CLIMBING THE WALLS

Years ago, while working a summer office temp job, I met a guy who had just graduated from a mainline theological school (this was before I had even thought of going to one myself). We hit it off immediately.

But we disagreed (amicably) on certain theological matters. He had been taught, for instance, that the main mission of the church was to address the injustices implicit in the outward structures of society – in short, the Social Gospel.

Partly because I was a child of the 60s, I wasn’t buying it. I had learned to question the reliability of such “worldly” solutions and instead sought to delve into the soul in search of life’s deeper meanings.

My prior search, defined mostly by the urgencies of the counterculture, had led to its inevitable dead-end. In its aftermath, I began exploring other avenues of enlightenment. I became interested in psychology and philosophy; then, finally, biblical Christianity.

Continue reading “Champagne Dreams and Caviar Wishes”

In a recent interview, Richard Werner, the noted economist who, among other things, coined the term “quantitative easing,” tells the story of how Deng Xiaoping, shortly after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, went to Japan hoping to learn from their economists how to fix China’s then moribund economy.

According to Werner, Deng was asked if he wanted the “official” version of the truth or the “real” one. Having spent considerable time in Japan, Werner notes that the Japanese as a people are remarkably honest and eager to speak the unvarnished truth. Yet their culture, curiously, demands two separate versions of the truth.

Werner goes on to suggest that one of the reasons Japanese businesspeople spend so much time together after work, often in bars and restaurants, is that the “real” truth can be spoken, rather than the “official” version required at the office.

Continue reading “Discomforting the Comfortable”

Above is the cover of a book written by Hiroo Onoda, the fabled Japanese WWII soldier who was sent to fight in the Philippines in 1944 but didn’t surrender until 1974, nearly 30 years after the war’s conclusion.

His dogged stance strikes me as symbolic of much conventional wisdom today. That is, we focus exclusively on the ephemeral ideas of the last few decades that only seem new, but that’s shelf life has come and gone. In much the same way as our blinkered hero, Onoda, we seem neither willing nor able to perceive, much less reorient to, life’s innate dynamism. (And don’t get me started on the underlying structural clarity of existence, both moral and spiritual.) We’re determined to fight tired old battles, all the while pretending they’re the wave of the future.

Which is ironic given that all I’ve heard over the last few decades is how we all must change. It’s our age’s official dogma.

Continue reading “The Long and Unending 20th Century”

While attending church not long ago, I listened to a retired, genuinely earnest preacher make a curious point.

First, he referenced the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who stressed the importance of asking questions. With this in mind, the preacher then went on to boldly assert that all declarative sentences (i.e., those that don’t pose questions) presume perfect knowledge and thus rob us of any sense of mystery (“epistemic closure?”).

Later in the sermon, he reminisced about the Episcopal church in the early days of his ministry, back in the 60s. He talked about how it had been a thriving enterprise back then and how much it had meant to him.

He then offered this sad refrain. The average attendance, he said, on any given Sunday in the Episcopal church today, is only about 40 worshippers. He expressed sadness at this, noting how tragic it is.

But then came the coup de grâce: “How have things come to this?” he asked, altogether innocently.

Continue reading “Paleofuturism”

It was unquestionably a “high” moment in American life, captured perfectly by the above-pictured ad for the General Electric exhibition at New York’s 1964 World’s Fair.

My memories of the event are decidedly dim. In fact, the only thing I do recall is arriving with my family to a huge line of people waiting outside to get in. But because my father had authored much of the content of the GE exhibition (something I found out only after he had died), we were ushered in ahead of everybody. I remember this especially since, as a kid, I’d never experienced anything like it before.

I was 13 at the time, having been born in 1951, right in the middle of the post-WW2 baby boom. Little did I know that soon the secure, confident, forward-looking world I was living in, which seemed destined to last forever, would be shaken to its foundations by a sudden and powerful cultural earthquake.

Continue reading “Toward the Sunlit Uplands”

The old adage seems apt: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And, as it turns out, utopian ones at that.

The emergence of Progressivism began in earnest around the turn of the 20^th century. It was, in general, a secular version of an earlier Protestant movement known as the Social Gospel.

The Social Gospel sought to Christianize society’s institutions based on the fanciful notion that Christ’s Second Coming would not happen until we humans first eliminated all of society’s ills (postmillennialism).

These ills included economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, lack of unionization, poor schools, and the dangers of war – of which there was no small shortage.

Continue reading “The Rise and Fall of Progressivism”

[N.B. This is a reprint of my post from October 5, 2019 entitled “Luxury Beliefs” that struck me as pertinent to the recent 2024 election.]

T.S. Eliot famously made the point, though he was hardly the first. One could go back to the New Testament reference to the “body of Christ,” Paul’s metaphor for the church.

Like the human body, the church has a head, hands, and all the other varied parts that together enable it to function as it should. There are those called to preach, some to evangelize, others to care for the poor and needy, and still others tasked with whatever the community requires, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

No one role is considered more important than another. Each must work together for the church to succeed in its godly mission. The sum, in other words, is greater than its constituent parts.

Continue reading “One Possible Explanation for November 5th?”

Oily politicians are always harping on about “kitchen table” issues and the alleged conversations that take place around them, mostly as a sop to those they have little to do with and even less knowledge of, but whose vote they covet.

Then again, I have my own kitchen table story to tell. And it has the added advantage of actually being real. It happened years ago while having lunch in the kitchen of a college friend’s parents in suburban Chicago.

As it was, his parents were dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalists who insisted on a literal interpretation of the Bible. The problem, at the time, was that I was a student at Yale Divinity School, a known liberal bastion. I might as well have had the mark of the beast imprinted on my forehead.

Continue reading “Confessions of a Recovering Apostate”

I think it was C.S. Lewis who tells of the time he was approached by a woman complaining about a church member who, in her mind, was unpleasant, uncouth, and just plain disagreeable.

Lewis’ shrewd response nails it. “Yes,” he advised, “but you should have seen him before he became a Christian.”

In my last post, https://climbingthewalls.org/sermon-christianity-a-well-known-stranger/, I pointed out that sin, contrary to common thought, actually means “the state of being separated from God,” sin being a relational term.

I also pointed out that the mythological story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall in the first three chapters of Genesis marks the symbolic movement from a once perfect relationship with our Creator to the alienated one we now experience here East of Eden.

But does this fall from grace constitute the final word? Are we destined, in other words, to live in a desacralized world devoid of hope or promise?

Continue reading “Then What?”

Six months after I retired, we moved from Harwich to Chatham. After the closing, Linda and I walked through our new home. One of the things I noticed was the beautiful Leyland cypress trees lining the edge of the property – all the way around.

But just as I was luxuriating in their splendor, I had a sudden start. Uh oh, I thought, I’m going to have to maintain all these trees! Dollar signs flashed before my eyes. For, in truth, I’m not the world’s most capable, much less dedicated, handyman. Just ask Linda. As a result, we had to hire a young man to trim our trees twice a year.

As it happens, he’s a very intelligent and thoughtful person and we frequently get to talking about politics, philosophy and, God forbid, religion. I might add, he’s not a Christian.

Continue reading “Sermon: “Christianity: A Well-Known Stranger””