My Journey Thus Far

I have been thinking a lot lately about de-converting, atheism, liberal and conservative Protestantism, to church or not to church, heaven and hell, what to do with Jesus, etc. and I will attempt to summarize the journey as best as I can, from early on till now.

I was a full time minister, both as pastor and associate pastor, for 7 years. Before that, I had done some youth ministry work with my home church and worked at a Christian summer camp for two summers. I really enjoyed being with people who were like me. It was easy. No major differences to speak of. As I got older and more responsibility was given to me, I thought, “This is it. I’ve arrived. I am where God wants me.” Life was…predictable.

It has been said that most people have a crisis of belief at some point in their lives. For most, it happens at early adulthood, for or some, early adolescence and for others later in life. I fall in the latter, later in life. I think that I can now pinpoint the time when it happened.

I had resigned pastoring my first church and had gotten a job as a cable TV installer. My family and I started attending another church and instantly fell in love with it. When you have pastored a church for awhile and then have little to no responsibilities at a new church, it is euphoric. What’s not to love? We weren’t members of the church very long when I was approached to teach an adult class for Sunday School. I was excited to take on a leadership role at this new church, so I accepted. Not long after that, I was offered the associate pastor/ youth minister’s position, a paying position, so I gladly accepted. I quit work with the cable company and planned to complete college. There is a “liberal arts” college near my home, so I enrolled. This is where the defining moment occurred. I was given special permission to take two religion classes, Religion 101 Old Testament and Religion 102 New Testament, and I even added in Religion and the Arts, World Civ., and a required orientation class. I get to my religion classes with a pretty well established Christian worldview, based solely on my experiences up to that point in my life. I had never gone to school to be a pastor but I had been one, and was one at this time. I found out in the first couple of classes that I attended, I was…misinformed about a great many things. To this point, I had always believed the bible was without error, God’s own words. I believed that the stories in the bible were not just stories but actual accounts of history. I believed that Christianity was THE road to God, the afterlife and its rewards. I believed anybody that had not had a “salvation” experience was lost and destined for hell. I believed that the bible writers were all taking dictation from their “God” phone and simply writing what he said down. I believed that the bible was some how one book that was stretched out over several thousand years. What I learned in that one semester of college literally blew my mind!

It would take up too much of your time to go into all the changes. Let’s just say that most of what I believed was…erroneous. At first, naturally, I thought, “These professors are heretics! How can this be a conservative Baptist college and teach this kind of stuff?” I put this new information on a shelf in the back of my mind and decided to take seminary classes by extension. There was a program offered by New Orleans Theological Seminary close enough by my house that I enrolled there instead the next semester. The way the extension classes worked, I stayed there most of Monday afternoon into the evening, but was able to get three classes in one day, nine hours. I did this for about two and half years. The classes were more of what I expected when I first started my secondary school work. Everyone there shared the same Christian worldview I was accustomed to it and it was more…comfortable. I wasn’t really challenged at all at these classes, but I was getting some hours under my belt and I felt pretty good about that. The extension classes work in a cycle. You can get in on any part of the cycle and get enough credits for an associate degree. From that point on, I would have to go to the NOBTS campus in New Orleans to complete my bachelor’s degree. I couldn’t uproot my family, so I tried finding ways to complete my degree online, without any luck. Since there was no other way for me to complete my degree, I just settled in my mind that that was as far as I was going to go.

During my time at seminary, I was working full time with the church. I liked going to school and getting some fodder for teaching the youth or adults in Sunday School. I felt really empowered. Life was pretty good and that is proverbially when the bottom falls out.

I started to have some difficulties with the senior pastor. We no longer saw eye to eye on some things and I felt constantly frustrated with the situation. I began to see that his ideas on how to minister where very different from my own and there was nothing I could do or say that would change that. But I stuck it out for a few more years. But like any untreated wound, things festered. Long story short, I resigned when things were at there quietest so that there would not be any harm to the church, and slipped quietly away.

