An Atheist’s Journey

June 30, 2009

Day 3 of 40-Day Fast

Filed under: 40-Day Fast — admin @ 6:37 pm

I guess I should be very clear about my ground rules for this fast. First, it is not a water-only fast. As I wrote in a previous post, I’m also consuming several ounces of a high quality nutrient drink filled with minerals and vitamins. But after the warning of a commenter, I decided to also consume 8 ounces of a protein shake every other day. The protein is high quality whey, and I’m adding a fruit concentrate, along with a calcium additive, magnesium, and kelp (for iodine). The total calorie count on all of this amounts to less than 200 calories per day, which I think still qualifies what I’m doing as a fast. It will also keep my digestive system operating, at a very low level, which I think is important. Under these conditions I think I can make it 40 days without any problems, except the expected hunger, temptations, emotional ups and downs, and everything else I was hoping to achieve with this.

If anyone is interested in the details of my nutritional supplements for this fast, let me know and I will post a link.

So today was Day 3. Actually, one of my greatest fears going into this fast was that I wouldn’t be able to survive without my daily chocolate chip cookie from the Barnes and Noble Cafe. It’s a *huge* cookie, packed with chocolate chunks, and giving it up was one of the main reasons I hesitated so long before deciding to do this fast. Of course Jesus didn’t have to contend with chocolate chip cookies of this magnitude.

So afraid I was of the temptation of this cookie, I avoided the Barnes and Noble for the first two days of the fast. However, I realized that I needed to confront my fear. So today I resolved to enter the book store, make my way to the Cafe, and steer clear of the cookie. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Everyone who works in the Cafe knows that I buy my cookie every day, and so they have it waiting for me as soon as they see me coming. So I figured that I would have to quickly get to the cash register and tell them, “No cookie today,” before they had served it up on a plate and charged me for it. Such are the difficulties of being a regular customer.

However, today it seemed that “higher powers” were at work. Okay, I’m just being silly now. Being an atheist, I don’t believe in a higher power. But when I arrived at the book store, a thunderstorm had just passed over us, and the lights were all out in the store. I walked in, was greeted by an employee who knows me well, and she said that the store was open but they weren’t doing transactions. Hmmm. So I went to the Cafe expecting to buy only a large water, but they wouldn’t even sell me that. No transactions. They didn’t even try to sell me a cookie. I couldn’t have bought a cookie even if I had wanted one!

It was quite depressing.

So I sat at my usual table, prepared to study some math and physics, and was rudely interrupted by loud children sitting at the next table. In my weakened and hungry state of mind, and sitting virtually in the dark, I was only able to stay for a few minutes and then I had to leave.

I’ll have to face my cookie temptation later.

June 29, 2009

Day 2 of 40-Day Fast

Filed under: 40-Day Fast — admin @ 8:41 pm

As an atheist, I have sometimes argued that Jesus didn’t really fast for 40 days and nights in the desert, that the bible exaggerates. But now I believe that Jesus did in fact fast for 40 days and 40 nights. I don’t know why He did it, but maybe I’ll have a better understanding when I get further into my own fast.

Today was long. Many of you may not know this, but I teach and tutor math at a community college. Today I started my day on campus at 9AM and didn’t leave until 8PM, and I was either lecturing or tutoring for the entire time. It is exhausting work, but it is also fun and worthwhile. However, it can be stressful, especially if you don’t have a meal to look forward to at the end of the day. There were times today when I wanted to cry, not because the day was bad, but because I didn’t know when my next pleasurable moment would be.

Do I depend so much on food for my happiness? Maybe that’s the first thing that has to get burned off in this desert.

An ex-girlfriend called me today and left a message. I would have taken her call if I could have. It’s complicated, and I won’t share details now, but we recently became friends again after many years, that is until she discovered that I’m an atheist. So she hasn’t communicated with me since then, for a couple of months. But today she calls. She didn’t say why in the message, but I think it might have been because of my 40-day fast. She is Christian, and I hope she is supportive. Maybe she knows that the first few days will be the hardest, until enough baggage has gotten burned off in the heat of the desert.

