THE MORNING OF HOPE - A Poem

 

The Morning Of Hope

                                            The morning of hope had vanished behind flag-striped booths 

                                            where dotted ballots erased a republic with pock marks 

                                            made on a paper wall by a firing squad, millions strong. 

                                           Darkness descended before the sun could rise; a horizon of avarice and fear

                                            shading the beacon on the hill and the golden lamp welcoming the 

                                            tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free.

                                    The people spoke the sentence that doomed their freedom;

                                     the irony lost with the loss of the dream once 

                                    held by those who said it.

                                            Time backwards does not flow,

                                            Molding a future from a history once lived 

                                            never lives again.

                                    The past a fading mirage, 

                                    a lifeless icon offering nothing but the semblance 

                                    of a bygone remembrance.

                                    The dictated day will be long.

                                    Where no sun rises, no sun will set.

                                   The sun will rise on a day not dictated,

                                    but on what will it shine?

                                            Norm

                                            November 6, 2024

LEAVING CHURCH - A NEW START

This was the last Sunday my wife and I were member of the church we belonged to forth past thirty years; a church where our daughters were confirmed and where our oldest daughter was married, a place where I have been an organist and lay worship leader for the past twenty-five years.   I'm sure some of my regular readers are thinking, "Well, its about time.  You're hardly a Christian."  I really can't argue with that assessment.  

* * *

I like Jesus.  I like what Jesus taught and find his teachings inspiring, but I no longer put him on the divine pedestal that Christianity has placed him on.  As many of my posts have pointed out, I find Jesus more interesting as a human like you and me than his being a god or demigod who is nothing like you or me.  For some time now, I have struggled with the thought of leaving the Church as a God-believer (of sorts) who doesn't believe God is a good term to describe what I mean when I  use the term God.  I can do without the biblical or to be more specific, the apostolic teachings about Jesus, that are the backbone of Christianity today.

Of course leaving a church is usually prompted by some form of dramatic event; a conflict or falling out with someone (usually a priest or pastor) or something like a change in the church's program or vision.  There is that, at some level, in my case which has provided an opportunity to step away, but such prompts are largely irrelevant when it comes to making a decision to leave organized religion which in essence is what I am doing.   My decision is fundamentally based on changes in my personal beliefs which were best left fully unsaid in the church I belonged to.   Having served as a lay preacher for many years, I have been finding it increasingly difficult to hold the party line, so to speak, when preparing a homily. 

* * *

Like Jesus, I am not trying to nor do I want to start a new religion.  What I truly want and, more importantly, what I need is to make peace with who I am and what I have come to believe about life and my place in an immense and unfathomable universe that has resulted in my being.  There is a great depth of spirituality present in all the life forms that are all around us.  I can no longer commit to being religious in the affiliated sense of that word. 

To forgive the abuse and the pettiness that religions frequently engage in requires me to let go and step away from such a toxic environments.  Clinging to a belief system and a religion on the premise that my eternal wellbeing is dependent on doing so is self destructive. 

* * * 

At a time in one's life when religion is usually deemed important, I am finding it toxic to my very soul and the wellbeing of my family.  What I will miss most about leaving our former church is being its organist and having access to a pipe organ that I greatly enjoyed playing.  I can honestly say that I am virtually addicted to playing a pipe organ.  It had become a creative outlet for most of my life, but as the saying goes, "All good things must comes to an end."  I will survive its loss, knowing that in moving on I will feel and be more honest about myself and where I am going in life's journey. 

Speaking of moving on, this blog will likely change the topic matter as I will probably lean into my being an agnostic as opposed to trying to save Christianity from itself, which is at best a Sisyphean task.  So stay tuned as I ponder the journey I have embarked on today.

Norm 

 

  

  

RECALIBRATING MY BELIEFS

In this post, I examine the personal evolution regarding my beliefs about Christianity.  

When I began this blog ten years ago, I was already questioning my Christian faith.  I call my blog, "The Faithful Agnostic," not so much because I considered myself an ardent agnostic who is ambivalent about whether there is a god and whether religions are relevant, but rather by identifying as an agnostic I am admitting that I know so little when there is so much to know.  In particular,  I believe no one knows why we are here and if the God Christians claim to know is in any factual sense knowable or real.  

I added the adjective "faithful" to agnostic because, while in questioning what I believe and what most Christians believe, I see value in taking another look at this Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth, and his teachings as found in the Synoptic Gospels.  I feel that Christianity would benefit by becoming less of what it has been for the past two millennia and more of what it could be if it were recalibrated in the light what we know of universe we live in today and in understanding Jesus as purely one of us, child of humankind, a son of man(kind).  

Like many agnostics and atheists, my journey started out trying to serve God and the Church as an ordained  minister.  I made several attempts at becoming a pastor, but none of them took root in the way I hoped for.  On the contrary, I felt called  away from the ordained ministry much like a minister might say he or she was "called" into ordained ministry.  What may differentiate me from ardent agnostics and atheists is that the pursuit to be an ordained minister led me to pursue the study religion, in particular, the religion I have long identified with, Christianity.  

SO WHERE AM I AT IN THIS RECALIBRATING JOURNEY ?

I find the traditional, dogmatic Christianity of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and mainline Protestantism has lost its appeal to me.  They have failed to embrace the radical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth by obscuring them in the mystery of the divinity they have consigned him to.  Ironically, being both a confirmed Lutheran and Episcopalian has confirmed nothing for me with regard to Christianity.  

On the contrary it has led me to question everything about Christianity and religions in general.  What drew me to the Episcopal Church besides its liturgical services and music is that reason is considered an honored path to understanding the spiritual, but reason in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion is constrained within the parameters of Scripture and Tradition, which seems to  be unreasonable to me.  Start questioning the validity of Scripture as the Word of God or (perhaps worse in the Episcopal Church) the validity of Tradition, one can find oneself on the fringe of membership.

