Book Review- "Discovering the God Imagination: Reconstructing a Whole New Christianity," by Jonathan Brink

Sometimes we are absolutely certain we understand something, and are in fact so sure of our comprehension, we base our entire lives on it. I was sure I understood Christianity and even more sure I had no use for it. And then I read Discovering the God Imagination, by Jonathan Brink and it changed everything.

I hope I’m not getting anyone’s hopes up. I should probably clarify: I’m not going to start attending church and I still don’t believe in hell. But I’m literally and figuratively re-opening the book on God. Yeah…that book. I have a love-hate relationship with the Bible, but thanks to Brink, I’m giving it another read.

If you were to take the classic fairy tale, Cinderella, cut each individual word out, throw all these words into a hat, shake them around, pour them out on the table and ask someone unfamiliar with the Cinderella storyline to use the individual words to create a story, it is unlikely that the end result would be the version of the story we grew up with. Sure, there would be a pretty dress, a pumpkin coach, a beautiful maiden and a romantic ball, but the way the happily-ever-after shakes out might be nothing like the story we have come to expect.

Jonathan Brink does something similar in his book. All the elements of the creation-to-crucifixion drama are there, but they are told in a way that changes the entire meaning of the story that has defined modern Christianity. Brink himself comes out of this very tradition, 2,000 years in the making, which has interpreted the God/Human story in a very definitive way; he clearly grasps this widely-accepted interpretation and then promptly turns it inside out.

Brink challenges the Christian framework in a manner that is, at once, supremely bold and stunningly simple. All the key elements of the story remain, but they are arranged in an entirely different way that makes the “happily ever after” something altogether new and different. It’s as though Disney’s Cinderella was re-told so that the evil stepmother is reformed, becomes the heroine and rides off, Prince Charming in tow, to begin a new life as a fairy godmother.

I spent the first 30 years of my life trying, not to make a religion work, but to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I was an evangelical Christian in the truest sense. But about 2 years ago, I opened the door, invited all the questions, doubts and instincts I’d kept locked up tight to come in, have a seat and speak freely. I finally got honest with myself and the consensus was that not only did I not want to go to church anymore, but I could no longer say I was a Christian. I wanted to believe the “right” things, but I just didn’t, and in retrospect, I realized I hadn’t for quite some time.

Leaving Christianity was painful; I’ve likened it in many ways to a divorce. Though it was a profound and palpable relief to finally allow myself to stop fighting to keep my true feelings and thoughts at bay, Christianity was like a thread woven through the entire fabric of my life and pulling it out was simultaneously the removal of a source of huge pain and a deep, gut-wrenching loss. The desire for a personal relationship with a God who loved me wasn’t easy to give up and walk away from.

It was difficult and painful to insist on what my inner knowing says when, from all accounts, I was walking away from God by doing so. I don’t want to “walk away from God.” Decades of my life were spent wanting a personal connection with God more than any one thing in my whole life, so following my knowing, what felt like away from God, has been painful, hard and many times, desperately lonely.

Then I read this book. Brink’s interpretation of the Biblical narrative is like looking at the whole of my life with a pair of glasses on and being shocked to realize what looked and felt like one thing was something else entirely. What if it wasn’t that I was “walking away from God” at all? What if, all along, he was “calling” me away? The exercise of thinking that’s possible, for even a minute, floods me with a mixture of joy, remorse, regret, pain and sadness.

Brink looks at the Biblical narrative and sees what he calls “the God imagination” at work. To look at not just the Bible, but my own life, through that lens means letting my assumptions go. Among other things, Brink says challenging our assumptions involves “leaving old stories behind.” He goes on to say that, “it means starting over again and building new ones…finally answering the deeper questions in our souls, the ones haunting us when we sleep.” (p. 72)

The prospect of doing so is, for me, terrifying. Re-opening the book on God means going back to “the scene of the crime,” as Brink refers to it. It means returning to the very ground on which I was hurt most, knowing I might be hurt again. I know from experience that anything that’s worth anything requires just that sort of “all in” risk, but that doesn’t change that it scares me to death.

