Conversion Story - Rusty Tisdale (former Pentecostal)

Becoming Hinged ^ | August 2, 2007 | Rusty Tisdale

[Mad Dawg]

Dawg, I'm sure you'd agree that both are experiences.

Actually I wouldn't. I mean, yeah, I'm awake and sense perception is happening, but I don't go to Mass for an experience(unless you count unspeakably banal hymnody as a kind of experience of "mortification" ...)
Humma, humma.
I hope we can work to dope out where the disagreement is. Also I'd balk at "based on". And I'd fall on the ground laughing at "euphoria". I don't go to Mass, fiddle with my rosary, "read" my office, or pester God all the live long day to "Feel" or experience something.

One of my own personal put-down phrases for a certain type of person is "consolation junky" (consolation being the calflick term of art for "warm, fuzzy" it having suffered the same debasement as "comfort" did in English speaking traditions). This is my term for people for whom the basis of their "religiosity" is experience, sensation, "feeling", blah blah, and much of whose discourse is about past experiences and their hopes for future experiences.

As far as the general principles go, I think I'm pretty much on board. The "news" that Jesus loves YOU, qua you, your own se'f, and "has put away all your sins", the "hearing" of that (as in, "Me? ME? You mean He loves ME? Woah!") is a critical "moment" in life in Christ.

I have nattered on and on elsewhere of a very funny and cute LOL (In this context meaning "little old lady") whom I really like who spent much of her life being a dutiful little Catholic girl, woman, wife, mother, widow -- and just a couple of years ago finally got it! She is now a little evangelical catholic dynamo!

Knowing her has confirmed in me my notion that the Holy Spirit may be active in one's life w/o one having a clue -- until one day when the whole weltanschauung is turned upside down.

I'm trying to run an inventory on the self here, and the most "experience-like" aspect of my personal religiosity (that I'm aware of - self-assessment is such an unreliable tool when a sinner is doing it) would be intellectual thrills and chills.

Try this as an inadequate analogy: Spiritual exercises or activities or whatever -- Mass, rosary, prayers, study -- these are in some respects like taking a pill and in some respects like exercising, in this way: Working with exercise equipment is so evidently futile, and deadly boring. "Okay, we are going to do three sets of 15 curls of 25 lb dumbbells." ("Oh Goody! Not."). OR, "You will now receive this injection or swallow this bolus." ("But, but, how does that little pill have anything whatsoever to do with my running a fever and producing industrial amounts of mucus?" "Trust me on this.")

But after a lot of pills or months of juggling dumbbells, maybe somebody says,"Hey? did you get a haircut or something?" Or (for the other side of the analogy) you realize that your taking a couple of gourmet beers and a bunch of high-class snack food to someone you hardly know but you know he likes beer (and so do you) AND he just broke his leg in three places qualifies as a "work of mercy".

And you're going, WOW! I didn't even plan on doing something good!

Or with the pills (I've had pneumonia twice, so I KNOW this sequence), you wake up drenched in sweat, cough up double industrial amounts of goo, and the next day you feel pretty darn good! THEN you realize, "wow! I guess the pills did some good!" And for the other side, you discover that your little, ahem, "disagreements" with the boss-lady are more productive of mutual understanding and less generally awful, and you finally say, "This is the Lord's doing - I sure couldn't have done it - and it is marvellous in our eyes!".

These are lousy analogies. My alleged point is that "experience" and "feeling" is really not a part of at least MY spearchool milieu/approach. I like to say "Service is the best metric," NOT in the sense that I think service buys me admission to the heavenly courts, but that if I am helping other people and especially if I am somehow part of their living into the Love which God's Son died for them to enjoy, then I guess my "spiritual life" (I don't like that phrase, but I hope you know what I mean) is ticking along okay.

I feel like I"m groping for common ground and a dialectical starting point here. I hope it's okay if I politely ignore all the Machiavelli stuff. Having been a clergy-dude myself, I've never had very high expectations of the clergy in any event.

[the_conscience]

Just to set the record straight I accept your testimony that you have good habits of faith and well-ordered subjective states (probably a result of a sound protestant background) but you seem to be missing the larger point that corporate culture can lead to an overemphasis on subjective states as a means to truth.

Euphoria as masochism is seen all around us in the forms of piercings and tattoos and other forms of self-mutilation so the Roman Catholic version is but a subset of the many forms available for people seeking euphoria thru self-mutilation.

