A Jew did not become a Christian by coming to see God as a righteous judge and a gracious forgiving protector. The Jew believed that already, being a Jew. What it took for him or her, to become a Christian was not some new idea about his or her sinfulness or God’s righteousness, but one about Jesus…
The heresy Paul was struggling against was not that the Jewish Christians continued to be committed to keeping the law; Paul was quite tolerant of those who held to such a conviction. He taught respect for the dietary scruples. He went out of his way to share their ritual faithfulness when in Jerusalem. Nor was it their thinking that by keeping the law they would be saved, for Jewish Christians did not believe that. The basic hersey he exposed was the failure of those Jewish Christians to recognize that since the Messiah had come the covenant of God had been broken open to include the Gentiles. In sum: the fundamental issue was that of the social form of the church. Was it going to be a new and inexplicable kind of community of both Jews and Gentiles, or was it going to be a confederation of a Jewish Christian sect and a Gentile one? Or would all the Gentiles have first to become Jews according to the conditions of premessianic proselytism.

In sum: Yoder is saying Paul is saying salvation is open to everybody, and the old system of us & them is done. This isn’t against the law per se except in as much as the law was used to exclude people.

In John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus I was lead to a possible glimpse of an endless eschatology. Let me quote the pertinent passage:

In correlation with our sense of impossibility we tend to think of “apocalyptic” promises as pointing “off the map” of human experience, off the scale of time, in that they announce an end to history. But the past deliverances of Israel had been recounted as having taken place within their own history and on their own Palestinian soil. The whole body of hermeneutic prejudices linked with the concept of the “interim ethic,” as if what Jesus was predicting was an end to time and space, gets us off the track right at this point. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom was unacceptable to most of his listeners not because they thought it could not happen but because they feared it might, and that it would bring down judgment on them.

…

The mighty acts of God in Israel’s history had been neither the end of history, nor off the scale of human events. We have every reason to assume that the inauguration of the jubilee was understood by Jesus’ hearers with the same concreteness as the Exodus story or the deliverance of Jehoshaphat had for them. (p.85-86, the end of the chapter “God Will Fight For Us” from The Politics of Jesus)

Previously in this chapter, Yoder describes the experiences of Israel in the Old Testament where they find their saving grace in the acts of God. The point he was making was how people would have heard Jesus’ message in the Palestine of the first century. The point being that the teachings of Jesus were not an unattainable perfection which showed people’s need for his saving power or a vision for a world to come which had no connection to his contemporaries. Rather what Jesus was saying, according to Yoder, would have been interpreted within a worldview where God’s redemption happens within history—because God had already done it before, the Old Testament being our remembrance of that.

What if we took this understanding of Jesus’ hearers not just simply as a hermeneutic but as our eschatology. What if we took the end out of our eschatology. What if Christianity was about continuing the story of God’s involvement in the world…a world without end.

So it is no surprise that while I’m looking at Twitter and my RSS feeds I would see people writing about resolutions for the new year. But when I came across these two articles, their contrast of perspective struck me as so interesting I had to write about them:

Toward a Culture of Assessment for New Year’s Resolutions - Adam Kotsko on An und für sich

Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work - Justin Holcomb on The Resurgence

Making resolutions is easy; it is the sticking to them that is difficult. Both of these articles acknowledge that resolutions are almost if not impossible to keep. But it is so interesting how each interprets why that is. One puts keeps the faculties of change within the person and directs us to better ways of crafting and judging our resolutions, the other removes almost all faculties of change from the person and places them outside of themselves, or even the world around them.

Hermeneutic A

In the article Adam Kotsko wrote he explains that most people’s failure could be helped with two simple changes.

First: Examples such “I will eat better” or “I will exercise more” are too vague. What is better or more in relation to? This vagueness needs to be re-described into goals that can be tracked and quantified. Take the exercise more example, how much is more? If you have a gym membership but you have been hit or miss all Fall, make the resolution to workout 2 times a week for 30 minutes (setting the day/time that will happen).

Second: How do you know if you have succeeded? Kotsko describes how we must track our results, keeping records allows us to see the change over time and not just have to rely on memory or our feelings of success. So we track our attendance and say if after 6 months I have an 85% attendance rate, then I’ve succeeded.

