Pastor Dan Scott

Well, my daughter has shifted her attention from Nostradamus to Galileo. www.beatriceblount.blogspot.com

In her latest post, she claims that we post-modern ‘sophisticates’ are as likely to misjudge those who offer challenging knowledge as the people of Galileo's time.

The famous astronomer, you will recall, made the discovery that the sun was the center of our solar system. That implied that the earth was not fixed but rather moved around the sun. Under pressure, he recanted. He feared banishment from the Lord's Table. It’s very old news. Also, the story has been repeated in so many scholarly text books and articles by now that few people in the Western World have escaped hearing about it.

We are not likely to face such a problem in our times, of course. We don't have any astronomers in our churches to begin with. They simply don't attend. Neither do paleontologists, physicists or anthropologists. As the church's infatuation with ignorance as a form of piety has deepened, we have steadily eliminated great swaths of human knowledge and those who pursue it, from our congregations. Today, among a shocking number of believers, even theology and biblical studies have become suspect.

We expect our faith to comfort us. We don’t expect it to offer information about origins, meaning, justice, jurisprudence, history, art and so forth. Furthermore, if a biblical or spiritual insight cannot be stated as a sound bite followed by a joke, (hopefully illuminated by clever lighting and delivered with excellent sound) we tend to be uninterested.

The most literary religion in all of history has suddenly fallen in love with ignorance. It’s an enormous tragedy.

American Evangelicalism is presently afflicted with a late stage of cognitive dissonance. (The term means “the voluntarily suppression of any knowledge that may challenge what one has decided in advance to believe.”)

In addiction work, we call that “denial.” It is a simple word that describes a serious condition. For example, it keeps an otherwise loving dad from noticing that his teenager has become anorexic. “That just doesn't happen in our family,” the dad keeps repeating to himself. Soon, the sedative pleasure of denial numbs his eyes to his daughter’s shrinking body.

The same process works to cover up any addiction in one’s family. Everyone outside the family may know that the old man is mad as a hatter but the family members just smile and tell stories about his eccentric and creative ways.

Cognitive dissonance is simply a fancier word for the same reaction.

Everyone is prone to cognitive dissonance, by the way. Thomas Samuel Kuhn wrote a very famous book about how it affects scientists. He claimed that when newly discovered facts threaten old theoretical structures, aging (and not so aging) scientists will often go to work to expel the people who take the new discoveries seriously from respectable positions in universities and laboratories. As it turns out, even scientists tend to fight new information. It's a very human trait. That’s why intellectually honest people intentionally adopt a process for information-gathering and information-evaluation that purposefully challenges what they would prefer to believe.

Christians call that process “discernment.” St. Paul says that it is a necessary for any Christian group that allows people to prophesy. “Let them prophesy,” writes Paul, “but let the others judge.” In other words, a prophet must not judge his or her own prophesy. The community must stand back, assess, ponder, reflect, examine, debate – do the difficult work of testing the origin, accuracy, and biblically faithful nature of the prophetic utterance. This is supposed to protect the Christian community from cults, stupidity, and from egomaniacal wind bags that manipulate Christian’s hunger for God in order to enrich themselves.

A genius can be wrong. After all, very intelligent people have sometimes taught heresy, a spiritually toxic spirit that comes wrapped in the guise of clever words. It is also possible to be a genius without acquiring wisdom, which is more spiritually desirable. So genius is not everything.

I certainly do not think we should open up all our doors and windows for every novel and cool idea. The church was right to be cautious in past generations. We are the poorer for our modern abdication of theological responsibility.

On the other hand, we must be cautious – and humble about our own tendency to suppress knowledge. We must own up to the real reason we tend to reject knowledge – to become cognitively dissonant. It is rarely because we think we are battling heresy; it is usually because we have become so ill informed about the world and our own faith that we are now uncomfortable with anyone who knows very much about anything. That’s why (by our actions and attitudes) we often tell thinkers and artists to go away.

And they do.

It hurts us when we look into the past and are forced to acknowledge the harm Christian leaders did to our witness. We still live with the results, as Tiffany points out. The historical church sometimes required intelligent people to deny what they knew to be true in order to keep peace with those they loved. That was a sin against truth and we must admit it. Every generation of young students rediscover these sins against science that our spiritual ancestors committed in the name of Christ. When our children discover these events in their studies, we must acknowledge their pain and embarrassment and tell them how we can avoid committing the same sin.

There is probably no better example of the church’s sin against intellectual integrity than the defeated Galileo leaving worship, the taste of consecrated bread and wine still on his lips, muttering to himself as he went, "and yet it moves."
However, our sin may be greater. We have allowed our knowledge base to become so weak that a developing Galileo will have left the Lord’s Table long before we ever have to threaten to deny him the body and blood of Christ. He probably will have left while still in high school, when the church refused to teach him, listen to his questions, treat his quest for knowledge respectfully, or find some mentor who is not threatened to explore the cosmos and to joyfully (And worshipfully) confess that “we know in part and see in part.”

