A Question About Gurus

Paul:  So, a friend of ours read our most recent post about gurus and asked (and I paraphrase), "how do you know the Bible itself is not just another guru?  There are so many interpretations and it was written by so many authors over so long a period of time.  On what basis do I believe one writer/book over another?"

I would like to attempt to answer some of that this week.  I'm not entirely certain my response will be satisfactory for all, but it will be honest and how I came to where I am.  Some of it will be personal and emotional, but some of it I hope will be more on the objective side in speaking to the veracity of scripture and the how and why of proper hermeneutics.  Although I would preface by saying many great doorstop, cookie-jar-reaching tomes have been written on this topic.  I don't expect we'll be exhaustive in our discussion here today.  It is also my intent to avoid the sort of cliche and cop-outs that I heard so often as a questioning unbeliever.  Phrases like "Well, that's where faith comes in."

Laurie:  Hmm, I feel the same way about the "that's where faith comes in" argument. I mean,  don't think it's helpful. Hopefully I won't get off track here, but I always believed the Bible was "God's Word" or the true "holy book" or however you might wish to put it. But for me, admittedly, (and I venture this is the case for many professing Christians) this belief had little to do with faith, and everything to do with geography and maternity. What I mean is, I'm a white Anglo-Saxon American. My mother was brought up Episcopalian, or so she told me, and raised me as a Lutheran.  I was told from Day One that the Bible was God's book, and that was that. It never occurred me to question that fact until much later, and, honestly, I thought questioning it was a dangerous, potentially unpardonable sin.

So I don't even think of believing that the Bible is God's word as a matter of faith. I think you can accept it as fact and not be a person of faith at all. There's believing, and there's believing. What I mean is, I accepted the notion that God orchestrated the writing of a book for humans, and that the Bible was that book, but I didn't much care about that God or His book. I'd say that faith cares. Faith loves that God and hangs on His every word. But, of course, if you don't accept the idea of God, let alone that he wrote a book...well I can see where believing such a thing would require a change of mind which some would call faith.

Paul:  Right, and I think I was a good example of that.  I went years with a high view of Scripture but without being a believer, as in a converted person.  The converse is also true.  The Gospel is the key point, the non-negotiable.

For me, I went, through a series of events, experiences and revelations, from full atheism to, at the very least the understanding that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy.  Now, I would like to point out a very important point for me right here at the beginning that just because something is emotional or breaking from consensus reality does not immediately translate to "false" or "not real."  We are all brains encased in skulls interpreting stimuli communicated by our senses.  It was an important realization for me that just because a person who is having a psychotic episode is "seeing" a four foot long cockroach on the wall doesn't mean it isn't real.  It doesn't even necessarily mean that they are "seeing something that isn't there."  Their brain is really seeing it just as much as I am seeing this computer screen in front of me.  So, just to make sure we're all on the same page, I'm going to do my best not to make sweeping generalizations about objective reality on both sides of the fence.

Laurie: Okay, I'm interrupting again, but, well...are you implying the imaginary cockroach is as real as a real cockroach? I always get hung up when you talk like this.


Paul: What I'm saying is: how can we really even measure such a thing?  Which sounds like I'm playing a mind game, but I assure you I am not.  I understand what you are asking is, correct me if I'm wrong, to the effect of "Is there really a giant cockroach there or not?"

Laurie: Right.

Paul:  What I'm saying is that we are all brains encased in skulls interpreting external stimuli communicated to our brains by our senses.  If someone has a wonky link in that chain and they are seeing something that the rest of consensus reality is incapable of sensing, that doesn't make them not see it.  They aren't making it up.  They really are seeing that giant cockroach just as much as I'm seeing a CRT Monitor right now (don't laugh, it was free.)

Put another way, Philip K. Dick was asked at a lecture he was giving "What is reality?"  He thought for a moment and said "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Which actually plays right into the hands of what I want to talk about. 

Speaking of sides of the fence, another common response I'd like to avoid is the one that says that the Bible is the infallible word of God because it says that it is the infallible word of God.  In my experience, that sort of argument is only helpful intramurally.  For example, if someone comes into the church and claims that they are a Christian and then claims that God told them that I need to give them money so that they can go buy meth, I can hold that up to the light of Scripture and examine it, see if it's inconsistent and deal with it appropriately.  Hypothetically speaking.  In the practical world, there would actually be a much shorter process to me saying "no."  I don't actually need to go break out my Bible to see if there's something fishy about that.

Laurie:  That reminds me of that line of reasoning I've always found suspect in which folks "prove"  the canon of Scripture is closed by pointing to the last book included in that canon, which happens to be the Revelation, which happens to end with a warning not to add or take away from it. Now, I understand the logic thread, but I think it's pretty clear that the intent of John when he penned the words "the book of this prophecy," was not an at-that-time-yet-to-be-canonized collection of Scriptures. It's never a good idea to misuse Scripture to prove Scripture.

In order not to be abused, Scripture should be used as it was intended to be used, read how it was meant to be read: as poetry, history, law, proverb, allegory, parable, letter of instruction, or prophecy. Each has its usefulness and it's limitations. But again, I think I'm straying from your point.

