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A Believable Conviction amidst the Trauma of Finitude
Column by Lauren Van Ham
September 6, 2018
Of the 12 theses Bishop Spong examines in his (maybe) last book, Unbelievable, Thesis 11 is, “Life After Death.” Still believable, he asks?
His two-part response is an exhilarating analysis, quick to deconstruct human-adapted theology, and an open-ended invitation to apply curiosity and love in the experience of not knowing. This invitation lives LARGE in any of us brave enough to admit that we are not in ultimate control and that, beyond all the gratitude we feel about the deep understanding our species has attained regarding many things, there is still so, so much more that we do not – perhaps cannot – know.
For the first 5 ½ pages, Spong unpacks “Heaven,” and “Hell,” illustrating that these categories tried to serve a purpose in early moral teachings; followers were encouraged to seek goodness and reward (& baptism!), and to rebuke ways of living that could do harm, or lead to isolation and punishment. He details certain contortions made by the church to find loopholes so that unbaptized babies would be well-held in eternal life, and so that the souls of those who had lived destructive lives would be sent to the form of hell commensurate with the sins committed. It’s ornate, rather desperate….and So Very Human!!!
Do we not wish for a pleasant path?
Do we not want goodness for ourselves and those we love?
Do we not hunger for equality and justice?
Do we not long for a life that “makes sense”?
What becomes so tricky, of course, is that in the face of not knowing, we tend to freak out. Some of us more than others, and it takes different forms: we are worriers, we are warriors, we are leaders, we are healers. Some pray or meditate, others run or medicate, and many go numb, possibly hoping someone out there will find an answer.
This pattern – grasping, resisting, fixing – is what the Buddha named, “suffering.” Full disclosure: my freak-out tendencies are calmer when things have names. When I can observe the spin that I’m in – grasping for control, longing to know, grieving a loss that wasn’t “supposed” to happen – I am re-membered to the phenomena of Life itself, which includes all of this (suffering) and thankfully, a lot of other things, too.
How we take care of ourselves in our suffering becomes a BIG spiritual question. In the second part of his “Life After Death” exploration, Spong does a dazzling job of walking us through Deep Time, the 13.8 billion year account starting with the Flaring Forth (Big Bang), and highlighting some of the most mind-blowing moments where Life emerged, and where Life replicated itself to create more Life, and where Life differentiated so it could enter into life-sustaining relationship with itself in myriad forms. All of this keeps moving, traveling through incredible expanses of time and arriving at a moment, roughly in the last quarter million years, when self-awareness emerged. As Spong describes it, “This creature knew that life had a beginning and an ending and that he or she would die. So this creature experienced the trauma of finitude…”
He continues from there quickly, but maybe it’s worth a pause right now. The trauma of finitude. At first sight, finitude is truly terrifying. We are wired for survival and capable of fighting hard to stay in the realm of living as we know it.
Experts in the trauma field have been receiving a lot of attention lately, and given all that is unfolding on Earth, we are wise to pay attention. Studies emphasize that while there is a lot that we don’t yet understand (there’s that not knowing again), it is resiliency and healthy adaptation that allows humans to move from traumatic states and behaviors into places of returned balance, trust and ease.
Those first explanations of reward and punishment, heaven and hell and how to live eternally were certainly attempts to adapt. They were also ways to avoid. Pretty understandable! I have equal parts compassion and frustration towards avoidance, my own, and what I perceive to be preventing others from becoming most fully themselves.
What happens when we explore the trauma and stop avoiding our finitude?
In elementary terms, I believe it is where we develop resiliency, but through the lens of Mystery, it is the place where we hold great treasure. It is the gift that comes from loving our miraculous body, in spite of its limitations, and endeavoring to live life in ways that end our deluded sense of separateness.
Early in the chapter Spong references Jeremiah 1:5, “Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you…” He then moves to biology saying of his own conception, “I am not a product of divine planning; I am rather a product of absolute randomness.” But then, Deep Time adds dimension to this discourse between scripture and science, “Somewhere around 3.8 million years ago, on this tiny planet revolving around a midsize star, in the galaxy we now call the Milky Way, life somehow emerged. It was a new thing, but we have to say that the possibility of life must always have been present or it could not have emerged.”