I think it fair to say I have read myself not only out of the church but also out of  traditional dogmatic Christianity.  This is not to say I don't believe in a creative force that brought all things into being, what many religions identify with the term "God," but I have come to the conclusion that the term "God" carries a lot of baggage.

What I find alluring in Christianity are the teachings of a first century Jewish man,  Jesus of Nazareth.   I see in his teachings a way forward in today's world in the manner he was trying to find a way forward in world of his time.   What I have a problem with in regard to Jesus are the teachings about him. 

First and foremost, I have a problem seeing him as God.  I don't believe he is and I doubt Jesus ever thought of himself as God.  Secondly, so much of the teachings about Jesus push his relevance in our  lives to a point when our mortal coils have long been shuffled off. As such, there is no immediate relevance in being Christian that helps us live in this life beyond encouraging us to keep ourselves from the wrongdoing and taint of this world so as not to prevent us from the eternal bliss of a new heaven and earth.

GOD

"God" is a catchall term that we humans tend imbue with whatever we want "God" to be or do.  We imbue God with compassion, love, and life-giving, but God is also imbued with angry, revenge, jealousy, and destructiveness.  We treat God as a pincushion on which to pin our needs and desires.  God, as a metaphor for the creative force that brought the universe and ourselves into being, however, is not something we can pin down.  

According to the Holy Bible, God will be what God will be.   God is whatever God is at any given moment or place.  Closer to the mark, is to say that God is a ubiquitous and indecipherable type of intelligence at work in every aspect of the universe   Even the Scriptures admit, "God's ways are not our ways." We  humans are merely living entities that temporarily reflect the intelligent ambiguity and ubiquity of  God.

Perhaps properly understood, God is a simile for the Theory of Everything.  God has no need of a plan since God is the plan being carried out since the beginning of time (if such a beginning ever happened).  God is multi-dimensional.  God is not and cannot be separated or "individuated" from that which God creates.  The constant creativity of God is not only all around us but also is in us and exists through us.

I use the term God only as a reference point that most understand, but it is far from being a description of something that is far beyond any definition.  Whatever God is we and everything that has existed and will exist are intrinsically related to it, to each other, and the universe as a whole.

JESUS

I can understand the Christian belief that Jesus is the human face of God, because Christians see in Jesus the God they want, a God of love and compassion; a God who is faithful to us, is forgiving, and has hope in us.  Jesus exhibited these attributes in his humanity.  To observe and listen to Jesus as one of us is to see that we, like him, aspires to something far greater than we can conceive., 

I have written a great deal about Jesus and his being a Jew living in a troubled time in what is now Israel.   Jesus had a remarkable, insightful mind, and an intuitive ability to see purpose in and beyond the mundane and often troubled existence we humans experience.   I believe he was devoted to his Jewish faith and who wanted to recalibrate and share his understanding of that faith through the lens of his unique understanding of God as a father figure.  Jesus brought what it  means for Jews being God's Chosen People down to a personal level in which each Jew is God's chosen child; someone loved by God and in whom God is well-pleased.  Over time, Jesus would be amazed to find that gentiles grasped this understanding of being God's offspring worthy of consideration like his fellow Jews.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus channeled Ezekiel by adopting God's moniker for Ezekiel, Son of man, to himself.   As such he saw himself as an exemplar to his Jewish brethren an inclusiveness that was largely foreign to the world and the times in which he lived.  Jesus loved life and loved people.  

Jesus understood the burden that the concept of sin had on people.  In some cases, being an identified sinner made people physically and mentally sick.  Jesus understood sin because he experienced being sinful in his life.  If he didn't have such experiences he could not have related to the human need for forgiveness as healing.  

Jesus demonstrated a repudiation of the hypocrisy of self-righteousness by befriending the hated tax collector, prostitutes, and those on the fringe of Jewish society.  Jesus touched the leper, welcomed little children, and accepted the gratitude of the thankful.  His main tool for healing those who came to him was to forgive what they couldn't in themselves. 

Jesus demonstrated that if God can forgive, then so must we.  If Jesus taught us anything about saving ourselves from ourselves, it is that we must forgive others as we desire to be forgiven.  We must do unto others as we would like others to do to us.  We must love our fellow human beings as ourselves because we cannot claim to love God when we are not loving what God loves.  

* * *

I do not believe Jesus was sent from heaven to die for our sins.  He did not give us a free pass to do nothing on this earth and in our lives except believe that he did it all for us so that we do not have to do anything to gain salvation.  On the contrary,  I believe Jesus showed us the way to forge a path to salvation in our lifetimes, by doing the difficult and often thankless job of lifting people from beneath the hardships they piled on themselves and the hardships that others and society placed on them.  This Jesus did, one person at a time.  I believe this is the task Jesus his followers to do, the role we humans are meant to step into but, as yet, have failed to fully do.  

This undertaking extends beyond forgiving humans and treating them with love and respect as our siblings.  It extends to attending the bounty of creation with care and gratitude, recognizing our commonality in the mutual needs we share with all living thing; the air we breathe, the water we drink, and so much more.  We must consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field because they too are God's offspring; they too are products of the same creative force that made us.  All life on this planet is dependent on some level with all other forms of life.  We humans are neither the masters nor the epitome of creation on the planet we share with other creations.   We are undoubtedly more dependent on them than they on us. 

Like Jesus, we can understand ourselves as incarnations of God, the evidentiary products of the creative force that brought us into being.  Like Jesus we can resurrect to new and vibrant experiences in this life by "letting go and letting God," by commending our life force to, the creative life-giving force from which all that exists proceeds, in which nothing is lost, and to which all that exists returns.   

