GRANDPA, WHAT...? GRANDPA, WHY...?

Lego's wonderfully articulated Shelob.
How did she become "evil?"

A little child shall lead them…

I find, alas, that I am in substantial agreement with the old saw, “There’s nothing more boring than other people’s grandchildren or vacation photos.” (There are exceptions, of course. Your grandchildren, for example, are certainly not boring. But I draw the line at your vacation pics.) So I will be neither offended nor surprised if – when I tell you that this essay is inspired by my grandson, Sam – you click off immediately as you stifle a yawn. But let me make this attempt to stay your hand: In what follows, I write not about how cute and clever Sam is, but about how I am both moved and startled by the thinking, the philosophy, the ethics, and – yes – the theology of a four-and-three-quarter year-old. Any four-and-three-quarter year-old. Including, I am glad to acknowledge, your grandkid.

Years ago I was in the middle of, “The body of Christ given for…” when another four-year-old, at the communion rail with his mother, interrupted me with a hoarse stage whisper, “Psst, Pastor Dick… when was God born and who were God’s mom and dad?” At one level, of course, this is standard, precious, out-of-the-mouths-of-babes fare, but at a deeper level (what I mean by being “startled”), these guileless questions and pronouncements elicit from me not an indulgent grandfatherly chuckle but an open-mouthed, pondering silence. Now, as a sixty-five-year-old theologian, I have an approach to this four-year-old’s question (I’ve even blogged about it for grown-ups, and will again), but I don’t exactly have an answer. (By golly, when was God born…?) It is a question asked by Aristotle and Aquinas, it is “What was there before there was something?” It is a question explored by Jim Holt in his new book, Why Does the World Exist? It is a question misunderstood by Richard Dawkins, and it is a question that drives philosophers, scientists, and theologians together as they stare into the light and into the darkness. It is the question of a four-year-old. Startling.

It seems that after four years of college, four years of seminary, countless hours of reading and advanced study, and thirty-five years in the ministry, I might have had a readier answer than I did to Sam’s question, from his child’s safety seat in the back of the car, “Grandpa, what does God do?” (Sam’s emphasis was on “do.”) My thoughtful formulation of an answer took too long. As I started to say, “Well…,” Sam was on to, “Look, there’s a loader!”

Sam is too young to have read The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or to have seen Star Wars, but he knows the essential stories because his dad is a Star Wars nerd and his YA literature-specialist Auntie Anna is a Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter geek, as is his pastor-friend Mike. They are his resources for learning the plots and the characters. But mostly he knows these stories because of Legos. Not only does Lego make intricate, multi-piece plastic kits of such esoterica as Gandalf’s fireworks cart, Harry Potter’s potions classroom, and Anakin’s pod racer; it also produces on-line video versions of the stories. (These sometimes veer too close to parody for an old Tolkien fan like grandpa: Ronald McDonald as part of the Fellowship of the Ring sneaking into Mordor?!)

Sam mostly tells me about these stories. He tells me which starfighter is piloted by Luke Skywalker, he tells me which Lego figure is Hermione, he tells me how Samwise picks up Frodo’s sword to fight off Shelob. But he also asks me. And what he mostly asks are questions like, “Why are the Orcs bad?” “What made Voldemort be bad?” “Did Smaug have a mom and dad?” I talk about how people sometimes turn to a bad life because they were mistreated by grownups or they didn’t grow up knowing they were loved, which is why your mommy and daddy love you so much…; I try to squeeze in an answer before Sam is distracted by the passing garbage truck. And then there’s, “Grandpa, what made Shelob evil?” Ah, “evil,” there it is. Good and Evil. I think I have a systematic theology textbook here somewhere…

Sam likes his children’s songs CDs. He said to me, “Grandpa, one of my songs says that Pharaoh’s army got drownded” (the old spiritual). “Yes,” I say, “there was that time when the water rose up and drowned the whole army….” “No, Grandpa,” says Sam, “God made the waters rise up and drown them.”  He doesn’t say it, but I feel the implied follow-up, “Tell me about a God who would drown a whole army, Grandpa.”

