FUSsa-talk Mailing List: Why am I here? Our struggle for meaning, in the world and church

[MADELINE SIMON (madeline-mpls]

>From Dick Bernard: "Long, serious, good reflection by Robert Jensen"
 
Madeline: A "radical" progressive "Christianity" that embraces humanism and 
atheism.  Excellent.  Also check out the Pastor at St. Andrew's, his 
discussions on health care and Radical Christianity.

Robert Jensen:
 
Why am I here? Our struggle for meaning, in the world and church



[This is an edited version of a sermon delivered July 25, 2010, at St. Andrew’s 
Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. http://www.staopen.com/]



by Robert Jensen



Let’s approach the question “Why am I here?” at two different levels.



The first is the question of the ages, which we all have asked at some point: 
Why is any one of us here? Why are we humans here, with this vexing 
consciousness and frustrating capacity for self-reflection? Are we the product 
of some larger plan beyond our understanding? Do humans have a purpose? Are we 
special?



The answer to that is easy: No. We are not special. We are an organism like all 
others, the product of an evolutionary process in a very big universe in which 
we are, as individuals, insignificant. But don’t fret about that; we are also 
insignificant as a species, and the collection of entities on Earth that we 
call “life” is insignificant, as is the planetary ecosystem in which we live 
and our solar system and our galaxy. We are, in the big picture, insignificant 
beings floating in insignificance in a universe that is vast beyond human 
comprehension.



If anyone is still wrestling with that one, still searching for some essential 
meaning to our existence, I have some simple advice: Get over it, and start 
pulling your weight in the meaning-making enterprise. If there’s meaning in any 
of this, we create it ourselves, and we need all hands on deck for that one.



The second, and more important, question: Why am I here, at St. Andrew’s? 
That’s a question all of us have asked at some point, and I suspect most of us 
ponder it regularly. Why are we members of a church, specifically members of 
this particular church, with its -- how shall we say politely -- tendency 
toward heresy and unwillingness to bend to the will of God as understood by 
John Calvin and his descendants in the Mission Presbytery.



In a culture in which Christianity typically is associated with supernatural 
claims (understanding “God” as an actual force, entity, or being that controls 
the world, and accepting the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event), why 
do those of us who reject those claims continue to identify as Christian? When 
the Christian world sometimes seems split about evenly between intolerant 
fundamentalists and ineffectual liberals, why should we struggle for a 
Christianity that is truly radical in theology, ethics, and politics, in 
principle and in practice?



In the five years I’ve been hanging out here, I have heard a variety answers to 
that question that mirror my own experience: An affection for the stories in 
the Christian tradition, a desire for a sense of community, an appreciation of 
the lively intellectual atmosphere, the sense of fellowship. And, of course, 
the strangely seductive nature of Mr. Monkey and the gang [the characters in 
the weekly St. Andrew’s puppet show, which is nominally for the children but a 
favorite of all].



All of those are part of why I am here, but perhaps the central reason I keep 
coming back to St. Andrew’s at this particular moment in history is the anguish 
I feel for the world.



I am not speaking about my anguish over things that have happened to me or to 
those I love in this world. Everyone deals with pain and suffering in one’s 
individual life, and the distress that comes with the inescapable 
disappointment, disease, and death in life is hard enough. I’ve had my share, 
as we all have, and those struggles alone are reason to seek out the comfort of 
church.



But in this context I am speaking of anguish about and for the world, in both 
concrete and abstract terms. It’s the concrete anguish we feel every day when 
we open the newspaper for the update on the amount of oil spilling into the 
Gulf. It’s that anguish that comes with hearing the news of the latest drone 
attack on a village in Afghanistan or Pakistan, or a reading a report on the 
most recent study of species extinction and reduction in biodiversity. And it 
is the abstract anguish we feel when we think about the world that coming 
generations will inherit from us, because of us -- because of what we have done 
and what we have not done.



You may have other words to describe these feelings. A friend of mine speaks of 
waking every morning into a state of profound grief. Others have told me they 
experience it as despair. For me, anguish captures the emotion associated with 
recognizing that we humans have fallen out of right relation with Creation, and 
therefore inevitably out of right relation with each other. We humans, because 
we did not attend carefully enough to the way meaning has been made in the 
modern era, have come to a point where we can see the contours of the end of 
our place in that Creation. That recognition is, for me, a source an intense 
anguish that has become not a source of occasional sadness or depression but 
simply a part of who I am.



