I.Q.

Sometimes I think that we get dumber as our numbers grow -  that collective I.Q. is inversely proportional to the number of people in the group.  It has been said that we behave more intelligently, and morally, as individuals.  Congress springs to mind as an example of an ethically challenged, ignorant group.  

But I shouldn’t be so offhand in the matter.  Who elects members of Congress?  Whose values do these members of Congress reflect? I’ll repeat the remark made by Winston Churchill that people get the government they deserve.  

Isn’t government whatever structure that people tolerate, or are forced to tolerate, to order their communities?  Democracy is, in theory, a form of collective government and it isn’t working anymore in America, partly, I believe, because we’re ignorant, we’re deceived, and we’re unmotivated.  When voters send the message that they don’t care enough to be rational and informed in their actions, this is what we get.  Nobody is minding the store. 

Helpless?  Perhaps.  Hopeless?  Never, for spiritual people (on a good day!)  

I think that the solution is basics, that is, a focus on our own spiritual growth.  What intelligence anyone has, what money, whatever influence we can exert is really just control.  Instead, we must hear the common thread of Jesus’ message.  It’s a challenge to our worldly, controlling thinking and an invitation to enter into God’s World in a radical way that opposes “conventional wisdom.”  

Love Works

A bad start for Christmas - what’s the world coming to anyway?  

We were sitting in a sacred space for a concert.  Directly in front of us were pre-teen girls - two of them - with Tablets.  The bright screens shone in our eyes – thumbs flicking around, moving game characters.  God.  

I know.  I’m an old man.  These kids live in a different world.  Actually so does their mother.  This looked to be a long concert and both girls were going to be majorly bored.  I resigned myself to an evening of distracted misery.  Perhaps a move across the aisle…  

But the orchestra was done with tuning up.  The choir was marching up the risers.  Now the mom reached along the back of the pew and gave the daughter on her left a gentle pat on the shoulder.  The Tablets flashed off and disappeared and the evening’s surprises began.  

Sharp and bright brasses, booming percussion, fifty perfect human voices took us through two and a half hours of classic, Broadway, traditional Christmas, jazz and locally arranged numbers.  They had us itching to be on our feet at times: singing, applauding.  But time went more slowly for the girls.  Rapt attention alternated with restlessness, squirming, fussing.  

Their mom never lost her cool.  It’s like there was a feeling of mutual trust between that mother and her daughters.  A very quiet whisper in the ear, a little rub.  She’d brush their hair back.  Both of them would lean against her for a while and she’d put her arms around them. Her directives were never hostile or anxious, and their responses were always matter-of-fact and compliant on their own terms.  I couldn’t believe it.  

Not knowing what people’s whole lives are like, it’s still a blessing to see a small picture of love working.  This was Christmas more than anything else.  God is with us, offering to make bearable the boredom-to-brokenness in our lives and the horrors we see in the media every day.  It’s this good stuff that repeatedly wins over my heart, and my hope. 

We've Got It All Backwards

We’ve got it all backwards. 

I thought that one role of religion was to provide a moral compass.  Now I think I was wrong.  It’s probably more accurate to say that culture is less informed by religion than religion is informed by the culture.  

After all, providing a moral compass, as Jesus did, just got him killed.  

John Shelby Spong has stated that “theistic” religion is on the way out.  The facts of science, and increasing knowledge of human makeup are driving the last nails into the coffin of second-century religious thinking.  But my fears linger on for reasons Bishop Spong doesn’t seem to consider.  Science and love are both under attack.  We’re going through a rough spell.  

I now believe that monied interests work against science, and religion follows suit for its own reasons.  Big tobacco is against the medical community.  Big petroleum is against environmentalists.  The arms industry is against human behavorial science.  Billions are being spent on bribery, pseudo-science and misinformation and distributive justice is instantly attacked.  Religion has an interest in keeping things as they are, so the two walk a common path.  We shouldn’t be having to debate evolution or global warming.    

My only hope for myself is to persist in my journey and not let my faith become the servant of the culture.  After all these years I’m finally accepting the idea that religion has become the often-violent defender of the status-quo, and not a moral challenge to evil.  Our culture, our thinking, needs to change, and religion will follow, not the other way around.  I believe that the spirit of Christ lives free of both religion and culture, and lives powerfully in loving hearts.  It moves us onto a journey that’s both fearsome and full of joy.  