My daughter, Tiffany, writes a blog that has become widely read. I can see why; she is one of the best writers around. Not only do her words dance and perform all sorts of intellectual acrobatics, she actually says something; and that’s refreshing these days!

Both of my daughters are believers, thanks be to God. They attend church faithfully and are raising my grandchildren in the faith. However, each of them struggle with American Evangelicalism’s current flight from the arts and sciences. They are not theological liberals, so its not an option for them to attend a church that is not committed to an orthodox expression of biblical faith. On the other hand, they often feel they must hide their interest in social concerns, philosophical questions, art, science – well, much of life that currently falls outside of the interest of many American Evangelicals.

In her latest blog, Tiffany muses about the relationship between Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henri II, and Nostradamus. She dips her foot in the swamp of history, fantasy, myth, fear and fascination that surrounds the old soothsayer. Then she raises the question of whether he actually was a soothsayer/wizard/devil-inspired spiritualist. She does this because she discovered that he saved lives during a plague by proscribing rose hips, which is of course a potent source of vitamin C.

The issue of Nostradamus leads her to wonder whether he was misjudged by his generation of believers simply because he made eerie predictions about the future. (For example, he predicted the rise of an evil European leader he called “Hinster” who would murder millions of people.)

Well, I don’t know. My knowledge of Nostradamus is limited. Like most of you, I realize that New Agers and the like find him fascinating. Through the fog of centuries he appears sinister and altogether mysterious.

But that’s not her point.

Her point is that church people have gotten it wrong a few times and have attacked (and even killed) people for witchcraft or heresy who were actually just intelligent. She names Galileo and Michelangelo and raises the specter of the Salem Witch trials.

Probably Nostradamus had a better grasp on pharmacology than others. Not knowing about vitamin C, he nonetheless intuitively grasped that something in rose hips could help people fight disease. As for his prophesies, why would that frighten any Christian? After all, don't we read daily from a text full of such predictions?

Tiffany is circling around what I think is probably the answer: Nostradamus was both an intellectual and a Charismatic.

Not good, especially now.

One must be either spiritually alive or intellectually curious...but not both.

Intellectuals and Charismatics are enemies; each expels the other from their camp. Therefore, if you are an intellectual and discover that you have Charismatic gifts and interests, you better hide that side of yourself from your intellectual friends. If you are a Charismatic who develops an interest in the intellectual life, you will have to hide that interest from your Charismatic friends.
An anti-intellectual mood has swept over Evangelicalism in the last few years that resembles the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the sixties. A couple of generations have grown up believing that fidelity to the Word of God requires a return to the nineteenth century. The Christian liberals’ capitulation to modernity has been met with a conservative retreat from the arts, science and social justice.

It leaves some of us with no place to go.

I grew up in an extremely conservative Christian home. We never had a television (we read books!)

We heard bible stories every single day. We prayed. We fasted. We cared for poor people. We did the stuff of spiritual life in a socially conservative context. However, I never once heard anyone ever claim that the earth was six thousand years old. I never heard anyone rebuke my boyhood interest in dinosaurs. No one yelled at me for reading Freud when I was a teenager.
My parents encouraged me to develop intellectually and welcomed my questions about life and reality.

I was thirty when I first heard an intelligent Christian man claim that the earth was six thousand years old. I thought he was kidding!

He wasn’t.

He was my first encounter with a growing tide of American believers who had declared war on all aspects of modern life; except for its technological toys.

Before this blog becomes a book, I must somehow wrap up my thoughts.

Truth, Goodness and Beauty exist. Believing that separates me from modern and post-modern thinkers.

I believe that a dead man rose from the dead and that He was God made flesh. That conviction destroys any intellectual credentials I might otherwise be allowed to establish.

Perception of Truth, Goodness and Beauty differs from person to person; from culture to culture and from generation to generation. That statement separates me from the current mood of many conservative Christians. Reality and the perception of reality are not the same things. That is why we must quest for all three of those eternal qualities. The quest begins in awe and humility. It cannot begin in a naive certainty that my family, my church, my culture and the age in which I happen to be living, gives me a privileged view of reality. That would be the doctrine of immaculate perception! Continental drift occurred; its not a theory or a speculation. That provides us with a visible proof of an earth that is the product of untold ages and cataclysmic (as well as incremental) change.

Quantum mechanics has uncovered truth that no previous generation ever considered: that our concrete world rests upon a constant motion of particles and energies that have only probable existence.

Relativity –now proven through numerous experiments – reveal a universe in which there is no fixed point, or for that matter, any fixed flow of time.

And there is more, but I must conclude.

Creatures who live for the briefest moment against a backdrop of infinity, ought to be humble. As St. Paul says, “We know in part and prophesy in part and see reality as in a glass, darkly.”

Nostradamus startles us by depicting a coming European monster centuries in advance, alluding to machines that would fly and rain down fire that would consume entire cities. However, he called the European monster “Hinster”. That’s really close! But not quite right.

We see in part and prophesy in part.

He discovered that vitamin C had potent powers to heal the sick. However, he had no explanation for what he had found, at least one that would satisfy his contemporaries.

