It is sometimes said that a PhD (short for “doctor of philosophy”) is a sign that one has learned to relate his or her subject of study to the world at large on a philosophical level, hence the name. The more of David Dark’s writing I read, the more I realize that he, perhaps more than most, understands the potential impact of his level of education in English and literature. Rather than devoting himself to insular research, he’s focused his energy on addressing a questioning subculture of the American religious and political tradition through thoughtful analysis of that culture, reflected back by its own literature, music, film, television and political icons.

In The Gospel According to America, Dark’s analyzes the intricacies of America’s politics and its “Christ-haunted idea” through the eyes of George Washington, Herman Melville, Bob Dylan, Flannery O’Connor, Elvis, Thomas Pynchon and others who have found inspiration in the freedom, culture, history and possibility of the American Way.

Unsurprisingly, Dark digs even further than just America’s past, by challenging its widely-held theories and practices concerning faith, salvation and the person of Jesus. He puts forward ideas of faith that both emphasize and support the underlying goals of America’s founders and challenge us to question the way those goals are put into practice. He warns us of the dangers of media pundits and believing we are administers of Truth:

When the church is the blind, uncritical endorser or “spiritual” chaplain of whatever the nation decides to do, it has largely renounced its vocation as the body of Christ.

But he also praises the art of being weird, exploring uncharted ideas and the practice of digging deeper than the sound bite culture to which most of us unknowingly subscribe to:

When we’re no longer willing (or able) to exercise the attention span required to hear, read, or listen to any version of history that can’t be contained in a sound bite or a put-down, our capacity for worship and for contribution to a stable democracy is compromised.

Potential readers of any of Dark’s work only need be warned that his explorations are not a quick read. While his ideas are clearly put forth, he doesn’t waste words for the sake of easy skimming. (Perhaps this is his own way of combating sound bite culture.) It’s more of a “take your time and take notes” kind of book than the more commonly enjoyed pop philosophy/sociology examinations that make it into the New York Times bestsellers list.

I’ve had the same wish for the past five years. My wish is that I’ll live forever. A lot of people don’t understand that… It’s a wish! Go big! I don’t wanna fucking die! How simple is that? I have no interest in dying… Out there? I don’t know what’s out there. It’s unknown. This is known. That’s unknown . I’m sticking with the known. “But Lewis, if you had faith,” my Christian friends say, “the angels will come and they will take you to heaven…” “Well,” I tell them, “until there are photographs, the legal system would say that’s hearsay.”

paraphrase of Lewis Black on his new album

A few weeks back, I had the distinct pleasure of getting to see David Bazan live at a house show here in Nashville. As many are well aware by this point, Bazan has made a major transformation from “leader of a Christian band” (Pedro the Lion) to “openly agnostic solo artist.” It would be easy to assume that someone who was that entrenched in the culture of western Christianity would be having quite an awkward adjustment — especially after “coming out” to the world via one of the best albums released in a long time. It was, essentially, his “breakup album with God,” for lack of a better description.

I was expecting to sit in a living room with a guy who was full of “umms” and “ahhs” that played his songs and mentally prepared himself for a barrage of questions about his departure from faith. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did my fellow listeners treat him with the utmost respect, he was confident, bold, outspoken and, dare I say it, happier and more comfortable than I’ve ever heard of him being. It was as though he had finally settled into his right place.

Especially in North America, evangelical culture persists a lot of black-and-white mentality about what is truth and what is lie, what is to be believed and what is to be rejected. In the past few years, I’ve seen a growing population of Christians who debate and argue and divide themselves over nitpicky theology, which I find more than a little bit disconcerting. Over time, I realized that this mentality is rooted in a desire to prove their beliefs in a concrete fashion which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous.

An idea that’s been rolling around in my head for my long absence from blogging here — originally seeded in a growing and poorly-worded curiosity about the validity of the other major religions — boils down to this: faith is just that.

Faith, in the religious sense, means believing in something that cannot be proven. If, as Lewis Black wishes, we can prove that God and heaven and angels and an afterlife exist without a shadow of doubt, it wouldn’t be faith. It would be fact. In the same way, we can’t disprove the beliefs of others, especially when they are in agreement with millions of others.

Western Christianity has made a lot of effort in the past 50 years to prove why Christianity is “it” and everything else is not. It shows a supreme lack of confidence in the unknown and in being wrong. To truly have great faith, one must submit to the fact that, at some point, he has to stop proving, accept what he believes and live accordingly. Or stop believing it.

Certainly we need people who can read and interpret the Bible and the Koran and the holy scriptures of Hinduism in order to form a foundation of beliefs, but interpretation is not something for everyone. In fact, the more that get involved in interpretation, the less unity there seems to be, which completely throw the idea of a body of believers out the window. Our culture’s Jeffersonian push on education has somehow caused us to forget that faith and education are near-polar opposites. Christian culture’s desire to have concrete answers to the eternally unanswerable and ridiculously inane questions of life is causing it to crumble in on itself.