I’m not hungry. And I’m not going through caffeine withdrawal, because I went through the last of those many years ago. I’m feeling pretty good, physically anyway. No overwhelming cravings. There’s a part of me that would like to report something bad today. But nothing bad has happened yet, except for the feeling that, without food, I will get depressed. Focus on other things…

Jesus was reportedly tempted in the desert. The bible says it was the devil who tempted Jesus. What if it wasn’t the devil? What if it was Jesus’s own human weaknesses? He was reportedly a man, after all. I’ve been tempted today by food. Maybe Jesus’s great strength was that He didn’t succumb to the temptations. He was an example for the rest of us. It seems to us that it was so easy for Him. Isn’t it always that way, that a great man makes it look easy? The bible reports it matter-of-factly, that Jesus went into the desert, fasted 40 days and 40 nights, then came out. He didn’t blog about it, describing in detail his every difficulty. They didn’t have blogs back then, but I suspect that Jesus wouldn’t have blogged about His experience even if there had been blogs. One of the things that makes Jesus great is that He lived simply, without fanfare, and yet now, 2000 years later, a billion people on the planet believe He was God.

As an atheist, I don’t believe that Jesus was God. But I can still believe that He was a great man, perhaps the greatest, and that He continues to inspire many of us to achieve our own modest successes.

So I will focus on the image in my mind of Jesus in the desert…

June 28, 2009

Day 1 of 40-Day Fast

Filed under: 40-Day Fast — admin @ 4:35 pm

It’s Sunday today, and I attended bible study. They had turned all the chairs to face outward, away from Rick the minister. They do stuff like that sometimes, to stir things up, to make us think. I’m feeling the need to stir things up in my life. During bible study I sat for an hour with my back to everyone, as the chairs told us to do, and I listened to Rick with my eyes closed as he talked about worship, and I gathered my courage for what I needed to do next.

It reached 102 degrees today in central Texas. Although Austin is not a desert, without rain it can feel like one in the summer. We’ve had a bunch of these 100+ days lately, and it’s only June. So it seems fitting that I enter the desert today, metaphorically.

I’ve wanted to do a 40-day fast for years. The number 40 is symbolic and appears often in the Judeo-Christian bible. The big ones: The flood, when it rained 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:17); And after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, when he goes into the desert for 40 days and is tempted by the devil (Mark 1:13). 40 days is longer than a month but shorter than a quarter. 40 is not a multiple of 7, the number of days in a week. Why 40?

This fast is not about losing weight. I’m only a little overweight. There are easier ways to get to my ideal weight. No, this is about something bigger than weight. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus tells the devil: “It is written, ‘Not by bread alone does man live…’”

I’m afraid. Embarking on a 40-day commitment to eat nothing is a big unknown. I won’t be going entirely without nutrition. I will be consuming 4 ounces of a mineral drink every day to keep my mineral balance in check. However, there will be nothing else except water. No fiber, no calories, no protein, no fat. Nothing to chew. I’m not sure why I’m afraid. I’ve gone 2 days without food before, but never more than that.

The idea to go without food for 40 days seemed so reasonable just yesterday. But today it seems a little crazy. I’ve read about 40-day fasting on the internet, so I know what to expect. I will not be consulting with a medical doctor before and during the fast. Perhaps I should, but I don’t want to be burdened with the tests and the concerns of someone who might not be entirely supportive of my goal. Again, this isn’t about health. It’s about being in the desert.

Why would an atheist want to live like Jesus for 40 days and nights? I don’t know. Maybe to burn away the irrelevant, the superfluous, the unnecessary. Maybe to focus the attention on something that matters.

I’ve read that someone fasting for 40 days and 40 nights will experience hunger for the first 3-5 days, but after 5 days there will be no hunger, after the body has made the adjustment to burning only fat for energy. When hunger comes again, sometime later, it will be a signal that the body should eat. If that warning is ignored, then the body will start burning its own muscle for protein.

But I’ve been hungry for something bigger for a long time. So hunger for food seems like a small thing to endure for what I truly want.

