Kernel of Truth

I left for the beach a little after 10 this morning. Today it’s a little warmer and we are back to a crystal clear blue sky. Although I must say I liked the wispy clouds yesterday. However, I like the brightness of this sky.

I get to the parking lot and Catalina looks close enough to reach out and touch. The ocean looks smooth and it is just a beautiful Fall day.

As I walk down the stairs to the beach, one thing stands out. The water looks really clear. I can see the scattered dark splotches in the water which are the rocks on the ocean floor. Most days, the ocean is just a solid blue (or whatever color the day’s light provides). When you can see the rocks through the water and especially when you can see them all over, it’s a good sign that visibility will be good.

When I get to the beach, the shore looks beautiful. The water is indeed super clear and as the very small waves build, you can see through them to the sandy bottom below.

As I walk into the ocean I find myself taken aback by both the cold and the beauty. I find myself saying, this is fucking cold and this is fucking beautiful in the same breath. It does feel a tad colder today. I am not surprised. With the longer nights and the 45 degree lows, it’s gotta cool things down.

I dive in and it is just amazingly beautiful and clear. I’d say this is the clearest day of the year (note that it is November). I dive down to get a better look at the floor and as I resurface I see a large school of fish hovering just below the surface.

There are a ton of fish today. I see large schools of silvery shiny Corbina, I see a couple lone Bass and a few Garibaldi. I also see a few fish that I can’t really identify. They are dark and medium-smallish.

The color really comes out in this clarity. Crops of green sea grass wave back and forth with the current. Purple moss clings to the rocks. The sand looks a light brown and sometimes almost white and the water is so so blue everywhere.

As the kelp waves it’s color is transformed from brown to green to orange to black.

I’m just finishing this book, Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer. Frank Schaeffer is the son of Francis Schaeffer of evangelical fame in the 70s and 80s. The book is Frank’s autobiography of growing up in fundamentalist Christianity with oddly eclectic and intellectual and almost hippyish parents. How he and his Dad helped to create the “Religious right” and how Frank saw the ridiculousness of it all and left. I find it super interesting.

A lot of the same characters are in this account as were in the Jesus and John Wayne book I read recently. Now the John Wayne book paints a pretty dark portrait of many of the founders of evangelical Christianity. This book certainly does not redeem them. It’s clear both Frank and his dad thought the Jerry Fallwells, Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons were cooky and down right mean. However this books adds some complexity to the mix in the figure of Francis Schaeffer. Almost anyone who moved inside of the evangelical movement of the 70s and 80s knows who Francis Schaeffer is. I faintly remember reading a couple of his books. I tried re-reading The God Who is There recently and just couldn’t get through it. To the vast majority of evangelicals at that time, one would assume that Frances Schaeffer was in cahoots with the other leaders of that movement. He shared a lot of the basic beliefs. He was anti-secular, anti-moral relativism, and very pro biblical inerrancy and pro life. However this book paints him as a sort of oddball and ill-fitting character in this mix who was super reluctant to join forces with the power hungry and super political evangelical leaders.

Frances Schaeffer and his family ran a sort of Christian commune in Europe where they tried to live as true followers of Christ. They opened their homes to young unwed mothers and other characters that many in the religious right would have ran from. He was very much into art and philosophy and he was a doubter. He was a real thinker.

I just find American Christianity from the 60s to 80s so completely fascinating. I’m certain the 90s and so on were interesting too but I left and am still catching up on what went on then. At any rate, you had all these core conservative beliefs rising up in the midst of so many totally different characters. In California you have the Chuck Smiths and John Wimbers and Lonnie Frisbees who would probably agree with the Dobson/Fallwell/Robertson crowd on many evangelical beliefs and would even show up on the 700 club if invited but they had a totally different vibe. Reading about this and living through some of it you may have had a sense that something new and exciting was happening. And by all means something right and correct. Growing up in this, I just assumed this is what Christianity is and always was and if you went somewhere where Christianity was much different then…well…it wasn’t really Christianity.

I think many people of my generation and geographic locality who grew up in the church just couldn’t imagine a Christianity that did not embrace inerrancy (the belief that everything in the bible is literally true). However if you look at Christian history on a global scale, this is a very small minority who embrace this view.

Frank Schaeffer talks about how later in life he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. He talks about finding a faith and spirituality that blended better with his own personal experience. He also mentioned how American Evangelicals practically invented the notion of salvation being a sort of single point in time event - a threshold one crosses. He says his experience of Eastern Orthodoxy approaches salvation as more of a journey.

When I heard this (I am listening and not reading the book), I thought, “hey that’s what I think and I thought I was on the fringe to believe it.” The idea of a single salvation event after a “sinners prayer” has never made sense to me and I can’t seem to identify it clearly in the bible either.

I feel like I am living with this constant tension with evangelicalism that I am kind of trying to resolve. I oddly find myself both repulsed and attracted to evangelicalism. I am repulsed because I just don’t share in many of its core beliefs. I am attracted by its passion, faith and yearning to engage with Jesus. I also think I am attracted to it because it feels kind of like home to me. It’s what I came from. Having left it I feel like I gained some perspective that maybe I can use someday to provide value to this group? Or at least certain individuals that struggle like myself with the clear cut, black and white, us and them portrayal of the world that often conflicts with lived experience.

I’m wrestling with faith every day. Who is God, Jesus, Satan and all of these other key figures of our faith. How do we make sense of them in light of conflicting ideologies that maybe we can’t so glibly say is out and out wrong. Maybe when we think about it, using the “Satan and his lies” argument to explain away every idea that contradicts what we grew up with but seems to have some appeal and make some actual sense is not a viable argument. However, when we look at our lives and the world around us, sure, there seems to be dark forces lurking about. This spiritual warfare language we like to use in evangelicalism seems to have a kernel of truth but often seems dressed in paranoia. Isn’t this the way with so many institutional and semi-institutional beliefs that corrupt? They take a kernel of something that is very very true and twist it and then we can’t seem to identify the twist.

I want to find the kernel of truth. I have faith it is there but perhaps my whole idea that shapes the definition of truth is ill founded. The idea of truth being over here and lies being everywhere else. Or the thought that truth can possibly exist as a set of ideas - especially ideas in the domain of the unseen. In the pursuit of this kernel, are we even looking for the right thing?

I feel drawn and compelled to seek Jesus because when I hear that name and read the gospels I see something worth reaching for. It’s not an idea or belief but seems like maybe more of a posture to hold or a horizon upon which to gaze. Who is Jesus, what is Jesus, why should I care, why does it seem so ridiculous sometimes especially when I think of some figure living in my own space-time with a face and a robe and nicely trimmed nostril hairs. Yet it feels so rich and real, like a wave of warmth, like truth when I stare into this clear clear water through the waves breaking on this beach.