Perhaps if most of us dropped the habit of (mis)interpreting, debating and arguing ideas, submit to the philosophy that it’s not only okay but recommended to not know everything, then focused on practicing the undeniable core of our beliefs — to love and respect and ask everything in humility — we’d all be better off.

Perhaps Bazan’s confidence is seeded in knowing that he doesn’t need to know all the answers or ask all the question to live an inspired and beautiful life.

Required reading/listening:

• The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, by David Dark
• The Religion Episode, by the Grapes of Rad
• Curse Your Branches, by David Bazan

It’s rare that someone is able to find an underlying idea that ties together so much of what it means for a piece of art, culture or life to be “good” to another person, but in Everyday Apocalypse, David Dark has efficiently described a common thread in much of that which I love that points to my continual searching for the “something more” of life. Dark calls this idea “apocalyptic.”

It should be made clear that when Dark talks about “apocalypse,” he’s not talking about some end-times event where the world explodes and all those who “accepted Jesus into their hearts” go to some other-place called Heaven. He’s talking about the actual meaning of the word “apocalypse:” lifting of the veil. To explain more explicitly, Dark is looking for threads of capital-T Truth in our art and culture that speak to the idea of the human conditions of suffering and imperfection, the necessary inclusion of eternal grace and love in our lives, the beauty of admitting to not knowing it all, and the ability of one person to “get” another even if, and especially if, that “getting” is something we can’t seem to quite put in words.

In short, apocalyptic is that which lifts the veil shrouding what life really is, has been, will be and is meant to be.

In Everyday Apocalypse, Dark runs through examples from Radiohead to The Simpsons to Flannery O’Connor, expressing how each has a way of subverting mere entertainment or pop cultural art and hinting at a deeply-rooted issue of what it is to participate in life on earth and, often, a part of the truly Christian ideology (not just what the culture of market-driven, Western evangelical Christianity has put forth as an example).

One part theology, one part philosophy, and one part art appreciation, the book was a perfect match for me, despite occasionally feeling a bit over my head. After truly grasping upon his idea of apocalyptic, though, the feeling of something going over my head didn’t seem as frustrating as it might’ve been before reading.

I’m excited to explore what apocalyptic lifestyle really is. I feel that, through my explorations of food, art, music and what it means to live faith every day, I’m already on my way, but I know I’ve hardly stepped a foot in the door.

Finally, it’s refreshing and relieving to see someone speaking to a more Catholic idea of living a Christian faith, in the sense that Christianity is hardly about “accepting Jesus into my heart so I don’t go to Hell.” It’s hardly that, if that at all, and if we are truly living the faith fully, such ideas should be the last thing on our minds as we seek to restore, renew and reveal the world we live in today in preparation for eternity.

Apologies at my slowness at getting back to the blogging board. It turns out that two and a half weeks of vacation make getting back into good habits a difficult endeavor. It’s not much help that my girlfriend is visiting this week, too. Not that I’m complaining.

While I get my head back on straight, enjoy this quote from the always-intriguing David Dark from an article in the latest issue of Relevant Magazine. And, once again, file it with that topic that I’ve talked about many times.

If we think we have faith, because we faithfully protect ourselves from anything that might call it into question — as if God is counting on us to keep ourselves stupid, closed off to the complexity of the world we’re in — I’d like to argue that we don’t have faith in God at all. We have faith in our own faith rather than the God who transcends it, faith in a faith that will somehow save us. Not faith in God, but faith in a false god of our own conceptions, a god too afraid to entertain a question or a doubt.

If we think certainty is what drives success and, in the end, the very faith (so-called) that saves us, our honest confusion will become a source of shame and a sign of weakness. We keep our honest doubts hidden. As I understand it, this is precisely where the biblical urges what I’m tempted to call a mandatory agnosticism. This is where we’re summoned to know that we don’t know. This is where we’re called to confession, not self-congratulation.

I like calling myself an agnostic about things. It’s become a loaded word, so I use it in defiance more often than not. But, despite my own rebellious tendencies, it’s a word we could all learn and use more often.

I’ve been listening to the podcast of all the talks from Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Music. Tonight while sweating my face off on the treadmill at the gym I listened to this talk by David Dark.

Dark has been on my radar for a few years. Basically ever since I heard recordings of talks he gave at the last FFM two years ago. He usually covers a particular topic, but one so broad that it ends up, in my fragmented mind, being a collection of thoughts on a variety of subjects that all relate to each other in a big way.

This talk, titled Survival of the Freshest: How to Detect and Channel Cosmic Plainspeak in the Written, Overheard and Sung, speaks about the idea of questioning everything and finding Truth in what we like because, as he says, “Talking about what I like is all I can do.”

I’m still processing it because, like I said, he’s all over the map. Everything from the religion of Radiohead to an unhealthy, fear-based view of Christianity that drives religious and moral motivations from the wrong direction. Go listen to it.

I, for one, will be putting Dark’s new book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything on my to-read list right away.