Brink responds to this very fear when he says: “Reconciling our assumptions means we just might have to engage in our own restoration. It means we just might have to tear away the covering which blinds us to the God imagination. It means coming out of hiding to discover our worst fears aren’t true.” (p. 72)

Now I have to ask: what if the stuff that has always felt “off” for me about Christianity is also “off” in God’s mind? I experienced such pain, rejection and fear during my “questioning/doubting” years that the idea that I was on the right track all along makes me weep – both for the waste and the hope. Do I have the guts to go back and take another look?

Previous to reading this book, I had easily and without equivocation left Christianity behind. Discovering the God Imagination hasn’t “brought me back into the fold” by any stretch of the imagination, but it has created a space in which I am able to look at the concept of God with new eyes, for one reason and one reason only: it paints a picture of a God who sees me with eyes that, when I look into them, I realize I have seen before. They are familiar in the way the bar of a song sung in childhood might be. The expression of love and acceptance in those eyes is what I recognize I’ve been waiting for all my life. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with that, except to keep gazing into them and follow my heart.

Survey Says: Better Not Play Bible Trivia with Un-Believers or You Might Lose

Contrary to common Christian belief, the average atheist is not in fact someone who needs to have the Gospel presented to them in a clear way. They don’t need to have “the bridge illustration” doodled on a napkin for them. The average agnostic is NOT “not sure about God” because he or she doesn’t want to think too hard or is chronically fickle. In fact, according to an article in today’s L.A Times, “a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.”

Say, what? Yup…you read that right. Why, you ask, would an atheist or agnostic know more about religion than a Christian?

The L.A. Times interviewed Alan Cooper, the associate director for research at the Pew Forum, the organization that released this survey earlier this week and he answers this very question. He thinks the reason atheists and agnostics know more about religion than those who ascribe to those religious beliefs is because they are more likely to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and went through a process of reading, reflection and decision before leaving that tradition. In other words, atheists and agnostics are not in fact people who don’t want to hear about, read about, or understand the “Gospel.” Rather, they are people who have grappled with it in a more serious way than the average believer; their atheism and agnosticism is something they came to thoughtfully.

“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” Cooperman said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”

The study also found a correlation between atheism/agnosticism and being well-educated. However, this is not to say that the most educated people became atheists and agnostics, since Christians with similar education levels still knew less about their beliefs than non-believers.

The L.A. Times article also quotes Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister and author who, commenting on the survey’s findings said, “I think that what happens for many Christians is they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it’s already accepted to be true, they don’t examine other people’s faiths.”

I’m someone who, as an evangelical Christian, assumed that, if atheists/agnostics just examined Christianity, they would get on board with it. I also told myself that atheists and agnostics liked sinning and therefore found their unbelief more “convenient.”

Today, as a not-atheist-and-sort-of-agnostic-but-definitely-not-Christian, I can say, looking back at my former thought process, that I couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not interested in finding an excuse for sinning. I ate, drank, breathed and lived the Christian gospel for the first 30 years of my life and very thoroughly understand it. I have beyond-average knowledge of biblical facts and Christian theology. I wanted to believe it, more than anything I’ve ever wanted.

When I say I’m not a Christian, this is not something I say lightly. It’s something I say a little sadly, because I wanted so much to believe it. I can’t. That’s not because I want to live in a certain type of “sinful” lifestyle and need to believe things that make that lifestyle o.k. If only it were that simple. My belief/unbelief came at a high cost. It’s something I wrestled with for decades. My saying that I’m not a Christian is very simply, honest.

These days I’m reluctant to publicaly state that I’m not a Christian anymore, mostly because my hard-won belief/lack thereof is immediately written off by most Christians as “lack of understanding.” I can’t even explain the process I’ve been through without a Christian trying to “better explain” the Gospel in a condescending voice, no less. I’m not stupid, believe it or not, and neither are most other atheists, agnostics and otherwise “un-believing” folks. More knowledge about the Bible or Christian theology isn’t going to convince me to change my mind. That’s because, according to this survey, chances are I understand Christianity better than the average Christian does and, with brain intact, I’ve opted out.

