Holy Envy by Barbara Brown Taylor
I’ve been planning to read Holy Envy for a while now. I had heard Barbara Brown Taylor (BBT) talk a bit about it, but it was even better than I expected. The book is a memoir of sorts about her years as a professor of world religions at Piedmont University, a small Christian university in Georgia. Taylor writes about discussing “worldview” with her students. She brings a globe to class and sets it
with the North Pole pointing up and the South Pole pointing down. My country is near the top where it is supposed to be. All is right with the world…I spin the globe laterally while I am talking…Then I tip it upside down. ‘Are you okay with that?’ I ask them once Australia is on top and Canada is at the bottom. ‘Or did that just make your stomach do a little flip?’” (* Page 49)
I thought of Galileo and the inquisition when he said Earth was not at the center of the solar system; the sun was. He and others suffered and even died for stating that scientific fact. Now we know that even our universe is not at the “center.” There are untold numbers of universes we are beginning to see in the pictures from the Webb telescope. Does that make the Earth less relevant or meaningful? Does that make humanity less relevant or meaningful? Does that make me less relevant or meaningful?
I suppose, in one sense, you might answer yes. It certainly makes me small. It makes me think of the words in Psalm 8, as I do whenever I go up in an airplane and watch humans get smaller and smaller and finally invisible. “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Yet I know, through the assurance God has gifted to me, he loves me. Like David, I am the apple of his eye. And so are my fellow humans.
I have good friends who, like me, listen to NPR and heard Barbara Brown Taylor’s interview with Terry Gross. Near the end, Barbara Brown Taylor talks about why she stays a Christian:
If God is revealed in many ways, why follow the Christian way? At my age, because it's the way I know best. I have learned the stories. I know how to look up Hebrew and Greek. I have practiced this tradition long enough to know how many ways it can go south and to become somewhat wiser about my own ego, needs, and theological questions. To switch ships now for me would be to go back to first grade, and I don't have time to do that. ... But, in terms of why choose one? I can't honestly tell you that it's because I've compared and chosen. That's not true. This is the tradition I found myself in, and it's the one I know. ... It's the horse I'm on, Terry! (“Fresh Air,” KQED, March 11, 2019)
My friends were disappointed with that answer. I thought it made perfect sense.
I was struck by this question years ago in a discussion with my older brother Dan, a question most of us have asked ourselves. I think we were both in high school when Dan said to me, “You only believe because you were born into this family. What if you had been born into a different country and a different family with a different religion?” When I tried to imagine that, I had to agree. If my dad and mom had been the same people as they were except Muslim, I think I’d have been a devout Muslim. Or Hindu. Or Buddhist. Or atheist. Or, or, or. I can’t fool myself that I chose Christianity based on reasoned, scholarly research. As I’ve matured, I have studied my faith tradition and learned a little about it in comparison to others. I have grown to love my religious tradition and the way it has enriched my life. As I have matured in my faith, I have become more and more grateful for my relationship with Christ.
But I believe the reason I came to and now stay in my faith is that, like Barbara Brown Taylor, “This is the tradition I found myself in, and it’s the one I know.” I hope that if I had been born into a harmful tradition bent on hurting others and the world, God would have found me and brought me to him. But otherwise, if the “tradition I found myself in” was one that encouraged me to love my neighbor as myself, to dedicate myself to a loving divine being, and I was surrounded by others in that tradition who loved and cared for me, I think I would have stayed in it.
I’ve been wondering if there is some way I can keep my religion, have a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ, and have a faith that matters to me and others but that also “allows” that same meaningfulness and truth for other religions. I want to fully believe that non-Christians will be in heaven, too, that they have the same assurance I do—that God loves them just as they are. I know this hope is not unique to me. I’ve heard others say the same, but I’ve heard Christians say that isn’t possible. One pastor I highly respect, when I voiced my wish that we all could be in heaven, whether we follow Jesus or not, said something like, “I think you’d have a hard time getting others to agree on that.”
Does the fact that others follow paths other than Christianity to their relationship with a Divine Being make my path—my faith—less relevant or meaningful? I do not think that the Earth is less important than other planets just because it is not in the center as mankind imagined in years past. In the same way, I do not think I am–or my religion is—less important to God just because my faith is not the only path to a relationship with him.
I know there are texts in the Bible that we read as contrary to believing that anyone other than Jesus followers, Christians like us, can come to God. Here’s a passage where Barbara Brown Taylor speaks to some of those.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.(Isa. 55:8-9)
In the Christian New Testament, Jesus himself admits that he does not know everything there is to know about God. When his disciples ask him to tell them about the end times, he gives them a harrowing description that includes everything but when.“But about that day or hour no one knows,” he says, “neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
Passages like these protect God’s autonomy, but most of us prefer those that grant us special privilege. For Christians, the most potent one is John 14:6, in which Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Here is the bedrock assurance that Christians alone have access to God. But why is this verse more important than one that comes two chapters earlier in John’s Gospel? "Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me," Jesus says in John 12:44. Maybe my hearing is off, but those two verses sound different to me. So why do so many Christians know the former saying but not the latter one? Could it be that our favorite verses are the ones that make us feel most right?
"I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” That is something else Jesus says in John’s Gospel. He does not elaborate, but I like imagining the God of many sheep, many folds, many favorites, many mansions. This is how far my holy envy has brought me: from fearing that Jesus will be mad at me for smelling other people’s roses to trusting that Jesus is the Way that embraces all ways. Because there is only one of me, I can only walk one way at a time, but that does not prevent me from believing that other people might be walking their ways with equal devotion and good will.
No one owns God. God alone knows what is good. For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace—to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of the outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is to love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now, my hands are full. ( * Page 119)
“…trusting that Jesus is the Way that embraces all ways.”
Yes and amen! “Because there is only one of me, I can only walk one way at a time, but that does not prevent me from believing that other people might be walking their ways with equal devotion and good will.” (* Page 119)
As I read Holy Envy, I felt a great sense of relief and gratitude. I also learned a little more about other religions that Barbara Brown Taylor wrote about and covered in her class, the five “major religions,” Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This book is deep and rich, yet totally “accessible,” and easy to read. It’s full of new things (at least for me) to learn, yet in no way is it textbook-y. There are stories, characters, and friendly language.
*Taylor, Barbara Brown. Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, Kindle, HarperOne, 2019.
After writing this, I listened to a Nomad podcast that expanded on these same concepts.
Alastair McIntosh - Reflections from a Quaker (Interview starts at 14m 59s)
Nomad Podcast