If we accept this, we are set on a path to change our internal image of God and who, or what, is God.  For me, it’s a wonderful and adventurous journey to new life in spite of the struggles and the fear that the old ways will die hard and with terror.

I begin with knowing now who God is not:  a tyrant prone to anger and violence, jealous, vindictive, male, manipulative, controlling, hateful, inconsistent, one who plays favorites, limited to location, desirous of flattery, invasive of nature, unmoved by progress, unable to learn.  

Then what is God?  God is present, always present, and God is the embodiment of love, the antithesis of greed.  That’s where I begin. Maybe that is all anyone needs because the products of this kind of trust will make a world so much different from what we have now.  I believe that’s where Jesus is taking people in spite of all the inaccuracies of scripture and tradition.  

The television evangelist holding that floppy, gold-trimmed Bible, the oil billionaires, politicians, bankers, who may be doing things of which I deeply disapprove, are still my spiritual family.  I only hope that someone loves them away from greed and control and all of us into the world that Jesus preached and visioned. 

Alarming

I’m alarmed right now.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but a familiar pattern seems to be emerging.  Here in America, people whose religious views are being questioned, or rejected, by increasing numbers are rumored to be working on a “power play” in which these views can be forced on others.  It seems to me that their agenda is aimed at the worldwide destruction of any religious or political entities that stand in opposition to their Christian fundamentalist views.  Most disturbing, this movement has over a billion dollars to throw at congress and at the media, and money talks.  (The Supreme Court says so.)  This group targets children, and people who are ignorant, desperate or otherwise vulnerable.  (See Truth Wins Out – Center Against Religious Extremism.)

What to do?  I, for one, certainly don’t have the resources of fundamentalist businessmen, nor can I raise that kind of money.  All I have to offer is an alternative that I believe is living Christianity today:  

Many old beliefs about God come out of ancient cultures and were useful for those people because the terms were fully understood. Others come from church politics benign, which clarified issues of ancient times, and some come from church politics malignant, intended to control or even destroy people.  Intermingled with this is the witness of scripture, assembled by a “committee” over two hundred years after the time of Jesus.  

Fundamentalists wish to ice all this down – to preserve it as perfection, especially scripture, in spite of the fact that there is no support in scripture itself for absolute descriptive terms such as “inerrant,” and “infallible.”  

The God I seek does not take the form of a male, sitting on a throne, out there somewhere.  God does not intervene in human affairs, including my own, at my behest, in violation of God’s own natural order, and in disregard of the consequences to nature and others around me.  (Lord, let our football team win and those other guys lose!)  There’s something better.  

I see people tiring of the nonsense and lies and leaving the church, still longing for some kind of relationship with some kind of God.  I hope the world population is gaining the intelligence, and more important, the heart to see God in today’s living terms and not frozen and dead.  It’s more than possible.  

I believe that Jesus launched the world toward this process, not by the mechanical “died-for-our-sins” dogma (not even known for about forty years after his death), but by giving his followers a glimpse of the very Spirit of God, a spirit that stayed with them through the centuries in spite of church politics and gross errors in thinking.  

For me now, God is here.  The Spirit of God is within me, within nature, and within all people whether they live it or not.  God’s “desire” is that we seek to recognize and live this truth, and not see God as judge/executioner and living in guilt, or as rescuer-at-our-bidding, protecting us from the pain, tragedies, heartbreak and injustices that happen to everyone.  

There are many implications to seeing God in today’s world.  There is so much more to this God than we could have ever imagined by artificially living in the ancient world.  My prayer life is changing dramatically.  I am increasingly living for now and loving people by not directing my energies toward an afterlife that leaves them out in this present world.  Christian ethics have an entirely different basis, not on obedience and control, but on love and the desire that people be whole, honest, authentic persons.  

I don’t have all the answers.  I “wrestle with God” over my own unresolved issues.  But this Spirit is here and it’s all I really need, absolutely.  

Scared?  Excited?  Good. 

God Had to Have A Sense of Humor

Returning from internship and reuniting with classmates for senior year at seminary was a time for telling tales of our experiences.  I don’t know how much they were embellished, or whether I even heard them accurately, but here are some I remember:   

One student hated dogs, and dogs reciprocated.  Worship was over and people were milling around and talking, and the intern, fully vested in his robes, started down the aisle for the front door when a bulldog appeared.  The intern turned and ran back up the aisle as best he could with those vestments, and jumped over a railing at the front of the sanctuary.  The dog went through the railing and managed to bite him on the leg before he could be rescued – didn’t break the skin and everyone was laughing.  

