The Mystic Christian Reader

The Full Text of Benedict's Speech

2006-09-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Here's the full text of Pope Benedict's lecture against religious violence. I thought it would be good to repost it here. While it quite easy to find his "anti-Islam" quote reposted and reposted throughout the web and the mass media, I found the transcript of the actual lecture quite a challenge to bring up in Google. I had to type in a very specific search chain "mohammed pope speech transcript", and even then, the actual transcript was the fourth hit on the page. If this lecture seems a bit dry and intellectual, rather than the religious diatribe you were expecting, don't be surprised. The speech was given to theologians at the University of Regensburg. It wasn't really meant for mass consumption, and that's why, I think, it's been taken the way it has.

Anyhow, Here it is (from Chiesa online):

------------------------------------------------
The Best of Greek Thought Is “An Integral Part of Christian Faith”
The complete text of the lecture given by the pope on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 12, 2006, in the main hall of the University of Regensburg
by Pope Benedict XVI

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is a moving experience for me to stand and give a lecture at this university podium once again. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. This was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a “dies academicus,” when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas: the reality that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason – this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the “universitas scientiarum”, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the "three Laws": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation-controversy, edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threaten. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the 'logos'". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with “logos.” “Logos” means both reason and word – a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the “logos,” and the “logos” is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) – this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and declares simply that he is, is already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates’ attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense perhaps less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with 'logos'" is contrary to God’s nature.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God’s “voluntas ordinata.” Beyond this is the realm of God’s freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV). God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as “logos” and, as “logos,” has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is “logos.” Consequently, Christian worship is “spiritual” worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history – it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity – a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.

Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the fundamental postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of “sola Scriptura,” on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.

The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal’s distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue. I will not repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack’s central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. The fundamental goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant’s "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature’s capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

We shall return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science" and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably (with 'logos') is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great “logos,” to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Does the Pope have a right to criticize jihad?

2006-09-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

For the last couple days, I've been overhearing things on the news about Pope Benedicts' "insensitive" remarks about the Islamic teaching of Holy War. Pope Benedict was quoting Emperor Manual II Paleologos, the 14th century emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Here is the offending comment:
"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the
Pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he preached'."

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," the pope also said in his speech, calling on different cultures to engage in dialogue.
Certain Islamic political leaders have demanded a personal appology from Benedict, and Morrocco has actually withdrawn its embassador to the Vatican. My question is this: Does the pope have some political requirement to be politically correct? I personally believe that Jesus was a teacher of Unity, a teacher that we are all Children of God... But, does the pope have to teach this? The Vatican has been scrambling to downplay the comment, saying that the pope was pointing to the wrongness of Holy War, that God would never demand violence of his children, no matter what a prophet might say. They've also been saying that the Pope respects the people of the islamic faith. But, does he HAVE to?

I personally believe in the "one heart" of all true lovers of God. I believe that there is One God, and that there have been MANY true prophets over the course of human history. Each of those come at a certain time, with a certain message, and that message is tailored to that specific time and place. While I have found Jesus' teachings to resonate with me the most deeply, I cannot recomend them to all. MANY people have read the Bible and found within it the command to kill in God's name, just as some have done with the Qu'aran. Past popes are within that group. That there is now a Supreme Pontiff at the healm speaking out against violence says much about the evolution of Western Culture.

But, this doesn't mean that Benedict believes a word of my interpretation of scripture. The Catholic Church... EVERY Christian church in modern times, actually... teaches that Jesus is the doorway to heaven. "I am The Way, The Truth, and The Life. No one comes to the Father but through Me" If Benedict really believes that literally, why should he be expected to teach something different? Why should he be expected to teach that Mohammed was a great guy, when The Prophet single-handedly created a movement that destroyed Christianity's influence in the middle east in the late 600's? Wouldn't this be like the President of the United States being expected to say what a great and peaceful leader Jefferson Davis was? I don't agree that Mohammed was evil, because I've read the teachings of the Sufi Masters, and if that is the fruits of true devotion to the path of Mohammed, then Mohammed MUST have had his Spiritual ducks in a row.

But I'll come out and say it too: Holy War is stupid. God doesn't want us killing each other. Screw PC'ness and respecting everyone's religion for a moment. Jihad, as it is preached by Islamic Extremists, is so obviously against God's will that it doesn't take someone even remotly as holy as the pope to see it.

My number 1 point, however, is this: Why is everyone acting so surprised that the Pope would be saying that other religions aren't as good as Christianity? Isn't that his damn job? It's like being surprised that the Michigan Militia is against open borders. For most of the time, my beliefs are pretty PC, but I don't get surprised when other people aren't, and I don't hold them up to some kind of standard that's against their true nature or that contradicts their job description. News flash, international community: The Pope Likes Jesus better than Mohammed... What a scoop! And remember, you heard it here first on The Mystic Christian Reader!

Insight from Bishop Spong on Theism

2006-08-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Matthew Baugh from the Internet writes:
"I've wondered for a while about the definition of theism and its implications. There seem to be three central points you use most often. The God of theism is 1) external, 2) supernatural, 3) intervenes in human lives. Does this statement imply that God is the opposite of these three things?

Much of what you write suggests that this is clearly true of point 3. You present God as not intervening and not capable of intervening. The opposite of point 2 would seem to be that God is natural. Is this a correct assumption and, if so, how do you see God as manifest in the natural world? The opposite of point 1 would seem to be that God is internal.

I'm very aware that I might be reading too much into your words but the sense I get is that you suggest that God is internal to human experience. This seems to fit with some modern brain research that suggests that human beings are "hard-wired" to believe in some higher power and to worship it. This research suggests that belief in God is a natural part of being human rather than a social construct imposed from without.

Is this the non-theistic understanding of God? Internal, natural (thought not manifest outside of human consciousness) and unable to intervene in the world (except perhaps through God's effects on the consciousness of each believer?"

Dear Matthew,

Thank you for your penetrating and perceptive letter that gives me an opportunity to think publicly once more about the meaning of the word "God" in human experience.

Let me begin by making a distinction. I try not to talk about the "God of theism." I regard theism as a human definition of God. It is not who or what God is. Theism is a human attempt to describe a God experience in pre-modern language. Prior to Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, people inevitably thought of God as a supernatural presence over the natural world.

Before Isaac Newton, they thought of God as setting aside the laws of the universe to do miracles or to answer prayers. Before Darwin and Freud, they thought of God as the external creator and portrayed God as a heavenly parent. Prior to Einstein, they assumed that these perceptions were objectively true and not subject to the relativity in which all human thought dwells since both the time in which we live and the space we occupy are relative, not absolute. So when I dismiss theism, I am not dismissing God. I am dismissing one human image of God that sought to define a human experience of the divine.

To suggest that if theism is not true then the opposite of theism is true is to make the same mistake. Every human attempt to define God is nothing more than a human attempt to define the human experience of the divine. We can never tell who God is or who God is not. We can only tell another of what we believe our experience of God has been. Even then we have to face the possibility that all of our God talk may be delusional.

When I try to talk of God, I am only talking of my God experience. That is not what God is, that is only what I believe my experience of God to be.

I do not experience God as a supernatural power, external to life invading my world in supernatural power. I see no evidence to think this definition is real. The problem is that most people have most deeply identified this definition of God with God that when this definition dies the victim of expanded knowledge, we think that God has died.

I am not trying to form a new definition. I am only trying to share an experience. In my human self-consciousness at both the depth of life and on the edges of consciousness, I believe I encounter a transcendent other. In that encounter, I experience expanded life, the increased ability to love and a new dimension of what it means to be. I call that experience God and that experience leads me to say that if I meet God in expanded life, God becomes for me the source of life. If I meet God in the enhanced ability to love, God becomes for me the source of love. If I meet God in an increased ability to be all that I am, God becomes for me the ground of being.

I can talk about my experience. Having only a human means of communication I cannot really talk about God. Horses can experience a human being entering their horse consciousness, but a horse could never tell another horse what it means to be human. Somehow human beings have never quite embraced that fact that this is also true about the human being's knowledge of God.

I do not know how God acts therefore I can never say how God acts. For me to say God is unable to intervene would be to say more than I know. For me to explain how God intervenes or why God does not intervene is to claim knowledge of God that is not mine.

I test my experience daily in the light of evolving human language. The result of that is that every day I believe in God more deeply, while at the same time, every day I seem to have less and less beliefs about God. Human beings seem almost incapable of embracing mystery, especially ultimate mystery. I am content to walk daily with the mystery of God. I walk past road maps, past religious systems, even my own but never beyond the mystery of God. I suppose that makes me a mystic, but an uncomfortable, never satisfied, always-evolving one.

I find great meaning and great power in this approach. I commend it to you. Thank you for your superb letter.

-- John Shelby Spong

Bishop Spong on "Why Jesus Died"

2006-08-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Don Peacock from the Internet writes:
In your answer of May 10, 2006, you wrote, 'I see Christianity at its heart as deeply humanistic. The core doctrines of the Christian faith suggest that God is revealed through a human life...so I see secular humanism as the residual remains of Christianity once the supernatural elements have been removed.' In the next paragraph, you say you do not think 'the supernatural understanding of God is essential to Christianity.'

In your answer of May 3, 2006, you reject 'the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice required by God to overcome the sins of the world' as making God 'barbaric' and 'Jesus the victim of a sadistic deity.' This 'deeply violates the essential note of the Gospel, which is that God is love calling us to love' and is not 'found in the pious but destructive phrase, "Jesus died for my sins."'

My question is: If Jesus did not die on the cross to atone for humanity's sins, why did he have to die to bring us the message that 'God is love, calling us to love'? "

Dear Don,
First, let me say that you have rightly summarized my thinking, for which I am grateful. Second, this understanding does challenge the traditional understanding of the cross as the place where the price of our redemption was paid and leaves many people with a gaping vacuum at the center of their understanding of Christianity. You have articulated that well.

I believe what you need to do is to free yourself of the theistic God who lives above the sky and who guides human history to accomplish the divine will. That mentality forces us to find purpose in everything. Locked into this view of God, the early Christians sought to find purpose in the cross. That is how we got substitutionary theories of the atonement and began to view the cross through the lens of the sacrificial Day of Atonement that the Jews called Yom Kippur. In the liturgy of Yom Kippur a perfect Lamb of God was slain. Its blood spread on the mercy seat of the Holy of Holies that was thought of as God's place of occupation. Therefore, to come to God, people had to come through the blood of the lamb. Then a second animal was brought out and the priest began to confess the sins of the people. As the priest confessed, the sins of the people were thought to leave the people and land on the back and head of this animal. Then burdened with the sins of the people, this animal was driven into the wilderness. The sin bearer (called 'the scape goat') thus carried the sins of the people away. Both the sacrificial lamb and the sin-bearing goat became symbols by which Jesus was understood. In our liturgies today, we still say "O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

If that understanding is removed from the cross, as I believe it must be, then questions like 'What is the meaning of the cross?' and 'Why did Jesus die?' become perennial questions. Take purpose out of them and what is left is a picture of a free man – whole, complete, with his life being taken cruelly from him. In the portrait painted in the gospels of the cross, the dying Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness to the soldiers who drive the nails. He speaks a word of encouragement to the thief who is portrayed as penitent. He speaks a word of comfort to his mother in her bereavement. Whether these are historical memories or not is not important to me and I do not think any of them literally happened. They are, however, expressions of the corporate memory of Jesus. Here was a life being put to death unjustly but instead of clinging to his fleeting existence, he is still giving life away. That is a picture of a new level of human consciousness. The cross reveals for me the infinite love of God calling the world and me to a new humanity, calling us beyond survival toward the deepest secrets of transcendence. That is what the cross means to me and it moves me deeply.

I hope this helps you.

-- John Shelby Spong

Insight from Bishop John Shelby Spong

2006-07-26T21:59:00.000-07:00

This week's Q and A from Bishop Spong:

Bob Waldo from the Internet writes:
"Why not refer readers both Christian/Church alumni/and non-Christian readers to the recent publication of James Robinson's "The Gospel of Jesus." It is a very well written account of how the New Testament came to be but is most effective in isolating the meat of the coco, his account of Jesus' own gospel as opposed to that of Paul and Rome. He paints a picture of what I truly believe the man Jesus was about that can only be described as "awesome!" But mostly he points me, a retired minister, to the tremendously exciting truth I could have been preaching...but sadly, I just didn't know."

Dear Bob,

I am happy to recommend James Robinson's book along with many others. Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" and "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time." Robert Fink's "Honest to Jesus," perhaps even my own book, "This Hebrew Lord" may be helpful to others.

The sad truth is that the scholarship present in the Christian Academy for at least 200 years has not been shared with the people sitting in the pews. This conspiracy of silence has been carried out quite consciously for fear that these biblical insights might destroy the faith of lay people and make the minister's task more difficult. I have always believed that any god who can be destroyed ought to be destroyed. If one's faith has to be protected from truth, it has already died.

If the clergy would accept the fact that lay people are not dumb sheep who cannot learn and stop insulting their intelligence with the theological drivel, masquerading as a sermon, and would take their educational task seriously, there might be some excitement in the Christian Church.
Instead we are offered a choice between hysterical fundamentalism and vapid liberalism. In my opinion both are dead end streets. There is a hunger in the church for truth, not illusion; for education, not propaganda; for the honoring of our questions rather than the pretense that the clergy have all the answers; for a journey into the mystery of God, not the memorization of creedal formulas.

Across America and Canada and perhaps the world, there are some local churches awakening to these possibilities and the response is heartening.
It takes courage to risk. However, the alternative is to die or to try to put a face-lift on the corpse of yesterday's religious system.

For you to recognize this, even in retirement, is a beautiful thing.