The need to come to terms with this anguish was reinforced for me recently when 
I started reading Bill McKibben’s new book, in which he suggests that the 
changes humans have brought are so extreme that we no longer live on Earth but 
on Eaarth. The planet is melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in 
ways so dramatic that the world, while still recognizable to us, is 
fundamentally different and deserves a different name, hence the title, Eaarth: 
Making a Life on a Tough New Planet 
(http://www.billmckibben.com/eaarth/eaarthbook.html).



This kind of discussion is often dismissed as “apocalyptic,” as if reasonable 
concerns about the multiple crises we face -- political and economic, cultural 
and ecological -- can be waved away by a suggestion that anyone who raises them 
is hysterical. Rather than cope with the evidence, many people want to deal 
with it through denial. And to rationalize their denial, they dismiss anyone 
else as a Revelation-quoting, rapture-anticipating nut. Some of you may think 
I’m a bit crazy, perhaps not without justification. But Bill McKibben, the 
person who 20 years ago warned us about global warming in the first major book 
on the subject, is clearly not a nut. He’s a smart guy, and he’s worried.



Perhaps we should remember that our word “apocalypse” is from the Greek 
“apokalypsis,” which means an uncovering or lifting of the veil. We might think 
of this as an apocalyptic moment, one in which scientific knowledge and our 
personal experiences allow us to lift the veil on the unsustainability of the 
systems in which we live. Whatever our view of “The Apocalypse of John” -- also 
known as Revelation, the last and perhaps most cinematic of the books of the 
New Testament -- we can no longer afford to let reality be veiled.



Now, just for the record, let me be clear: I think that people who await the 
rapture are misguided. But I have no doubt that part of what motivates that 
belief is the same recognition I am speaking of -- a growing awareness that we 
have unleashed forces in this world that are not easily tamed, and that perhaps 
we are past a point of no return. To believe that the anointed are going to be 
lifted up to heaven in the rapture is a bit crazy, but to recognize the 
unfolding collapse of all the fundamental systems that structure our lives is 
not crazy at all. It is rational, sensible, and sane.



I deal with this recognition in many ways, emotional and intellectual, 
political and personal. But part of how I cope is St. Andrew’s. I come to 
church. I am part of a religious tradition. I use the term “religious” rather 
than “spiritual” very consciously. It’s common these days in my circles to hear 
people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” By that, I assume they mean that 
they like to ponder questions about the nature of our being but prefer to do it 
without the trappings of formal religion. I can certainly understand that 
instinct, but it’s not my instinct.



I’m religious, not spiritual.



This may be because I was born and raised in North Dakota, a place where the 
material world -- especially the material reality of blizzards --  tends to 
overshadow the more ethereal. I don’t deny there is a realm of human experience 
we can call the spiritual, but I don’t tend to dwell there. It’s all well and 
good to ponder the spiritual, to dance in the ethereal now and then. But in the 
meantime, that front that came down from Canada dumped another foot of snow on 
us last night, and it’s time to pick up a shovel.



For me, religion is more useful than spirituality in clearing the driveway of 
all that snow. By religion I don’t mean, of course, a rigid obsession with 
doctrine that is imposed on people. I don’t mean the kind of religion that 
closes off questions and closes down minds. I don’t mean a religion that 
hardens our hearts to others or lets us grow soft in our commitment to justice. 
Sadly, that describes a lot of contemporary religion in the United States.



For me, religion is a place and a space, it is people and relationships. 
Religion is a church building, a place where I can come. And in that place, we 
try to create a space to work through our struggles. Religion is a group of 
people who are engaged in a common struggle, a structure for creating 
relationships that are crucial to keeping us on track and looking forward.



The best of religion helps me in my struggles, in my quest to stay focused. 
Over and over again, Scripture reminds us of how to do this, such as in 1 
Thessalonians 5:12-17.



12 But we request of you, brothers and sisters, that you appreciate those who 
diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you 
instruction,

13 and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Live in 
peace with one another.

14 We urge you, brothers and sisters, admonish the unruly, encourage the 
fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone.

15 See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after 
that which is good for one another and for all people.

16 Rejoice always;

17 pray without ceasing.