If we can get by the anecdotal evidences and move onto the histiograph and sociology, and most importantly the doctrinal depravities that need reforming on a corporate level then perhaps we can find a dialectical starting point by which can mutually strive to bring the greatest glory to God instead of what brings the greatest glory to the corporation.

[Mad Dawg]

Actually, I suspect it's because I grew up in a crazy family that I developed a healthy suspicion of affect as a guide to anything valuable. And throughout my life, that suspicion has served me well. (Plenty of people who FEEL guilty aren't, and lots who are indeed guilty, don't feel guilty at all ...)The so-called "charismatic" movement (in whatever denomination) seemed to me to be accompanied by a truly astonishing lack of even the most elementary personal insight and consequent messed up interpersonal relationships.

And somehow, by the grace of God, Socrates became one of my early heroes. So "skepticism is my friend". I know Our Lord says, "Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed," and if there's no other way around it, I'm open to believing without seeing. But generally I'd prefer to take a look, thanks.

Now, here's an interesting (to moi) wonderment and spekkerlation. I think a lot of Protestants form their view of the RC Church from observing the pious practices of the laity. And since the RC Church, considered sociologically, is truly catholic (lower case 'c') in that its appeal reaches to many different sorts of folks, a lot of the fervent lay piety strikes one as very "affective" and even emotional. So that's the generalization that observers make. "Them thar cat'licks shore git worked up, don't they?"

So I think of my Oxford graduate godmother. (Mom was a Limey and an Oxford scholar, so her homies were ditto.) When I converted she remarked that all she knew about Catholics was that they seemed so ignorant and superstitious.

Of course, I'm thinking, uh John Newman? Oxford? Ignorant? or Tolkein? Hopkins?

And I would say that MY route to the whore of Babylon was influenced by Augustine, Dante, Aquinas, Dante, Eckhart, and did I say Dante? Well, and then there's Dante. And then some contemporary RCs who struck me as sane, learned, smart, and of great sanctity.

I still get the heebie-jeebies at some types of emotive piety, but my sort of sub-classification seems to be more or less Dominican which for me means a continuation of as much study as this dyslexic, aged sufferer of ADHD can do combined with prayer, community, and an awareness of a duty to an apostolate (which some have suggested I am fulfilling right here on FR!)

(Forgive my loquacity. I've got some bug or other and am distracting myself from my discomfort by burdening you with blather.)

I think Protestants think of the RC church as from top to bottom kind of snooping and watching and nipping things in the bud, as clerical 'fixers' note and then stamp out some movement among the laity. My experience is that the average cleric has enough on his plate and will put off dealing with a problem as much as possible. Our three Dominican Friars work their fannies off, and a lot of devotional stuff at our parish is started, promoted, and executed by laity. The rosaries, novenas, vigils, perpetual adorations, etc. are permitted and sometimes participated in by the friars, but they are the responsibility of the laity.

I remember during the Elian Gonzales mess someone saying if the Pope had wanted those sisters in Miami to keep Elian, they would have kept him - as though the pope had only to say Jump, and the sisters would say,"How high?" It's just not true. It's not that way at all. And people who think it is haven't taken seriously the problem of governing a world-wide body of maybe a billion souls. (My guess is you don't govern so much as hold on for dear life.)

So when it comes to Filipinos crucifying themselves on Good Friday, and web sites saying the God is gonna mash us like a bug if we don't declare Mary to be Co- whatever-it-is-were-supposed-to-declare her, if fault MUST be laid, I'd lay it more at the indolence, timorousness, or distractibility of the clergy than at their promoting unsound doctrine or practice.

The above is entirely anecdotal and of no argumentative value whatsoever. It is the sharing of an impression and the off-scourings of a fevered brain.

Of course, if I have to stipulate "doctrinal depravities" to participate, it ain't gonna happen. I don't see how we can have a real discussion without entertaining the possibility, however unlikely, that the other guy might have something of value to say. If I have to start with a sign saying "doctrinal depravity" hung around my neck, I will get all fractious and depressed. Similarly, "corporation" suggests "body", nd the "body" which I think the Catholic (as distinct from "Roman Catholic") Church is is that of Christ. So my attitude about glorification of the corporation may be different from yours..

---