At the time, I thought I was leaving that church for another church. My family and I took a week or so off and started looking for other churches. I quickly discovered that I didn’t like any of them. I was extremely cynical and disillusioned. I still had some ideas about how church and ministry should be done and ended up running into a friend of mine from several years before. He was starting a home based church ministry and I was immediately interested. We talked a lot over a few months and tried to come up with a model for church that worked. We met together with a few others, in homes, and tried to make things happen. Unfortunately, we began to see a very big problem. In order to have a home church, you have to have potential members, people in your “circle of influence” to invite to come and join in. My friend, Lyndon, and I have the same occupation, marketing/advertising in the health care field. We travel around the state mostly and have no co-workers. It’s pretty much a solo mission. So that limited our “circle”. Another thing that limited our “circle” was all our friendships were with church people. We discovered we didn’t know non-Christians or non-church people. With a depleted “circle” of people we could minister to, we sort of disbanded. We had an idea of going to churches and trying to work with them to change what they were doing to match what we thought would work, but that didn’t work either. We finally decided it was time to give up on the church/ministry we were trying to do. What I discovered next was that I didn’t leave one church for another, I actually had left ministry period.

For the next few months, I tried going to church with my family. My wife was open to try some new things, so we did, but nothing appealed to me, I was still way too cynical. I started to believe that I was now agnostic or maybe even an atheist. It’s really amazing how fast the “fall” was for me. One day, minister, next day cynic, next day agnostic, where was the bottom going to come?

Influenced by my friend and authors such as Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, some Philip Yancey and Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Mike Yaconelli, Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher, especially his early stuff), and more recently Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, and Donald Miller, I started to come to terms with the fact that I had completely left religion, the church, and all it had to offer. I couldn’t, however, leave God. Something keeps me from leaving the journey to find God. I can’t explain it but it is undeniable. Cynical as I am, I can’t let go of God. I have let go of the romanticized version of God and I think that is where I am right now.

I read a lot. Books and blogs, I listen to audiobooks when I am driving. I seem to have an insatiable need for knowledge. The difference between my life before “The Great Awakening” (what I call my moment of crisis of belief) and now is that I don’t limit myself to hearing only one voice, ie conservative Christian. I am more open to all kinds of things and so the vast sea of knowledge is even more vast. I have learned a great deal from this openess to all things. I have found that I am not alone in my thoughts. I owe a lot of the beginning of this journey to my good friend Lyndon. Without me having someone to talk to about what I was going through and them completely understand, I would have gone nuts. There is no doubt in my mind. Nuts.

Now you know where the next few statements are coming from, the context from which they flow.

I am not a Christian as most would define Christianity. I don’t want to be associated with, in my humble opinion, this dilluted version of religion. I define religion as the method by which we seek “God”. I agree with Margaret Cho’s statement, “I wish Jesus would come back and say, ‘THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!!” I really believe that Jesus would really be appalled at what has happened and is happening in his name.

I am not an atheist. I define atheist here to mean the “belief” that there is no God. I have not come to that conclusion in my journey thus far. Even though I may not view God as I once did, I haven’t rejected the idea of something bigger than myself in the center of it all.

I am somewhere in the middle of these two. Maybe agnostic thiest is the appropriate term if it is defined as one who views that the true value of certain claims, in particular the existance of “God” is unknown or inherently unknowable but chooses to believe in God in spite of this. Is this dillusionable? Probably in most’s opinions. Can I help it? Not right now and maybe ever. I tried explaining this to Lyndon just the other day as a stain. No matter how much I have tried to rub out God from my mind and heart, it ain’t coming out.

It would take a great deal of work to correctly define “God” as I understand him/her, but I would like to put down a few thoughts.

I believe “God” is not described very accurately in the bible, especially the Old Testament. I think it is more accurate to say that the authors of the biblical books were defining “God” as they saw him/her, much like I am doing here. In the world that we live in now, I don’t need to Wow you with amazing stories of “God”’s works and deeds. Its just not necessary. Because of our current world’s fascination with high energy entertainment, we already get a steady dose of this without my having to awe you with the amazing feats of “God”. So I won’t. “God” is “God”, how can I add to that without seeming like a complete idiot?

I believe I have a duty to love others unconditionally. This is not an easy task and may never be made manifest in my life during my lifetime but I will try.

I believe I am responsible to my wife and two boys to love them, nurture them, protect them, teach and learn from them, support them, acknowledge them, guide them based on my life experiences, and just be there for them in all their needs. They are mine and I am their’s.