This is a very rational scientific way to approach the problem. He doesn’t pretend that this will make it any easier to actually change, but it does offer a possible way to make it happen.

Hermeneutic B

There is a stark contrast in the second post, which opens with this point: you are probably making resolutions because you aren’t loving Jesus enough. It then follows with the thought that if you must make a resolution you will probably fail because you’re a sinner. But hey don’t worry, it follows, this is just a chance for God’s grace to be shown to you.

The first article gives a very tangible way of working out a plan of success. And while the actual achieving is left to be determined, one can at least map out a realistic plan. The second article, under paragraph heading “Just Do It” tells us to do it, without much guidance as to how it is done…though you will probably not be able to succeed, just like everyone else.

Which then nicely segues into how we need God’s grace. Which makes me think that people’s failed New Year’s Resolutions are really just an opportunity for me to share the gospel—the good news that their failure to lose weight or quit smoking is because there a sinner that needs Jesus. And wouldn’t that put us dangerously close to rejoicing in the failures of others, because it would show their need of God?

Have you made any resolutions or just hoping to let God do the changing for you this year?

Adam Moore described the work as primarily about Resurrection—an affirmation of it, a call for transformation, conversion, & being born again. I had a hard time seeing this aspect of it with my first reading. But after a second reading with more time to reflect upon Pete’s thoughts, I can see and agree with Adam’s reading of the text. Peter Rollins divides the book in two parts: Crucifixion & Resurrection.

Crucifixion

The first half is about cutting our ties to the deus ex machina, the God of the Machine. This term comes from Greek tragedy where a god is lowered down onto the stage to resolve a conflict. Rollins describes how third-rate playwrights began to employ this technique not add to the story but to simply solve plot difficulties. And this is exactly what the Church does today, which Rollins describes as such:

For Bonhoeffer, the Church approached God as a deus ex machina. God was merely an idea clumsily dropped into our world in order to fulfill a task. God was introduced into the world on our terms in order to resolve a problem rather than expressing a lived reality. The result is a God who simply justifies our beliefs and helps us sleep comfortably at night. God is brought into the picture only when we face a problem of some kind that doesn’t lend itself to solution by other means. In Bonhoeffer’s view, this God plays the same meager role as the supernatural beings in third-rate Greek plays.

Rollins uses the Crucifixion as the central event for deconstructing the God-as-crutch. He sees the cry of Jesus, ”Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”, my God my God why have you forsaken me, as a definitive event for our faith. It is the moment of atheism, not the intellectual atheism of Dawkins but rather an existential atheism, the lived experience of abandonment. This is the moment that we all experience the loss of all meaning and comfort.

After setting this event of the cross as the central hermeneutical element, he sets his attention not only on our stated beliefs which affirms a God-crutch but also exposes how the structures and liturgies of church re-enforce a comforting system which believes so that we don’t have to. And I think this is the highlight of the first half of the book. His deconstruction of how we may affirm our doubts, intellectually, but when it comes to songs we sing & liturgies we read there is no hint of the doubt we affirm.

His point is that this allows us to insulate ourselves from the trauma of the cross, the rupture that it causes for our comforts & meaning. We allow our friends, family, & clergy to believe for us. While we may not affirm a creed each week, we find comfort in knowing that our blessed mother goes each week and prays for us. This allows us to not feel the trauma of hanging above the void of meaningless & nothingness.

Peter Rollins argues that we must re-align our structures, liturgies, songs so that our Sunday worship doesn’t allow us to hide from the truth of the cross but rather we need songs which speak from that place of the cross. Not just songs which speak ofthe cross as a comfort—Jesus experienced it so you don’t have to—rather we must lead people to their own experience of the cross through our worship. This is a pulling away of the security blanket that so often is the church.

The point of this for Rollins, is to get to Resurrection. The trauma of going through the cross to get to the Resurrection he sees as necessary. Here is how he frames it as the concluding thought of Part 1:

In short, the Christological crisis is one where everything that grounds us (the political, spiritual, and social) is torn away, where we stare into the void, and, as Nietzsche once said, we feel the void stare back. In this place we are alone as we dimly glimpse life without the gilded cage of religion. And it is here that we stand or fall. Here we must choose whether to embrace life or to turn and run. It is only here, in this dry and barren land of death, that we can approach the truth of life testified to in the event of Resurrection. If, however, Resurrection is not possible, then those who go through this death are, as the apostle Paul knew, “to be pitied more than all men.”

