Category: Open Questions and Ongoing Exploration

Theology, Two Types

T. M. Loewen-ElofsonLeave a comment

I remember a moment during the summer between my junior and senior year when a group of high school students got together to figure out whether ministry was something which they wanted to explore. We came from all sorts of backgrounds. Some of us were musically inclined. Others, athletically gifted. To be honest, in some ways, I felt like it could have been an expanded, uncut edition of the Breakfast Club, if it lasted for a month and took us into the Adirondacks and the capital of Nicaragua.

We were united in confession of faith alone. Even our theological convictions were disparate, adding to the complexity of our disagreements. Even today, as I try (albeit terribly) to stay in touch with my friends on social media, I am reminded of how different each of us was.

At one point in the Nicaraguan leg of our journey, one of our mentors – an MDiv student of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at the time – looked at me as I hung from a hammock chair. I had asked him some question about theodicy at the time because in my mind he seemed to know a lot about that sort of thing.

Thinking about that moment, I laugh nowadays because I realize how funny it is how we perceive those older than us as having their act (and theology) together more often than not. But, instead of taking an outright stab in the dark, the mentor was wise enough to pause and reflect.

After a while in silence, he said, “You know, Tim, there’s definitely a distinct difference between the theology one does in the classroom and the theology one does with a couple of beers and some friends out in the backyard. You’d best remember that.”

I nodded, not realizing what sort of gift he just gave me. To this day, I can’t remember the question I asked. I don’t remember many lectures or conversations had during that month-long summer program, but I remember snippets here and there.

I remember a seminarian professor telling my peers and I, upon making some astute observation, that we were a hair’s breadth away from being profound.

I remember seeing the Milky Way galaxy for the first time in the mountains in Northern New York.

I remember the spark of interest I had in studying ministry flaring up within me.

And I remember this conversation with that group mentor, Bryn.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the friends and mentors I had during the summer of 2013. College was distant, foggy concept. I was still terribly shy and had yet to date anyone. It’s strange to realize first, how far all of us have come, and second, how in some ways, I’m in the same shoes that Bryn occupied all those years ago.

I found myself sitting around a fire in the backyard of some acquaintances from graduate school a couple of years ago. Some of the guys had cracked open a beer or two. The small talk had died down and several of us just sat looking into the flames, lost in our thoughts. One of them shifted in their seat and set their drink down.

“So, this whole seminary thing – are you certain about everything that you believe?”

I paused.

“I’d like to think so. If I’m being honest, there’ll be some days when I have my doubts about one thing or another. But for the most part, I am.”

“But what about…?”

The conversation continued long into the night, rolling back and forth between each of us like a ball.

At one point, I paused again. “And sure, there are times I’ve got questions, but that doesn’t mean I throw the baby out with the bath-”

The guy took a sip of the beer he had, causing me to erupt in laughter.

“What?”

“Oh,” I started, touching my thumb and pointer finger together, “Just a memory I have. A friend once told me we need backyard moments like this to sort out everything going on in the academy. It’s just funny when we realize that we’re coming full circle. You feel?”

He shrugged. I laughed some more. Then, the conversation continued long into the night, our words mingling with the smoke as it rose into the night sky.

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Going Home to the Edge

T. M. Loewen-ElofsonLeave a comment

The season of Advent snuck up on me the other day. Even though I’m away from my family, from my loved ones studying all about a guy named Jesus in Atlanta, the season still caught me by surprise amid my swimming through the seas of papers and projects. It came in a question posed to me by my friend Katelyn: “Are you going home for the holidays?”

Home. That place for each of us that evokes a multitude of feelings, and for good reason. It’s a place that’s unlike anywhere else. For me, home is a small house warmed by a woodburning stove, nestled between a grove of pine trees on a hill overlooking the rocky Plymouth Bay in Massachusetts. Home might look different for you. Frederick Buechner observed that “The word home summons up a place-more specifically a house within that place-that you have rich and complex feelings about, a place where you feel, or did feel once, uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel you belong and that in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment.”