I believe mankind has an innate desire to be with one another. I believe the statement, “No man is an island”. There is something about community, in all it’s forms, that is a very good thing. We are not meant to walk alone.

I believe somewhere in time, my questions will be answered. No matter what, I will get to the bottom of it all. No matter if the Christians are right or the atheist is, I will one day know and until then, I must journey on.

Justification by Grace

I am still reading Borg’s “Reading the bible again for the first time” and am in the chapter where he is tackling Paul’s letters. I came across some good information on “justification by grace” that I would like to share here.

Borg gives four interpretations and a final thought.

1.  Justification by grace in opposition to justification by works of the law is NOT about the inadequacy of the Jewish law or Judaism. Paul’s attack of the law subverts a more universal way of being, found not only within Christianity and Judaism but also within secular culture. Life under the law is the life of “measuring up” in which our well-being depends upon how well we do. Life under the law is, as one contemporary scholar puts it, living according to the “performance principle.”

2. Justification by grace is NOT about forgiveness; it is not simply an affirmation that God will forgive those who repent. Forgiveness was a given for Paul even before his Damascus Road experience. The Judaism he knew did not teach that one had to observe the law perfectly; rather, it taught that God forgives repentant sinners, and it provided means for mediating forgiveness.

3. Jusification by grace is NOT about who goes to heaven, or how. The notion that it is flows out of conventional Christianity’s preoccupation with the afterlife throughout the centuries, as if that were most central to the message of Jesus and Paul and the New Testament. When justification by grace is thought about in this context, it leads to questions such as: Does this mean that everybody goes to heaven, regardless of what they believe or how they have lived (which strikes most people as unfair)? And if it doesn’t mean that, what distinguishes those who do go to heaven from those who don’t. If it’s something we do, then we are back to works. But if going to heaven doesn’t depend on something we do, then God must arbitrarily decide who goes to heaven–and then notions of predestination emerge. Here, as is much else, preoccupation with the afterlife has profoundly distorted Christianity.

4. Paul’s understanding of justification is NOT about replacement of one requirement with another. This frequently happens in Christianity when “faith” replaces “good works” as what God requires of us. The system of requirements remains; only the content has changed. Of course, faith in God and Jesus was central for Paul. But it was not a new requirement; rather, faith in God’s grace–in the God who justifies the ungodly–is the abolition of the whole system of requirements. It is thus a radically new way of seeing.

So what, then, is justification by grace about? Very simply, it is about the basis of our relationship to God in the present. Is it constituted by something we do or believe? Or is it a gift, a given? For Paul, of course, the answer is by now obvious. Justification is a gift of God, not a human accomplishment. Within the framework of justification by grace, the Christian life is about becoming conscious of and entering more deeply into an already existing relationship with God as known in Jesus. It is not about meeting requirements for salvation later but about newness of life in the present. And living by grace produces the same qualities of life “in Christ”: freedom, joy, peace, and love.

Your thoughts? Personally, I really like his third point. Lots of discussion can come from it.

The Law of Pure Potentiality

The first law of Deepak Chopra’s “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” is the law of pure potentiality. He starts with this statement, “The source of all creation is pure consciousness…pure potentiality seeking expression from the unmanifest to the manifest. And when we realize that our true Self is one of pure potentiality, we align with the power that manifests everything in the universe.”

Where to begin? Well, pure consciousness, if I understand the author correctly, is defined as the very essential part of what makes me, me and you, you. Our true Self at the very core. This is what makes us all unique (which reminds me of a funny saying, You are unique like everybody else. Funny, no?). The very core of who we are, according to Dr. Chopra, is “infinite and unbounded”. Also included in this list is “pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invicibility, simplicity, and bliss”. Through my lens of understanding, this sounds very much like what I would call my spirit, or the part of me that lives on past the body. Growing up, I understood that this part of me would be what goes to heaven when the body dies.

Let me stop here and ask, isn’t this just a different name for the same thing, pure consciousness and spirit? I don’t mean this sacastically. When I went to college for a brief time after being out of school for almost a decade, one of my teachers told me something that for some reason I haven’t forgotten. He said that everything is pretty much the same only the terms/names of changed, meaning, don’t worry about the words/terms, what is being taught is the same. Ok. Is this the same thing? A new label on an old bottle. (Not that that is bad, just wondering)

On with the post.

