I get ripped-off

The law requires that my monthly shipment of narcotics has to be delivered directly to my door and signed for. If I’m away, it can’t be left with a neighbor, even at my request, nor can I pick it up at a UPS facility. This means that every month, I have to stay home all day waiting for its arrival because although it doesn’t usually come before 6:30, it could come at any time. Last Thursday, it didn’t come at all, but when I checked my email, I found notification that it had. The following is my email to the UPS fraud division, which I contacted when no one else at UPS seemed to give a rip. As it turned out, the fraud division didn’t either.

  “My name is _____. I supposedly received a package containing 60, 10 mg oxycodone tablets yesterday (October 9) at 5:46 p.m. here at my home. Someone named Kahl supposedly signed for this package. Neither my wife nor I have ever known anyone named Kahl. She and I were both home at the time the shipment was supposedly made. We heard no UPS truck, and we heard no knock at our door.

“I have spoken with several of your phone representatives today, three of whom live in India and didn’t understand what the word narcotic meant even after I tried to explain it. They went over the same information and asked the same questions repeatedly because they didn’t understand enough English to do something productive. They all said that it would take 8-10 business days to investigate my complaint, which is the same amount of time it would take to investigate a claim for a lost knick-knack, yet I am in chronic pain, and the theft of Class II narcotics* is a federal crime. I was told that the outcome of the investigation won’t be shared with me, although I will be reimbursed for my $5 copay. Since the UPS is unwilling to keep me in the loop, I have no confidence that it will contact the police either.”

Fortunately, I’m tenacious and vindictive, and it has often stood me in good stead. When I received no help from the UPS, I called the local cops. Detective Marlowe (his actual name) gave me a case number but said he wouldn’t be doing anything to help. He suggested that I complain to the US Postal Service, which was just silly since the UPS is a private company and has zero affiliation with the USPS, which is run by the government. I asked him if I should call the DEA (the Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal agency), but he said they wouldn’t be interested in tracking down sixty pills. I called them anyway with the thought that it couldn’t hurt. Then again, it struck me that maybe it could hurt because enlisting the help of the DEA felt like asking Satan to lend me a hand, this because of my impression that it’s an agency that has ruined the lives of countless people for nothing nobler than justifying its existence. So, I was surprised to find that I was interviewed thoroughly and respectfully by the person who took my call, and by the “diversion officer” who was assigned to my case and contacted me within the hour. When I asked what a diversion officer does, she said she investigates the loss of legal narcotics that were diverted from their intended recipient. Maybe it was a silly question. 

I also called the pharmacy that shipped the drug, and was told, as expected, that they couldn’t replace it without a new order from the doctor. I don’t want to get one because it might give investigators reason to think that I filed a false report in order to get double the amount of pills. Both the local cop and the DEA agent assured me that I didn’t need to worry about this since I have no criminal record (the local cop, at least, had investigated me before interviewing me), but I still hesitate because I’m dedicated to doing everything I can to see someone busted, and I don’t want to take any chance of clouding the waters by making it look like I had a motive for lying. I’m just that way when I've been ripped off. Fighting for my rights can take up a lot of time and get me nowhere, but it’s easier than knuckling under, which is how I interpret letting something go of something before I’ve exhausted the possibilities for correcting it. 

*Both Class II drugs and Class I drugs are considered to have a high potential for severe addiction, but, unlike Class I drugs, Class II drugs have an accepted medical use. They include Fentanyl, morphine, and oxycodone, as well as meth and barbiturates. Class III, IV, and V drugs also have an accepted medical use but a decreasing risk of addiction.

Asking why

I share the following sentiment:

“No matter how difficult our circumstances or how dire our situation, we need a way to pull everything together and celebrate wholeness. We need to affirm what is true, cherish what is beautiful, and embrace what is lovely. The necessity of religion emerges from this deep-seated and longstanding human need for wholeness.”*

Upon reading it, I reflected that most if not all of the atheists I’ve known would argue that I don’t need religion for these things, but I’m afraid I do. Yet, I too am an atheist so why, then, religion? Because I’m still idealistic enough to believe that, at its best, religion has the potential to contain in one place a mixture of worship, philosophy, morality, mystery, compassion, openness, music, art, history, and community. But why Christianity? Because it’s what I have to work with, both by virtue of my culture and my history.

