Betty White, Snickers Bars, and Your Personal Identity

The Commercial Have you seen the 30 second TV commercial with actress Betty White and Snickers candy bars?  It was introduced during the 2010 Super Bowl.  It's an interesting portrayal of personal identity.  Watch it:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA7-31Cxc2I&w=560&h=349]

The Snickers Identity Paradigm

The ad's a great example of how so often we see others by what they're doing on the outside.  Their identity is their performance.  If you're not playing football very well we see you as a Betty White (although I would have had second thoughts about playing ball against a younger Betty White--she's got the spirit!).  "Come on, man, don't be such a wuss!  Get it together and start playing like a man!"  If you're really good (which is to say, proficient, skillful, aggressive), then we see you as your "real" self.  Our culture bases everything about identity on externals.  Get that real job!  Drive that real car!  Make a real salary!  Date that real woman or man!  Buy a real house!  Wear that power suit!  Carry that real purse or wear those real shoes!  Show your stuff (whatever "stuff" is) and stop wimping around!

And if you're just not "manifesting" it rightly, then eat a Snickers bar and turn yourself back into a real man or woman!  Notice the interesting solution to being your "true self":  a candy bar (or whatever external things the advertisers are offering).

You and I are tempted every day to buy into this perspective on identity and reality.  If we can just manifest the right outside and external world, we can be satisfied that all is right with the world, we are who we're suppose to be.  So our identity is held captive to what we can or cannot manifest on the outside.

Some Drawbacks

But here are a couple of big dangers with this paradigm.  One, if you base your identity on what you can manifest in your life (the externals like people, things, circumstances), then you never have a solid foundation for your self esteem.  Your identity is dependent upon what happens on the outside.  And so your self esteem fluctuates based upon circumstances created by either you or others.  Your self esteem and personal identity are victimized by the fluctuations of whatever's happening to you or by you.  Definitely not a very secure way to live.

And two, it becomes easy to put yourself down or to put others down who aren't manifesting everything you think you or they should.  You can guilt people by saying, "If you just would get your thoughts right, you should be able to do it.  So if you're not doing it, there's something wrong with you!"

It's so subtle how our attitudes impact our sense of self and our expectations of others.

An Alternative Paradigm:  Secure Identity and Inner Peace

There's an alternative way to live that produces far more confidence, assurance, and solid peace.  Notice this statement from scripture:

"Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace."  (2 Corinthians 4:16)

Now considering the context of this statement, the significance of it increases dramatically.  The author is writing to people who have developed the insidious belief that your external world validates who you are.  The worldview was that if you were experiencing a life of success, ease, and prosperity that was a sign that you were being blessed by the divine universe.  And being blessed by God was always manifested by a life of prosperity.  They claimed that the condition of your external world indicated your personal identity and your status with the gods.

But author Paul is trying to counter that popular paradigm by describing his own life.  When he talks about looking like things are falling apart, he's painting a pretty graphic picture of his life experience:

"You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus' sake, which makes Jesus' life all the more evident in us. While we're going through the worst, you're getting in on the best!"  (2 Corinthians 4:8-12)

Notice his juxtaposition of external circumstances and internal attitude and identity.  Even though his external life would appear to be a complete failure, falling apart at the seams, his sense of identity and security with himself and with God are completely secure.  There's an internal sense of peace and certainty that pervades his mind and heart.  He is describing himself as possessing true life in its deepest and most meaningful sense, a life that God is continually creating and recreating in him.  And the more centered he finds himself in this internal life, the more grounded he finds himself in how he faces his external world.

And he ends that paragraph with a sentence describing another truism (did you notice it?):  our internal attitude does impact our external environment with others.  As Paul centered himself on inner peace that he allows God to create within him in the midst of external chaos, he blesses others with that environment of peace, too, giving them opportunity to experience inner peace for themselves.  It may not still the storms swirling all around, but it does provide inner calm and centeredness which is contagious.

Our True Miracle

That's the true miracle we all are needing.  Being able to live life with the continual unfolding of divine grace within us, where God is making a new life every day--not based upon what people think about us or even what we're tempted to think about ourselves based upon what we have or don't have, do or don't do, but based upon what God gives us inside--an nonfluctuating identity as a child of God embued with eternal value because of that stamp of love on our souls.  The ability to live in love rather than fear is the greatest miracle of all.  That should be our highest manifestation in life.  And it certainly has the power to impact others with a spirit of peace and love, too.