Deepak says that if we can find our “pure consciouness” and connect to it, we have unlimited potential, hence the name of the law. When we are connected to our pure consciouness, we are connected to the universe. When we are connected to the universe, we have access to unlimited power to be a ”success” at being your true self. He states that our true natures are “immune to critisism, unfearful of any challegne, and it feels beneath no one. And yet, it is also humble and feels superior to no one, because it recognizes that everyone else is the same.”

Again, to me, this sounds very much like what I grew knowing as my eternal spirit. Chopra definitly defines a whole lot better than the Sunday School answer, ”Oh, your spirit is you, only fuzzier”. Fuzzier? What does that mean? I can understand a little better about what I was learning as I was growing and maturing about my spirit. It isn’t just “fuzzy”, its the essence of who I am and that makes sense to me.

Now the obvious question, how does one get in touch with our pure consciouness/spirit? One of the good things about this book is it doesn’t leave you hanging when it comes to application. Dr. Chopra says, “One way…is through daily practice of silence, meditation, and non-judgement” also, “spending time in nature” is suggested. This sounds alot like daily quiet time as I once practiced. The difference here is what I do in my quiet time. Before, I would read the bible, listen for God, and talk to God/pray. I don’t think Deepak would say that this is not a good thing, but he suggests more silence. Have you ever tried to sit still and quiet for more than five minutes without falling asleep? Or if not falling asleep, never really attaining absolute silence. Dr. Chopra says this is to be expected. When you first start trying to experience silence, your “internal dialouge becomes even more turbulent”. He says stick with it, eventually you will be able get to the point were you experience silence.  

Meditation, as I understand Deepak, is once you have spent time in silence (he suggests an hour or two and also whole days as you can), you should also incorporate focusing on the consciousness or field of energy. Meditation is suggested for both morning and evening.

I like this last one the best, practicing non-judgement. “Judgement is the constant evaluation of things as right and wrong, good and bad. When you constantly evaluating, classifying, labeling, analyzing, you create a lot of turbulence in your internal dialouge.” This put a new twist on it for me. Not only am I to eliminate thinking this or that is bad or wrong but also this or that is good or right. When I focus on saying things are right and good, their polar opposites are also in my thoughts, wrong and bad. Makes sense to me, but this will be much more difficult than silence and meditation for me.

Now to complete this section, Deepak says that once we are able to attain access to our true self through silence, meditation, and non-judgement, we have to now learn to take the silence with us where ever we go. No matter how turbulent the outside world is, we have to learn to maintain peace and tranquility within our spirit. Again, easier said than done.

Yon prophet Yoda of Dagobah once said, “Do or do not. There is no try” and I guess that is the attitude to have here.  Also, as stated in the first post on this subject, how is teaching the same/different from traditional Christian teachings? Before I share what I think, what do you think?

Postcritical Naivete

Continuing down the road of “reading the bible again for the first time”, Borg shares his thoughts on the cycle that takes place (or should take place) when one stands before the bible and tries to understand it. The cycle starts at precritical naviete to critical thinking to postcritical naviete. These, he says, “identify ways of reading and hearing the Bible that we recognize in our own experiences.”

Precritical naivete is an early childhood state in which we take it for granted that whatever the significant authority figures in our lives tell us to be true is indeed true. In this state(if we grow up in a Christian setting), we simply hear the stories of the Bible as true stories.

It did not occur to me [Borg] to wonder, “Now, how much of this [biblical stories] is historically factual, and how much is metaphorical narrative?” I [Borg] simply heard the familiar stories as true. Moreover, it took no effort to do so. It did not require faith. I [Borg] had no reason to think that things were otherwise than the stories reported.

Critical thinking begins in late childhood and early adolescence. One does not need to be an intellectual or go to college for this kind of thinking to develop. Rather, it is a natural stage of human development; everybody enters it. In this stage, consciously or quite unconsciously, we sift through what we learned as children to see how much of it we should keep.

In modern Western culture, critical thinking is very much concerned with factuality and is thus deeply corrosive of religion in general and Christianity and the Bible in particular. As critical thinkers in that culture, most of us no longer hear the biblical stories as true stories–or at the least their truth has become suspect. Now it takes faith to believe them, and faith becomes believing things that one would normally reject.