**You can go here to take a quiz that represents a sampling of the actual Pew Survey of Basic Religious Knowledge.

Religion: The DVD

I would not say I’m an atheist and I resist labeling myself as an agnostic, mostly because I can’t stand labels anymore. But I definitely am not a Christian. I’m at a place where I no longer feel the need to believe or disbelieve anything. I know what I’m experiencing. I’m honest about it. I don’t need to label it. I don’t need to change or move. I’m where I’m at.

Because the shifts that have gradually occurred in me didn’t happen overnight, I think it’s important to write about the various stages I went through in the deconstruction of my Christianity. I know I am not alone in the feelings I have or had, but I often feel like there is a lot written from a Christian stand-point and a lot written from an atheist or agnostic paradigm, but not a lot written about the “process” people go through in between. What about the places in between belief and unbelief? Lots of people are there, but unless they read something about someone else’s similar experience or feelings, they inevitably feel alone.

Who do you talk to about the “in-between” places? Sometimes it feels like everyone – Christians and atheists, alike – would have you “hurry up and get on board, already!” There has to be a place for the process. In fact, I think I always WILL be in process and I don’t see myself ever pigeon-holing myself as “this” or “that.” I want to just be where I’m at and be honest about it, from here on out.

In the effort to talk about the in-between places, I’d like to share something I wrote about a year ago, when some questions began to surface that I think are important in the “deconstruction” process for a lot of people. Where I was at the time, it made sense to me to frame them like this:

Winter 2008 –

What if religion is the world’s effort to package up God in a manner we can offer to another at arms' length...we don't have to get too close, don't have to get the weepy, hurting friend's runny mascara on our clean shirts and we don't have to love in a palpable way that makes a difference in their circumstances?

After all, we aren't loved that way by others, so why should we get messy for someone else when no one is getting messy for us? Religion was handed to us at arm's length.

Many of us received religion as a neat and tidy package we didn’t dare unwrap. Religion was like a DVD still in the package we based our whole lives on even though we never opened or watched it ourselves.

Everybody we know gives and receives the same DVD in its' sealed form; we have forgotten there is something inside. Instead we talk about the DVD as if we've watched it. We repeat the little summary from the back cover, talking and acting as though we have seen it ourselves, when in fact we have not. We, along with our fellow-unopened-DVD owners, make special clubs we advertise as a place to talk about the DVD in depth. Instead, the clubs all go the same way: everyone repeating the description from the back cover in all the same ways. We forget the DVD is anything but the package it's inside of.

We all feel a vague discomfort- a feeling that there is something missing. Every once in awhile we might have a tiny flash of insight: what if we open up the DVD and actually watch it? What if, when we watch it, we find the story is different than our simple little clubs had interpreted it as being? What if, after actually watching it for ourselves, we can no longer stomach the "pat" conversation at our clubs? What then? This line of thinking is so uncomfortable, we more often than not push it from our minds.

We are too busy, too tired, too....afraid. We know deep inside that watching the DVD would change our lives, change our relationships, change how we do things. We, like the rich young ruler Jesus challenged to actually act on his beliefs, are willing to buy and distribute copies of the DVD to the world, stand in front of crowds and recite the blurb on the back cover and attend every single club meeting discussing the DVD. But open it up and watch it, knowing it could potentially change everything...hell, no. That is far too scary.

We give this same DVD to our children. We teach our impressionable children to memorize the blurb on the back of the DVD. We at least imply, and sometimes overtly teach, that if our children and/or other DVD-less acquaintances do not take the DVD we offer them and attend the discussion clubs, they will quite possibly go to hell. They are made to understand that if that happens, they are in danger of losing not only God's approval, but perhaps even our love.

When our children reach an age where they begin to think independently, they of course begin to doubt the "magical powers" of the DVD we touted: the rest of the world is watching all sorts of interesting DVDs, talking about them and don't live with the fear and numbed-out brains our children inherited from us. Why should they risk opening and watching the DVD for themselves; they already know the basic plot by rote, thank you very much, and they're frankly not impressed. Everywhere they look people are living their lives and watching fascinating DVDs.