This relatively unknown Jewish man from Galilee made a lasting impact on what it means to be a human.   His teachings and  his treatment of others keeps him alive in our hearts and minds.  He is an exemplar for all of humanity.  I believe that to follow in his footsteps is to bring about a better world or, as Jesus would have put it, brings about the Kingdom of God, a world that could and should be. 

THE HOLY BIBLE

The Holy Bible is a fascinating work of religious literature.  Both Christianity and Judaism have a navel-gazing relationship with it; in that, they both treat it as a self-defining resource that needs no other outside sources to verify its validity.  While neither claim to worship it, their treatment of it is seems to belie that claim.  The familiar, "The Word of the Lord"  said at the end of reading a portion of scripture in many liturgical Christian churches seems to be an attempt to close the doors of one's mind to what it says, to leave it unquestioned and thus undigested.  

The Old Testament (Judaic Scriptures) are fascinating to me as they show the evolution of the Jewish religion from a tribal, mountaintop understanding of God as one of many gods, to the one God of monotheism.  I consider the book of Genesis to be the most singular important book of the Bible.  It is the bedrock on which both the Old and New Testaments rests. 

The Old Testament is collection of diverse forms of literature.  Myth, legend, history, poetry, prophecy and wisdom abound throughout its pages.  There is nothing particularly consistent in its presentation but rather it is a menagerie of literary types that reveal an evolutionary process regarding a particular people's experiences and understanding of God.  

The New Testament, on the other hand, is an attempt to present a consistent narrative about Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ of God.  The consistent narrative consists of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke that present a linear narrative about Jesus life, ministry, death, and resurrection that contain his teachings in forms of conversations, sermons, and parables..   Then there is a theological presentation of who Jesus that begins with the Gospel of John, the legendary accounts found in the Acts of the Apostles, the letters  ascribed to Paul, Peter, James, John, Jude and the Book of Revelation.  Most of the New Testament is aimed of promoting the teachings about Jesus; otherwise known as, the apostolic teachings.  

The  Bible is not the Word of God.  It is religious literature and nothing more.  Like the Greek myths, the Jewish and Christian myths  contained in it tells us more about who we are than who or what God is.

* * *

I find myself questioning how a collection of books at least two to three thousand years old maintains its hold on people or why the moral codes of an ancient civilization is considered the basis for all moral and ethical decisions being made today.  By now, we know that stealing, murder, adultery, for example, are wrong.  I sometimes think the fear of losing the Bible is that we humans will go off the rails and lose all sense moral and ethical conduct.  Personally, I doubt that.  The problem I have is that it so many Christians use the Bible to bully and justify harming people in the name of a God.  

Jesus was no literalist when it came to the scriptures he knew.  While Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew claims he did not come to change one "jot or tittle" of the law, he certainly broadened the law's meaning. For instance, whenever Jesus says something like, "You have heard... but I say ....."  A good example of this is when he says in Matthew 5, "Love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may claim yourselves to be the children of your Father in heaven" 

If only Christians would follow Jesus' example of treating scripture as a living document, open to interpretation and reinterpretation as the times demand.  Jesus places our enemies and persecutors in the same category as our neighbors, the people we are to love. In claiming oneself to be child of God moves one to recognize that one's enemies and persecutors are also one's sibling in the eyes of God.  How are we to treat such siblings?  Do we give them multiple chances to recognize us as their siblings or do we disown them?

The Gospel of John and the scriptures that follow after it present a different story.  They depict Jesus to be revealed as different from the rest of us due to the resurrection story that reveals him not only to be more than the Messiah, but also the only-begotten Son of God sent to earth to take away the sins of the world.  This is a remarkably different understanding than the Synoptic Gospels present  Jesus as being.  

It is my belief that the Synoptic Gospels were edited to lean into the notion of Jesus being the Messiah as the only-begotten Son of God via Jesus' birth stories in Matthew and Luke and to further the notion that his life purpose in was meant to be a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world.  I think this is an erroneous interpretation of Jesus' life and ministry.  His death was an unnecessary tragedy that cut short a life that was transforming the world one person at a time.  His inner circle of disciples did their best to continue that approach.

The resurrection story is mnemonic device to keep Jesus' teachings alive and relevant following his death.   People, at the time, undoubtedly believed it to be a factually true story and it certainly is presented in the Gospels as being so.  Nevertheless, like so much of miraculous accounts recorded in the Bible, there is little or no proof or way of proving them to be factual events.  The resurrection stories of Jesus fall into the category of things unprovable and non-replicable.  Believing or disbelieving such stories does neither enhance nor deprive them of meaning, which is why I believe they have relevance in defining the human experience.   

Undoubtedly, the Holy Bible will remain the foundational mainstay of Christianity, but I feel it needs to be recalibrated from the position of being the only source of understanding Jesus and God.  There is so much information coming to light via historical discoveries, anthropology, the sciences that continue to shed new light on our planet home, our place in the universe, and the importance of all living things.  As such, I see a need to reevaluate the meaning and role of these ancient scriptures in the light of such information.

* * *

God indeed moves in mysterious and wondrous ways.  The being-ness that is the vastness of the universe, the macrocosm and microcosm, presents multidimensional possibilities as exhibited by the creative forces that have brought about our lives and all the forms of plant and animal existence we know on this planet.

Obviously, the beliefs I grew up and which became part of my psyche has experienced changes over the years.  At times these changes have made me feel discomfort as what I had thought I believed with all my heart began to melt away. As such, one questions why one stays and continues to nominally belong to a Christian church whose doctrines one largely disagrees with.  While I have left and am letting go of many of my indoctrinated beliefs about God and Jesus, I am finding  new ways to understand the concept of God and the person of Jesus that I find  more meaningful than what I have previously believed throughout most of my life.  

Stay tuned.

