop carrier. Lay the net flat on the ground. Stand in one of the open squares. Let the square define a culture of which you are a part and to some extent you understand. 

It could be Western or Asian culture. Many people in each of these societies share broadly similar histories and lifestyles. It could be Buddhist or Palestinian or Native American. It could be Black or Hispanic. It could be one of several geographical US cultures. Numerous maps and charts have been designed in an effort to portray regional similarities and differences. 

It is when you step into a different part of the net that difficulties can arise. I. could move from the Left Coast to another area. I was raised near Detroit and have vacationed frequently in Wisconsin. I lived in Chicago and attended seminary there. Later our family moved to Cleveland. I could be comfortable in Yankeedom without much effort. 

Yet I know from experience I would be woefully unaware of many linguistic and culinary customs in Greater Appalachia. I might also encounter a communal suspicion about my reasons for being there. We once took a church youth group from Cleveland to work on a mission project in Kentucky, and we got lost near Harlan. I decided to ask for directions at a small log cabin store on a dirt road. When we walked in the door we noticed large animal traps, high caliber guns, and double compound bows. They were  hanging behind the counter, which was stacked with ammunition. The proprietor asked in a slow drawl, “And just what are you boys doin’ here?” At the moment I wondered that myself.

But truthfully I could experience the same disquiet at home, be just as culturally adrift here on the Left Coast. If I met someone who had a marijuana enterprise (those businesses are prolific in Oregon) my personal values would be challenged immediately. At one point in my past that would not have been true, but my life has changed. Now I might be friendly toward that person, but I doubt we could ever agree on what constitutes a moral occupation or become close companions.

I share a similar discomfort in the company of some who are either extremely wealthy or dreadfully poverty-stricken. I remember having breakfast in a hotel dining room with an affluent parishioner.  He had invited me and we had – I’m serious -  two forks apiece and real linen napkins. After an hour I asked him if he wanted me to go check the parking meter on his car. I said, “I don’t want you to get a ticket.”

He said, “Parking tickets are only $15.00. I’d never worry about that.” I thought, well, I would. I was also hoping he wouldn’t expect me to pay for breakfast. 

Likewise I have frequently attempted in the course of my pastoral ministry to offer support to poor or homeless individuals. Sometimes I have done well, at others not so much. I have often felt ill-equipped to decide whether a person with no resources should receive money from the church, or out of my emotional league to care about that person deeply without judging them or seeing them as a recurring burden. At times it has been gratifying to offer help and encouragement. Likewise it has been frustrating when I’ve felt like I was being manipulated.

The question I struggle with here is how my faith in Christ can guide me through the several encounters I have with others when my beliefs and values are diametrically opposed to theirs.[1] Right now I straddle the ropes of the landing net that divide American Baptists and progressive Quakers. It’s easy for me to take part in both of those worlds. We regularly attend a church connected with one or the other denomination. But I’m adrift with the religious reasoning of right-wing anarchists and narcissistic anti-immigration bureaucrats. I’m especially uncomfortable with self-proclaimed “Christian evangelicals” who are attempting to build a white authoritarian society, or with politicians whose goal is to provide more and more profit for large businesses. I may exist in the same geographical space with them, but we are several times removed when it comes to our values.

I believe deeply in the peaceful resolution of conflict, fair legal treatment of minorities, the welcoming of immigrants, and government provision of adequate food, housing and medical treatment for those with negligible income. For me those are inarguable Biblical values. Where does it leave a person trying to be faithful when Christ’s salvation is intended to encompass the entire world[2]- the whole net, if you will - and yet you can’t relate to some of the people in your own cultural vicinity? It challenges me. But I’m somewhat reassured knowing this was the plight of the first followers of Jesus.

Ultimately,” or so H. Richard Niebuhr wrote as early as 1929, “the problem of church and world involves us in a paradox; unless the church accommodates itself to the world, it becomes sterile inwardly and outwardly; unless it transcends the world, it becomes indistinguishable from the world and loses its effectiveness no less surely.” ^[3]

Niebuhr has been roundly criticized over the past 90 years for his inability to cover all the theological bases that deal with Christ and culture. But I can resonate with him. How does one prevent inward and outward sterility of faith when the church clashes with the world? What I have been taught, and what I have frequently taught others, is that God is constantly present, caring for us, loving us, suffering with us when necessary. Niebuhr went on to state, 

The rhythm of approach and withdrawal need not be like the swinging of the pendulum, mere repetition without progress; it may be more like the rhythm of the waves that wash upon the beach; each succeeding wave advances a little farther into the world with its cleansing gospel before that gospel becomes sullied with the earth.[4]

The world is a big place, and its beach is expansive. To keep one’s own faith unsullied in the midst of it we begin by inviting those waves to wash over us, individually and communally. Granted it is a much smaller beach than the one possessed by the world, but the waves wash over us nonetheless. The gospel is still a cleansing gospel.