Are you going home for the holidays? There’s a reason why our feelings of home are so complex. In stories, it is a well-established truth that when a hero comes home, things never go well. Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca after the Trojan War or Frodo and Samwise returning to the Shire in the Lord of the Rings, catastrophe is bound to occur soon after her or his homecoming.

In the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus leaves the desert filled with the Holy Spirit and begins a preaching tour in synagogues throughout all the countryside. He swings by his home, a newly minted golden child, to attend services as was his custom. But instead of the service going as expected, the doors fly open with the crowd bent on killing him. What happened in the span of these few moments? What has happened to home here?

The reason why all hell breaks loose in the homes in our stories and in our lives is because of the breaking of expectations. Both the hero and the community have different expectations of one another and themselves. Here, for years leading up to this point, people had been using Isaiah’s passage to claim divine authority to take up the role of liberator against Israel’s oppressors. When Christ sought out this passage, he knew what people would think. He knew what people would expect.

Despite their expectations, Christ presents a new way of being – not one of dominance, but of service. Not one of force, but of love. The heart of the matter today is that Christ is quick to remind the people that those who are most comfortable with him, those who think he owes them their due, those who want to keep them for themselves to build themselves up, to make their idea of what home should be like a reality, aren’t the ones who he has come to serve.

“I cannot claim,” Buechner continues, ”that I have found the home I long for every day of my life, not by a long shot, but I believe that in my heart I have found, and have maybe always known, the way that leads to it. I believe that […] the home we long for and belong to is finally where Christ is.” You’ve heard it said that home is where the heart is. And where is God’s heart? God finds home amid the captives, in proclaiming good news to the poor, in standing in solidarity with those squatting under the highways and byways around fires in trashcans. Furthermore, if home is where Christ is, I find myself asking myself today, are you going home for the holidays? Will we go with God to the edge of society, or will we take him there, to a hill outside of town to kill him?

“I believe that home is Christ’s kingdom,” Buechner concludes, ”which exists both within us and among us as we wend our prodigal ways through the world in search of it.” Even despite ourselves, even when we cannot see past ourselves, I am thankful that Christ still somehow slips through. As we struggle to be faithful to follow Christ, as we clamber down all the roads our lives take, I invite you to wonder where you’re going in life. Where does Christ say home is today? And finally, are you going home for the holidays?

Mobius

T. M. Loewen-ElofsonLeave a comment

The other day, when I was lost in the backwoods of Kentucky, I received a call from my sister. I was driving back from work at church, my mind filled with thoughts from the previous week, when I realized that the exit which I needed to take on the highway was three or four back. Faced with heading straight on to Cincinnati, I turned off the road at the next exit and began picking my way back west on some winding Kentucky back roads.

The car wound its way through rolling hills and fields filled with corn, its meandering nature following the same course as my mind as it twisted this way and that. After a wandering the country, I noticed that my tank was hovering just above empty. As a gas station appeared, I pulled in and got out.

The smell of gasoline filled the air and mingled with the sound of crickets and the frogs which made their home in and around the Ohio River. Some folk music was gently piped in under the florescent lights of the gas station. I would have stayed a bit longer to listen and watch the sun set had my phone in my car not rang.

As I climbed in and continued my return home, I picked up the call. It had been a couple of weeks since my sister and I had caught up. I smiled as we shot the breeze for a bit. After getting me up to date on things back in New England, she switched the topic.

“Have you ever heard of Rachel Held Evans?” she asked. “I just discovered her and this book I just finished by her just has been incredible.”

“Really?” I asked as I slowed to a stop at a four-way intersection. “How so?”

“Basically, the one big take-away from the book is, and I know this sounds obvious but, bear with me here. It’s that there are multiple ways to interpret Scripture.”

There was a moment of silence as I felt laughter bubbling up in my chest. After chuckling for a few seconds, I apologized, and explained, “Kristen, you wouldn’t believe it, but I find myself learning and re-learning this constantly. If this is the first time you’ve encountered Evans’ work, you have a treat ahead of you.”

The light turned green and I continued down the road, disappearing around another cornfield a few moments later.

—

Several years ago, I remember sitting down with my older brother over a discovery he had made. As a math and physics person, my brother and I don’t always see eye to eye – in part because we’ve been trained that way. An elegant equation looks like gobbledygook to me. To him, it’s meaningful in some way.