It was a hot summer’s day and no a/c in the old building, so the intern stripped to his boxers before putting on his vestments and, you guessed it, their elastic wasn’t up to the task and the boxers fell down around his ankles right there in front of God and everybody.  

Startled by the shots of an honor guard, one intern lost his footing and slipped part-way into an open grave.  

Factual or not, stories like this give me new perspective when I take myself too seriously.  I’m on a journey now over the meaning of an honest “God-concept” in today’s scientific world where old world-views and scriptural factuality are questioned.  But sometimes I think that God has to have a sense of humor and when I ponder spiritual things I need reminding that my vision is human and limited, and I hope I can laugh together with “the source of my being” when things get hilarious. 

Artificial Intelliegence

The human race will be finished, probably in the next century.  

So says Nick Bostrom of Oxford University as reported by Kathleen Miles in the Huffington Post.  If I understand Bostrom’s thesis correctly, the culprit is not going to be microscopic bacteria or viruses, but rather microscopic semi-conductors engineered by humans to produce AI, Artificial Intelligence.  

Artificial Intelligence fully developed produces Superintelligence, or the ability to do all the things the human brain can do, only far better and faster.  Then the next step is the obvious elimination of humans entirely since they would be unneeded and a burden.  

Bostrom states that the only solution to this problem is control of the development of AI.  In order to do this, everyone on the planet needs to be in accord and this won’t happen as long as human egos keep producing warfare and destructive governments and economic systems -- including predatory capitalism.  In other words, the human race needs to get its act together in order to face this and other threats to its existence.  Is this going to happen before AI is prematurely loosed on the planet for money and profit, or we fail to develop the technology to move an asteroid out of our orbit because we’re bombing each other?  

This is about the gospel, which works against “conventional wisdom” on so many levels.  Instead of focusing on survival, the gospel points us to the common good.  Instead of focusing on dominance, the gospel points us to service.  Instead of stirring the negativity of fear and anger and judgment, the gospel leads us to grace and trust in a loving God.  The gospel is not just relevant, it’s everything.  

I think we all need to get back into the fight: the fight to love others as much as we love ourselves, maybe more, and re-learn to love ourselves if that has been taken away.

Defense and Offense

How many people, when they are frightened, don’t do well loving others?  

If someone is seen as a threat to a person’s livelihood, pride, sense of honor, or life, isn’t the first response often to fight back?  Would the human race be killed off if we didn’t do this, and if that is true, then how does Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies work?  

I get the impression from reading Paul that he habitually and unwillingly did, or had to do, things that he knew offended nature and the will of God – this from a person deeply committed to the teachings of Jesus.  

It’s World War One and a German soldier is pinned down in a bomb crater with a French soldier who he has mortally wounded.  The French soldier can’t speak anymore, but is able to reach into his pocket and pull out a photograph of a woman and two children, his family.  It’s then that the German soldier realizes that he has killed another human being in defending his own life and it breaks his heart. 

I think we cross a line when we glorify “defense” over all else and use defense as an excuse to commit offense.  We’ve become morally lazy, and it’s easier to shoot through a closed door and kill the girl on the front porch who is begging for help in a dark and strange neighborhood, instead of speaking to her.  I would be more willing to call myself Christian were I to work harder at calming my own spirit, taking some risks, and persistently struggling with moral issues that, at first, seem to have no solution. 

Where My Heart Lies

He had tattoos on his face, not the gorgeous curves of the Maori tattoos that follow the contours of eye and jaw, but a crude and motley assortment, seemingly done without thought – jailhouse tattoos – a Celtic cross on one cheek, unbalanced by a larger pair of dice on the opposite temple.  

He caught me out in the open.  I couldn’t escape.  I was struggling to start the mower and he came, walking rapidly and talking a line I’d heard before – a story I couldn’t confirm and which didn’t really make sense.  His message: I’m a good guy.  I work and am willing to work more.  I have an emergency and can you help?  

When sis and I were about four and six, dad took us to town in his new ’53 Chevy to run some errands.  He parked on main street, fed the meter, and left the two of us to our own devices.  (I know, I know, but this was 1952.)  