Paul:  But we're trying to speak externally at this point, so I'm going to talk about my conversion. This may not be entirely intellectually satisfying to some (I also apologize for being so apologetic), and there is an element to my own story similar to Evelyn Waugh's description of his conversion "It was either Christianity or chaos."  I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but as I've said elsewhere, the only thing that keeps me a Christian is the Gospel. Otherwise there's no way I would have chosen Christianity.  I find I believe the Gospel and I cannot not believe the Gospel no matter how fed up I get with Christianity.

I didn't exactly have a light-switch, road to Damascus conversion.  I had a conversion to assenting to the truths of the Bible in my early 20s and then a true spiritual follow-up where I started actually wanting to do anything about it in my late 20s.  We'll get to that in a moment.

Early 20's Paul was an agnostic, a poet, and a raging alcoholic (I don't place those three together to say that the former two are character flaws in and of themselves.  They just happen to be my three chief accurate specific character descriptions of that period.)  I'd done some pretty terrible things and would have gone on to do some more.  I became interested in attending church, a Quaker one in that case, for a number of reasons.  One was reading Albert Schweitzer, one was a girl who played the cello and went to the youth group, and one was the pastor whose sermons I found fascinating.  He would preach with historicity in the forefront, which greatly appealed to me.  He sort of preached how my brain works, which is to say in stories.  It was in winter that he started a series on the basics of the Gospel, which was one of those things I thought I knew, "Yeah, I get it. Jesus died for sinners."  But he started on a point I'd never heard before and it gripped me so completely.

The doctrine, although he didn't use this term (it was a Quaker church after all), was the doctrine of Total Depravity.  He started talking about sin nature, how we humans are all sinners by nature, how all fall short of the glory of God and how that keeps us separate from the divine, and I had about as close to an epiphany as I've ever had in my Christian life.  I thought "Wait a minute!  That sounds like me!  And on top of that, it sounds like an accurate description of human civilization!"

Much to the chagrin of my close friends, I went around for a while in that headspace, as sort of a One Point Calvinist.  Total Depravity and that's all.  When I tell this story it surprises some people that it didn't even occur to me to look further into it, to see if there was a way out.  I just wandered around looking at the world around me through those glasses, bleaker than late period Nietzsche.

I minored in Religion at Chapman University under Marv Meyer of the Jesus Seminar (which is the group of academics who are totally enamored with the Gnostic texts and who famously voted over the entire canonical gospel with color coded stones over whether or not what was being told in the text really happened or not.)  I found the story of the preservation of Scripture throughout history a very compelling story, the variety of authors with doctrinal unity, the clear path (mostly) of what would and wouldn't be canonized, and, in spite of what Bart Ehrman tries to shill to those whose religious curiosity extends only to what's available at Barnes and Noble, the constantly growing evidence for accuracy in the preservation of the ancient texts throughout history based on an ever growing store of ever older manuscripts.

Although, there is an important point I feel I need to make right now before we make the transition into my more recent history into church life.  Part of what keeps the infallible Scripture from being a rigid guru is that, in spite of what I hear so often, there is vast freedom in God's grace and Christ's imputed righteousness.  This is what made me fall so in love with the Gospel, as well as the key reason why I feel like an alien in Christianity so much of the time.  The Gospel tells me that God loves me and that I am regarded by Him as having Christ's righteousness.  I know that people are quick to take the next step to "but that means I'm going to want to behave myself and do good works," but let's camp here for a moment.  It's so refreshing here.  I can be a Gentile, I can approach God intimately, I can love un-apologetically anyone and everyone, in fact I'm commanded to.

When I first moved to Chico, I spent about a year in the Quaker meeting mainly because I had first gone my brother's former church, once.

Laurie: Once?

Paul:  Okay, maybe a handful of times right when I moved up here.  I was abridging for the sake of the flow of the story.  But I went a few times and then I went to one Saturday evening service and then didn't come back for a long time, around a year if memory serves, while I went to the Quaker meeting instead.

That was because the weekend music director at my brother's former church pretty much told me I wasn't welcome in his church because I was wearing a Jerry Garcia t-shirt.  So, I figured I would oblige him and take my congregating elsewhere. Since then I've noticed time and time again some set of behavioral expectations that Christians put on one another which make absolutely no sense to me. And, as I've said, so often I feel like if people in church really knew me, really knew what I think and feel, they wouldn't let me in the door.  Because, you see, there are a lot of people who turn Christianity into a weird, rigid set of actions, rules and orders.  But, the problem is that the expected points of views have nothing to do with the Gospel, which is the only essential point to Christianity. You can believe all kinds of bizarre accessories, but if you have the Gospel, if God has removed your heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh which seeks Christ, you're a Christian!  It doesn't matter if you baptize babies or think the wine turns into other things at communion, or sit in silence for an hour Sunday morning, or dance with the Hare Krishnas, or sleep all day and climb trees at night or wear a tin foil hat. In Heaven, there will be Communists and Monarchists.  There will be people of all skin colors. There will be people who go to churches that you don't go to. I don't understand why people feel such a strong need to take one thing that should unify us all and turn it into a point for division.  The Gospel is the only essential point.