I’m a Christian in the same way that I’m a Mississippian. I lived in that state for 37 years, and in Oregon for all but two of the past 28 years. I left Mississippi because I hated so much about it, yet it is ever with me. I miss its water oaks and Spanish moss; the flatness of its Delta; its Indian mounds, battlefields, antebellum mansions, and Natchez Trace; the heavy fragrance of its warm humid nights; the constant reminders of its Civil Rights era; and scores of other things. When I’m especially low, I envy my friend Lee, who left Indiana and never looked back. I likewise envy my wife, Peggy, who left God and religion and never looked back. I not only look back; I can’t separate myself from these things. They make me the person I am, possibly as much or more than if I had never left them, and I find it as pointless for my fellow atheists to argue against the literal truth of God or Christianity as to argue against the literal truth of anything that matters deeply to me. Besides, I know all their arguments.

If you want to understand something, be completely absorbed by it, think of it from a thousand different angles, throw everything you have into reaching a state of peace and wisdom regarding it; then love it even while being tortured by it, knowing that the times it will hurt you the most are when you’re the most vulnerable, which are also the times it will delight you the most. I wouldn't wish to mold myself into someone else because I know who I am and what I’m about. Others might look at me and think I need some serious alterations, but just as they pity me, I don’t envy them because my struggle is also my reward. I apparently communicate this poorly because, much to my horror, it’s obvious that many people do pity me, and since I relate pity to condescension, I hate being on the receiving end of it.

Too many people imagine that a good life is one in which pressing problems have been resolved. I can’t say but what they’re right because I’ve never experienced such a life, but when I think of one, I picture prisoners who are kept in their cells for 23-hours a day and only allowed out to exercise in what amounts to a dog-run. They’re fed without working and don’t even have to wash the dishes. Their laundry is done for them, and they need never worry about getting behind in their work, or being laid-off, or having an accident, or finding enough money to pay for surgery, because their lives are completely secure in regard to the kinds of problems that the rest of us face every day. Yet, who wouldn’t rather be dead than to live in such security?

This post was mostly inspired by those readers who, for years, have repeatedly asked: Why would an atheist write about religion so much? and Why would an atheist go to church? To what I just wrote, I would add the following: I enjoy holy water, ritual and incense. I delight in stained glass. I like reading about religion. I like discussing religion. I enjoy religious art, poetry, music, and history. I enjoy being a part of a community that struggles with issues of morality (which is something the Episcopal Church does in spades). I enjoy having at least the hope of a sense of community that is otherwise lacking in my life, and I enjoy knowing that this community will outlast me because I’ve been a part of so many communities that failed. I enjoy trying to work out old hurts in a new way, a way that is right-brain rather than left-brain. I enjoy taking risks. I enjoy exploring internal frontiers. I enjoy experiencing new things. I enjoy meeting thoughtful people. I enjoy being reminded that not all religious groups are intent on dominating society’s schools, morals, and politics. Despite my atheism, I enjoy the experience of reverence and worship.

I have no illusions that what I’ve written will satisfy my questioners because: (1) As their context usually indicates, umbrella questions that challenge my motivations by asking why? suggest that the questioner regards my behavior as so extraordinary as to warrant disapproval if I am unable to offer an adequate explanation, something that I am rarely, if ever, able to do to their satisfaction. (2) Almost invariably—if not invariably—my past explanations were met with complete silence, and I took this to imply that they were likewise met with disappointment, an interpretation that was reinforced when the same readers asked the same questions repeatedly. (3) I can’t even defend my preference for chocolate over vanilla, so how am I to defend myself in matters that are interpreted as indicative of a deficiency in character or stability? I wish I could, but I know that my efforts are doomed in the eyes of others, and so it is, as it has ever been, that I write primarily for my own benefit. Although these two questions have encouraged me to think, I've come to wish they were a bit more varied because, after years of answering them to the best of my ability, I've run out of things to say. It's now a case of either accepting my answers or not.

*by Galen Guengerich in an article entitled “The necessity of religion,” UU World, Winter 2013 

A way that works for me

Two nights after my unhappy experience with the Methodists, I went to a class on the history of Unitarianism at, surprise, surprise, the Unitarian Church. I regard Unitarianism as a social club for rollicking extroverts, and this seemed true of last night’s class even while we watched slide after slide of “heretics” being burned at the stake in the name of a triune God. At one point the teacher asked the class of perhaps forty to name some current heresies. A young man immediately answered, “Atheism, as I’ve discovered from personal experience.” His comment elicited laughter and the nodding of heads. After four such serious answers, the man next to me said, “People who don’t use Facebook,” and a woman said, “My brother-in-law regards everything I do as heresy, but then he never really left the South.” Then someone pointed out that the church’s only Republican had recently left because his values were held in contempt, and someone else said that no one who opposed abortion would feel welcomed. Beside me sat a man in women’s clothes who was obviously welcome. So it is among Unitarians.

