Thursday, September 05, 2019

Heart in the Deep of Texas


I've gotta say, as someone who was born and raised in Texas, and who is hardly part of the "secularized Left" (I'm a lefty; I'm hardly secularized), that I have no idea what she's talking about, or what it's got to do with Texas.

Let me take it on this way, in the language usually employed by Christians who make this argument that prayer "works."  By "works," of course, they mean affects the physical universe (like moving hurricanes away).  Jesus, they might cite, said:

And the Lord said, 'If you had trust no larger than a mustard seed, you could tell this mulberry tree, "Uproot yourself and plant yourself in the sea," and it would obey you.'  (Luke 17:6, SV)

I like the Scholar's Version because it goes right to the heart of my argument, but the usual and expected translation is "faith," not trust.  But faith, in modern parlance, means belief, acceptance, even adherence.  Faith in that definition becomes a matter of will, and if you can't uproot the mulberry tree or divert a hurricane, then you don't "faith" enough, you don't believe in God enough, you don't believe in God's promise enough, you, in the end, lack the proper will.  Alternatively, if you pray "hard enough," if you "really pray," if you really believe it will happen, it will.  Your will, will do it.

But faith, trust, is an act of kenosis, of self-emptying.  You don't increase your faith by willing it.  That's what Jesus is talking about, because Luke 17:5 has the apostles demanding Jesus do something for them:  "The apostles said to the Lord, 'Make our trust grow!' "  Again, the word "trust" is truer to the original than "faith," because we understand (or think we do) making our faith grow.  But how do we make our trust grow?  Is it an act of will?  Is trust something we develop, like a muscle?  Is it something we increase by concentrating on it, by paying more attention to it, by willing it into existence and nurturing it with our effort to strengthen it?  It's quite common to speak of "faith" that way, but trust?  Trust is, or it isn't.  Trust is earned, or it is not.  Trust is not something you will into existence, and then "grow" like a muscle or a skill. You trust, or you don't.  So, says Jesus, if you have any real trust in God at all, that mulberry tree would be in the ocean by now.  But all the mental strain in the world won't make that happen.  Sure, "millions of people are praying that Dorian turn away from land," but it didn't.  It turned away from Florida, but only after scrubbing islands of the Bahamas nearly clean.  Did they not have enough power of mind?  Or, like nuclear bombs, does it take more, perhaps more than humanity can muster?

I'm sure Ms. Williamson has seen something she thinks was the result of prayer.  But I don't think of prayer that way; and I don't think Jesus was advocating the use of prayer in his statement about the mulberry tree.  Jesus' most comprehensive statement on prayer is what we now call the "Lord's Prayer", and it teaches us to pray (again, in response to a request from the disciples) by focussing us on God, and on our relationship to others, and on all we should expect from God ("give us this day our daily bread") and how we should think of ourselves in regard to others ("forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors").  Nothing there about:  "Oh, and give us the power to divert hurricanes and uproot mulberry trees."

Obviously I don't think prayer is the "power of the mind."  I'm not sure what the "power of the mind" is, except a misplaced metaphor arising from the dualism that insists "mind" is separate from "body" and somehow the "ghost in the machine" brings these disparate realms together.  Because body is (or can be) powerful (the heart is a mighty muscle indeed, it doesn't stop working for decades and decades, sometimes a century), "mind" must have power, too.  It's a mistake, again, of thinking of power as the ultimate in this universe, and we must have a share of it we can wield.  Jesus is mocking that, too.  If you did have the power to command a mulberry tree to move itself to the sea, what would be the point of that?  What would that power do for you?  You certainly wouldn't be using the power for others; and it wouldn't do you any good.  So maybe it's not the point of trust after all?

Trust in this context is a much deeper matter than merely having enough people praying at once that a critical mass is achieved and somehow the "power of mind" is manifested.  Chef Jose Andres would seem to be doing more good than that.  If our faith, or our trust, moved us to do likewise, wouldn't that be a better thing?

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