It’s September 19. So it’s time for my annual reflection on Rich Mullins, a Christian musician from Indiana who meant a great deal to me in my youth, and still means a great deal to me now. Rich died on September 19, 1997 in a car accident, and I think he would say people should celebrate the day a person died rather than when they were born, so I’m honoring that as a tradition.
Here’s my past reflections, if you’re interested.
This year, I’m reflecting on Rich’s prose rather than his lyrics. Rich wrote essays as a columnist for Release magazine in the 90s. For the uninitiated, Release, which is now defunct and which I cannot find anywhere on the web, was like the Christian Rolling Stone; Relevant, which Rich did not live to see, was like the Christian Spin. Christian music is its own sub-cultural ecosystem; it is beautiful in its own way.
Rich’s prose is powerful, grounded, and beautiful, like his verse. I’ve selected two columns that have always resonated (I can quote parts from memory), and one I rediscovered as I reread them for my reflection. There are a lot more I could talk about, but pith.1
If you want to read (most of) the essays, they are archived at KidBrothers.net. But I’m getting “Telling the Joke” from a compilation of the Release columns.
I will add a disclaimer. It is time, after many years of praise, to talk about what I don’t like about Rich and what I have learned from his bad example, rather than from his good example. Rich would have it no other way. He hated and loved being on a pedestal. And that’s one thing I like about him, dammit. So human.
“Telling the Joke,” Spring 1991
The first thing I remember is how I once won an argument with a heathen friend of mine who—after I had whacked away his last scrap of defense, after I had successfully cut off every possible escape route that he could use, after I had backed him into an inescapable corner and hit him with a great inarguable truth—blue me away by simply saying, “I do not want to be a Christian. I don’t want your Jesus Christ.” There was no argument left to be had or won. Faith is a matter of the will as much as it is of the intellect. I wanted to believe in Jesus. My friend wanted to believe in himself. In spite of how convincing my reason was, my reason was not compelling.
I like how some Christians, like Rich, psychoanalyze non-Christians by assigning the least charitable interpretation of their non-belief. Rich’s conclusion is that his friend wanted “to believe in himself.” First off, so? There are many situations in life when believing in your own abilities is good. But that’s not what Rich means. Rich means that his heathen friend’s highest purpose—his telos—was himself. That there was nothing, for Rich’s friend, beyond himself.
Could Rich be right? Yes. There are a lot of people who believe only in themselves. But there are also a lot of non-believers who believe in virtues (like me), in science, in democracy, in the common good. None of these things are reducible to “believing in yourself.” I wish that all Christians would have some charity towards people who don’t believe as they do; many do, but some think they’re right and non-believers are wrong and therefore must only be motivated in their unbelief by some nefarious or erroneous cause—”being mad at God,” “getting hurt by the church,” “wanting to sin,” or, “believing in themselves.” It’s a load of crap, is what I think. And research suggests these Christians are making faulty inferences.
But Rich’s broader point here, as is often the case, is profound and true. Faith is a matter of the will. I am not a Christian because I don’t want to be one.
As I’ve gotten older and reflected on my own life experiences, I’ve tried to figure out the story I’m in and how I actually came to leave the faith. For a long time, it all seemed motivated by logical inconsistencies I found through my undergraduate education taking courses on the history of the Bible, Biblical interpretation, and the archeological history of the ancient Middle East. And there were also moral quandaries, like the belief in eternal conscious torment in hell for good people who aren’t Christians—who practice some other faith like Buddhism, for example, as some of my friends and colleagues do.
But over time, I came to accept that there were social and personal motivations why I left as well. That it wasn’t all about reason. I attended church throughout the first few years of graduate school in a congregation I still love and miss. They did good work in the local community, and they motivated me to get more involved with food insecurity. But I quit going after some time because there wasn’t a space in my social circle for my faith. To be clear, I did have scholarly friends who were Christians (and still do), but they were a minority. In my conversations with my friends, I found that I had to bracket out my faith when we were talking about what we cared about—language and education. I ended up living in two different worlds, being two different people, and I really got tired of it. I wanted to be one person, to have some coherence to my identity.