Again, I’m thrown back upon the fact that the Episcopal service is the only one that I enjoy, but—being an atheist and all—I’m no more of a Trinitarian than Michael Servetus and all those other Unitarians who were murdered, some of them by Anglicans. Of course, the Episcopal Church is now overrun by clergy who themselves would have once been burned for heresy, so the question is whether to do as they do and ignore the things I object to, or stay home.

I’m attending a Episcopal book group at Resurrection Episcopal that is currently reading a book entitled The Bible by Karen Armstrong. It was a gutsy choice for a church book group because she makes no assumption that the Bible was divinely inspired, and even points out its flaws so completely as to make divine inspiration seem incredible. I’m probably the only nonbeliever in the 10-15 member group and, until last night, its most loquacious member. The discussion started when a woman said she had had no idea that the writers of the gospels were such “spin doctors.” What she meant was that they tried to prove the divinity of Jesus through Old Testament prophecy despite the fact that many of the verses used had nothing do with Jesus and weren’t even meant as prophecy. Furthermore, the gospel writers often made things up.

There followed a period during which Father Brent and Alan, one of the more scholarly members, made a determined effort to convince her that none of this need be an obstacle to faith. I offer the following as a loose summary of what they said: 

(1) The gospels were originally circulated anonymously, and the apostles’ names affixed to them much later. (2) It was commonly believed in Biblical times that affixing someone’s name to something he didn’t write wasn’t an act of dishonesty but a compliment to the person whose name was used as long as he would have agreed with the thoughts presented. (3) It was also believed that scripture was equally relevant in every age, meaning that verses which were written in ancient times about ancient events were seen as equally applicable to present times and present events. (4) The writers made up real world events as metaphors for internal changes. For example, people who felt spiritually healed by Jesus weren’t necessarily being dishonest when they made up stories about him healing people physically. (5) The first gospel, Mark, was written around 70 A.D. and the last one, John, around 96 A.D., and the slant of their writers reflect the events and concerns of those eras. (6) The fact that the gospels have survived and meant so much to so many attests to the fact that they contain spiritual truth even though they sometimes lack literal truth.

When Brent asked the woman who opened the discussion whether she felt that her problem had been adequately addressed, she said it had. I was incredulous, but I didn’t say as much because, after all, the problem had been posed and the answers, such as they were, given, so it was a case of every individual deciding whether those answers were adequate. I was consequently left to feel, as I often do among believers, that they live on one planet and I on another. Just as the Christians I knew as a boy would twist themselves into pretzels in order to maintain their belief that the Bible was true in every particular and entirely free of contradiction, so do I hear liberal Christians twisting themselves into pretzels in order to maintain their beliefs despite their awareness that the Bible contains so many errors, untruths, and contradictions, that it’s impossible to know what Jesus said or did. The most liberal among them avoid the problem by claiming that the real Jesus matters less--if at all--than the wisdom within the myth. Theirs is the only way that I can get anything of value from the Jesus story because it otherwise presents too many problems for me to take it seriously.

As I was writing this, I received an email from Brent. When I saw him at the book group, he suggested that I read C.S. Lewis (I had asked him for theological reading recommendations), and offered me a couple of his books. Not wanting to seem unappreciative, I didn’t say much at the time, but I didn’t take the books either, so I later felt the need to write to him and explain that I’ve read enough of Lewis to know that he represents beliefs that I’ve already rejected. Brent wrote back:

I totally hear you about the supernatural complications and the troubles with notions of a deity that expresses love and guidance... I struggle deeply with those ideas as well. What I can say is that there is room here for you; room for you and for your beliefs.  How that will manifest? I am not sure… The only thing I am sure of is that an open heart and an inquiring mind are the prerequisites to an authentic religious journey. It would seem that you have both. Once the dust settles after the next week of busyness, let’s get a cup of something hot and talk again.

I have no earthly idea what to talk about with Brent because, despite his openness, intelligence, and doctorate in religion, how am I to convey to him how different our paths are, or to share with him all the things that I’ve thought, experienced, and learned that he almost surely hasn’t? What I would want to say to him, I’ve spent years putting into this blog, so the prospect of even trying to approach the subject in an hour over coffee leaves me despondent. What I value most about his offer is simply that he made it because it counters my impression of priests as salespeople, and me as a poor candidate for what they have to sell. With the exception of Brent and a priest I knew in my twenties, I’ve not met a one who wanted to have anything to do with me. Truly, it’s not the grand gestures that matter but the small ones, things like an invitation to coffee….

How many believers have “an open heart and an inquiring mind” I wonder. Do I? I can but say that my heart opens and closes, opens and closes, and that my mind is ever at its mercy.