Look, the Gospel is that we humans are sinners and that God is merciful.  He sent His Son to atone for our sin nature so that if we believe in Him we will live forever with Him and seek to glorify Him. Here's where I get in trouble with other Christians (as usual.)  The Gospel is not that the world was created in 6 literal days, or that evolution is false, or hating homosexuals, or the American brand of modern political Conservatism.  It doesn't call one to seek to destroy any work of art or thought that acknowledges unchristian actions or ideas or godlessness.  Just because we're allowed to eat bacon doesn't mean it's compulsory for a Christian to eat bacon.  In fact, in spite of how all of the above are taken as givens in modern American Christian behavior, I think all of the above are things that I personally reject. And yet I am a Christian. What do you make of that?

Laurie:  It's all so simple. Too simple, I think. I mean too simple for people to accept at plain old face value. We want to glamor it up. Besides that, if it's free (to us) we immediately devalue it. It's human nature. It's why we, or the Treasury, can't just go printing up new dollars when we run short. What amazing beings we humans are, for whom "taking something for granted" is a statement understood to mean something we don't value! When in fact the statement, at face value means "treating something as an un-earned gift".  We sure do know how to turn things on their heads. If given a gift we either de-value it, or else refuse to accept it unless we can find a way to pay back the giver, so that we get the glory for the possession of it rather than the one who gave it.

Paul: Yes, exactly.  And thus our very response to the gift is yet another symptom of how much we need the gift.

So, back to the guru thing, the Gospel is the means to salvation, an atonement with God.  Yes, returning to where we camped earlier, my changed heart as a Christian is going to direct my life in certain directions, but the Gospel is not a philosophy, nor is it a set of rules.  It's a gift from God. Part of how it naturally modifies one's behavior is that when shown such comprehensive undeserved grace, it stands to reason that one would also seek to extend grace.  And it would also stand to reason that one should try to keep aware of just how comprehensive that grace really is.

Laurie:  What do you mean "comprehensive"?

Paul:  That it encompasses our entire being, everything we have or ever will do or think.  Our works have absolutely nothing to do with achieving our justification.  Our justification is Christ's own imputed justification.

Laurie:  So, this grace has a profound effect on our lives, but the changes are internal and not imposed by the external demands of a guru.

Now, of course there remains the fact, which our friend brought up, that there is a sense in which Jesus Christ is a guru, in that people look to Him for wisdom, and for hope, and to be transformed, and especially in that He actually told people to do that very thing. He set out to gain a following, if you will. And, since the Bible is the book written to testify to this Jesus, and through which we learn about Him, and in which we are told to continue to draw followers to Him, it in that sense could also be viewed as a guru. Now this, of course, could be said about anyone who puts himself forth as a leader, along with any literature a leader produces with the intent of gaining and keeping a following. So, I think this is were we need to begin making distinctions.

Paul: Right, because we could have an infinite regression to the point of absurdity here where any scrap of truth or wisdom could be labeled a "guru."  

Laurie:  Yes, exactly. And where would we be no absolute or objective truth? There is a point at which we decide whether someone is worthy of following, whether their claims appear to be true and their teachings of value.  The "liar, lunatic, or Lord" argument has been around for a long time, and is useful here. If Jesus is not who he claimed to be, then he was either a liar or a lunatic. I will never knowingly or willingly follow a liar or a nutcase, and no matter which way I slice it, neither the testimony of Jesus or His apostles or their writings smack of either disingenuousness or insanity. Also the testimony of history does little to dissuade me from the truth of these claims. And so, as far as gurus go, and in that sense, I have found Jesus Christ to a respectable one.

But I would also distinguish the Christian message from others in another way, in that, as Paul has alluded to, Christ does the work. He does not gain from us. He only gives to us. He does not require that we pay debts to him. He pays them. He does not make demands upon us as a Lawgiver and Judge, but comes offering a reconciliation with God that is already bought and paid for - by him - to all who will accept it. A new-found peace with God will bring about changes in a person's life, not the least of which are love for God and mankind, but these are by-products, so to speak. This is pure and simple Christianity.

Sadly, though, there are would-be gurus in this world who lack the originality to come up with their own shtick. These folks will latch onto the work of another and use it as they see fit to manipulate others and bring them under their control. The Bible has been found by some to be very useful to this end, authoritative as it is, and exclusive as it is. But, they must abuse it to accomplish their ends, because the Scripture itself warns against having any "gurus" besides Christ, and against using his teaching to create gurus for ourselves.

Paul:  So, the short answer is something along the lines of "not if you're using it right."  Is that what you're saying?

Laurie: Exactly. We must take it as it is, for what it claims to be, and use it for what it's for - or else dispose of it entirely.  As you've said elsewhere Paul, a meal tainted with poison, no matter how fine a meal, is no longer fit to be eaten. So the Gospel message, as millennia has proven, when tainted is not just useless, but dangerous. But, when taken pure, it is life and peace.