Dualism

Karla and I had an interesting conversation after a long walk through downtown heading from the convention center, past Staples, past a brand new Ralph's (reurbanization anyone?) to a lovely organic (ah, LA) restaurant/diner called the Tiara Cafe. Understated flamboyance, that's my take. Anyway, we somehow got on the topic of dualism. Family dualisms, personal dualisms, etc. This is probably because she is taking the Ordination exams for the Presbyterian Church soon and I grew up in a theologically dualistic household and am constantly in a state of narcissistic self-reflection. She was trying to figure out if she could be considered reformed, orthodox reformed, or what, and we ended up getting on the subject of dualism. For her, dualism can be defined as splitting the sacred and secular, pre-judging who is "in" and who is "out" of salvation. What this comes down to is how you answer the question of whether or not common grace exists or not. In the churches I grew up, there was a very exclusive, insular mentality, in which salvation meant saying a sinner's prayer, belonging to a church or a community of "born-again" believers, preferably baptized in the holy spirit, you get the drift. But there was a fundamental view of reality as dualistic, somehow bifurcated. Holiness over here, evil over here. Kingdom of darkness out in "the world" or in "the flesh" and kingdom of God "in here" or "with us" or "in the spirit." Part of my path, my struggle has been wrestling with that duality. Even when I cast it off intellectually and embrace a different theology, I tend to fall back into it, encoded as it is into my spiritual DNA, unless I am actively a part of a community that believes otherwise. This one central element is huge in understanding theological differences within Christianity. If you believe in Common Grace, that is, that God is active in the world and calls it good even though there is sin, then you can embrace mystery. The downside is, perhaps, lack of accountability, not even to narrowly defined morality or what have you, but a mature life, open to God. I guess that opens up a question, how do you define spiritual growth outside of a rigid belief system with propositional truth and an emphasis on "the moral life?" What is a "deep well?" maybe it involves the same discipline, except that the discipline is not coerced nor out of fear. In my own journey I see so much the role of dualism. Now, this might work well for the Jesus People (my parents' generation) who were into this and that and then had a radical conversion experience as young adults. If you come "from" abuse, neglect, alcoholism, drug abuse, and you find life, find God in a church or through some faith tradition, then you are likely to see the split quite clearly, the shift from sprawling, selfish, ungoverned, random life to governed, ordered life as part of a religious community (I know, I know, it's "relationship with God" not "religion" well, ok, if it makes you feel better about it). But what if you're born into a religious community, Most of what you hear is to pray a sinner's prayer, to forsake your former life, to turn to God, away from sin, etc. In my case, although I'm sure I did some stupid things when I was 3, that is, before I said the sinner's prayer, and then many more times out of fear the first one didn't stick, I'm not sure the same message applies, although I heard it a thousand and one times. In this dualistic context, God has somehow given over the world to Satan "the prince of the power of the air" and condemned everyone to be his slaves. The contrast is so striking. I now walk about, not afraid the devil is around every corner in downtown Los Angeles, but interested in people, wondering where they're from, where they're at, what I could learn from them, what they could learn from me. I'm no longer afraid that all these streets, cars, this architecture, the people are somehow agents of Satan out to separate me from God because misery loves company. But this is exactly the kind of thinking the dualistic mind-set tends towards. What a revelation is Common Grace in this context. God just loves people, even though we do stupid stuff. The earth is his. I'm not waiting on the Millenium. I'm not worried about Hal Lindsey, don't care about Left Behind or any other scare tactics narrow minded people are controlled by and want others to be controlled by. Now who's scary? I had a kind of image of an open tent in the desert, like Burning Man or something. Thousands of people gathered round, some closer, some farther away from the center. The tent is open, not closed, and people are moving toward it, and some away from it, but there is energy there, and life, truth, transformation, transcendence. Where is judgment here? you might ask. What about "kingdom of darkness?" What about "gnashing of teeth?" You tell me. I don't know. Maybe there are people up in the hills, hiding from the light in fetal positions gnashing their teeth, only some of them have built their own little tents in the hills and some haven't, but they're all cold and naked and I think sometimes I'm one of them and nowhere near a tent. Common Grace means I can find God where I couldn't find him before, lost in stunted-graceland. I wrestled with this dualism all through college. I couldn't articulate it or identify it, but I knew it, felt it. I loved Blake, Dante, but was God really there? Couldn't possibly be. There was no invitation to salvation, not in the sense I was raised up to acknowledge. Instead of resolving the dualism, I suppose, I just hopped the border. The reasoning being, well, if I'm screwed anyway (and if our goal is nothing less than "to be perfect like our holy father is perfect" then, of course, we're all screwed) then I might as well enjoy myself. This is the logical conclusion of the dualistic mindset, at least for an aesthete such as myself. I have friends raised in similar circumstances who were better behaved, the difference being they didn't move to Germany when they were nine but stayed in exclusivist Christian subcultures that reinforced the dualism, moralism, and guilt. I, instead, was dropped into German school and then international school, which, you might say, is the opposite of moralistic. From the conservative American mindset, it seems horribly depraved and hedonistic. From the other side, it just seems like fun. On occasion, I would feel guilty about my lifestyle and repent, but any change was short term at best. My reasoning went that the high standards are impossible, and if we're going to be permissive, we might as well go all the way, you know, short of death and harm to others. In this mindset, sin is sin, and if you steal a dollar you might as well steal a million, because both will land you out of favor. So I didn't play by the rules, but I never really relinquished the dualism either. Maybe it took getting married to have enough perspective to see this. I don't know. It'll be interesting reconstructing a healthy theology and trying not to screw that up, too. =)