What Happened To Hosea?

The prophet Hosea in the Bible is commanded by God to marry a woman he knows will cheat on him. He is commanded to do this because God wants Him to know what it is that God is going through in relation to His people, Israel. He wants Hosea to know His pain. Hosea's struggle with his wife Gomer becomes a kind of living testament to the character of God, and His struggle with the sinful Israel.

One way to look at this is to think of God actually 'speaking' in a voice to Hosea. No doubt people experience God's voice in this way. I do sometimes. Many of the prophets' encounters with God can be looked at no other way. But to the ancient Israelites, there were so many ways for God to speak.  For to the ancients, every act was an act of God. A lightning bolt struck a house, and that was God speaking. If you had a dream, this was a message from God and experience of another dimension to reality. An intense love for a person no doubt was seen as a message from God.

So another way to look at Hosea's experience with Gomer is like this: Homer fell in love with a woman who cheated on him constantly. He had felt in his love, no doubt, the hand of God. Now, however, everything has fallen apart. Some of the children's names may indicate that Hosea suspected that they were not his own (one is named Lo-Ammi which means 'not my people'). Eventually, Homer is reconciled to his wife. This moment brought great joy.

All along the way Hosea may have seen God's hand and Word within the very context of what he was doing. God's message might not have been direct or supernatural, but in the fabric of the whole experience of Gomer and her adultery. Hosea may have had a moment where he turned to God and ASKED God why he was brought to love for this woman who hurt him so. In that moment, perhaps he realized that this reality of pain-from-love is a key to understanding who God is, and what God wants. His later reconciliation with Gomer may have similarly been EXPERIENCED as a message bout God's love for His people.

Now either way is possible. It may be that everything Hosea did was directed to him by God through a voice  or vision. But the second account seems more true to me. God's influence on the world may be at times direct, but perhaps such events only take place when they can. God's general relationship with the world seems more subtle, and I suspect that this subtlety is not incidental. It probably speaks to something very important in the divine. I find it very interesting that in Hosea 2:16, God talks of His desire to 'allure' Israel. Alluring is one of the fundamental concepts in process theology. God moves the world by alluring it forward.

There are plenty of places in the Old Testament where God's control over the world seems absolute and controlling. But there are also many places where God's influence seems far different. There are places where God's plans are frustrated, and where God changes plans in response to human decision making. There are places where God regrets and frets, and seeks to make a respect for free will first and foremost in all He does. Usually the passages that suggest God's total and dominating omnipotence are used to interpret the others. But why can't I go the other direction? Why can't I take the second way of interpreting the Bible to be my primary lens, and seek a way to fit the others into it?

Question of the Day

What do you think of God's act of empowering rather than controlling?

God's Divesting Of Power & The Trinity

In my still-in-progress second book I struggle with the idea of the Holy Spirit and the Trinity. I see God's empowering action as embodied in the Trinity. The Father gives power to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the Divine Power bearer. The Spirit then gives that power to Christ, who makes it available to all the beings in the world. We are to give power to each other, and to new creations. God, in His essence, is self-giving.

Sharing Power Vs Giving Up Power

Last night after a strange dream I had a minor epiphany. I solved a problem in Biblical interpretation I've had for a while, concerning the Book of Revelation, which has been for a year and a half a constant source of contemplation and investigation for me.

It has always bothered me that satan seems to share his power with other beings in the Book of Revelation. I see the primary dichotomy in the Book as being between the Lamb Slain, which is vulnerable love incarnate verses the beasts, which represent power and control. People almost naturally worship glory, power, money, everything that gives one control and protects them from harm. But the Lamb is pure vulnerability, weak, seemingly nothing, and yet containing with him the True Divine Power. The Lamb's power is superior but paradoxical, the beasts power is false, but straightforward.

But the beasts power comes from satan. The devil summons the beasts and shares his power and authority with them. This image bothers me. I think of Lord of the Rings: "There is only one lord of the ring, and he does not share power." The image of the devil sharing power seems antithetical to what I understand to be his nature. Last nigh it hit me though, that until the very end of the book God is all but unmoving. God's power is completely DIVESTED in other beings. God does not exert His power to punish the empires of the earth. Nor does He engage in battle with the devil. Rather the power of God is controlled and contained by other beings and things. God's power is hidden within a scroll that only His agent, the Lamb, can open. The horsemen and the angels are given authority over the plagues, and over those they are sent to do battle with. Even humans are given a part of God's authority. The Two Witnesses in Chapter 11 are given a kind of divine control over nature, especially the weather.

The devil remains a player throughout the book. It is involved in all that happens along the way. In chapter 16, all three of the evil beings: both beasts and satan, summon demons to cover the earth. The devil can share power, but only so far as it increases his ability to control. Power can be shared, but it cannot be divested as God does. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel the image of God in Revelation is concomitant with the process theology I am so fond of. For while all power derives from God, control over that power is in the hands of created beings, the Lamb being the possible exception. This might make some sense of the trinity as well.

I think of God's power as being empowering. God's power is to make others more powerful, freer. They only use that power properly when they use it for the same ends. But such a use of power could never be a case of God gaining more control. The devil may share power for his purposes. But he would never give the gift of empowering and freedom that God does. More on this later today.

One-Post Wednesday: Incarnation Homily 2

My comments on Daniel 7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FALbdre9TTk

Question of the Day

What is your favorite prayer?

"Follow Your Dreams"

We encourage people to follow their dreams all the time. Yet many people's dreams leave something to be desired. So many wish for a life without struggle, where all their material needs are attended to. Popularity and fame are the values of the day, and they are the substance of so many people's dreams. Perhaps we should focus less on getting people to pursue their dream and more on getting them to have better dreams.

Prayer

Dostoevsky once said, "prayer is an education." And that's about right. In prayer we mimic Gods action in the world. We meet God in his hiding place. We fall on our knees and find Jesus. Prayer is an expression of a fundamental reality, expressed in Philippians 2. God is self emptying. If we fail to empty ourselves, we miss out on an important opportunity for relationship with Him.

The image of Jesus that sticks with so many is that of Him praying to His Father. There are so many paintings and images of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane or in a quite place, looking up at God. This is a strange image, if you think about it. God is literally praying to God. Some claim that Jesus did this to give us an example of how to live. It is about living a perfect human life. On one level, this is doubtless true. Some will just say that Jesus is talking to His dad. The Trinity is One God in three Persons, after all, and it makes some sense for One Person of the Trinity to have a conversation with Another. But somehow I doubt proper praying was necessary for this. Certainly Jesus and God remained essentially One even during Jesus' time on Earth. Still, there is also probably truth in this suggestion as well.

But what if what Jesus was really doing was revealing God to us? Jesus entire life was on of humility, of self-giving love. In this we see God. If we fail to realize this, we miss one of the most profound truths in the Gospels. I wonder how much God makes in the lives of most of the people who believe in Him. Would they live significantly different if they did not believe in Him? I think a great many people would not, barring some little rituals here and there. And for Christians, how many really live differently because of Jesus? Would they live or believe any differently if they just believed in God? I doubt it. Most Christians justify their belief in Jesus, not by remarking how Jesus makes a difference in their picture of God, but by misrepresenting Judaism. Judaism is painted as this legalistic religion that required animal sacrifice for forgiveness. Jesus takes the place of that animal sacrifice, and that is why Jesus matters.

