Month: October 2019

Want to know what scares me almost more than anything else?

Dentists

I think I’m not alone in this. Let’s face it. Nobody goes to the dentist for pleasure.  I think I might have a deeper fear than some others though.  It’s a childhood fear having to do with my upper right front tooth. When I was ten years old, I was pushed lips first into a cinderblock wall by two bullies. That tooth broke and for the next dozen years I underwent multiple procedures in an effort to have a permanent false tooth.  I finally got my permanent tooth when I was twenty two years old after my last temporary one broke. The procedure involved grinding down the broken tooth to a small stump.  Also a root canal with pins inserted into the bone to give the permanent tooth a good foundation.  It was a good fix and the tooth still serves me well twenty five years later. The problem is, I was so nervous about going to the dentist after that (in 1995) that I didn’t go again until I had a horrible toothache from multiple cavities in 2018. I went again a couple of weeks ago to deal with another four cavities. I still don’t like going there, but the fear is slowly going away.

Fear is an interesting thing. It can be helpful to be fearful of reasonable things in order to keep us save and alive. We can also develop unreasonable fears, which are counterproductive and keep us from living healthy, joyful lives.  Neuroscientists tell us that the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in your brain are responsible for fear based responses. When we have a traumatic experience, It causes us, when triggered, to bypass reason and engage the fight/flight response. It is automatic, just like when you burn yourself and your hand moves away from the hot object before you can even process what happened.  

One of these unreasonable and unhelpful—even detrimental fears that we can have, is religious, existential fear.  I always find it interesting…also frustrating, how when I end up having a conversation about theology with my family and friends who still believe that God punishes most of His created beings in an eternal torture chamber called Hell, most times they just shut down.  Fear and anger are triggered and they simply cannot have a calm, rational conversation anymore. They do not want to hear information that is contrary to what they have been taught all of their lives.

Why is there such a fear based response to the good news that God is actually as nice as Jesus and that He is more like a restorative doctor than a retributive judge?  Why are the religious fundamentalists not jumping for joy that the gospel really is good news? Why can’t they listen when I show them how historically, exegetically, morally and philosophically, the idea of eternal punishment is man-made, unreasonable and just plain untenable?  What keeps them from being excited and hopeful that the gospel is not only an eschatology, but a present reality of universal restoration?

Most of these people have been taught as I was—as young, impressionable children that there is an all powerful being out there who is rather disappointed with you because you were born sinful.  Of course it doesn’t matter that you were apparently thrust into existence apart from personal consent and immediately burdened with original sin which wasn’t even your fault.  Of course the only way to escape the infinite, unimaginable torture which lasts forever (the human brain cannot even process the concept of infinity) is to believe the correct idea about God in a world with thousands of ideas about God.  Of course it gives you an advantage if you are born in the right country and into the right family. And what you have to believe, is that God can’t forgive without being paid off first—which doesn’t really even make sense.  God killed His own son (who is also God) and got it out of His system so that He doesn’t have to punish you.  But if you don’t believe this, He will STILL punish you!  Forever!

Teaching children this nonsense is child abuse.

This kind of mental trauma gets stuck in the prefrontal cortex.  There is irrational fear when confronted later on in life with ideas of a God who really is love and cannot coerce, or hate, or punish retributively or behave an any way that is not love.  They are actually scared that God will punish them for listening to these ideas. Reason is bypassed and the fight/flight response kicks in. 

What’s the solution?

Patience. 

Trauma like that takes time to heal. The more I go to the dentist to fix the years of neglect to my teeth, the more I realize that he is there for my healing and restoration.  The punishment I endure is not comfortable, but he is working to ultimately take away my pain and to give me a better life. I’m less nervous every time I book an appointment. 

You will never change a religious persons mind by arguing with them.  Believe me…I’ve tried that and it does not work!  I’m realizing as time goes on that the only way to convince these people, is to patiently be God’s love to them. To meet them where they are and accept them as they are, ironically without the agenda of convincing them.  Perhaps as they experience God’s unconditional love from you, they will come to understand that no matter how loving you are, God is far more loving. One day they might come to the life changing realization that one simply cannot overestimate God’s love and mercy. From my own experience I can say that once I felt safe, my mind was ready to learn what my heart had always known!

Now the healing can begin as the divine dentist is able to extract the toxic decay of poor theology and self identity, leading them to wholeness of life. 

This is salvation!

“I just hate having to sit in front of a black person!”, said the young boy to his friend—quite loudly on the school bus. This brash statement was observed during the third week of the new school year, and what made it particularity significant to me, is that it was observed by my youngest daughter who sits two rows behind this young boy.  

You see, my daughter is black.  And yes, she came home in tears that day.  Someone thought she didn’t deserve any dignity because she happens to have beautiful dark skin. That’s all.  My daughter is one of the sweetest and most empathetic souls I personally know. I may very well be biased, but I do believe that she is also the prettiest girl in the whole school. And yet, this white boy was not able or willing to look past the colour of her skin to see that.  Why?  Because she is different from him. I don’t believe for a moment that racism is something inherent in humanity. It is a learned behaviour. But what causes it?  

I believe that racism can be traced back to fear, which comes from living your life with an assumption of scarcity.  When you live day to day with the assumption that life is a zero sum game. That there is not enough for everyone, this leads—quite naturally to fearful competition for limited resources.  Self preservation is a strong instinct. And most people are more than willing to do what it takes to look after # 1. 

Me.

This kind of mentality shows up in religion and politics as well. In religion, there is often an assumption that God doesn’t have enough love to go around for everyone.  Therefore, only the few people who believe the correct things can experience God’s love. It becomes important to embrace certitude, that I am right about what I believe about God and those other people are wrong.  In fact, their wrongness is a threat because they are obviously leading people that I care about (and possibly even me) into deception and thus divine punishment. In their minds, love is conditional and limited.  

In politics, working together for the common good by gleaning quality ideas from other parties we don’t necessarily entirely agree with is traded for partisan politics. We demonize and disregard those of other political affiliations, becoming societally fractured and backward in the process.

They are different from me and therefore a threat. And so we turn our gaze to others that look and think like ourselves and surround ourselves with them. This is a means of ultimately protecting myself, by advantaging others who are just like me. It’s like having a layer of insulation around yourself. Subsequently, we push others away who are different and in our perception are a threat to my self preservation. We dehumanize because it’s easier to hate those whom we can perceive as less human.  We identify them not by who they are, but by how they are different from me. 

That person is black

That person is a liberal

That person is a Muslim. 

What’s the solution?  The opposite of fear is love. Love as defined by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 does not leave any room for fear.  That is why John in John 4:18 says that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment.”  Most often the punishment we fear is the actualization of scarcity that we bring upon ourselves by living in that very mindset of scarcity. 

What would happen if we woke up to the reality that we do live in an abundant universe where there is enough for everyone?  Where self preservation is not necessary because others are looking out for me as I look out for them?  What if we realized that the One who is being itself exists as unconditional, limitless, self emptying love?  What if we realized that we are all one with the One who is existence and if we participate in that praxis of self emptying love there will be no division, no lack, no perceived difference?  

No fear

No racism

What if John Lennon was right in his song “Imagine”?