Slanted Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant / Success in Circuit lies / Too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth's superb surprise / As Lightning to the Children eased / With explanation kind / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind. – Emily Dickinson*

I was first made aware of this poem through a sermon delivered by Debie Thomas (“Good News Too Soon: When Triumph Hurts”), minister at St. Mark’s Episcopal in Palo Alto, California (Thomas blogs regularly for the Christian webzine Journey with Jesus; I’d encourage you to check it out!).

Rev. Thomas begins her message as follows: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant, because the truth’s superb surprise is too bright for our eyes. Unless it’s offered to us gently, with kindness, patience, and wisdom, it won’t do us good. In fact, it might even do us harm.”

The poem she references, written by the great Massachusetts wordsmith Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), reflects upon the tenuous nature of truth-telling. The poem consists of four verse-couplets, the first line of which is in iambic tetrameter (four accented syllables), the second iambic trimeter (three accented syllables).

The first line, then, is to be read as follows (stressed syllables in bold):

Tell all | the truth | but tell | it slant

And the second: Success | in Cir | cuit lies

The first two lines (one couplet), then, should be read as one verbal mouthful:

Tell all | the truth | but tell | it slant | Success | in Cir | cuit lies.

If read correctly you would’ve heard the following rhythm: “da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM,” i.e., seven da-DUMs and then “breath!”

Now, try reading the rest of the poem with the above syllables stressed.  

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies (breath).

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise (breath).

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind (breath).

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind — (Wasn’t that fun!?)

Now, you may be asking me: why the poetry lesson? Why the syllable stress, the meter, the rhythm?

Well, poetry as a genre of literature operates differently than conversational discourse, prose narrative, or argumentative writing. With poetry it’s less about what it means –i.e., the information-content expressed by the words– and more about how it means –i.e., the formation, order, and sound of the words themselves.

Poetry, to begin with, needs to be experienced and felt rather than interpreted or understood. Toward that end, in poetry the very form of the language has meaning. This means that syllable stress, word order, sound, speed, even type-set, are all crucial factors in the formation of meaning.

To read a poem well then, we need to ask: How does the language behave? How does it express meaning? The question, then, is less “what does a poem mean?” than “how does a poem mean?”

What is so striking about Dickinson’s poem –which seems to be an example of ars poetica (Latin for “the art of poetry”; a poem which remarks upon the nature of poetry itself)– is that its form not only contributes to its meaning-content; it exemplifies its meaning-content!

Tell all the truth but tell it slant / Success in Circuit lies. Successful truth-telling, writes Dickinson, lies “in Circuit”: in a sort of circular, cyclical hovering rather than in a direct, straightforward exchange. The meaning-content of this line is that successful truth-telling depends on indirection, on orbit rather than collision, on a slanted, rather than flat/straight plane. The use of poetic verse with its indirect form thus mirrors the truth-content of these lines.

Too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth’s superb surprise. The superb surprise of raw truth is too bright for our frail human minds to accept, comprehend, and enjoy (cf., “delight”). The brilliance of truth is such that it would overwhelm us if received directly. Our infirm nature as finite, limited human creatures prevents us from a direct, straightforward experience of Truth.

As Lightning to the Children eased / With explanation kind. Truth must be handled as lightning is handled among fearful children: adults, by kindly explaining what lightning is, melt away the children’s fears. The sheer brilliance of such heavenly energy is made palatable and acceptable through indirect and gentle explanation.

The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind. In plain(er) terms Dickinson concludes her poem: the brilliant splendor of truth must dazzle in a gradual, indirect, circuitous way, or else by it human beings will be made blind. Truth, therefore, compared to bright rays, bolts of lightning, and sparkling sheen, can only be effectively received in a gradual, orbital kind of way.

Rev. Thomas goes on in her message to describe Christians as “bearers of the gospel... of good news.” She says that “Christians affirm that the truth at the heart of reality is that of healing, hope, forgiveness, justice, and peace.” The truth of which Dickinson sings, then, is for Christians the truth of resurrection, a truth which must dazzle gradually or leave every person blind.