I am reminded of the description of the Bible as “not so much a great answer book as a great question book.” The Bible’s questions are our questions. Of course I have answers, or approaches to answers, for these questions, based on the classic Lutheran combination of faith and reason. And I look forward not so much to answering all of Sam’s questions in black and white as to continuing the conversation with him as he grows. And of course I’ll tell him I have questions of my own. “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

It would be good if more adults could live with the uncertainty of the Apostle Paul (“Now we see as through a clouded glass...” why should we think we’ll know it all?) And in Lutheran theology, all questions (and doubts) take us to Jesus and the cross. Sam loved learning about Jesus at Vacation Bible School this summer. He talked about Jesus so much that at one point I decided to seize on a teachable moment. In response to a little misbehavior, I said, “You know, Sam, Jesus teaches us that we should treat other people the way we would like to be treated.” Sam glared rather harshly at me and said, “Jesus teaches us nothing. He’s dead on the cross.” I was reduced to that open-mouthed silence for a few seconds. Then I realized that Sam’s response was a combination of the oppositional stage he is in (Sam, time to take a bath. “No, Grandpa, time for you to take a bath!”) and the idea he came away with from Bible School: Jesus is dead on the cross right now; at Easter he will come back alive.

My grandson the religious skeptic. May God grant us many years of conversation. Because I realize that not only are the Bible’s questions my questions. Sam’s questions are my questions.

MAYBE MY RUSSIAN BRIDE WILL ARRIVE IN A USED MERCEDES...

A few days ago I had a thought that comes into my noggin every once in a while (and more frequently now that I’m approaching retirement): Some day before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’d like to own a Mercedes Benz – used, of course. I did not commit this thought to writing in any way, but the very next time I sat down at this keyboard, the good folks at Google provided a banner ad atop my screen: “Pre-owned Mercedes…” They’re reading my mind! I thought. My friend Mike came to a different conclusion: By reading my keystrokes for the last few years (with a soulless keystroke reader), “they” know that I’m a sixty-five year old boomer male approaching retirement who certainly doesn’t make enough to buy a new Mercedes, that my reading and correspondence skew my interests ever so slightly toward a German rather than a Japanese luxury-mobile, and that a demographically placed ad for a pre-owned Mercedes might present just the “it’s now or never” opportunity that I might act on. Pathetic.

As a matter of principle, I didn’t click on the ad (the principle being a protest against our society’s easy acquiescence in the giving up of our privacy), but I have to confess a grudging admiration for the technology. I do not, however, admire the philosophy of the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, who disingenuously claim that these targeted ads are a favor they are providing for the consumer. My advertising friend tells me to get used to it and get over it – that it’s just an extension of a 1950s Madison Avenue ad for Crest toothpaste.  But it seems that the other privacy shoe is yet to drop – that the Zuckerbergian "privacy-is-so-twentieth-century" approach will, too late, be seen to be a favor only for the tyrannical and the amoral, and all of us who carelessly click that we “like” Kraft Mayonnaise will increasingly resemble hapless characters out of 1984 or Brave New World.

What’s both interesting and scary is that the targeted ad technology seems to be getting sharper and sharper. But sometimes they humorously miss the mark. A while back I wrote a piece on marriage.  Almost immediately I received a Google Mail sidebar ad offering me “Russian Brides--See Pics.”  As a matter of principle, I didn’t click on the ad, the principle being that Caryl was coming into the room and I wasn’t sure what these Russian Brides would look like!

HOLIER THAN THOU

Jesus promised us the kingdom; what did we get? The Church!

                                                                                                ~Adolph Harnack

Ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda. (The church, always reformed, always in need of reforming.)  ~an expression of the Protestant Reformation

I am a hopeful ecumenist, encouraged by the apparent waning or blurring of denominationalism, so it always both startles and bothers me when I realize that I am still aggravated by a few issues of the sixteenth century Lutheran reformation—issues such as the nature of the priesthood.

This came to mind a few months ago while watching a 60 Minutes segment on the priest sex scandal in Ireland, and more recently on the occasion of the announced resignation of Pope Benedict, during whose "watch" the Church's response to these scandals came under increasing scrutiny and criticism.