The truth of the matter is that the idea that Jews today or during Jesus time thought that perfect obedience to
the law was necessary for salvation is simply false. Most Jews understood the law as a way for Jews to live lives that were 'set apart' from the lives of the people around them. But they did not think perfect obedience to the law was possible, much less necessary for 'salvation'. For Jews, what saves them is the act of God adopting them as His people through Abraham and Moses' covenants. It is an act of grace. So Judaism is not some Law Religion that must be replaced by the Grace Religion of Christianity. Once you get rid of this dichotomy, Judaism/Christianity as Grace Religion Vs Law Religion, what is really left for the average Christian? Little, I'd wager.

For me, the simple image of Jesus praying is the very key to all The Incarnation is all about. Jesus is showing us a new way to think about God, and a new path to God. Prayer is shaping oneself into the image of the divine, truly in Dostoevsky's words 'an education'. It is this new vision of God has humble and self-giving, made the very center of our faith, which truly can set Christianity apart.

Question of the Day

What do you think the Christian attitude towards animals should be and why?

Man & Animals In The Bible

There are many people who present the relationship between man and animals in the Bible in unambiguous terms: man is to be master of animals, and rule over them, they are in no way equals. People who hold this view often claim that animals have no souls as humans do, and that we can do with animals as we wish, barring some extreme forms of cruelty (though they often have trouble justifying this caveat). The defining text for this is Genesis 1:28.

But as I've said elsewhere, there are two creation stories in Genesis, one right after the other. Genesis 2:4b-2:25 is a different creation account, with dramatically different details as to how and why God created the world, and the things that live upon it. In the first creation story, God makes animals before human beings, and humans are made specially in the image of God. Humanity is the crowning achievement of divine creation, and is afforded a special place in the world. He is deliberately given dominance over all other living things.

In the second creation story, animals are made after mankind. And Genesis 2:18-19 gives a very different account of why they are made. Here we are told that God 'brought forth' animals to act as companions to human beings. So on this account, animals are created to be equal to humans. Adam discovers they are not, and his act of naming them would've been symbolic to ancient peoples of his superiority over them (2:20). Here mankind is given no special pre-eminence over animals nor any special dominion over them. Rather, animals are experimental attempts to make a companion and a helper for God's Adam. We are not told that mankind is created through some process different from the one God uses to make the animals. Ecclesiastes, addressing the issue of the afterlife says that animals and humans have the same 'life-breath' (the words 'breath' and 'spirit' are interchangeable in ancient Hebrew), and that for all we know animals go to heaven and we rot in the earth (Ecclesiastes 3:19-22). This is a good passage, by the way, for those who intuitively believe that animals have souls, and go to heaven.

Christian vegetarians can latch onto this alternative view. In point of fact, it was only after the flood that humans were given the right to even eat animals (Genesis 9:1-4). Some could argue that a return to vegetarianism is a return to the perfect relationship between man and the world that existed in Eden (for the record, I am not a vegetarian). The real point I want to make, however, is that like so much in the Bible, the issue of human/animal relationships is one of conversation, and dialectical encounter. You have not one, but a couple of positions on the matter. The Bible offers you options, but you have to choose which seems true to you and why. I think there is truth in both positions, and a middle way is most advisable here. That is usually my way. 

Why Gnosticism?

Why has there been such a resurgence of Gnosticism both explicit and hidden? Genuine, traditional Gnostics have achieved something of a modern resurgence. Their websites are everywhere, and there are many scholars who have some very successful pro-gnostic books. I just recently met a Pentecostal woman whose father had become a Gnostic.

But greater than Gnosticism is the "gnosticistic" tendency among modern fundamentalists. They talk about the devil ruling the world, and see the entire created universe as fallen. I suggest that the success of these movements results from the failure of mainstream Christian theology to speak to the combat motif which I have written about before.

The truth in Gnosticism is that the spiritual life is warfare. There are cosmic stakes. But however cosmic in scope our enemy may be, God is infinitely greater and will triumph. The inability of God to destroy His enemy right this second does not mean that He is not assured of eventual success. The lie of Gnosticism is the vision of the created world as being in the hands of darkness. Creation is good, life is good, as Genesis 1 says right at the beginning of the Bible. The evil is the result of organized rebellion, nothing more than the cosmic toxic waste leftover from the universe's freedom and creativity. It is a disease, as Rene Girard rightly argues, a cancer that will be cured.

But even on the road to cure there will be bad days. The war may be won, but every individual battle is still of supreme import. If the wider Christian community fails to speak to this reality, which impinges on our encounter with the world every day, then it will continue to lose ground to those forces who speak this truth, surrounded by lies that I believe to be truly dangerous.

Thought For The Day

Contra Bultmann, Christians should not 'demythologize the text' the text should 're-mythologize the world'.

Questions of the Day

What would the name "Breasted Lord" mean to you? What would the name "God of the Mountains" mean to you? What would the name "God the Destroyer" mean to you?

Commentary On The Names of God: El-Shaddai

In Genesis, God is most often called "God Almighty". The Hebrew word for this is "El-Shaddai". In point of fact, in Exodus 6 we are told that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew God by the name El-Shaddai, but that to Moses God was giving His true Name, the Name by which the Israelites are to know Him from that time onward (more on this in a future post).

But El-Shaddai is a word with a vague and complicated history, and the translation "Almighty" is a best approximation. There are several ancient semitic words that may be the foundation for the name El-Shaddai. The word is most commonly translated "The God of the Mountains". In the ancient world, mountains were often associated with great power, and with Divinity. It may have to do with the fact that before the building of Solomon's Temple, God was understood to reside on mountains (Sinai, for instance).

The translation "God of the Mountains" actually has an etymological connection to yet another translation, "The Breasted Lord". The word Shaddai has some similarity to the Hebrew word for nursing breasts. On this translation, the name El-Shaddai indicates a God of life, or even fertility. Much of the early Hebrew religious experience was about contrasting the religion of life, which Judaism represented, with the religion of death of the Egyptians. John Cobb, Jr. combines the two translations and has said that a proper translation would be something like "The God of the Two Mountains" or "The God of the Grand Tetons", for those who can grasp the latter idiom. One of the interesting theological consequences of rendering the name El-Shaddai as 'the Breasted Lord' is it emphasizes God as a sustainer, and really contains within it a maternal image.

Yet another translation renders the name Shaddai as 'Destroyer'. Here God would be closely associated with the forces that destroyed Sodom and Gammorah, and the 10th Plague that killed all the first born in Egypt. In point of fact, the translation "Almighty" is the result of combining the first translation (God of the Mountains) and the third (Destroyer), while more or less ignoring the second.

So here you have two very different visions of the role and character of God. On the one hand, the name might emphasize God as Life Incarnate, as sustainer and even mother. The second translation emphasizes Power and Control as primary to the nature of God. This vision is also much more fatherly, I think.

Which translation is correct? Well that depends on how you weigh the following evidence, I think. In Genesis  17:11, 28:3, and 35:11, the first three places we find the name El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai is closely associated with making someone 'fruitful' and promising 'descendants beyond number'. In other words, fertility. So in the earliest mentions we see God closely associated with life and life-giving, which all would tend us to think in terms of something like 'the nursing Lord'.