Christians then, as followers of Jesus, are in possession of news that is good, news that conveys the Truth of all reality. This news is resurrection, “the cosmic defeat of evil and death,” the fulfillment of God’s dream, namely: “the wiping away of all tears, the soothing of all terrors, the easing of all pain.”

“This dream,” Thomas proclaims, “this gorgeous, indescribable dream, will triumph over all others which attempt to dispel it.” The truth then, that Christians bear, is the news that with God comes resurrection, on a social, political, physical, spiritual, and even an ecological plane.

The truth to which Christians bear witness can be dazzling, illuminating, and healing. But if wielded too directly, head-on without gentleness and care, such truth will blind rather than bless.

Christians, then, I encourage you to practice slanting your truth; to take heed of Dickinson’s ultimate claim, that: “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind – ”

 Jonah Bissell

Associate Pastor

*Emily Dickinson, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” (#1129 in Complete Poems, edited by Thomas H. Johnson [London: Faber & Faber, 1976]).

**The image above (an early manuscript of “Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant”) and others can be accessed online at the richly furnished Emily Dickinson Archive.

Healing Across the Divide

If the church is to be the church, it needs to embrace political diversity.

So, I’m breaking my own rules here since this post is not based directly on something I am reading. It is inspired, rather, by a number of conversations I have had as of late, and by an episode in The Pastor Theologians Podcast (link here).

In this post, I would like to address the now-quite-popular theme of political polarization. Such polarization, as many know, has reached a staggering high in American society today.

If you pay any attention whatsoever to the media (social media certainly included), you’ll see liberals and conservatives fiercely upbraiding their “opponents.” You’ll see vitriol, misrepresentation, and flagrant rebuke. In the process, left and right are moving further and further apart, as the American populace becomes ever and more polarized.

What Gerald Hiestand helpfully notes in this episode of the CPT podcast (see link above) is that Christian churches are being tempted to follow suit with this pattern of polarization.

Tragically, the process has already begun. Conservative churches have publicly condemned liberal ones; liberal pastors have blatantly chastised conservative ones (vice versa to both); and, even worse, conservatives and liberals in the same congregation are being pushed further and further apart.

Christians are talking to Christians the same way the far-left talks to the far-right (and vice versa). Polarization, it seems, has already entered the church.

To be the body of Christ, however, to truly shine as a lampstand of Jesus (cf. Rev. 2:1-7), we must resist such polarization.

While Christians share the same sacred texts, worship the same Triune God, and follow the same Lord Jesus (the) Christ, we exhibit a vast diversity of opinion on our civic and political responsibilities.

The line from theology to politics, in other words, is anything but straightforward. You and I may agree on numerous doctrinal propositions yet disagree (quite starkly!) about what forms of civic action should emerge from such positions.

Such diversity of opinion is, I think, what makes the church so interesting! And in the current of American society today, it presents to us a key opportunity: to model unity-in-diversity for a fragmented and polarized world. 

Toward this end, the church needs to plainly admit that there is no singular Christian party (political). To be a Christian, to be an Evangelical even, is not to be a conservative/Republican, nor to be a liberal/Democrat!

While in recent years, American Evangelicalism has been ‘popularly’ associated with conservative politics, statistical evidence shows that such an association may be changing (see chap. 1 of David Gushee’s, After Evangelicalism for precise figures and references). In 2014, for example, the Pew Research Center reported that 28% of evangelicals were left-leaning while 56% leaned right. 2014, however, was eight years ago, and antedates the watershed election of a certain American president.

Since then, based on trends I have seen, conversations I have had, and books I have studied, I would estimate that the percentage of Evangelicals who now lean left is much closer to the percentage who lean right.

The Evangelical church, if it is to survive, cannot afford to be aligned with a singular political party. In practice, what this means is that those Christians who lean left cannot afford to look down on those Christians who lean right. Conversely, it has to mean that those Christians who lean right cannot afford to look down on those Christians who lean left.