Time passed and dad didn’t return.  Looking out the windshield, I noticed that the meter was running out.  I only knew that when a meter runs out bad things could happen and it had to do with the police.  I sort of panicked.  

We jumped out of the car.  I sent sis one direction and I went the other.  I entered stores and begged for some change, no luck until a shoe salesman gave me a nickel.  I fed the meter.  Dad returned and was annoyed at what we had done.  Oh well…

Now, this guy didn’t qualify.  He asked for a small loan.  I said I don’t loan money but I would give him something.  He’d probably done this to a hundred people or maybe not.  I didn’t care.  

Jesus, and a shoe salesman, taught me that it’s not about the merits of a beggar’s case, it’s about me the giver.  It’s about where my heart lies.  Whether my man was in the same position as a kid looking for a nickel or not didn’t matter.  I just wanted him to be. 

Our Civil War

The shooting death of Michael Brown, and now others being picked up by the media, has revisited feelings that the black community has known for generations and the rest of us have ignored.  From what I understand, the Brown incident began with two young men walking on the street and an officer ordering them to get up on the sidewalk.  

It’s so easy to decline into our primitive, superior, dominating attitudes.  It’s about people, feeling marginalized, stepping out into the street and making it their turf and coming up against an angry and perhaps frustrated police officer.  It’s one attitude pushing up against another attitude.  

I think we need to wake up and realize that we’re still fighting the Civil War, just on another level.  I think America has racism, lots of it, and we’ve been sticking our heads in the sand over the issue.  The civil war, an act of violence, produced winners and losers and nobody’s heart was changed.  Instead, the disease morphed into more subtle forms of hatred and pride.  Violence begets violence even if the moral victory is won.  

We’re not going to become a decent nation unless distributive justice is preached from pulpits, taught in classrooms, and embraced in our homes.  Kids don’t hate by nature.  They have to be taught.  We’re not going to have peace through war, but by getting out on the street and standing with the oppressed and by voting and demanding accountability from our leadership. We need to abandon our televisions and our games and get out into the real world where there’s work to be done.  Racism is evil, and yet both the perpetrators and the victims need to be loved for genuine peace to become reality. 

Human Behavior

Culture is the accumulated wisdom, art, and irrationality of a people, calcified into traditions that can’t be changed.  In a story reported this week by Reuters a woman has been forcibly removed from a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, by her family after she tested positive for the Ebola virus.  Too many people there distrust doctors but Ebola is contagious and carries a death rate of sixty to ninety percent and she’s now on the loose.  How many people have to die horribly from this disease before the learning curve overtakes the culture? 

Here in America our stuff has to be big and noisy and wasteful.  This is irrational, unless making an ego statement is rational.  And there’s a lot more that has developed into our present culture: Racism, Greed, Misogynism, Denial. 

And most, if not all, cultures are locked into compulsive human reproduction, even in the face of evidence that this habit we have may result in catastrophe.  I’m saying that cultural mores play a huge part in destructiveness and abuse and we, the human race, may be approaching a tipping point.  I think it’s highly unlikely that humans can change their collective thinking - their cultures - in time. 

Now enter religion.  Some folks want to say that God is going to intervene.  Jesus is coming back to rescue us and kill and torture the bad guys while the planet goes up in flames. 

I think it’s more likely that human behavior is going to result in a massive natural disaster causing a kill-off of billions of people.  Then we will say that God did it. 

Seven Reasons I Think America Is Just a Wannabe Nation

1.  Most Americans I have met who self-identify as Christians deny or ignore selected teachings of Jesus.  (i.e. Love your enemy.) 2.   I have a sense there is more interest in owning Jesus than following him.  Spiritual struggle, the bearing of one’s cross, is pushed aside in favor of spiritual “arrival,” where privilege trumps accountability. 3.  It seems that Americanized Christianity wants to rule, not serve.  Doesn’t this stand in direct opposition to Jesus’ desire for all his followers to be servants? 4. “Us” and “them” attitudes are fostered by too many people.  Jesus rebuked his disciples for wishing fire and brimstone on a village that rejected him.  I haven’t been seeing his accepting attitude enough. 5.   Is there a push by Christians in America to enshrine their religion with official government status and deny constitutional rights to other faiths?  How does this fit with Jesus supposedly saying, “My kingdom is not of this world.”6.   There seems to be a powerful interest in warfare and violence among Christians, who supposedly worship a man who was a victim of violence. 7.  Why do I have a problem with people who say they are “saving babies,” but who seem to relish killing adults? I have to admit that I have all of these inclinations myself.  We, the human race, are poxed with insecurities and aggression and lust for power.  Fear and hatred boil to the surface when we are stressed, and we are majorly stressed and divided right now.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just chill out, and see with new eyes the beautiful souls of all our sisters and brothers, just because everyone has come from the creative hand of God? 