-- John Shelby Spong

Amazing rainbow photos

2006-05-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

There are few things more awe-inspiring in the natural world than a rainbow. My father, grandfather, and I were on a trip to Northern Minnesota once, when we witnessed a full double rainbow arching across the sky after a rainstorm. It was an amazing event, and one that renewed my trust in God's presence in the natural world. A friend sent me a link to some amazing rainbow photos on the missouri skys website. Check them out:

Rainbows from Feb. 2, 2006

Article worth a read

2006-05-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

Here's an article from Salon.com which is well worth a reading:

"Going Beyond God" An interview with former Catholic Nun Karen Armstrong by Steve Paulson

============================

Going beyond God

Historian and former nun Karen Armstrong says the afterlife is a "red herring," hating religion is a pathology and that many Westerners cling to infantile ideas of God.

By Steve Paulson

May. 30, 2006 Karen Armstrong is a one-woman publishing industry, the author of nearly 20 books on religion. When her breakthrough book "A History of God" appeared in 1993, this British writer quickly became known as one of the world's leading historians of spiritual matters. Her work displays a wide-ranging knowledge of religious traditions -- from the monotheistic religions to Buddhism. What's most remarkable is how she carved out this career for herself after rejecting a life in the church.

At 17, Armstrong became a Catholic nun. She left the convent after seven years of torment. "I had failed to make a gift of myself to God," she wrote in her recent memoir, "The Spiral Staircase." While she despaired over never managing to feel the presence of God, Armstrong also bristled at the restrictive life imposed by the convent, which she described in her first book, "Through the Narrow Gate." When she left in 1969, she had never heard of the Beatles or the Vietnam War, and she'd lost her faith in God.

Armstrong went on to work in British television, where she became a well-known secular commentator on religion. Then something strange happened. After a TV project fell apart, she rediscovered religion while working on two books, "A History of God" and a biography of Mohammed. Her study of sacred texts finally gave her the appreciation of religion she had longed for -- not religion as a system of belief, but as a gateway into a world of mystery and the ineffable. "Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet" also made her one of Europe's most prominent defenders of Islam.

Armstrong now calls herself a "freelance monotheist." It's easy to understand her appeal in today's world of spiritual seekers. As an ex-nun, she resonates with people who've fallen out with organized religion. Armstrong has little patience for literal readings of the Bible, but argues that sacred texts yield profound insights if we read them as myth and poetry. She's especially drawn to the mystical tradition, which -- in her view -- has often been distorted by institutionalized religion. While her books have made her enormously popular, it isn't surprising that she's also managed to raise the ire of both Christian fundamentalists and atheists.
In her recent book, "The Great Transformation," Armstrong writes about the religions that emerged during the "Axial Age," a phrase coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. This is the era when many great sages appeared, including the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah and the mystics of the Upanishads. I interviewed Armstrong in the middle of her grueling American book tour. She dislikes flying in small airplanes, so her publisher hired a car service to drive her from Minnesota to Wisconsin, where I spoke with her before she met with a church group. When she got out of her car, I was greeted by a rather short and intense woman, somewhat frazzled by last-minute interview requests. But once settled, her passion for religion came pouring out. She was full of surprises. Armstrong dismissed the afterlife as insignificant, and drew some intriguing analogies: Just as there's good and bad sex and art, there's good and bad religion. Religion, she says, is hard work.

Why are you so interested in the Axial Age?

Because it was the pivot, or the axis, around which the future spiritual development of humanity has revolved. We've never gone beyond these original insights. And they have so much to tell us today because very often in our religious institutions we are producing exactly the kind of religiosity that people such as the Buddha wanted to get rid of. While I was researching this book, they seemed to be talking directly to us in our own troubled time.

What religions emerged during the Axial Age?

From about 900 to 200 BCE, the traditions that have continued to nourish humanity either came into being or had their roots in four distinct regions of the world. So you had Confucianism and Taoism in China; Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece.

You're saying all these different religions developed independently of each other. But there was a common message that emerged roughly around the same time.

Yes. Without any collusion, they all came up with a remarkably similar solution to the spiritual ills of humanity. Before the Axial Age, religions had been very different. They had been based largely on external rituals which gave people intimations of greatness. But there was no disciplined introspection before the Axial Age. The Axial sages discovered the inner world. And religions became much more spiritualized because humanity had taken a leap forward. People were creating much larger empires and kingdoms than ever before. A market economy was in its very early stages. That meant the old, rather parochial visions were no longer adequate. And these regions were torn apart by an unprecedented crescendo of violence. In every single case, the catalyst for religious change had been a revulsion against violence.

So what was the spiritual message that rejected violence?

First of all, they all insisted that you must give up and abandon your ego. The sages said the root cause of suffering lay in our desperate concern with self, which often needs to destroy others in order to preserve itself. And so they insisted that if we stepped outside the ego, then we would encounter what we call Brahman or God, nirvana or the Tao.

You say one of the common messages in all these religions was what we now call the Golden Rule. And Confucius was probably the first person who came up with this idea.

All these sages, with the exception of the Greeks, posited a counter-ideology to the violence of their time. The safest way to get rid of egotism was by means of compassion. The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. His disciples asked him, "What is the single thread that runs through all your teaching and pulls it all together?" And Confucius said, "Look into your own heart. Discover what it is that gives you pain. And then refuse to inflict that pain on anybody else." His disciples also asked, "Master, which one of your teachings can we put into practice every day?" And Confucius said, "Do not do to others as you would not have them do to you." The Buddha had his version of the Golden Rule. Jesus taught it much later. And Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said the Golden Rule was the essence of Judaism.

Now, there is the question of whether all of these were actually religions. I mean, the philosophies of the ancient Greeks -- Socrates and Plato -- were not religious at all. Buddhism is essentially a philosophy of mind. And I suppose you could see Confucianism as essentially a system of ethics.

That's a very chauvinistic Western view, if I may say so. You're saying this is what we regard as religion, and anything that doesn't measure up to that isn't. I think a Buddhist or a Confucian would be very offended to hear that he or she was not practicing a religion.

Well, explain that. What is religion?

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. The sages were all extremely concerned with transcendence, with going beyond the self and discovering a realm, a reality, that could not be defined in words. Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God.

That's fascinating. So in Buddhism, which is nontheistic, the message or the experience of nirvana is the same as the Christian God?

The experience is the same. The trouble is that we define our God too closely. In my book "A History of God," I pointed out that the most eminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you couldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being. It was better to say that God did not exist because our notion of existence was far too limited to apply to God.

Didn't a lot of people say God is beyond language? We could only experience the glimmer of God.

That's what the Buddha said. You can't define nirvana, you can't say what it is. The Buddha also said you could craft a new kind of human being in touch with transcendence. He was once asked by a Brahman priest who passed him in contemplation and was absolutely mesmerized by this man sitting in utter serenity. He said, "Are you a god, sir? Are you an angel or a spirit?" And the Buddha said, "No, I'm awake." His disciplined lifestyle had activated parts of his humanity that ordinarily lie dormant. But anybody could do it if they trained hard enough. The Buddhists and the Confucians and the greatest monotheistic mystics did with their minds and hearts what gymnasts and dancers do with their bodies.

You're saying these ancient sages really didn't care about big metaphysical systems. They didn't care about theology.

No, none of them did. And neither did Jesus. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. In the Quran, metaphysical speculation is regarded as self-indulgent guesswork. And it makes people, the Quran says, quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian. You can't prove these things one way or the other, so why quarrel about it? The Taoists said this kind of speculation where people pompously hold forth about their opinions was egotism. And when you're faced with the ineffable and the indescribable, they would say it's belittling to cut it down to size. Sometimes, I think the way monotheists talk about God is unreligious.

Unreligious? Like talk about a personal God?

Yes, people very often talk about him as a kind of acquaintance, whom they can second-guess. People will say God loves that, God wills that, and God despises the other. And very often, the opinions of the deity are made to coincide exactly with those of the speaker.
Yet we certainly see a personal God in various sacred texts. People aren't just making that up.
No, but the great theologians in Judaism, Christianity and Islam say you begin with the idea of a god who is personal. But God transcends personality as God transcends every other human characteristic, such as gender. If we get stuck there, this is very immature. Very often people hear about God at about the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. And their ideas about Santa Claus mature and change in time, but their idea of God remains infantile.

What about the supernatural, though? Do you need any sense of the miraculous or of things that cannot be explained by science?

I think religions hold us in an attitude of awe and wonder. People such as the Buddha thought miracles were rather vulgar -- you know, displays of power and ego. If you look at the healing miracles attributed to Jesus, they generally had some kind of symbolic aspect about healing the soul rather than showing off a supernatural power. Western people think the supernatural is the essence of religion, but that's rather like the idea of an external god. That's a minority view worldwide. I really get so distressed on behalf of Buddhists and Confucians and Hindus to have a few Western philosophers loftily dismissing their religion as not religious because it doesn't conform to Western norms. It seems the height of parochialism.

I think these questions are tremendously important now because more and more people, especially those with a scientific bent, say we don't need religion anymore. Science has replaced religion. You know, religion used to explain all kinds of things about the world. But science for the most part does that now. And people who are not religious say they can be just as morally upright.

They can. I fully endorse that. I don't think you need to believe in an external god to obey the Golden Rule. In the Axial Age, when people started to concentrate too much on what they're transcending to -- that is, God -- and neglected what they're transcending from -- their greed, pompous egotism, cruelty -- then they lost the plot, religiously. That's why God is a difficult religious concept. I think God is often used by religious people to give egotism a sacred seal of divine approval, rather than to take you beyond the ego.

As for scientists, they can explain a tremendous amount. But they can't talk about meaning so much. If your child dies, or you witness a terrible natural catastrophe such as Hurricane Katrina, you want to have a scientific explanation of it. But that's not all human beings need. We are beings who fall very easily into despair because we're meaning-seeking creatures. And if things don't add up in some way, we can become crippled by our despondency.

So would you say religion addresses those questions through the stories and myths?

Yes. In the pre-modern world, there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato, for example, called them mythos and logos. Myth and reason or science. We've always needed both of them. It was very important in the pre-modern world to realize these two things, myth and science, were complementary. One didn't cancel the other out.

Well, what do you say to the scientists, especially the Darwinists -- Richard Dawkins would be the obvious case -- who are quite angry about religion? They say religion is the root of much evil in the world. Wars are fought and fueled by religion. And now that we're in the 21st century, they say it's time that science replace religion.

I don't think it will. In the scientific age, we've seen a massive religious revival everywhere but Europe. And some of these people -- not all, by any means -- seem to be secular fundamentalists. They have as bigoted a view of religion as some religious fundamentalists have of secularism. We have too much dogmatism at the moment. Take Richard Dawkins, for example. He did a couple of religious programs that I was fortunate enough to miss. It was a very, very one-sided view.

Well, he hates religion.

Yeah, this is not what the Buddha would call skillful. If you're consumed by hatred -- Freud was rather the same -- then this is souring your personality and clouding your vision. What you need to do is to look appraisingly and calmly on other traditions. Because when you hate religion, it's also very easy to hate the people who practice it.

This does raise the question, though, of how to read the sacred scriptures.

Indeed.

Because there are all kinds of inflammatory things that are said. For instance, many passages in both the Bible and the Quran exhort the faithful to kill the infidels. Sam Harris, in his book "The End of Faith," has seven very densely packed pages of nothing but quotations from the Quran with just this message. "God's curse be upon the infidels"; "slay them wherever you find them"; "fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it." And Sam Harris' point is that the Muslim suicide bombings are not the aberration of Islam. They are the message of Islam.

Well, that's simply not true. He's taken parts of those texts and omitted their conclusions, which say fighting is hateful for you. You have to do it if you're attacked, as Mohammed was being attacked at the time when that verse was revealed. But forgiveness is better for you. Peace is better. But when we're living in a violent society, our religion becomes violent, too. Religion gets sucked in and becomes part of the problem. But to isolate these texts as though they expressed the whole of the tradition is very mischievous and dangerous at this time when we are in danger of polarizing people on both sides. And this kind of inflammatory talk, say about Islam, is convincing Muslims all over the world who are not extremists that the West is incurably Islamophobic and will never respect their traditions. I think it's irresponsible at this time.

But many people would say you can't just pick out the peaceful and loving passages of the sacred scriptures. There are plenty of other passages that are frightening.

I would say there are more passages in the Bible than the Quran that are dedicated to violence. I think what all religious people ought to do is to look at their own sacred traditions. Not just point a finger at somebody else's, but our own. Christians should look long and hard at the Book of Revelation. And they should look at those passages in the Pentateuch that speak of the destruction of the enemy. They should make a serious study of these. And let's not forget that in its short history, secularism has had some catastrophes.

Certainly, the major tragedies of the 20th century were committed by secularists -- Stalin, Hitler, Mao.

And Saddam Hussein, a secularist supported by us in the West for 10 years, even when he gassed the Kurds. We supported him because he was a secularist. If people are resistant to secularism in Iraq now, it's because their most recent experience of it was Saddam. So this kind of chauvinism that says secularism is right, religion is all bunk -- this is one-sided and I think basically egotistic. People are saying my opinion is right and everybody else's is wrong. It gets you riled up. It gives you a sense of holy righteousness, where you feel frightfully pleased with yourself when you're sounding off, and you get a glorious buzz about it. But I don't see this as helpful to humanity. And when you suppress religion and try and get rid of it, then it's likely to take unhealthy forms.

That's when fundamentalism starts to appear.

Yes, because fundamentalism has developed in every single one of the major traditions as a response to secularism that has been dismissive or even cruel, and has attempted to wipe out religion. And if you try to repress it -- as happened in the Soviet Union -- there's now a huge religious revival in the Soviet Union, and some of it's not very healthy. It's like the suppression of the sexual instinct. If you repress the sexual instinct and try to tamp it down, it's likely to develop all kinds of perverse and twisted forms. And religion's the same.

Well, it seems to me you're also saying that to be religious -- truly religious -- is tremendously hard work. It's far harder than just ...

... singing a few hymns.

... or just reading the scriptures literally. You can't live that way.

Religion is hard work. It's an art form. It's a way of finding meaning, like art, like painting, like poetry, in a world that is violent and cruel and often seems meaningless. And art is hard work. You don't just dash off a painting. It takes years of study. I think we expect religious knowledge to be instant. But religious knowledge comes incrementally and slowly. And religion is like any other activity. It's like cooking or sex or science. You have good art, sex and science, and bad art, sex and science. It's not easy to do it well.

