After reading my essay on Sophrony and Jung, my sister sent me a link to a very good article over at the Steadfast Lutherans site entitled, Let Us Say Goodbye to Ladder Theology! It’s a good essay on grace from an anti-Pelagian perspective. It punctuates the issue I raised about our tendency toward do-it-yourself salvation.
I’ve not said a lot about Pelagius over the years, but this link gives me the opportunity to do just that. So you can expect an essay or two on Pelagius in the near future.
I’m currently reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Marlow, the narrator, is describing Kurtz, a mysterious central character who we haven’t even met yet, although we’re 2/3 of the way through the story:
Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
(And this post is written by somebody who used to live in Louisville!!!)
This summer a horse named Arrrrr! is running at Saratoga Race Track and listening to the announcer is hilarious. (The links are to YouTube videos, by the way.)
I first heard this first one on the Dan LeBatard radio show (and laughed until I had tears running). I replayed it for Brenda and she too laughed ’til she cried.
Here’s another one, which isn’t quite as funny (imo), but also includes “Blazing Buddha” and “Golden Goose Gut” running side by side with “Arrrrr!,” which is sort of amusing in and of itself.
This is eventually going to be an essay about the Orthodox Christian monk, Elder Sophrony, and one of the most famous sayings he ever uttered. But before we get to him, I need to put my ideas into context by commenting on the influence of Carl Jung in the modern world.
Jung might be described as the religious man’s psychologist and such a claim might seem odd to those who know him as a thoroughly secular thinker. The key to understanding this seeming contradiction is to understand, as I have explained earlier, that Western Christianity is essentially secular. This strong tendency toward secularism is a result of the embrace of the empirical world view that grew out of the Enlightenment. It was good at breaking things into smaller and smaller pieces but not good at putting them back together into a meaningful whole. Because of this lack of integration, Western Christianity has had a profound difficulty holding on to God’s deep and dappled presence in creation, resulting in a determined drift toward secularism.
And this “breaking apart” vs. “putting together” is the key difference between Jung and his mentor, Sigmund Freud. Freud approached the psyche scientifically and broke it into what he hoped would be understandable parts. Jung, after immersing himself in Freud’s method, recognized that in order to understand a human one had to understand him as a complete being. But Jung did not use the old Christian categories and methods to put the human psyche back together. Using unifying categories such as “archetypes,” “the collective unconscious,” and “synchronicity,” he was able to understand the human psyche in a manner remarkably similar to ancient religious traditions without all the religious baggage (ie, morality).
But in order to unify Freud’s disassembled parts, Jung had to become what I will call an “athlete of the mind.” I use this term because Christians who are very advanced in their Christian faith and have a profound understanding of the connection between the material and immaterial, or the spiritual disciplines and physical disciplines which together reveal reality and lead to divine union, were historically called “ascetics.” Askesis, in Greek is a term that refers to an athlete. Thus, the ascetics were spiritual athletes.
And the Christian monks and ascetics were not unique. Monks in other religious traditions, most especially in India, have advanced to remarkable religious levels, apart from Jesus Christ. Their severe disciplines have led them to understand the profound and inherent relationship between mind and body and the transcendence that is possible when the power of that relationship is tapped. Unfortunately those ascetic practices, because they are accomplished apart from Christ, do not lead to salvation (which is union with God in the context of the Body of Christ), although they do lead to integration within the individual, and often integration of the individual into the community.
What has become clear following the publication of The Red Book, Jung’s most private diary of his research from 1914 to 1993 (pub. In 2009), is that Jung was an athlete of the mind in a manner not unlike the Christian and Buddhist monks are spiritual athletes. The primary difference is that his asceticism was self-consciously secular, although it sought to plumb the depths of the connection between body, mind and spirit in order that a person might become integrated with himself as well as with the community (which, for Jung, was the rather bizarre world of archetypes and the collective unconscious).
It is also true that Jung’s way of viewing the world has become pervasive. Freud’s name may be the one associated with psychiatry; Jung’s methods, on the other hand, are the ones that have entered into our modern way of thinking and doing things. (The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, for instance, which is a direct application of Jung’s typologies, has become so pervasive and authoritative that even Brenda and I were required to take it by both the Bible College we attended and our marriage counselor in order to determine our suitability for each other in marriage.)