What was that identity? I wanted to be a good social scientist, and that meant following the evidence and valuing reason above emotional commitments. Following the evidence in undergrad had already gotten to the point where I didn’t believe most of the stuff at church literally. I had a lot of problems affirming the Nicene Creed. And I thought that was a very important part of the faith. So I didn’t feel like I could be a Christian anymore. Most of my friends weren’t Christians, and it’s not really who I wanted to be anymore, so I stopped being a Christian.
So the second thing I remember is this: I am a Christian because I have seen the love of God lived out in the lives of people who know Him. The Word has become flesh and I have encountered God in the people who have manifested (in many “unreasonable” ways) His Presence; a Presence that is more than convincing—it is a Presence that is compelling. I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people who were willing to be nuts and bolts, who through their explanation of it, held it together so that I could experience it and be compelled by it to obey.
This is the part where I acknowledge that there is still a part of me that is Christian. How could I not be? I was born into it, raised in it, but more importantly, as Rich notes, I saw models of good, real Christianity. There is a reason Jesus is so popular. It’s because he was right about a lot, and his example was often powerful and compelling, and he inspired others to provide powerful and compelling examples of how to live life focused on love. Even as I explored and practice Stoicism, love was not a common part of the vocabulary, and that’s simply something I could not give up. So let’s hyphenate my identity, shall we? It’s all the rage. I’m a exvangelical-Stoic-Christian-atheist-agnostic-scholar-poet. Who likes cats. Christian atheism, believe it or not, is a thing. And St. Augustine was a Christian heavily influenced by Stoicism (I always knew there was a reason he was my favorite Church Father). But I’m a person first. Which, to me, means is that those identities are all malleable. Stay tuned, for life.
“Flight of the Philistine,” Summer 1993
It was near the end of that cursed Age of Enlightenment, when the supreme God of Reason had puttered out and the court of the world was cluttered with computer clowns and information peddlers, where ideas passed hands like a currency that was not backed by gold.
Prescient, eh? This is 1993. He anticipates misinformation and internet bullshit. He was seeing it already in 90s media.
But more importantly, Rich calls out the Enlightenment and the “supreme God of Reason,” and them’s fightin’ words, so we’re gonna go at it.
Let me concede some points here. In graduate school, I did worship the “supreme God of Reason.” I did that well into my early career. Reason was primary. Reason was god.
Yeah, I don’t go for that so much anymore. I think Reason is incredibly important, but I like to balance my virtues now. The Stoics teach me temperance; so does my wife. I read some books, did some thinking, and realized there’s gotta be more to life than knowing stuff and solving problems. Don’t get me wrong—I like to know stuff and solve problems. It’s like, you know, my job. But it’s not my life. So I’ll concede to Rich we ought not worship Reason.
But cursing the Enlightenment is a deal-breaker. What doesn’t Rich like the Enlightenment? His next few paragraphs provide clues. For context, this essay is about a conversation he had with woman in Europe.
She said, "I don't believe in war. I can't imagine anything that would make someone want to fight another human being, let alone kill one. I don't believe in war and if everyone wouldn't believe in it, then we could all be at peace."
Of course, you can never be sure what someone means when they talk about peace or belief or most anything else, but I wasn't too sold on the idea that disbelief in war would bring about peace. I felt kind of embarrassed - kind of Philistine. I could easily imagine wanting to fight another human being. I could imagine hunger and I could imagine (or, more honestly, I could remember) greed. I could imagine rage over injustice and I could imagine honest (even if mistaken) fear. I could imagine a woman two men would wrangle over. I'd like to be the sort of man two women might quarrel over. I can imagine, remember and even presently see a lot of things that would make someone want to fight another person. And worse, I suspect that a world emptied of these things would be no more peaceful - it would just be more dead.
The promise of the Enlightenment is that we can solve human social problems through Reason. And you know what? I agree with that. But what Rich is getting at here is that the Enlightenment, at times, painted too broad a brush of human nature. Many influenced by the Enlightenment seemed to think that human suffering and vices could be eradicated by Reason. This seems to be the project of utopians and communists. And, perhaps quintessentially, the French Revolution, where Robespierre literally created a deity of Reason and thought we could eradicate vice through terror.