The Salem witches were apparently smart women who were trying to discover ways of keeping their families alive with things they learned from Indians – that some roots and berries have medicinal properties.

Galileo tried not to see what he had seen in order to maintaining his community with those he loved. “And yet,” he was heard to mutter as he left the church, “the sun does move.”

The scripture commands us to “comfort the feeble minded.” We are forbidden to ridicule or mock those who struggle with mental deficiencies.

Why then do we feel free to ridicule or mock those who exercise their minds to discover the wonders of the world?

I don’t know. But it isn’t right.

If you want to read the blog that provoked this diatribe, here’s the link: http://beatriceblount.blogspot.com/2009/07/nostradamus.html

Today is June 1st, the day after Pentecost.

It’s the first day of Ordinary Time, that vast stretch of nothing from Pentecost to Advent.

From late Fall to early Summer, we prepare for (and celebrate) the three great Christian holidays: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.

Six months of stirring dramas, parties, feasts, fasting, graduations, and other special things.

Then, Ordinary Time.

Boring. Boring. Boriiiiiing.

The wasteland of the church year, the time when no one has enough creativity to make anything special.

That’s what I thought until June 1st, 2004.Perhaps my opinion of Ordinary Time changed the moment Byron Joyner ordered the steak (and I ordered the salmon) that we would never eat.It was a pleasant enough day, just before the hellish Sonoran summer erupts to bake the streets of Phoenix and all those who dwell therein.

I sipped on my coffee, ate my salad, and chatted with Byron.When the cell phone rang, I ignored it. I hate it when people keep answering their cell phone when they are supposed to be visiting with me. It makes me feel as though people who are not present are more important than the ones who are. However, this ring seemed different somehow. I apologized and took the call.

“This is Mrs. (Someone whose name I cannot recall) at the Salvation Army. I work with your wife in drug rehab. She has just collapsed. The ambulance is taking her to St. Joseph’s.”

I thanked her and put my phone away.“It was the Salvation Army,” I explained to Byron. “Trish has collapsed. She’s going to the hospital.”I ate a bit of my salad and waited for him to continue.It took me a few seconds to notice the look on his face. It’s the look people give you when you are doing something completely weird and inappropriate.

“Aren’t you going?” He asked.“I guess I should,” I replied.

“Tell the waitress that I will not be eating the salmon.” I walked to my car. I drove to St. Joe’s. I called Debby Lefebvre and asked her to cancel my appointments. I arrived. I walked into the hospital with that professional clergy stride that one develops over the many years of dealing with tragedy and uncertainty.

Calamity doesn’t come like in the movies. When calamity knocks, most of us keep walking for as long as we can as though nothing has happened. Its like the cartoon characters who step over the cliff and keep walking for several steps before they realize that the ground has given way.

Trish seemed nauseated and a bit pale. She asked me to fill out her hospital forms. John and Sybil Dyson came by for a moment. They prayed and left. I kept trying to figure out what was wrong.

Then Trish stopped breathing. We would not speak another word for a month. Her shades went down. No one would know what was happening inside her for many weeks. It would be months before our conversations made much sense, even after she began to talk.

Loss? Terror? The sound of something ripping up the tapestry of our lives? What words or metaphor can carry the load of the unspeakable?

A brain aneurism is a neurological tornado.

It destroys this and leaves that. It removes a roof and leaves a little boy’s bicycle propped up against his house, untouched.When Advent would come again, we would be in another city. Our lives – and the lives of many others – would be altered forever.

The tornado carried us away and plopped us down into another life. Ordinary Time, 2004 because the season when Trish learned how to do ordinary things again: walk, talk, think, and breathe on her own.

Each ordinary thing she recovered became suddenly extraordinary. If one cannot breathe on his own, an ordinary breath becomes infinitely valuable. We cried the day she drank water, as though we had won a lottery and could now put our troubles behind us.

She would not learn to fix her hair again for three years. Her hands had simply lost the ability to speak to one another. Each hand insisted on doing things the way it wanted, without any sense of obligation to the other.

This morning, Trish played the piano with both hands and filled our house with the sound of five years of recovery.

Today is June 1st, 2009.It’s ordinary time.The birds in the oaks around our house are having some sort of pow-wow in a language I cannot understand.

It’s a bit windy.The green fields make me sneeze.The sun kisses my face.

Yesterday was Pentecost. I thought at times that the people in our church might be caught up in a fiery chariot, like Elijah the Tishbite. We danced. We wept. We listened to sermons that touched the deepest parts of our soul. We ate bread and drank wine from God’s Table. It was all glorious.

But today is Ordinary Time. It’s the season to put into practice all we have learned. It is a time to walk through life without drama or adrenaline. It is time to act in those small ways, day after day, that slowly, undramatically and unperceptively makes saints of us.Yesterday was red, alive with tongues of fire and mighty rushing winds. Today is green, with echoes of mercy and whispers of love.It is an ordinary day, in Ordinary Time and all is well.

Thanks be to God!