Postcritical naviete is the ability to hear the biblical stories once again as true stories, even as one knows that they may not be factually true and that their truth does not depend upon their factuality.

This way of hearing sacred stories is widespread in premodern cultures. A favorite of mine [Borg] is the way a Native American storyteller begins telling his tribe’s story of creation;”Now I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true.” If you can get your mind around that statement, then you know what postcritical naivete is.

Importantly, postcritical naivete is not a return to precritical naivete. It brings critical thinking with it. It does not reject the insights of historical criticism but integrates them into a larger whole.

Though the movement from precritical naivete into critical thinking is inevitable, there is nothing inevitable about moving into the state of postcritical naivete. One can get stuck in the state of critical thinking all of one’s life, as a significant number of people in the modern period do. The initial movements into critical thinking is often experienced as liberating, but if one remains in this state decade after decade, it becomes a very arid and barren place in which to live.

We need to be led into the state of postcritical naviete. It does not happen automatically. This is one of the major tasks in our time as we learn how to read the Bible using a historical and metaphorical approach.

How then shall I view the Bible?

 

As you know if you’ve looked through my Books section, that I am a fan of Marcus Borg. According to Rabbi Harold Kushner, Borg has “removed many of the barriers that separate thoughtful people from the wisdom of the Bible.” Why should I check my brains at the door when trying to learn the wisdom of the Bible? Borg says, you don’t.

In Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, Borg encourages seeing the Bible metaphorically-historically as opposed to inerrant factuality. To prove his point about metaphorically seeing the bible, he lists three examples that I will list here:

A Finger Pointing to the Moon

The first metaphor comes from the Buddhist tradition. Buddhists often speak of the teaching of the Buddha as “a finger pointing to the moon.” The metaphor helps guard against the mistake of thinking that being a Buddhist means believing in Buddhist teachings–that is, believing in the finger. As the metaphor implies, one is to see (and pay attention to) that to which the finger points.

To apply the metaphor to the Bible, the Bible is a finger pointing to the moon. Christians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that being Christian is about believing in the finger rather than seeing the Christian life as a relationship to that to which the finger points.

The Bible as Lens

…using the lens metaphor and applying it to the Bible itself: the Bible is a lens. A student of Borg’s, after a few weeks into a semester made this statement that has stuck with him: “I think I’m beginning to get it. You’re saying that the Bible is like a lens through which we see God, but some people think that it’s important to believe in the lens.”

The point, of course, is the same as the finger metaphor: there is a crucial difference between believing in the lens and using the lens as a way of seeing that which is beyond the lens.

The Bible as Sacrament

Now [Borg] extends the metaphor so that is includes the Christian tradition as a whole: the Bible as well as Christian creeds, liturgies, rituals, practices, hymns, music, art, and so forth. When one sees Christianity as a sacrament of the sacred, being Christian is not about believing in Christianity. That would be like believing in the bread and wine of the eucharist rather than letting the bread and wine do their sacramental work of mediating the presence of Christ. It would be like believing in the finger or the lens.

Rather, being Christian is about a relationship to the God who is mediated by the Christian tradition as sacrament. To be Christian is to live within the Christian tradition as a sacrament and let it do it transforming work within and among us.

As mentioned above, Borg also suggests seeing/reading the bible historically. I will post on this at a later time.

What Makes A Man Hate Another Man?

 

I am a long time fan of Depeche Mode. I was listening to some old school Mode today and really listened to some lyrics to one of the their best known songs. Read Martin Gore’s lyrics below:

People are people
So why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully

So we’re different colours
And we’re different creeds
And different people have different needs
It’s obvious you hate me
Though I’ve done nothing wrong
I’ve never even met you so what could I have done

I can’t understand
What makes a man
Hate another man
Help me understand

Help me understand

Now you’re punching
And you’re kicking
And you’re shouting at me
I’m relying on your common decency
So far it hasn’t surfaced
But I’m sure it exists
It just takes a while to travel
From your head to your fists

 