And even if they had the gumption to open and watch the DVD we gave them, they'd likely meet with disapproval from us, as well as from our clubs, anyway. So why bother? It's much easier, more attractive and less of a bother to dump our DVD entirely and just subscribe to Netflix like everyone else in the world. Who cares what the movies the world watches are about; at least they WATCH them!!

What if we watched the DVD rather than leaving it unwrapped and having silly, shallow discussion groups about what someone else decided to say ABOUT the movie? What if we watch the movie, running the risk that it could change us? What if we were always meant to live in the truth the movie so beautifully pictures? What if there is no need for clubs? After all, why talk about watching it with other people, when we could be WATCHING it with other people?

Perhaps God created the movie TO change us as we watch it. If so, we shouldn't be standing arm's length from people, telling them ABOUT the movie and expecting them to be changed because they know what it's about. What if it's a movie only appreciated, only understood and only life-changing because the individual watches it themselves?

Perhaps watching the DVD yourself rather than basing your life on someone's tidy little summary would mean that the movie relates differently, personally and specifically to each individual. What if God made this movie specifically for each person, knowing exactly what that person needed to hear, see and feel? To give someone my interpretation or tell them about my experience is only helpful if they have already experienced it and been impacted by it in the way that is specific to them. If they already know the movie, they would enjoy hearing how it impacted me, what was personal to me and the individualized message I uncovered in it.

Perhaps the main difference between reading the description on the back cover and actually watching it myself is, quite simply, love. I can be told I am loved every day and twice on Sundays but until I am loved in a palpable, personal, wipe-your-snot-on-my-new-sweater-while-I-listen-to-you kind of way, others' statements of love are worth nothing to me; in fact their emptiness eventually hurts so much, I numb out to it. And yet, am I doing anything different when it comes to my interactions with others?

To be handed the DVD while the person offering it sits and watches the DVD-less person's child cry because she's hungry is insensitive and even hateful. And you better believe that when that person shouts, "goodbye!" over the deafening cries of that hungry child, the DVD-less person will be throwing their DVD, unopened, into the next rubbish bin. If she is given a DVD about African salamanders, while the cries of her child and her own tears rolling down her cheeks are ignored, the giver is worse than those that walked right by her, pretending they don't see her plight. In her world of pain, she has no use for DVDs...doesn't matter whether they are about salamanders or love. Same thing in her reality. The tidy giver doesn't see her; he or she doesn't care. They just want to go back to their happy little club and tell all their buddies how many DVDs they distributed this week.

"She wasn't very receptive," he or she will tell their friends, when asked about what the person they offered the DVD to did and said when given the DVD. These friends shake their carefully-coiffed heads sadly.

"We'll just pray that she looks at it. That's all God asks of us, after all," they say. "We've planted the seed..."

How despicable is it to distribute a DVD about love in an unloving way. We might as well replace the real cover with a new one that is entitled, "Fuck You." At least that cover is honest about what the giver really thinks and feels about the person who doesn't own the DVD. I know for a fact that such a person would rather they just ignored her. But instead we shout over the sounds of her cries what will happen to her if she continues to refuse what we are offering.

What if we just toss the DVD altogether? Or maybe we watch the DVD ourselves and then put it away. What if we meet one another, DVD-less, and simply offer the compassion, support, acceptance and love we all want? Who needs to watch a DVD about something when they can experience it themselves? I enjoy a good love story, but I'd much rather experience one than watch a movie about it.

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This article was published in today's "ExChristian.Net" and you can find it HERE.

The Porpoise Diving Life: Podcast with Peter Walker

I mentioned that I'd be doing some more "in-depth" interviews with some of the authors behind the articles in this month's Porpoise Diving Life, which I'd hoped could be of the pod-cast variety. So far, I've not found a free/easy way to record video interviews but I'm not giving up.

In the meantime, I talked with Peter Walker, the author of a fantastic article called, "Family Questions," from this month's issue, and he recorded our conversation on his end. As this was my first experience recording a podcast with someone else I sound terribly nervous (I was) and like I'm reading a script (I was)! Peter, on the other hand, did a fabulous job, so I'm happy to invite you to watch our interview: