ask the introvert

Some people have told me they don't understand how introverts can "lock up" around other people and have trouble carrying on a conversation, especially when it's perceived as high-pressure. It's just other people, and it's just talking; how could that be hard? Shouldn't something as simple and routine as "typical small talk" be easy?

It might help to consider a situation that seems analogous: test-taking anxiety (which I don't have in the least). This anxiety results in someone who, despite studying hard and learning all the answers beforehand, feels his or her mind "go blank" when the test is in front of them. The test-taker feels an undercurrent of panic, has trouble thinking of the answers, and keeps rereading the same question over and over rather than taking a moment to pause and quiet themselves mentally.

The experience I described above has similarities to what can happen when I'm confronted with a social situation (although I'm getting better at it). An open-ended, casual question gets my mind spinning with concerns such as "What am I expected to say?" or "How do I most easily explain ____?" or "If I say _____ then wouldn't I seem weird?" As I try to optimize my response out of the several candidates according to the criteria that I'm applying, the questioner's facial expression starts to indicate that he or she doesn't understand how complex the question was, and he or she may be starting to wonder at the apparent sluggishness of my mind. At that point I start to think "Say something! Now!" and I spit out something that turns out to be neither interesting nor expected.

The other possibility is that as soon as someone begins to ask the question, I think "I'm being put on the spot! This didn't turn out well the last time it happened! Oh no!", shift into the classic body state known as "fight or flight", and feel my thoughts freeze completely. Just as an anxious test-taker finds it difficult to write an answer when his or her mind is "clenched", so for the introvert who in similar straits finds it difficult to formulate coherent sentences.

In the past, people have advised me to relax in social situations and say something without "overanalyzing it". After saying something, then I can proceed to clarify as needed. While that's a sensible recommendation, I hope the people making it understand that it's a little like telling someone with a spider phobia "The next time one crawls onto your clothing, remember that the vast majority of the time it won't hurt you and you should respond by calmly pushing it off". Easy to say but not so easy for the hearer to put into practice.

some quick suggestions

If you're struggling with the question of "How can and how should I be serving God?", then check with the church to whom you've committed (you don't see church as a consumption activity, right?) as to what needs to be done. If you're struggling with the question of "The world is so huge and messed-up; what can I do?", then look around your community to identify the needs right in front of you and fill them. If you're struggling with the question of "There's no church ministry in which I can serve", then brainstorm some ideas and present them.

One of the spiritual disciplines is service. If you wish to begin the process of God replacing your selfishness with the virtue of charity, then this is an excellent way. Are you wiling to wash feet? Your role model is.

saving the "universe"

Someone has to say it: if people literally believe that the church's goal is to save the universe, then they have a HUGE task ahead of them. Moreover, they need to get crackin' soon, because the universe ain't gettin' any smaller - those faraway galaxies are running away. Any accusations that the notion of "saving the world" betrays an elevated self-importance are a million (well, more than that) times more applicable in this case.

Of course, to be charitable, their intended meaning might differ. By "universe" they might mean simply "all the bits of reality that I affect". Alternatively, maybe my bedrock assumptions don't match theirs. I assume that words mean things, have literal references to objective truth. Someone who doesn't assume that to be the case doesn't take words seriously anyway and therefore sees no value in precision or clarity of communication. He or she says "universe" because he or she feels like it, not because the word signifies anything.

In related news, intellectual haze is not profundity except to the weak-minded.

my present favorite definition of salvation

This isn't original, of course (nor would I wish it to be!). "Salvation" is: now and forever (continuous verb tense), the afterlife being merely one part of this period, all parts of the Trinity declaring "You are my son, returned home and accepted because my sacrifice for you covers your mistakes. You have an inheritance. We walk and talk together. You heed my words. I provide comfort, hope, and joy to you as you allow Me. I am beyond your understanding but together we can remedy this on an ongoing basis. For your own good, and the good of everyone you encounter, and the rest of fallen creation, I want to change your past habits and your inborn tendency to do whatever you want no matter how destructive or impure. My determination at this task will continue despite your temporary failures that occur when you take your eyes off me for a moment. You will need to sincerely confess and repent when this happens, but be reassured that no matter how much you wound Me with your disobedience, I will absorb it if you will cast it away and if you will honestly return to My arms once more. You live in a fallen creation for now, but within it you are My emissary and ambassador as one of the first evidences of the new creation for all My children."

Sorta blows away the old "salvation is for not going to Hell when you die" definition, doesn't it?

oversimplifying church service style

I won't delve too deeply into a discussion about style in church services. First, service style doesn't interest me since I'm more attracted to ideas than the "ideas' adornments", and second, I tend to appreciate strengths (and weaknesses) of each style, which makes me pretty useless in arguments.

However, apart from arguments between styles, one joint error is oversimplifying the styles' distinctive values. This is related to what I wrote before about Christians sometimes oversimplifying the role of tradition.

• A service element - whether object, song, ritual, liturgy, sermon - shouldn't be judged as unsympathetic/sacred/"mysterious"/heavenly merely because it is old and ponderous and cerebral. For instance, although such pomp emphasizes divine majesty and carefully-written doctrinal statements (i.e. accurate perceptions of God, self, and the relationship between), when people barely pay attention due to boredom and monotony then these elements are doing more harm than good as people feel detached from the proceedings and by extension God! (Have I mentioned that my personal preferences exclude self-important rote chanting?)
• A service element shouldn't be judged as relevant/frank/welcoming/earthy merely because it is novel (or "current") and exciting and visceral. For instance, selecting a song because it is contemporary and popular, especially when the song doesn't contain anything identifiably Christian, shouldn't be at the expense of checking the song's worth in reorienting people to God (whatever that means). Unless an element satisfies that purpose, its relatability amounts to nothing. And celebration/fun whose connection to spiritual matters is nonexistent is a frivolous waste of the precious time allocated to services.
  

jettison certainty?

I should start out by remarking that I don't "get" the purpose or reasoning behind abandoning certainty in Christianity.

I like to think that the way that I see the issue of certainty is straightforward and commonsensical. I consider it uncontroversial that generally speaking certainty has many shades similar to the range of grays between blackest black and whitest white. As supporting evidence piles up, certainty increases. As contradictory evidence piles up, certainty decreases. Last winter, when I had trouble starting my car, the truth "the battery must be replaced" became increasingly more certain while other "hypothetical truths" such as "the starter is broken" or "the battery just needs a 'jump' because of the temperature" became increasingly less certain. (Actually, I didn't have much cause to complain considering the car had ran on the factory battery for years and years without problems.)

While I was rather slowly figuring out the cause and solution of my car start-up travails, I didn't feel a need to precede or footnote my changing beliefs about the topic by routine reminders: "I'm uncertain, I'm uncertain, I'm uncertain" (maybe in the tone of a sing-song religious chant). Nor did I feel a need to explicitly characterize those beliefs as provisional: "I believe the battery terminals are dirty but only for the sake of a temporary basis for action"; listeners, at least ones who don't claim to be "postmodern auto mechanics" (when the car doesn't work just change your narrative), would likely assume that I wouldn't act as if the terminals are dirty if I didn't believe that the terminals were, in fact, dirty! Nor did I react to my own uncertainty by carefully circumscribing the "nature" of my battery truths in halfhearted terms: "From my perspective the most probable cause that appeals to me and partially originates in my subjective encounter with the ambiguous kaleidoscope which is reality's unfiltered whole..."

In short, truths lie on a continuum of certainty but this shouldn't mislead us into the erroneous claim that the truths themselves are this way. That is, the mere fact that we can't ascertain and measure the certainty of all truth doesn't imply that truth doesn't really exist. When someone estimates that contradictory "truths" A and B are each 50% probable, we shouldn't take the quite ridiculous step of describing the situation as "50% of A and 50% of B are simultaneously true". In reality only one of the two can be true at once; the failure to figure it out is a failing of ours. (As an aside, people enjoy pointing at the inherent probabilities of quantum mechanics to somehow illustrate that reality is fundamentally uncertain before observation. The flaw in this argument, as could be explained by any physicist, is that this uncertainty "collapses" into a single state long before it percolates up to a scale that matters to we macroscopic beings. This is why constructing a useful, functioning quantum computer is so blasted difficult.)

I'll repeat that I just don't "get" it. Given that truths are on a continuum of certainty, what is the point of calling attention to the uncertainty as opposed to the certainty when the two are by definition directly correlated? To be 95% certain is to be 5% uncertain. To measure a population by taking a randomized sample is to admit some theoretically-calculable sampling error (which entails assuming a particular distribution for the source population...), but this doesn't prevent people from stating the findings as well as the probability of error.

My guess is that redirecting focus to the uncertainty is at bottom an emotional not an intellectual phenomenon. By replacing the Good News with the Uncertain News, Christians can attempt to avoid the impressions of arrogance, weirdness, and close-mindedness that have plagued them for centuries. In essence, jettisoning all references to certainty is an excessive overreaction to the stereotype of the Christian who never changes his or her beliefs in response to thought, questions, and experiences. It's cultural.

My cultural recommendation for combating unflattering public images of Christians isn't to play around with philosophical sleight-of-hands in regard to Truth but to live humbly, compassionately, and thoughtfully. Easier said than done, and that's for certain.