Analog Theology Part III: Analog Faith

The thrust of this series so far has been that in an increasingly digital age--in which almost every image or video we see, and every song we hear, has been broken down into one's and zero's by computers, and perfectly reconstituted for our eyes and ears--it's important to remember that our experience of life and faith is analog. It's unified and interconnected. It's too rich to be broken down into billions of "yes" or "no" questions. I've already talked about this principle as it relates to our experience of God, as well as our experience of worship.

Time to talk about analog faith. Let's start with what I'd classify as the "digital" approach: breaking things down into tiny bits, and reconstituting it in a supposedly "perfect" form. Again, I use the word "digital" metaphorically here, because this tendency has been around since long before computers. In fact, for as long as there's been faith, there's been the attempt to break it down into component parts, 1's and 0's, "yes's" and "no's."

The first three centuries of Christian spirituality were a wild, chaotic weed patch of different beliefs about Jesus. A wonderful theology professor of mine who has now passed on, Walter Bouman, once said, "You can't invent a new heresy...just read your church history and you'll find it back there somewhere!" But even the term "heresy" is anachronistic, because it implies somebody with power deciding what was the "right" thing to believe, which originally there wasn't. Everything was growing up together. Almost any theory about Jesus you've ever heard someone come up with after a beer or two, chances are, somebody thought of it in those first couple centuries.

But in the fourth century, and particularly after the Conversion of Emperor Constantine, church leaders became very uncomfortable with the weed patch. Through a centuries-long series of ecumenical councils, arguments and fistfights (no joke), a lot of what most "orthodox" Christians believe was set in motion. Now, no honest historian will claim that this process embodied Christian love and unity. Far, far...far from it. Believe me. But I'd still argue that there were some arguments the church kind of needed to have, and by the Spirit's power and despite ourselves, I believe we emerged with some great ideas about God.

But immediately, these ideas were no longer ideas. They were "orthodoxies." They became "yes" or "no" questions, to determine whether you were "in" or "out" of the church. They became "one's" and "zero's," by which, theoretically, you could burn perfect digital copies of the faith of fourth-century bishops, unto the ages of ages, world without end, Amen.

And the Reformation, for all its benefits, kind of cemented that "digital" idea of faith. With the dawn of the printing press came opportunities for scholars like Martin Luther to make exact copies of the "one's" and "zero's" of Christian orthodoxy for every single household, simply cutting out the "middle men" of church hierarchy. And it worked so well that almost five hundred years later, we're still using some of those same books, pretty much word for word, to teach our children the "yes's" and "no's" of faith.

Even in our sacrament of baptism, we ask the parents and sponsors a series of "yes" or "no" questions about their faith and intentions. Then, assuming the kids stay part of the church, we have them memorize a whole bunch of facts about the Bible, Jesus, the Law, faith, and then we stand them up and ask them all the same "yes" or "no" questions again so they can answer for themselves, and if they say "yes," then that's faith...right?

Well, we've managed all too effectively to convince the world it is. So much so, I would argue, that even some agnostics and atheists have bought into the same "yes" or "no", all-or-nothing narrative still touted by many Christians today: that faith means being able to say "yes" to a series of intellectual questions about God, Jesus, the church and the Bible, and not have to cross your fingers. Since they can't say "yes" to them all, they assume they must just not be Christians. If you're not a perfect digital copy of a fourth century bishop, or a sixteenth century professor, then no church for you.

But that was not how Jesus taught faith. Not once, in all four Gospels, does Jesus ever call a disciple by saying,

"Hi there: I'm Jesus, the 100% human, 100% divine Son of God, second person of the Trinity. You may remember me from such historical events as the dawn of time, and the redemption of all humankind. Now if I could just get you to check "yes" here on the clipboard to all that I just said, you'll be all set."

Not once. Not even close.

Mind you, I'll still make the case that all that stuff about Jesus is in the Bible. But what Jesus said was, "Follow me." The disciples learned from simply being with Jesus, and watching and listening for what mattered most to Him. This was an analog approach: a unified experience of the presence of Christ, which, by the Spirit's power, enables disciples to seek God's truth, and see it revealed. A relationship of trust, beginning with our letting go of what we think we know and believe, and handing it over to our Rabbi.

This relationship makes an impression on us. It cuts deep grooves into our souls. It teaches us how to live more fully as the people God created us to be, trusting that God's Spirit will guide us into all truth.

It's a very intuitive model, because for better and for worse, it's exactly how young children learn. From simply being around parents and caregivers, a child learns in her first year of life whether the world is a safe place, and whether others, including God, can be trusted. Every single child learns it, and not always because we set out to teach them.