But when Abraham meets Melchizedek in Genesis 14, and Mel starts talking about "The God Most High" (El-Elyon), Abraham almost instantly identifies Mel's God with the El-Shaddai Abraham is familiar with. Now, why would the name "God Most High" be associated with El-Shaddai, in Abraham's mind? A likely answer is because Abraham thinks of El-Shaddai as "The God of the Mountains".

So it is unclear which translation is the correct one. I'm apt to think with John Cobb Jr. that both "God of the Mountains" and "The Breasted Lord" are correct, while rejecting completely the association with 'Destroyer', (though I'll admit there are some good etymological reasons for rendering it the third way as well). But neither of these translations forces me to see coercive power as the primary characteristic of God. For a God of the Mountains is to my mind "High and Raised Up" and yet a breasted Lord is "Life-Giving and Sustaining". Neither of these conflicts with my own view of God. For God remains in my view Ultimate Reality. Nothing is greater than God. That greatness, however, is found in His Love, His Humility, and His Goodness. God is qualitatively transcendent over us, greater than anything we can imagine. But our normal definition of greatness is wrong. God is 'beyond' in the sense of being Infinite Love. Is not calling God Infinite Love to honor Him has "high and raised up"? I think so. For all these reasons, I feel comfortable calling God "Almighty" so long as I understand that it is simply a stand-in for one of His Holy Names, El-Shaddai

Maverick Meditator

Great post on meditation over at MAVERICK PHILOSOPHER:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/01/meditation-how-long-and-what-to-expect.html

Stations of the Cross Updated

Intro

These stations represent the last fourteen steps of Jesus' long journey to the cross.

It was a journey with many twists and turns, with joy and laughter, danger and sorrow, as any great journey is. But Jesus knew how it would end.

Yes, these are the last fourteen steps' of Jesus life. But for us they must be the first fourteen steps on a new journey. 

Unlike Jesus we don't know where that journey will take us, but if it is shaped by our experience here, then we can know that wherever it takes us, we will be able to endure and keep faith. 

For our journey can be no harder than His, and on ours He will be our companion. 

Amen.

Station 1: Jesus Is Condemned By Pilate

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Here Jesus, The Judge of the World, stands trial before a corrupt official. But who is really on trial here? Who is proved guilty and who really stands condemned? We must always beware when we judge others, that in our condemnation we are not really condemning ourselves. And let us seek to never overcome evil with evil. But like Jesus to let our love and obedience be so great, that in defeat God might bring us victory.

O: "Let us not judge lest we be judged."

R: "And not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good."

Station 2: Jesus Takes His Cross

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Jesus is given a mighty burden to bear. But the physical weight of the Cross is only the tip of the iceberg. It reveals to the senses a much more terrible and hidden reality. For the real burden this frail man carries is the weight of all of our sins. Every lie, every betrayal, every harm visited upon anyone, now sits upon the body and soul of Jesus. So whenever we find and opportunity to fight against sin within, or injustice without, let us see that as an opportunity to relieve, if even to the smallest degree, the pain of our Lord.

O: "We know what is required of us."

R: "To love goodness, and do justice, and walk humbly with our God."

Station 3: Jesus Falls For The First Time

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Jesus is God Incarnate, the Lord of the Universe. Now He has so humbled Himself that He now falls upon the ground from exhaustion. People so often seek God in the unusual, the extraordinary, the glorious and the distinguished. But Christ came as one of the lowly. And it is among the lowly that we will discover our God. Service to the lowest is not a duty, but the expression of a fundamental truth: God is Suffering Love.

O: "For The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve"

R: "And offer Himself as a sacrifice for many"

Station 4: Jesus Meets His Mother

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

The greatest spiritual pain a person can experience is helplessly watching the suffering of someone they love. But in a very real sense, we should all seek the perspective of Mary, watching Jesus bear this terrible burden. For if our sin causes the suffering of the Lord we love, then should not this knowledge push us away from evil? So let us not turn away, but witness boldly the consequences of our sin, so that we may sin less. 

O: "Create in us pure hearts, O Lord"

R: "And send your Spirit upon us."

 Station 5: Simon The Cyrene Carries Jesus' Cross

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Jesus is not alone on this final leg of His journey. God is with Him. And there are people there, too. Simon bears' Jesus physical burden, when He no longer has the strength to. Simon has no idea what is going on, or who Jesus is. How often do those who know nothing of Our Lord, find communion with Him through the alleviation of suffering in this world. May we follow their example, and let love be our guiding light when others are in pain.

O: "Let not jealousy bring us to stop those who are doing good."

R: "For whoever is not against us is for us."

Station 6: Veronica Wipes The Face Of Jesus

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Simon comes to us as an outsider. But Veronica appears as one who knows and loves Jesus. Love always issues in obedience and service. And no kindness, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is ever wasted. For to alleviate any suffering to any degree is to do a kindness to God. And no kindness towards God could ever be accounted small.

O: "Anyone who gives even a cup of water to one of these who are His servants"

R: "Will surely receive their reward."

Station 7: Jesus Falls A Second Time

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

How great Jesus' suffering must be. Even without the physical burden of the Cross, now carried by Simon, the spiritual weight of all sin and it's consequences weighs Him down. How often do we complain and moan because we have to deal with the after-effects of even one person's mistakes? Only through forgiveness and tolerance of the weakness of others, can we share in the power of Christ.

O: "Let us daily bear each other's burdens"

R: "For to suffer for the wrongs of others is to share in the Cross of Christ."

Station 8: Jesus Meets The Women Of Jerusalem

Jesus did not seek the pity of others. Rather, He had pity for all those whose sin is so great and so unexamined that a sacrifice like His is required. The women Jesus meets here love Him, and stay close to Him even when His other friends have left. But their pity is misplaced. For it is not the one who suffers because of sin that is pitiable. It is the sin itself that is pitiful.

O: "Let us not weep for Him, but for ourselves."

R: "For if this is what happens when times are green, what will happen when they are dry?"

Station 9: Jesus Falls For The Third Time

Jesus again reveals to us a God found not on the mountaintop, but in the lowest and weakest. God created us to love and serve Him. But He also created us so that He could love and serve us. We cannot fully understand the meaning of the first principle, if we do not grasp the significance of the second.

O: "If we do not allow Him to serve us, we can have no part with Him."

R: "But as He served so must we, for the student is not greater than the master."

Station 10: Jesus' Clothes Are Taken Away

He stands now at His most vulnerable. God Incarnate, naked to the world. Battered, broken, and humiliated. But this is the very reason for which He came: to show us the power of vulnerability, and the Divinity of Love. In helping those most in need, we humble ourselves before the lowest, and make ourselves vulnerable to those most vulnerable. That is the very substance of the Kingdom of God in this world.

O: "We know how to feed, clothe, and comfort our Lord."

R: "For if we do this for the least of these that are His children, we do it for Him."

Station 11: Jesus Is Nailed To The Cross

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

The nailing to the cross is the image that stick with us. The physical pain is something we can scarcely imagine. But, again, that image is but a visible and outward sign of a more terrible and hidden reality. For the pain of the nails merely represents Jesus' place as the victim of every crime, of every sin, every dishonor of ever visited upon anyone. So to fight for the right, and to help the victims of sin, is to alleviate the suffering of God.

O: "For we know that our redeemer lives."

R: "And that He has stood upon the Earth."

