Hard Work!

Some friends and I have been reading Karen Armstrong's The Case for God recently and one of the things she repeats several times is that religion is hard work. God has never been easy to understand and some of our finest mystics and theologians assert that God is found more in the questions and contradictions, and the struggle the struggle to understand, than in answers and doctrines.

We've had different responses to this idea. Some of us want at least some core -- some basic set of unalterable truths to be taught and to teach our children -- around which some of the other questions can exist as points of discussion or difference. Some of us are willing, or even eager, to question everything and to challenge all our positions radically. I think it's been good for us all to hear the perspectives of the other, and to be open to the diversity of our paths.

Today's gospel, if you read the longer passage (Matthew 10:34-42, instead of just 40-42) is one of those places where all the questions and contradictions seem to come to a head. At first Jesus says "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" and talks of setting everyone against each other. But, the passage ends with the "whoever welcomes you welcomes me" passage about radical hospitality. It's enough to set the mind spinning. Just at first it doesn't seem quite so contradictory -- love God first and foremost, and then others, and treat them like you would treat Jesus. That's what we heard in the sermon. But, the more I think about it, the less clear it becomes. If I am to treat even one of these little ones like I would welcome the Lord, then how can it be that "one's foes will be the members of one's own household"? How can I fully recognize and respond to God in everyone and yet expect that the result will be not peace, but a sword? Why are these so apparently contradictory teachings given practically in the same breath (at least as the gospel writer has recorded it)? Is it, perhaps, the contemplation of the contradiction that is the point? The either/or interpretation works for some people -- sometimes it is like this, sometimes like that. But, for me, it's is the both/and question that is the most profitable. How can both instructions be true at the same time, what is the meaning of the paradox?

As I have been trying to learn more about gardening the past couple of summers (my historically brownish-black thumb is showing a few signs of green around the edges), I have discovered that my plants respond very differently to pruning. Some have to be pruned very gently, and may even die if you cut away too much or at the wrong season. Some, like my lilacs, are almost impossible to kill and do best if old growth is cut away completely not long after they finish blooming. I guess I respond most like a lilac. I do best when my strongest held and most solid beliefs get chopped all the way back to the root every once in awhile -- everything up for rethinking and possible revision. The resulting chaos and even trauma make me dig deeper and bring out new growth and (one hopes) new blooms in due season. But, I also need to be careful not to inflict my drastic pruning methods on plants or people who respond differently.

As Armstrong also says in her book, the proof of a religious doctrine or point of faith isn't in it's being right or wrong, it's whether it is helpful or unhelpful in helping us to live the life we want to live and be the people we want to be. We won't all get there in the same path or by the same set of beliefs and doctrines.