As epiphanies go, Muzi Cindi’s stands way out. As a preacher and churchman of some 25 years standing, God appeared to him in 2007 during a Radox moment in the shower. So far, only slightly unusual. Then, God actually spoke to him. That deserves, I suppose, a hearing, even in this day of revelation overload. But the clincher is the message, and it was this: “God does not exist”.
But instead of creating a debilitating crisis of faith for Cindi, this subversive “a-theist” anticreed has become his catharsis, motivation, and passion. The evangelical zeal which was his all along merely adjusted to a new message and is as far as one can tell, as strong as it ever has been, and certainly no less radical. The outcome of his visitation is now available as a book, “Thinking about God, Talking about God”.
Well, maybe I should say that it’s not so much a conventional book, as a documented process, largely unedited, full of spelling errors and dubious assertions, brimming with contradiction, but ultimately held together in a burning vision. Lordy Lordy Hallelujah! this is surely a testimony for the postmodern age.
As a text, and because this is a review, let it be noted that the index of howlers is unusually high, the problems ranging from simple spelling, incorrect word usage, to un-researched shortcuts, and the appropriation of whole chapters from other sources. This I am sure is due to the fact that this is an entirely self funded enterprise, and therefore wholly sidesteps normal publishing channels; but this is part of the “Thinking about God” charm. To stop at such nitpicking would be to miss the point.
Cindi’s essential point is this: the Christianity he was brought up in, is not only unsustainable and discredited, but already defunct. “The Christian world is disintegrating, because the story on which it is based is losing its power.” He supplies abundant (though somewhat chaotic) data to support his claims. But his offering is essentially a visionary one, involving wide theological, philosophical, and scientific thought. He seeks to address the seeming incompatibility of a deep love for his evangelical tradition – and his faith in Jesus – with his philosophical embrace of the new atheists such as Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris.
And this embrace extends to just about everything that contributed to the end of the modern era, from Copernicus and Galileo’s pioneering cosmologies, Darwin’s evolutional insights, Einstein’s discovery of relativity, Paul Tillich’s theological atheism and Karen Armstrong’s religious demythologising.
“Don’t believe what I believe” is one of Muzi’s rallying cries, and I look forward to the T-Shirt. In case this gets interpreted as mere reactionary anarchy, he explains to us the apophatic (negative theology) traditions from where he draws his succour: Meister Eckhart, the 13th century mystic, Paul Tillich, and Don Cuppit. And he gives credit too to all reformers – Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, the evangelical fathers Wesley, Edwards, Moody, and the South Africans such as John G Lake and Nicholas Bhengu. And references are not just to Christianity: universal, ecumenical appeals to the wisdom of all the worlds’ faith traditions pepper the book.
One of the most curious questions I have about Cindi’s explosive energy its relatively sparse dealings with the question of African roots, and bringing in more post colonial thought to buttressing his extensive postmodernism. Where, for example, are the fathers of the African revolutions, where is his own South African literary tradition amongst the plethora of first world sources? I do not want to prescribe who he should be, but it is a little vexing that the vast majority of his thesis of a post-God God is found in European and American thinking. I’d be delighted to see him take on African traditions with the same zeal he has taken on his own Evangelical roots, and even further to see him unpack an authentic Ubuntu as part of the rebuilding of Christianity.
I find myself identifying with Cindi’s vision, including his passion for knowledge, his hermeneutic of suspicion, his honest confusion, and his pariah status. At the same time I share his love for the evangelical tradition, and the ancient way of Jesus. He affirms, “A redefined Jesus still stands at the centre of my God experience”. Furthermore, I broadly concur with his inclusivity and embrace of all wisdom traditions as a way forward in a post Christian age. “Thinking about God” is flawed and fabulous, a headily chaotic brew, diverse, divisive, and delicious.
Muzi Cindi is a self confessed heretic, and draws strength from making peace with heterodoxy. The book is prefaced with an unattributed quote, “For every orthodoxy was once a heresy, and every heresy is fated to be orthodoxy. All countries were founded by traitors. All our churches were founded by heretics. The patriotism of today glories in the treasons of yesterday.” But to accuse him of lack of accountability would be short-sighted indeed; in addition to his relational ties to his mentors, the book is remarkable for its sheer range of references.
His vision is no idiosyncratic delusion, but rather an extension of a variety of well acknowledged intellectual and spiritual traditions. And we need his energy and his attempt to reconcile the old and new views of God and the cosmos. Despite his rambling style, I do not believe that this is a “mish-mash” of thought, so much as an emerging, integral vision.
Overcoming the taboo associated with thinking outside of our boxes, especially our religious ones, is a foundational shift which requires great courage; as Seal sings, “We’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy”. Cindi is not shy of being regarded as a holy fool, and having recovered from the fear of asking questions, the potential for “error” appears to have no limit. And yet, all progress, and all evolutionary shifts, require these chaotic conditions. With startling audacity, Cindi has created them.