Station 12: Jesus Dies On The Cross

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

The life of God now encompasses the whole of human existence: from birth to death. There is no place of brokenness, fear, or pain where God has not followed, or where we are hidden from Him. God has fully embraced the problem of Job. Death and suffering are not foreign to the life Divine. So let us never take them as signs of God's disfavor or opposition in this world. Jesus suffered not because He was evil, but because He was good.

O: "Let us be of the same mind as Christ"

R: "Who became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

Station 13: The Body Of Jesus Is Taken Down From The Cross

Even through His darkest moment, Jesus brought people to the light. A Roman soldier sees in Jesus' attitude towards death a revelation of the Divine. His battered and broken body, now lifeless is brought down from the cross. Death is painful for those left behind, but for the dying it is a doorway to a greater adventure. For without the cross, there can be no resurrection.

O: "See, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness over its people."

R: "But the Lord rises upon you."

Station 14: Jesus Is Laid In The Tomb

It ends with yet another act of service. Joseph of Arimathea has contributed part of his burial land for the one called Jesus. This would've taken great courage, as Joseph was a member of the very council that condemned Jesus. What a wonderful event is to come, however, and Joseph's kindness is richly rewarded, for his name will forever be connected to it. Service to others is service to our Lord, and to serve our Lord is to share in His resurrection. Not just in the future, but right here, right now.

O: "As Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish but was released,"

R: "So shall our Lord descend to the realm of the dead, yet be raised up on the third day."

Conclusion

And so Jesus' journey ends. But yours is just beginning. You do not know where it will take you, but now you know the real stakes in life. Every decision to sin or not to sin; to help or not to help; is a decision to participate in or to alleviate the suffering of God. You will not always make the right choice, but try my friends. And for good or ill know that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world can separate you from the love of God, and all because of the gift Jesus Christ gave us upon that Cross. Amen.

The Stations of The Cross

I felt a strong call this morning to write a version of the STATIONS, tell me what you think:

Intro

These stations represent the last fourteen steps of Jesus' long journey to the cross.

It was a journey with many twists and turns, with joy and laughter, danger and sorrow, as any great journey is. But Jesus knew how it would end.

Yes, these are the last fourteen steps' of Jesus life. But for us they must be the first fourteen steps on a new journey. 

Unlike Jesus we don't know where that journey will take us, but if it is shaped by our experience here, then we can know that wherever it takes we will be able to endure and keep faith. 

For our journey can be no harder than His, and on it He will be our companion. 

Amen.

Station 1: Jesus Is Condemned By Pilate

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Here Jesus, The Judge of the World, stands trial before a corrupt official. But who is really on trial here? Who is proved guilty and who really stands condemned? We must always beware when we judge others, that in our condemnation we are not really condemning ourselves. And let us seek to never overcome evil with evil. But like Jesus to let our love and obedience be so great, that in defeat God might bring us victory.

O: "Let us not judge lest we be judged."

R: "And not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good."

Station 2: Jesus Takes His Cross

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

Jesus is given a mighty burden to bear. But the physical weight of the Cross is only the tip of the iceberg. It reveals to the senses a much more terrible and hidden reality. For the real burden this frail man carries is the weight of all of our sins. Every lie, every betrayal, every harm visited upon anyone, now sits upon the body and soul of Jesus. So whenever we find and opportunity to fight against sin within, or injustice without, let us see that as an opportunity to relieve, if even to the smallest degree, the pain of our Lord.

O: "We know what is required of us."

R: "To love goodness, and do justice, and walk humbly with our God."

Station 3: Jesus Falls For The First Time

Station 4: Jesus Meets His Mother

O: "We give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, for your gift upon the Cross."

R: "For by Your death You destroyed death. And by Your wounds we are healed."

O: Amen

The greatest spiritual pain a person can experience is helplessly watching the suffering of someone they love. But in a very real sense, we should all seek the perspective of Mary, watching Jesus bear this terrible burden. For if our sin causes the suffering of the Lord we love, then should not this knowledge push us away from evil? So let us not turn away, but witness boldly the consequences of our sin, so that we may sin less. 

O: "Create in us pure hearts, O Lord"

R: "And send your Spirit upon us."

 Station 5: Simon The Cyrene Carries Jesus' Cross

Station 6: Veronica Wipes The Face Of Jesus

Station 7: Jesus Falls A Second Time

Station 8: Jesus Meets The Women Of Jerusalem

Station 9: Jesus Falls For The Third Time

Station 10: Jesus' Clothes Are Taken Away

Station 11: Jesus Is Nailed To The Cross

Station 12: Jesus Dies On The Cross

Station 13: The Body Of Jesus Is Taken Down From The Cross

Station 14: Jesus Is Laid In The Tomb

Conclusion

And so Jesus' journey ends. But yours is just beginning. You do not know where it will take you, but now you know the real stakes in life. Every decision to sin or not to sin; to help or not to help; is a decision to participate in or to alleviate the suffering of God. You will not always make the right choice, but try my friends. And for good or I'll know that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world can separate you from the love of God, and all because of the gift Jesus Christ gave us upon that Cross. Amen.

Universalism & The Pain of God

If there is no eternal punishment for our sins, if Hell is at most temporary and possibly closed for business, does this not mean that there is no ultimate judgment for our sins? Does it not mean there is no justice in the universe? How can we make sense of our intuition that our moral choices have ultimate significance, one of the very grounds for our belief in God?

I found my answers to many of these questions in the book THE THEOLOGY OF THE PAIN OF GOD by Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori. Sin hurts God. If the Cross reveals anything, it is this. It is, in my opinion, one of the most shocking and indeed important aspects of Christianity. No doubt there is some shadow of this truth in the Old Testament. But it is the central Divine Revelation in the New. The Pain of God swallows up divine justice and mercy. Let me explain what I mean by this.

The "punishment" for sin, is knowing that our sins hurt God. If every time you lied it caused your closest loved one pain, you would naturally try to stop lying. In a real sense, the pain they experience is a punishment upon you. A parent would no doubt prefer that they experience physical pain over their child, as their spiritual pain resulting from the knowledge of their child's physical pain is in some sense greater. No doubt, every child would choose to suffer for their parent for the same reason.

This makes more sense of faith and virtue. For if the Christian believes and seeks to do good out of a fear of punishment, and the atheist seeks the good out of love and believes due to a commitment to reason, then the atheist seems to be in a superior moral position. Yet the atheist has no way to make sense of the significance of our moral decisions. In the Theology of the Pain of God, God's very being is the substance of judgment, shining a terrible light on all we do wrong. It is not that God judges, it is that His pain reflects our sin back to us.

Yet that pain, that judgment, derives from God's ridiculous love and mercy, which desires that not one of His creations should be lost. His pain is both His just judgment, and his own door to Heaven. In the end, the pain of God should be anyone's top priority when thinking about how one should act. For one moment of pain for God is infinitely more important than any possible eternal punishment that might threaten me. Alleviating the suffering of Christ must be the top priority for any who love Him. Their can be no other motivation for moral action or faith than this, for the Christian. Of course one may not love God, and so sin without care for His pain. But in such a case it matters not whether one believes in an eternal Hell or not. For if there is such a punishment for our sins, what could earn it but disregard for God's pain?

Question of the Day

What do the words "religionless Christianity" mean to you?