Nobody listens to me.

Nobody listens to me. I just can’t make people understand what’s wrong with them! Let’s say that someone grievously offends me.  Let’s say that this someone was a serial killer who tortured and murdered innocent people. I feel hatred for this creep.  I have fantasies about what I would do with him if he were under my power.  It would be about doing to him what he did to others so he would know what it was like.  I imagine him begging for mercy and saying that he was sorry. But now that I’m older and more experienced with people I know that torturing the torturer or killing the killer may or may not bring some desired result.  Many criminals behave the way they do for deeper reasons than we understand and it isn’t likely that messing with them is going to move them in any significant way. There just isn’t going to be justice if justice is getting satisfaction for us.  Some criminals simply need to be locked away for the safety of society and nobody is going to change them with punishment. Even images in scripture depict this too-human desire for revenge and project it on God.  The gospel of Luke tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, depicting the rich man’s agony in burning hell.  I have little investment anymore in these images.  I think that God may have a better way, and if not God, then who? I wish I could remember the author who proposed this, but in my readings this theologian speculated that what’s best in terms of justice is for the offender to truly see the damage he or she has done, and the product of that vision would be deep and excruciating grief.  I think that it is an extremely rare case to accomplish this drastic change of thinking through human intervention. In his writings, Paul hints that in the life after this life, we will see things clearly, with vision no longer obstructed by our human failings, even malformed or damaged brains.  Wouldn’t this be a surprising truth even for criminals when “judgment” is that person’s judgment on himself? This is iffy for me too.  I’m not sure I want to see and have to deal with my own brokenness.  And yet, because God is love, I am also trusting that I will see the good part too, the parts of myself that I haven’t seen as beautiful or intelligent or loving.  All I can say is bring it on so I can see the real me because the real Lord of the universe will be standing with me. 

Judging or Loving?

Just for fun let’s say that the day arrives when human beings come to a collective notion: Fault-finding or judging is simply not a legitimate way to evaluate the things we do, or don’t do, as people.  For instance, locking up a serial killer until he’s fixed or dead makes sense for public safety but killing or torturing him is irrational.  In a society such as that, would religion be put out of business? Jesus was approached by a man who asked him to settle an inheritance dispute and Jesus not-so-graciously declined (Luke 12:13ff).  So if religion is not about morality us religious folks must be missing the point. And since Jesus refused the office of judge (and therefore the church at a later date was dead wrong in presenting him as a returning judge), then he must have taught something else. There is evidence in scripture supporting both sides of this debate but I’m coming down on the side of a non-judgmental Jesus because it goes against the grain of human nature and conventional wisdom.  Tough issues, puzzling metaphors, unanswered questions (i.e. the parable of the “good Samaritan” in which Jesus did definitely not answer the man’s question – Luke 10:29ff) all point to the Jesus who was out to change people, and the world, radically. Easy, pithy pronouncements don’t change people. I see Jesus moving, challenging, encouraging us to see God personally and intimately.  Doing so is life-changing and nurturing of love.  It’s creative and it blesses both the inner and outer person.  It’s salvation in the fullest sense.  He blessed both those who clung to him for hope and those who murdered him for fear.  It is not a wonder that, in spite of countless errors by his followers, his name is still lifted up worldwide by people who need not to be judged, but loved. 

God Spoke to Me

God spoke to me this week. Yes, in words that I could hear. It was a male voice so it had to be God.  He called me on the phone. I know it was God because the caller-I.D. showed “Yahweh, Inc.”  I didn’t pick up but he left a message. It was a pitch for supplemental medicare insurance coverage. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before, but it makes sense that God is a businessman.  After all, God knows everything so it would be logical that he could sell anything to anybody and get rich.  Who doesn’t trust God? And we all know that business is the most noble of enterprises and capitalism is endorsed by God as the most perfect of economic and political systems.  It says so in the Bible somewhere. I didn’t return the call and I didn’t buy any insurance from Yahweh, Inc.  I wonder, am I going to hell now? 