To be a Christian, friends, does not mean to be a Republican. Nor does it mean, however, to be a Democrat. Any suggestion that is does both compromises our witness to the gospel and impairs our ability to be Christ’s hands and feet.

If the church is to be the church, it needs to embrace political diversity. If we choose, on the other hand, to follow suit with American society by becoming singular, polarized, or divided, we will cease to be the church. Our lampstand will be removed (Rev. 2:5).  

In view of this, I for one, am excited for the future of the church. This excitement does depend, however, on a considerable degree of openness.

Our church, the First Baptist Church of Freeport, can be this place of openness: a place of diversity, inclusion, conversation; a place of genuine listening and love.

At this pivotal moment in our culture, friends, let us resist the vice of polarization. Let us as the body of Christ, be a place of healing across the divide.

Jonah Bissell

Associate Pastor

The Traumatized God

“For the cross to truly cost God, wouldn’t it make him less-than-God afterward?”

“Wouldn’t it affect him in some irreversible way?”

These were some of the questions asked during the fifth session of our course Theology: the Basics (salvation being the topic of the hour). “What happened to Jesus on the cross,” one student asked: “how was it costly to God?”

To give you a little background, we’d been discussing theories of the atonement, such as St. Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory and the Medieval Ransom to Satan theory. Each theory is unique, but they gesture toward the same idea: the cross cost God something.

The inquisitive student queried further: “For the cross to truly cost God, wouldn’t it make him less-than-God afterward? I mean: for it to truly cost God something, wouldn’t it affect him in some irreversible way?”

This got me thinking.

First, it got me thinking of a book I’d read the year before: the Crucified God by Jürgen Moltmann. Therein Moltmann devotes unflinching attention to how the Cross is (or should be) foundational for all of Christian theology. The whole book is well worth a read, but one theme in particular stands out. At the cross, reasons Moltmann, God is paradoxically, unimaginably separated from Godself. Yes, I said it: separated.

As Jesus quotes the words of Psalm 22:1 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), God the Son is abandoned by God the Father. At the very same ‘time’, it seems, God the Father is bereaved of his only Son (God the Word). In stupefying fashion then, on the cross, Moltmann argues: God is separated from God.

Thinking apart from the cross for a moment (if we can even do that!), Father, Son, and Spirit exist together in unbreakable union. From eternity past the Godhead has coexisted in interdependent mutuality and harmony. On the cross, however, it seems that this Trinity was effectively broken, ruptured, torn asunder (for a time; cf. 1 Cor. 15:1f).

As we were discussing this, flexing our flimsy intellects with varied success, I couldn’t help but hear one word in the quiet recesses of my (exhausted) mind: trauma... trauma. What God experienced on the cross was nothing less than trauma.

According to theologian Deanna Thompson (now in her fourth remission from cancer; see one of her recent books here), trauma is suffering that remains. To experience trauma, she says, is to experience something so cataclysmic, so category-shifting, so overwhelming, that afterwards one is never quite the same.

Theologians such as Thompson, Shelly Rambo, Nancy Eiesland, and others, have pioneered this new field of theology. They are sourcing their reflections on God from the traumatic, existential impact of the cross. God, such theologians claim, has experienced a sort of trauma. On the cross, God was so pierced, shaken, and distressed, that afterwards he was never quite the same.

About three years ago, I experienced an episode of trauma. It was much, much less serious than what God and countless others have experienced, but it was trauma all the same. I awoke in the wee hours of the night, heart racing, sweat streaming, and my perception of life was at once different. Little did I know, I was experiencing my very first panic attack, which led to a long season of counseling, psychological diagnoses, and prescription medications. Even after something so small, I’ve felt a little different ever since.

The student from before had asked if God was deficient or perhaps something-less after the cross. My mind, however, went somewhere else...

God is not, I think, anything less, nor has he fundamentally changed (in nature). What God is now (after-the-cross), is just a little more human.

The original human pair, Adam and Eve, it says, “became like God” (cf. Gen. 3:5) when they ate from the fruit of the tree in Eden (immediately “knowing good and evil”). God, it would seem then, “became like us” when he ‘ate’ from the fruit of the cross (=death/separation).