Quotables

"I learned later, and I am still learning up to this moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in this world in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. Taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but the sufferings of God in the world. In so doing we throw ourselves into the arms of God, standing with Christ at Gethsemane. That I think is faith, that is metanoia, and that is what it means to be a Christian, and a man." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Quest For A "Religionless Christianity"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of his search for a "religionless Christianity". Every once in a while I return to his musings on this subject in his LETTERS AND PAPERS FROM PRISON. What he was grasping at seems supremely important and true. Yet his thoughts on the matter are raw and unformed, he never got to the point of really pulling it all together. He was viciously taken from this world before he could get to that point. Today I feel closer to seeing what he did than I ever have. Yet I feel I am nowhere close to putting forth anything like a model. I know it has something to do with the Holy Spirit and the power of God. I know it has something to do with the kind of experience John The Revelator had in that cave on Patmos. And the way the spiritual/secular divide disappears in Japanese culture. And the way apocalyptic imagery asserts itself in modern pop culture. And it is all about Jesus, that simple man on the cross. Maybe it's something like Grant Morrison's philosophy, but with truth that can only  be found in Christ. I have the pieces, or at least many of them. But I have no idea how to even begin to put them together. I will leave you with a few quotes from Bonhoeffer, that echo in my soul. I'll post more down the line.

"What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God-- without religion, i.e. without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak in a 'secular' way about 'God'? In what way are we religionless-secular Christians, those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does this mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation? Does the secret discipline, or alternatively the difference between penultimate and ultimate, take on new importance here?"

"God's 'beyond' is not the beyond of cognitive faculties. The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village. That is how it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little in light of the Old. How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I'm thinking about a great deal..."

I feel like I will only really understand the Gospels if I ever fully grasp what Bonhoeffer saw in them while in those Nazi prisons

Christian Deconstructionism

"Mother of creation wait, embrace the souls of a lost world 
Carry them away, 
Darkness negative receptive, 
Pour firmament between our waters 
Separate the space 
Brother of destruction wait with a belt of 
Skulls strap me down 
And send the ship away, 
Progress with the process, mine the souls 
From their casts 
Pour form and reshape"
- Mudvayne

I have no illusions about the band Mudvayne. I know they intend nothing Christian in those lyrics. Perhaps the point they originally intend is something I would abhor as a Christian. I don't care what they originally meant, and I have no desire to know. I only know what these words do to me personally. And for me, their is something positive, spiritual and even Christian about these words. There is a protest against the way the world is, which I find in line with the prophetic tradition. If you cannot turn to the world and scream "there is something wrong with you", then you lack a true sense of sin in the Christian sense, and you probably have a hard time really understanding what the Christian faith is all about. I love the words "pour form and reshape". The whole song reminds me of the words of Ben Skyles "God crush me down, so I can be raised up."

There are some forms of media I can take into myself and reshape into whatever I want them to be. I watch things, and participate in cultural products, that no doubt other Christians might abhor. I like weird movies, and some of the weirdest have had some of the deepest meaning for me, as a Christian. Movies like Pumpkin, Hesher, Butter, Cloud Atlas, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil, Waking Life, Safety Not Guaranteed, Ghost Dog and Dogma

Mary McCleary is an artist who uses trash to make beautiful collages, often with Christian themes (see here: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://imagejournal.org/uploadedfiles/Image/visual_art/coverart/23coverart.jpg&imgrefurl=http://imagejournal.org/page/journal/back-issues/issue-23&h=665&w=1000&sz=526&tbnid=9ffl3zyPviqTjM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmary%2Bmccleary%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=mary+mccleary&usg=__VZZg9DLQU5FiyrhKArAQRM5LeeE=&docid=jf9OVQyxOrH0qM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jn8BUZKlOO-_2QXB4YHYDg&sqi=2&ved=0CFYQ9QEwBQ&dur=2179)

 Advertisers 'deconstruct' our culture all the time. They take themes of meaning and value and turn them into just another mode of attention-grabbing. They break down our Christian symbols and make them part of a meaningless tower whose only purpose is to hold people's attention so as to sell product. Culture today is manufactured. But if these organizations can take my meaning and rebuild it into something meaningless, why can't I do what Mary McCleary is doing and take their meaningless chatter, break it down, and build it up into something meaningful. It is a dangerous endeavor, it has great risks, but it has great benefits. I reap them every day. With a soul focused on Christ as the center, as God, the mind can go on great adventures that need not threaten it. 

My Mystical Approach

I try to let my mind and imagination grow to the size of the universe, and then focus it all down to one single point in space and time, one single human being: Jesus Christ. In this way I keep myself open to the limitless possibilities of spirituality, preventing a calcification of my life into some restricted religious practice. And I also keep myself from flights of fancy that may lead me into pride and thus the realm of the evil one. The Holy Spirit without The Son becomes idolatrous. The Son without the Spirit becomes cold and sterile. And either without the Father become meaningless.

Question of the Day

What do you think of the doctrine of purgatory?

Those Wacky, Inconsistent Evangelicals...Gotta Love Em

See this previous post: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-reflection-on-near-death-experience.html

Well, some of my evangelical brothers have latched on to another tale of a near-death experience. In fact, my favorite one, the story of Eben Alexander III a non-believing neurosurgeon who came to a deep faith in God and the afterlife after a NDE. I read his book, and it is good. Many of his musings on God and the afterlife mirror some of my own. It is the best book on this particular subject I've encountered, it is called PROOF OF HEAVEN. At some of the more evangelical/fundamentalist Facebook pages they are posting links to his story.

Like the earlier post, I have to bring up the fact that Alexander's experience and the conclusions he draws from those experience fly in the face of strict orthodox Christianity, particularly of the evangelical variety. It speaks more to beliefs in purgatory, or those who think there will be a 'final test' of people after death, which will give them the chance to repent and return to God. This seems to fly in the face of the predominant view among evangelicals that one has to make a commitment to Jesus Christ here and now if one wants to be saved. In fact, most evangelicals I've met believe that if you are not absolutely certain right here right now that you are saved and will be going to heaven because of the sacrifice of Christ, without any doubt in your heart, you are not truly saved and will not be going to heaven.

In point of fact the vast majority of NDEs are about heaven, and a person's religious affiliation has little to do with whether they encounter Heaven or Hell. Only about 15% of NDEs include some "hellish" experience, and of those many describe going to Heaven afterwards, again indicating a kind of 'final test' theology of the afterlife.

It seems to me that evangelicals are trapped here. They cannot point to NDEs they agree with doctrinally, and reject those that they disagree with. For any evidentiary weight one has should carry over to the other, unless you can give some non-circular reason that isn't ad hoc as to why one has precedence. Further, one cannot take one part of an NDE that one thinks is real and reject the rest unless one has some consistent process by which one does this. If a Christian wants to take an experience of Heaven as PROOF that Heaven exists, it seems that same Christian is committed to accepting the doctrine of purgatory if that same experience points to the existence of that kind of place. My attitude towards NDEs remains what it was before: NDEs are an interesting experience that one should consider seriously but skeptically. They should be looked at the same way one looks at mystical experience. They point to SOME truth, but what that truth is isn't clear. I think that to the degree they shape one's conception of the afterlife, they cannot but shape that conception in an unorthodox direction.

One-Post Wednesday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qL1k3wMCuE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

First of a two-part homily series on incarnation.