Resurrection

If the Crucifixion is fundamentally about turning towards the reality of yourself and the world, then Resurrection is the embrace of that reality. As Rollins says:

If the Crucifixion marks the moment of darkness, then the Resurrection is the very act of living fully into this darkness and saying “Yes” to it. The faith that is born in Resurrection does not enable us to escape these deeply troubling anxieties; it provides the power to face up to them.

Resurrection for Rollins is about materiality, it is about enveloping the life of love. Often people affirm Resurrection with their mouth but not their hands. Affirming the Resurrection happening by caring for the poor, destroying the systems of injustice. This transforms how we think about not just religion but life itself:

In the Resurrection faith is testified to in the New Testament, the question Do you believe in God? is transformed and now involves the very being of the one asking the question. As such it can be rendered in this way: Is your entire being caught up in a commitment to embracing the world? In Christianity to believe in God means nothing other than to be the site where love is born, where to find the courage to affirm the world and live fully into.

The much of the rest of Part 2 is about helping us to realize that our actions in the world need to be more radical than simply ‘being a better person’. He uses Batman as a great example of this. Bruce Wayne is shown to be fighting crime under the guise of Batman, but Rollins questions the hows & whys of that. How can Wayne get the money to fund this project? Wayne Industries, but how much are they making, that they don’t notice this multi-million dollar project! And what if Wayne used that money for education, homelessness, joblessness wouldn’t his dollars be spent better in fighting crime and making a better city? Rollins looks deeper and finds Batman’s ‘good deeds’ are actually a result of anger & revenge for seeing his parents murdered as a child—talk about good motives…

So he concludes the book by saying “…denying the Resurrection means nothing less than to turn away from the world, to run from our suffering, to avoid an authentic meeting with our neighbor and to hide from ourselves…For it is only when we are the site where Resurrection takes place that we truly affirm it. To believe in the Crucifixion and Resurrection means nothing less than enacting them.”

My Question To Peter Rollins

I love this book, I love the deconstruction and then the call to action from that place. But I can’t get past the central assumption that God is dead, absent, or unable to intervene. While I would agree that too often we rely on a God who is simply there to solve my problems. I am thankful for your tearing down that idol, but at the same time it seems so much of the scriptures is based upon the notion that God has committed himself to making all things right, that God intervening within the world, even today still.Your reading of the Resurrection puts all the responsibility upon us, where my Protestantism would say that is the exact opposite of the gospel, God’s intervention is because we were powerless to rescue ourselves.

I could understand how good this book may be for someone who finds themselves in a dark night, who hasn’t experienced God for quite sometime if at all. But what about the person whose reality is an experience of the divine. Is that a false reality? I have a hard time taking a Radical Theology which seems to want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I understand you wanted to bracket out these questions because they distract from the direction you wanted to go with your book. But my question is couldn’t you make the moves you made and keep the historical-orthodox understanding of Crucifixion/Resurrection (not that I’m saying you should, but I have a hard time throwing out the historical). For me it is the historical events which give these words power, I don’t understand {though I continue to be very curious in} how the liberal move to divorce historical from symbol keeps meaning intact.

To Everyone Else

Get the book if you haven’t already. Join the Conversation. The Church and Postmodern Culture blog hosted a discussion of the book that is worth reading.

It seems our basic informational requests are now mediated through computer applications. Instead of asking someone who you would consider to be knowledgeable on a subject for help, you first search the web for the answer. This has become so pervasive that we don’t even see the shift that has happened, until someone like a family member calls you requesting your help. Yesterday my mother texted me about a problem she was having with her phone. My instinct was to simply go to a web browser and do a keyword search for the problem. The first result I clicked gave me an answer, totaling less than 30 seconds of labor.

The question I was asking myself after I had resolved the issue was, why didn’t she just do this herself. It seems the answer lies in the fact that there has been a cultural shift that has rapidly shifted the way we seek answers to our problems. And while I would not enjoy entertaining consider losing the gains allowed by the internet, what I would ask is what have we lost as a result. The internet result I received was impersonal; I couldn’t even tell you where I found it or who wrote the information without looking at my browser history. Maybe I should of left a comment, thanking them for answer but is that really much better.