Brian Swimme, mathematician and cosmologist says it like this, “The center of the cosmos refers to that place where the great birth of the universe happened at the beginning of time, but it also refers to the upwelling of the universe as river, as star, as raven, as you, the universe surging into existence anew. The consciousness that learns it is at the origin point of the universe is itself an origin of the universe. The awareness that bubbles up each moment that we identify as ourselves is rooted in the originating activity of the universe. We are all of us arising together at the center of the cosmos.”(1)
A new perspective on eternity and our inter-relatedness allows space for all of it to co-exist! The randomness and the finitude are in the same holy soup with the interdependence and the meaning. Thesis 11 offers us this challenge, in body, mind and spirit. And herein lies the practice. Back in the second paragraph, I mentioned the LARGE invitation that beckons those of us brave enough to admit we are not ultimately in control. That sounds judgmental at first, but I will be the first to share that I am trying to be brave. I have moments of intellectual comprehension, when this challenge of Life After Death registers as logical. I have moments of physical pain or psychological panic when I desperately want a super-power god to “make things right.” And then, there are the occasional moments of incredible courage and vast freedom where Life After Death fills me with a rush of gratitude, wonder and contentment in not having to know.
I forget, and then I’m reminded. I forget again, and then remember. What helps me remember? Some of it is practice and some of it is noticing the times when I am called back into the Great Family of Belonging. In Spong’s words, “I believe that I have touched the eternal and that I share in what that means. …The only place I can hold this conviction and prepare for what comes next is in a community of seekers.”
In this life, and possibly beyond, we are invited to Life After Death. It happens each time we become intimate with Life itself, our suffering, our ecstasy and our inseparable relatedness to that which is timeless and eternal.
~ Lauren Van Ham
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About the Author
Lauren Van Ham was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest; Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute. Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care), and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Her passion and training in the fine arts, spirituality and Earth’s teachings has supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief and loss, and sacred activism. Lauren’s work with Green Sangha (a Bay Area-based non-profit) is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of environmental activism taking place in religious America. Her essay, “Way of the Eco-Chaplain” appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women. Lauren tends a private spiritual direction practice and serves as Dean for The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, CA.
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(1) Swimme, Brian. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story, 1996 ed., Orbis Books, p. 112
Question & Answer
Q: By David
Is there some hidden reason why you treat the issue of homosexuality so frequently? Are you gay?
A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong
Dear David,
I am amazed that prejudice against homosexual persons is so deep that people like you think there must be some hidden agenda that would motivate a person to take up the battle for justice and full acceptance in both Church and society for gay and lesbian people. "He must have an angle," they say. "Perhaps he is a closeted homosexual." Actually, the surprising thing that we discover over and over is that some of the most vigorous religious opponents of homosexuality, including some who are bishops are in fact covering their own closeted homosexuality in their frequent attacks on homosexual persons.
No David, my sexual orientation is heterosexual and is not my agenda. My agenda comes out of my understanding of the Gospel. If we take seriously the words attributed to Jesus in the 4th Gospel, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly," then the enhancement of life is at the center of Christian ministry. The reverse of that is true also. Anything that diminishes the life of any child of God is a violation of both the Gospel and its mission.
When the Church discriminated against people of color, defining them as less than fully human and deserving of something less than equal opportunity, the Gospel was violated. So I joined in the civil rights movement and worked in my church to put an end to every vestige of racism in my church. I rejoice that today the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, where I grew up in a segregated church, has as its elected Diocesan Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, an African American.
When the Church discriminated against women, defining them as lesser creatures, unworthy to serve the Church except in secondary roles, which specifically excluded being bishops, priests and deacons, I joined the crusade to rid the Church of its sexist and patriarchal sin. I rejoice today that my church now has 12 female bishops and, in the diocese I served for 24 years, women constitute more than 40% of its clergy. Some other parts of the Christian Church, including Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox traditions and various branches of conservative Protestantism like the Southern Baptist Convention still wallow in this prejudice of the ages, but increasingly these bodies look like apparitions from another century.