Question of the Day

What do you think of the 'comic book-ish' parts of the Bible?

Comic Book Theology

People sometimes avoid the most 'comic book-ish' parts of the Bible. As a person who loves comic books, I have never understood this. Actually, I think the visions of God and his armies doing battle with some enemy speaks to something deep in the human experience, as I've said before.. Martin Luther King Jr, in his sermon "Unfulfilled Dreams" talks extensively about the sense that there is some struggle at the heart of the universe. William James said he was religious in part because "life feels like a fight".

Mainline churches have all but abandoned the language of combat. Everything is psychologized, even sin. The struggle to be a good person is a purely internal struggle. "The only demons we have to fight are in our own hearts", Gandhi said. Me, I can't completely agree with this view. It simply ignores the full breadth of the problem of evil. It is interesting that in the Book of Job, the primary problem of evil is not moral evil. Most of the horrors visited upon Job are sufferings caused by nature. The Book of Job deals more with the 'problem of innocent suffering' than the 'problem of evil'.

Life was not a perfect harmony, even before man got here. The story of the snake in the garden is a primitive recognition of this fact. In point of fact, that snake has a long history. In Psalm 74 and elsewhere we hear the story of God doing battle with some ancient serpent or dragon, perhaps before the beginning of existence. Psalm 82 and Genesis 6 recount God being betrayed by beings known as the Bene Elohim, the "Sons of God". In Psalm 82, God looks at these beings and says, "I tasked you from caring for the earth, and yet the earth is a total mess. So I am coming to take the reigns myself and completely destroy you for your failure and betrayal." Think about this kind of atonement: Jesus is the fulfilling of God's promise in Psalm 82. Wow! What a thought! It just stirs something deep within me. In Numbers 13:26-33 we are told that the Jews were frightened off  from entering Canaan by beings who were descended from the mating of the Sons of God and humans, a story recounted in Genesis 6. What? That's just cool, man.

I don't take the Numbers or Genesis passages as some kind of strict historical accounts, obviously. I don't think angels literally came down from some place 'up there' and mated with women. But all of these musings about the cosmic sources of evil point to something real. What that is I can only guess at by doing some 'mythologizing' or 'comic booking' of my own. Language like this excites us and gets us thinking, and that is a good thing. What's more it helps us make sense of our experience of evil. Any theology that tries to erase evil, or to deny it, or to somehow subsume it in some grand monistic scheme, divorces itself from the human experience of the world which is the only justification of the religious life. Our experience of evil is as palpable as our experience of good. If we fail to do justice to this fact, then we fail to do good theology. This is why people come back to combat myths even in a society that has separated itself from the religious spirit. Try to stamp the combat motif out, and it pops up again: in movies, in comic books, in literature. Today apocalyptic language, the language of combat and cosmic forces both good and evil, saturates our culture. It is ironic that a world that prides itself as secular betrays its inability to extricate itself from the religious spirit in every hit movie, and every popular comic book.

When I read the fights between angels in demons in Daniel, in the apocryphal book of Tobit, in Judith, and in Revelation, something in me indeed stirs. Yes, there is some truth in all of this. No doubt, picturing that truth is a tricky and maybe even dangerous venture. It risks flights of fancy. But are flights of fancy always bad? Perhaps an imaginative journey, which both reveals and obscures, is the only way to capture even a part of the truth of the experience. Building a metaphysical picture from this is dangerous and difficult, but I'm not sure we can escape it altogether. Some of the thoughts and reflections that have been brought forth from my apocalyptic moments are some of the most interesting, awe-inspiring and motivating thoughts I have ever had. But I worry about self-deception. In the end I'll probably embrace more comic book passages than I ignore or criticize. If nothing else, it makes the journey more fun. And what is wrong with that?

An Origenal Thought

My recent mystical encounters and musings have implications that remind me of Origen, or rather what I know of his theology. Which, in fact, is litte. He is on my book list, and I think he will warrant some extended investigation on my part. I have long appreciated his universalism. Now I think his cosmology will deserve a look-see.

My Grand Apologetics Project Part 5

See these previous posts:

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2-cont.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-3-a.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-3b.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-3c-f.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-4.html

Part 5: Religion In The Making

So here I stand, with a thoroughgoing commitment to truth that limits my options. I must do my absolute best to live and believe truly. If I reject the religious experiences spoken of as data from which to draw conclusions about the world, then I cannot in good conscience give myself over to them. If, on the other hand, I find I cannot live without giving myself over to them, then I cannot but take them as data that I must use to build my vision of what the world is.

We ended the last section with a comment about the similarity of such a vision and what many religions call 'God'. But before we explore this similarity in more detail, we need to ask what religion even is.

a. What Is Religion

There are many interesting theories about the history of religion. Many center around an evolutionary model of development. This I think is good. There can be little doubt that religions has evolved over human history, and so any theory about what religion is must account for this fact. Indeed, it must be central to it. No doubt, darwinism itself must fit into a thoroughgoing account of religion, if it is to be intellectually satisfying for most people. But I think using such an account as the SOLE or even primary foundation for a model of what religion is, is in error. 

For such an account necessarily discounts the deciding nature of the individual. Darwinian accounts of human action discount free will as a factor. This isn't a bad thing. All good scientific models leave something out. The classic solar system model of the atom, leaves out the fact that electron activity can be described using a cloud model. But the cloud model leaves out something that the solar system model gets right: the fact that electrons travel within shells. No model is all-encompassing, and in the case of complex issues like atoms or human behavior, each is likely to capture only a part of the truth. Darwinian models, understood in this restrictive sense, are beneficial. But when they are made the end-all be-all they obscure more than they reveal. And since our discussion of religion so far has had so much to do with making choices, about how to respond to experience, about what we really believe about those experiences, the model of religion that is going to be most useful as we move forward will have to account for the people as beings possessed of free will, as deciders.

Most of what I say here is going to be taken from Alfred N Whitehead's brilliant book RELIGION IN THE MAKING. You can get it online, I highly recommend it though the language is very dense. Part of what I will try to do here is make it more accessible.

Religion, in this model, begins with ritual. Ritual provided people with the ability to explore experiences and the emotions attending those experiences without actually repeating the event. For instance, a hunter experiences thrill and fear in the hunt. The community may invent a dance that not only allows a person to re-encounter those feelings, but to communicate them to those who do not take part in them. A hunter's wife, then, through a dance, can feel what it is like for him to hunt. Experience itself, in the sense of phenomenological content, is isolated and then explored through ritual. Thus play, art, and religion all have their sources in the same human activity: ritual.

Over time, a community organizes itself around its rituals. This causes them to form beliefs about the ritual. The emotions and experiences change the way people think about the world. Thinking is staring to become important in religion, but emotion is still primary. So the hunter in ritual has isolated the experience of hunting, and the feelings that attend it. He perhaps now worships a god of the hunt, which others can also experience through the ritual. Rituals and beliefs form varying degrees of relationship with historical facts. For instance, passover probably began as a harvest ritual. But when the Hebrews escaped from Egypt, it became a way to remember those events and what it was like to experience them. So the emotions changed, and the ritual changed. The historical event heightens the power of the ritual, and the ritual deepens the memory of the event, making it something that can be re-experienced over and over again. Stories grow up around the event, stories that serve the same purpose as the ritual. Various people re-experiencing the event, isolate or concentrate on it's emotional and phenomenal core. 

