Christian Piatt Blog

Faces of Death: Halloween to coffee, we’re obsessed

By Christian Piatt

            This Halloween was the first time my son, Mattias, truly enjoyed all of the excitement available. He insisted on dressing up as Dash from the movie, The Incredibles. I swallowed my disdain for children acting as walking media billboards and conceded. It made him happy, after all.

            I noticed that, the older the kids got, the gorier and more frightening their costumes became. Pumpkins and superheroes gave way to horror movie icons, dismembered zombies and other mavens of mayhem.

It’s all a thin façade. Even in moments when I feared Mattias would be scared by the ghouls, he plopped a handful of candy into their bag and proclaimed, “You’re not scary. You’re a nice monster.”

Across the city, there a are symbols of our morbid fascination with death.  Even in the front yard of Mattias’ day care center, they have mock graves, mounded up with fresh dirt, complete with skeletal hands, reaching for unsuspecting prey. Cartoon ghosts, makeshift graveyards and haunted houses reveal that we’re terrified of death, yet we have no idea how to talk about it.

Recently, I listened to the testimony of a cancer survivor who had undergone extensive chemotherapy. The most frequent question she received during her treatment had to do with her hair loss. Few had the nerve to ask about her physical suffering, he fears, the risk to her life, or even the more violent side-effects of the poison they pumped through her veins to annihilate the tumors.

After all, when your fighting for your life, she suggests, isn’t your cosmetic appearance a little farther down on the list?

An article on the anatomy of the human taste bud in The New Yorker explains what takes place in our brains when we experience flavors. Our gustatory system actually is a critical survival mechanism, attuned to telling us what is safe to eat and what is toxic. Those things that are sweet, savory and salty generally include nutrients our bodies crave.

Spicy and bitter foods, however, send immediate warnings to the brain that we may be ingesting something that can harm or kill us. The resultant chemical response is a rush of endorphins, similar to a “fight or flight” experience.

Though the initial prompt is to respond quickly – in this case, spit out the offending morsel – the following endorphin effect is quite pleasurable. This causes us ironically to crave spicy or bitter food, along with other adventurous and life-threatening activities.

We can even get a voyeuristic thrill out of watching others risk life and limb. If this wasn’t the case, the new “Jackass” movie that features sophomoric acts of self-abuse would not have grossed nearly $70 million.

We spend billions of dollars celebrating a holiday that glorifies death, and we flock to movies where alligators snip at the genitalia of deviants. We even crave the bitter nectar of our morning coffee, sipping our “cup of death” so-described by The New Yorker article, just to help us feel ironically more alive.  The caffeine doesn’t hurt either.

As innately mortal creatures, we long to understand our end in its many expressions. We make jokes about it, scare ourselves in safe doses and take curious pleasure in the suffering of others: as long as it’s not too real. The moment the shadow of death looms too closely, we retreat into a paralytic state. We avoid even saying the “D” word.

Churches often capitalize on this collective neurosis to make the transcendence of death the cornerstone of their ministry. Who hasn’t been approached with the age-old question, “if you died today, do you know where you would go?” The answer for all of us is “no,” and that’s scary.

We believe a number of things, but knowledge suggests a direct line into the mind of God. We’re better served when our churches provide opportunities to learn how to safely grieve, discuss loss and death, and to explore the mysteries of what exactly lies beyond.

The best we can hope for is a faith in the promise of something better, and a commitment to making the best of life, simply for the sake of life itself.

Spiritual, not religious: Your own personal Jesus

Brian, the pastor of a new church in Plano, Texas, works evenings at a coffee shop to make ends meet. His wife stays at home with their children, and their church is not to the point that it can support a full-time pastor.

As coffee shops grow in their social importance, pastors like Brian are realizing the value of spending time there. Some ministers have started book groups, knitting circles and even one-on-one counseling sessions at the corner coffee shop. Starbucks has become an extension of twenty-first century ministry.

As Brian prepared a drink for a young customer, they got into a discussion about occupations. He mentioned that he was the pastor of a church, to which she replied that she was spiritual, but not religious.