In his hands, Dave had a length of paper, cut to be about an inch wide. He took the paper and twisted it one hundred and eighty degrees once before taping it together. The result was a rather odd shape.

“This,” he began, “is a Mobius strip.”

“The cool thing about this is that it only has one side.”

My mouth dropped open. “What? You’re lying. It obviously has two.”

Dave offered me a pen.

“Try and draw a single continuous line and you’ll see I’m right.”

After making my way around the strip, I was shocked to see that waiting for me at the other end was the line I started with. I flipped the strip over. The pen’s trail was still there. Dave was right.

“Now here’s the kicker,” he continued. “Imagine that you were a two-dimensional person who lived on the Mobius Strip called a Flatlander. You would have no idea that you’re flipping. It’s all flat to you. But perspective matters, as we can see what’s happening in three dimensions.”

Something clicked in my mind. “It’s kind of like living in a cave all your life and seeing the sun for the first time.”

Dave furrowed his brow.

“I mean, I guess. Whatever floats your boat.”

—

My mind’s been going in circles recently. Or rather, been thinking on them. Perhaps as I drive along winding country roads outside of Louisville and work with people with vastly different backgrounds and life experience as me, it’s causing me to reflect on perspective. And after a summer’s worth of reflection, I have increasingly come to the conclusion that I am a maniac. Or rather, I’ve always been. I’m just becoming more aware of it.

G. K. Chesterton makes the observation that maniacs are deemed so not because of their lack of reason, but because of their perfection of it. “The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactorily […] Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is just as infinite as a large circle; but though it is infinite, it is not so large. In the same way, the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not as large.” For the madman or -woman, the explanations that they create are systematic and complete. But for those who find themselves more clued in on the reality of things, it seems as though the madman or -woman is missing out on so much more.

The theologian Frederick Buechner observed that theology is just like a dung beetle taking up a study of humans with the goal of understanding everything there is to know about them. “If so,” he concludes, “we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.” When we arrive at the notion that, while God wants to be known and does so most clearly through the person of Christ, and yet simultaneously cannot be fully comprehended as a beetle cannot fully comprehend the complexity of a human person, we realize that in a certain way, we humans have constructed, over the course of many centuries and with the work of many careful and reflective theologians, circles of our own making. We’re Flatlanders, trying to make sense of a three-dimensional reality. When we hold to one school of thought to the exclusion of others, I think that God sees us as maniacs. Or maniacs trying our best.

The nice thing is that special revelation provides us with some correlation of the bigger picture, we hope. Experience typically reinforces this notion. And yet, I must confess that oftentimes we struggle to encompass all of it because we are finite creatures in a universe that is vastly other. While I believe that there are absolutes, I’m realizing that approaching those absolutes are a much harder task than modernity had led us to believe.

Evans writes that “when you stop trying to force the Bible to be something it’s not—static, perspicacious, certain, absolute—then you’re free to revel in what it is: living, breathing, confounding, surprising, and yes, perhaps even magic […] ‘The adventure,’ wrote Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky in Reading the Book, lies in ‘learning the secrets of the palace, unlocking all the doors and perhaps catching a glimpse of the King in all His splendor.’”

This, I believe, inspires humility. I trust and, I would think, know experientially that what I have received in faith is true, it also reminds me that the universe, Scripture, and the Creator it reveals is a much more complicated and multifaceted reality than the way I thought they were like back in my earlier days. Using Scripture as a window to this greater reality, then, logically would generate several meanings when viewed from different places—different rooms in the palace—as we constantly grapple with God.

Here’s hoping that, like Jacob, we might not let go until God blesses us. And may it cause us to walk differently.

A Devil of Our Own

T. M. Loewen-ElofsonLeave a comment

A few months ago, I was catching an indirect flight out of Atlanta to Portland, Oregon by way of Oakland, California. I was on my way to a wedding in Vancouver, Washington. Seeing that one of the happy couple getting hitched that weekend was my girlfriend’s oldest sister, I had planned to meet up with Olivia and her family a few days early to help set up. After the festivities, we all would then pile into the car and drive back to sunny Southern California for the rest of my spring break.

