Pub Theology 12/10/24 -- Deep thoughts, deeper thinking

Peter Trumbore • December 9, 2024

Those of us of a certain age surely remember the old Saturday Night Live bit, "Deep Thoughts" by comedian Jack Handey, a staple of the show back in the 1990s. Handey's collection of deep thoughts was first published in 1992, and little bits would be aired on SNL in between sketches, accompanied by bucolic imagery like that above, and soothing New Age music, It was a fun gag that produced gems like these:


  • The purpose of a lock is to turn a door into a wall.
  • When you buy and eat a half chicken, you are secretly sharing a meal with a stranger.
  • Your car keys have traveled farther than your car.
  • The object of golf is to play the least amount of golf.
  • With every new sunrise, there is a new chance. But with every sunset, you blew it.


These were clever, often silly, and sometimes actually thought-provoking. It's been suggested that we can train ourselves to become deeper thinkers by asking ourselves, and really trying to contemplate the answers to, what are essentially unanswerable questions. A classic example of one such question is the familiar Zen koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping." Zen monks were instructed to meditate on and debate such cryptic questions, a typically frustrating and maddening exercise, as a way to acquire, through mental struggle, a deeper understanding of the question itself. That was the path to enlightenment.


This discussion comes from a source we've been turning to lately for inspiration for our weekly conversations, a regular feature at The Atlantic website by Arthur C. Brooks, whose pieces revolve around building our lives. In this article, Brooks suggests that we can improve our emotional health and grow as a person by wrestling with our own questions without clear answers. Questions like, Why am I here? or For what would I give my life? And, he continues, the questions that tend to matter the most to us are typically the least likely to have clear answers. In fact, trivial questions are generally easy to answer with clarity. That's why we like them, and shy away from the hard ones.


Further, he argues, thinking about hard questions is good for us:


"Taking the evidence all together, I’d propose a hypothesis that, as a society, we have become spiritually flabby and psychically out of shape because we haven’t been getting in the reps on challenging existential questions. As much research has documented, anxiety and depression have been exploding in the United States, especially among young adults. I believe that this is not because we’re thinking too much about the hard questions of life, but too little. As I’ve discussed previously, we pass our hours and days hypnotized by the trivia injected into our lives via our tech devices, and are less willing to delve into deeper matters. The elevated levels of sadness and fear are, I believe, at least in part the result of our philosophically sedentary lifestyle. Like the benefits of hard exercise, the short-term discomfort of big questions is necessary to avoid the long-term ill-health that comes from avoiding these questions."


And so, if we're going to treat this like exercise, then here are Brooks' suggestions for to build our philosophical muscles.


First, schedule your mental workout. "Choose a period of time each day—say, 30 minutes—that you can dedicate to weighing tough questions of real importance. First, ban all devices and allow no distractions; then figure out in advance what existential or spiritual challenges you plan to consider. You can use a paragraph or two of philosophy or scripture to focus your mind on a specific question, break it down, and improve your understanding."


Alternatively, go for a long walk. "For some people, a good alternative is a long walk alone, without devices, as a way to give room to your right-brain questions. Philosophers have long advocated this technique—Immanuel Kant was reputedly such a regular walker, to aid his deep thinking, that neighbors set their watches by his passing. Research has shown that walking naturally stimulates creative thinking and facilitates the ability to focus without being distracted."


Then there's this; Invite boredom. "One effect of our screen-centered culture is that we’re never truly bored. This might sound great, like a quality-of-life enhancement. But it isn’t. Experiencing boredom is crucial for abstract reasoning and insight, because it helps stimulate the brain’s default-mode network, the set of brain regions that becomes active when the outside world does not impinge on our mind’s attention. Neuroscientists have shown that such activity is vital for accessing high-level meaning. For this reason, building periods of boredom into our life really matters, because they no longer occur spontaneously."


So what deep thoughts do you have about all of this? Do you take time to ponder the unanswerable questions that swirl around us, or do you prefer to tune them out in favor of the trivial and easily answered? Do you think you would benefit from developing a habit of encouraging deep thinking like that outlined by Brooks above? What kind of unanswerable questions would you focus on in such a practice?