So how should we approach the sacred texts? How should we read them?

Sacred texts have traditionally been a bridge to the divine. They're all difficult. They're not a simple manual -- a how-to book that will tell you how to gain enlightenment by next week, like how to lose weight on the Atkins diet. This is a slow process. I think the best image for reading scripture occurs in the story of Jacob, who wrestles with a stranger all night long. And in the morning, the stranger seems to have been his God. That's when Jacob is given the name Israel -- "one who fights with God." And he goes away limping as he walks into the sunrise. Scriptures are a struggle.

Is faith a struggle?

Well, faith is not a matter of believing things. That's again a modern Western notion. It's only been current since the 18th century. Believing things is neither here nor there, despite what some religious people say and what some secularists say. That is a very eccentric religious position, current really only in the Western Christian world. You don't have it much in Judaism, for example.

But it's not surprising that religion has become equated with belief because these are the messages we hear as we grow up, regardless of our faiths.

We hear it from some of them. And I think we've become rather stupid in our scientific age about religion. If you'd presented some of these literalistic readings of the Bible to people in the pre-modern age, they would have found it rather obtuse. They'd have found it incomprehensible that people really believe the first chapter of Genesis is an account of the origins of life.

So how should we read the story of creation in Genesis?

Well, it's not a literal account because it's put right next door to another account in Chapter 2, which completely contradicts it. Then there are other creation stories in the Bible that show Yahweh like a Middle Eastern god killing a sea monster to create the world. Cosmogony in the ancient world was not an account of the physical origins of life. Cosmogony was usually used therapeutically. When people were sick or in times of vulnerability, they would read a cosmogony in order to get an influx of the divine, to tap into those extraordinary energies that had created something out of nothing.

That seems to be a question that scientists are struggling with now. Did the big bang come out of nothing?

Exactly. And I think some scientists are writing a new kind of religious discourse, teaching us to pit ourselves against the dark world of uncreated reality and pushing us back to the mysterious. They're resorting to mythological imagery: Big Bang, black hole. They have all kinds of resonances because this is beyond our ken.

I'm curious about how these issues have played out in your own life because you went into a convent at a rather young age -- at 17. You lived there for seven years. You've written about how you tried to find God but couldn't. And you left in despair. I don't know if you called yourself an atheist, but you were certainly close to that. And then, as you worked on your book, "A History of God," you seemed to discover something that you hadn't known before.

I couldn't get on with religion in the convent because it was a very unkind institution. I limped away from it. I wanted nothing to do with religion ever again, but came back to it through the study of other religious traditions -- initially, Judaism and Islam. Later, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism.

So it was actually studying the history and the texts that allowed you to enter into the religious experience.

Yes, once I'd stopped prancing and posturing around on TV, where I was expected to have an inflammatory opinion and to let people have it. All this was pure egotism. I did some early television programs and expressed my secularism very cleverly. I'm slightly down on cleverness, which can be fun and witty at a dinner party and I enjoy that as much as anybody else. But it can be superficial. Once my television career had folded, I was left on my own with these texts. There was nobody to exclaim derisively about the irrationality of a Greek Orthodox text or the stupidity of a certain Jewish mysticism. I began to read them like poetry, which is what theology is. It's poetry. It's an attempt to express the inexpressible. It needs quiet. You can't read a Rilke sonnet at a party. Sometimes a poem can live in your head for a long time until its meaning is finally revealed. And if you try and grasp that meaning prematurely, you can distort the poem for yourself. And because I'd been cast out from the media world, and was living in a world of silence and solitude, the texts and I started to have a different relationship.

Do you consider yourself a religious person?

Yes. It's a constant pursuit for me. It's helped me immeasurably to overcome despair in my own life. But I have no hard and fast answers.

I take it you don't like the question, do you believe in God?

No, because people who ask this question often have a rather simplistic notion of what God is.

What about an afterlife?

It's a red herring as far as I'm concerned.

But you must have thought about that question. Does everything end once we die?

I don't know. I prefer to be agnostic on that matter, as do most of the world's religions. It's really only Christianity and Islam that are obsessed with afterlife in this way. It was not a concern in the Axial Age, not for any of them. I think the old scenarios of heaven and hell can be unreligious. People can perform their good deeds in the spirit of putting their installments in their retirement annuities. And there's nothing religious about that. Religion is supposed to be about the loss of the ego, not about its eternal survival.

But certainly there are a lot of people -- both scientists and religious people -- who speculate about whether there's some cosmic order. For the evolutionary biologists, the question is whether there's some natural progression to evolution.

Who knows?

And is there an endpoint? From the cosmological perspective, was the universe designed specifically for life? Are those important questions?

Yeah, I think they can be wonderful questions. But they don't occupy me very much. I believe that what we have is now. The religions say you can experience eternity in this life, here and now, by getting those moments of ecstasy where time ceases to be a constraint. And you do it by the exercise of the Golden Rule and by compassion. And just endless speculation about the next world is depriving you of a great experience in this one.

-- By Steve Paulson
================================

Resurrection

2006-05-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

After many days without posts, I have finally returned to the digital world. The day before Easter, our son, Joshua Jonathan Thompson-Linton was born! He was born on April 15 (tax day & Holy Saturday, the perfect balance of the material world and the spiritual world), 2006 @4:34 pm EST @ The Greenhouse Birthing Center in Okemos, MI. He weighed 7 lb, 9 oz, was 20" long, and was born 4 weeks premature (although he's now doing quite well!) I am also now employed as a Manager @ BD's Mongolian Barbeque of Okemos, and am an employee of one of the greatest guys I know, a deeply spiritual man and a very successful resturanteur, Rob Thomas.

Lenten Reading for Saturday, Fifth Week of Lent

2006-04-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 35-37:

The rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said, "He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God." Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him some wine, they called out, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself." Above him there was an inscription that read, "This is the King of the Jews." Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us."

How many of us in the educated, liberal-thinking community have not jeered at the idea of devout religion? I know that in my past, I have subscribed to an attitude of superiority over those who would put faith in God over science and education. Today, however, I see God as the fountainhead of Science, the instigator of education. In these verses, as Jesus is jeered by those who would seek to secure their own beliefs by belittling those of Jesus' followers, I see myself, and many of my contemporaries. We must remember that when we mock those with strong faith in God, we are mocking God and Jesus themselves. That is not to say that we shouldn't have religious dialogue, but there is a poem by the Sufi mysic Jalalladin Rumi called "Moses and the Shepherd" in which this attitude is attacked by God to Moses:

You have separated me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever?
I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. What seems wrong for you is right for him. What is poisonous to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to me.
I am apart from all that.Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.the Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do. It's all praise, and it's all right. It's not me that's glorified in acts of worship. It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words they say. I look inside at the humility. That broken-open lowliness is the reality, not the language! Forget phraseology. I want burning, burning.
(As translated by Coleman Barks)

Therefore, if our criticizms are meant to strenghten someone's burning for God, to bring them closer to Love, then OK. If what we are doing is out of spite or ideas or right and wrong, then we are doing them for the wrong reasons. God is Love. Those who Love are saved.

Lenten Reading for Friday, Fifth Week of Lent

2006-04-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 34:

They divided his garments by casting lots. The people stood by and watched.

The Jesus Papers

2006-04-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Michael Baigent, one of the co-authors of 1982's Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the major source material for Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code) has a new book out, rehashing the same old material. The Book is called The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Coverup in History. Salon.com has a review here. I'll let you know what I think after I read it.

Lenten Reading for Thursday, Fifth Week of Lent

2006-04-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 34:

Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

To me, this is one of Jesus' difinitive statements. If only I could live my life at a fraction of this level of Saintliness, I'd be garanteed a place in eterity. The guy is hanging on a cross, in the most excruciating pain a person can endure, and he asks God to forgive the people doing it to him. The only recent thing I can think of to parallel this is when Dick Chaney shot that guy in the face and the guy came on TV to appologize to Chaney for all the problems it caused the VP... But that's a whole different can of worms...

Luke 23:34 is one of those sayings of Jesus' which I think can be used as a summation of his entire life and teachings. If we only knew this one verse from the bible, and followed it to perfection, we could reach enlightenment in this lifetime.

Bishop John Shelby Spong on Fundamentalists vs. Evangelicals

2006-04-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

This is a letter from Bishop John Shelby Spong's weekly e-letter. In it, he addresses a question from a reader on the similarities and differences between Fundamentalist Christiantiy and Evangelical Christianity.

To subscribe to Bishop Spong's weekly e-letter, click here.

------------------------------------------------------------
Pat Clark from Anniston, Alabama writes:

"I'm not sure of the difference between Fundamentalists and Evangelicals. Are they the same or different in political activism and social concerns? I think of Albert Mohler as a fundamentalist because he is so narrow, while Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis call themselves evangelicals and there is a world of difference between them and Mohler. Campolo and Wallis seem to concentrate on living by the teaching of Jesus, rather than on theology."

Dear Pat,
It would be better if you would ask a fundamentalist and an evangelical to draw this distinction. You are correct between Albert Mohler who heads the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners Magazine, there is a great gulf. Yet they would overlap in places.
Neither evangelicals nor fundamentalists have yet discovered the critical biblical scholarship that has graced the western world for at least the last 200 years. When I last was on a television program with Albert Mohler, it was painfully obvious that he was not in touch with any of the contemporary biblical scholarship of the past century. Both camps seem to me to operate with pre-modern images of the universe as well as God. Evangelicals and fundamentalists like to call themselves conservative Christians, as if there is something called conservative or liberal scholarship. There isn't. There is just competent and incompetent scholarship. To call ignorance 'conservative' is a clever ploy, since conservatism is a legitimate political perspective, but that word does not translate well into religious categories. My sense is that the difference between those who call themselves "conservative" Christians and those they call "liberal" Christians is more about being open or closed to ongoing truth than it is about anything else. J. B. Phillips once wrote a book entitled, "Your God is Too Small." That is the peril into which I fear both evangelicals and fundamentalists fall. Deep down I find that almost every person seeks security in some form of literalism or unchanging certainty, both in religion and politics. I find little difference between those politicians who talk about 'strict construction of the constitution' and those preachers who talk about the Bible as 'the inerrant word of God.' Perhaps it is fair to say that evangelicals draw the line at what must be viewed literally a tiny bit more loosely than do fundamentalists. The difference, however, is very, very small. For example some people are literal about Adam and Eve; some about the Virgin Birth; and some about the physical Resurrection. I do not believe that any prepositional statement about God can be literally true. I think people should take the Bible seriously but never literally. Literalism is finally and always idolatry. Someday, all Christians will recognize that.
-- John Shelby Spong

Lenten Reading for Wednesday, Fifth Week in Lent

2006-04-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

(Picture from the film "Passion of the Christ")
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 33:

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one at his right, and the other on his left.

There it is, a mere three words, which are one of the two (along with the resurrection) defining moments for most Christians: "...They crucified him..." What would be more physical pain than any of us living could possibly imagine is filed away in only three words. Crucifixion was a long, agonizing death. Often, the person's eyes and tongue were pecked out by carrion birds while the victim was still alive. The weight of one's whole body would be hanging from two nails, driven into the wrists. The cause of death in crucifixion, however, was suffocation. This position of hanging forced the abdominal muscles and the diaphram to support the whole weight of the body. Eventually, as the midsection became fatigued and finally exhausted, the diaphram could no longer lift to inflate the lungs, and the victim would no longer be able to breathe.

The cross has become the symbol of the Christian faith the world over. In the first three centuries of the faith, however, the preferred symbol was the fish (often seen on cars today) or the "good shepherd." Why was the cross not used then? There are many possible reasons. First, it could have been that the crucifixion was not an important event. In the first century of Christianity, many different groups of Christians existed, with many beliefs. Some held, as I do, that the crucifixion/resurrection was not as vital to Christian life as Jesus' teachings themselves. They believed that by following his example and living the life he called us to live, that we save ourselves from sin. He lowered the drawbridge leading to heaven, but he isn't paying your toll.

Another thing to consider is that in the first couple centuries of the Chruch, Christians were still dying by crucifixion on a daily basis. To wear a cross around ones' neck would be incredibly morbid. The cross and crucifix did not become a symbol of the faith till long after the suffering had become a thing of the past. In fact, by the time Jesus' crucifixion had become a subject of art, the very mechanics of crucifixion had been forgotten, which is why we always see the nails and nail marks in Jesus' palms.

Lenten Reading for Tuesday, Fifth Week of Lent

2006-04-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 27-32:

A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.' At that time people will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!' for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?" Now tow others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed.

Many people in the apocalyptic Christian movement consider this speech of Jesus' to be a foreshadowing of the coming "Day of Judgement." While I do not deny that Jesus is doing some soothsaying here, I think his foresight was looking more into the near future. Jesus is foreshadowing the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in 70 CE. This was a time of great suffering for the Jewish people. Some biblical scholars even consider the Revelation of St. John to be a telling of the destruction of Jerusalem, rather than a tale of the end of the created Earth.

Lenten Reading for Monday, Fifth Week of Lent

2006-04-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 26:

As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus.

Lenten Reading for Saturday, Fourth week in Lent

2006-04-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 24 and 25:

The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted. So he released the man who had been imprisioned for rebellion and murder, for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.

Lenten Reading for Friday, Fourth Week in Lent

2006-03-31T11:46:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 20-23:

Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus, but they continued their shouting. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Pilate addressed them a third time, "What evil has this man done? I found him guilty of no capital crime. Therefore I shall have him flagged and then release him." With loud shouts, however, they persisted in calling for his crucifixion, and their voices prevailed.

Lenten Reading for Thursday, Fourth Week in Lent

2006-03-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 13-18:

Pilate then summoned the chief priests, the rulers, and the people and said to them, "You brought this man to me and accused him of inciting the people to revolt. I have conducted my investigation in your presence and have not found this man guilty of the charges you have brought against him, nor did Herod, for he sent him back to us. So no capital crime has been committed by him. Therefore, I shall have him flogged and then release him."
But together they shoulted out, "Away with this man! Release Barabas to us." (Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellion that had taken place in the city and for murder.)