To die, in its ‘real’ sense, is to be separated, disconnected, cut-off from the life-giving womb of community. Such separation, fragmentation, disconnection... God experienced in Godself (for a time). The wounds of divine trauma, the holes in Christ’s hands, the cracks in God’s heart, will never fully go away. And that doesn’t make God less-than-God. It makes him like one of us.

God has experienced trauma and he has never been the same since. The God we know, therefore, is not a woundless or compassionless God. No. Rather, he is a traumatized God.

He is the God who was fragmented so that we could be made whole. He is the God who bears wounds, so that someday he could heal ours. He’s the God who knows what it’s like to be lost, abandoned, alone.

And he’s the God who beckons us all to “come home... come home... come home.”

Jonah Bissell

Associate Pastor

*The artwork displayed above is a crucifixion scene from the Syriac Rabbula Gospels (dated 586 AD). This, therefore, is the earliest crucifixion scene we possess from any New Testament manuscript.

Forgetful Presence

“Where we live without counting / where we have forgotten time / and have forgotten ourselves where eternity has seized us / we are entirely present / entirely trusting, eternal.”

–Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poems, 2007.IV

So muses Wendell Berry, the philosopher-farmer-prophet, whose words present a potent elixir to our restless, fragmented souls. From 1979 to 2012, Berry would walk his Kentucky farmstead alone on the Sabbath day with nothing but pad and pencil in hand. This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems is a transcript of Berry’s strolls.

His fourth poem in 2007 concerns the consciousness of time: a disease which left unchecked, he writes, “dooms us to the past.” To concern oneself with time, which we moderns have clearly mastered, is to forfeit any chance of real, authentic presence.

We know this all too well, especially those of us with packed-to-bursting schedules: the more we attune our consciousness to time, the more, it seems, time eludes us. We are left with no place to live, constantly remembering but never residing.

We focus on tasks to be accomplished and the measurable slivers of time available for use. All the while, we float through our days constantly looking back, back, back– remembering but never truly residing.

The word abide has really pollinated our church in recent years (cf. John 15:1-17). What does it mean to abide in God? And what does it mean to abide with others? Wendell Berry, I believe, can help with both.

To abide somewhere or in the presence of someone is to exercise a kind of forgetful presence. In the words of Berry, it is to “live without counting,” to forget one’s own self, to be “seized by eternity’s” grasp. Likewise, to truly abide with others is to let go of the measuring rod of consciousness, to quit quantifying and calculating, and to be, just be.

To abide with one’s children is to forget time, task, and tally. It is to lower the mirror of awareness, to slam shut –you could say– the mind’s-eye, and to lose oneself blissfully in their presence, if it is but for a moment.

Such moments though, I would argue, feel nothing like moments at all. There is no measurable quantity to them. Such moments are states of existence in which eternity itself has seized us, letting us live, finally –maybe for the very first time, exactly where we are.

As you consider, today, how to abide in God and with others, I urge you to practice forgetful presence, a mode of creaturely existence in which you are “entirely present, entirely trusting... eternal.”

Jonah Bissell

Associate Pastor

A Loveless Church?

“This I have against you: you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:4).

Toward the end of the first century (ca. 92-96 AD), a certain Jewish prophet named John wrote what came to be the most provocative text in the Christian Bible: Revelation. This document, appearing last in printed Bibles today, is of hybrid literary character: it is at once apocalypse, prophecy, and letter, and was intended to function as both a liturgical and political guidebook.

The work as a whole was sent to seven actual churches located in ancient Asia Minor (western Turkey today): Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. After John wrote the work’s main series of visions (chs. 4-22), he wrote seven brief letters to each of these churches (chs. 2-3).

The first of such letters is to the seasoned church of Ephesus, the largest and most significant city of those addressed in Rev. 2-3. The Ephesian church was nearly four decades old, not a new church by any means.

This is how John phrases the opening of his letter to the Ephesians (note that Jesus is the speaker here):

“I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil... I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake. But this I have against you: you have abandoned the love you had at first” (2:2-4, ESV).

