I remember during the run-up to the New Hampshire primary the news was that heroin addiction was at epidemic levels in white New Hampshire.

When I think of a heroin problem I remember heroin going through Paterson in the 70s where I grew up. My father and others helped develop Northside Addicts Rehabilitation Center to help people get off heroin. Most involved in the program were poor, black or Hispanic and got caught up in it at a young age. Now we see this in very white New Hampshire and also among men and women well into middle age, presumably people who have some knowledge of what drugs can do to your life. This is what is catching sociologists by surprise.

But What About White Privilege?

Now all of this happens in the context of another movement trying to expose white privilege.

It is simply the case that being white in America is easier than being black.

• You don’t get stopped by the cops for the color of your skin
• You don’t get followed through the store keeper fearing you’ll take something
• You get to buy a house in any neighborhood you want
• You don’t pay more for your car or the car note

But lots of white people will also note that being white doesn’t pay for food, or keep the lights on or pay the credit card. Lots of white people here about privilege and ask “when they were handing out those privileges where was I because I’m struggling here!”

The Life We Assume and Expect

Why are middle-aged white people who aren’t suffering from common public racism falling into so much despair to drink themselves to death, do heroin or even take their lives at rates that caught the attention of sociologists?

Part of the problem with questions like this is that for most of us rushing in to make sense of it we hold hammers and everything around us looks like nails.

• It’s economics!
• It’s a failure of education!
• It’s advertising!
• It’s genetic!
• It’s history!

I don’t see why all don’t have a part in it. As a pastor my view into this is religious. Think about this like a generational mid-life crisis.  These people were told to expect that if they did certain things then their dreams would come true. Well it didn’t. What then?

Jasper in 28 Days

Classical Buddhism and American Hedonistic New-Age Prosperity Gospel

Those of you who know a bit of comparative religions will recognize that this is an old issue. The Buddha recognized it and attempted to address it by addressing attachment. This from Peter Kreeft’s lecture The Dark Side.

To live is to suffer – that was Buddha’s First Noble Truth, the truth that he thought was the most obvious and indisputable truth in life, the data on which any quasi-scientific theory of human life must be erected. Pain is the most obvious problem in the world. This is no less true today, for now that our civilisation has succeeded in conquering half of humanity’s physical pains, by anesthetics and medical technology and boogie boards, it has also doubled humanity’s spiritual pains: depression, despair, divorce (which is more painful than death), other betrayals, loneliness, emptiness, meaninglessness, the existential vacuum. Victor Frankl says, quoting Nietzsche, “A man can endure almost any how if only he has a why.” The how is the circumstances, including the suffering. The why is a purpose and a meaning. This is not a theory; this is an observation. Frankl is a scientist. He observed this to be true in the laboratory of Auschwitz.

Now, there are two obvious solutions to physical pain: no and yes. No tries to abolish it, and this is quite natural and good. And the modern West is very successful in doing that. Yes tries to somehow accept pain, but change our inner attitude towards it. This is the answer of the ancient East, especially of Hinduism and Buddhism, and in the ancient West, of Stoicism, which is a kind of non-mystical Buddhism. The modern West prays, “Grant me the courage to change what can be changed,” the ancient East prays, “Grant me the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,” and both pray for the wisdom to know the difference.

If the West’s problem is failure, I think the East’s problem is success. For some people, at least, that is, for the spiritual athletes who practice Raja Yoga or Jnana Yoga, or the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path, pain is abolished, by abolishing its root, desire. When there are no desires left, there are no frustrations left. Hindu or Buddhist Yoga can indeed succeed in killing off the desires. The true Buddhist does overcome all pain, but also all pleasure. All fear, but also all hope. All hate, but also all love. All misery, but also all joy. This is a remarkable achievement. But is it worth the price of the abolition of half our human nature? It looks like spiritual euthanasia: killing the patient, the desires, to cure the disease, pain.

I think, however, this is a misunderstanding. I must confess that the Buddhists that I have met have surprised me and impressed me with their peaceful alertness and spiritual aliveness. They certainly are not spiritually dead. But they have also surprised me with the inadequacy of their philosophy, their explanations. I must be as offensively honest with the East as I have been with the West, though, and protest that the freedom from pain is not worth the price. I will take the bitter with the sweet, thank you; the depth with the heights. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

I watch a lot of people get enamored by Eastern religions but most stay in the shallow end. It’s fashionable and cool but when I watch people their attraction to it seems strangely parallel to people’s attraction to what Christian’s call the “prosperity gospel”. It is deeply ironic to become “spiritual” in this sort of way because you want to get a hot body, or make more money, or feel powerful, or have your dreams come true. The whole point is to be suspicious of your attachments that cause pain. Most people simply don’t want to do the work to address their passions and attachments.