This is an interesting bit of prose in all four gospels, and one which, I believe is harmed by the writers' attempt to either cloud the true nature of this incident or to recount an event he did not understand himself. Sometimes we are told that there was a Passover tradition of releasing one prisoner held by the Romans back to the Jewish people. This is not recounted here, and it must be understood that such a claim is entirely non-historical. It makes no sense that an occupying force, which found the Jews' insistantly monotheistic beliefs and rebellious attitude a growing nusance, would release a political prisoner in honor of the Jews' religious holiday. In other Gospel translations, this Barabas is simply referred to as a murderer or as a thief. Reading these passages, we cannot immagine why the Israelites would want such a terrible person released over the peaceful, compassionate Jesus.

The translation quoted above gives us a hint at what could be the deeper truth behind this event. It hints that the man whose release the mob was calling for in place of Jesus' was not a "common criminal" or a simple crazed murderer. He was a political prisoner, condemed to die for inciting a riot against the Roman occupiers. When we understand that the name (more accurately, the title) Barabas means "Son of God," (Bar in Aramaic means "Son of", Abbas is closely related to Abba, and means "God the Father.") we see that this man was no less than a competitor with Jesus for the title Messiah. In some translations of Mark's Gospel, this man is even called Jesus Barabas. In the Palistine of the 1st century, there were many people before and after Jesus of Nazareth claiming the title of Messiah. Jesus' falling out of favor with the people could have been due to the fact that his mission did not fit with what the people were expecting in a Messiah. They wanted a conquering hero, a G0d-man who would overthrow the Romans and the Herods, reinstitute the Kingdom of David and Solomon, and restore the Levites to the administration of the temple. Barabas, who had been arrested, Luke admits, for inciting rebellion, fit better with the mob's vision of how their Messiah should behave. Plate says he will release Jesus, and the people say "We don't want that Messiah, give us the real one back." In essence, they were asking to trade Jesus' life for the life of the man they thought was the real Messiah. In this passage, we can see that even before he died, Jesus gave his life up for the sake of others'.

Lenten Reading for Wednesday, Fourth week in Lent

2006-03-29T11:00:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 11 and 12:

Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and moked him, and after clothing him resplendent garb, he sent him back to Pilate. Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly.

Lenten Reading for Tuesday, Fourth Week in Lent

2006-03-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

Today's reading is from the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 23, verses 9 and 10:

Herod questioned Jesus at length, but he gave him no answer. The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile, stood by accusing him harshly.

Lenten Reading for Monday, Fourth Week in Lent

2006-03-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 23, verse 8:

Herod was very glad to see Jesus; he had been wanting to see him for a long time, for he had heard about him and had been hoping to see him perform some sign.

Lenten Reading for Saturday, Third Week in Lent

2006-03-25T21:52:00.000-08:00

Today's reading is taken from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 3-7:

Pilate then addressed the chief priests and the crowds, "I find this man not guilty." But they were adamant and said, "He is inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to here." On hearing this Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean; and upon learning that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time.

Lenten Reading for Friday, Third Week in Lent

2006-03-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

Today's Reading is taken from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 2 and 3:

They brought charges against him, saying, "We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Christ, a King." Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He said to him in reply, "You say so."

I envision this scene as an almost Shakesperian tragedy. Here are these Spiritual leaders of the Jewish community, lying to the Roman athorites because they know Jesus hasn't broken any Roman laws and they cannot legally kill him for the Religious laws they believe he has violated. So, they make shit up. I sense a certain "sick of it all" vibration to Jesus' voice when Pilate presents the accusations to him. Jesus' phrase seems like "Whatever you say dude... Whatever you say." He knows it doesn't matter what he says, that he has very little chance of survival (God has told him already that he will die), so he just allows the major players to beleive whatever they have to in order to feel justified.

The mystical interpretation of this is clear. The divine isn't interested in "converting" us to His way of thinking. In fact, his way isn't thinking at all. Like the parable of the prodigal son, we see God letting us wander and spend our lives frivolusly. He even alows us to deny him if we choose. In the end, though, he is always willing to take us back. Even hanging on the cross, Jesus asks God to forgive those who torment him, saying "They know not what they do."

Lenten Reading for Thursday, Third Week in Lent

2006-03-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

Today's Reading is taken from the Gospel of Luke, 22:71 - 23:1:

Then they said, "What further need have we for testimony? We have heard it from his own mouth."
Then the whole assembly of them arose and brought him before Pilate.

Lenten Reading for Wednesday, Third Week in Lent

2006-03-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

Today's reading is taken from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 66-70:

When day came the elders of the people met, both chief priests and scribes, and they brought him before their Sanhedrin. They said, "If you are the Christ, tell us," but he replied to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I question, you will not respond. But from this time on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God."
They all asked him, "Are you then the Son of God?" He replied to them, "You say that I am."

Here we have scriptural evidence of the ancient question of Jesus' true paternity. Was it divine, or was he Joseph's son? This is a question which plagued Christianity from its very earliest days. It is a question which was silenced for many centuries, but which has arrisen again in the popular dialogue because of the popularity of The Da Vinci Code. It is interesting to see that in this passage, when challenged directly about the nature of his divinity, Jesus answers that it doesn't matter what he says becuase they aren't going to listen to him anyway. The word used Luke (in Greek) is Christos (The Annointed), but the Hebrew word the Sanhedrin would have used, Messiah, had different implications then than we as Christians give to it today. Messiah was like God's embassador to Earth. The Messiah would be a temporal ruler, like King David, who ruled and spoke as God. This was a vision modeled after the Pharaohs of Egypt... God and King, Messiah, Pharaoh is Horus.

Jesus and God had other plans, other ideas for the world. They didn't want a world where people worshiped the King, but where God ruled from the throne of every human heart. Jesus couldn't answer the questions of the Sanhedrin because they weren't capable of understanding what he was really talking about. In fact, they'd proved that by bringing him to this secret trial. He'd spoken publicly in the Temple for many days and they'd heard him give sermons on the Torah.

My favorite phrase here is Jesus' "From this time on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the Power of God." This is a phrase that can help give us deeper insight into Jesus' true nature. I would recomend using this phrase as a focus for a centering prayer session. Open your heart to what Jesus is saying here, and deeper insights are bound to be made clear.

Lenten Reading for Tuesday, Third Week in Lent

2006-03-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

Today's Reading is taken from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 63-65:

The men who held Jesus in custody were ridiculing and beating him, saying "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?" And they reviled him saying many other things against him.

This passage is the beginning of the "Passion" proper in the Gospel of Luke. It is here that Jesus' physical suffering at the hands of strangers begins. In the following days, we will experience the growing physical pain and emotional sorrow experienced by Jesus.

Lenten Reading for Monday, Third Week in Lent

2006-03-20T03:44:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 60-62:

Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times." He went out and began to weep bitterly."

This is one of those places in the bible where my own conception of "how it happened" doesn't really match well with what is going on in the Gospel. When we combine this reading with Friday's and Saturday's, it's difficult to get a sense of the layout of the room or the order that things occurred. It seems to me that this notion of Peter "following at a distance" and joining the guards at "a fire in the middle of the courtyard" of the "house of the high priest" is clouding some other event. Could it be that Peter was present at the trial of Jesus and actually testified against him? If Jesus was indoors with the Sanhedrin and Peter was in the courtyard, how could he "turn and look at Peter," without being led outside? This is how the event is usually portrayed in art and film, but it's not really what's being said by Luke. In Luke, we get the sense that they're all in the same room. Since I do not consider the Gospels to be historical documents, I don't think it's worth much time trying to figure out these issues. More likely, aspects of the "historical" kind (layout of the high priest's house, Jesus being led out into the courtyard by guards) are omitted by the author becuase their purpose is not to leave an historical record of Jesus' life, but to tell a spiritual parable of his own.

Lenten Reading for Saturday, Second Week in Lent

2006-03-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 56-60:

When a maid saw him seated in the light, she looked intently at him and said, "This man too was with him." But he denied it saying, "Woman, I do not know him."
A short while later someone else saw him and said, "You too are one of them;" but Peter answered, "My friend, I am not."
About an hour later, still another insisted, "Assuredly, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean." But Peter said, "My friend, I do not know what you are talking about."

This is one of those fundamental moments in the New Testament. Jesus' chief disciple has abandoned his Master, and denied that he even knows Jesus in order to save his own ass. Remember, this story is not really about a bunch of Jewish Palestinians who lived 2000 years ago, but is really about us and about our quest to find God in our own hearts. This story tells of the devotee of God who, when presented with the dark night of the soul, abandons the quest, denies his love for God, and returns to the material world. In fact, in the 21st chapter of John, we find that Peter and many of the other disciples have returned to their previous way of life (namely, making a living as fishermen) until they are reawakened by the appearance of the resurrected Christ.

We are Peter when we become bored with meditation, when our practice is dry and lacks experiences, and we decide that it might be more fun to play Gamecube or watch a movie before bed instead of praying and meditating. The best part of this story, however, is that from the ashes of his denial comes a new Peter, reawakened at Pentecost, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Like the Father in the tale of the Prodigal Son, Jesus will never deny us, no matter how many times we deny him. If we are sincere seekers, and we fall, He will be there to pick us up when we are ready to begin again. But he leaves it up to us. When we make the choice to return to Him, he is right there to help.

Lenten Reading for Friday, Second Week in Lent

2006-03-19T17:29:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 54 and 55:

After arresting him they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter was following at a distance. They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it, and Peter sat down with them.

Lenten Reading--Thursday, Second Week of Lent

2006-03-16T05:02:00.000-08:00

Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 52 and 53:

And Jesus said to the chief priests and temple guards and elders who had come for him, "have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? Day after day I was with you in the temple area, and you did not seize me; but this is your hour, the time for the power of darkness.

Before his arrest, Jesus had become a popular preacher in the temple courtyard. Some of the Sanhedrin had openly debated him, but his popularity with the people prevented them from charging him openly in public. These verses of Luke from the Passion of Jesus (Luke 22 and 23) are some of the most historical-sounding in the Bible. It's difficult to look at them allegorically. But from a big-picture perspective, the stories of Luke from the Last Supper to Jesus' Burial are our story. They are the story of our struggle over fear. We are Peter as he rejects Jesus in the temple courtyard. We are Mary Magdalene and Jesus' Mother at the foot of the cross, mourning the loss of Love and Compassion in the world. We are even Judas, as he betrays his Master with a kiss.

Spiritual practices demand a great deal from us. Time to do them, a commitment to the type of life they compel us to lead, and the doubt and fear and darkness that arises when the Splendors of deep meditation seem to dry up for long or short periods and we seem lost. St. John of the Cross called these times "the dark night of the soul," and it is these times which we find expressed in the life of Jesus during the Passion. This period is represented in the liturgical year on the "three days" (actually 1 1/2 days) from Friday afternoon (Good Friday) till Sunday Morning (Easter) of Holy Week. St. John expressed his vision of Jesus' crucifixion in a sketch. In this sketch, Jesus seems to be hanging from the cross, almost being dragged down by the weight of the world's sins. It is these times when faith is most required. Faith is often defined in terms of what we cannot see, with emphasis on John 20:29. However, the Indian saint Paramhansa Yogananda defined Faith as the conviction of God's existence that comes with personal experience. John 20:29 can still apply here, however. I believe that when addressing Thomas, Jesus speaks not to "blind faith," in believing in something even though one has never seen it (aka: never having experience the Truth of the Living Christ), but faith in that even though you cannot see God now, He has not abandoned you, and is still present with you, even if your inner sight is diminished. It is in these times that we must hold onto the blessings of past inner experiences and remember that when Christ returns and we have powerful experiences again, they will be all the more cherished because of their absence.

Lenten Reading for Wednesday, Second Week in Lent

2006-03-15T07:49:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 49-51:

His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked, "Lord, shall we strike wia a sword?" And one of them struck the high priests servant and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said in reply, "Stop, no more of this!" Then he touched the servant's ear and healed him.

This verse seems to confirm my suspicions about an earlier verse we examined. Jesus' claim that the disciples must "sell sell their cloak and buy [a sword]," seems in direct opposition to today's passage, where he prevents the disciples from fighting with the High Priest's men. When one of the disciples (Peter) cuts off the ear of an attacker, Jesus even uses his powers to heal the wound.

Lenten Reading for Tuesday, Second Week in Lent

2006-03-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 47 and 48:

While he was still speaking, a crowd aproached him and in front was one of the Twelve, a man named Judas. He went up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said to him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?"

Lenten Reading for Monday, Second Week in Lent

2006-03-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 45 and 46

When he rose from prayer and returned to his disciples, he found them sleeping from grief. He said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test."

Lenten Reading for Saturday, the First week of Lent

2006-03-11T19:25:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 43 and 44:

And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him. He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground.

Again, we see Jesus' humanity. The angel appears in his inner sight, and he know's God's answer, but also knows that God will grant him the power to complete the task set before him. Jesus prays and focuses his mind with all his Willpower. His efforts are so great that he "sweats bullets," like man carrying a heavy weight in the hot sun. Here, we see that while God may ask us to do things that seem impossible for us, He will never abandon us. No matter how difficult it may seem to say and live "thy will be done," if we continue to live this phrase, God will bless us with the strength to meet His every challenge.

Lenten Reading for Friday, First Week in Lent

2006-03-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

Today's reading from the Little Black Book comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 39-42:
Then going out, he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he arrived at the place he said to them, "Pray that you may not undergo the test." After withdrawing about a stone's throw from them and kneeling, he prayed, saying, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done."

We are often told of Jesus' innate Godliness, of his being born with full knowledge of his purpose in life, and that he never in his life committed a single sin. In this passage, while Jesus prayed to our Father on the night he was betrayed and taken into custody by those who hated him and conspired against him, we are shown a true and deep reflection of the side of Jesus we are often meant to forget... His pure humanity. Jesus was a human, just as we are. Yes, he was the Master. Yes, he lived a live filled with the sublime wisdom of God-Realization. Yes, perhaps he even did know God's will from his birth. But here... here... on the Mount of Olives, we are shown a man. A man with fears, with doubts, and with a request from his father to avoid physical suffering... After all, hadn't God saved Isaac at the zero hour, and stayed Abraham's hand? Jesus' test is different than his forefather Abraham's, however. He passes this test with the words "not my will, but yours." Perhaps even more than his death on the cross, those words were his greatest achievement in life, for if we knew nothing else of Jesus' life but this phrase, and lived our lives by this phrase, we too could look upon the Zohar (splendor) that is the face of the One, True, and Ever Living God.

Lenten Reading for Thursday, First Week of Lent

2006-03-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

Today's Little Black Book reading comes from the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 22, verses 35-38:

He said to them, "When I sent you forth without a money bag or sandals, were you in need of anything?" "No, nothing," they replied. He said to them, "But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me, namely, 'He was counted among the wicked;' and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment." Then they said, "Lord, look, there are two swords here." But he replied, "That is enough!"

This is a very deep and symbolic verse. It would seem that Jesus is contradicting his earlier speeches, found in Matthew 6, where he speaks of going out in the world with nothing and trusting fully in God's Will to provide for us. It also seems to contradict his teaching about turning the other cheek, but is perhaps in tune with his saying "I come not to bring peace, but a sword." It seems that at the end of this verse, Jesus chastizes the disciples for taking his speech on swords literally. In both these sayings, the sword referred to is the "sword of discrimination," which cuts through illusion and reveals our true self. The "cloak" which we must sell to buy a sword is our "security blankets"... Seeking self-identity in outward things (personality, likes and dislikes, and in possessions). Jesus says he is "counted among the wicked" because when a True Teacher comes to us, we are forced into the uncomfortable position of being faced with the parts of ourselves which are out of sync with God, and of giving up those habits and behaviors that get in the way of a pure relationship with Him.

Lenten Readings from the "Little Black Book"

2006-03-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

(image from The Compass Newsletter)

The Diocese of Saginaw, MI produces a "little black book" each year at Lent. The book contains readings for each day of the Lenten season, and is a very good tool for turning the mind inward. The book asks that the reader take 6 minutes out of each day to focus soley on God. I will be posting each day's Bible readings from the "little black book" here with either no commentary, or minor commentary. I would love to see the comments on these readings grow, to see what others reading these posts think about the verses. If anyone would like to order some of these books, and support this really wonderful work, here's the link.

Here's a newsletter article about the books from The Compass

Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 22, verses 31-34:

"Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers." He said to him, "Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you." But He replied, "I tell you, Peter, before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you even know me."

For me, this passage is a lesson in forgiveness and the Power of a Spiritual Master to affect the lives of his disciples. Jesus tells Peter that He has prayed for Peter, and even though Peter will deny Jesus and loose his faith to fear, Jesus' prayers will intercede in fate (in Peter's Karma) and pull him back up. Jesus' prayers are so strong, in fact, that Peter will rebound and become the person that the other disciples can lean on (their "rock") in their time of trial. This passage also illustrates the Master's capacity for lovingkindness and forgiveness. He knows Peter's faith will fail, but he does not resent him or stop interceding to the Father on Peter's behalf.

When studying a verse, remember to look at it in context. Read the whole chapter and get a sense of what's being said in light of other events. Context is EVERYTHING.

The Rosary: Not Just for Catholics Anymore!

2006-03-08T05:01:00.000-08:00

Given up TV or movies this Lenten season? Looking for something to fill the void of time and turn your thoughts toward God? The Rosary is a perfect devotional tool for any Christians looking to deepen their relationship with God and with Jesus. It is also a beautiful way to take time out and focus our hearts and minds away from the material world, and onto the spiritual world. This "refocusing" is the true goal of Lent.

Praying the Rosary has become a practice of refreshment and joy for me. For those who were not raised in the Catholic tradition (like myself) or are unfamiliar with the prayer, it is simple in its form, but endless in its depth. In many ways, it is not unlike the practice of mantra meditation which is used by countless millions in China, Southeast Asia, and on the Indian subcontinent. In its essence, the rosary is a repetition of Divine Names: Mary, Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, and the sacred word Amen.

The Dominican Rosary (the most commonly found form) consists of a circle of 5 "decades" (sets of 10 beads) separated by 4 larger or more spaced-apart "Our Father" beads. To illustrate our deep cultural relationship between these prayers and the beads of the Rosary, it is worth noting that the very word bead is derived from the ancient Saxon word bede, which meant "prayer."

For each of fifty decade beads, the Ave Maria (Hail Mary) is recited:

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

For each of the "Our Father" beads, the Our Father or Lord's Prayer is recited, along with the doxology:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

...and the "Fatima Decade Prayer," (also called the "Oh My Jesus") a prayer for Jesus' intercession in the lives of all people on Earth:

Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, specially those in more need of your mercy.

These prayers are repeated at their respective beads while four sets of five "mysteries" from the lives of Jesus and Mary are meditated upon.

Here is a link to a good basic instructional site on how to pray the Rosary.
For an even more interesting experience, try the Fatima.org creation, the "Perpetual Rosary Online"
To hear a free recording of the rosary recited, click here (hosted by Beliefnet.com)
To get a set of your own beads, head over to the Franciscan Rosary House or Easter's Catholic Books & Gifts

Give this amazing devotional tool a try, and I'll give some examples of ways to deepen your practice in another post.

Afternoon inspiration

2006-03-07T05:03:00.000-08:00

My friend Travis just linked to a collection of his father's sermons which were put up online by a relative. Travis' dad is a Chruch of the Brethren minister. I took a click over there to check them out. There's some really inspiring stuff there. It'll only take a few minutes to read one. Go ahead, you need a little inspiration.

Sermons of Edward Poling 2002-2006

The Surprise of the Millenium!

2006-03-06T05:35:00.000-08:00

What's the big news today? Crash won the Oscar? It'll be in the 50's in West Michigan this week? No. The big news that I read today is that Pope Benedict has opened the philosophical and dogmatic door for women to take "roles of leadership" in the Catholic Church. He hasn't actually come out and say that the Church will start ordaining female priests, but in an organization that took 400+ years to apologize for calling Galileo a heretic, this is a move in the right direction. Here's the full article in the Washington Post (commentary follows):
--------------------------------------------------------

Pope Indicates Openness to Greater Role for Women

Reuters
Friday, March 3, 2006; 9:03 AM

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict has indicated that women might be allowed to have positions of greater responsibility in the ministry of the Catholic Church but reaffirmed that they could not become priests.
The Pope's comments were found in a transcript released by the Vatican on Friday, a day after he made them in a closed-door meeting with priests from the Rome diocese.
Weekly Roundup

During the meeting, which took the form of a question and answer session, a priest asked why the Church could not let women have more "governing" roles.

In the conclusion part of his answer, the Pope said: "Nevertheless, it is right to ask oneself if more space, more positions of responsibility, can be given to women, even in the ministerial services ...."

The Pope did not elaborate on types of positions women could hold in the Church or in its governance.

Women's groups have for years been asking for more positions of responsibility in the Vatican departments, where nearly all positions of power are held by men. But the Pope made clear that there could be no change in the Church's ban on women priests. The Church teaches that it cannot ordain women as priests because Christ willingly chose only men as his disciples.

Those in favor of a female priesthood say Christ was only acting according to the social norms of his times.

The late Pope John Paul was adamant on the issue, saying the Church did not have and never would have the authority to change the rule against women priests.

In his response the pope listed well-known women, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta and several women saints, whom he said had served the Church with distinction.
-------------------------------------------------

To me, there is a much more interesting, more mystical thing going on here than just the church's overdue recognition of the holiness of women and the understanding that the female human is just as inherently holy as the male. As wonderful and righteous as this is, the more interesting thing is to see the power of The Christ and the Holy Spirit at work in the Papal throne.

Cardinal Ratzinger, while serving in his roll as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (essentially the modern manifestation of High Inquisitor), became the scourge of mystical theology, excommunicating brilliant liberal theologians such as Matthew Fox and closing the debate to new, mystical, and ecstatic readings of scripture. While this announcement about women doesn't liberate him fully from these past decisions, it proves to me once again that the ways of God and the Spirit are mysterious and beautiful.

Most liberally minded theologians, myself included, felt that the choice of Ratzinger as Pontiff was a reactionary one. It was believed that this decision would finally roll back the last of the forward momentum of liberalism created by Vatican II, which had been loosing ground step-by-step since John Paul II's coronation. However, there is a firm belief within the Catholic Faith that it is not the college of cardinals, but the Holy Spirit itself which chooses the Pope, and when that choice is made, The Christ takes some form of residence in the newly crowned Pontiff.

Popes have often surprised the college of cardinals and the world by chaining their "votes" on long-held ideas or beliefs after being coronated. This has historically been held as a function of the Holy Spirit in their new lives, and is one of the major symbolic reasons that the Popes take new names when they take office. A most recent surprise such as this occurred with the father of Vatican II, Pope John XXIII. When elected, the college thought they were getting an old, conservative, "transitional" Pope. What they got instead was a revolutionary who sought to bring a new life to the Catholic faith. While I cannot say that I agree wholeheartedly with the changes of Vatican II (I am a firm lover of the Latin Mass and the sacredness of its rituals), I believe that without those reforms, people such as Matthew Fox or Andrew Greely or Brother Wayne Teasdale wouldn't have even begun to speak, and we would never have had their ideas in the cultural dialogue.

I hope, I pray that our new Benedict XVI is perhaps beginning a journey of transformation which allows him to keep the things that made John Paul II great (diplomacy, peacemaking, increasing Catholic visibility), while moving into the new millennium with a sense of future and momentum rather than running from new ideas and positive changes which foster equality (a female-friendly and MARRIED priesthood).

On the 7th Day, God Rested

2006-03-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

I don't often discuss the Old Testament, for various reasons. First of all, I feel that most of these books are the most dangerous in the bible when read literally (with the possible exception of the Revelation of St. John). Second, while the books of the New Testament were written nearly 2000 years ago, the books of the OT were written MUCH earlier, and are the social relics of a world we cannot possibly understand or relate to.

That being said, the Old Testament, when looked at mystically, is a beautiful, symbolic, and uplifiting collection of documents. This past week, at the Ash Wednesday service I atteneded with my dad, the Old Testament reading was from the ten commandments (Exodus 20). As the minister was reading the verses, the commandment regarding the keeping of the Sabbath Day stood out to me in a way it never had before.

8Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. 9Six days shall you labor and do all your work; 10But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor the sojourner who dwells in your towns; 11For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the seas, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. (Lamsa, pg 88)

What stood out most to me in this reading was God's complete lack of mentioning anything about going to church or any other form of worship on the sabbath. This commandment has nothing to do with worship, and everything to do with not working. In fact, the writer of this particular list of the commandments goes to great lengths to bring home this point. Not only should we not work, but we should instruct our employees, our children, our animals, and anyone hanging around from out of town that they should also not work. Of course, it is wonderful and deserved to take a day off work (especially in those ancient days when work was WORK), a day when everyone, of all social classes is given the day to be free of labor. However, if we explore the deeper meaning of these verses, we are offered a powerful teaching on the nature of God and on the true way to worship Him "in spirit and in Truth." (John 4: 24)

In order to understand this verse mystically, we must explore the deeper meaning of "not working." Once a person progresses on the spiritual path to the point where they feel called to inward practices such as meditation, centering prayer, the Rosary or the Jesus Prayer, they usually find that while the prayer or meditation itself is spiritually beneficial, it is the resulting consciousness, a consciousness free from thoughts of the world and free from desires of the flesh, which is most beneficial. While some spiritual aspirants may become stuck on the idea of the techniques themselves, it is the consciousness they invoke which is the true goal of all true spiritual practices. In this state, the human mind is in the deepest state of "not working" which is achievable while on Earth. In this state, not only are we not moving our body about, doing physical work, but our minds are not consumed with the work of thoughts, emotions, and desires. In this state, free from identification with personal desires, we have truly STOPPED. We cannot do work, because we have lost the sense of being the "doer" in any way and given all identification of Self over to Christ.

This state is the perfection of worship. It is the kind of worship Jesus was speaking about to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well:

21Jesus said to her, Woman believe me, the time is coming, when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will they worship the Father. 22You worship what you do not know; but we worship what we do know... 23But the time is coming, and it is here, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father also desires worshippers such as these. 24For God is Spirit; and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The Day My Father Came Running to Meet Me

2006-02-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

"The Prodigal Son" by Gwen Raverat
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is probably one of Jesus' most famous teaching stories. With "The Good Samaritan," it holds a place in the Western mind that borders on the unconscious. We are so familar with these stories that we no longer think about their meaning. In the case of "The Good Samaritan," we have even transformed the word Samaritan into a synonym for "a good person" when at the time it refered to someone from the region of Samaria, an area in the North of present-day Israel (between Galilee and Judea). They practiced a form of Judaism, but did not believe in the need to worship YHVH in the Temple of Jerusalem, as the Sanhedrin taught. This made them outcastes and Orthodox Jews were not permitted to eat with them or come into contact with them.

In the Case of The Prodigal Son, we have at its core the story of forgiveness and redemption. The Master presents us with a caring, forgiving, and forgetting Father. When the son returns, he does not care about the past, nor does he even consider the son's speech about being unworthy of the Father's Love. When deeply reflected upon, I believe, we find a powerful rejection from the lips of The Master of the idea of a vengeful God who sends sinners to be punished in the depths of Hell.

"20 And he rose up and came to his father. And while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion on him, and he ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. 21 And his son said to him, My father, I have sinned before heaven and before you, and I am not worthy to be called your son. 22 But his father said to his servants, Bring the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet; 23 And bring and kill the fat ox, and let us eat and be merry; 24 For this my son was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry."

