What happened?
It might seem like an easy question, but behind its initial simplicity there is a tangled web that ensnares us often even without our knowing it. I would hazard to say that this is the question that religious individuals underestimate more than any other, because it is the question that non-religious individuals value above all others. Herein lies the problem. The religious person, out of a deep-seated faith tradition, is bound to give a creedal answer to an historical question. Then, the non-religious person will give a retort out of a modern understanding of history. They will follow by arguing in different languages, each claiming ultimate superiority--the theist on the grounds of divine authority and the atheist on the grounds of historical record. Both are trying to say what happened but both fail to acknowledge that the other is speaking quite a different language.
Today I find myself troubled by the seemingly boundless ability of religious individuals to throw the question under the bus. We do this when we say things like "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it"--the kind of blunt creed that most mainline Christians can laugh at. But we also give up the question when we act as if God cannot work through means that are visible and immediate. Even mainline Christians seem incapable of separating the question--what happened?--from historical events, like the creation story, the crucifixion and resurrection, or modern accounts of miracles. And as such we end up backing ourselves into a corner where God is only active in the most unlikely of circumstances. I believe God is active in those moments in history, but I would have a hard time justifying that if I didn't also believe that God is active here--today. Christian traditions have failed to acknowledge, let alone convey, the presence of God here and now. We focus on the miraculous in spite of God's overwhelming presence in the mundane.
There's a great interview that Louis C K gave on the Conan O'Brien show where he talks about how everything's amazing and nobody's happy. I can think of no better commentary on how we talk about God. Everything is amazing. Seriously, so much of life is insanely wonderful and we hardly stop to think about it. All of this is a great testimony to God. In modern times we've somehow managed to take God out of all of that by focusing on what sets God apart from the descriptive language that we use everyday. We focus on the contentious question of what happened historically in all sorts of critical moments of witness, all the while implicitly granting that nothing in the present matters; that God is somehow an active force only in the distant past and the unforeseeable future. Then, we wonder why Joe Bag-a-Donuts in the pew every Sunday has no ability to articulate where or how God is active in his life.
So, for the God-believers among us, I have some simple advice. Give up on the arguments about the past; not because you can't win them (though it would behoove us to wonder what "winning" such an argument would look like) and not because they aren't important, but because they aren't fruitful. Instead, begin to think about the blessings that you have and the grace of God that is visible everyday of your life. Then the question--what happened?--will begin to move out of the distant past and right into the stories of your life. It will live with you, as you live into it. The answers you give will no longer sound like creedal obligation but grace-drenched proclamation, and finally, God will not be an abstract question but a concrete reality.
So, what happened?
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