Swimming For Shore (or For Sure): How to assemble your convictions

Americans have fun during election campaigns hyperventilating about their candidates. Recently I read a rant by a fellow who was alarmed at the risk of electing someone with an Arab sounding name (obviously Barack Obama). He extrapolated that no Muslim could be a safe choice for national office because his loyalties would always conflict with true American values and convictions. He proposed a list of test questions that would identify all those disqualified to be true Americans. But running through his test, it appears that anyone alive on the continent would be disqualified on one or several grounds. You could not be irreligious, wrongly religious, born elsewhere, have ancestors born elsewhere, or even be a native American for various reasons. This writer suggested that anyone with any mark of suspicion should be exported. He thought his own personal convictions were the perfect match for American values. This man had strong convictions, but his certainties had lost touch with the original values of those with whom he wanted to identify--namely, true Americans. When I responded to the person who had shared this screed with me, I referred to what I called my own “emerging convictions.” He wondered what I meant, so I came up with a blog. Here are my thoughts on certifying ones convictions. When I was a youngster, I thought convictions were what adults had and wanted me to drink. Upon reaching the "age of accountability," I would have the responsibility to choose to "own" these convictions for myself, as my parents articulated and exemplified them, or if I proved rebellious, I might pick them up somewhere else in altered form. I thought of convictions as items on a shelf that you walk up to and select, or items offered as certified and judged to be safe--things one accepts, or concepts you take title to, as in "buying into." It would be something like loading up a backpack and carrying the contents through life. And if I really believe in my load, I will not worry if backpacks go out of fashion. Knowing that my convictions are secure on my back, I can be confident and relaxed. When needed, I can reach in and pull out a conviction to enlighten a scoffer, or settle an argument, or use as a pointer for my children. From this perspective, convictions are something we "have." But when I speak of "emerging convictions," I have something else in mind. Rather, I "am" my convictions, and always have been. Even children have budding convictions. Accountability kicks in at an appropriate age, when reason starts to function. But reason ultimately plays only a consulting role. Experience, rather, is the deep flowing determiner of personal conviction. When we try to order our adult world with a “set” of convictions we have adopted or posted as our "rules," they lose the suppleness so helpful in weathering life's strong winds. Convictions emerge. How does one determine where one is in the emerging process? The first thing to do is ask where you "got" your convictions. Avoid scales or score cards. Somebody else makes those up. If your convictions do not "emerge" from your own experiences, they won't hold up. I try to engage in candid introspection and work from where I "am." Candid is a key word, for it clears the trail for the emerging to make progress. I know better than anyone (when I'm candid) whether my convictions are sound. And if I am alert, I will notice my convictions ripening. Don't worry about this sounding as if I choose to float downstream, following unpredictable swirls of current that might leave me stranded in an eddy. I notice that after every heavy rain, our mountain creek is slightly, yet in some places noticeably, reconfigured. I have found that as my convictions season; the only core change from earlier formulations is increased vitality as I sense that the river inexorably leads to the great sea. If I were to express to you some of my most deeply felt spiritual convictions, they might sound at odds with the formulations mapped out for me by my parents and Sunday School teachers. Meanwhile my personal spiritual vocabulary has taken its own roots. I'm not saying I am more spiritually advanced than my parents. I'm only saying that my expression of basic convictions reflects, and arises from, my own gnarly life trail. Experience gives conviction its persuasiveness. This is where reading inspired writings can be serendipitous. There I can compare what I am experiencing with what others have discovered. If the connection welds, my convictions gain assurance. But they won't weld by simply downloading, printing, and filing for easy retrieval. If what I "have” does not amalgamate, it sits inert. What we "are" emerges, as a sapling's root that soon heaves aside the paved sidewalk. It only remains for us to notice. The difference between having and being your convictions, is the difference between asserting and exuding. When we encounter advice, we check the academic credentials, or the organization the advisor represents. But when wise persons offer counsel, we just sense they know whereof they speak, or they would not have a reputation for wisdom. A held conviction stands to be sold. A living conviction sells itself. A true conviction cannot be passed on; the action is in the receiver who gets it by self-initiated connecting. I know it is a lot easier to chart a composite and well-approved set of convictions to live by. But catechetical answers leave me unconvinced. I scrutinize things until I can explain them the way I experience them, not how someone else describes them. I may sound unorthodox at times, but if you go the whole circle with me, you may just see me back at the starting point with a wardrobe well suited to keep me spiritually outfitted. But I'm not there yet, I'm still emerging. Does my concept of “emerging convictions” have any theological basis? My explanation may sound unconventional, but only because the usual way of talking about convictions is backwards. In order to impart a concept, teachers symbolize. For example, to commemorate the Christian salvation experiential moment, we “baptize” converts, which implies “immersion.” But to me the word “emerse” seems to say it better (the prefix “i” or “e” determines the direction of the “merge”-- either “into” or “out from”). When you immerse, you dunk. The dipper forces the action, and the dippee sputters his consent. Emersion turns the action away from the catechizer to the catechete. To be “born again” is something you experience, not something someone does to you. To symbolize the event and confirm its importance, John the Baptist, stressed ceremony. But let’s go behind the baptismal ceremony and revision the conviction. Jesus did not baptize people. John did it because he wasn’t Jesus. When Jesus used the birth metaphor, he did not say we are re-fetalized. He was describing the experience of emersion. We get “born right”; we consummate our birth; in the salvation moment we “emerse,” validating it by experiencing it. Expanding this example to apply to our journey through life, rather than being transported, we continue our trip from the birth canal eventually to "arrive" at the great sea. Our backpack of convictions becomes our skin and we “emerge,” as a swimmer lifting his head above water. Doug Good