According to the Brethren minister I heard today, the ring would have been a signet ring, much like the seal rings worn by kings and the Pope in the middle ages. It was an outward sign that the wearer spoke with the athority of the family whose crest was on the ring, and meant that the father was welcoming him back into the family with all the privalages he once had. The shoes were given because to be barefoot insinuated that one was a slave or servant, and the robe was a symbol of the father's hospitality, only given to honored guests.

With these three gifts, the robe, the ring, and the shoes, the father in Jesus' story refutes the son's arguement for his unworthiness without a word. He will not be a servant, he will have the athority of the family, and he is, for now, the honored guest. It is obvious, I think, that the father of this story is God the Father, whom Christ often called by the Aramaic word Abba, a term of familiarity and endearment akin to the English word "Daddy." Would your Daddy leave you out in the cold for a mistake? Jesus tells us that our Heavenly Father would never do that. He holds no grudges, he requires no repayment. All he requires is for us to begin the journey back to Him. We do not even need to go the whole way. God comes running down the path to meet us. What a joy to have such a Father who fills the world with such love.

This was my lesson today. I started on the path back to Him, with my tail between my legs, humble in the knowledge that I've not been able to cope without my spiritual practices. On the way to the Brethren Church, I passed an Amish man, probably about my age, on the road. I slowed down and moved over to give him room. He waved to me and we made eye contact. I was so filled with Love and Christian Brotherhood for this man whom I will most likely never meet. Then, the pastor's message in Church was so tailored to me, The Spirit moved him and The Christ Himself spoke to me though his lips. I took one step back toward the Father, and He came running to meet me! What Joy!

A Wake-Up Call

2006-02-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

As those very few of you who do read my blog may (or may not) have noticed, I haven't exactly been a presence on the web in the last couple of months. This is due to a number of factors, the biggest of which has been our move back to our hometown and back into my parents' house after 4 years in California. The limitations of a dial-up internet connection, and all my books being in boxes in the garage have left me with little inspiration or patience for blogging...

Today, however, I was VERY inspired. For the first time since coming back to Michigan, I attended worship services at a Christian church. Last week, while driving between my parents' house and the home of my in-laws, I noticed a small Church of the Brethren congregation at a rural crossroads outside of Crystal, MI and decided to give them a go, as I'd found little inspiriation recently on my own, and was starved for communion with other members of the Body of Christ. My old friend Travis' blog Sister Anna Bap's Famous Radical Pie made me consider the possibility that I'd get on well with the Brethren, and since I knew that I'd never be able to just blend in and "pose as Catholic" in a town of 4,000, I paid them a visit.

Amazingly, there were familiar faces there! My High School science teacher, now retired, had been going there most of his life (his family has been members for the entire 100-year history of the congregation), as well as an old High School classmate. Their new minister gave a very inspiring talk on the parable of the prodigal son, and afterward, we spend over an hour drinking coffee and discussing scripture. I had a wonderful time, and my thoughts on God, Christ, and the intricacies of biblical translations seemed to fall on sympathetic ears. I believe I'll spend more time with them, and perhaps attend some of their bible study groups.

For God so Loved the World

2005-12-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of St. John the Beloved, Chapter 3:

(14)Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of man is ready to be lifted up (15)so that every man who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

(16)For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (17)For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world should be saved by Him. (18)He who believes in Him will not be condemned; and he who does not believe has already been condemned for not believing in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (19)And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world and yet men have loved darkness more than light, because their works were evil. (20)For every one who does detestable things hates the light, and he does not come to the light, because his works cannot be covered. (21)But he who does truthful things comes to the light, so that his works may be known, that they are done through God.

I've been very reluctant to tackle this passage, even though it has loomed large in my consciousness. This is, by all accounts, one of the most important verses in all of Christendom. This is the verse that tells us, we are told, that Jesus' death on the cross is the act by which our sinful lives are redeemed and the way to heaven is made clear. This is the passage, too that tells us how non-believers will be damned to hell for not accepting Jesus as their savior. I was moved to address this passage because of a comment from an anonymous person to one of my other posts regarding the nature of Jesus the man vs. Jesus The Christ.

The first step in understanding this passage is to understand the context in which this teaching is being given. In this story, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, who is one of His followers, and also a Pharisee, possibly a member of the Sanhedrin (temple leadership) itself. Nicodemus has come to the place where Jesus and followers are camped, to speak with Him about the opinion of Him among the Jewish religious leadership, and to get clarity regarding a previous teaching he'd heard from The Master. Again, from John, Chapter 3:

(1)There was at that place a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. (2)He came at night to Jesus and said to him,"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, for no man can do the things that you are doing unless God is with him."

What we are experiencing in this passage is something very intimate. This is an evening meeting, without the crowds, between Our Lord and a very influential member of His discipleship. As Jesus begins to teach Nicodemus about the need to be "born again," Nicodemus becomes confused:

(9)Nicodemus answered, saying to Him, "How can these things be?"
(10)Jesus answered, "You are a Teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? (11)Truly, truly, I say to you, We speak only what we know, and we testify only to what we have seen; and yet you do not accept our testimony."

Jesus is speaking here of the difference between simply reading about God by studying the Torah (or the Bible in the Christian case) and experiencing the Truth of God's presence through personal, inner experience. Jesus says that He and his disciples only speak from personal experience, and he is surprised that someone as important to the religious community as Nicodemus hasn't had a similar experience that would allow him to understand what Jesus is talking about.

So, what Jesus has said, in essence, is: "If I have to explain it, you won't understand." Therefore we, too, must realize that the teaching Jesus is revealing here, and St. John has recorded for us are some of the deepest Truths contained in Christianity. They are, however, Truths that do not reveal themselves with a casual reading of the Bible. They can only be understood through personal experience; that which the Greek Christians referred to as gnosis.

Any attempt at explaining the meaning of these words will undoubtedly miss the mark. Like Jesus and His disciples, I can only speak what I know and testify to what I have seen. As my own gnosis is far from complete, I can only explain them as I understand them, and welcome comments on the understandings that others receive.

Since Jesus has been speaking of personal experience, of "that which we have seen," I think that the word translated here as believe cannot be understood to be synonymous with "blind faith," but should be understood more like "seeing is believing." Therefore, we could read John 3:15 as "so that everyone who experiences Christ and accepts that experience as Truth will not die, but have eternal life." As someone who believes (as the early Chruch Fathers and the ancient Jews believed) in reincarnation, I believe that Jesus speaks here of the end of the cycle of birth and death, of Final Liberation, or in His own words "Entering the Kingdom of Heaven."

As I have stated in an earlier post, I believe that the Son of God which Jesus refers to (often in the third person) is not himself in the personal sense, but to the consciousness which was bestowed upon him and for which he became a totally pure doorway into the world of human ego. As Jesus says in verse 15, and reiterates in verse 16, God loves His creation so deeply, that he sent His Son, The Christ Consciousness, into the world in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of Man" so that it could be remembered and experienced by others; that through the experience and the acceptance of the experience as Truth, humanity could escape the false belief that we are the body, and therefore be free from death and at One with The Father.

The second part of this passage, I believe, holds much relevance to Christianity as it manifests itself today in America. Jesus first says that the Son of God has not come to judge people. The very next thing he says is that those who do not believe (remember, "seeing is believing") are already condemned, and that THIS is the judgment. It is not God or Christ dealing out "death sentences" to hell or commending people to heaven based on accepting or not accepting Jesus as their savior, but that some natural order, beyond judgment or values, keeps us in a state of "condemnation" (being unable to experience our closeness to God and having to experience the death of the physical body). After we experience God's Son, The Christ, an accept that experience as truth, then the condemnation is lifted and we are free.

Jesus' final statement in this passage speaks of our desires in the world and our love of materiality, and how this prevents us from experiencing The Christ. An important word to pay attention to here is evil. According to Neil-Douglas Klotz in his book "Prayers of the Cosmos," the Aramaic word which means evil also means unripe or "not yet ready to be harvested." Understanding this, the whole last part of the passage becomes illuminated, and could just as easily say:

When we love darkness more than light (when we are more interested in the world than in God), then everything we do will be incomplete. As long as we love the world more than God, we're avoiding God's love, and damning ourselves. We don't come into the light of God's love because we know that our faults will be illuminated and we'll have to change them, but we love our faults too much to do that. However, when we live in Truth, coming to God is easy because we aren't ashamed of anything, and we see that God is truly the source of all things, the only true "doer."

Giving Thanks (and recognizing the sameness of all people)

2005-12-07T02:31:00.000-08:00

Photo from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

For Thanksgiving this year, my wife, four friends, and myself decided to expand our sense of thankfulness, or sense of community, and get out of our comfort zone. After a small meal together in the afternoon, we spent the evening feeding the poor in front of the Salvation Army and the alley behind Loaves and Fishes Shelter in Sacramento. My wife and I prepared for this by going to Safeway and buying enough bread, lunchmeat, and sliced cheese to make 60'ish sandwiches. Our friends Neal and Penelope made a huge pot of potato soup. The effort, for us, was twofold.

First, it was an exercise in extending our sense of who we included in our definition of "community." For many people, community is their family, their school or work friends, members of their church or spiritual group, and for some, their neighbors. While the poor and homeless are a visible part of our urban landscape, most wouldn't consider these people a part of the "community." We have a sense that community means those we socialize with, those who vote, those who make "positive contributions" to the economy of our city. I too, was paralyzed by these closed concepts of community. While I am aware of the homeless in our neighborhood, and sometimes give food or money to those who live near the shopping center where we work, I hadn't given that much thought to their part in the community. While I gave them money or food, I never really placed myself in a situation where I would be forced to recognize these people as people... as a part of my community. Until Thanksgiving.

As we handed out the food, Penelope led the way in getting us to break down the barriers still separating us from the people who were right there in front of us, out in the cool Sacramento night. She dove in, and used the food as a opening, for dialogue, and for her heart and mind. She began to probe them, engage them in questions about their lives, their friends, their feeling of community. As I listened, I began to see what community really is, and how intimately we are all connected to one another.

At the Salvation Army, Nicole began talking to a guy in a wheelchair who had separated himself from the group, who were waiting in line for a free movie which was going to be shown later in the evening. His leg was held upright and straight in a brace, and he said that he'd already had one surgery on his knee, and was waiting on a second surgery, which he hoped would come before Christmas. He said he was a truck driver, and that since his injury prevented him from driving, he was forced to live on the streets till he could work again. He also said "I'll NEVER go without medical insurance AGAIN!" This was a pretty normal fellow. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't crazy or a drug addict. He was just a regular guy; a guy that had a piece of bad luck and was now stuck. What struck me about him was his sense that he was a "short-timer." He didn't plan on being there long, and sincerely felt that he'd be back on his feet (both literally and figuratively) before the year was out. Talking to this man made me realize how close to this life so many people are. If something were to happen to me that prevented me from working, I could very well be right were he is.

The other lesson gained from this experience was realizing the preciousness of my ability to choose what kinds of food I eat. I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan. I found myself laughing at how buying ten pounds of cold cuts and a tub of mayonnaise must have thrown off my Safeway Club Card customer profile (and they thought they had me all figured out). Handling meat is not something I'm keen on, but it made me appreciate my power of choice. I don't consider myself wealthy by most American standards. I'm working-class. I have a "white collar" job, but make "blue collar" wages, and don't drive anything near a new car. But, I can choose to be vegetarian, and even vegan! That's not just a choice toward health (as I usually see it), but also a choice toward cutting out the staples of caloricly dense foods. Top that off with my usual abstinence from bread, and I've pretty much eliminated the majority of Americans' caloric intake. What is left are expensive, nutrient-dense (but caloricly light) foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables (organic if we can afford them), meat alternatives such as Seitan and Tofu, and filtered water. All these things I take for granted, but being able to choose and afford a diet such as this puts me in a very exclusive club! I have SO MUCH to be thankful for.

So, I started off talking about our Thanksgiving trip to feed the poor and ended up talking about my own diet. What's the point? The point is that while we were supposedly serving others, it seemed that the ones doing the serving were given an enormous gift in return. Being out there in the cool night air, sharing the company of those I would've never had the opportunity to meet otherwise, I felt so blissful. It wasn't a sense of self-righteousness, or of pride. It was a feeling that THIS was what human beings were put on the earth to do... To Love and Serve each other.

So, I advise all who read this to take an opportunity to serve those in your community who have no place to live and no consistent source of nutrition. I KNOW, I KNOW. You can't afford it. What little you could do wouldn't really make a dent in the problem. The truth is, if you can afford to take your family out to dinner and to a movie once in a while, if you can afford to lavish each other with gifts on Christmas, then you can afford an experience like this now and again. We plan on doing this more often, and at a time OTHER than Thanksgiving, as all the people we talked to had eaten pretty well in the days leading up to that one. They were most grateful for our chicken sandwiches, as they said they couldn't possibly eat more turkey! We spent a total of about $75, and with it, we were able to give a sandwich to every single person we met who wanted one (some even got two). Perhaps this didn't put even "a tiny dent in the problem," but for us, it was $75 very well spent on an amazing experience in unconditional love and gratitude.

Your Spirituality Type

2005-11-16T02:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a link from the Blog of my old friend Travis Polling (Sister Anna Bap's Famous Radical Pie), I found THIS link to the "test your spiritual type" website. This website proports to tell you what KIND of Christian you are. I thought that was pretty silly... Till I took the test. As soon as I saw "Franciscan Prayer" at the top of my results page, I KNEW this little Java script had it's shit together. Totally cool! So Check it out!

Here's my results:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Spirituality Type: PATH OF SERVICE (Franciscan prayer)

About 38 percent of the population is this spiritual type--but far fewer of this type come to church regularly.

Like Saint Francis of Assisi, those who follow the path must be free, unconfined, and able to do whatever their inner spirit moves them to do. They don't like to be tied down by rules. One thinks of Saint Peter impetuously jumping into the water to join Jesus as a typical action of this type.