The account of the Hebrews crossing the Reed Sea in Exodus includes in it both a more primitive version and a later version. The more primitive version is rather mundane. The Hebrews cross a Sand Bar that is brought to the surface by an east wind. The Egyptians are unable to cross because they are on chariots. But the later version has God holding up the water like a wall for a long time, and drowning the Egyptians that follow. 

The later version is the result of a people trying to capture the feelings and the experience of the event. For in the Reed Sea crossing, what the Hebrews felt, what has spoken to the Jews who descended from them to the present day, is the experience of salvation, the sense of being preserved within the world from all the dark and turbid forces that threaten the human adventure. 

As time goes on, and especially as the religious community gets bigger, people begin to bring rational reflection to the enterprise of religion. Doctrines are created, that try to formalize and universalize the insights of the religious community, contained within their body of scripture. Theology seeks to categorize and organize the insights of religious experience, indeed of phenomenology in the same way that science seeks to categorize and organize the insights of sense experience, and the third-person perspective (which abstracts away from phenomenology altogether). At this point, religious groups start to function as doxastic communities, groups of people who have had experiences like our own, against whom we can check what we have felt and encountered within our experiences. This is religion seeking intersubjective agreement.

So as we move from the raw human experiences we had before, we find that there are communities out there that might have something to offer us, for they have been experimenting and isolating experiences like our own for a long time. Religion provides a community against which we can check our own experience. It also provides rituals and stories that give us the opportunity to isolate the elements of our experiences that fascinated us in the first place. Religion then functions as a way to isolate those experiences, push them as far as we can go, and stay true to our first insight: that life is an adventure. Religion turns our self-exploration into an adventure, and helps us wash ourselves in the religious encounter with the world. 

Science, when it wants to learn about some object of interest. Takes that object of interest and separates it, abstracts it, from most everything else. (This is not universally true, but I am speaking here of reductive science which is quite useful though it has it's limits. Still, I'll be speaking very generally here.) It takes it, and it breaks it down, it experiments with it, it ponders it, it pushes that one object of study as far as it can go. In religion our phenomenal encounter with the world should be subject to the same kind of abstraction. 

b. Gods, Gods, Everywhere, and All I Wanted Was A Drink

So what started as simple curiosity about our selves, now has turned into a major adventure into thought and emotion. And there are so many ways to choose from whereby we may explore those emotions. Atheists often claim that religious people are all 'atheists' about every god they don't happen to believe in. This seems to me to be rather silly. It would be like saying that people who believe in quantum gravity theory are 'antiscience' about string theory. But people who believe in quantum gravity theory don't deny that string theory is science. They deny it is true. 

I think of different religions as attempts to create pictures using religious experience. I can evaluate how good they are at this, based on my own experience and how good they are at providing the elements I listed as the reason religion matters in the first place. One question a person asks is whether they can speak to the experiences that brought one to religion. Another is whether they provide a good and steady doxastic community that can help check mistakes. Finally, one needs to consider if they are the most conducive at pushing religious experience as far as it can go. I do not think of other religions has absolutely wrong. They are more or less wrong. No religion is 'right' in the sense of giving a 100% perfect model for the experiences at question. Any more than any one scientific theory can be taken to be all-encompassing for the object at issue. Rather, every scientific theory is in a constant state of flux, models are tweaked and tinkered with, seeking an ever-improving picture of the object of study. 

Different 'gods' are competing models concerning how we should think about that part of the world that will allow us to account for us living into those experiences that we spoke of earlier, and more I haven't listed. People will weigh differently which experience is more important, which model is simplest and most consistent not only with RE, but with what is known from sensory experience as well, and which experiences need to be accounted for at all. For instance, a Buddhist is likely to focus primarily on life-as-venture and self-as-community, whereas I as a Christian weigh equally those experiences that make joy the center of the world. Some Christians will emphasize those experiences of joy over and against our experience of horror and evil, which I will discuss later. I consider those latter experiences as supremely important as well. 

So religious disagreements are no different than any other intellectual disagreement. The believer in quantum gravity may disagree with the string theorist about the latter's theory being predictive or simple. The string theorist may insist that the quantum gravity believer's theory doesn't explain enough. They are weighing the data differently. Religious disagreements are caused by similar differences. 

But whereas the scientists' disagreement has no bearing on how people are going to live in the world, the religious people's disagreement has HUGE moral and metaphysical consequences. As Alfred N Whitehead says, "You use arithmetic, but you are religious. Arithmetic of course enters into your nature, so far as that nature involves a multiplicity of things. But it is there as a necessary condition, and not as a transforming agency. No one is invariably "justified" by his faith in the multiplication table. But in some sense or other, justification is the basis of all religion. Your character is developed according to your faith. This is the primary religious truth from which no one can escape. Religion is force of belief cleansing the inward parts. For this reason the primary religious virtue is sincerity, a penetrating sincerity."

This is why religious disagreements LOOK different from other disagreements. But in point of fact, the reasons for disagreement are usually the same. 

c. Which Model?

In the next section, we will talk about some other experiences that stand as a kind of counter-evidence to what has been said so far. Then we will work on which model best suits the experiences spoken of earlier. At this point, the argument will become more idiosyncratic, since I cannot convince people to weigh the data of human experience the way I have. In every intellectual disagreement, there are some evaluative differences that cannot be overcome, differences about which experiences are more important and why. But for now, let me say that it should be obvious that given the experiences I've presented, and the analysis and weighing process that took place earlier on, certain models should be pretty well excluded. 

For if I see the experience of risk and venture as being 'like the universe is not indifferent to the human adventure' then obviously, I am going to have to have a picture of this reality as something that cares about what we do.  Further, if I take my experience of judgment seriously, this reality must see and judge. And so religions that deny the personhood of God are not going to work for me. If I see humor  and joy as making the joy the center of the world and overcoming time, and so choose to see the universe as a place where joy stands at the center and time is transcended, this reality is going to have to be in some sense redeeming. If I see the interconnectedness of all things as pointing to one all-encompassing selfhood, then my vision must ultimately be UNIFIED. So polytheism is out. If I seek a reality that justifies the conviction that, in the end, 'everything will be alright', then this reality must be truly good and in some way capable of overcoming the evils of the world. Religious models that fit the phenomenological picture I put forth earlier are going to have God at the center. For it would be the acme of denial to talk of a transcendent personality that loves and saves the world without recognizing that this is exactly the role God plays in other religions. This would be particularly true of the Judeo-Christian religions, which emphasize God's oneness, goodness and salvation. 

So far, this is where I lay my cards. I do this not arbitrarily, and not because God supposedly came down and told me to believe this way (we'll get to that part later). No, I choose that religious model because it fits the experiences I spoke of earlier, having analyzed and weighed them as I have. I have moved from experiencing, to analysis, to organization and now I proceed to the point where I check my conclusions against other doxastic communities. These are the communities that have even the possibility of serving the purposes I need a religious community for for, for only they speak to the reasons why I care in the first place. Other people will weigh these experiences differently, others will analyze them differently. But at that point our argument isn't here, at this point, but earlier on, in the premises portion of this paper. 

