May 16, 2023 If myth is one end of the narrative spectrum, then metaphor is the other. Myths are grand, transcendent stories which help to explain why the world is as it is. Metaphors are nuggets of meaning, comparisons which carry associations and contextual significance rather than storylines. Metaphors are true without being isolated ideas or propositions. They imply stories without being limited by them.
The transcendent is, by definition, beyond our experience and, being beyond our experience, beyond our words.
May 10, 2020 I’ve been reading Inspired by Rachel Held Evans, partly because it was available on my Bible study app and partly because I no longer know how to read scripture or what “inspired” even means. I enjoy her humor and frank honesty about her own struggles and misbehavior—it feels like she has invited me into her secret society of misfits and screwballs. That’s a crowd that makes me feel right at home, even if I, like Rachel, look pretty normal at first glance.
April 11, 2023 In our next exciting installment, we’ll explore the authority of scripture and how has collapsed for me. Sort of. I still find scripture compelling, and I’m trying to understand how to read it appropriately.
Scripture In Reformed Christianity, Scripture is the single most important revelation of the nature and work of God, and if one takes sola scriptura seriously, it is the only true revelation of God.
Memo to everyone who has been behaving badly on my feed:
I recently was told that people were shouting at each other on my feed. I spend very little time on social media, particularly Facebook, because it has become a cesspool, and I was oblivious until someone apologized for blowing up my notifications. I have deleted the Facebook app from all my devices, so I actually don’t get any notifications. The only reason this post exists is that I created it on a quieter platform and absent-mindedly cross-posted to Facebook.
##March 31, 2023 Now that I’ve deconstructed or unravelled my faith, where do I go? I don’t want to float around in an unanchored agnosticism, but I also don’t want to latch onto the next shiny certainty I see. I’m jumping forward a bit here to start discussing reconstruction of a new way to believe.
Reconstruction Having deconstructed my faith or experienced its collapse of its own accord, what will fill the void?
March 25, 2023 What can we know about God? As the first cause and creator of the material universe, God is, by definition, transcendent, and as such, not observable as an object in our experience. Transcendence means the idea of God is necessarily an abstract concept and hard to get our heads around—if we could understand God as something in our experience, God wouldn’t be transcendent. There are parts of God that are necessarily outside our experience and any experience we ever could have and can only be understood, partially, by metaphors, using objects within our experience.
May 28, 2023 I’ve been all over the place, revising older posts and wrestling new ones into publishable form. Don’t ever let anyone tell you writing isn’t work.
Introduction I’ve been in a near constant state of gradual spiritual evolution over the last 40 years (since college), a process which reached a turning point around 2016. Even though I was more comfortable calling myself “Evangelical adjacent” than Evangelical, Evangelicals were still my people.
Finished reading: What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey 📚
I actually read this when it came out, in 1998. I remember standing in the bookstore, tears running down my face, unable to put the book down. So I didn’t. I don’t think this started my deconstruction, but it was a profound relief to learn that I wasn’t the only one thinking that my people were marching down a wide and easy road to destruction, not the narrow way to God.
March 16, 2023 “Deconstruction” has become overused and weighed down with cultural baggage, but I still find it a useful concept. I am disassembling bits and pieces of my spiritual heritage and the framework I’ve built to determine what can support belief and what needs to be discarded or renovated (made new again). This isn’t hipster indulgence (as if—I’m 61 years old), as it is sometimes labelled by religious curmudgeons and the overly certain, but an in-depth analysis of beliefs I’ve inherited and a thorough exploration of alternatives.
Lioness, Seneca Park Zoo This is a photo I took in 2021 of either Zuri or Asha, the two lionesses at the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, NY. This was in the middle of winter, on a beautiful day with a clear blue sky. I’ve been volunteering as a photographer at the Zoo since 2019, when my wife started there as a docent. It’s an activity we can share while still making our own individual contributions—sort of parallel play for big people.
March 16, 2023 Sooooo . . . where am I going with this?
First, I want to document and discuss my deconstruction from both intellectual and experiential perspectives. This has been a long process, really more of a spiritual journey than deconstruction, per se, with roots all the way back to my teens and 20s. I don’t expect this to be a process where I arrive at some destination and sit there, fat and happy.
March 11, 2023 I’ve been in a near constant state of gradual spiritual evolution over the last 40 years (since college), development which reached a turning point around 2016. Even though I was more comfortable calling myself “Evangelical adjacent” than Evangelical, Evangelicals were still my people. I went to an Evangelical college, listened to Evangelical music, and grew up in a church that anyone from the outside would have called Evangelical.
March 12, 2023 So, why write about all this? Why not just chuck it and be done? There are several reasons:
I haven’t said I don’t believe in Christianity but that I don’t know how to believe in it—I am agnostic, not antagonistic. Scripture may well be inspired and authoritative, if not inerrant—I just need to find a new basis for believing that. I believe there is a God at minimum, because I can’t conceive of a universe without a first cause or creation without a Creator.
March 11, 2023 This is my daughter’s incredibly undignified cat, Thor the Wonder Kitty. He is a roughly 16lb Maine Coon mix, and he loves this chair. He also loves to harass his older housemate, Chester. In spite of all his annoying faults, he’s a lovable lunk.
Remember, I didn’t promise the Great American Novel. Cat pics qualify.
March 11, 2023 This is my first attempt at a real, live blog—something of a leap for an introverted geek who has struggled for 40+ years with any kind of writing. Terrifying, actually. Well, I’m going to give it a try. My therapist will be so proud.
Yes, my handle is ArtGeek. That’s a name I adopted when trying to freelance, and it still fits. My day job is in IT support at a large academic medical center, and I love music, photography, and being outdoors when I’m not curled up with a good book (or tablet).