God? talk

This talk was deliver with some responses at Peace Mennonite Church, June 16.

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Where’s the beef?

Let me begin with two big ideas that I won’t finish with in this short time.

My beliefs, however much they matter to me, are less important to the relationship between you and me than whether we understand each other. That is, if we can listen to each other and respect each other as persons, we will find that we can live with each other, even while we continue to reject some of the other person’s ideas or practices. I won’t try to prove this point to you. In fact, feel free to disagree with aspects of this idea for yourself, while accepting that I believe it.

But I hope we are not too far apart in thinking that there is a distinction to be made between accepting a person and accepting an idea. The real differences can be tough enough. Without somehow understanding each other as people, they become impossible.

Second, to avoid misunderstandings, we need to remember that even when we’re speaking the same language, say English, for example, we are in fact not always speaking the same language. The words and the meanings of the words I use may not be the words and meanings you hear.

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If I go into a café in Vietnam and ask for pho – I think they pronounce it ‘feh’ – I will likely get a bowl of beef noodle soup. In the circumstance, we would quickly recognize that there are language difficulties between us. Since we both want to understand each other, we will make allowances. Eventually, I will get soup. They will sell soup.

If I ask the person handing me the soup, Where’s the beef? he or she will point to my bowl.

One of the most incisive and articulate moments in my life occurred years ago at a sporting event. There was some kerfuffle on the court and the crowd had gotten relatively quiet and I yelled out, Where’s the beef?

So where is the problem? I think that much of it is in our language.  To repeat: a very large problem rests within our various languages – our languages within languages. We often fail to realize that words we use that appear to be the same can, in fact, mean very different things to other people. What I think I am saying may not be what you are hearing.

‘God’ has become a word like that word ‘beef’ for me. I grew up thinking ‘God’ meant certain very particular things. And I’ve learned that throughout much of human history that ‘word’ has meant countless things in countless different cultures. Now it takes me a million words just to try to define what I think that ‘word’ does not mean. And whatever the reality, the word, and the ways people use that word within an array of languages from Buddhist to Islamic to Mennonite to atheist and all the dialects therein – well, often just the use of the word ‘God’ leads to kerfuffles.

So I have come to avoid what I call ‘supernatural languages.’ I want to speak of my direct experience and to hear about yours. Of course, our sense of what life means to us and how we use languages to describe that meaning are so intertwined that it is impossible for human beings to entirely speak an unfiltered natural language. But I try to get as close to the ground as I can get. Here and now is where you and I have things in common. We can start with a bowl of soup and work our way up.

We can start our conversations by agreeing that each of our lives is important to us. And then, what are our immediate desires and needs? What does the world around you look like to you? We shouldn’t be afraid to just stop talking and just slurp some soup together if our words are getting in the way of our understanding. And perhaps that misunderstanding should be a sign that things aren’t as clear in our own heads as we might think that they are.

It can be useful or interesting or important to talk about profound things. But until we can talk about childish things without fighting - and we often don’t - I am inclined to avoid trying to talk about higher things. At the very least, when we do try to talk about ‘God,’ we should recognize and make allowances for our language differences. And when we no longer understand what the other person is saying - go back to the soup.

The fact that various languages, and not merely English or Vietnamese, serve us so well and so apparently easily much of the time, should not beguile us. Being misunderstood, and misunderstanding what the other person is saying, especially when ‘God’ is stirred into the soup, is remarkably easy.

So I’ve avoided saying much about God here this morning. Other’s will have their say. And when this is over, we’ll all shake hands and say ‘good game’ or other good words to each other. We were just talking here, after all. We still have our lives – real lives - to try to live with each other. No kerfuffles.

Let us begin by trying to understand each other, a little, even when we don’t understand everything the other person says.