How did Jung plumb the depths of the human psyche? How did he come to know as much as he knew? Essentially (according to his own claim in The Red Book) he became psychotic in order to understand the limits, the depths, and the shape of the mind. In one of his most remarkable metaphors, describing this process of entering into psychosis without any assurance that he could return to normalcy, he said that the journey to hell means to become hell oneself.
And when I heard this metaphor for Jung’s own process of self-discovery, Elder Sophrony immediately came to mind. Elder Sophrony’s most famous saying (or at least the one with which the Western world is most enamored) is as follows:
A young monk came to Elder Sophrony and asked, “How will we be saved?” The elder was, at the moment, brewing some tea, and he said to the young monk, “Stand on the edge of the abyss and when you feel that it is beyond your strength, break off and have a cup of tea.”
This statement caused a great deal of trouble. [At this point I leave out part of the story for brevity.] When Sophrony later clarified his statement, he told the young monk, “Keep your mind in hell and despair not.”
The Orthodox world in the west has been all a-twitter with what Sophrony could possibly mean both in the original statement and his “clarification.” Search the internet with the words “sophrony” and “tea” and you will get dozens, possibly hundreds, of hits of people speculating on his enigmatic words. (And now, you can add my post to that list.)
The idea of dying to oneself, of the “dark night of the soul,” of the purposeful entry into our inmost being (which is where our most stubborn sins and wickedness resides) in order to root them out, confess them, and become Christ-like is as old as Christianity itself. But Elder Sophrony recast that idea into a context which spoke to the contemporary Western world. If anything in Orthodoxy could be described as “viral” it seems that this is certainly one contemporary “saying of the Fathers” that has gone viral and captured the imaginations of Orthodox Christians throughout the West.
What is it about these two statements that would lead them to go viral? I have pondered that question a lot since I first ran into the sayings five or six years ago. But then, when I heard the very secular Carl Jung (who lived at the same time and probably breathed the same intellectual air as Sophrony) offer up the nearly identical saying, I began to suspect a cultural connection.
Karl Menninger famously asked whatever became of sin. (It’s one of the most pernicious problems in pastoral counseling, by the way. Without a lively sense of sin – of which modern Americans mostly have none – no authtentic forgiveness and healing is possible.) I believe this is the very problem Carl Jung recognized a very long time ago and sought to address. Secular people may not believe in sin, but they still must journey to hell in order to become integrated. And what they will discover on that journey is that they are hell itself. Only when they (and we!) are able to make that insight can emotional and spiritual healing truly take place.
The Orthodox Church, because of its difficult contemporary history of persecution and marginalization never passed through Modernity in the same manner that the Western churches did. It remains an essentially pre-modern church. But in America a large percentage of Orthodox Christians are converts who are very much modern and post-modern people. No doubt it’s the very stability of Orthodoxy’s pre-modern perspective that is so attractive to post-modern people.
When Elder Sophrony couched a great historical truth of the spiritual life in this very modern framework (gazing into hell rather that contemplating one’s own sin), it struck a chord among converts (and contemporary Western people in general). The more traditional language didn’t have the urgency as this new way of offering up this truth.
But Sophrony’s saying, recast in the form it is, leaves me disturbed. He was speaking in a very specific context, as elder to monk. As monks, it was their goal to become Christ-like in an utterly profound way, which would involve entering into the very depths of darkness that Christ himself knew on the cross and in the grave in order to be prepared to receive the gift of Light. But that is very advanced stuff (which is probably why the young monk was so troubled by the saying).
For those of us who have not plumbed the spiritual depths as the monks of Mt. Athos have (and, as a result, are enamored and excited by the saying rather than troubled by it), it needs to be said clearly and emphatically that Christ is the one who went to hell on our behalf. He tasted death so that we could taste life; his darkness brings us to Light. If we journey to hell and back, if we “become hell” (Jung’s phrase), if we “stand at the edge of the abyss” (Sophrony’s phrase), we do it, not on our own, but only in Christ, for Christ and Christ alone is the one who took that journey so that we could be reconciled to God.
Of course that was not an option for Jung. He did not believe in Christ’s redemptive power. It was therefore incumbent on him to do it himself. His journey to hell and back in order to find emotional wholeness was ultimately an attempt at self-salvation. And this should give us, as Christians, pause. Are we enamored with Sophrony’s saying because it rings true to historic faith or are we enamored because it is a way of sneaking a bit of self-salvation into the Orthodox way? Self-salvation has always been a great temptation to Christians. It is the very nature of sin to want to rely on self and not become humble enough to accept help from others. I can’t help but wonder if gazing over the abyss before we have our “cuppa teal” is not a re-emergence of this ancient Pelagian heresy.