The American Revolutionaries, and those founding other liberal democracies, blessedly avoided this error. Their enactment of the Enlightenment was to accept the flaws of human nature by building systems to resolve conflict peacefully. We can’t eradicate the vices of human nature is part of Rich’s point here, and he’s probably right (counterpoint: Star Trek). But that doesn’t mean that all of the Enlightenment thinkers and its descendants thought we could eradicate human evil. The American Revolutionaries thought the best we could do was agree ahead of time on a set of rules for how we will resolve conflicts peacefully. If you want to read more, I recommend The Constitution of Knowledge.
To Rich’s last point, “a world emptied of these things would be no more peaceful—it would just be more dead.” Great writing, of course. And he’s right. These passions we carry with us are part of what it means to be alive and human. If we didn’t have them, we would be more dead inside. The woman can’t imagine anything she would “want to fight” someone over, but she’s being idealistic about herself. When push came to shove, I’m sure there would be something. But you know what? She probably lived in a society where violence was not a regular part of her world. It’s hard to imagine fighting when it’s not a regular part of how you resolve conflict as a rule. The Enlightenment helped us create societies where we by design settle our conflicts without violence.
And that is what I think Rich is missing about the Enlightenment. He seems to read it as the worship of Reason rather than a way of thinking that uses Reason to govern human passions—kinda like Stoicism. We don’t deny human passions; we accept them and attempt to manage them through practice.
So I don’t curse the Enlightenment. I bless it, and I am grateful to the generations who came before whose ideological riches I inherited.
And the people who died to protect them.
“Virtue Reality,” Summer 1996
Virtues are funny things. They are the fruit of faith and, whenever paraded, become parodies of themselves and the worst kind of vanity imaginable. When they are not the fruit of faith they become its greatest obstacle. Virtues are most vital when invisible and most sharply imaged when they are not the focus of our attentions. They are evidence of their Source (and ours) and not the generators of it (or us).
For many Christians, like Rich, their ability to change and grow as human beings by developing virtues is dependent on literally an act of God through the Holy Spirit. A common prayer is to ask God for some virtue—more patience, more compassion. When people inspired by the Enlightenment abandon belief in God, which many do (although many American Revolutionaries were at least Deists), they can no longer rely on external forces like God for their own personal development. So they naturally turn to Reason. And from that effort, we got things like psychological therapy, social work, and social safety nets. All products, albeit many years downstream, of the Enlightenment.
But there’s a catch, which Rich points out later in the essay.
In a world where quantitative values have obscured the reality of qualitative values - where we long to measure progress and chart growth, it is easy to give in to the temptation to judge ourselves and to try to walk by sight. But into that confused and meaningless effort God speaks with His great, still and small voice, with his Christ. He speaks through these invisible virtues with which His people shine and in the light of their lives this desperate, smug world sees not strength, wisdom, or even love, but Him who is the source of these things and the savior of humankind. Let us in whom He dwells look also to Him so we can shine more brightly.
Rich is right here that we often obscure qualitative values in our efforts at personal growth through Reason. Quantification is, of course, a useful tool for “charting growth.” When I first went into therapy for my OCD, I had to measure my level of distress with Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS). What do you know, after therapy, it went down—and a couple of years later of applying what I learned, I was at a normal level. But my anthropological linguistics professor always used to say, “Before you quantify, you have to qualify.” Indeed, I have found this in my own research, when attempting to design an experiment for a novel construct, I had to characterize the construct first—I had to qualify it, figure out what it looked like in my dataset based on a set of empirical indicators. So Rich is right we need qualitative values.
But then, he gets me again with this line: “He speaks through these invisible virtues with which His people shine and in the light of their lives this desperate, smug world sees not strength, wisdom, or even love, but Him who is the source of these things and the savior of humankind.” Why is the world “smug?” Because it deigns to attempt personal growth without God, without some kind of higher power to sit in judgment as the absolute authority on right and wrong. I wrote about this as one of the problems of modernity. Rich seems to think that anyone who isn’t Christian is to some degree arrogant for thinking they could live their lives without God. Why? Because if a person attempts to live a virtuous life, they can’t point to some higher power as the Source of the virtues that they are being obedient to; they’re making up their own minds on the virtues. And the arrogance is that virtues are great and important things, and the idea that anyone could form their own opinion on this topic is the height of arrogance. Why? Because Rich knows humans are frail and broken creatures at times. And if we are truly capable of great evil and are frequently a hot mess, what makes us think we could make up our own minds about something as important and meaningful as the good life?