Prosperity gospel works the same way. Do these things and God will give you what you want. God is the tool, my desires determine the outcome. What we see, however, in the rising death rates of middle-aged whites is that their desires are killing them. Everyone says “follow your passions” but no one notices that addicts are more passionate than anyone and they are being most true to that creed. Maybe we should be a bit more suspicious of our passions before we tell people to follow them.

The Failure of Israel, Again

Last week  we saw, once again, the complete failure of the experiment of Israel. God didn’t come through. The Philistines routed the Israelites. The ark was captured but returned because it was too hot for the Philistines, or the Israelites to handle. We basically see that for the next 20 years the Israelites were weak kids on the playground and the Philistines took their lunch money every day.

1 Samuel 6:20–7:2 (NET)

²⁰ The residents of Beth Shemesh asked, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?” ²¹ So they sent messengers to the residents of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down here and take it back home with you.” ¹ Then the people of Kiriath Jearim came and took the ark of the Lord; they brought it to the house of Abinadab located on the hill. They consecrated Eleazar his son to guard the ark of the Lord. ² It was quite a long time—some twenty years in all—that the ark stayed at Kiriath Jearim. All the people of Israel longed for the Lord.

There is something funny going on here that ancient readers might pick up but we clueless people over hearing might miss.

Kiriath Jearim (6:21). The location of Kiriath Jearim (“city of the forests)” has not been positively identified, though some authorities believe it to be “Tell el-Azhar, near modern Qaryet el-ʿEnab.” This would place Kiriath Jearim almost nine miles east-northeast of Beth Shemesh in the general direction of Jerusalem, seven or eight miles farther east. First mentioned as one of the Gibeonite cities in Joshua 9, Kiriath Jearim housed the ark for twenty years (7:2) following its return to Beth Shemesh by the Philistines, until King David brought it to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6). That the site is sometimes called Kiriath Baal (Josh. 15:60; 18:14), Baalah (15:9), and Baalah Judah (2 Sam. 6:2) may reflect a Canaanite cultic background—Baal was one of Canaan’s chief deities, and Baalah is a feminine counterpart. The name change to Kiriath Jearim may be intended to mute this association.

Walton, J. H. (2009). Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 302). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Other Gods

What will follow in the story is the rise of Samuel and the Yahwist demand for religious exclusivity.

1 Samuel 7:3–11 (NET)

³ Samuel said to all the people of Israel, “If you are really turning to the Lord with all your hearts, remove from among you the foreign gods and the images of Ashtoreth. Give your hearts to the Lord and serve only him. Then he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” ⁴ So the Israelites removed the Baals and images of Ashtoreth. They served only the Lord. ⁵ Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord on your behalf.” ⁶ After they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. They fasted on that day, and they confessed there, “We have sinned against the Lord.” So Samuel led the people of Israel at Mizpah. ⁷ When the Philistines heard that the Israelites had gathered at Mizpah, the leaders of the Philistines went up against Israel. When the Israelites heard about this, they were afraid of the Philistines. ⁸ The Israelites said to Samuel, “Keep crying out to the Lord our God so that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines!” ⁹ So Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. Samuel cried out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf, and the Lord answered him. ¹⁰ As Samuel was offering burnt offerings, the Philistines approached to do battle with Israel. But on that day the Lord thundered loudly against the Philistines. He caused them to panic, and they were defeated by Israel. ¹¹ Then the men of Israel left Mizpah and chased the Philistines, striking them down all the way to an area below Beth Car.

Now this is pretty standard stuff for the Bible. The Bible is full of demands to “not worship other gods” from the 10 Commandments all the way to Paul dealing with the Corinthians. The Jews were unusual in the ancient world because they refused the common assumption that if one god is good two is better and a thousand is better still.

Now as pluralistic, post-christendom Westerners we get reactive about this. We of course read this text after hundreds of years of religious wars and divisions and ask with Rodney King “why can’t we all just get along?” Many will point to texts like this as the source of the trouble.

There are things about the text that you would only notice if you were a Bible wonk. Now we imagine that the tabernacle was probably destroyed and plundered in the Israelite defeat when Eli died. Scholars today who study comparative Ancient Near Eastern religious practices will note that some of Samuel’s practices here are a bit paganish. The libation, the offering, he’s freelancing a bit being without a temple, all the while telling Israel to be less pagan. On top of that the motivation seems clearly mercenary. Is he running his own prosperity cult here? Won’t Samuel, at the end of it be Israel’s leader? If you skim ahead you’ll see an ironic redux in the fact that when Samuel is old his sons who would be his heirs apparent are corrupt similar to the sons of Levi. Isn’t this all just a little to suspect to buy?

Ancient gods

Now if we’re going to be modern skeptics we might as well go all the way. We see the corn god, the storm god, the water god, many of them had wives or consorts. If you need your crops to grow sacrifice to this god. If you want your wife to have sons talk to this god.

Modernity explains all of this as some sort of primitive wish projection. All the gods of all the furniture of the ancient world weren’t “jealous” like the LORD. “I the Lord am a jealous God”.