By today's standards based upon the Law of Attraction, Paul would be considered a real failure.  And yet Paul is completely confident in who he is, what God is doing in his life, and his courageous living of his purpose.

Marianne Williamson, author and spiritual teacher, puts it this way:  "We're not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change.  We're looking for a softer orientation to life...Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.  If we're frantic, life will be frantic.  If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful.  And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.  Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state."  (Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love, p. 66)

So build your identity, your sense of self and esteem and worth, on a foundation that remains secure, that outside circumstances and people cannot destroy.  So whether you have much in life that you truly want or have very little, you still are rich--you are grounded on the eternal truth of your being as a child of the God of the universe and nothing can take that away.

What are the internal changes and transformations you're experiencing in your life these days?  Are you clear of your identity and what it's based upon?  Do you possess a centered and grounded sense of who you are and where your value comes from?  Do you have that "softer orientation to life" that comes from living with love instead of fear?  Do you have a peace and security regardless of what's happening in your external world?

Next time I find myself face down on the muddy football field, and others think I'm playing ball like Betty White, I think I need to stick something more substantial into my soul than a Snickers bar.

Developing A Faith That Works, 4: A Way of Seeing

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] In August of 2007 the New York Times reported that in her collection of letters, Come Be My Light, Mother Teresa (1910-97) confessed that for years she had harbored deep, troubling doubts about the existence of God, even as she worked tirelessly to relieve the pain and suffering of the sick and dying in Calcutta.

In one of her journal entries, she cried out, "Where is my Faith - even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness - My God - how painful is this unknown pain - I have no Faith - I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart - & make me suffer untold agony.  When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven - there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. - I am told God loves me - and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?"

Her honest confession evoked a wave of criticism.  Was she a hypocrite?  Had she been faking it all along?  Or was she, as atheists are now claiming triumphantly, simply a self-deluded person trying to have a faith in something that obviously doesn't exist?

But in the flood of public comments that followed the publishing of her diaries, a student named Krista E. Hughes made the most telling comment in a letter to the editor.  "Mother Teresa's life," she wrote, "exemplifies the living aspect of faith, something sorely needed in a society where Christian identity is most often defined in terms of what a person believes rather than how he or she lives.  Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Krista Hughes speaks truth, and Mother Teresa illustrates that truth:  faith is not just about what you believe, whether you give mental assent to a propositional statement about what Reality is or isn't; faith isn't simply believing that God exists.  Faith is, as Harvey Cox (emeritus professor at Harvard Divinity School) in his book The Future of Faith puts it, "more a matter of embodiment than of axioms ... a way of life, a guiding compass ... the experience OF the divine displacing theories ABOUT it." And sometimes the experience of the divine is more an action in harmony with the Presence than a feeling of Presence (as Mother Teresa showed).

There were times Mother Teresa wasn't even sure God existed, at least for her.  But she continued living the Way of Love to the suffering and dying poor in Calcutta.  She continued the practice of compassion regardless of her doubts because of her love for Jesus not just her experience of Jesus.

That's why Jesus called himself "The way, the truth, and the life."  And to illustrate an experience of Jesus in this reality, his disciples were called followers of The Way.  Following Jesus meant walking the path of Jesus, the path of self-denial and unconditional compassion and justice.  Spiritual practices and disciplines emerged to help empower followers to walk this Way of Jesus.  Following that was known as a life of faith – a way of the heart, not just the head.

SO IN THIS SERIES, we've been taking a look at three words that are translated as "faith."  We're unpacking each word and exploring what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that defines ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.  It's a return to the core of what religion was always meant to facilitate but has too often lost along the way:  a transformation of the heart.  So far, we’ve looked at FAITH AS fiducia – trust, relaxed confidence, fidelitas – faithfulness, loyalty, allegiance.  The third word is visio.

Faith As Vision

The third Latin word for faith is visio which literally means “likeness, face, visage."  It's our English word for “vision.”  This is faith as a way of seeing – a way of seeing “what is,” of seeing the whole.  The Christian New Testament often connects faith with seeing a certain way.  H. Richard Niebuhr, a mid-twentieth century theologian, in his book The Responsible Self, speaks of the central importance of how we see the whole of what is, for how we see the whole will affect how we respond to life.  He describes three contrasting ways of seeing life and reality.  Notice the corresponding attitudes and responses to life with each life vision.