I had found my seat and, upon sliding my carry-on bag underneath the seat in front of me, began reading an assigned book on constructive political theology. After reading for several moments, I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye, looking perplexed. Glancing up, I noticed the middle-aged woman holding a bag pensively in one hand as she stared at the seat next to mine before glancing at the ticket in her other one.

“Is that seat open?” she said as I looked up from my book, “I’m hoping so. More leg room and all.”

“I’m not sure, but I’m sitting here by the window so you do you. If someone takes the seat, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

She smiled and placed her bag between us. Closing the book, I began to get up from my seat and extended my hand.

“Well, looks like we’ll be neighbors for the next couple of hours. I’m Timothy.”

Shaking my hand, she replied, “Jennifer.”

I began to sit back down and open my book again, looking for the last sentence I remembered reading. Finding my place, I looked back at the woman and asked, “You heading to California?”

“Yes. You?”

I shook my head.

“Just passing through on my way to Portland.”

Jennifer had gotten into her seat at this point and had pulled out her own book as the flight attendant came by to remind everyone to buckle their seatbelts.

“Oh, that will be nice,” she responded before finding her place in her own book and falling silent.

The two of us read in silence for the next two hours without much conversation between the two of us. Every so often, one of us would glance at the other’s book to try and discern what the other was interested in. About halfway through the flight, I looked up from Catherine Keller’s description of the undercommons to see Jennifer looking at me with a curious, if not cautious, expression.

“Are you a priest or something?”

I laughed.

“Not quite. I’m a student. This here is homework. I might be a pastor one day if things fall that way. What do you do?”

“I’m an independent consultant for virtual security.”

“You do stuff similar to Avast and all them?”

She nodded and said, “Well, kind of. I like to think I work for the sake of the little guy.”

“A noble pursuit, if ever there was one.”

“Yeah, I like working for the underdog.”   

There was a pause for a moment before I asked, “Would you mind if I asked why you wondered whether I was a priest?”

“Oh, I saw your book. Theology. And political at that! Two things that usually shut down conversation at Thanksgiving, am I right?”

We laughed and she continued, saying, “I went to Catholic school, but I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not really the superstitious type, you know.”

I shrugged.

“Fair enough,” I replied. “Thanks for letting me know. I was curious.”

I continued on with my reading for a few minutes. Catherine Keller was making some astute insights on the world with her second chapter. I found myself jotting notes in the margins and underlining more than a few times. Sometimes I think that the only difference between vandals and academics is that the latter can string a few more words together in a drier-sounding article.

Jennifer interrupted my stream of thought.

“Do you believe in the devil and all that?”

Looking back up from Keller, I looked back at my neighbor.

“I believe that there is a Satan and spiritual beings, yes. Why?”

She shrugged. “Well, I always wonder whether we need a devil nowadays. We seem to be making ones in our own image.”

I closed my book, smiling.

“Do tell. What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I told you I work as a virtual security consultant, right?”

I nodded.

“You know how sometimes you’re talking to somebody about how you want something and a couple hours later an ad for that exact thing pops up on Google? Well, I work in that space working against companies collecting info which makes those ads so relevant.”

I frowned “How so?”

“The thing is, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook have these programs that collect data on everyone that uses them. And, these big data companies don’t really have much of an interest apart from compiling a profile of you based on your interests, background, and actions to figure out when to best market to you and how.”

“Sure, I get that, but how does this connect back to a devil made in our own image?”

“Well, look at it this way. Your Satan is meant to be an accuser type who finds ways to make you slip up and sin, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, these companies are finding what you’re weak to and when you’re weakest to it so that they can conveniently drop an ad right when you’re most susceptible to clicking it.”

“Interesting,” I remarked. “You’re making it seem like it has an agenda. What would you say to the claim that technology isn’t good or bad, but a force for whatever uses it?”

“Well, that the worst thing, data collection programs don’t have a morality. It’s just trying to get clicks as part of just doing its job when it’s advertising beer to the alcoholic or pornography to a sex-addict. Is that good? Effective, sure. But good? No. Helping someone find a stroller for a kid, maybe. Still, one has to wonder what you give up for the sake of convenience.”