* * *

Norm

RECALIBRATING CHRISTIANITY - JESOLOGY

After having written several post on the need to recalibrate certain aspects of traditional Christianity that are considered foundational to its existence, I am going to attempt to describe how recalibration can be done.   I ended with the topic of theology and introduced a new approach which strictly treats Jesus as a human rather than the "only-begotten" Son of God.  To be a human being is the result of a universal power that enabled life on this planet, a power that in Christian circles is called God.  As such, I am calling this new approach to understanding Jesus, Jesology, a humanological approach to understanding Jesus from the perspective of his being a Jewish man living in the 1st. century C.E. Palestine. 

As mentioned in other posts, I feel it is vitally important to understand Jesus as a devout 1st century Jew  and what he was telling his fellow Jews about their relationship to God and each other and by extension what he is telling us today.   Jesology strips away the divine veneer that Christianity has given Jesus, while accepting that this veneer was given to Jesus' story to make Jesus more appealing to the polytheistic mindset of the Roman Empire.  As such, Jesology is not a theology but a type of humanology. 

Theology is a highly speculative navel-gazing activity based on premises that have no basis in fact; like his supposed virgin birth, the intended purpose of his existence to be a sacrificial victim, his resurrection,  and his ascension.   Christian theology has been and to a large extent remains resistant to historic and scientific discoveries.  Historically speaking, anyone within the ecclesial realm who possesses an inquiring and open mind like Galileo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and are perceived as contradicting Christian dogma are likely to be treated with suspicion if not viewed as heretical.  Christian theology; in particular, Christology offers a narrow perspective of Jesus based on the premise that Jesus is not only the Messiah that Jews fail to recognize but also that Jesus is the "only-begotten" Son of God.   What Christology tends to sidetrack is the teachings of Jesus that were relevant to human life in his day and remain so today.

HUMAN JESUS

Jesology sees treats Jesus solely as a human.  Period.  If Jesus believed he was a child or a son of God as portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels, he didn't keep that to designation himself.  Human Jesus did not see himself as the only made-to-order child of God.   If we take the account of the vision he experienced at his baptism in the Jordan in which he heard God say, "This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased" as a factual experience, Jesus likely did not take it to mean he was the only one, but that what he personally felt and experienced applied to everyone; namely, that if everyone had a vision in which God spoke to them like he did, they too would have heard the same thing, "This is my son... this is my daughter... ." Jesus applied his experience to everyone he met.

Human Jesus saw Samaritan lepers, a Roman Centurion, and a Syro-Phoenecian woman as worthy of his attention.  He marveled at the amount of trust they gave him.  In fact, I would say he was surprised on their willingness to approach him.  Miraculous healings attributed to Jesus appear to have involved deep-seated intentionality and faith, which is particularly evident in the story of Roman Centurion asking Jesus to heal his slave,  the Syro-Phoenecian woman asking Jesus to heal her daughter, and the father at wits end on how to heal his epileptic son.  

While being seen as a healer would have undoubtedly drawn people to him,  his teachings were aimed at mending their interpersonal relationships which would deepen their relationship with the being-ness of God in which we find ourselves living and being loved.  Human Jesus did not see himself as a divine offspring of God, but rather in a human relationship the creator of our being, "Our Father," which opened him to the understanding that every person is his sibling by virtue of being a child of God like himself.  That was the primary focus of his ministry, to reestablish within the context of his Jewish faith this fundamental relationship amongst his fellow Jews. Not only are Jews a chosen people but also each Jewish person is a child of God chosen for a broader mission to the world of God's other children, their gentile siblings.  

Jews understand that gentiles are also made in the image of God and thus God's children.  The focus of Jesus' ministry was not to save the world en masse by being sacrificed for the sins of the world.   If the world is to be saved it would be because of the ethical teachings he was giving to his fellow Jews.  It would be due to the deeper relationship that Jews had to each other as God's chosen children  by reaffirming their mission to be a light to world; that the world would be saved through their embrace of his teachings.  

   BEING HUMANE

People know God.  They might call God by other names, but they know or suspect that there is a power above any human power that is responsive to our needs.  Call it Being, God, or the Universe, there is a personal sense of something in us and around us that cares for us.   Jesus had an abundance of that sense.  Jesus called God Father to identify God as a loving and caring parent.  

People can lose this caring personal sense rather easily.   Perhaps the most important task of religion is to keep reminding us of this sense.  Jesus defines in himself what it means to be human and  (in a reversal to Chrstian theology) what is human about God.  As a result we understand that being made in the image of God is what makes us humans.

In Jesus' view, God's divinity can only be comprehended in God's humanity, God's relating to the whole human condition with love, compassion, caring, forgiveness   As such Jesus is our exemplar of this interrelationship between God and humankind.  Throughout his life, Jesus was living into what he told us to live into, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."  (Matthew 5:48).  Perfection in this case is not being a sinless do-gooder, but rather a humble person who knows one's faults and weaknesses as well as one's strengths and talents; a person who uses that information to foster a compassionate and caring approach towards one's fellow human beings.

Jesus does not need to be God to inspire goodness. Neither Jesus nor God never relegated the task of saving the world to only Jesus or God's self.  We see in Jesus that it is relegated to all of us.  If we want to save ourselves and the world we live in, Jesus points out that we have a major role to play that extends far beyond someone's (not God's) idea of being sexual moral, saying the right things, and being church-goers.  It is about treating others as one's siblings, treating animals humanely, treating plants with respect because every single animal and plant species, including ourselves are dependent on each other.  

Jesus was amongst the earliest environmentalist.  He tells us to consider the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air.  If we want to engage with God's perfect creation; God's perfection, we must protect and appreciate creation as God does.  Jesus was not a doomsday sort of person.  When people questioned him about the end times, he points to what we are doing in the present.