REALITY 1:  Life is hostile and Threatening.  Corresponding attitudes:  Paranoia; “None of us gets out of here alive”; Life is filled with threats to our existence.  Response to life is:  Defensive; Seek to build systems of security and self-protection to fend off hostile powers; God is our Judge - God is going to get us – unless we do the right things to secure His favor.

REALITY 2:  Life is indifferent.  Corresponding attitudes:  “What is” is simply indifferent to human purposes and ends and meanings; Universe is neither hostile to nor supportive of our lives and dreams.  Response to life is:  Less anxious and paranoid than the first vision; But still likely to be defensive and precautionary; We build up what security we can in the midst of an indifferent universe; Though we may enjoy times of rich aesthetic to life, ultimately, we are likely to be concerned primarily for ourselves and those who are most important to us.

REALITY 3:  Life is life-giving and nourishing.  Corresponding attitudes:  Sees reality as gracious; It has brought us and everything that is into existence; It is filled with wonder and beauty, even if sometimes a terrible beauty; Jesus’ theology:  God feeds the birds and lilies, clothes them; God sends rain on the just and unjust; God is generous.  Response to life is:  Faith as a radical trust in God; Frees us from the anxiety, self-preoccupation, and concern to protect the self with systems of security that mark the first two viewpoints; Leads to a “self-forgetfulness of faith and thus to the ability to love and to be present to the moment”; Generates a “willingness to spend and be spent” for the sake of a vision that goes beyond ourselves; St. Paul:  leads to a life of freedom, joy, peace, and love.

Niebuhr's point is that the way we see the whole radically impacts the way we live life.  Vision makes a transforming difference.  And since faith is about vision, how we see, the quality of one's faith directly affects the quality of one's life.  This is why Albert Einstein made the provocative observation, "The most important question you'll ever ask yourself is, Is the universe friendly?"  With all his scientific knowledge, along with his growing spiritual awareness, he began to put the two "worlds" together and realized that one's perspective on the universe and the cosmos and the Force behind and in it all was a hugely important issue.  Is Life, is God, is the Universe friendly or not?  That starting point affects everything.

But to develop a vision of reality as life-giving and nourishing is not to be naive or to turn a blind eye to the darker side of life.  Here's the way Marcus Borg summarized it:  “Niebuhr was no Pollyanna.  He knew about the Holocaust and all the terrible things that we are capable of doing to each other.  The point is not that reality is simply ‘nice,’ or that one can demonstrate that it is gracious.  Rather, the point is that how we see reality matters, for how we see ‘what is’ profoundly affects how we experience and live our lives.” Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, p. 36

Faith then is a choice for how you want to see, what lens you want to look at life through.  As quantum physicists are saying these days, your perspective helps to create and shape your reality.  You end up seeing what you choose to see.  The depth and quality of your spirituality and faith is a lot about making choices about vision and sight and a view of reality.  And what you decide impacts what you experience.

So of the three realities Niebuhr describes, which do you tend to live in the most?  How has that impacted your life experience?  Do you see yourself as being able to change visions and lens?  Or are you simply stuck where you're at?  Are you living out of an expansive and liberating life view or a constricted and confining view?  Are you caught up in your own little world (preoccupied with self survival) or are you living life with a clear vision of the whole, an ability to live beyond yourself in loving response to others?  Or like many people, perhaps you're somewhere in the middle between those two poles, leaning toward one side or the other depending on your current life circumstances?

I'm amazed at Mother Teresa's honest recounting of her often painful spiritual journey.  But I'm also comforted.  I can relate to pieces of her journey.  Faith isn't about never doubting God or about never questioning or about having all the right answers.  Faith is about staying on the journey even in the midst of uncertainty, about hanging on even when you can't sense the divine.  And that comes from a certain vision, a way of choosing to look at life and what's most important.  Mother Teresa, though not feeling God's direct comforting presence, chose to hang on, continually addressed her journal to her Jesus,  expressed honestly her doubt and pain, and kept on working for the poor and suffering in the world anyway.  She chose to live compassionately as her highest value.  Which of the above 3 Realities was she choosing to see and live from?