Zeitgeist Movie

Yesterday I decided I would watch the Zeitgeist movie after reading a post about the movie. I had to clear some time off my schedule to watch the on-line movie because it is almost two hours long. What did I think? I’m glad you asked. I will give a general summary and then share my thoughts.
The movie is broken down into three parts, or theories, on Christianity, 9/11, and International Banking and the Federal Reserve Bank. Be warned these are theories steeped in conspiracy. In order to make it through, I had to be VERY open-minded to even make it past the first half hour (if you do watch it, skip the first seven or so minutes, its just instrumental, doesn’t add to the movie at all).
Act 1: “The Greastest Story Ever Told”
The movie suggests that Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus are all based on astrology, Egyptian religious figures, and several other pagan “potpourri”. The story of Jesus’ miracle birth is described as being a plagarized story from any number of religious gods ie. Horus, Mythra, Krishna, etc. All of these and several others according to the movie had similar miraculous occurances surrounding their birth, life, deaths, and in most cases resurrection. Also, the movie suggests that Jesus never existed and all the stories about him are in fact about astrology. The sun, which is central to ancient astrology, is equated to the story of Jesus in many facets. One of those facets is Jesus is literally God’s Sun. When the sun starts to go through the winter months, food supplies dry up and freeze, and “death” starts to the creep in. This time is a desolate time for ancients and  they look to the sun to start ushering in warmer climates so that “life” can begin again. Miraculously , on December 25th the sun actually starts this climb back higher into the sky. So Jesus, God’s Sun, is born on this date (every year). During this time three stars from Orion’s belt line up with the some sun’s birth. The name of these three stars you may be asking? The Three Kings (Wise Men). There are too many other suggestions made by the film dealing with Christianity, Jesus, and the like, to be made here. Watch if you want to see the others. My thoughts on this act. First, there is very little  support for the claims made (and the other Acts). There is plenty of theory but very little facts presented. The sources on the movie home page are very hodge podge and not very academically recognized. My first thoughts were that the facts presented seem very “cut and paste”. Take a little from here and a little from here and Voila! here is the answer to life’s questions. I believe that this would make good discussion starters but little else.
Act 2: “The 9/11 Myth”. The movie expounds on some thoughts that have circulated since Sept. 11th. Were the Bush’s conspiring with the bin Laden’s over several years? Were the WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7 detonated by explosives and not by planes? Building 7 was not even hit by a plane, why did it fall? The 9/11 commission seems to glide over important facts and in fact covers some up, does it? Of the three acts in this movie, this one has spirred my curiousity the most. I will comment further after I have spent some time investigating. Of course it is too over the top. If the movie creators could have spent some more time on this act and left the other two out completely, I would take it more seriously. The acts don’t really go together and I think this makes me less certain of the claims made.
Act 3: “The Men Behind The Curtain”. This has been in conspiracy theories archives for a long time. I remember being real young hearing about “One World Goverments”, “Implants by governments to enslave their societies”, etc. I think that again facts are too scarce for true academic thought. I think it would make a pretty good book plot. If you could take what Dan Brown does and mix just enough facts with a huge portion of fantasy and sell a million copies.
If I had to guess, this movie was made by people that have been hurt by the church and the federal government. I don’t know for sure what led the producers to make such a movie. I can guess, but that is all it will be. Watch the movie if you want to. Don’t watch the movie if don’t want to. Either way, no harm done but be warned, again, these are theories by those that believe in conspiracies. You must consider the source.

Caught Red Handed.

I skipped ahead last night to Borg’s Epilogue in his book Jesus. I was trying to “cheat” a little to understand where he was going with the post-Easter Jesus (see previous post), but came across something else that got my attention.

Borg admits that he has tried to be objective in his writing of this book, but admits that the idea of “pure objectivity” is fantasy, he calls this place sub specie aeternitatis, the vantage point of the eternal, which belongs only to God.

He uses an illustration he contributes to another author, history is like a parade and historians are in a reviewing stand, watching the parade (history) go by, but that is not what is happening. There is no reviewing stand, historians are part of the parade it self, constantly moving with the flow and therefore the understanding of the past, or what is behind, is constantly changing because of the ever-changing vantage point of the “beholder”.  So far, I am in complete agreement with Mr. Borg.