Rejoice always, and pray without ceasing. I don’t take “rejoice always” to be 
an excuse to “party on,” nor do I take “pray without ceasing” to be 
justification for pious posturing. For me, those two verses are a reminder of 
the need to always see the joy in life and never forget the struggle of life. 
That is not easy to do, and for me, religion helps. Church helps remind me 
there is something beyond, something bigger, but that our work is here. I don’t 
want to float off into the spiritual, to ponder in the clouds, but instead 
prefer to root myself in the religion -- in relationships, in the work on the 
ground.



It is that work to which we must return. If we are to do that work well, it’s 
important to remember that just as we humans are not special, neither are we 
Christians. There are lots of other people engaged in that work in this world. 
Much of my own life has been spent in secular organizations committed to social 
justice and ecological sustainability, and those people are as much a part of 
my life as the people here at St. Andrew’s. To claim that religion can help is 
not to claim that religion is all we need.



One of those secular people who has been especially important to me is Abe 
Osheroff, a radical activist who spent his 92 years struggling to contribute to 
a better world. Abe made his living as a carpenter but his life was defined by 
his politics. As Abe closed in on the end of that life, he spoke to me about 
his anguish, his sense of loneliness, his struggle to cope with the pain of 
knowing too much (http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html). Abe was 
culturally Jewish and philosophically agnostic; he had little use for scripture 
or most preachers. But of all the people I have known, I can think of no one 
who more fully lived the command to rejoice always and pray without ceasing.



One of Abe’s gifts was the ability to cut through pompousness and state clearly 
what was at stake. The documentary film I produced about Abe’s life and 
philosophy (http://www.abeosheroffmovie.com/) ends with a simple statement that 
he repeated often: “Solidarity is love in action.”



Solidarity is a defining term for the secular left, while love is a word 
repeated endlessly in church. For Abe, who could be as critical of the failures 
of the left as of the hypocrisy of religion, knew that if solidarity is to be 
lived, it requires both. Abe knew that love without action is empty, and that 
action without love is dangerous.



We all know people who profess to love the world but who retreat into the 
passivity made possible by affluence and privilege. We ask of them, what do 
they truly love?



We also all know people who act out of what they claim to be a commitment to 
justice but in that action can hurt others without thought. We ask of them, to 
what are they truly committed?



We know these people exist because, if we are to be honest with ourselves, we 
all can remember moments when that person was us, when we fell short.



Rejoice always, but don’t forget the admonition to pray without ceasing. We 
will always fall short, but we can search for the strength to pull ourselves 
and each other closer to that standard of loving through action and acting out 
of love.



That standard has never been more important, as we face the reality of life on 
the slope down. We may laugh at apocalyptic talk of the end times, but we are 
living in times that are marked by systems and ways of living that are coming 
to an end. It is the end of the empire, the end of cheap energy, the end of 
careless and carefree consumption, the end of so much that we have come to take 
for granted in the affluent world.



I am not nostalgic about those systems. In fact, I am glad to see the end of 
most of what we have come to call “the good life,” for it never struck me as 
all that good, at least not for most people and other living things. The 
problem is that the unraveling of those systems and ways of living is likely to 
bring immense suffering and destruction -- beyond the levels we see today -- if 
not in our lifetimes then most certainly in the generation after us. Even if we 
are personally insulated from the worst of it, we will watch this human 
betrayal of Creation play out all around us.



If we can watch that and not feel anguish, then we will have surrendered our 
own humanity. To be human today -- to live fully alive -- is to embrace that 
anguish. I see no other choice.



We all need a philosophy, a theology, a worldview to deal with this. Call it 
radical humanism, as Abe did. Call it Christianity, as we do. Call it whatever 
you like, so long as you answer the call to live your own life in solidarity, 
as love in action. That task has never been easy for people, and it has never 
been harder than in the anguish of end times.



We cannot know what lies ahead, we can only love and act.



No matter what lies ahead, we can rejoice always. We can pray without ceasing.



-----------------------



Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin 
and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is 
the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic 
Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of 
Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, 
Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The 
Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking 
Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is 
also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, 
the Other Still Dancing,” which chronicles the life and philosophy of the 
longtime radical activist. Information about the film, distributed by the Media 
Education Foundation, and an extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff 
are online at http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html.

Jensen can be reached at rjensen [at] uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be 
found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. To join an email 
list to receive articles by Jensen, go to 
http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html.