In the parable of the king overseeing the last judgment in Matthew 25, the king makes a profound concluding statement,  "What you do to the least of my brethren you do to me."  Generally speaking, most Christians see the King as God or Jesus, but being a parable invites us to see ourselves in the character of the king.  What we do to the least of our brethren we do not only to everyone else, we do it to ourselves.  

One can extend this line of thinking even further.  Our brethren on this small speck of dust includes the plants and animals we share it with; the land we live on, the air we breath, and the water we drink.  We humans historically have a terrible time  treating each other humanely.  We are just beginning to see on a larger scale an appreciation of the interconnectedness we have with all living things. We still have a long way to go as we continue to war with ourselves over things we don't really own and really don't matter.

Historically, Christianity has not done much to help with in saving ourselves and our planet home by relegating the full effect of salvation to an end time when those who believed that Jesus Christ died for their sins and kept their noses clean will get their heavenly reward.  We tend to ignore the stories of Jesus conversing and communing with those who were considered sinners, the extorting tax collector, the prostitutes, and the unclean.  Jesus was critical of the religious leaders of his day for their hypocrisy in applying a strict moral code on everyone they judged less than they, while giving themselves a pass because they considered themselves more righteous and deserving.

JESOLOGY  

Jesus is a unique human and unlike the polytheistic mind-set of most living in the 1st century, Jesus does not need to be God.   It is time to move beyond a theology that requires Jesus to be the "only begotten" Son of God and the Christianity of the Roman Empire which remains embedded in the modern Christian mind.  Recalibrating Jesus back to his being a human like the rest of us and provides giving us a fresh look at what Jesus taught and why he taught it.  

Jesology raises important questions.  What are we make of the stories about Jesus? What are we to make of the stories of his birth, the miracle stories, and his resurrection story?  Should Jesus be worshipped? How does one treat the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Epistles, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelations?  Does Christianity have any relevance today?   

The last question is the first question I asked at the beginning of this series on recalibrating Christianity.  In my opinion, the term "Christianity" is problematic in that it implies from the start that Jesus is the Messiah Jews and Christians are still seeking within the context of their religions.  Christians and Jews share this anticipation of a coming Messiah.  In fact, much of Christianity is a remake of Judaism for gentiles, along with the inclusion of some Greek and Roman pagan concepts and rituals.  

For most Christians in the Church today, its longstanding beliefs and doctrines about Jesus are not sustainable for the reasons I have explained in the preceding posts.  People are leaving christian churches primarily because of Christianity's lack of relevance.  It is hard to sincerely relate to a god/man; to someone who is not like us, who is more god than human no matter how much Christian doctrine stresses that Jesus is both true human and true God.  

Human Jesus is relatable.  Human Jesus' teachings are not only relatable but they are also applicable.  He does not have to be God to be life-saving.  He only needs to be one of us who has tried to make us understand that we are loved and cared for as children of God.  It is up to us to embrace and put into practice what Jesus has taught; to allow it to inspire us in finding deeper meaning and understanding in and about our lives.

In the next post, I will begin a new series on the Recalibrated Church that is based on human Jesus.

Norm

RECALIBRATING CHRISTIANITY - THEOLOGY

How does Christianity break away from its navel gazing theology?  How does Christianity bring Jesus back to earth as being fully human?   How does Christianity recalibrate and retain the Bible as its foundational source in the light of anthropological, historical, and scientific evidence that debunks and questions the factuality of its narrative?

Jesus, if he indeed existed (and there is no reason to believe that as human he didn't) is far more interesting to me as a human rather than the only-begotten Son of God.  In fact, I have difficulty relating to the concept of a human identified as a "sinless" demigod whose sole purpose was to pay for the sins of the world by being crucified.  If Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, he is anything but what people expected two thousand years ago and what they expect today, which, to be honest remains pretty much what they expected two thousand years ago.   Many Christians look for Jesus, the Messiah, to return to earth as a warrior god-king.  A god-king who will set creation straight, judge the living and dead, and establish a new creation.  

WAIT!!!  

Does anyone else see the irony of saying Jesus freed us from our sins and then has to come back and judge us,  as if being once pardoned one will still be judged if one keeps sinning?   Does anyone really believe their sin are forgiven, and "by really" I mean having no fear of the after-life consequences of one's actions in a here and now?   Doesn't the concept of Hell, for instance, contradict the fundamental purpose of Jesus dying to save the world, past, present, and future?

Historically, some early Christians like the Roman emperor Constantine refused baptism until they were on their deathbed so that they wouldn't have a chance to sin after being baptized.  What strange theology.  If Christ died once for all, then shouldn't that be enough?  Why the need for Jesus Christ to return as judge?  

Could there be a theology that does not rely on ambiguity about whether or not one's sins are forgiven; a theology in which there is no need for Hell since Jesus broke the bonds of Hell? One would think that the essential Gospel message is that everyone is saved - full stop - that there is no need to keep beating oneself up or anyone else over the concept of sin.   In fact it isn't that death has lost its sting, but rather that sin has lost its effectiveness. 

Paul's justification through faith mitigates the salvific effect of Jesus' supposed sacrifice as the everlasting atonement for humankind's sins.  Salvation is conditioned on faith in Paul's mind which is not something everyone has.  Some are predestined to be saved, others not.   Does salvation or my preferred term, redemption, need to be grounded in the tragic and horrific execution of Jesus by crucifixion?

STARTING OVER

Theologically speaking, what if we start over?    Why not keep God as a permeating spirit,  a creating, recreating, and sustaining force working (to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther) through, with, and under the forces and species (Aquinas) of nature?  Why not keep Jesus of Nazareth a human being like the rest of us?

If one would start at the beginning of human understanding of a universal force beyond human comprehension, an unnamable God (the ideal God) that brings about everything, how would one differentiate being made in God's image from God being made in our image?   