Don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not accusing Elder Sophrony of such a thing. But I am troubled that while the young monk was troubled by Sophrony, we are, instead, enamored with him.
One of the speakers at the Missouri River Conference we attended last weekend was Mike Lawson, formerly a historian for the National Park Service and currently a partner in a Washington DC public policy consulting firm, but best known for his book, Dammed Indians: The Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux (recently revised as Dammed Indians Revisited). It is shocking (although not surprising) how illegal the process was that led to the building of the five dams along the Missouri River in the Dakotas.
Americans, since the founding of the country, have always held the Constitution and the rule of law in high regard in principle, while generally holding them in contempt when they wanted to do something different. (It’s one of our quirks that so endeared us to Tocqueville.) Teaching American History I was shocked at the antics of the Washington administration during the Whiskey Rebellion. (If you weren’t paying attention during that class, it makes booth Homeland Security and Obama-care look quite civil.) And from that first administration the Constitution and rule of law increasingly became an afterthought culminating with the Jackson administration. (When I was teaching that chapter, the cadets worried I was going to pop a vein and keel over on the spot … although I suspect that they weren’t so worried about me, just that Steve Pollard, the math teacher across the hall, would see me on the floor and make them do pushups … but I digress.) And since Jackson, the constitution has often been considered a mere inconvenience — a speed bump on the path toward pet legislation.
But I was totally unaware of the Pick-Sloan legislation and numerous and sundry ways the Army Corps of Engineers dodged, not only constitutional requirements, but even the requirements of Pick-Sloan (which “dodged” the constitution … to put it politely … in the first place) in order to get the dams built.
All this was in the name of national necessity. (The 1952 Missouri River flood was a national disaster, after all. As we have learned in various wars and crises, most recently after Katrina and 9-11, no American government wants to waste a perfectly good disaster.)
It would be easy to be totally cynical about Pick-Sloan and the Army Corps of Engineers and simply group them in with that whole series of national projects which steam rolled everything from personal rights to personal property to constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. (And it is admittedly loads of fun to write cynical essays!) But in this case I find it hard to play the cynicism card.
Frequently the welfare of the group outweighs the welfare of individuals. And when that happens in a society which guarantees individual liberty it can become impossible to legally and constitutionally do the right thing.
NIMBY
(It stands for Not In My Back Yard.) It’s probably the primary reason we are so utterly incapable, as a nation, of doing significant public works. But in the 1950s, after a series of compromises and back-room deals, Pick-Sloan was passed and a few years later, dams began to be built.
It is unconscionable that we didn’t properly reimburse the people whose land and livelihoods we, as a nation, stole (the overwhelming majority of whom were native Americans). But, the fact that the government (and if the truth be known, it wasn’t the government, but a very small handful of visionary and energetic leaders, such as Pick and Sloan) muscled this project, that sought the good of the whole in spite of the protests of a whole host of individuals, through is breathtaking.
Who knew bureaucrats could do such good through means that were so detestable?
It gives me hope that we might get a pipeline through Nebraska before I die.
[This essay is a summary to date of my thinking on Classical Liberalism and the Church. I am writing this as a precursor to some thoughts about Carl Jung, which will come soon in another essay.]
The thesis in much of my recent writing under the category of “Liberty” has been twofold. First, American politics and religion are both inherently Liberal. This includes Republicans and the Tea Party; this includes Evangelicals and Protestant fundamentalists. What we call Conservatism in the modern era is simply a flavor of the Classic Liberalism (or “Jeffersonian Liberalism”) espoused most famously by John Locke and applied to theology (albeit, in a far less virulent form a generation prior) by John Calvin. As Wikipedia accurately describes it,
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets.
The second part of my argument has been that Classical Liberalism is an inherently secularizing philosophy (which constantly pressures Protestantism toward a secular form of religion). Unfortunately, “secular” is completely the wrong word to use in this context, but I know of no other term which can more adequately bear the burden of what I’m trying to say.