June 19, 2009

Judith Ann’s Baptism

Filed under: Traditions — admin @ 3:11 am

Judith Ann is not a young woman. As Rick the minister said, “You’re not a member of a youth group,” which got a laugh from her gathered friends and family. He hadn’t meant to call attention to her age, but just simply that she wasn’t doing this because of the usual peer pressure of a teen group. Judith Ann, late in life, had been “called” by God to be baptized into the Christian faith.

Judith Ann had been “thinking about this for years”. She’d had the Presbyterian “Sprinkles”, but now wanted something more. Or maybe she didn’t “want” it. She was being *called* to it. Is that the same thing?

It’s perhaps not often that an atheist finds himself in attendance at such a baptism. I was privileged to be a small part of it. As a member of a “Fred” group, a social group in our church, Journey Imperfect Faith Community, I had been invited to Judith Ann’s condo where she could use the public pool for the baptism. People brought food and we ate, laughed, talked, loved each other in friendship. There was joking about throwing her into the pool, about her fear that her neighbors, sitting around the pool, would get a sideshow of the rare baptism event, about just the oddity of an emersion baptism. Since being invited a couple of weeks earlier I had looked forward to being present, for reasons I couldn’t quite admit to myself.

The food eaten, it was time to move outside. Over the din of the conversation, Rick yelled, “Okay, let’s go!” The 22 of us meandered out the door and toward the condo pool nearby. Though it had been 100 degrees that day, not unusual in a Texas summer, only a few neighbors were using the pool, and they left when our rambunctious group arrived.

I hadn’t thought anybody but Judith Ann would actually get in the pool, but nearly everybody took off their shoes and socks, rolled up their pants, and waded into the shallow end. Rick and Judith Ann had dressed for the occasion, in swim trunks and teeshirts, and they waded into the deeper part of the pool. Only a very few of us, including myself, stood outside the water, perhaps protecting our dry clothes or perhaps resisting commitment.

Before performing the ceremony, as the two of them stood chest deep in the water, Rick said a few words. He talked of the history of baptism. He said that originally baptism had been a ceremonial cleansing, that in the desert water is scarce and precious, and that if you have some water you should do something special with it. But even before the time of Jesus, the ceremonial cleansing had, in the hands of the Jewish hierarchy, become “a dull religious experience”, corrupted by the need to pay for it at the Temple. And this was the reason that John The Baptist had borrowed the ceremonial cleansing ritual and taken it out of the Temple back to its origin at the Jordan river, where ordinary people could, without the corruption, engage in a “rebirth”. Rick talked of C.S. Lewis’s belief that baptism causes a literal transformation of the body, changing every cell of the baptized individual.

Rick then told Judith Ann he was going to ask her a few questions. “Do you believe in God?” She said she did. “Do you believe that God is at work in the world today?” She said she did. “Do you believe that God is at work in your life?” She said she did. Then he asked a couple of questions which I don’t remember exactly, but basically whether she freely accepted this calling to her rebirth as a Christian. She said she did.

Then he had her put one of her hands on her chest and use the other to squeeze her nostrils, for he was going to lean her backwards into the water. He said that allowing him to do this to her would be a sign of her submission to her faith. He reassured her that he would hold her and wouldn’t let her be submerged for more than a moment.

Judith Ann nodded, ready. Then Rick held her and leaned her backwards into the water, saying, “I baptize you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

When he brought her head out of the water, they hugged. I’m not sure, but I thought she was crying, even as the baptismal water of the pool poured off her face.

It would be easy for me, an atheist, to criticize, to joke, to question. But in those moments immediately after the ceremonial cleansing, as Judith Ann dried herself off and received hugs of congratulations from her two dozen friends, I found myself wondering how long it would be before I, too, would be called to the ceremonial cleansing, and to the commitment of Chistian faith.

June 8, 2009

What does worship do for me that a rock concert cannot?

Filed under: Worship — admin @ 12:17 am

In bible study, Rick the minister has been deconstructing worship, “looking under the hood” as he says.

We’ve learned, for example, that people worship by gathering together in a particular kind of physical space, a “sanctuary” or “holy place”. Rick told of his childhood when he was not allowed to enter the sanctuary in bare feet, which he said is weird because, what’s the first thing that God told Moses? Take your shoes off, because now Moses was on holy ground. So culture clashes with religious ritual. “The way we’ve always done it becomes holy,” Rick said.