When the Church, out of its own lack of understanding of sexual orientation, expresses a profound ignorance about homosexuality, it is, in my opinion, not worthy of serious attention. When church leaders violate what we now know about the Bible to employ proof texts to bolster their prejudices, they violate what it means to be "the Body of Christ." Discrimination on the part of the Christian Church against any child of God on the basis of any external difference is not a matter of a simple disagreement about which we ought to be tolerant, it is rather a dagger aimed at the very heart of the Gospel. The Church tolerates that prejudice at the peril of its own soul.
The battle that goes on today in the churches of the world over this enormous moral issue regarding justice and the full acceptance for homosexual persons in both the Church and the society is a battle for the future of Christianity. I would be derelict in response to my baptismal vows "to seek Christ in every person" if I did not engage this battle until the last vestiges of homophobia have been rooted out of the Christian faith. I intend to do just that. I commend this same course of action to you.
John Shelby Spong
Published February 1, 2006
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
Facing the Abortion Issue as Mature Religious People
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
February 1, 2006
There were many issues raised at the confirmation hearings on the nomination of Samuel Alito to serve on the Supreme Court. Yet only one of them, the issue of abortion, exerted so much power that it seemed like the proverbial “elephant in the room.” It was present from two different perspectives as senators from both parties questioned Judge Alito. Abortion politics is a major game being played out at this moment in America’s national life. Can the courts of this country change their minds? Of course they can. One has only to look at the Dred Scott case for proof of that. When that case was reversed it was to expand the rights of a citizen that had been compromised by the court. Can the courts, however, withdraw 33 years later a right they extended to the citizens in 1973? That has never happened before in our national history. Perhaps that is why this issue is so emotional. The battle lines are hard and the huge chasm that divides the two sides apparently cannot be compromised. Indeed, one of the reasons for this bitter stalemate is that too many people on both sides have a vested interest in keeping the tensions alive. Organized religion is one of those power hungry, vested interests.
What neither side in the abortion conflict seems to me to recognize is that this debate is not about an idealistic moral issue. It is about real people, whose lives are deeply caught in the web of this conflict. Few abortions are casually undertaken. Almost all represent failure at some level, leaving lasting scars. Yet what is clear is that most Americans want abortions to be legal, safe and rare. No one, however, seems to know how to bring about this common goal, probably because we do not know how to assess the influence of organized religion that sees abortion as the final act separating morality from the power that religion once exercised over all of life.
Banning or criminalizing abortions, prosecuting either mothers or doctors is not the way to go, no matter what the “right to life” people say. The evidence supporting this conclusion is overwhelming. Abortions were performed long before Roe v. Wade made them legal. There was a veritable abortion cottage industry in this nation, doing about 200,000 abortions a year, staffed by opportunists, who operated without standards, ready and willing to serve the needs of their clientele. The number of botched jobs was abundant and the lives of many women and fetuses were lost in the process. If the proposition to return to this were put to the voters of this country, it would be overwhelmingly defeated. If one really believes in “the right to life,” that should include at a minimum “the right to life” for frightened pregnant women.
Criminalizing abortion has been tried in other parts of the world with tragic results. Throughout Latin America where abortion is almost universally a crime, the abortion rates are far higher than they are in Western Europe or in the United States. The New York Times reported recently that in Columbia, where abortions are illegal even when a woman’s life is in danger, there is on the average one abortion per woman during her fertile years. In Peru, the average is nearly two abortions per woman over the course of her reproductive years. Up to 5000 women a year die from abortions in Latin America. If one really wants to lower the number of abortions, indeed to make them rare, the attempt to criminalize the procedure is not going to accomplish that goal. The policy of the Bush administration in denying aid to family planning clinics that provide abortion counseling may have served his agenda among his religious constituency in the United States, but the facts reveal that the result was more illegal and uninformed abortions and more women who died seeking illegal abortions.
Many people in America, including some of the most passionate pro-lifers, are deeply confused about what would happen if the Supreme Court actually overturned Roe v. Wade. This nation would simply revert to where it was before that 1973 ruling. Abortion was legal in some states, not in others. There would be a patchwork pattern across this nation. In non-abortion states, abortions could still be obtained legally but only by traveling to a state where the procedure was legal. Those who could travel would do so. Those who could not travel would avail themselves of the back alley clinics. I find it hard to imagine anyone on either side of this debate believing that a desirable outcome. To make abortion legally available in parts of the nation but only to those who can afford the time and expense of travel, neither addresses the moral issue, nor is it “equal protection under the law.”