Part of our evidence for God’s constant presence is the existence of a beautiful earth, the love of others, and our love for them. But it is more than that. Our relationship is initiated by God and it calls for a response, in this case having the conviction that God’s Spirit is always with us. The response is to be “joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer.”[5] The strength of the “cleansing gospel waves” is in the hope they contain. Hope in Christ is much more than an idyllic dream. It is the certainty of well-being that arises unbidden within us when everything is out of sorts. It is the assurance framed by the teachings and actions of Jesus, by the confessions and deeds of the saints. Or as the Apostle Paul put it, “Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”[6]

Michael Sayler

April, 2020

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[1] With thanks ti Howard Macy and Johan Maurer

[2] John 3:17 NIV

^[3] Diefenthaler, Jon. The paradox of the church and the world. Selected writings of H. Richard Niebuhr. 2015, Kindle Edition.

[4] Ibid

[5] Romans 12:12

[6] Romans 5:5 NIV

Remembering Jacob Bayer

In his collection of short stories, The Pacific, Mark Helprin dutifully records the experiences in 1913 of Jacob Bayer who, while walking, came upon the town of Koidanyev in White Russia, where he was denied entry by sentries on the road. They explained to him that no travelers were permitted because first if all, Koidanyev was already overpopulated and second of all, visitors only wanted to enter so they could take away some of the wealth of the current residents (since all of the current residents were extremely wealthy.) Jacob denied wanting or needing any wealth and was finally allowed entry on the condition that when he departed he would give half to the sentries of anything he took with him.

Upon arrival in Koidanyev he found the sentries had spoken truthfully. The town was overflowing with rich people who had indoor plumbing, electric lights, English clothing and German typewriters. They did not study, nor did they have active rabbis, nor did they have Torah or Talmud, all of which they had left behind. Instead they were enamored with, no, infatuated with, no, truly worshipped, the telephone. The telephone had made them wealthy beyond measure and now the idea of it and the subject of it consumed their activities and their conversations. Everyone constantly talked on the telephone. The telephone had, in fact, been willingly invited to usurp the position of God.

Halprin’s story is reminiscent of Israel in the Sinai, who when Moses absented himself on the mountain for 40 days to receive God’s commandments, became anxious, forgot about God leading them out of Egypt, and constructed their own god out of precious metal and jewelry, a golden idol that they proceeded to worship in place of God. They denied making it. “We threw in our gold and out popped this calf.”

Later Israel was on the verge of entering Canaan, a most fertile land, where Moses feared they would be tempted to forget the covenant and believe they could manage, without YHWH, on their own. In their anxiety, having been stranded in the desert without food or water, they had already made a glistening idol. As Walter Brueggemann points out, “’God-making,’ amid anxiety is a standard human procedure.”[1]

What anxiety could have prompted the people of Koidanyev to make a god out of telephones? Perhaps they had concluded that the goal of life is to acquire and acquire.[2] If the telephone is, indeed, the sole vehicle for such acquisition, then it should indeed be worshipped. Why worship a God you can neither see nor remember when a tangible god is always present?

Having written Jacob Bayer and the Telephone in 2004, one wonders if Helprin was drawing a parallel between the telephone and the internet. The people of Koidanyev imagined, “It will be possible for a child to be born in his home, delivered by a doctor telephoning from Burma or Buffalo, for him to have books read to him on the telephone, friends by telephone, and to have all his clothing and food brought to him … In hundreds of years, perhaps, telephones may not even need wires.”[3]

But it hasn’t taken a hundred years. And so here we are. Yet we are not accumulating more like the citizens of Koidanyev. We are counting not our gains, but our losses.

We are losing lives. Thousands of people are dying daily for lack of adequate medical care and the absence of testing and a vaccine for Covid-19. We suppose if we are fortunate either a cure or a serum may be ready in two years. 