“Hey,” proclaimed Brian with a smile, “I’ve read a lot about you!”

In his book, Spiritual, but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America, Robert C. Fuller says that one-fifth of the American population identifies themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Approximately one in two Americans who do not attend a church identifies themselves in this way.

This means there are sixty million people in this country who feel some affiliation with a higher power, yet who are not connected to a religious organization. This is enough to make any pastor’s mouth water. The issues with reaching these folks in a meaningful way, however, are complex.

Prior to the 20^th century, says Fuller, the two terms “religious” and “spiritual” were used almost synonymously. This was partly because people considered spiritual life to be a public, shared experience. Since then, spiritual experience – along with many other experiences – has become increasingly private. While churches historically have been built to accommodate a corporate worship experience, the values of the culture around it have moved away from the model we still use.

Another big issue is a negative perception of church. From emotional, physical or sexual abuse to a more vague sense of alienation, people have been hurt by church. There is accountability for both parties in this case. Many churches still are reticent to engage people about the pain they’ve experienced in church, and chances are the last place people want to do this is at a church.

However, negative past experience isn’t an excuse to give up on organized religion. I have been hurt by church too, but I’ve also been hurt by family, friends and pretty much any other group of which I’ve been a part. Generally, we don’t walk away from these, so why should church be any different? Walking away not only means that the person who was hurt loses the chance to find healing from the source of their pain, but it also allows the harmful dynamics within the church to continue.

Finally, research shows that most people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious don’t see the church as the only means – or even the best means – for spiritual growth. The perception is that we’re not doing our job in offering a large contingency of the public what they feel they need to be spiritually enriched.

We need to ask ourselves whether making connections with people is more important than our church membership. If we could meet weekly with a group of people at the coffee shop, but who would never attend our church, would we invest the time?

Those who solely measure success by worship attendance and giving totals will continue to struggle to reach this group of sixty million. Ministry to this group may not pay the bills, but it’s as important as any work we do within our institutional walls.

Intelligent design: Making a mockery of science

By Christian Piatt

(This column originally appeared in the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper)

I listened to a sermon series on intelligent design recently. The minister went through the many sophisticated organs, cells and systems within the human body, and after each example, he pulled out a coin. He went from cellular mitochondria to the visual cortex, pointing out each time how unlikely this system was to occur by accident. Each point was punctuated by another coin.

Many systems within the body are built upon preceding ones, and conditions had to be just right for us to become what we are, he pointed out. By the end, he had fifteen coins laid out on the lectern. The odds of flipping those fifteen coins and having them all land heads-up was about one in thirty-three thousand. How much more unlikely, then, are we to be here?

That depends. If you believe in infinite time and space, then you have to accept the concept of infinite probability. Given time and space without boundary, it’s reasonable to expect that everything that can happen ultimately will. This would include earth, humans, and other forms of intelligent life.

At this point, we can’t say how big or old the universe is, any more than we can claim whether or not this is the only universe there is.  For all we know, there are millions of other universes that existed before ours, or maybe they even exist in parallel to ours right now. If time has a beginning and an end, or that there are limits to the boundaries of the universe, our existence becomes less likely the product of random chance.

Asking ‘What are the odds?’ alone doesn’t really bother me, although I think it’s a weak argument for the existence of a Creator. But this same argument is the cornerstone of many proponents of teaching intelligent design in our schools, as an alternative to evolution.

There’s one big difference between evolution and intelligent design: the former is science and the latter isn’t. For an idea to be part of the scientific body of thought, you first have to develop a hypothesis and test it using scientifically recognized processes. If your findings support your initial hypothesis, you share your findings with the rest of the scientific community and allow them to try to replicate your results.

Over time, if your hypothesis continues to be supported, it becomes a theory. If evidence arises later that challenges the theory, it’s either changed or discarded. There’s no such thing as a scientific absolute. We only have theories waiting to be disproved.