Jennifer began drawing on a napkin she had left over from the complementary drink service. “An entity – a program – which knows exactly what you want and knows when you want it most based on details about you which you thought was private and has no interest in dissuading you from destructive habits. I don’t need to be superstitious to believe in a Satan figure, because we have one now of our own making.”

I blinked.

“But wouldn’t that make a more convincing argument that there is some type of actual entity out there?”

“Not necessarily,” she commented. “Would an entity that makes perfect sense to us be evidence of human design in the first place?”

“Touché,” I replied. “I think that figures like that are a bit more alien and malevolent to us than we usually give them credit for. They’re not just programs.”

I paused, mulling what she said over in my head.

“I think your critique is pretty valid though, when we reduce agents like that to this. Still, this is terrifying at the level that we have it now.”

She nodded. “And that’s why I do what I do.”

“And that’s one of the reasons why I’m studying what I’m studying too.” I smiled. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“No problem,” she said.

And with that, Jennifer and I went back to our books. I still wonder about that conversation though, and I’d like to think that I’m more conscious of what I do online. What is lost when we exchange privacy for convenience? What is created? What is a healthy relationship with technology look like? How does theology and computer science overlap?

While I am not one to see angels and demons behind every rock and tree, it’s a good reminder of the fact that in a sacramental universe, while things might not be inherently spiritual, everything we do has spiritual implications, including within a virtual space.

Small Somethings

T. M. Loewen-ElofsonLeave a comment

The Christmas break after my first semester of seminary brought Olivia and I back to my old stomping grounds, swept up in a strong northward breeze and carried upon it back to my home state of Massachusetts. It blew me into the doors of the church that I had spent in which I spent most of my youth. Much about the place had changed. So had I. The space had a new layer of paint here, a remodeling there, but for the most part, the space had remained familiar.

After the service, I caught up with a few old friends. One person with whom I looked forward to connecting was a man who many in the church have taken to calling Jeep.[1] He stood near the Welcome Center, his head of light gray hair just barely bobbing over most of the crowd that spilled out into the narthex.

After grabbing my coat, I turned to see him a few feet away. I waved him over and introduced Olivia to him before I began asking him about how life had been.

A few minutes later, he paused and asked, “So, how’s seminary been?”

Jeep, from what I can recall, was well-acquainted with the seminary life himself, going to a well-known seminary north of Boston back when I was still in high school. I began rattling off a couple of subjects that I had taken and puffed my chest out when I told him what my grades were.

Olivia rolled her eyes. Jeep laughed before holding up a hand and looking at me with a serious expression on his face.

“Honestly, Tim,” he replied, “I really don’t care what grades you got or what subjects you studied. I trust that you’ll do alright in that department. What I’m concerned with is how you’ve learned to love people more like Christ.”

That memory has stuck with me over the last year. As I find myself out in Kentucky, working for a wonderful church as its pastoral intern, Jeep’s voice just sits there in the back of my head, gently chiding me for focusing on quantifiable results that are summed up in a letter grade instead of listening to God’s voice to see where God is working on me and through me.

This has especially been the case during regular check-ins with my seminary on how I’m doing. There’s a presentation at the end of the summer that I’m supposed to be preparing for, based on our learning objectives and theological questions. That’s all well and good, but it’s been hard to change from an academic mindset to one out in the field. Every time I hear how one of my friends is working on the border advocating for the rights of immigrants and those seeking asylum, or another who is working in hospice care, I sometimes look at my own situation and wonder what quantifiable thing I can bring to the table at the “judgment day” come this August.

Not because there’s nothing to do, but on the contrary, there are so many things going on in the running of the life of the church each week. I find they’ve all been essential and formative.

This past week, for example, I had the privilege to visit two families who had children. I had so many conversations with wonderful people. I have sat with students and processed pain with them. I’ve taught Sunday School and youth group a couple times and watched as something clicked in the minds of one or two of my students. I have broken bread with children. I’ve helped teach a family how to use a washing machine and a dryer. I’ve been covered in grime from diving in a dumpster to fish out an iPad a student threw out.