The classic Judeo-Christian way of thinking involves certain assumptions that make Christianity what it is. Without those assumptions, Christianity becomes something rather different than what it ought to be. Among those assumptions are a belief that the interior life of a person is real and capable of doing remarkable things and that there is an inherent link between what has come to be called our spiritual and physical existence. Our material existence (the body) can affect and change our spiritual existence for good or ill. Conversely, our spiritual existence can affect and change our material existence. And finally, among those assumptions is that just as there is an indissoluble link between material and spiritual, so there is an indissoluble link between the one and the many, or the individual and the community.
Our very humanity, our personhood, is not defined only by our material and spiritual aspects, but also by our communal aspect. A person who has cut himself off from all community is less than a person in the classical sense. One might say that a disconnected person has reverted to an aspect of their animal nature.
But Classical Liberalism brings all these relationships (material/immaterial, material/communal, and immaterial/communal) into question. Elsewhere I have traced the secular philosophies rooted in the Enlightenment to Christian practices. Here I will simply highlight the following.
First, Protestants don’t trust ascetical practices. The idea that fasting is not only an interesting and helpful suggestion but an actual necessity for spiritual growth is nearly always dismissed as a form of works religion. I would argue that this reaction to ascetical practices is not so much rooted in a fear of works salvation as it is a bifurcation of the material and immaterial world. It assumes that salvation is primarily spiritual, not physical (as if those two realms can be separated!).
Second, Protestants don’t trust the tradition. I have frequently called this the Berean Heresy. (See, Acts 17:11, where the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonicans because not only did they receive the word, they “examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”) Protestants typically believe that a truth from scripture cannot be truth unless it is verified by my own personal study. In this manner, the individual is set as judge over the community and the whole idea that the Holy Spirit reveals himself to the community rather than the individual (Mt. 18:20) is rejected in favor of a privatistic interpretation of scripture. This is a break between the immaterial person (the mind) and the community.
Third, there is a break between the material person and the community. Protestants (and American Catholics!) tend not to trust outside authority. Our churches are volunteer organizations with no real authority over members. Creeds, confessions, and statements of faith tend to be suggestions rather than iron-clad requirements for membership. And while many denominations have some sort of authority structure, the idea of a bishop as the divinely appointed protector of the faith is anathema.
Because of the bifurcation (or in this case, the trifurcation) of the material, immaterial, and communal existence, contemporary Western Christianity is not whole or complete. It is in this sense that I use the word “secular.” Contemporary Christianity goes about its religious practices viewing reality in much the same way as her secular counterparts.
This breakdown is secular, not only because it is incomplete, but because it undermines our perception of the very activity of God in the world. How does God speak to us? Contemporary Christians embrace the idea that God speaks to me, to my heart, that he reveals his will to me. But what if the Bishop said I was supposed to do something that I didn’t want to do? Would that be God speaking? What if I believed I was called to be a pastor, but the church (the congregation or the presbytery, etc.) said I wasn’t qualified? Would I accept that as the voice of God, or would I go find another group more amenable to my personal revelation? The very fact that we ask the question at all belies the fact that we do not trust the community, only our own inner heart.
Our trifurcation (the breaking apart) of material, immaterial, and communal means we distrust the very presence and voice of God in its completeness. In that sense, we are a thoroughly secular religious tradition.
One of the other results is that we fail to appreciate the fullness of our humanity. The human mind, apart from God, is capable of incredible things and can even influence and change the physical world. Because of the Western distrust of the non-material this inherent ability of the non-material person is questioned in both science and religion. But Christians can’t so easily dismiss the spiritual world, so this power is often dismissed as demonic.
And yes the world of spirits, both fallen (demons) and unfallen (angels) is real. But so is the spiritual aspect of humans. One of the products of the secularization of the Western church is the incredible diminishing of our humanity because of our tendency to relegate all powerful or materially significant spiritual activity to angels and demons.
Ah, but aren’t we spiritually dead? Aren’t we incapable of all these things except through the Holy Spirit’s life within us? The classic Christian tradition claims that spiritual death is separation, not annihilation. The death of spirit means that it is subject to corruption because it is cut off from God. But even though it can no longer function to its full capability, because it is corrupt (ie, rusted, like iron is corrupt with that most power solvent, oxygen, and becomes mixed with iron oxide, or rust, and thus weakened), it is still a powerful force.
In this sense, even though cut off from the true God and true religion, the monks of Nepal can do astounding things, not because they are controlled by demons, but because they are not secular and understand the profound relationship between the material and the immaterial.
This is why a careful definition of terms is so critical to understanding the failures of Protestantism, Evangelicalism, Protestant Fundamentalism, and the Western Church in general. We are all Liberals. We have all been liberated from responsibilities of the classical world view and are now free to do as we see best without the burden of ancient rules and customs and without the meddling of other people in our lives. In the process of gaining the ephemera of freedom, we have lost the Body, and in losing the Body, we have lost many of the facets of our connection to God himself. We have been reduced to a largely secular religion.
So, just how big was that 2011 flood of the Missouri River? Well there are many different ways to measure it. For instance, the flood on the lower Missouri (let’s say from the mouth of the Platte River — Plattsmouth, NE and south) started in late winter/early spring because of high water in tributaries below all the dams on the Missouri River. Rulo, Nebraska and northern Missouri flood almost every year because of water from the James, Big and Little Sioux, Platte, and Nishnabotna Rivers, which are all below the last dam on the river, and are therefore beyond the possibility of traditional flood control. (And this, by the way, is why the Corps was not at liberty to release large amounts of water to empty to reservoirs in March and April — southern Nebraska and northern Missouri were already experiencing significant flooding which would have been seriously exacerbated if the Corps would have lowered the reservoir levels.
So, let’s narrow it down and ask, how big was the flood on the Upper Missouri River (that would be Threeforks, MT to Sioux City, IA)? The USGS has records for the last 113 years and 2011 is the biggest runoff on record by a large margin. The 2011 runoff was 246% larger than normal.
But there’s more. Let’s just consider the ten weeks from early May to late July of 2011. If those ten weeks alone are compared to previous full years, only ten full years had runoffs that exceeded those ten weeks of 2011.
In June 2011 alone, 14.8 million acre feet (MAF) entered the upper Missouri River. The previous monthly record was April 1952 when 13.2 MAF entered the upper Missouri.
One Million Acre Foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre of ground to the depth of one foot. I can’t conceive of that, much less 14.8 million of them.
But of course all that rain and snow melt had little to do with the flood of 2011. We all know it was actually the fault of the Corps of Engineers.
Brenda and I attended a conference about the Missouri River at Ponca State Park this weekend. One of the presenters (and his cohorts) deserves to be called out. His talk was based on a paper entitled, “Dynamics of plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides) forests and historic landscape change across the upper Missouri River, USA, Environmental Management,” published in 2010.
The study that led to the publication of this paper was initiated and funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) back in the days when the bald eagle was still on the endangered species list. Congress has told USACE that they can bring no further harm to any endangered species in their management of the Missouri River. (In other words, they have to take endangered species into consideration as part of their logic for when and how they will release water from the six major reservoirs along the Missouri River.)
As part of their mandate they asked for input on the impact of the river management on bald eagles. One of the studies that the USACE paid for in full was done by the following people:
The study is quite fascinating, and I suspect the results of the study will be quite helpful as policy decisions are made in the years after the 2011 flood along the Missouri River. One of the things they found is that if the river is managed in such a way that cottonwood forests are encouraged to thrive, the chances of massive destructive floods are reduced. That seems like a good thing to me.
But we taxpayers paid millions for this study specifically because of a mandate to study bald eagles. This study was proposed and carried out under the umbrella of bald eagle research.
Of course, early in the study the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list, so the urgency of the study was lost. (But the research went on!)
The study focused particularly on the transformation of cottonwood forests along the banks of the Missouri into more durable hardwood forests. Among the findings is that cottonwood forests support woodpeckers, ovenbirds, and certain songbirds while hardwood forests support Bell’s vireos and other songbirds. Because of how the Missouri River has been managed over the last fifty years, cottonwood forests are declining while hardwood forests are thriving. As a result, woodpecker and ovenbird populations are declining while Bell’s vireo populations are increasing.
After the paper was presented I asked, “How does the decline of cottonwood forests affect bald eagle populations?”
In one of those “You can’t make this stuff up” moments, Professor Mark Dixon got this deer-in-the-headlights look in his eye and said, “You know, that would be a good question to study.” He admitted that they never actually considered bald eagle populations in the study and that the study itself didn’t easily apply itself to bald eagle populations. It was much more applicable to song bird populations.
In fairness this gang of merry money spenders more recently received a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant for a study entitled, “Projecting Long-term Landscape Change along the Missouri River: Implications for Cottonwood Forests and Songbird Populations, Plains and Prairie Potholes Landscape Conservation Cooperative.” So they are specifically capitalizing on the songbird connection, but I think we the taxpayers should demand that Dixon, Johnson, Scott, Bowen, and Rabbe return their millions of dollars (out of their own pockets!) from this study, which was foisted upon us as a bald eagle study.