But my mother on the other hand did receive a personal interaction, she did further and deepen the relationship I have with her by asking for help. I wonder what a generation that relies on google more than a friend for help is losing.

My informal analysis would say that google is helpful for basic information, but when it comes to interpreting those elements, creating more complex elements out of those basic informational blocks then real personal relations are required. When you are stuck, when you aren’t sure how to go forward, it seems that people not mediated through web searches is required.

Further questions arise to this rise of web based education & learning. We are a long way from the world where one learned the family business from early in one’s childhood. Instead today, when we want to learn to cook, rarely is it next to one’s mother learning the passed on recipes of the family. Instead we google it, finding a recipe & watching youtube clips of strangers walking you through the steps. Instead of learning to tie a tie from one’s father we search for graphics & video clips to learn. Instead our experience of learning & personal growth being tied to relationships, building the history which is so vital for any relationship, we miss out on because it is through disconnected web searches.

Of late I’ve been taking this question and moving into the realm of church life. What do we do when no one needs to come to a physical building to learn about Jesus? What place does that building then have? What’s the point of our Sunday gatherings? What does discipleship look like when it isn’t information/knowledge centered & focused? I feel there is something of value in the gathering, but it seems our understanding of why it is valuable needs to be reevaluated. It seems we need to do some serious reflection upon the central role for the church because while we are trying to do the same thing (announcing the kingdom come, displaying the crucified God, making disciples to follow him…) for people to get there it will need to look very different. We don’t live in a world where information is limited and community is centralized & predictable. Instead we live in a world where everything is changing no one is staying anywhere very long, community is only portrayed {unrealistically} on TV but rarely lived out well but where information is flowing out of every device we interact with.

So what does the church look like in a world where information flows freely but people rarely truly engage with other people beyond the commodified economic exchanges of the day.

Anyone who has grown up within such a tradition—where salvation as a specific proclamation especially in fearful response to eternal torment is highly regarded—will smile and possibly laugh at the many times they and their friends walked down to the altar call on a Sunday morning. We smile and laugh and wonder why we were so silly to do that same act over and over.

But I can’t help but think it makes perfect sense.

When you place such a high value on that one act. When all too often the only participatory-responsive act anyone is called to is an altar call. When the central message of any sermon always comes back to the proclamation. Then what do you expect?

Moving forward we need offer people opportunities to respond which fit both the new and old believer alike. We need to find varied ways for people to respond to the Call in just as many varied ways as their are people. One of the great heritages of American Christianity is the revival. We have mastered the service of gathering multitudes into a swooning atmosphere. We have learned well have to draw an announcement of dramatic change. What we haven’t learned yet though is what to do the next day, week, year later. We don’t know how to make our liturgical structures form to anything beyond a confession, a this I believe. And we shouldn’t be surprised to have a people who are never getting any further in their faith unless we are showing them what that looks like and how to respond through our gatherings together.

God wanted me to ask you what you are learning. Not what you are learning from books or from other people,and not what you are learning to share with others. But what are you learning from God? No reply needed..just being obedient to ask the question.

There is much I could say, but I will focus on the nature of how we learn from God. While I can understand what this person is trying to say—implicitly making a distinction between the knowledge & wisdom of man compared to that of God, implying that there is some fundamental difference between them—I think they are missing a deep point about the nature of both of the physical & spiritual. They are not so far split from each other that we face an either/or choice.

One of the main focuses of Jesus’ teachings was on the Kingdom of God. But what was (and still is) so important about that message is that it is here now, it isn’t something we have to wait for but that we can grasp it today. A substantial shift occurs in theology with Jesus; we now have an incarnational faith. While a select few were granted access to the presence of God in the times of the Temple, Jesus promises us all that access.

So where do we find that access, where is the kingdom among us today?

As James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” Or as the author of Colossians writes in chapter one verses 16 & 17, “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

What I hear in these verses is that I don’t have to look beyond this earth. I don’t have to escape this physicality to find God, to hear his voice, because the imprint of Jesus is upon everything. It is about simply about seeing and listening (let those who have ears hear let & those who have eyes see), learning from God is simply about awakening to the world around you. There are divine messages in all of life, because it is the very fabric of the divine.