Mike, one of his congregation, observed that, if you don’t have something that’s holy, bigger than ourselves, then it’s just us, just a bunch of people. When he does communion, something that Christians have done for two thousand years, Mike says he feels connected to something larger than himself. And the meaning transcends the immediate.

How is that different from a rock concert? I saw the rock band Heart in 1977, and the experience was spiritual, transcendent. But if there is a God, I wasn’t aware of Him that night. I attended the concert because of a love of their music, because I *valued* it, valued the band and their contribution to my life. But it had nothing to do with God. That rock concert experience was not worship of God.

Rick went on: So the practice of worship connects the worshipers to something larger than the here and now, he said. When we ask, ‘What does that even mean?’ that can be a huge blessing or blasphemy. What is holy is when a group of people get together and say, here’s what’s of value to us, here’s what’s holy to us. They choose consciously, and are invested in it, and that makes it holy.

Also in about 1977, I saw the rock band Chicago in concert. I had second row seats. I knew all their music, and again it was a spiritual, transcendent experience. For one large stretch of the concert, they performed Side 2 of Chicago 2. It has the song “Color My World” on it, but also long jazz riffs that are amazing. The concert involved traditions, people, and was transcendent. Yet that experience was not worship of God.

Rick continued: If it’s not about veneration of God, if it begins to divide people, such as when the rich dress up to go to church, then it’s not holy. Paul even mentions this in the bible. Paul says, Why do the wealthy among you get to eat at the big table first? But as Rick observed, it had to be the wealthy first, because it was their food. And it was their house, because only the wealthy had houses big enough for worship in the early church. As Rick said, it was an exercise in missing the point.

Rick said, the traditions of worship developed in the same way as rituals in our culture. Then he asked as a challenge: What do you value enough in your life to create specific rituals around it? Those are the things you value. Another way of seeing worship is that the thing is not the thing itself, but is a tool that opens us to something bigger.

That’s all well and good. However, it’s not enough of an explanation. I understand that rituals make us comfortable. I understand that worship rituals developed in a societal context. I understand that verneration of God developed because the worshiper values God.

However, I still don’t understand, even if God exists or not, why should I, an atheist, worship Him? Why should I, an atheist, value Him? What does worship do for me that a rock concert cannot?

June 4, 2009

The Jesus Christ of my generation, David Carradine, has died

Filed under: Introductory — admin @ 5:51 pm

The Jesus Christ of my generation, David Carradine, died today of an apparent suicide. Maybe David Carradine himself wasn’t Jesus Christ, but his most famous character, Kwai Chang Caine, was one of the closest characters we’ve had to a Jesus in two thousand years. Kwai Chang Caine, an outcast from his own country of China, a half-breed born of a white American father and a Chinese mother, traveled the desert of the western United States of the 1800s carrying a message of peace, tolerance, and love of life and of one’s neighbor. Hunted and persecuted for his peaceful ways and his one mistake of defending his master from a brutal attack by the Chinese emperor’s nephew, Kwai Chang Caine had a lot in common with the more commonly known Jesus, the Jesus of Nazareth.

“Kung Fu” ran from 1972-1975, before DVDs, before cable, when living in the country meant suffering through poor television reception. Yet I watched as many episodes as I could. As a high school student during those years, I came of age watching his adventures and carefully paying attention to his message and his commitment to “The Tao”, the path he chose and did not forsake.

Caine was a Shaolin priest, a monk of high training in the teachings of his masters and the fighting style of kung fu. Every episode of the television program had its obligatory two fighting scenes, but Kwai Chang never wanted to fight and only did so to protect the rights of others, or to defend himself from evil men bent on killing him. A Shaolin priest could walk through walls, it was said, yet Caine was “just a man” as he insisted with unequaled humility. He was not familiar with the Christian Bible, as we learned in “The Tong”, my favorite episode from Season 2, but he recited quotes from famous Chinese Buddhists and other philosophers of his era. For example, Caine said, “Yield and overcome,” to the Christian woman who had quoted the passage from the Bible about turning the other cheek.