It isn’t that this God isn’t involved, we’ll see that in a minute. It is that this God claims to be something different, and the size claims he makes on his followers, and even on his non-followers are enormous.

The pagan way of many gods creates a spiritual marketplace of handy gods ready for purchase at the right price to address all your needs, at least the ones you need help with.

Now having one big GOD instead of many small ones doesn’t necessarily remove this danger, as we can see from the prosperity gospel peddlers. When we have a need we get desperate and will sell ourselves, our values, our ideas at almost any prices to get out of a scrape. Hence the saying “no atheists in foxholes”.

What I want us to see, however, is that the intent of this religious exclusivism is to functionally dislocate us from the basic problem that the Buddha exposed without actually relieving us from capacity for love and desire.

Ancient paganism allows the self to stay in the center of the universe. This self is the religious consumer. The LORD comes to this self and says “you are way, way too small to be the center of the universe. You have insufficient gravity, insufficient power, insufficient wisdom. Please lay down this futile mission of yours and recognize the only way things can really be. Won’t you recognize me as Lord?”

Samuel, who heard God calling in the night, wants Israel to join him in this even though Samuel’s ways may look a bit paganish in his religious furnishings. Last week the Philistines in their own way stumbled around and tried to do right by this God that obviously outclassed their wheat god Dagon. God showed them mercy, more in a way than he showed the residents of Beth Shemesh who tried to poke around the ark. Samuel is pointing them in the right direction.

Ebenezer

1 Samuel 7:12 (NET)

¹² Samuel took a stone and placed it between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Up to here the Lord has helped us.”

This word lingers on in Christian names and hymns but it has been mostly lost to us, who think that the value of things is determined to how new they are.

Samuel wants Israel to remember their twenty plus years of being Philistia’s bitch and the turn they needed to make, away from their idols, which is actually away from their passions and their demands, to recognizing the reality of who they are and what they are.

Misery: Middle-Aged White Privilege Failure

Now back to where we began.

So when you’re young in American you believe the sign on the lightrail overpass “if you can dream it you can do it”. The church of Walt Disney got that into your head pretty early on and even American public schools, and this month commencement addresses will reinforce it.

So off you go with your dreams, everyone cheering you on until you also run into another dirty little secret of our ideas of justice in America our meritocracy. You see on one hand we tell you “you can do it” but on the other you are in competition with everyone else and in many cases there can only be a few winners and many many many other losers. So you scurry around trying to win, bolstered by the encouragement to believe in yourself and follow your dreams until you run into the fact that you are not going to be LeBron James or Beyonce or Obama. You’re going to have to get a job, go to work, pay your taxes, stand in line.

Then you diversity your passions to find some niche and hopefully in THAT niche you will soar like an eagle. Then you learn that now in our Internet related world being a big fish in a small pond is hardly possible because on Facebook you’re constantly looking at everyone else’s other pond.

Well maybe you marry your sweetheart and get into a house and have some kids only to realize that marriage is hard, your kids aren’t perfect, and life can be drudgery. Then you look at even stars like Robin Williams who says just one week after winning an Oscar when he leaves a club someone says “hey Mork” and you realize that even if you win the competition, the money, the trophy spouse and the glory that is is vanity. (Ecclesiastes). Then you go to a church and the stupid preacher keeps reminding you of this every time he says “age of decay”.

And then everyone says “well you’re a white American, you’re the top of the heap. You’ve got all this privilege” and you begin to think that you’ve been set up.

At some point you listen to Jasper and you realize “I just want to be comfortably numb.”

Deliverance

The wheat god, the fertility goddess, the storm god are all in the same boat as you. This one God comes to you and says “Won’t you let me be God to you? I’m already God and always will be. Won’t you wake up to me?”

We have trust issues with him because we’ve been living in this competitive meritocracy all along. How do we know he’s not simply mercenary like the wheat god?

He comes into our story and becomes our victim and while we’re punishing him for not being the god we want him to be he forgives us and invites us to be servant of all with him and join him in his resurrection to creation 2.0.

Gratitude

I’m almost 53 now. I’m right in the demographic checking out with gambling, drugs and suicide. I’m old enough to begin to face the fact that my biological clock is ticking and there are hosts of dreams I will never realize. How can I handle this emotionally? How can I avoid simply becoming selfish and self-seeking and instead love those around me and those who depend on me?

I believe that this is just a tiny part of my life, and in many ways will be the saddest, hardest part. I believe that Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, has paid for my sins, promised me resurrection, and will save me from the grave, the age of decay and my own sinful desires. I believe what Paul talks about when he was trying to explain to the Corinthian church why he, unlike all of the super-apostles who looked like wealthy powerful celebrity preachers compared to him, poured out his life for churches like that one who struggled to even understand what he was talking about.

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 (NET)

¹⁶ Therefore we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our momentary, light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison ¹⁸ because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

Such a vision can allow me to lose in this life, so that I can gain far more in the next.