I think this would closely follow the thoughts of two 20th century Jewish thinkers Martin Buber & Emmanuel Levinas, who both argued for us finding the divine within the Other. Which reflecting on how we are made in the image of God, seeing that image in another person is a restorative act in-itself, a little work of the “thy kingdom come thy will be done…”

So what am I learning?

I’m learning grace from the stranger who helped me.
I’m learning love from the simple look of my wife.
I’m learning patience from raising two daughters.
I’m learning wisdom through how I handle relationships.
I’m learning about the nature of God through the wisdom of others.
I’m learning hope from the prophets of old & of today.
I’m learning faith from a body of believers who believe that their church is meaningful.

And I’m learning that my time of prayer & meditation on the scriptures is (possibly most importantly) about preparing my heart & mind to be able see and hear when all these other things are happening.

…singing the same CCM songs everyone is singing in any ‘contemporary’ worship service all across America.

…not trusting the local leadership to lead a group, so you buy a pre-packaged small group curriculum from a big name trusted leader.

…having others wrestle with a passage all week so you can show up, listen, and leave without really having to think too hard about any of it.

…giving to missions, so you don’t have to feel guilty about ignoring the problems of your neighbor.

the metaphorical setup

Lets think of worship as food…beyond the obvious metaphors of spiritual hunger or nourishment. Lets think of the prolonged process that food takes to get from the farm to the table. It used to be everyone had a kitchen garden where they grew their basic vegetable needs along with the cow & pig to meet the needs of milk & protein. With the industrial revolution we lost that intimate connection to our food. We moved to the city and started buying our food from someone else. Though it was still mostly whole raw foods they were consuming. That changed dramatically in the twentieth century especially in the post war era.

We now live in a highly processed food era, though there is a slow rising movement trying to change the way we eat.

People reached a point of great alienation from their food, they saw the deeply negative impact it has had on health, economics, community, and even spirituality. Because of that they began to change the way they were relating to food. They started figuring out ways to reconnect with their food, growing it themselves, learning the chain of production from farm to table, changing farming methods to more sustainable practices, connecting farmer and eater to break the divide and demystify food.

This same path could be followed in relation to church and especially worship and other practices of the church. Church like farming has until recently been very communal, following the ebb and flow of the seasons. As the culture continued to shift in the latter half of the 20th century new types of church life came into view. The contemporary, seeker churches were born, with rock bands becoming the norm. This style of church slowly infected all reaches of American religion.

As the success of these initial churches grew, others were quick to copy. As a result, worship in Protestant American churches has become for the most part homogenized. You can walk into a ‘contemporary’ worship service, within any denomination, and find yourself in familiar territory. The songs will be the same, the casual style, and of course the fact that no one will talk to you. It is just like McDonalds where the building maybe slightly different but the menu will look the same.

Churches today have become like the processed food. It is all basically the same, there is no connection between what you see and where it might have come from, and especially no experience trying to connect you between those points.

getting to the point

My job is to worry about constructing worship services, but worship rarely happens during the actual event for me. If it does it is a fleeting glimpse, the slight head nod by the Holy Spirit telling me I did what I was supposed to do. Otherwise the time is rather vacuous experience. Not that those gatherings or events aren’t special, because they are, but rather because they are like processed food compared to fresh picked fruits. A garden’s fruit taste better the more time you take to pull weeds and water plants, not just because it adds to the health of the plants, but because it deepens the experience you have with the fruit and the earth around it. You cherish them after you restled to keep them alive for months. The same can be said for worship, people miss out on the true satisfaction of a worship service when they haven’t done the work the weeks prior to the event.

Participation is key to meaningful worship.

The more we participate in the worship itself, the more meaningful it will be. That is something that is central to what I’ve been trying to do with Vespers in different ways. But even deeper participation through the preparation and creation of the events allows an even fuller deeper experience of worship. I know personally I read a given text in a different way when I know I’m supposed to hear something out of it to share with others. You have to read it over and over, researching how others have handled that or similar themes. Especially for me because I don’t want to just tell someone the answer but open up a place for them to receive their own answer. This wrestling with a text always requires such prayer, listening, and waiting…and it is in these moments that worship happens. When you realize that you can’t create this thing without a gift from God, it puts you into a corner where you can only stop & listen. It is only then that it all opens up to you. And isn’t that the gospel?

concluding thought

So this is really an adverting trying to get more people to help make Vesper events with me. The only way to get good raw veggies is to grow them yourself, and to, the only way to get good raw spiritual worship is to create it yourself with others.