The Ephesian church is commended for their tireless work and patient endurance, defined further as their refusal to tolerate “wrongdoers” (cf. “those who are evil”). These wrongdoers are immediately identified in v. 2b (not included above) as “those who call themselves apostles but are not, who are actually false.” The Ephesian church had “endured patiently,” safeguarding truth and orthodoxy for nearly 40 years, but Jesus has one thing against them: they have forsaken the love they had at first.

Now, for quite some time, I interpreted such love to be love of Jesus. But after consulting some technical commentaries, carefully studying the Greek, and considering the tenor of this (mini-)letter, I now prefer a different interpretation: the love the Ephesians abandoned seems not to be love of Jesus but rather love of each other, or more broadly: love of all people.

The Ephesian church, in other words, had prized, treasured, and safeguarded doctrinal accuracy and theological truth. However, along the way they abandoned love. They thus prioritized truth and accuracy over heartfelt care and concern.

This, friends, is no small matter. The apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. 13:1-3 says, “If I speak in the tongues of humans and angels... If I have prophetic power... If I have faith to move mountains... If I give away all I have, but I have not love... I gain nothing...” Eugene Peterson, long-time pastor, poet, and theologian, similarly writes “the church is not the church if it has not love.”

I struggle to remember a time in my life at which such a message was more relevant and necessary. Certain branches of Christianity, in North America especially, have become like the Ephesian church: they have prized doctrinal accuracy and theological truth at the expense of their love of others.

A church, however, with truth but not love, cannot be the church. It cannot accomplish its purpose, namely: to reflect the light and love of Jesus Christ.

In our present cultural and political moment, some churches, like that of Ephesus, need to hear this message. They need to own up to this sobering reality, and ask God for help and direction.

Luckily, Jesus doesn’t leave the Ephesians in the dark, but tells them exactly what they are to do:

“Remember therefore from where you’ve fallen; repent and do the works you did at first” (2:5).

The works they did at first were likely deeds of charity, sensitivity, generosity, patience, kindness, and goodness. They were works of humility, support, endurance, hope, and love, definitely love.

Churches that have privileged doctrinal accuracy at the expense of love of the other ought simply to heed the advice of Jesus: “return to the loving actions you did at first, and only then can my light shine through you.”

Jonah Bissell

Associate Pastor

The Pastor as Writer

Throughout Christian history, the most impactful pastors by and large have been writers.

There’s Paul of Tarsus, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Augustine of Hippo, to name a few ancients. There’s Anselm of Canterbury, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards, for medievals and early moderns. Last but not least, there’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fleming Rutledge, and Eugene Peterson, for us today.

The fact is: some of the best theological writing has emerged from the gritty, life-on-life demands of full-time pastoral ministry.

Now, I do not claim to occupy a space even close to these giants! I do know, however, that writing, good writing, emerging from the soil of local church ministry, can profoundly nourish both congregation and pastor. Upon the recommendations of others, then, I have decided to include writing as part of my formal responsibilities as pastor.

To date, much of my writing has been to a specialized, academic audience. For example, I currently write short reviews for Wiley’s Religious Studies Review, offering summary-analyses of the latest theological scholarship. I am also usually working on a paper to present at the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting(s), a guild which draws professors, researchers, and religious leaders alike.

As pastor of this congregation, I feel a burden to write, but especially to write for you.

What I plan to do at first, then, is write about what I am reading. Whether it’s Wendell Berry’s poetry, Athanasius’s treatise on the Incarnation, or John Steinbeck’s religious allegory in East of Eden, my aim is to connect these literary worlds with the concrete world(s) in which you live. The following posts, then, will serve not as mere flags of my own literary interests. My hope, rather, is that they will provide fresh insights from a variety of places so as to enrich you spiritually today.

I look forward to embarking on this journey together, and I hope my articulations serve you well. May they be a spark which ignites a conversation, an idea which provokes fresh insight, an image which charts a trajectory as you navigate Christian life today.

Jonah Bissell

Associate Pastor