One more aspect of the religious encounters I spoke of earlier need to be addressed. Whatever model I come up with must speak to the sense contained in humor of turning the world upside down. There must be something truly 'inverting' about the model I build. That final 'must-needs' of my humanity will be one of the last I address. First we need to stop and step back for a moment, recognizing that religious experience is not all there is to human life. What about the world of the sense? And what about the various challenges the particular things we see and know bring up for the picture I have put forth here? It is to those questions I will turn next in this paper.

Question of the Day

How do you attempt to answer the problem of evil, if at all?

A Quick Thought

I have a thoroughgoing commitment to truth, both in how I live and how I believe. I cannot live counter to what I believe. If life is nothing by a passing shadow without ultimate meaning or spiritual depth, then those experiences that indicate that it is such a place are not ones I can participate in. Further, if I must participate in those things as a matter of course or to continue living, then I must believe those things that make it possible to live those experiences as 'true'.

Question of the Day

What is the most troublesome or difficult part of the Bible, for you?

On The Second Commandment

We often picture ancient Israel as being very legalistic about the Law. The Law had one meaning, and everyone knew what that meaning was, and you had to follow it by the letter if you were to receive salvation. Everyone had the same understanding of proper worship or Yahweh, and a person was judged by how well they performed that worship. But in point of fact, there were many debated issues within the law, and different Jews held different positions on what this or that part of the Law actually meant, and how it should be lived out. Take something that we all may believe to be clear, hard and fast: the injunction against idolatry. In point of fact different Israelites had different positions on what the second commandment actually meant, and your attitude towards it differed based on where you lived.

When Israel split into two kingdoms, the North and South started to diverge in styles and forms of worship. For instance, since the South was the location of Solomon's Temple, it was no longer possible for the Northern Tribes to worship there. The Northern Tribes had always had a more diffuse sense of God's location in worship. In the North, it was emphasized that God was EVERYWHERE and so there could be altars outside of Solomon's Temple where worship could rightly take place. Actually, there were people who held to this position in the south as well, but eventually they were oppressed and worship was centralized solely in Solomon's Temple. But in the North, this never took place. Nevertheless, there was a center of worship that eventually became more important than all the others. Shechem had been a traditional center of worship during the time of the Judges, and had some importance even during the time of the Patriarchs in Genesis. It was here that the Northern Tribes set up their most important holy shrine (1 Kings 12).

At that Shrine, we know there was the image of two bulls set up to represent El (their name for Yahweh). And in fact there is much evidence that among the Northern Tribes, it was thought that it was proper to represent El with an image of a bull or two bulls (bulls were symbols of power for many ancient peoples). Now note, the Northern Kingdom was not worshipping this as a god beside El or instead of Him, but this statues represented The One True God.

Some passages in the Bible, which is made up of scriptures collected in the south, try to gloss over this by painting statue of the bull as some extra god over and above Yahweh (1 Kings 12). But there are places in the text that betray the fact that this was not what was going on, and in fact we have good archeological evidence that differ from the 1 Kings 12 account. In point of fact, all the religious reformers and prophets seem to accept the bulls as fact, and never chide the Northern Kingdom for setting them up. In point of fact the only focus for Elijah and the other prophets mentioned in 1 Kings is the worship of other gods, which is an innovation that came later than the setting up of the bulls.

Simply put, in the North images representing El were not considered idolatrous. For them the second commandment was setting up an image that draws worship away from El. So long as a image did not do this, it was not illegal. The South thought that any attempt to contain or represent God in an image was inherently sinful, and so they were stricter about the second commandment. You see the evidence of this theological debate in the 'seams' of some of the early books of the Bible, places where the written scripture betrays its oral sources. In Exodus 32, the creation of the Golden Calf is at first painted as an attempt to set up a god over and against Yahweh (Exodus 32:1), but when Aaron announces the calf to the people he specifically calls it Yahweh (32:4-5). This is probably the writer actually editing the received oral tradition, which painted the dedication of the calf as a good thing. Since the writer was of the Southern Tribes, he could not abide a tradition that painted this act as something good or right. Notice the parallel of the language of Exodus 32:1-6 and 1 Kings 12:25-33.

The question facing us is what is more important: focusing on worship of Yahweh, or focusing on the idea that whatever Yahweh IS, is beyond any particular human image or thought about Him. Is it recognizing the transcendence of God, or worshipping the correct God, that is more important.

I bring this issue up for several reasons. First, we still have this argument today. Most protestants accuse Roman Catholics of idolatry for their focus on icons. Many are very hard on Roman Catholics for just this reason. It is important to note that this argument goes way, way back, and the Bible is not absolutely consistent on the matter of who is right. Second, it is important to paint that debate in it's proper theological context. Further, it is important for us to realize that the Hebrew/Jewish faith was a diverse faith, lively and full of debate, going a long way back. We need to stop painting Judaism as iconoclastic or hard and fast. It was a living religion of argument and dialectic. A lot of those ancient arguments still influence us today, and we would do well to be aware that the Bible itself is in many ways a collection of documents of various people discussing what lessons we should pull from God's self-revelation. God reveals Himself, it is the people who write it down. How and what they write down is supremely important. We would do well to learn more about it.

Quotables

"I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched"- Edgar Allen Poe

The Summit of the Religious (And Human) Journey

From STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's final episode:

Capt. Picard: I sincerely hope that this is the last time that I find myself here. 
Q: You just don't get it, do you, Jean-Luc? The trial never ends. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did. 
Capt. Picard: When I realized the paradox. 
Q: Exactly. For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. *That* is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence. 
One of the things that sticks out to me when it comes to the early Church Fathers, as well as the great mystics of the Christian tradition, is how much of what they were doing was like what Q is talking about in this exchange. The exploration of new ideas, of new possibilities, and the delving into the deepest of mysteries. God was a vast undiscovered country that these people were excited to explore. So much of this stuff was like onto-psycho-cosmo-theology. In meditation, in scripture study, God can become a partner that helps us learn more about us, about Him, and about the world we live in. 

Early Christianity had the excitement of a new discovery. But most Christians nowadays would deny that we can discover anything new about God. Revelation stopped 1900 years ago, and now all there is, is waiting. The only time the thrill of discovery is experienced within Christianity is when someone learns something new about the Bible itself. People get so pumped when you teach them some new Biblical fact, because this is the limit of the spirit of discovery in Christianity for most people. And whatever you discover about the Bible, most people cannot abide it if it challenges their current understanding of God. For that remains hard and fast, unchanging and limited to what they have always been taught. Because of this, the spirit of discovery and exploration in the modern world seems for most people like it is the purview of science alone. Is it any wonder, then, that science has replaced God for many people? Heck, there are a lot of neo-pagan religions that seem mor possessed of a sense of discovery than modern Christianity is. That is why I appreciate Grant Morrison's religious perspective even as I disagree with it.

To me, this is a denial of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was given to us so revelation and the process of divine discovery could continue. Of course, the Holy Spirit plays little role in the life of the mainline western church, and that could be part of the problem. But I believe that since God is Infinite, there should always be more to discover about Him. Since we are in relationship with Him, we should expect the opportunity to plumb those depths. It is this exploration and sense of discovery that keeps me coming back to the religious life. I feel I am personally learning new things about God, about life, about everything. It is the reason I came to love theology as I have always loved science. If people really want to recapture the Spirit of the early, they would do well to re-examine what we really have to offer the world of the mind. After all, we are called to love God with all of it.