His life’s work, I intuit, will be to ensure that this chaos does indeed lead to a sustainable spirituality. Perhaps chief amongst the questions will be the one “Where, now, is our authority?” which emergent thinkers like Phyllis Tickle have been addressing.
If the world is to remember Muzi Cindi the author, he will have to employ a good editor. And if it is to celebrate his personal legacy, he will have to help those still ensnared in modernistic thinking, to emerge. He will need to fully develop his empathy, creating sound bridges for others to cross. And he will have to gain the trust of those who not so long ago, would have gloried in his immolation at the heretic’s stake.
Don Rogers said
I like this guy!! He is my hyper-extroverted doppleganger! Your review of his book here reminds me so much of the post Christian “theology” of J.S. Spong. Anxious to hear more on Cindi.
Nic Paton said
Thanks Don – hopefully Muzi will drop by for a comment soon, (or so he promised). Have any questions for him?
We all look forward to the ruckous his book will cause.
Hoping you are well, we think of you often..
Muzi Cindi said
Nic, thanx for opening this conversation for me. I’m a businessman who enjoys the money I make from my business. The book itself is self-funded, self-published, and self-edited by the nigger (using the Queen’s language). I do not make a cent in profits out of it. It is a way of sending forth the message just like Moses did. I apologize for the few spelling mistakes and language structure. Let us now leave the side issues and concentrate on the main issue – The God concept!
I call myself a postmodern mystic and i join the mystics in saying that I think I am part of what God is. God lives in me, loves through me and empowers me to escape that drive to survive that is in every living thing in order to give my life away. That is the Christ role and I think it is also the role that, we as his disciples, are called to model. Am interested in hearing more on the God concept. For now, may we leave side issues aside please!
Nic Paton said
I think the fact that you are not beholden to anyone gives you a freedom others do not have.
Muzi, your thought is travelling at, well, faster than light… For example you hardly mention being a mystic in the book, and I think that its an important point to make. Mysticism gives us something of a cushion when it comes to controversy.
OK – I hear you now – the main issue is “The God Concept”. Most Moderns are not going to get this, because they do not see other concepts as having validity.
I’d love to interview you and focus on this more.
Don Rogers said
Muzi- The God Concept is an issue that really concerns me as well. I view the monarchial, anthropomorphic concept of God as one that severely limits us as believers. It puts us in a position of being beneath, or below God, wondering to ourselves how he could possibly relate to us. The concept of God living in me, loving through me, being a part of me, and I of him is much more comforting to me. I don’t believe that we can ever make progress in presenting of new, Post-modern or Post-Christian view of God until we can successfully view Source in a personal, unified with us, way. I truly believe that I am part of the whole of what God is. Now, just to fully realize what that truly means! Looking forward to hearing more.
Gavin Marshall said
Nic – if I ever write a book, I want you to review it. Nicely done
Nic Paton said
Thanks Gavin. I thought you might relate to Muzi.
Muzi Cindi said
Don Roggers is spot on! We need to explore what happens to our western spiritual tradition when the God of presumptive monotheism – the wrathful King made in the image of men – is removed. We will no longer talk about God as a “being that exists”. We will discover God as Being itself. We have no idea of what Being is. It is not, and cannot be an object of thought. Human beings beings will always use the language of time and space to give form to an experience and a reality that is not bound by or within time and space.
Nic – In chapter 11 of my book I describe myself as someone who has become a postmodern mystic at least three times. Like my ancestors, Aquinas, Eckhardt. Tillich, etc I also have a profound respect for the mystery which is God. God can’t be placed in the category of things that exists. The moment we confuse our metaphors with reality, we create idols. God the Father can be an idol, a false god created in our image. I need to hear more on the God concept!
Nic Paton said
Muzi – I stand corrected, then, on the issue of you as a mystic. I’m glad you pointed that out.
I love your take on your ancestors: its both African and Universal at the same time. This way I can say that you and I have common ancestory, an exciting proposition!
Please take a look at my post on Idol-Icon : http://soundandsilence.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/idol-icon/
Gavin Marshall said
Muzi – I like what you’re saying (haven’t read your book – just what you’re saying here). The question is, why do we still use the word ‘God’. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to drop it altogether. It has too much history and trying to redefine something with that much momentum seems like an awful waste of energy..
Muzi Cindi said
“So an Idol is a created thing usurping the place of the creator. An Icon is a created thing mediating between created and creator. Although it initially appears clear cut, the line between them is surprisingly hard to define once one starts to explore it”. – I’ve just enjoyed this post! Makes me think! Our traditional ancestral worship can then be regarded as icons that mediate between the created and the creator!
I was raised in a family and ubringing that abhored ancestral worship. I’ve never had time to study the roots of our ancestral worship. All I know is that this practice existed long, long, before Christianity came to Africa. It was Westerners who saw this as Idols as opposed to Icons that mediate! We then joined the Westerners in demonizing it! Thanx for this. I will share with my friends next monday when we next have our ‘monthly church’.