Here is where he gets me. He says that he tried to be objective but avoid being what he called “uncritically subjective“. He said that there are two common and virtually opposite forms. And I’ll quote:

“One is the easy-going tolerance of difference that sees all views as valid because they’re all subjective and that it’s all a matter of ‘where you are coming from.’ The other form of uncritical subjectivity fails to recognize its own subjectivity and thus thinks its view is ‘the way things are.’ One is completely relative, the other is dogmatically certain.”

His answer to the problem of “uncrital subjectivity” is critical thinking about not only the views of others but also about one’s own.

That is the whammy for me. I left one camp (dogmatic certainty) to join the other (easy-going tolerance). It was for me the easiest way to get out of the first camp, complete treason. That has alot to do with my personality. I find it easier to side with an extreme. The lines are more clearly drawn. There is less guess work or work in general. But to be honest, I am finding that in order to make this Wilderness of Spirituality journey more successful, I must be willing to be more critical in my thinking. This will make the journey a little more difficult, but in the end, I now believe more rewarding.

The Wheels Have Been Turning.

I am still making my way through what I have called The Wilderness of Spirituality and I have come across something else that now seems to be a foreign idea.

I have always been taught and understood that Jesus was both 100% man and 100% God, at the same time. Well, I used to argue, sure, no problem there, he was God and therefore could do anything. Not much of an arguement upon further review.

I am reading Marcus Borg’s book Jesus, and he basis alot of the book on the idea that there are two “versions” of Jesus in the bible, the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. The pre-Easter Jesus is all human, no deity. He is the son of two earthly parents (Borg argues against the virgin birth. He thinks the idea is dated much later than earlier stories of Jesus and therefore a legendary or mythical idea perpetuated by early Christian communities after the revealing of the post-Easter Jesus), lived as a peasant, was a radical, both politically/socially and spiritually, and died because of this radicalness. Borg calls this Jesus a Jewish mystic.

The post-Easter Jesus has been vindicated by God and therefore no longer human but deity. For me, I am still trying to understand how Borg is going to develop the post-Easter Jesus (I’m still reading the book), but the point of  there being a distinction between pre and post Easter Jesus’ makes more sense to me than 100% man and 100% God. The difference between man and God are so polar opposite that it is impossible to find in the same place much less one “person”. By definition, if he was all human, which I believe Borg is saying about the pre-Easter Jesus, then he could not have been God at all. Just on definition alone this doesn’t wash. If he was all God, start to finish, then he was not human at all, but an all together different species of existence.

I will continue to come back to this idea as I continue my journey, both personally and through Borg’s book.

Peace

 

Went to church this morning. Not sure why. Thought that I would try again to not be cynical and sit in a church service.

Well, I think my blood pressure was up during the “message”.  I was uncomfortably hot, felt like vomiting, and had a headache. I didn’t feel this way going in to the church. I guess maybe it is the virus known as “Fundamentalism” that I contracted. Maybe I should have induced vomiting, but I don’t think that would have helped in the long run.

Anyway, the “message” was about peace, specifically the peace the Jesus came to bring. The peace that was announced at his birth and later recalled by Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus. OK. So far so good, I can understand that Jesus came to bring peace. Here is where the virus attacked. The reason the world is in the shape that it is in, is because everybody else (the ever popular us vs. them statements abounding) in the world is not bowed the knee to God’s Word, aka the CHRISTIAN bible. WTF?!? Why don’t those that really want peace stop trying to shove THEIR belief system down the throats of everybody that doesn’t believe as they do? I mean if I trully want peace, am I not going to work on making peace with my fellow man, regardless of what he/she believes.

Another statement of craziness, the world is not getting any better till Jesus comes again. News Flash! The world is not getting any better because the foolishness of fundamentalism. Not only is fundamentalism in any religion/belief system foolish, its a dead end. What are you going to do in order to bring YOUR message to those that don’t believe as you do? Aside from bombing the hell out of them. Is there a peaceful way to bring a no tolerance, fundamentalistic message to those of different beliefs? I can’t see how that can ever happen.

I heard a comedian the other day say that he doesn’t like going to movies that have a bad ending. He asked, why go to the movies, pay X amount of dollars to see a depressing movie? He said if he wanted to be depressed when he left from somewhere he could always go to church. I can sympathize.