In my next blog post, we'll look at an intriguing story from ancient scripture showing how these contrasting views of reality impact life experiences and how this Latin word for faith (visio) plays out.  Maybe you'll see your current faith journey illustrated somewhere in the story.  Stay tuned.

Developing A Faith That Works: What Is Trust?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] Marcus Borg, a professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University and a prolific author and speaker about the importance of a progressive Christianity, was on a plane trip sitting next to a woman who said, "I'm much more interested in Buddhism and Sufism than I am in Christianity."  When he asked her why, she said, "Because they're about a way of life, and Christianity is all about believing." She continued:  "I don't think beliefs matter nearly as much as having a spiritual path and following a way."

He commented later in one of his books:  "I understood her comment, even as I silently disagreed with part of it.  To begin with the disagreement, Christianity is about a way of life, a path, and it has been from its very beginning.  At the center of Jesus' own teaching is the notion of a 'way' or a 'path,' and the first name of the early Christian movement was 'the Way.'  Indeed, seeing Christianity as a 'way' is one of the central features of the emerging paradigm." (The Heart of Christianity, p. 31)

The woman's statement does reflect the most common understanding of the word "faith" in modern Western Christianity:  that faith means holding a certain set of "beliefs," "believing" a set of statements to be true, whether cast as biblical teachings or doctrines or dogma.  If you possess this faith, you're even called a "believer."

As a result, this concept of faith as primarily an intellectual exercise has turned faith almost exclusively into a matter of the head.  But significantly, that was not the central meaning and use of the word "faith" in scripture and among followers during the centuries from the time of Jesus to the Enlightenment.  Faith was not a matter of the head but a matter of the heart - that deep level of life below our thinking, feeling, and willing (intellect, emotions, and volition), deeper than our conscious self and the ideas we have in our heads.

And faith was always seen as central to experiencing the God-life, accessing the divine spirit and allowing It to transform existence.  One of the authors of the Christian New Testament even stated this spiritual reality in strong terms like this, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6)  He’s not suggesting that God hates us if we don’t have faith, or that if we don’t believe the right things God thinks less of us.  No, he’s saying that “faith” is central to the spiritual journey – it’s a key to accessing the divine life and living a transformed life.  In fact, that verse is in the context of a whole chapter that tells the stories of how various people in the Bible journeyed with God – some of them knew a lot about theology, others knew very little.  But all of them chose to stay on the journey with God through thick and thin, successes and failures.  That was called “faith” – the willingness to be in presence (in synch) with the divine spirit

OVER THE NEXT FEW BLOG POSTS, we'll take a look at four words that are translated as "faith."  We'll unpack each word and explore what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that helps define ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.

TODAY’S WORD: “fiducia”

This is the Latin word for “faith” which literally means trust, confidence.  It's where we get our financial word “fiduciary” - a person to whom property or power is entrusted for the benefit of another. Of, based on, or in the nature of trust and confidence.  I mean think about it - if you're going to give another person access to all of your money and estate, you want to be able to trust that person.  Right?

In a biblical context, this word for “faith” is describing a radical trust IN God.  This trust "faith" may not mean you know everything there is to know about God.  There will still be lots of questions, maybe even doubts about the metaphysical issues surrounding the divine, the universe, how it all came into being, who or what started it all and how everything is sustained.  But faith as trust is the willingness to connect with God (as you know It/Him/Her) and has a degree of confidence that this Divine Force is, as Albert Einstein put it, a friendly Universe - that God has your best interests in mind.

So let’s look at a couple of metaphors and illustrations of what TRUST is – how TRUST relates to our experience of God and the spiritual life – what are some of the dynamics of TRUST?

Floating in Water:

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the pre-eminent existentialist philosophers and spiritual writers in the 20th century, described faith like this:  “Faith is like floating in seven thousand fathoms of water in the ocean.  If you struggle, if you tense up and thrash about, you will eventually sink.  But if you relax and trust, you will float.”

So, if God is the water, and we’re floating in It, what does this metaphor mean?  Floating in water (without struggling and thrashing about) describes a kind of relaxing quality to trust – you can hold your life without struggling – you relax with yourself and with the Unknowns in your life (after all, you don’t know or understand everything about the fathomless ocean you’re floating in but you can still be there) because you’re being “held up,” supported – the physics works whether you understand everything about the principles and dynamics or not.