So Are You In?

“I’ve been thinking recently about our temptation to try to become more like God — more holy, more sinless, more perfect. Perhaps the thing we should be working for is to become more human — more fragile, more vulnerable, more unfinished; to be better at being human.”

-Cheryl Lawrie

During my family’s annual trip to Colorado we spent an evening with friends of my in-laws. They are an older couple who have spent the last 20 years living in these Colorado mountains ranching. I really enjoyed talking to them because they were so very different than us or anyone we regularly socialize with.

The differences of generations and cultural background were so easy to see throughout the conversations. For me it was so very interesting how certain things I’ve taken for granted seemed strange and curious to them. I’m not one to quickly mention that I work for a church and definitely stay away from titles like pastor and the likes. But nevertheless it was mentioned that I was a pastor; but interestingly enough it was received with a much different reaction than I normally get. This man who is nearly 80 years old gave me a respect that I had never had before. And this was coming from a man who hadn’t been to church in ages and wasn’t interested in organized religion at all. The typical reaction I get from people outside of religion is always “…oh…” as you can see their guard begin to be lifted.

It’s very interesting to me to see how he would respect me in this role even though he wasn’t interested in religion at all. Gathering from various conversations throughout the night it seems that culturally/generationally he was just raised to respect certain positions of authority. Family was another area where this came up. He held a high esteem for a man who would hold to the wishes & desires of one’s mother or father as long as they were alive and sometimes even beyond that. I really liked this about him; I would call it a cowboy’s ethics, where a man’s word was good enough still.

With all that in mind…we came to the question of ordination and authority in our conversation. He was rather curious of what I’m doing and brought the conversation into such interesting topics—things I would of never dreamed. Who discusses ordinational authority with a cowboy from Colorado?

He couldn’t understand how I could have any authority within my church community without the ordination stamp of a denomination (and of course the seminary degree to go along with it). But actually the question is an extremely astute one. Isn’t that the case in the rest of life? We obey the police not because we necessarily respect that specific person but rather because the postion the city/state stamped their approval upon as holding such powers & responsibilities. The same for teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc. We even make jokes about people who think they can magically garnish the abilities of a doctor by simply sleeping at a certain hotel.

So in my reply to his question, I acknowledged that without that institutional approval, gaining the respect and authority of a position is a lot harder. It isn’t simply about jumping through loops or check off to do boxes. To gain authority within my community I’ve not had to gain the approval of institutional structure and leadership that are outside my community and context; no, I’ve had to gain that respect from the very people I am serving. They must see it themselves in what I’m doing and respond with an acknowledgement of what I’ve earned in their sight.

I think this inherently leads to a closer relationship between me and the community, because there is no outside source supplying my authority. My ability to be heard, to be listened to, or followed lies directly in their faith and their trust in me. Nadia Bolz-Weber recently talked about this during one of her talks at the Wild Goose Festival. What is so interesting is that she has gone through the ordination/seminary/institutional system. Now as a minister in a Lutheran church, she still sees any authority she has comes not from the institution but from the people who make up her community. And that comes from the lived out sacrifices and limitations that come from being in that position.

So what does this type of authority look like? It isn’t a heavy handed power, it is more about trust. I have no desire to tell people what to do (even though it seems like an easy way and is so very tempting). As I was telling my cowboy friend Bill, I’m simply trying to create a place where people come and drink for themselves. My job is to help remove any of the barriers that might get in the way of them drinking the good clean water, but ultimately it has to be about them coming freely and drinking on their own.

So the authority I have (and hopefully they would agree with this) is their trust in me, that I have our (their’s and my) best interests at heart, that they know I’m trying my best to lead them towards the kingdom of God, towards the way of Jesus. And that trust can only be built over time through the good & bad, success & failure; and no degree, slip of paper, or ritual could bestow that without the lived experiences to back it up.