Most of what the Bible describes as God's mood has a definite human flavor.  Philosophers, such as Ludwig Feuerbach, have been on to this theological problem for some time.  Apart from Judaism and Islam, the Christian version of God is depicted as all powerful. all knowing, wise, and Zeus-like old man or a Janus-like three-faced God in which Jesus is depicted like God's younger self.  By Old Testament standards, God cannot be made into an image, ether in stone or in our minds.  Jesus is not the face of God.  Jesus might be considered the human exemplar of God's relationship with humankind, but Jesus is not God.  

It is unlikely that Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew and the son of Mary and Joseph, ever thought of himself as God nor did he ever refer to himself in the Synoptic Gospel as the Son of God.  Rather, he chose to refer to himself as the Son of Man.  Why not stick and work with that?

The problem with the New Testament is that everything after the Gospel of Mark, from the Gospel of John through Revelation, is a theology that places Jesus near or as being equivalent with God without directly saying it. That equivalency would come later at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.  The theology of Jesus, Christology, is based on Jesus being the Messiah of Judaism.  More importantly Jesus is God incarnate whose sole purpose was to sacrifice himself for our sins, be resurrected by God, and return to "heaven" until such time he returns to judge the world.   Christology is not based on fact, but rather on speculative beliefs and unverifiable stories

The mythic basis for Christology is important to understanding Christianity's development and evolution. It evolved from mindset juggling with a monotheistic understanding of creation in a polytheistic world where gods and goddesses have images, have sexual relationships with humans who then produce demigod offspring.  It is world where demigods (and occasionally a god) can be killed, and resurrected and raised to the level of their divine parentage. Christianity could not have evolved and survived  solely as a monotheistic religion in a polytheistic culture.   While such myths have no basis in fact, they are capable of giving meaning to human experience on a metaphorical level.  

As such, there is no need to edit or rewrite the scriptures we have, but rather understand them for what they are.  God did not write the Bible.  God as the ideal creator, re-creator (redeemer), and sustainer of the universe is the inspiration for writing the Bible, but human beings wrote the Bible as the speculative story of the interaction between this divine ideal and humankind.   As I have mentioned in other posts,  the Bible is not the Word of God, but rather words about God.   The claim that the Bible is the Word of God renders it an idol to be worshipped as the voice of God which it is not nor is it an exact transcription of what God is said.  The oldest scriptures within the Bible was written centuries, perhaps a millennia or two, after God was perceived as acting in (guiding) our history. 

As such, theology should be a fluid undertaking that not only appreciates an ever evolving relationship with God as distilled in scripture, but also in the light of scientific discoveries and emerging human thought expressed in word and deeds. God is what God is. and God will be what God will be at any given time.  As such, one cannot paint a permanent picture of God.  Allegorically speaking, God is light, love, the flame, the cloud, the thunder, the quaking earth, the wind, the dawning, the darkening, the absence, the quiet, etc..   God cannot be pinned down by our limited understanding; not by creeds, doctrines, or dogmatic beliefs.

JESOLOGY 

Theology is a dangerous activity when it tries to figure out God and paint a picture of God.  Jesus cannot be God, but is one of the many manifestations or incarnations of God.  In Christianity,  Jesus should be understood as the prime exemplar of what a human child of God i.   Instead of Christology, there is a need for a humanology seen through the teachings of Jesus, a "Jesology" (so to speak) that examines the image of God at work in our world and through all of our lives as expressed in the teachings of Jesus. 

The mythological stories; such as, the birth stories, miracle stories, resurrection and ascension stories about Jesus should not be altered in text, but altered in meaning.   As mentioned above, they contain meaning without having to be believed as factual events.  They are relevant without being replicable in a factual way.  Preachers often give sermons that talk about Jesus' birth stories and his resurrection stories as metaphors for the experience we have in our lives.  All mythic stories have this attribute of applicability.  Treating stories that have no factual or replicable basis removes the burden of having to believe in something unbelievable in order for it to convey meaning.  

Within many of my previous posts is an emerging theology based on Jesus' teachings and the stories about Jesus.   To bring Jesus down to earth, where Jesus started and ended his life is vital to recalibrating Christianity.  In future post, I plan to expand on this concept of Jesology, as a form of humanology based on the teachings of Jesus.  

Norm

  

   

  

RECALIBRATING CHRISTIANITY - THE BIBLE

Perhaps the most challenging undertaking in recalibrating Christianity is the understanding and use of the Bible in the light of its history and the role that science plays in shaping its application.   Most Christians are not well versed in the history of the Bible.  Most have an understanding of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, having no need of history outside of what itself describes.  The fact is the Bible has a history as a collection of writings with regard to how it came to be and how we understand it today. 

John Barton's "A History of the Bible - The Book & Its Faiths" is an excellent history of the Bible that covers its development, interpretations, and use in both Christian and Jewish settings.  Barton's history is topically exhaustive and provides resources for those interested in doing further research beyond his text.  I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of the Bible.  

* * *

In Christianity, the Bible is the foundational source of its mission and worship.  For two millennia the Bible has been the one source all Christian churches and denominations rely on to support their beliefs, their doctrines, and their practices.  The Bible has been treated as a "stand-alone" and an unquestioned authoritative source for what Christians believe. 

Understanding how the Bible came to be and how it was written and why it was written in the way it was written is essential to understanding its use and application in the twenty-first century.  The understanding that the Bible is the Word of God needs to be replaced with the understanding that it is words about God and how such understandings shape one's understanding of human relationships with each other and with God.  Christianity can no longer afford to treat the Bible as a "stand-alone" source.  It has its own history amongst the histories of other cultures, religions, philosophies  politics, and science.  How do these histories shape one's understanding of the Bible? 