Fighting and struggling and thrashing about only tire you out and facilitate your sinking.  Trusting means letting go of your fears and anxieties and uncertainties and simply letting yourself live life in the embrace of God and God’s love; relaxing in the truth that the Universe is friendly and is on your side and will bring what’s good to you and will redeem what’s painful and evil and bad by bringing good growth to you.

So would you describe your personal spirituality or style of life with the word "relaxed?"  Would your faith be described as a "relaxed confidence" in Life or God or Goodness?  Do you feel that the Universe is fundamentally friendly (as Einstein once said, the most important question we'll ever ask ourselves is, Is the universe friendly?).  Faith as TRUST is about relaxing, holding life with an open hand (rather than a clenched fist that tends to signify our desire to control, to hang on for dear life from fear of losing something).  A relaxing confidence!

Rock and Fortress:

The Hebrew poets of sacred scripture, especially in the book of Songs (Psalms) often used two other metaphors to describe faith as trust:  God is both Rock and Fortress.  Notice this piece of poetry:

⁵ Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. ⁶ He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. ⁷ My victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me. ⁸ O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge. (Psalm 62)

What do these metaphors – Rock, Fortress - say about trust?  God is secure, solid, able to be counted on.  What’s that insurance company that uses the “rock” in their advertisement?  Prudential.  What’s their point:  you can count of them when you need to – they’re reliable – “rock solid.”

Notice the phrases about “trust” in these verses:  waiting quietly before God, putting hope in God, not being shaken, resting in a safe place, pouring out our hearts to God.  The poet's point is that he can trust in God as the one upon whom he relies, as his support and foundation and ground, as his safe place.   A solid confidence!

Does this kind of "solid" trust mean that you never have any doubts about God?  That God always comes through for you by protecting you from evil or harm or danger or pain and suffering?  This is certainly the kind of theology (picture of God) that many religious people have - it's very simplistic though real to them.  But, as I've experienced personally, the danger of this belief is that when you go through the storm, the tendency is to question God and wonder what the heck is going wrong?  Where is God?  Why am I going through this?  God really must not care about me after all!  When I lost my job, went through a divorce, experienced great failure in my life, I wondered where the Divine Rock and Fortress were for me.  Either I had failed so miserably that God had left me and wouldn't have any more to do with me or God simply wasn't going to come through for me and couldn't be expected to.  Either way, I was on the losing end!  There wasn't much solid in the swamp I was in.

The psychiatrist and spiritual writer Gerald May once wrote:  "I know that God is loving and that God's loving is trustworthy.  I know this directly, through the experience of my life.  There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God's goodness meant I would not be hurt.  But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God's goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain - it embraces them both."

The naive belief that if God is truly good and solid in that goodness then your trust in God will be rewarded with lack of pain and trouble and suffering.  God's goodness = no pain.  I learned that, as Gerald May wrote, it isn't true.  God's goodness, God's solid rock and fortress, can be counted on to be a reliable presence in the midst of ALL of life's experiences (self-imposed or externally imposed).  God showed up for me during those dark times most often through other people who chose to come along side me and support, love, care for, and journey with me.  And as the dark tunnel finally emerged into the light, I saw that God's goodness was involved in helping to redeem the pain in my life by ultimately bringing good out of it, by doing a work of transformation in me, maturing me, establishing my confidence in myself, in others, and ultimately in God.

So would you use the word "solid" to describe your confidence in Life or God?  What would you use the words "rock" and "fortress" to describe in your life?  What power outside yourself can you count on to bring you redemption and transformation or is it just up to you alone to muddle through the swamp?  Is God a "safe place" (as the poet described) you can be with or be in?

Faith is about trust; and trust is about both a relaxed and solid confidence in Another.  And that kind of trust can only come from a journey ... together ... through the bumps, bruises, hurts, joys, sorrows, ecstasies of life ... where you begin to discover that nothing you do minimizes or maximizes the Divine love or Goodness for you.  It continues flowing like a River all the time, in you, around you, through you, enveloping you, embracing you.  Trust is about choosing at some point to relax, to give in to the Flow and embrace It back and let it carry you along the winding waters until It empties out into the boundless and deep Ocean.

Stay tuned to word two for faith.