“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” H.L. Mencken

“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”  H.L. Mencken How much of the world’s unhappiness is driven by religious belief? The more I study, the more I understand that the corruption of the gospel began early, with the first generation after the death of Jesus.  There was fear that the movement would die – that Jesus would die – unless his followers got organized and took control.  In my view, at some point not long after the crucifixion, this lack of faith in the power of God and of the gospel got a grip on a frightened and insecure bunch of people.  For them survival became the goal instead of trust in God.  Survival included the tactic “the best defense is a good offense.”  This attitude won, politically, and in doing so lost the soul of the gospel. Christians, now identified as a group of people rather than as a belief, got used to being the powers-that-be.  They governed, taxed, waged war, and took steps to manage the thinking of the masses, steps that did not exclude imprisonment, torture and death. If evil has intelligence, this was brilliant.  It took the persecuted and powerless minority and morphed them into modeling the very persecutors from whom they had previously been hiding and fleeing.  The church dropped the ball and ran from the playing field. Now in the twenty-first century the church, claiming authority over science and human rights, is gaining political power in the promotion of ignorance and placing people at different levels of value.  Judgment is made, based on race, culture, sexuality, gender, and economic status. The gospel needs to be re-established.  Personal conviction and the gathering of communities based on this conviction needs to be nurtured.  Governance and authoritarianism should be shunned, for to subvert evil the gospel needs to stand on its own and not be institutionalized.  That requires trust in God.  Do we have it? 

Heaven and Hell

It’s been a year or two now, at a social gathering, an acquaintance took me aside and said, “I think I’m going to hell because I can’t forgive.” Whoa.  That’s a line-drive coming right at me.  How am I going to play it?  Here is a victim of heaven-and-hell religion speaking the most sincere and troublesome confession I’ve ever heard. There are images of judgment in scripture, but in my studies I have come to question whether a God who is presented in one place as the embodiment of love can in another place be the angry, torturing God of judgment.  I refuse to worship a God who has dual personalities. I proposed to my listener that he begin a journey with a God who just might have bigger ideas than we have, and who is not susceptible to the human weaknesses of anger and lust for revenge.  As for the Bible, it’s not inerrant but a witness like us.  The Bible is tainted with the human weaknesses of its writers and redactors.   I suggested that he take his time to forgive individually those who had offended him.  Were he to die before completion, perhaps this larger God would see a work in progress as a work completed.  He said, “Honestly, I’ve forgiven everyone.  I just can’t forgive myself.” Then he said, “Maybe, by letting God do the forgiving, I can learn again to love myself, and forgive myself.” Is that what I said?  I’m not sure.  But that’s what he heard, and probably because it’s what he desperately needed to hear. And the idea that the God of love can first love, even before we can love ourselves, is a reminder that we do not control the process of our salvation so much as recognize what already is. 

I'm a Male

I’m a card-carrying, dues-paying, chrome-plated member of the most destructive culture on the planet: I’m a male. Who is most likely to start a war?  Who is most likely to commit rape, murder or assault?  Who is most often on the internet hacking passwords and writing destructive viruses for fun and profit?  Who must possess women or slaves?  Who is it who most often tortures people and ruins lives for political gain, cultural tradition or religious dogma?  It’s us, the males. Who is it who is too stupid to see that the weapons industry is stoking our masculinity and propensity for violence so they can bank billions of dollars in sales?  It’s us, the males. I’m not saying that women can’t be criminals too.  I’m just saying that men are better at it, perhaps because at this time we’re the dominant gender. (“Worst case of testosterone poisoning I’ve ever seen.” Claudia Christian’s character, referring to a ship’s captain heading for disaster in an episode of Babylon 5.)If I were the television-evangelist type I would say that God is going to “come down here” and strike down all the out-of-control males.  But I don’t believe that God is an interventionist.  I don’t think that God is inclined to break God’s own laws of natural order so that I can have some kind of personal satisfaction or relief.  Instead, I think there are natural consequences, which I like to call the flow of God’s will, for our actions. If the man-culture has its way the planet is going to become a smoking ruin – and in fact it is many male religious leaders who are most out front, saying that just this thing is God’s will. Not so.  I believe that God’s will is echoed by Jesus’ call to repentance, a call also of John the Baptist, and all the prophets before who demanded that we change our way of thinking and strive for restorative justice instead of retribution, and the giving of self ahead of the preservation of self. I don’t believe that we become stronger by taking from others and decimating creation.  I think instead, that the community and the planet become stronger when we give of ourselves, and become part of a healthier, more spiritual, culture.  Make it so. 