As mentioned in another post, the Bible is best understood if it is treated as any other form of literature.  For the most parts, Christians struggle with that concept.  The concept that it is holy, immediately, puts it into a category of its own.  It is not holy.  It is human.   

It is a human work inspired by the concept or the ideal of a being called God.  Should such an "individualized" being exist it must have been created.  It was.  

It was created in the minds of human beings and if one reads the Bible, in particular, one can clearly sees this.   When one begins to realize this, the Bible takes on a more significant role in understanding it and humanity's relationship to it.  It becomes a brush-stroke amongst many other brushstrokes that paint a picture of what it means to be human.

There is no need to change the Bible.  It can stand as work of literature amongst many literary works that bring meaning to who we are in relationship to the force that brought about the universe and us. 

Speaking of "the force," the writers of the "Star Wars" movies and George Lucas were, I believe, deliberately on to something when they came up with the idea that there is an accessible force in the universe, ingenuously called, "The Force."  All kidding aside, it seems to encapsulates the creation story as redefined in John 1:1:  "In the beginning was the Word..." (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος in the Koine Greek original).    The word "beginning" is translated from the the Greek word, ἀρχῇ, which also connotes power and by extension an active force.  

* * *

The universe in which we live may not have a beginning, as time itself is part of what is or what evolved as a result of gravitational forces.  The universe may be eternal;  a paradoxical timeless state of being in which time exists.  We only pinpoint its age as being fourteen billion years because that is as far back in light years we can see. What we also know is that the universe is in constant flux; that galaxies come and go over billions of years in the macro Universe, but we also know that electrons in the micro (quantum) universe are virtually eternal forms of energy.  

As I have noted in other posts, God is a nominal or pronominal term describing a verb; as in, an active force that could also be described as Being or Being-ness.  That God is seen as a separate being, apart from creation, seems improbable to me.  That God is "being" in which creation is manifest is less improbable and more understandable in the 21st century.  

The Bible personifies God as a being because it is near impossible to relate to God on a personal or cultural level if God cannot be objectified as a divine being. What does that even mean?  The Bible, itself, tells us that God is beyond description.  The best we get in deciphering what God is in the metaphorical references to what God is like:  God is a spirit (life-giving energy).  God is light (intellectual and also life-giving energy).   God is love (emotive and motivational energy). 

Genesis is the singular most important book in the Bible; in that, it is the premise upon which the whole story of the Bible for both Christians and Jews evolves. To metaphorically understand the creation story of the universe in the Bible and its creation in the light of evolutionary science and psychology is important in recalibrating Christianity; just as understanding the New Testament as a largely metaphorical story about Jesus is important in making the teachings of Jesus relevant for the times in which we live. 

To accept the Bible as the truth is a matter of intellectual assent in the form of belief.   I doubt that most people accept the Bible as containing capital "T"  Truth.  Most of us can see truths about our humanity expressed through the stories in the Bible and in its depiction of  the relationships human have with the idea of God through the perspective of the prophets, including Jesus, who gave God a human voice. 

* * *

For those who have followed this blog, you are likely to see that my views on Christianity are changing.  I have used this blog to examine my own thoughts as well as others on the subjects I write about, and I have written several posts on the topics covered in this series on recalibrating Christianity.  The Bible being the one source upon which Christianity is based should give any serious person pause to consider the ramifications.

The question that has been forming in my mind since beginning this blog is if it is realistic to continue to adhere to one book containing a collection of writings between two and three thousand years old which were based on an understanding of the world we live in as being the center of the universe and we humans beings the crown of God's creation in light of what we now know today?   Have we not evolved as humans in what we know about creation; the universe, the diversity of life on earth, and ourselves?  Should we remain tethered to concepts of the causes and effects of events that are based on human rectitude rather than their explanations found in atmospheric, biological, geological, and psychological science?

At best the Bible gives us a history of religious evolution of a tribal mountaintop god, amongst many others, to the one God of monotheism; a universal God who brought all things into being (a major leap towards seeking a unified theory of everything).  Then there is the Christian scriptures of the New Testament that contains the teachings of Jesus and his understanding of the value of each human as a child of God and being an incarnation of God's image.  

The Bible as a stand alone authoritative source has also been a source of humankind's inhumanity.  Both the Old and the New Testaments have been used to justify wars and deadly persecutions throughout human history.  In more recent years, it has been used to stoke what I have been calling "willful ignorance" which ignores science in all of its forms.  In political circles, it continues to be useful tool to encourage fundamental Christian churches to back and justify movements aimed at establishing autocracies and oligarchies.  

* * *

While the Bible has been cited as the scriptural basis for civil rights and in general human rights, it is the Enlightenment (something disparaged by many Christian denominations and churches) that influenced Christians, particularly in the West, to seek a better understanding of its scriptures in its light.  If Christians had not been influenced by the Enlightenment, slavery and the broad spectrum of human rights (the civil rights of all people regardless of race, gender, gender identity) would not have occurred, as the Bible does not mention such rights.  The Bible contains language that is ambivalent on such subjects and particularly disparages the idea of homosexuals and women having any rights. At best, the rights of individuals is something derived from the teachings of the prophets and Jesus.  

I need to add here that Paul's claim in his letter to the Galatians of there being no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or freedman in Christ was never meant to establish a social or world order.  It is obvious in his other letters  Paul was not ready to "unnecessarily" upset the social order of the times.  He ordered women to remain silent, wear head coverings, abstain from jewelry, and sent a slave back to his master.  The prophets, Paul, and even Jesus were products of their times and the places in which they lived.  Where Jesus differs is in his emphasis on the importance of the individual; from a small child to a Roman Centurian, a Samaritan Leper, and a Syro-Phoenician woman.  Like God, Jesus was a minimalist; one person at a time, every time. 