Will be inviting boredom if we take all of this on in our conversation this week? Join us for the discussion tomorrow evening, Tuesday Dec. 10, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford, and find out.



By Peter Trumbore May 27, 2025
Some seven years back, researchers at NYU and Johns Hopkins University launched a study in which they enlisted some two dozen religious leaders from a variety of traditions -- priests, pastors, rabbis, Zen Buddhist monks, Islamic prayer leaders -- to take part in a research project exploring psychedelics and sacred experience. The experiment was intended to assess whether a transcendental experience makes the leaders more effective and confident in their work and how it alters their religious thinking. You can read about the setup of the study in this article from The Guardian . It turns out that the study produced some really interesting results. A story published a few weeks ago in The New Yorker tells the tale. Unfortunately that article is locked behind a paywall, but the author, Michael Pollan (who has written extensively about the use of psychedelics and their effects), however, summarized some of what the study found in this interview . Pollan writes that the participants described their regarded their mushroom-induced trips as authentic mystical experiences, not just a drug experience. For some, the experience was truly transformative. One of the surprising findings that Pollan remarked upon was that "their experiences were not always consistent with the imagery or symbolism of their own faiths. One Christian theologian said God was like a Jewish mother. In fact, most of the people I interviewed felt that the divine they encountered was feminine. That blew their minds; and it blew mine, too. ... Just about everybody had an encounter with the divine, and for the most part it was a feminine, nurturing, sweet presence. We have such a patriarchal understanding of religion, and most stereotypes of God are gendered masculine. So I think it’s ironic, and somewhat humorous, that under the influence of psychedelics God turns out to be more female than male." Nearly all of the participants rated their first experience with psilocybin as among the top five most spiritually significant events of their lives. Among participants who had two sessions, the researchers found that a striking number—seventy-nine per cent—reported that the experience had enriched their prayer, their effectiveness in their vocation, and their sense of the sacred in daily life. It turns out that there is a long history of people trying to trace a connection between the early Christian church's eucharistic practice and psychedelic substances, though scholars have their doubts. This article from The Christian Century goes into some of that fascinating story. For our conversation this evening, we're going to talk about psychedelics and spirituality. Do you have experience with this? If so, what was your experience like? If not, would you try it? Do you feel that a spiritual experience augmented by substances is more or less valid than other spiritual experiences? The discussion starts at 7pm tonight, May 27, at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.
By Andrew Guffey May 25, 2025
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service. 
By Andrew Guffey May 18, 2025
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service. 
By Peter Trumbore May 12, 2025
Way back in January 1959, C.S. Lewis published an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which the author and Christian apologist explores the question of the efficacy of prayer. In short, Does prayer work? But Lewis, ever one to make us want to think, says that's the wrong question, as understandable a question as it might be. "For up till now we have been tackling the whole question in the wrong way and on the wrong level. The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. “Work”: as if it were magic, or a machine — something that functions automatically." This isn't to say that petitionary prayer, i.e. asking God for things, is never appropriate, Lewis says. Only that's a small part of what it means to pray. So what does it mean our prayers don't get answered? For Lewis, that's not the right question. One reason for that has to do with being created with free will by an omnipotent God, who could do whatever we ask if God wanted to. But that's not the point: "For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. He allows us to neglect what He would have us do, or to fail. Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to coexist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work." If the question Does prayer work is the wrong question, then what's the right one? If your prayers are answered, does that mean you are special in God's eyes? And if they're not, does that mean God has forsaken you? We'll talk all about it in our conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday May 13. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.
By Andrew Guffey May 11, 2025
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service. 
By Andrew Guffey May 4, 2025
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service. 
By Peter Trumbore April 28, 2025