Thin Places

It’s only been five years or so that I’ve been consistently fed spiritually in a Christian congregation - not just incidentally, but consistently.  I’ve experienced lots of good sermons, lots of thoughtful discussions.  Challenges and conflicts have become opportunities for growth. One subject has been brought up more than once and it comes out of Celtic spirituality, which defines what it calls “thin places.”  Thin places are locations in space or time where the barrier between a person and God is “thin,” and she or he is suddenly and unexpectedly granted a view.  I’ve read about this from Christian theologians and I heard it again recently in a sermon. It’s an experience sometimes described as an “overwhelming rush of love out of nowhere,” and it most often happens to children.  Never solicited, it is soft, bright, and powerful.  It happened to me twice and those incidents left permanent memories, memories to which I frequently return.  They have defined the personhood of my Higher Power and left me with a powerful hope. And I miss them.  It’s been a long time. One explanation for the lack of this experience for adults is our tendency, as we age, to take on innumerable distractions. We also indulge ourselves in prejuduce that makes life easier and sadly, cheaper.  Prejudice shuts out the open heart that is necessary to be close to the Creator.  If that is true then we are inclined to deteriorate spiritually as we age. But I wonder if there may be another possibility.  We all need love, but perhaps different manifestations of it as we age. Closeness, warmth, physical and spiritual bonding are universal for all ages, but as we grow in knowledge and wisdom perhaps God is expecting us to exercise our adult powers in showing that love to others.  Perhaps in the inspiration we exercise in our words, our art and music, our craft, our actions, we are dispensing that same pure love we may have experienced as children and in the very act of giving, we receive. 

It's okay to question

A buddy of mine was brought up out in the woods, literally, he and his siblings.  The family’s attitude was, “If you don’t finish school or have a good job you’re not going to die.”  That went along with, “If you don’t have sex you’re not going to die.” But you’re not really going to live either. There’s nothing wrong with hunting and gardening to put food on the table.  In fact, it’s a lot healthier than the way most of us feed ourselves these days.  But I question the attitude that intellectual curiosity and spiritual growth are “optional.” When Jesus spoke of the “bread of life” he wasn’t talking about pumpernickel.  He was speaking of living a spiritual life, a life that is connected intimately with our individual understanding of God.  Just as our love for parents or partner grows and changes over time, morphs like the patterns of a kaleidoscope, so too our love and understanding of our creator should develop from new knowledge and new interpretation. Sometimes this life-journey is like work, sometimes it seems almost life-threatening.  But overall it should be pure joy, and we will have life in it.  I think the human soul wants this, and without it loses spirit just like we lose physical energy when we are starving.  It’s okay to question.  It’s okay to speak out our doubts and fears.  That’s how we make room for the shy God who is out there.

Imagination and Faith

Imagination and faith are dancing partners and I think there’s some confusion about which of them is to lead. We all like certainty.  We all like to be in the position of “having arrived.”  Of course spiritually this is a figment of our imaginations.  It is spiritual laziness and a reluctance to pick up our crosses and follow Jesus.  I just don’t think there’s any religious position a person can take that exempts us from spiritual growth, including, and especially, the religious ritual of “being saved.” “Being saved,” does nothing but license a person to sit at leisure in false certainties, in his or her own imagination.  It inclines people to look out at others who are struggling or exploring with God as condemned sinners.  It provides an excuse to suppress fact and the pursuit of facts that may confront the false certainties.  Witness recent efforts at legislation to restrict scientific inquiry for political or religious reasons. My imagination is something I recognize for what it is, that is, imagination.  It is my vision of how things should or could be.  But there is no guarantee that the fruits of my imagination are a good thing since I’m inclined to be lazy, self-serving and a pleasure-seeker. Faith, on the other hand, is trust.  It’s trusting that someone outside myself, a Higher Power, knows better and is better disposed toward my life and health.  Faith allows, actually requires, that I trust another entity, and am dependent on that entity for life itself.  Faith opens the door to learning from the very embodiment of love. Trusting God then, I can use my imagination to envision a better world.  And it’s ironic, it seems, that visions sometimes have a way of becoming reality.