We are NOT hiding from existential angst

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The questions people in our community are asking aren’t solved with neat and tidy answers; they require ongoing courage, risk, direction. With help from Psalm 90 and Søren Kierkegaard (the Christian grandfather of Existential thought), Vince tries to offer some guidance. (Art: The Scream, 1893, by Edvard Munch)

SPEAKER NOTES

We are NOT hiding from existential angst

Intro

• We are continuing our series centered on question-asking today!
• Inspired by the idea that communities often form stronger connections by asking questions together, not necessarily by arriving at the same answers.
• Our questions can drive us into deeper curiosity and openness, rather than lead us into being more closed off
• Last week we talked through our starting place and posture in asking questions and at the end of our time together, Hayley asked everyone to share some of the questions you’re currently asking in the Discord chat.
• And we got so many wonderful questions! So thank you for that! Questions like:
  • What can we even do?
    • that really laid heavily on me this week watching ICE terrorize Chicago neighborhoods.
  • Why questions — suffering, hatred, evil.
  • Meaning questions — What does it mean to live like Jesus? Is Jesus divine? A teacher? What even are the stakes of such a question?
  • Practical questions - how do we sanely and ethically navigate a world in which social media is our primary mediator of information and communication? Or How do I stay informed without falling into despair?

Existentialism

My takeaway reading Discord last week was: we are a community that is NOT hiding from existential angst. We are naming it! Good for us!

The traditional existential questions in philosophy are about meaninglessness, loneliness, suffering, death, the weight of freedom, the arbitrariness of being born into a family and culture and social location you didn’t choose.

So many of the questions people shared had undertones of these existential anxieties.

So, after reading our questions, I thought of one of my heroes in the Christian Tradition, who is often called the grandfather of existentialism: Søren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard's image of life was that we are ship captains in a storm (yes a little outdated but bear with him; he’s from the 19th century) — his point is that we’re not able to stop time to carefully take all our measurements so we can be certain; life must be lived, as thoughtfully and intentionally as we can, as the storm rages on.

In the recent book Camping with Kierkegaard, Aaron Simmons, a contemporary philosopher and theologian, says this is basically what faith is — not necessarily a religious pursuit, but an existential pursuit — he defines faith as "risk with direction”.

Life is going to be full of questions, big un-answerable, or constantly evolving questions. And a life of faith is risking to respond to those questions with intentional direction, as best you can, like the ship captain in the storm.

I love that — it’s not so much that we need answers. We need the capacity to risk, and we need the guidance of an intentional direction.

I think of the value we try to encourage here on being Rooted & open

• When the picture of being rooted in Christianity includes things like Christian nationalism, purity culture, and a lack of moral courage, people today in a place like Chicago are rightfully hesitant to get rooted. Because we think it means you have to sacrifice openness. We think you can’t be both.
• But what if the reason to be Rooted in Christianity is not because it’s the only true way and everyone else is going to hell.
• What if we need to be Rooted because we need guidance and direction for the big movements in life — what do we do when someone dies? when tragedy strikes? or when someone is born? when someone comes of age? — having to make meaning out of all of these things for myself by myself is too great a burden for any individual to bear.
• That doesn’t sacrifice openness at all. It’s just living in a way that risks direction.
• Yes there are risks to me self-identifying as a Christian; I do indeed have to clarify often “not that kind of Christian” — but the risk is worth it because my passions and convictions are so much more animated as a result of being directed toward Jesus.

Scripture

The Biblical wisdom that comes to mind when we think of Kierkegaard’s insight is Psalm 90:12.

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Unfortunately, some of us may have experienced religious settings that passed this scripture off as: “Teach us to number our days, so we stay in line and don’t go to hell”.

But that’s not at all what it says. It says, “so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Aaron Simmons, in Camping with Kierkegaard, offers an amazing question to live by that I think is a beautiful re-phrase of Psalm 90:12 for our time:

“What is worthy of your finitude?”

Numbering our days means recognizing we are finite, we will not live forever, and we do not have infinite energy or time or resources…

SO, when we live, we should live risking in a direction, in pursuit of what feels worthy of our finitude.

Story of Risk with Direction

Part of this is, I think, rootedness, as I mentioned, so every storm doesn’t feel like a brand new thing, requiring a brand new authentic response. We can outsource some of our needed direction to earned wisdom from our ancestors, our traditions.

AND the other part of this is learning how to just best we can live into complex situations.

• Keziah and I have an ongoing open question in our life together about trying to be as ethical as possible in our spending and investing.
• It is not easy, because modern life is built on the capitalist values of growth, return, speed, and convenience.
  • Ethics around not exploiting workers and not devastating the earth are an afterthought usually.
  • Just this week, we were on a phone call with the bank that manages Keziah’s employer-sponsored retirement plan, and we’re talking about investment options and we ask “do any of the mutual fund options you would invest our money in release any literature on their ethical criteria for selecting stocks or do they only release literature on their financial return criteria?” And they just said no, sorry, none of our mutual funds release any literature on ethical criteria, only on projected financial growth.
• When we face things like this, we’ve learned that
  • I have a tendency to edge toward nihilism — it comes from a good place, a pastoral place in me, because I get so infuriated with a world that will do NO favors for anyone trying to live with ethical intention; it’s entirely up to the individual to live according to their values. And that is just too great a burden for individuals to carry; it grieves me as a pastor of amazing but burnt out people who all feel like they're terrible because they really could be being more ethical — BUT while my grief over our unjust larger systems can sometimes lead me into organizing and activism, it can also sometimes lead me into a nihilism, where I tell Keziah, “there’s nothing we can do to change things as individuals, we need regulation at the highest level, so just let them assign us a mutual fund; this isn’t worth our time.”
  • Keziah, on the other hand, defaults to: sure, we can’t change the world with our small individual acts, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do our best with what’s right in front of us! — Which comes from such a good place in her and is such an important check to my sometimes nihilism. BUT then that means she can edge toward burn out, carrying too much guilt that is outsized for our agency, and that can lead to a paralysis where we just avoid it all because it’s too much.
• This is an example of Kierkegaard’s “ship captain in a storm” for us.
• When I pray about this,
  • I feel like God’s response is never trite, like here’s the simple solution that will take away the problem.
  • And I’m grateful for that. I don’t want a God selling false promises. We did some research; there is no perfectly pure way to invest a retirement account. Every option has flaws.
  • God’s response to me when I pray is more like: this storm is not magically disappearing, it just is; so let me help you take risks with some direction in the midst of this.
  • I feel like God fills me with courage, gently reminds me what I’m aiming toward.
  • And so, this week, Keziah and I crossed one retirement account option off our list, and we know what questions we want to ask next.
• I can recognize God in this, because there’s a grace in it, a flexibility in it.
  • If you’re trying to hear God in prayer, it’s all about paying attention for grace, lures, invitations.
  • We use the analogy often at BLC of God speaking in yellow lights more than red or green lights. There is no simple either-or to “acting right” or “living justly”; there is just courage to risk doing something. God trusts you to use your best reasoning to make the call. You can stop, or you can go. It’s a yellow light.
  • When I feel that permission, that partnership, that’s how I know it’s God.
  • It feels like being saved from nihilism AND from outsized guilt.
  • Because the measure of my humanity is not getting it perfectly right. There is no such thing as getting it perfectly right. Life is too complex and messy.
  • There is just continuing to navigate the storm best we can, or giving up.
  • That is where we find God’s peace in the midst of existential angst; the most heroic ethical decisions in the world are birthed from peaceful places like this. Not anxious, wound up places.

Prayer

Guided imaginative experience