Some may cry foul, claiming that intelligent design can’t be tested like this. After all, if we can’t prove the existence of God, how can we prove that any of the resultant byproducts are of God’s hands?

That’s why intelligent design isn’t science.

Although I believe personally that God created the universe, I don’t confuse my beliefs with the human-conceived scientific system. There are places in school for discussions such as these, including philosophy and comparative religion classes. I also think each family can impart their beliefs to their children, both at home and at church. But to cloud our understanding of what science is, promoting a religious agenda under the thin veil of scholarship, threatens to contaminate both science and faith.

Some scientists are guilty of making a religion of science. They confuse theory with fact and proclaim the human intellect as the prevailing standard by which all things must solely be measured.

Aristotle, the father of modern science, wisely recognized the limits of science and logic. Thomas Aquinas later claimed that this point where logic breaks down is where faith helps complete the picture.

The difference is that both Aristotle and Aquinas knew not to confuse faith and logic, and both understood the limits of each. The current creation-versus-evolution debate suggests that we haven’t evolved toward a greater truth in the meantime.

(Christian Piatt’s new book, “Lost: A Search for Meaning,” is available for pre-order at most online bookstores now.)

School shootings: We ask why, but need peace

By Christian Piatt

 (Originally printed in the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper)

On Monday, Charles Carl Roberts entered a peaceful one-room Amish schoolhouse with the intention of slaughtering all of its young female occupants, as well as himself. As of Monday afternoon, four children, a young teaching assistant and the attacker all were dead, with five more still in critical condition.

In a call to his wife, and in notes he scribbled out prior to the attack, Roberts evidently was acting on some two-decade-old grudge, seeking revenge for some injustice he suffered some time back. Reports reveal that Roberts may have had a history of sexually abusing children.

Roberts was not Amish, and seems to have no particular connection with the community or the school he attacked. It is thought that his choice of targets was based more upon convenience.

This is the third attack in a school setting in a little more than week, and the whole string of incidents smacks of the Columbine shooting, which occurred in Denver several years ago. My wife, Amy, was a youth minister in Denver at the time, and one of her girls was a friend of the shooters. She spent weeks counseling the girl, her family, and others who were less directly affected, yet impacted nonetheless.

The first question that most people begin with has something to do with why such a senseless, violent event has to take place. How does the human mind end up accommodating such diabolical notions? How divorced from one’s divine spirit must one become to even consider the murder of children? How does someone so young, with so much ahead of them, determine that their time on earth is complete, to be cut short by their own hand?

I’ve found that there are no satisfactory answers in cases such as these, and I’d go so far as to suggest we’re not really seeking answers. What we want is to reclaim a sense of peace. Such things cannot ever be understood, any more than an act of so-called “justice” could satisfy the survivors. No matter what, we’re left with pain, confusion, anger, despair, and in some cases, abject hatred.

So how do we go about rediscovering a sense of peace amid so much suffering and bloodshed?  After all, it’s not a natural part of the human condition. Those who ascribe to the “everything happens for a reason” mindset have a particularly difficult time with such tragedies, as they must reconcile what they believe about God’s plan with such horrendous human-made consequences.

The only way we find peace is to try to transcend the very humanity of the experience. At the essence of life is suffering, and if that is all we lay claim to, it’s all we’re left with. But in acknowledging that we not only don’t understand life sometimes, but that we also cannot control it, we are relieved of the curse of why’s and how’s that get us nowhere closer to the peace we desire.

Ironically, this transcendence, for many, is found in a community of faith. For the Amish, the very bonds that hold them together are the same ones that marry them to their faith. The two are inseparable. Yet even when this peace-loving and peace-living community is encroached upon by the violence of the outside world, you hear no cries for retribution. You don’t even hear complaints of the unfairness of life. What we witness is a community that comes even closer together to support one another, to remember and begin the slow healing process.

No one can make sense of these recent events. We may never completely understand Roberts’ motivations, and even if we did, we would still live with the stain of his murdering binge. However, the prayerful, peaceful response of those who suffered the most – as unnatural as it may seem – makes all the sense in the world.