The same is true with faith: the old cliche is, it's "caught, not taught." It comes from the experience of living in the Body of Christ, seeing and hearing and studying and experiencing what disciples of Jesus do, what matters to them, and what difference it makes. It isn't being able to check "yes" for a bunch of orthodox boxes. It's trusting God enough, so that your life is a "yes" to the way of Jesus. It's going around and around in our own scratchy, imperfect rendering of a disciple's life, trying to play back for others the experiences we've had of Jesus, which have cut deep grooves in our souls. It's messing up, and asking for forgiveness, and picking up the needle to try to play it again.

Digital faith demands perfection in every theological detail, or you're out. Analog faith means you keep coming back, you keep searching for Jesus, not just in church but everywhere you go, because you trust that in Him is life, and that life is the light of all people. You entrust Him with more than just a few lines of code in your intellectual, metaphysical framework, but with your entire being. It can't be done perfectly; but He doesn't want perfection. He wants us.

Analog Theology, Part II: Analog Worship

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’



One of my most treasured vinyl albums is a very old and worn copy of Beatles '65. Sure, it's in pretty bad shape, and it's by no means rare--they pressed a gazillion of those things--but its value for me comes from an inscription in very clear, intentional sharpie marker on the top right corner: "DAVE JAHN." I figure my dad must have bought it when he was 10 or 11 years old, and played the heck out of it. Consequently, as much as I enjoy spinning it, objectively speaking, the thing sounds terrible. Snaps, pops, skips and scratches galore. Still, in the whole history of the universe, there is exactly one copy of Beatles 65 that sounds like this, and even this one has changed since it was new.

That's part of what makes digital technology "superior," isn't it? There's no decay. A digital sound file will sound exactly the same from now on until forever, until the data is no longer accessible. It's just a sequence of one's and zero's, so it will sound the same wherever and whenever you play it. But analog is different. Every time you make a copy, you lose quality. You're making an imperfect approximation of the original, which may itself be an imperfect approximation of the actual event being recorded. Now, when I started making music of my own, I did it in the analog world, on a four track tape recorder, and I learned fast that you guard that master tape with your life, because the more times you play it, the more it will degrade. In very minute ways, it plays back differently each time.

So...analog worship. What all this makes me think about is our current "digital" approach to all kinds of personal experience, and by extension our experience of worship. I'm sure you've all seen this photo, comparing the announcement of Pope Benedict's election and that of Pope Francis:



In 8 short years, it became as important, or even more important, to record a historic event in "perfect" digital detail, even though everyone around you is recording the same event, as it is to witness that event with your own eyes and ears. And hey, I'm a major offender in this department. Just this past Wednesday, I was one of many preschool parents snapping photos of my daughter's graduation so obsessively that I finally had to snap myself out of it and actually be present there, in the room, as my little girl became a kindergartener before my eyes.

I think that for as long as there's been worship, there has been what I'd call the "digital" approach to worship: the attempt to take some huge, life-altering experience, and pick it apart into its tiny components, in the hopes of putting it back together in a "perfect" rendering that you can recreate every Friday, Saturday or Sunday from now on until eternity, just that way. For some churches, the event being recorded was something that happened in Biblical times, like the walk to Emmmaus above. Or maybe it was the house church worship of the early Christians. Or the spirit-filled worship or Reformation times, or maybe good old J.S. Bach's time, or theAzusa Street Revival of 1906, or the way worship sounded and felt when you were in Sunday School, or some amazing worship at a revival or conference you went to last year.

But digital doesn't work for worship, doesn't it? Our experience is analog. By that I mean, the harder we try to recreate a past experience, even a really amazing one, the more muddled it sounds: like a tape of a tape of a tape of something you got off the radio. Or like my Dad's almost 1/2 century old copy of Beatles '65, love it though I do.

To take a digital approach to worship, and try to take apart and put back together some seminal moment, will never work, because the past is only one part of what worship is. Worship is made up from what happened then, but worship is live. Worship is what's happening now. So even if you go to a liturgical church that goes through the same seasons every year and the same stories every three years, or even if you go to a non liturgical church that tends toward many of the same songs and Bible passages based on the taste of those in charge, those songs and stories mean a different thing today than they did last year or last week. They mean something different because the person speaking and singing and preaching them is a different person from who it was a week ago, even if the name on their driver's license matches. And it's a different group of people listening, even if the same twenty people come to your church each week. And oh yeah...you are different. You have lived and changed since last week, and God's Spirit has a different message for you today than last week or last year. It's not about trying to recapture an experience you've had, even an experience as important Jesus' last supper with his disciples, and his death on a cross for us. Because, "This is my body, given for you" means something different to the pain and brokenness and loneliness of this week--and this very moment--than it did for any other moment in history. It means something different because we are different: scratched and cracked and warped in slightly different places than before, yet needing it no less than before.