We are losing our financial system. Most retail stores and restaurants are closed if not out of business, and groceries are only employing surrogate shoppers to gather food from store shelves and deliver it to our car or our doorstep. The economy is teetering on the edge. Oil is valued today at $-35.00 per barrel. Over fifteen million people in our country are out of work and are receiving minimal, if any, financial support. Mortgages and rent are going unpaid, and one suspects the banks are waiting in the wings to seize delinquent properties that they can resell at a profit when the financial tides turn.  

We are losing land. While it has no apparent connection to this virus, we are losing the battle with climate change. Ocean reefs are dying. The sea level is rising. Storms occur that are more ferocious than before. Waves are lapping over the Outer Banks and the islands of the Caribbean and the low places of the South Pacific. No great efforts are being made to slow the advance.

We are losing diversity for the sake of a cleansed culture. Immigrants are being denied entrance to the country. It is said by the government and by a racist advisor in the current administration, who lives in the fetid bowels of the White House, that they import crime and carry disease and take away jobs. We may make an exception for “necessary workers” who can be employed for minimum wages. It is a Nazi’s dream.

Jacob Bayer asked the people of Koidanyev, “Where are the children?” He received no answer. But we know where many of our children are. They are living in poverty with no food and often no shelter. And we know where some of the immigrant children are. We are keeping them locked up, out of the reach of social services or medical care. Or we have deported them with no supervising adults. We are losing our children.

Two topics of conversation prevail. One is how to maintain social distance that will minimize viral contamination. The other (usually at odds with the first) is about when we can forgo isolation and quarantine and get back to the urgent task of buying and selling, experiencing profit and loss, making certain that people who don’t have much can continue supplying the daily needs of those who believe they require much. Some government leaders have suggested that we should sacrifice the elderly and the weak to return to economic normalcy. There are, after all, larger barns to build. But we need to return to the holy business of commerce.

One of my vivid memories from the days after 9/11 comes from walking down the streets of Colorado Springs and noticing that people, myself included, were gathered on the sidewalk, on street corners, in front of televisions seen through the windows of sports bars, beside parked cars, all strangers to each other but magnetically drawn, absorbing in silence a shared grief and shock and anxiety. We are herd animals, wanting to gather in the face of not knowing what is happening or what tomorrow will bring.

Communal gathering has been taken away, despite the loud protests of a distinctly small minority. It has even been denied to the practice of worship. Most churches, with the exception of some led by rather angry anti-isolationist pastors, have been divested of the ability to observe the ritual and tradition of communal prayer and encouragement. That doesn’t mean social distancing is bad. It simply means it has been seen as a necessary choice.

But perhaps the greatest loss isn’t gathering with strangers, but meeting with friends and loved ones. Some because they have died. Others because they are ill. And still others because physical interactions have been determined out of bounds.  It is a grievous loss when relationships are deemed too dangerous to maintain. 

But we haven’t lost the internet. We simply have been reduced to depending on it. Who could have imagined?

When Jacob Bayer attempted to persuade the populace of Koidanyev that the telephone was not God, and that the pulse of life was found in the covenant and not in shimmering wires, he was summarily scolded, belittled, and escorted out of town (having acquired, not surprisingly, nothing during his stay). But before he departed the mantle of prophecy fell on him, and while he couldn’t discern details, he predicted phones would disappear and that Koidanyev would be reduced to smoke, rubble, and ashes in the near future. People heatedly cried out that this was impossible. But three years later the city would be destroyed in a world war.

Unimaginable to them at the time. Nor can we imagine the disappearance of the internet. What would happen (not to sound negative) if we lost it? I have no idea whether or when it could happen. I can imagine how. Electric power diminishes because managing workers die. Hackers overwhelm the system and make it unusable. Satellites, for one reason or another, drift out of orbit. Hunger riots drive us from our homes. If the internet is where our treasure is, what if the treasure disappears? And are our assumptions so very different from Koidanyev’s after all?

We  walk a tightrope not between faith and despair, but between faith and problem solving. Moses’ admonition upon entry to the Promised Land wasn’t to ignore the potential prosperity of Canaan, but to remember all that YHWH had done. Not to overlook opportunities to avoid personal and communal poverty, but to recall the exodus from slavery, the crossing of the sea, and the journey through the desert, because YHWH had accomplished these things in their lives. Likewise we are blessed, and also capable of addressing illness and high water and relational poverty. We are invited to maintain an attitude of plenty in the midst of supposed scarcity, and memory in the midst of forgetfulness.

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[1] Brueggemann, Walter. Sabbath as resistance. P. 35.

[2] Ibid, 38.

[3] Helprin, Mark. The Pacific. P.288