Nic Paton said
Hey Muzi. First thanks for holding this conversation. I believe this ability to keep talking is a virtue.
Are you saying you might go against your families anti-amadlozi stance. I think it needs a fair, thorough debate. Another interview?
Tell us about your “monthly church”…
marius said
I don’t if any of you reading this post have come across Žižek, but Pete Rollins who is another of Muzi’s influences, is heavily influenced by Žižek. Now I must admit I have not read him myself, but J Caputo wrote a good reveiw of Žižek & Milbank’s book ‘The Monstrosity of Christ’ (http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17605), which reminded me in many ways of what Muzi is arguing:
“Žižek provocatively suggests an odd kind of “positive” unbelief in an undead God, like the “undead” in the novels of Stephen King, a “spectral” belief that is never simple disbelief along with a God who is never simply dead (101). God is dead but we continue to (un)believe in the ghost of god, in a living dead god. If atheism (“I don’t believe in God”) is the negation of belief (“I believe in God”), what is the negation of that negation? It is not a higher living spirit of faith that reconciles belief and unbelief but a negation deeper than a simple naturalistic and reactionary atheism (like Hitchins and Dawkins). Belief is not aufgehoben but rather not quite killed off, even though it is dead. It is muted, erased but surviving under erasure, like seeing Marley’s ghost even though Scrooge knows he is dead these twenty years; like a crossed out letter we can still read, oddly living on in a kind of spectral condition. Things are neither black nor white but shifting, spectral, incomplete. We have bid farewell to God, adieu to the good old God (à Dieu), farewell to the Big Other, Who Makes Everything Turn Out Right, Who Writes Straight with Crooked Lines, who maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Still, that negation of negation does not spell the simple death of belief but its positive mode in which belief, while dead, lives on (sur/vivre).”
Long may belief in unbelief live on!
Nic Paton said
Oh holy confusion, now doth thou reign supreme!
My favourite phrase here is that the negation of negation is “a negation deeper than a simple naturalistic and reactionary atheism.”
Thanks Mariuarse.
cobus said
I’ve been starting to read/listen Caputo/Zizek myself the past few weeks. And although I think this line of thinking have a long way to go, I find it valuable, it open my eyes to see some new possibilities of understanding.
Another South African theologian who I think might help us is Albert Nolan. Jesus Today p146: “For many of us the process of unlearning or unknowing our previous images of God might include a stage of atheism or at least a period of grappling with a de-personalized God. But as our search continues, and especially if we are learning from Jesus, we will come to experience God in personal terms. This will of course be very different from the childish images of a personal God some of us grew up with.”
Nic Paton said
Thanks Cobus – the more perspectives we can gain the better. The Nolan quote adds a great deal to this difficulat debate. Looking forward to seeing you next week.
Muzi – have you read Nolan?
Muzi Cindi said
I’m reminded of the man who said to Jesus: “Lord I believe! Help my unbelief!” I find Marius’ comments quite profound. Don Cupitts Book – Taking leave of God – is on the same line. Its only at the end of God that God beyond God emerges. Whatever we say about Jesus, let us not in any way diminish or compromise his humanity. I have a problem with a Jesus who is so highly exalted that he becomes an alien being that is not truly and fully human. The debate that lasted 500 years of the early church history has caught up with us again in the 21st century.
A Jesus who is irrelevant to me, the one who was not a truly human person, has known the weaknesses and temptations of being human, cannot be a saviour for me. It is only a Jesus who was truly man who can push forward the frontiers of the human spirit. This is the Jesus I call my Lord. God was truly met in this Jesus. God is truly met in ordinary human beings who walk in the ways of Jesus. For me, that human being can be anyone, including an atheist.
Nic – i’ve been told about Nolan and will get the book. We are meeting on monday with a few friends for a conversation on my book. We hold a ‘everything goes’ church meeting once a month where we tell our stories and the story behind them.
Don Rogers said
Muzi- I love this statement, “Its only at the end of God that God beyond God emerges”.
Cobus- I, too, find your statement all too familiar:
” “For many of us the process of unlearning or unknowing our previous images of God might include a stage of atheism or at least a period of grappling with a de-personalized God.”
I have been grappling with it for some time now, thinking that I have simply gone too, too hard. Now I understand better my process. Thank you.
Don Rogers said
That last statement should read: ” have been grappling with it for some time now, thinking that I have simply gone too, too far. Now I understand better my process.
Eljah Foiik said
There exist no straight lines in the universe.
The universe defies measurement.
You & I defy measurement.
God defies measurement.
Thank God for that!
The Mystery continues…
nic paton said
Eljah – interesting responses. If I join the dots between Muzis thesis and your response, I get a great synthesis – thanks!