Perhaps this is what Rilke meant when he advised a young man to “be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.”

My theological questions may not have a direct answer in a way I’m used to finding in order to get a grade. Instead, it might require getting down, into a dumpster from time to time, to find it. A flash of it might happen sitting by someone who is home-bound as we stop by to visit.

I think I heard a glimpse of it in a sermon my supervisor delivered when she observed that it’s not mountaintops or valleys or extraordinary experiences that offer the most formation in us, but the long, slow plod of the everyday -the bread and wine moments, the every day staples, the small somethings in life- which does through the habits we allow to form along the way.

I’m not used to living out uncertainties outside of the letter grade and the textbook, but I think I’m starting to adapt, trying to listen even amid the ordinary tasks of the week. Rilke concludes likewise, stating, “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I’ve discovered my time in Kentucky to be good work. Certainly, strange at times, but worth it at the end of the day.

I can’t wait to tell Jeep.

[1] To this day, I’m still not sure how people got from John to Jeep, but I’m content letting that mystery remain unsolved.

Just Like Kayaking

T. M. Loewen-Elofson2 Comments

I found myself sitting down in a dining area of my alma mater this past Spring Break. Across from me sat a former professor of mine who I have been honored to count as a friend, advisor, and confidant throughout the course of my four years there. Seeing that I was in the area nearing the end of my first year at seminary, we decided to reconnect to see where each of us found ourselves before both of us ran off in different directions.

I found him leaving his office on his way toward the dining area. His back was turned, but the khakis and polo shirt betrayed his identity even though I hadn’t seen his face yet.

As he turned from locking up his office, I noticed that he had grown out his facial hair from the last time I had seen him, so that his glasses seemed to rest just over a slightly tousled beard. I did a double-take. The last time I had seen him, he had been more convinced of the clean-shaven persuasion. Time had certainly passed over the course of the past year.

He, on the other hand, smiled as though meetings between the two of us nowadays were still a pleasant regularity. Gesturing down the hall, he asked, “Shall we?”

Accepting his offer, I joined him as we made our way across the campus, shooting the breeze until we had gotten our drinks and sat down in the far corner of the room.

“So,” he said after taking a sip from the coffee he had ordered, “Tell me about Candler. What have you learned?”

I laughed.

“Well,” I started, “Graduate school certainly is a different animal from that of undergrad.”

He nodded, smiling. The steam from his drink condensed on his glasses, concealing his eyes for a moment. I paused, waiting for him to wipe them off. Doing so, he gestured for me to continue.

“You know,” I said, “I think seminary’s taught me within and without the classroom that I’ve got a lot more growing to do.”

“How’s that?”

“You’ve gone kayaking or canoeing on occasion, right, sir?”

He chuckled. “I was an adrenaline junkie for the first half of my life. Still am in some respects! Of course I’m familiar with kayaking and canoeing.”

“Well, almost 95% of the time, I sense that my life has been on this river on which I have been kayaking. And I’ve been making progress, but for the last two years, beginning with senior year, I feel like I’ve been pulled out of the current and have watched a bunch of friends and peers get swept downstream with chances to work in churches and other amazing ministries. I’m glad for them. I just wonder whether Jesus has left me in academia. Sure, classes have been great and thought-provoking, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing out on what I’m meant to do.”

My professor and mentor fell silent as he chewed on what I was saying. After a few moments, he asked, “What do you think you’re supposed to do?”

“Work in a church, hopefully.”

His eyes flicked up from the floor, locking with mine. “Why?”   

“Because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last four years of my life studying for. Because I feel ready to take on the challenge of a ministry position and yet nothing seems to be coming my way.”

I paused. “Because… that’s what I’m called to do? This May will mark the fifth year I have studied ministry in particular. It all just seems so anti-climatic and I can’t help but feel disheartened.”

Shaking his head, he replied, “You’re conflating calling and vocation. A vocation enables a person to fulfill their call. But having your vocation be your call in every season isn’t exactly guaranteed.”

I took a sip of coffee. It seemed so straightforward, and yet, part of who I have trained myself to be resisted wholeheartedly embracing it in the moment. I think it’s because it’s hard for a person, place, or thing with a trajectory one way to change.