All worship is analog, in the sense that if your goal is to perfectly copy what's already been, the copy will degrade over time. But if you treasure the experience itself--how it has stayed the same, and how it has changed--you'll discover that, in fact, it's live, every time. Jesus promised it would be. You gather in his name, you bring your own unique, imperfect copy of obedience and faith, and he shows up and creates a brand new thing. Count on it.

Analog Theology: Part I

What you are reading is not words. It's a collection of one's and zero's that my computer sent to a server, which sent it to your computer, to put back together into a group of tiny dots of light that are meant to look like words to your brain.

The same is true of all digital media: print, music, film, art, whatever. It's all possible because of binary code, which at its most basic is millions and even billions of "yes" or "no" questions being asked and answered by computers. That's how digital photography works: the image the photographer's eye sees, gets recorded and taken apart into billions of little pieces, then put back together again on your computer. Same with CD's and MP3's: a singer sings into a microphone, and the actual voice of the singer gets taken apart into very tiny pieces. So tiny that you can't tell the difference and it sounds like one piece coming out of your computer speakers.

That's part of why I enjoy having inherited my parents' turntable. That is analog technology, which works differently. Instead of breaking up the sound wave, what happened was that back in the day, Dave Brubeck and his band made sound waves with their instruments, and the recording equipment did its best to actually capture their sound wave as a whole, then transfer it in one piece onto a physical object: a vinyl record. When the band played louder, the groove in the record is deeper, and when they quieted down, it gets shallow. an "A" note is a different physical shape in the groove than a "C" note. Quite literally, the aim was to create a one-to-one analogy (eh, see what I did there?) between actual event and physical object. Some people (including my dad) can hear the difference. They say even listening to the best digital recording is like watching the Mona Lisa on television rather than traveling to Paris to see it. I guess I didn't inherit the sound gene, but I do appreciate the difference on a philosophical level, and I love going down into my basement--a place set apart--to stop multitasking, and make time for music. (I am in fact going somewhere with this, so bear with me.)

It occurs to me that reality is not digital. It is analog. It is shapes and waves. It is light, at a particular frequency, with a particular wave length, hitting our rods and cones and being transferred by chemical reaction to our brain. It is sound waves of a particular frequency shaking the air and making our eardrums vibrate. It is not one or two, but millions of kinds of molecules, made from not one or two, but at least 92 naturally occurring elements. It is human beings: made of DNA, from not one or two but four base molecules, combined in not one or two but billions of possible combinations. Even at the subatomic level, there are more than 2 base particles. Even when we're asking about long stretches of space, and wondering if there's something there as opposed to nothing: Well, with the discovery of dark matter, we realize that even what we saw as "nothing" is yet another variety of "something." This can not be broken down into one's and zero's and remain intact. We can break it down into a million, a billion, a trillion yes or no questions, and the whole will still be more than the sum of its parts. Reality is analog, not digital. It's one piece, that can't be broken down. It's not black or white, but a whole spectrum of color. That's why they can build a computer that can beat the world's best chess player, but fifteen years later, they can not make Siri "get" you.

The reason this matters to me is that I believe God wants it this way. That's not to say I don't believe in computers. (I'm using one to type this, for goodness' sake!) It's to say that long before computers were around, we began a desperate effort to divide things up into a long series of yes or no questions--good or evil, black or white, saved or condemned--and by the nature of God's creation, it can't be done. What we'll come up with is a clumsy, pixelated version of reality. An Atari 2600 graphic rendering of Niagara Falls.

In the very beginning, there was only darkness and chaos, and nothing was any different from anything else, and the first thing God did was make something different: "let there be light." and on the second day there still wasn't enough difference, so the waters below and above the dome of sky got separated. Then land and sea, and plants, and sea and land creatures, etc., etc., etc., all the way to humankind, in not one but two genders at the same time, because diversity is how God works. God does not intend a creation, nor a humanity, that can be broken down into a series of "yes's" and "no's", and thus, I'd be very surprised indeed if God in Godself can be, either. Not in Megabytes, or Gigabytes or Terabytes. So I'd like to do a little theology in the weeks to come, based on the assumption that reality is analog, and so is God, and so our conversation has to get beyond one's and zero's, beyond "yes's" or "no's", into asking what shape our thoughts and words and actions might take, were they truly imprinted--albeit imperfectly--by the unified shape and image of the Lord of Hosts. I hope you'll join me.