Franciscan spirituality leads to acts of loving service which can be a most effective form of prayer. The gospel stories about Jesus have a special appeal, particularly the Incarnation of God in the life of Jesus, which is the center around which Franciscan life and spirituality revolve. Franciscan prayer is flexible and free-flowing making full use of the five senses and it is spirit-filled prayer.

Those on this path can make a meditation on the beauty of a waterfall, flower, meadow, mountain, or ocean—all of God's creation. There is more stress in prayer on the events of Jesus' life on this teaching. Like Saint Therese of Lisieux, prayer is done with total concentration—as if this is the most important thing to be doing at this moment Therese did all tasks knowing that each was a part of the total harmony of the universe.

By Roger O'Brien.
Found in VISION: http://www.vocationguide.org
© National Religious Vocation Conference
------------------------------------------------------

Weird... A little java script has me all figured out. Therese and Francis are mi familia and my patrons. I'm in love with Therese and want to be Francis' best friend. Cool. Check this little site out!

Vatican cardinal says "Loose those stupid Jesus-Fish-eating-Darwin-Fish car thingies"

2005-11-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

While it may come as a shock to many Christians, scholars generally agree that the 4 Gospels contain 4 different versions of Jesus' public life. While their messages are similar (although addressed to different audiences and with different agendas), the chronological order of events, and even the places which events take place do not always agree. As soon as one begins to study the Bible closely, with even a small amount of open-mindedness, it becomes impossible to read it "literally" or see it in any way as an historical document. This is especially true for the "bookends" of the Bible--Genesis and The Revelation of St. John. Just as with the Gospels, a close reading of the first two chapters of Genesis reveal not one, but two distinct creation stories. The first is laid out for us in Genesis 1:1-2:3. This is the 6-day creation with one day off, the text which fundamentalists and creationists pound again and again in the fight against the Darwinian theory of evolution and even, as ridiculous as it may seem, the insistence that the earth is only 4,000 years old.

The other creation story is contained in Genesis 2:4-25. This story is more heavily focused on the creation of human beings and the relationship between men and women.

Here is the account of the creation of humans and animals in the first creation story:

"Then God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind and everything that creeps upon the earth after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
"Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild beasts of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis 2:25-27 Lamsa Translation)

Here is the same account, but from the second story:

"And the Lord God formed Adam out of the soil of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...
"Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper who is like him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to all fowl of the air, and to all wild beasts; but for Adam there was not found a helper who was equal to him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the place with flesh and in its stead; And the rib which the Lord God had taken from Adam he made a woman, and brought her to Adam. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." (Genesis 2:7-9, 18-23, Lamsa Translation).

Clearly, these are two distinctly different stories. First, and most glaring to me, is the fact that the order of creation is changed. In the first story, God creates animals first, and afterward creates man and woman at the same time. In the second story, man (the male) is created first, then God creates a bunch of animals in a futile attempt to find one which will be a suitable companion for Adam. Adam rejects one after another, till finally God sedates him, takes a rib from his side, and uses it as some sort of seed to create a woman.

Another, more subtle difference, which is a telltale sign for scholars that these two stories are not only different, but were written at very different times, is the change in names used to refer to God. In the first story, God is called simply "God". The Hebrew word used here is elohim. In the second story, the name becomes the Lord God. The Hebrew used here is adonai elohim. The difference is subtle, but important for those dating scriptures.

So, not only have we established that there are two disagreeing versions of the creation of mankind within the same chapter of Genesis, we have seen that these two versions were probably written at different times in human history, and (like the 4 Gospels) probably have different agendas and audiences. What am I getting at, you may ask? Am I saying the Bible is not a reliable document? Most definitly not. The Bible is one of the most reliable documents on earth, but not as an historical document, but as a spiritual document. These creation stories are myths, that is, they are meant to convey a spiritual Truth, not to be taken as historial fact. For me, the first creation myth paints God as the ultimate artist, and teaches that we should appreciate the world as His Art. Everything around us was painted on a blank canvas of black void, and we were placed in that work that we might appricate and enjoy it. The second myth, I feel, speaks of the creation of sexuality. In many Western Mystery traditions, the first human was either asexual or hermaphroditic (being either both male and female or neither male nor female). Then, some fundamental act separates the two, and Soul Mates are created. One becomes two, and the meaning of life is the reunion of the male and female aspects of our own soul--the healing of duality. I think this story of Adam's rib can easily be taken as a version of that myth; although there are many other interpretations, some less woman friendly than mine. It is not my place to say that my interpretation is better than those, only that it speaks more to the truth as I have experienced it.

The Vatican, it seems, agrees with my hypothesis that the book of Genesis is NOT an historical document, but a spiritual one. Earlier this month, in a press conference, Cardinal Paul Poupard spoke of the dangers of reading the Bible too literally and of rejecting the findings of Science. Read more for details:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article copied from the Washington Post. Click Here for the original.

Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science
By NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
Friday, November 4, 2005; 10:12 AM

VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.
But he said science, too, should listen to religion.

"We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link," he said.

"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said.

"The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."
Poupard and others at the news conference were asked about the religion-science debate raging in the United States over evolution and "intelligent design."

Intelligent design's supporters argue that natural selection, an element of evolutionary theory, cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis."

"A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. "(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."

He was asked about comments made in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who dismissed in a New York Times article the 1996 statement by John Paul as "rather vague and unimportant" and seemed to back intelligent design.

Basti concurred that John Paul's 1996 letter "is not a very clear expression from a definition point of view," but he said evolution was assuming ever more authority as scientific proof develops.

Poupard, for his part, stressed that what was important was that "the universe wasn't made by itself, but has a creator." But he added, "It's important for the faithful to know how science views things to understand better."

The Vatican project STOQ has organized academic courses and conferences on the relationship between science and religion and is hosting its first international conference on "the infinity in science, philosophy and theology," next week.

United Methodist Bishops speak out against Iraq War

2005-11-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to pass on this piece of Gospel (greek for "Good News") I got today from a member of the OES (Order of Ecumenical Franciscans) email list. Rejoice!

Nov. 11, 2005 .
By United Methodist News Service
http://tinyurl.com/74ph4

Ninety-six United Methodist bishops have signed a statement repenting "of our complicity in what we believe to be the unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"The signers include more than half of the denomination's active and retired bishops, both within the United States and in the Central Conferences outside the United States. Bishop Kenneth Carder, one of the signers, told United Methodist News Service on Nov. 11 that the statement had been nearly six weeks in the making.

The statement confesses "our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated."While the sacrifices of military personnel are valued, true security does not lie in the weapons of war, the bishops pointed out.

The bishops committed to praying daily for the end of war in Iraq and all wars in general, reclaiming the idea of living "faithfully in the light of God's new creation" and pledging to peacemaking as an "integral component of our own Christian discipleship."

They also called upon United Methodists to object to "solutions of war that conflict with the gospel message of self-emptying love" and work toward "unity in a world of diversity."

On Nov. 4, the Council of Bishops adopted a resolution calling on President George Bush to draw up a plan and timeline for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq. Another statement on Iraq had been issued by the council a year and a half earlier.

In the "Resolution on the War in Iraq," the bishops noted that "peacemaking is a sacred calling of the Lord Jesus Christ," and that the denomination's Book of Discipline declares war "incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ."

The resolution stated that "the continuing loss of Iraqi civilian lives, especially children, and the increasing death toll among United States and coalition military, grieves the heart of God." The bishops said the U.S. government's reasons for war - "the presumption of weapons of mass destruction and alleged connection between al-Qaida and Iraq" - have not been verified, and that the violence in Iraq has created a context for "gross violations of human rights of prisoners of war."

In October, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society passed a resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq. "As people of faith, we raise our voice in protest against the tragedy of the unjust war in Iraq," the resolution stated. "We urge the United States government to develop and implement a plan for the withdrawal of its troops. The U.S. invasion has set in motion a sequence of events which may plunge Iraq into civil war."

Who Would Jesus Bomb? (originally posted 10/11/05)

2005-11-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

Today, I found a wonderful article about the current nature of spiritual debate in our American political world. I have, in the last few years, avoided much political discussion outside my very close friends, simply because I felt that there were other things more productive to talk about. It was enough to say that I was unhappy with the current administration, and that I wish if they were going to carry Jesus around like a banner, that they'd at least LISTEN to what the guy had to say. Our Great Christian President, George the Second, when asked in the 2000 debates who his "favorite philosopher" was, he answered "Jesus Christ." The man's actions in the last 5 years show me he doesn't know much about Jesus' teachings on unconditional love, helping the poor or the children, or on non-violence.

Anyway, I found this great article on the topic from Salon.com. The original can be read Here

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Rescuing Jesus

Bush & Co. have hijacked Jesus, using him as the poster child for their callous worldview. It's time to rescue Christ from his kidnappers.

By Alessandro Camon

Oct. 07, 2005 Harriet Miers, should she be confirmed to the Supreme Court, will be the resident evangelical Christian. She shares her religious background with George W. Bush, whose claim to have chosen her based on "knowing her heart" has as much to do with the born-again faith he shares with her as with her long service in his inner circle. This choice might have left secular conservatives perplexed or downright dissatisfied, but is an obvious crowd-pleaser with the Christian right. Above all, it reflects the importance of Christianity for Bush, widely described as the most devout president in history.

But as we brace for more battles over abortion rights, gay marriage, stem cell research and so forth, it's time to ask just how Christian the supposedly pious Bush administration really is. Because what happened in New Orleans, and what has been happening in Iraq, raises serious questions about whether Bush & Co. deserve to be called Christian at all.

Natural disasters are often labeled "acts of God." Those who take the expression literally may think that God is punishing our sins (a belief shared by some Christians with those Muslims who think Katrina is Allah's reprisal), or they may struggle to reconcile the idea of an infinitely good God with the devastation he brings upon us. But you don't have to take the expression literally to feel that natural disasters call into question the meaning of life. They cut us down to size, and challenge us to rise up again. They make us mourn for the dead and reach out for the survivors. If we do believe in God, even just a little bit, they are a true test of our faith, and an opportunity to do what we preach: to give, to comfort, to assist.

Wars are acts of man, yet all too often are fought for a "holy" cause, painted as deeds of "infinite justice" or "crusades" of good vs. evil. But it's when we look at the victims that faith is truly tested. A religious person will have the chance to show all his horror, regret, compassion, forgiveness. In war, many parents will lose their children, a sacrifice so profound that it is more than a human being can be expected to bear; a sacrifice that is, in fact, made by God -- the Christian one -- and proof of godliness. (In one of the harshest and most controversial biblical tales, Abraham is ready to sacrifice his son before God, as he believes God asked him to do, but God stops him before he goes through with it. However one wants to interpret the tale -- whether it's about obedience or misunderstanding -- the point is, God doesn't actually want to impose on a parent the loss of a child.) To those who suffer such a loss, we have a chance -- and an obligation -- to offer utmost solidarity.

The administration's lethargic and callous response to the call after Hurricane Katrina, just like the president's coldheartedness toward Cindy Sheehan, suggests that the people who govern us are as willing to invoke Jesus as their guide, their inspiration, even their "favorite philosopher," as they are firmly unwilling to behave anything like Jesus.
"What would Jesus do?" has been a favorite slogan of the Christian right. It's a rhetorical question, meant to display lofty concerns and stake the high ground. It's not meant to be answered; in fact it's usually not even asked in relation to the things Jesus cared about.
It's time to put that question to better use.

Should a nation rush into an unprovoked war whose justification is weak at best, and fraudulent at worst? What would Jesus do?

A mother mourning the death of her son in that war asks for a chance to speak to the president about her grief, and to have her questions answered. What would Jesus do?
Thousands of men, women and children are left behind in the flood with no food, drinkable water or medical aid. What would Jesus do?

Would Jesus rush to war, or neglect to interrupt his vacation to meet the mother of a dead soldier, or abandon the people of a ravaged city? Would he promote tax breaks for the rich, undercut education, support the death penalty?

The answers are painfully easy. We know what Jesus would do, because he did do it, or talked about it in no uncertain terms. Jesus was for peace, for the poor, for the afflicted, for the children, and against the death penalty -- of which he was a victim. Anybody who denies this, or who argues that it's possible to be a good Christian without adhering to these basic positions, is basically betraying Christ.

We could ask some harder questions. Would Jesus really frown upon homosexuality? Would he seek to prolong life at all cost, even when in the form of a persistent vegetative state? Here many believe the answers are in the affirmative, or at least much more uncertain. But homosexuality existed in Jesus' times. And what Jesus had to say about it was, in one word, nothing. Unlike poverty, it just wasn't a concern. As far as pulling the plug, being a Christian means to believe that life doesn't end with the physical death of this body, on this earth. That's when a far better, everlasting life begins. (The one legitimately complex issue is abortion, and one can see a case for Jesus being generally against it; still, it is not something he directly spoke about.)

The American Christian right has hijacked Jesus Christ. It has made him into a brand, a logo, a bumper sticker. It celebrates his suffering on the cross, but largely neglects what he had to say. It prefers an Old Testament God, a "Jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children." It elevates success to proof of God's favor, and washes its hands of responsibility for the poor. It combines a self-righteous vision of Americans as the chosen people with shrill intimations of imminent apocalypse, to justify indifference to the rest of the world and to the planet itself. It sticks to the letter of the Bible with arbitrary selectiveness, so that it can endorse creationism and condemn homosexuality while acknowledging that (contrary to Old Testament wisdom) the earth is in fact round, and slavery is not OK.

It's a twisted, schizophrenic form of religion that mirrors the most reactionary form of Islam. (Not by chance, both the Christian right and conservative Muslims are at odds with women's rights, and fiercely homophobic.)

A lot can be said about the theological fallacies and over-simplifications of the Christian right. Take the way it reads the Commandments. What, for example, does "not to take the Lord's name in vain" mean? Is it a prohibition against using the word "God" in casual conversation? Or does it forbid Christians from going to war in the name of God? And what about "love thy neighbor"? Does it refer to the guy next door, who shares our tax bracket? Or is it about all of our fellow humans, whether similar or different? In fact, is it not an exhortation to love precisely those who are different?