Let me concede a point. I can see how that could read as “smug.” I get that.
But I have three objections. My first objection is that even though I make up my own mind, it’s not like I have other choices. I have to make up my own mind—I don’t have a higher power to defer to. As Taylor Swift sings, “You’re on your own kid. You always have been.” It’s not like I made a plan to become an atheist. At my Christian university in undergrad, I took a class on Christianity every semester with the goal of being able to defend my faith. I was taught by theologians and ministers. All of my professors had to sign an affirmation of faith as a condition of employment. I was at the flagship school of a somewhat conservative denomination. And it was those classes that provided a reasonable basis for questioning my faith. Life happened to me, and I made the best decisions I could at the time. I basically went into atheism kicking and screaming. So I ended up having to making up my own mind about virtues not because I wanted to, but because once my life had led to me atheism, I had no other choice.
My second objection is that even though I make up my own mind, it’s not like I don’t have role models. I have many people in my life I look up to as models of virtue. I became a Stoic because Marcus Aurelius was the “nuts and bolts” of Stoicism for me. In my lonely, Doha flat, at the lowest point I had been in my life in decades, I read the journal of a Roman emperor, and his words gutted me. He was trying to work out his own problems in his journal. And I saw that the way he dealt with these problems was the exact opposite of how I was doing it—and my way had been a disaster. But Marcus was poised; he had control over his emotions—and my lack of self-control was what had gotten me into a bad place. I was like, “This is who I want to be like.” I persisted in Stoicism because I found a community of practice of people who I saw practice Stoicism and whose lives were better for it. And I wanted to be like them.
And even if I don’t affirm the Nicene Creed, I still look up to Jesus and many of the Christians in my life who have been models of love and compassion. I look up to my wife for her mastery of temperance; my friends for their wisdom; many of my colleagues for their sense of justice. And my Heterodox community for their courage.
Just because I don’t believe in God doesn’t mean I’m not looking up.
My third objection is that even though I make up my own mind, it’s not like I do whatever I want. I do practice obedience, weirdly enough (it feels strange saying it). I obey the law. I obey the principles of my profession. I obey the regulations of my institution. I obey my department director, unless he asks me to do something unethical (which he never has). I don’t obey my wife, but I honor my commitment to her, which means I do the chores we agree on me doing, and I try to respect her wishes and requests. I don’t obey the ancient Stoics, but I take their precepts seriously, and I accept them unless I find reason not to. Sometimes I obey because I think the rule is reasonable; sometimes because I don’t want to deal with the consequences of NOT obeying the rule; sometimes because I don’t care either way; sometimes because even though I disagree, I respect the process that led to the rules, and I agree to abide by the social contract.
At this point, if you’re still reading, you’re like, “Mike, you just wrote 900 words on the word ‘smug.’ Are you okay?” Yeah maybe this post is about something else.
Role models are tricky once you see them as human beings. Because then they end up just like you. I’m not looking up. I’m looking at them, on a level playing field. Rich never said he was a saint; he said the opposite. He had problems with alcohol, suffered from loneliness, and had many what he called “hang-ups” (so 90s). And at this point in my life, I see him more clearly as a complicated person who I don’t agree with a lot of times. He embodied some of the things that drove me away from evangelical Christianity. And that frustrates me to the point that I get into long arguments with a dead man. Because I want to look up to him, but in some ways, I just can’t.
I think what still tilts my gaze is the beauty of his writing and his honesty. Rich gave the world truly wonderful music and writing. And he put on no airs; he was just human, a guy trying to make it in this world, and he didn’t try to be important or a role model. He just was one. And that is the kind of person I have always wanted to be.
I miss you Rich. Peace, until next year.
I kept this line because I was attempting to write a short piece. I always try to make these posts short because everyone’s busy. But it’s mildly hilarious how long this post got.