The Bible will always remain central to Christianity, but in the 21st century it can no longer remain as a stand-alone authoritative source.  It must be understood in the light of the ongoing effects of the Enlightenment expressed in science and emerging philosophies and thought.  Christian theology needs to move beyond a naval-gazing activity that insists on continuity with the past as each age presents its challenges to long-held doctrine, practices, and traditions.  For Christians, the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke must be distilled from their narrative setting and become the center piece of Christian life and worship, as opposed to the teaching about Jesus; such as, his divine birth, the meaning of his death and resurrection.  It is the teachings of Jesus that have more relevance today than they have had in the past.

The Bible is an important literary artifact that is the foundation on which Christianity is based, but for Christianity to remain relevant, the Bible must be understood in the light of our rapidly changing world.  It should not be used as a defense for what is no longer defensible.  More important to its relevance is understanding it as literature about humans in relation to the concept of God rather than believing it to be the Word of God. 

Norm 

THE MADNESS OF JESUS - A REFLECTION ON MARK 3:20-35 (Revised)

I presented this homily at Christ Episcopal Church on June 9, 2024.  It is a revision of a homily I posted online during Covid on June 6, 2021 

 May the words of my mouth and the mediations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.   Amen

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Jesus’ family was concerned.  

You can imagine what their conversations might have been like:  

“What’s going on? What is happening with Jesus? 

He’s not eating right; all that preaching, all those people.  

It’s not good.  People are talking.  

Casting out demons!  What next?  

Perhaps we should do a family intervention.”   

So they go in search of Jesus.  

* * *

They are not the only ones concerned.  Prior to today’s reading from Mark, we read that word quickly spread about Jesus who was healing people and casting out demons.  People from all around, even beyond the borders of Galilee and Judea, were making the journey to hear Jesus and be healed by him.  And when that happens, the leadership in Jerusalem takes notice and they send some scribes (some legal experts) to hear and see what Jesus is up to.  

After doing so, they arrive at a conclusion, confirming what worried Jesus’ family, “He’s out of his mind.”  

Beyond that, they conclude that if Jesus is, in fact, casting out demons, it stands to reason he can do so because he’s possessed himself, and not by some generic demon, but by the Prince of demons, Beelzebul.  

Imagine what Jesus must have sounded like and looked like after preaching and healing non-stop for days:

Wild-eyed with the fervor of delivering a message of hope to a world in need of hope.  He most likely didn’t look the best or smell the best from the press of a never-ending flow of people who had no one else to turn to, no one else to give their hope for hope a chance.  It is no wonder his family and the scribes thought he was losing his mind.

* * *  

But Jesus wasn’t losing his mind.   Jesus was healing minds, healing bodies, and liberating souls. 

When he hears those scribes describe him as casting out demons by the prince of demons, Jesus seizes a teaching opportunity in which he offers one of his most enduring statements, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  

* * *

Jesus exposes an illogic that presents itself as a resistance to evidential hope; as in, when good happens where and to whom it is never expected to happen  The ones who object to such hope are those who inwardly fear they have the most to lose when hope emerges in opposition to their hard-nosed pragmatism that sees hope as a waste of time that only results in people becoming unruly, as evidenced by the press of the crowd surrounding Jesus.  

 

Hope defies control.  When hope takes shape and becomes realized, those who fear it most cast it as demonic, casts liberation as domination, and unconditional concern for those outside of one’s inner circle as subversive.  Illogical theories like Satan casting out Satan are presented as fact because, in a polarized setting, one person’s hope becomes another person’s fear.  Jesus exposes the fallacy of such illogical theorizing.

* * *  

What comes next is one of Jesus’ most confusing statements about the eternal and unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit.  Mark concludes that Jesus gave the scribes this warning because they said he had an unclean spirit.  

It’s not exactly clear what Jesus meant by this statement, and it may strike us as a bit over the top and out of character for Jesus.  Nevertheless, it serves as a poignant warning to those who, in the name of God and religion, demonize people as a means of preventing them from entertaining hope.Jesus could be implying that those who discredit the Spirit of God in others end up severing their tie to the very Spirit that made us living souls; that it ends up diminishing their souls to the point their isn’t much left of their souls to forgive.

* * *

Another seemingly uncharacteristic moment for Jesus is when his mother, brothers, and sisters arrive and are asking for him.  Instead of going out to meet them, he uses their presence as another teaching moment.   

In what comes across as a being dismissive to their presence, Jesus asks the crowd surrounding him, “Who is my mother, brothers, and sisters?”  Looking at those who came to hear him and be healed by him, he says, “You are. You, who are doing the will of God are my family.”  

The madness of Jesus is in appearance only and he appears as such only to those who fear losing control like the scribes and those who felt powerless against a good they couldn’t understand like his biological family; a power that defied conventional wisdom as to whom such good things should happen to and be enacted by.  For those whose hope was rekindled in Jesus’ preaching, who experienced his healing touch and whose souls were liberated, they saw and experienced in this wild-eyed, unkempt human being, the refining fire of God’s liberating and life-giving Spirit. 

* * *

This reading is particularly appropriate for a season devoted to the movement of God’s Spirit in our world - redeeming it and restoring it one person, one moment, one event at a time.  To discern the movement of God’s Spirit requires one to step back, sometimes way back, to see the bigger picture.  

It requires letting go of what one thinks must happen or should happen in order to see within the madness of our times the goodness that is taking place, to recognize and hold on to a hope that emerges in some of the most seemingly hopeless places and situations.   As people of faith we know this to be true. To discern the movement of God’s Spirit requires a patient and an open heart that feels the Spirit of God moving us ever closer towards the realization of God’s loving hope in us working with God’s Spirit in healing our world and liberating souls.  

Amen.