In the current political debate, people speak out of widely differing contexts. There are in affluent circles some who view abortion as the ultimate form of birth control. This surely trivializes pregnancy and diminishes the sacredness of life. If that is the context in which moral judgment is being made, it is easy to be condemnatory. There are, however, others living in poverty and hopelessness, who see abortion as their only chance to survive their circumstances. How can one law legislate for all? We do not want to build a society in which the life of the unborn is not valued; yet we also do not want to build a society where an unwanted pregnancy is a life sentence to poverty and degradation. Imagine yourself facing an abortion decision as a poor 12-13 year old girl, living in the squalor of an inner city ghetto, the product of a dysfunctional family structure and pregnant by your own father, an uncle or whoever slept last night with your mother. Imagine the prospect of bringing yet another life into this environment and tipping the scale of this family unit more deeply into despair and hopelessness. It is a very different decision from one made by those who see abortion as a convenient way to “rectify” a mistake.
Have we reached the point in our own maturity as a society that we are able to separate our thoughts on birth control from the issue of abortion? While the Roman Catholic Church condemns both, there is a great difference between the two in the life of our society. No one is publicly debating birth control today. Family planning has become a virtue in an overpopulated world. Polls reveal no difference in the use of birth control among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems and non-believers. If we can honestly face that issue, why can we not have effective sex education in our public schools? Why are school officials still being tyrannized by religious pressure groups, both Catholic and Evangelical, who campaign relentlessly against sex education? There is no evidence that sex education encourages sexual activity. That is fear mongering on the part of religious groups who think that sexual activity can be stopped with pious campaigns that emphasize abstinence. “Just say no!” doesn’t work with swirling hormones. It never has, not even in those Middle Ages that religious people think of as their “golden age.”
In the high Middle Ages, so admired by “traditionalists,” the gap between stated moral values and observable sexual practices was still enormous. A clear double standard existed. The time between puberty and marriage was no more than one to two years among the gentle-born young ladies who were the only people whose “virtue” anyone seemed anxious to protect. These future brides of the well-to-do were chaperoned scrupulously in that brief period of time until they were safely married and under the protection of their husbands. Young males in this era were never discouraged from “sowing their wild oats.” Since one cannot engage in sex without a partner, sexually active males had to find sexually active females to serve their needs. Who did they find in this age of public sexual repression? There were prostitutes but they also availed themselves of lower class girls, both white and black, who had little power to resist. That was always known but never “noticed” or morally condemned. Revelations through DNA evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings and that Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina fathered a child, Elsie Washington, by a 15-year-old black servant are only the tip of an iceberg of the sexual activity that was rampant through the ages.
Has not the time come for sexual honesty? Our children today enter puberty at eleven, twelve and thirteen. Because of educational opportunities many of them do not get married for 10-15 years after puberty. There is no realistic chaperone system during those years between puberty and marriage and the double standard has disappeared. How can anyone seriously argue against the necessity of publicly funded sex education in the schools of this nation? How long will we as a society allow the voice of a deeply-compromised religious system to continue to dictate our laws that result primarily in expanded welfare payments to unwed mothers and half orphan infants and that allow the family life of some 20-25% of our population to remain under impossible pressure? When will we demand that there be public responsibility through our publicly financed educational system to mandate competent sex education for all of our children? It is time to act. It is time to throw off hysterical religious systems! The present abortion debate is little more than a smokescreen designed to cover these realities.
I truly hope that we will get to a place where abortion will be rare in our whole world. I believe it does cheapen the sacredness of life. Some therapeutic abortions of malformed fetuses or the products of rape and incest will always need to be protected for the sake of the living. Convenience abortions, however, should never occur in an educated society where they can be so easily prevented. We are, however, not yet at that point so abortion must be kept safe and legal. Not to do so cheapens life even more. My goal is to make abortions legal, safe and rare. I do this because I worship a God who promises life in all its fullness to both the mother and the unborn child and who calls us all to live, to love and to be as responsible adults. The time has come to stop playing “religious games” with the vulnerable people in our society.
President Bush, members of Congress and Justices of the Supreme Court, I hope you are listening.
~ John Shelby Spong
Announcements
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September 20 - 22nd, Sacramento, CA
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