Most important, though, is how Christians actually relate to Christ.

Jesus was a poor man. He started a movement of the poor, for the poor. This isn't socialist revisionism: This is what the Gospels say. Jesus defied authority, and spread a message of hope, tolerance, inclusion.

He said:
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ... For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

He also said:
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Moreover:
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

And of course, he said:
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. (...) Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.

Does this sound like the voice inspiring this administration? Or the voice they go out of their way to ignore?

Last month, President Bush said that Hurricane Katrina exposed the problem of persistent poverty in this country. But why did the problem need to be exposed in order to warrant his concern? Was the president not aware of it before? And what about poverty in the rest of the world -- a problem that the Bush administration stubbornly refuses to make a priority, which in fact its policies greatly exacerbate?

To hold a president (or a justice) up to such a high standard as the teachings of Jesus would be unfair, if it weren't the president himself who claimed to act in Jesus' name. It's time for Bush, the Republican Party and the Christian right to be confronted with their failings as Christians. If there is a worthy measure of anybody's religious commitment, it has to be how it's expressed in action. It's not how you talk the talk that makes you a true Christian. It's the deeds you do -- and those you don't.

Liberals have let the right claim Jesus for themselves. But the legacy of Christ is far too precious to be left in the hands of the hypocrites who use it to justify war, bigotry and injustice. It is time to reclaim Jesus -- not to start another religious party, but to free him from the one that's hogging him as their poster child. It's time not just to ask "what would Jesus do?" but to actually listen to the answer.

It's about poverty. It's about peace. No true Christian can have anything more important in mind.

-- By Alessandro Camon

Jesus' Yoga (originally posted 10/6/05)

2005-11-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

Today's reading comes from the 11th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, verses 28-30:

"Come to me, all you who are tired out and carrying burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am genial and meek in my heart, and you will find rest in your souls. For my yoke is very pleasant, and my burden is light."

It is interesting, and very revealing to examine the root of the word "Yoke." A Yoke is the large wooden harness that is used to tie an ox or a buffalo to a cart or plough that they might do work for their master. So, here, The Master is saying that becoming His oxen, his workers, is an easy burden. This may seem at odds with other places in the Gospels and Epistles, where we are told that to be a disciple of Christ is to be rejected by society, to be spit upon. The whole of the Catholic faith seems sometimes constructed upon the foundation of the correctness of suffering. What then, is Jesus saying here?

The "lightness" The Master speaks of is a lightness of the Spirit, an inner serenity. It is interesting to note that the English word "yoke" is a derivative of the Sanskrit word "Yoga" (Sanskrit being the oldest surviving language in the Indo-European language family). Yoga means "to tie or hook together," and as we have said before, a yoke is a tool for attaching a load to work animals. In order to gain the deeper understanding of The Master's words, then, it is useful to know WHAT "binding" is implied in the term Yoga. While we in the West tend to think of Yoga as a bunch of stretching exercises like an Indian calisthenics or something, this physical Yoga, or HATHA Yoga, is only one aspect of a whole system of philosophy, meditation, and postures which are designed to bind the Soul of the individual to God. This is nearly identical to the analogy Christ makes in another part of the Gospel where he speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven as a wedding, where He is the Groom and the Human Soul the Bride.

The deeper meaning of this passage, then is that once we bind ourselves to Christ; once our consciousness is wedded to His, all our burdens (our stresses, emotional considerations, our responsibilities in the world) will become light and easy. Even this so-called suffering, which is considered a hallmark of the Christian life, will seem like nothing at all, and we will be able to bare it easily and without worry or stress. Christ is telling us that when we bind ourselves to His Consciousness, we are lifted up to a state of mind beyond worry and weight to a place of Serenity, Light, and equanimity.

Source Texts (originally posted 9/28/05)

2005-11-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

A couple friends asked me where I was getting the Bible verses I was quoting (which translation), so I decided to feature my Favorite Book in this post.

The Bible I use most often, although I ALWAYS reference 2 or 3 others (till I learn to read Biblical Greek and Syriac myself), is "The Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text" translated by George Lamsa. This book is an English translation of the Peshitta, the official Bible of the Eastern Orthodox Church. This text is written in Syriac, a language also called "Eastern Aramaic," which is similar to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and his contemporaries, though not identical (think Mexican Spanish vs Spanish Spanish). Lamsa felt that growing up in a Semitic, Aramaic-speaking desert tribe made him especially qualified to translate and comment on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.

I enjoy Lamsa's work because he approaches his subject matter as a scholar, doing well for the most part of keeping his personal theology out of the matter at hand and approaching the translation from the view of a "cultural insider" without ramming his personal views on God or the Spiritual World down his readers' throats.

Those familiar with the Hebrew/Greek or KJV-based translations will not feel like they're in completely new territory as they plumb the depths of the uniquely Semitic Biblical world that this book illuminates. Lamsa does his best to use similar phraseology and style to the KJV (occasionally, even, at the expense of a more mystical reading of the work), which eases us into this new way of reading old stories.

Generally speaking, reading "The Holy Bible" is like getting a hopeful second opinion after your Dr. tells you the cancer is inoperable. Lamsa explores the dual (or triple) meanings of words in Semitic languages (like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic) and shows us that the physical, "Literal" and Non-Mystical interpretation of these well-known scriptures may not have been inherent in their writing (as they seem to be from the Latin and Greek texts) but that there may be MANY meanings for a particular verse, some which even seem "Eastern" in the sense of Buddhist or Taoist.

So READ THIS BIBLE, and USE IT; either as your primary Bible, or to supplement your well-worn "Western" Bible.

Get it at amazon.com HERE

You can also read it online for free HERE

For further Aramaic and Peshitta resources, check out the works of Neil Douglas-Klotz HERE

And the Church of Lamsa's protege, Rocco Errico HERE

Shalom

A Simple LIfe (Originally Published 9/27/05)

2005-11-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

My friend Aubrey has a quote from Marcus Auraleus in her email signature:

"Very little is needed to live a happy life"

Whenever I get a letter from her, I really contemplate this little phrase, which comes in a cursive font with a little cartoon rose on each side. I like it because it's a GREAT motto for her and her partner Matt. They are, more than anyone else I know, easily contented with little, with the simple, the quiet, the slow. As one who attempts to live in the immitation of Christ, It stands out to me as almost a mantra. This little verse could easily have been a truism for Jesus and his Apostles, just as it surely was for our Beloved Father Francis and Sister Claire of Assisi. It is a truth for the Amish, the Menonites, and the Brethren (three AMAZING groups of American Christians), and was a motto of the homesteaders and Pioneers who travelled across the Great Plains with fiddle and hoe in hand.

What I LOVE about getting this from Aubrey is that while her and Matt would most definitly NOT identify themselves as Christians, this is a MOST Christian of mottos. Not Christian in the closed-off, Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell/Fred Phelps sense of the word, but in the expansive, Jesus/John the Baptist/St. Francis sense of the word. This is the Christianity I hope to be an example for in the world, and I love that this lesson comes from a non-Christian friend's quote of a non-Christian Emperor.

Shalom

Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Personal Savior? (orginally posted 8/30/05)

2005-11-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

As a free-thinking, open-minded Christian who strives in his life to be as Christlike as possible (with mixed results), I find myself constantly at odds with the Fundamentalist, born-again doctrine that says all we must do is "accept Jesus Christ into our lives" and everything will be great from there on in. There's nothing else to do. You can be a wonderful person who cares for people and is generous and loving, but if you haven't "given your life to Jesus", then you will certainly burn in Hell. However, one can pretty much do whatever one wants, consequence-free, as long as he has accepted Jesus as his Savior and asks for forgiveness for whatever he's done. This man is garanteed to go to heaven.

This is not to say that all born-again Christians are doing terrible things all the time and then asking for forgiveness later on. On the contrary, many of them are very good people, who work just as hard as anyone else at being what they believe to be a right and moral person. This is the most we can truly ask of anyone, that they are living their lives to the best of their abilities as their own spiritual tradition dictates.

The Born-Again tradition is firmly grounded in the teachings of the Bible... Saddly, reading The Bible is a passtime that has rapdily gone out of style, even among us Christians who profess to follow its precepts. How surprised I was to find that in Matthew 7:21-23, at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Himself spoke out against the Born-Again theology.

"Knowing the correct password--saying "Master, Master,' for instance--isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience--doing what my Father wills. I can see it now--at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, "Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? "You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here.' (from "The Message")

Or, from a more "conventional" translation:

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' (from NIV)

Clearly to me, Jesus is saying here: "Just calling me 'Master' is not enough. You have to do the REAL WORK (aka: the Will of The Father) in order to get into Paradise on Judgement Day. The important question is: What is the REAL WORK? What is the Will of The Father? I believe that in this respect, the Born-again theology is PARTIALLY correct. The goal IS to have a PERSONAL relationship with Christ, and therefore with God. Again a question arrises: What is a PERSONAL relationship with God? It is a realationshp where we listen more than we speak, where we quiet our minds and open our Hearts so that God can enter there. A famous painting of Jesus has Him knocking at a door. The artist was once asked why the door had no handle. He said the door was the door to our hearts, and that it only opened from the INSIDE. We had to let God in. The best way to do this to follow the advice of Psalm 46, verse 10:

"Be still, and know that I am God"

Reading the Bible... REALLY! (originally posted to Tribe.net 08/25/2005)

2005-11-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

After finishing "Lamb," I decided I was going to embark on a true reading of the New Testiment. I called myself a Christian as a kid, and after a somewhat long break, am doing so now again... So I thought it would be pertinant to actually read the document from which I proport to believe.

As I read, I found that much of what I'd been raised on as "The Gospel Truth" was anything but. Today's case in point: The baptism of Jesus as recorded by St. Matthew (3:16,17)

"16And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

How is this different from the scene as Sunday School and the movies have taught us to remember it? "The Gospel Truth" shows us CLEARLY that this experience, so familar to our Protestant American mind, with the bird and the booming voice of God from heaven (probably sounding a great deal like Charton Heston or James Earl Jones, if we are to believe the movies) was an INTERIOR experience of Jesus'. The Bible states explicitly that "the heavens were opened up to HIM" and "HE saw the spirit of God".

So, what our cultural memory teaches us is the "Gospel Truth" is actually NOT. The people surrounding Jesus that day didn't hear the booming voice of God from the sky, and they didn't see a dove made of light decend upon Jesus. Only Jesus saw these things. The experience that St. Matthew recounts here is the moment of enlightenment of Jesus, the event of his "Christing"

The deeper revelation of this verse, if we are to read into it a bit, is even more illuminating. If the voice IS God addressing Jesus, why would He say "THIS is my Son?" Wouldn't He say "YOU are my Son?" Since He didn't say that, we must assume that Jesus THE MAN isn't the Son of God as we have prevoiusly been raised to believe that He was. Instead, God addresses Jesus and says THIS is my Son. Whom, then is God refering to?

I believe that God references THE EXPERIENCE... The CONSCIOUSNESS... Jesus became THE CHRIST at that moment. God was refering to the EXPEREINCE or the STATE OF MIND that Jesus was witnessing at that moment when He said "THIS is my son..." The body of Jesus ben Joseph became a recepticle for the only begotten Son of God at that moment, just as we all can also become, for does it not say, in John 1:12--

"But as many as received him, to them gave He power to become THE SONS OF GOD, even to them that believe on his name"

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

2005-11-14T07:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a little "visiting home" gift from my friend Aubrey, I was blessed with the joy of reading "Lamb" a nove by Christopher Moore which proports to tell the story of Jesus from the vantage point of his best friend "Levi, who is called Biff". Biff is something of a heathen, has a MASSIVE crush on the Virgin Mary growing up (can you blame him), and looses his virginity to Mary Magdalene on the eve of he and Jesus leaving Nazareth for the "Lost Years" period.

The Beauty of this book is how it uses humor, sarcasm, and irreverence, to tell some of the "alternative" theories about Jesus, especially those regarding the infamous "Lost Years." This book has Jesus and Biff inventing "Judo" (aka: The way of the Jew), rescuing Untouchable children in India from being sacrificed at a Kali ritual, and Biff claims over and over to be the inventor of sarcasm.

There is also an interesting side story, taking place in the "present", where Biff has been resurrected from the dead by the angel Raziel to write his Gospel. Since angels have no freewill and can only do what they are told by God, They are portrayed in the book as somewhat dimwhitted as compared to the humans. It's funny! I recommend this book to everybody, especially those without a sense of humor regarding the "Only Begotten Son." The sad thing is, the people who need this book the most are those who would probably consider it a one-way ticket to Hell. Read "Lamb" and laugh your ego off! Get it here on Amazon.com

Clarion Call to Open-Minded Christians Webwide

2005-11-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

The first few entries in this blog will be reposting from my old blog site at http://www.tribe.net. I wanted to be easily available to a wider audience, and reading and commenting on Tribe blogs requires setting up a whole account and profile. Here, people can simply access and comment on my ramblings, commentaries, and reflections, free of "register here" clicks. (Not that Tribe's bad... It's actually decent and should be investigated. It's like (to quote my friend Ali) "friendster meets craigslist."

If you're reading these posts and you like what you see, sign up for Tribe here. There's Lots of like-minded souls on there, interested in Christianity, the Western Mysteries, and more!

So... This is my introduction to the world of the blog. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to promulgate the concept that one CAN be a Christian in this world and at the same time honor the Truth in ALL religions. I am a mystic, an armchair scholar of religious history, and a Good (Gnostic) Catholic Boy. I currently reside in Sacramento, CA, but my wife and I will be on the road starting New Year's Eve, heading back to reside in the Midwest after a 4-year absence, due to the forthcoming birth of our new son. He's due May 13! Then, we'll be winter/summer'ing in Lansing, MI before moving to (insert name of city where I get accepted to Graduate School). I'm planning on a Theology Masters/Ph.D. Program in Biblical Languages and Early Christian History, and would like to go on to be a university or Community College teacher and perhaps give lectures at progressive churches on early Christian history and the evolution of Christian theology.