I know NUFFINK!!

“SCHULTZ!” echoed over the airwaves in the late 1960’s, as television sought to buffer the lingering war memories of veterans’, 15 years past. Werner Klemperer’s reluctant Nazi officer bellowed often to John Banner's bumbling Sgt. Schultz, while they corralled a group of WWII war prisoners who actually controlled the camp. Schultz’ rejoinder to Col. Klink’s insufferable questioning regarding the creative prisoner’s ability to stay one step ahead of the officers generally consisted of, “ I know nuffink!”

While the television show Hogan’s Heroes portrayed Nazis as bumbling fools, in reality they were anything but. They KNEW everything. The Nazi machine fostered exacting scientific studies of human nature, and their empire grew quickly after mass distribution of ‘knowledge’ and limited exposure to outside influences. Their great knowledge resulted in the demise of millions, to include a centuries-old faith-based society. 

We know nuffink. 

We may think we have gleaned inordinate amounts of important knowledge in our lifetimes, but all that we know we picked up from someone else –or somewhere else, and we’ve taken these gleanings and turned them into our own.

Newborn infants in every culture are born knowing every dialectal sound of every language. As they listen to the sounds around them, they pick up of repetition, and slowly discard the unnecessary inflections. Children under the age of ten retain the basal memory of all these language systems – and pick up second and third languages effortlessly.  After ten their concrete reasoning takes over their abstract thinking ability, and languages are more difficult to attain.

Subjects studied in junior high, high school and college are merely an expansion of what was learned in elementary school –  and it’s harder to pick up something that you had no exposure to as a child. 

As adults, we follow those who are influential to us, mimicking their speech, habits, and adopting some of their values which correlate -- or supplant -- our own. 

So it is with the way we worship – or choose not to – based on what we know.  Kids raised in a church denomination are indoctrinated with that denomination’s dogma. Hell or no hell; saints or no saints; grace by faith or grace by works; no drinking/dancing or party on; Halloween is the devil's day or All Souls' Eve; no birthdays or Christmas -- or lots of celebrations. 

More and more simply refuse to ascribe to an organized religion, and follow the ways of nature while navigating the world at large and relying on self-motivation to live a good life. So many schools of thought, on God. 

Huh.

Historically, the Catholic Church holds the honor of longevity and endurance. It rose from the early Church and attained power due to the KNOWLEDGE that the laity lacked -- the ability to read and write treatises on faith and the mysteries of faith and disseminate information. Protestantism broke off in protest against the Catholic Church, and heinous battles waged for centuries over who had divine rights and so forth. The Church exclusively held the seat of power before the Reformation – knowledge (and wealth gained from knowledge).

We’ve learned of terrible, terrible secrets within the walls – but there are no worse secrets among the Catholic family than anywhere else. More, perhaps, but simply due to volume.  

Consider the last twenty years within the evangelical circles. Scandals and betrayal and ‘ good upright church people’ who turned out to be sexual deviants, serial killers, rapists, and militant terrorists. Terrible secrets of what PEOPLE have done within the Church are the world’s way of distracting from what God has done within the Church – which is the continuous nurturing of pilgrims on a journey of faith, for over two thousand years.

We are all sinners – whether we believe in the communion of saints or the sprits among the trees.

Yet, believing in a Creator God who loves each one of us in spite of the fact that we are a flash of light in the vast expanse of time goes beyond any mortal amassing of knowledge. Believing in a Creator whose story includes every religion, every denomination, every theological theory goes beyond anything known.

Believing in a Creator God who lives as one of us grants a higher level of life --- eternal life beyond this finite one.

Belief, faith, worship – all require leaving what is known and felt to the studious and the sensitive.

Belief, faith, and worship involve turning your face to the Light, and training yourself as a vine which seeks a place to climb towards It, tendrils tightly clinging to what it senses underneath.

We know nuffink. Instead of clinging tightly to what we've been told, we can be like vines, seeking an open place in which to climb to the Light.

We simply need to Believe.