It’s possible. It’s just difficult based on the inertia we build up over time.

“Who knows,” he said, “Perhaps your ‘call’ in this season is to just be a student. Or maybe it is just to wait for wherever God leads. There are multiple ways to go kayaking, you know.”

We continued to chat for the rest of an hour. As the hour reached its end, he and I began walking toward a presentation he wanted to sit in on. As we reached the doors of the lecture hall, he paused and turned to say a last word.

“Don’t allow yourself to buy into the idea that calling is vocation. When options begin to foreclose, or you feel like you’re being left behind by your friends who have jobs in those areas, it can be easy to fall into despair and even doubt that you’re even supposed to be doing what you’re doing.”

I nodded as I turned to make my way across campus to meet up with someone else. It would be easy to accept the concept intellectually. The issue was more of a heart problem for me. I think it will take some work, but with God’s help, I can begin to reclaim some of the places in my heart that I have allowed weeds to take over.

Probably means I need to learn to be content with just floating along in life for a bit, trusting that things will work out one way or the other for the better.

I think, for a little bit of time, there’s good here too.

Adaptation

T. M. Loewen-ElofsonLeave a comment

In recent months, I find myself in one of my university’s libraries on a regular basis. As the evening wears on, I make my way to the first floor of the building. There, I find a place to sit in the coffee shop which remains open until the early morning hours.

As I type up one assignment after another, I’ve noticed that I tend to flip quickly from Word to one of several tabs I have open. Facebook. YouTube. Reddit. A random article that I found interesting but got distracted by something else halfway through reading it. Netflix.

I would think that I would get through my assignments faster if I could buckle down and focus for a solid hour or so. At least, I would make a good dent of progress going in some direction. And yet, it feels like I’m working uphill most nights.

In one of my classes, the professor had us read an article penned for the Atlantic a decade ago, the title of which asked its readers whether “Google is Making Us Stupid?” Nicolas Carr, the author, made the observation that as we have increasingly integrated search engines like Google into our everyday lives, we have rewired our brains to operate in a manner that is not conducive to the deep reading that is needed within academia. Instead, we are primed to find instant answers, fill in the respective blank, and forget what we read soon thereafter.

“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy,” confesses Carr, noting that before his frequent Internet use that “My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.”

In short, Carr (and many of us today who struggle through lengthy texts featured so prominently within the humanities) has re-trained his brain to retrieve information, at the cost of knowledge retention, as evidenced by his discomfort sitting with a text of any length.

While Google, among many others, allow us to search out information quickly, it does so in a decontextualized manner, retrieving the requested information with almost surgical precision without having to do the legwork of reading a book or body of text to understand it more fully within the larger discussion going on within its field.

Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, had similar concerns about the invention of writing, saying that people who used writing were substituting the written word for actual experiential knowledge. Socrates feared that people would cease to use their memory and forget. Furthermore, disconnected from experience, they would have the impression that they are knowledgeable in areas where they aren’t.

In one respect, Socrates, in critiquing the pro-writing Greeks of his time, had a legitimate concern that writing made people stupid because it shifted the human mind to engage the world in a particular way which was foreign to the previous way of doing things. And yet, writing empowered humanity in ways that Socrates did not anticipate. For one, we know what Socrates said because Plato went ahead, much to his mentor’s chagrin, and wrote his thoughts down.

I can’t help but draw a line between the institution of writing and the internet today. While I am concerned for students who don’t seem to have the capacity to sit down and read through a passage of Scripture, I wonder how the Internet might change how the faith might be conveyed or engaged for new generations.

At the exact same time, I wonder what are necessary parts of the faith, in an attempt to understand how to teach the faith in an increasingly distracted world. Abraham Heschel claims this when he states that “spiritually we cannot live by merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge.” Faith, then, cannot live within a search engine paradigm, where a propositional truth is retrieved and promptly forgotten by the one retrieving it.

We must do more. But what? And how realistic would that be? Might we find ourselves at a re-visitation to Medieval Christianity, in which many people were illiterate and yet were arguably still participating in the faith? What might that look like applied to ministry today?