"The world only spins forward." This is a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and I came across it. in all places, at the end of a review of the 2024 movie Conclave , about the sudden death of a pope and the machinations surrounding the election of a successor. Fair warning, lest you get your hopes up, this week's topic isn't about Kushner's play, or the election of a new pope to replace Francis. It's about the quote itself. The author of the review, which is really a discussion of the film's twist ending, harnesses the quote to suggest something about the possibility of an institution like the Catholic Church evolving and changing. In other words, the quote seems to suggest the idea of progress, So that's what we're going to talk about. In context, that's what I think Kushner is getting at too with the line. Angels in America is a complex examination of homosexuality and the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. With that backdrop, the full quote reads like this: " We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins." Things are changing, Kushner implies here, and for the better. Is that what we mean by progress? That's really the crux of our topic this week. What does the quote "The world only spins forward" suggest to you? And what does progress mean to us? What does progress look like, whether in our personal lives, our faith lives, in society, or the world itself? Help us figure it all out in our conversation this week. The discussion start at 7pm tomorrow evening, Tuesday, April 29, at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.
By Andrew Guffey April 27, 2025
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service. 
By Peter Trumbore April 21, 2025
I imagine we're all familiar with the slogan WWJD, or, What Would Jesus Do. In fact, it's so familiar that it's turned into a cliched bit of pop culture replicated on wristbands, inspirational posters, bumperstickers, and so on. But have you heard of WWJI, What (or Who) Would Jesus Imitate? OK, true confessions time, I made that one up. But stick with me for a minute. I got to thinking about this after reading an article at the website Mockingbird titled "Are you a Follower or a Fan: Imitation vs. Participation." The piece starts off by acknowledging the very real challenges of being modern people trying to do as Jesus did. The author writes: "A few Sundays ago, I listened to a homily that drew a sharp distinction between being a mere fan of Jesus and being a true follower. The preacher’s message was clear: admiration is not enough; commitment is required. And yet, as I sat there, I couldn’t help but think that this framing, while stirring, glossed over the profound complexities of discipleship. After all, what does it truly mean to follow a first-century prophet who renounced self-protection, rejected wealth, and issued radical moral demands? It’s one thing to nod along in agreement; it’s quite another to live as he did. After the service, I mentioned to a fellow congregant that I don’t consider myself a follower of Jesus — just a fan. And only on my better days." A little further on, the author raises what is a profound and I think fundamental question about the nature of Christianity and what it means to be a Christian. "Is Christianity about imitating Jesus or participating in Jesus? Is it primarily following a moral example or being swept up into an unfolding mystery?" As the author notes, this is about the fundamental tension of Christian life. The idea of imitation is that Christian life is about emulating Jesus, replicating his actions, embodying his virtues, and modeling our behaviors after his. Hence the WWJD paradigm. But there's a problem there. This mindset reduces "Christianity to a moral project focused on individual actions and ethical conduct. While imitation is undeniably valuable, when it becomes the core of the Christian journey, it risks turning faith into little more than a moralistic exercise — a set of rules to follow rather than a living, transformative experience." This approach is also, at its core, a specifically individual exercise. In short, how can I be like Jesus? Participation, the author writes, is a radically different approach that reframes the Christian experience. "It’s not about striving to mimic Christ’s life, but about engaging in the ongoing mystery of his presence in the world. The believer isn’t just a disciple learning to imitate an ancient figure but a participant in a larger, living story — a story that transcends time and encompasses both the individual and the collective." While imitation offers a clear moral framework, it risks reducing our faith to a checklist of behaviors. Do these things (what Jesus would do), replicate these actions, and we're set. Participation, the author writes, "pulls believers into something dynamic and ongoing. It’s not about asking 'What would Jesus do?' but 'What is Jesus doing right now?' It’s about recognizing that faith is not just a story to be retold, but a mystery to be lived and actively engaged with in the present." So where are you in this mix of imitation vs. participation? How different are the two? Does participation mean we discard imitation? Or does participation give meaning to imitation. If imitation is about me, myself, and I, who is participation about? Are you a fan or a follower? We will wrestle with these questions in our discussion this week. Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday, April 22, starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.
By Andrew Guffey April 20, 2025
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service. 
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