I dreamed of joining a Shaolin monastery and learning kung fu, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized that I *had* been trained in the monastery every week for the three years that the series ran. From Kwai Chang Caine I learned patience, determination, tolerance, and a philosophical world view.

David Carradine became a cult hero to a whole generation of boys like me. Martial arts schools exploded onto the scene in the 1970s, and are still a rage today. I studied martial arts for one year as an adult. Two of my brothers went further, one even competing at the national level in the 1980s. “Kung Fu” had a huge impact on me personally and on an entire generation.

If the Jesus of Nazareth was anything like the character of Kwai Chang Caine, in temperament, spirituality, strength of character, and the struggles he lived through, then it is no wonder that Christianity caught on. I mean no disrespect to Jesus of Nazareth to compare Him with Kwai Chang Caine, and I hope no offense will be taken by the reader.

The passing of David Carradine will be felt, quietly, privately, by many who will miss their own personal Jesus.

June 2, 2009

Grace, Gratitude, and Who should we thank for civilization?

Filed under: Religion and Language — admin @ 9:07 pm

I am grateful for so many things. A Christian thanks God for everything, but the atheist doesn’t know who to thank. In fact, there is no “who” to thank.

But in recent years I’ve been rethinking my attitude toward gratitude. All the self-help gurus tell us that we should have an attitude of gratitude. I first heard this from Anthony Robbins, on his Personal Power tapes, and later I read it in his book “Awaken The Giant Within”. But he will admit that many of his ideas come from others, and after reading dozens of self-help books, I’m convinced that the lineage of the attitude of gratitude idea can be traced back to “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, published early in the 20th century. And the ideas certainly go further back, probably all the way to the Bible.

When we say Grace at meal time, we are expressing our gratitude for the food, and often for other good things in our life. What is grace? The New World Dictionary (2nd Edition) says of grace: from the Latin, gratia, pleasing, quality, favor, thanks. I’m reminded of the Spanish “gracias” meaning “thanks”, which shares the same root.

As an atheist, I have refrained from saying Grace at meal time because of its religious connotations. “Bless us Oh Lord for these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive,” or something like that. An atheist doesn’t believe in God, and therefore it seems inappropriate to thank God for the food. Shouldn’t we be thanking the farmer, the grocer, the breadwinner, the cook? What’s all this about thanking God?

But who does the farmer thank? What if the weather is bad that year and the crops don’t grow or can’t be harvested? Should we just take the good weather for granted? You can’t thank the weather; that doesn’t make sense! The direct object of the verb “to thank” is a person, or being. Linguistically, then, and perhaps psychologically, we need God in order to have an object to thank, for at least some of those things that we are grateful for.

The hard-core atheist (of which I am one) argues that we shouldn’t be grateful for the good weather. Our gratitude can’t change the weather. For even if we are grateful, our gratitude will not increase the likelihood that the weather will be good in the future. I believe that’s true, but it doesn’t *feel* right. I *feel* that we should be grateful for the good in our lives, even if there is no scientific basis for thinking that the gratitude will keep the good weather coming.

What about the things that gratitude *can* facilitate? For example, when someone invites me to attend the Journey IFC social “FRED” group meeting and provides snacks, shouldn’t I be grateful for that? Of course! Absolutely! There is clearly an identifiable object of my gratitude, namely the person who hosted the meeting and the person who provided the snacks.

Sometimes, however, the object of our gratitude isn’t as obvious, or the chain of gratitude isn’t clear. For example, should I be grateful for the sewer system in our neighborhood? And who in society should I thank for the sewer system? The worker who dug the trenches, the worker who installed the pipes, the worker who mans the sewage processing plant, the vast organization that provides electricity to the sewage processing plant, the plumber who connected the sewer system to my house, the vast network of people who create metal pipes and PVC, the politician who created the legislation which begat the sewer system, the bond holders who bought the bonds that built the system, the tax payer who paid for it. And perhaps dozens of other individuals and groups or organizations that made all of these things possible.

It seems that just about everyone, all of civilization, is responsible for my sewer system.

Who should I thank for civilization?

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