And finally, the moral of the story: University professors would likely go extinct without massive federal funding and protection. The American Bald Eagle is quite capable of taking care of itself – cottonwoods or no cottonwoods … professors or no professors … government grants or no government grants.
Note: It turns out that this essay is part two of an earlier essay about the Gospel of Mark. I wrote that essay as a stand-alone, but after the essay was done, my mind kept working.
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I’ve been pondering Thomas, who doesn’t come off too well in John’s gospel. He’s presented as the guy who never quite puts all the pieces together. He ultimately believes but in the process shows himself to be a day late and dollar short (which is why Thomas Sunday is a week after Resurrection Sunday).
When Jesus says he’s going to the Jerusalem suburbs to visit Lazarus (and ultimately raise him from the dead) … in spite of the fact that the Jerusalem religious leaders are trying to kill Jesus … Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (Jn 11:16). When Jesus says “You know where I’m going” (ie, back to his Father), Thomas says, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going; how can we know the way?” (Jn 14:5).
And of course there’s the most famous Thomas story … or actually an absence of Thomas story. Jesus appears to the apostles right after his resurrection (Jn 20) but Thomas is absent. He says he will not believe that Jesus is risen from the dead unless he can see him for himself and examine the wounds. The next Sunday (what we now observe as Thomas Sunday) Jesus appears to the apostles again with Thomas present. Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not be faithless, but believing. … Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (Jn 20:26f).
Thomas’s doubt and lack of insight point to an important characteristic of the Church that wouldn’t be obvious and probably wouldn’t be celebrated if it weren’t for his bumbling. Part of the strength of the Church is that certain members are weak. I think it’s safe to say that Thomas wasn’t a cynic, just a slow learner. He did finally confess Jesus as “my Lord and my God,” after all. But unlike certain other apostles who seemed to grasp the truth of the matter immediately, Thomas required both time and help to work things through before arriving at the truth of the matter that others grasped immediately.
This dynamic of struggling with the truth, of being seemingly dense to ultimate reality, balances out the dynamic of immediate insight and flashes of brilliance. The quick learners are there to bring everyone else along while the slow learners are there to keep the Church from running ahead of itself.
A similar example is the community at Corinth. They failed to understand many fundamental Christian principles and Paul’s corrections of their failure now serve as the basis for our own sorting out of these difficult questions. If Paul never would have written those letters, the Church would be poorer and weaker for it.
In this sense the Apostle Thomas and John Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark, are quite similar. They both fall short of completion or perfection; they are still on the Way toward the final Truth. And precisely because of their imperfections the Church is far more rich and complete (dare I say, because of their imperfections the Church can be perfect?). Even though the Gospel of Mark isn’t the last word on the Good News of Jesus (as I wrote about in the previous post), his perspective of terror and failure have provided great comfort and understanding to countless generations of Christians who might have otherwise thought they were spineless and thus unworthy to be part of the Church. Similarly, Thomas’s doubts have given strength to countless generations whose faith has been weak in the face of uncertainty.
A perfect church, aside from being totally annoying to be around, would be a weak and ineffectual church. It would have little ability to empathize with the larger community because it wouldn’t face the same troubles. Likewise, when true persecution or trouble come along it would not be prepared for such unexpected things. Our greatest strength, as the Body of Christ, is the fact that more often than not we don’t get it right the first time. Mark’s Gospel isn’t complete without Luke and Matthew; the flip side is that the struggle that leads to the joy of Luke and Matthew wouldn’t be very clear without Mark.
Similarly, the Easter joy of the apostles could possibly be written off. (In today’s psychologically driven world we might blame the strain of the day or lack of sleep … or, if we dip into Mark … the sheer terror of events.) But when the whole scene is repeated a week later, after the immediacy has worn off a bit, the resurrection is reaffirmed by the hold-out, Thomas. Just as Matthew and Luke need Mark, so Easter needs Thomas Sunday in order for its glory to be grasped.
Christ is risen! Indeed, he is risen! … except, now we can say it without sleep deprivation. It’s no longer just an excited verbal ejaculation. It has become an article of authentic faith.
When I got up this morning and looked at the current temps in the various cities I am interested in, it was warmer in Fairbanks, AK (34°) than in South Sioux City, NE (32°).