Let me be quick to acknowledge that there have been plenty of sexual boundary violators in my own Lutheran fold, and I agree that the solution to this Roman Catholic catastrophe has to be found within the Roman Catholic Church and not in finger-pointing suggestions from protestant onlookers, even as I, ironically, humbly offer an observation based on Lutheran theology. So, to the possible challenge, “What gives you the gall to say anything at all about this?” I can only reply that what follows is the same thing I offer my Roman Catholic friends in conversation over coffee.

Also, I understand the Lutheran Church to be a reform movement within the Church Catholic (Martin Luther never intended to start a new “church”), and it is in that spirit that I have the temerity to comment.

Although the cause of each case of sexual abuse has to do with the mental or sexual health of each individual priest involved (and leads critics within the Roman system to wonder about an approach to priest-formation that perhaps engages young men at a too-early stage in their psycho-sexual development), and although the strictures of celibacy are an easy target for speculation (an issue beyond the scope of this essay), the thing that makes sexual abuse by priests a grave spiritual crisis for Roman Catholics is the ontological holiness of the priesthood.

Some will hear this as an understatement of the obvious, others will say, “Huh?” Let me explain.   I know that “ontological” is a big old sophomore philosophy term, but it’s at the heart of this sad situation. It is a word that has to do with the very essence of being – of one’s nature. In Roman Catholic doctrine, the priest, at his ordination, becomes a holier person in his essential self, in his “being.” Compared to the laity, he is, quite literally, “holier than thou.” He is, in fact, holy in the same way that Christ is divine while still being human. In the words of John Cardinal O’Connor:

We become priests at ordination. There is an "ontological change" in our spiritual nature. Such is a profound mystery. Is it too bold an analogy to compare the change to Christ the Son of God's retaining His Divinity while becoming a man? At ordination an ontological change takes place. (Emphasis the cardinal’s.)[1]

This perceived holiness not only makes a trusting person vulnerable, it also elevates the criminal act to a crisis of faith for Roman Catholic laity and a crisis of integrity (not to mention public relations) for the hierarchy. As a laywoman in the 60 Minutes piece puts it, “They covered it up because the priest is supposed to be perfect.” (In Ireland, these ontologically superior beings are now allowed to be in the presence of children only under the supervision of another adult!) Although refreshingly open, the archbishop in the 60 Minutes interview doesn't address the issue of elevated priestly holiness. To my observation, it is never mentioned in churchly or journalistic discussions of this matter. But it is central.

By contrast, the reformation view is that all Christians are priests (needing no intermediary to approach the Divine), and that a member of the clergy is one of these priests who is ordained to a certain function (the care and ministry of word and sacrament), not to a different level of holiness. If the pastor plays a spiritually important role, it is because the word and sacraments, not the person, are important. What happens at ordination is a call to do a job for the community, not a transformation of one’s being.

  

For good biblical and practical reasons, a pastor is – and ought to be – expected to live an “exemplary” life. But even though a kind of folk-theology causes many a protestant layperson to think of the pastor as especially “holy,” Roman Catholic doctrine assures everyone – the layperson, the hierarchy, and the priest himself that he, in fact, is, and bases the priest-people relationship on this holiness.

When a protestant pastor commits an abuse, great damage ensues (worthy—because it’s in my own clan—of a much hotter essay than this), and each individual case is every bit as devastating as that perpetrated by a Roman Catholic priest. But, I suggest, it seems not to have the effect of a church-wide (or world-wide) spiritual crisis because of the ultimate leveling of function (vs. ontology); the Lutheran pastor is not, in the final analysis, understood to be holier than the parishioners he serves.

What is beginning to sound like a lecture is actually an expression of frustration. And to the charge, “You’re just rehashing a centuries-old debate,” I plead guilty. I continue to hope and pray for the healing of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic breach. I worship lovingly with my Roman Catholic friends. But ecumenism means speaking honestly to one another from the strengths of our traditions, and in this case Martin Luther got it right. Roman Catholic priests need to come down an ontological peg (while the Church itself comes to honest terms with the causes of this epidemic). Of course only a new reformation will allow this. It happened before; it will happen again. Semper reformanda.

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[1] Vatican article.