"You have to die before you can be resurrected. You have to be totally extinguished. Then you can be fully renewed."
"God is forgiving, but He can't coexist with sin. Even an innocent mistake is still sin."
"Sin has to be paid for."
These are statements I heard last night at my church's weekly study group. (We're slowly going through Max Lucado's 3:16, and while I think Lucado is a fine writer I am far from agreeing with him on matters of faith. Still, I believe I can learn something from this study and leave behind whatever I cannot agree with or learn from.) They were made by my pastor. They all waved red flags at me. At one point I almost asked a question that would have made the discussion extremely interesting, but then I decided that the discussion would be better held in private.
It all goes to the root of my problem with the Christian tradition.
It makes sense that you have to be totally extinguished before you can be renewed. Any crumb left from the original can come back to haunt you if you're renewed prematurely. I was totally renewed one night almost 27 years ago, and I happily died to my old life and accepted birth into the new one. Fine. (Pronounced FEE-nay, this is Italian for "the end.")
From then on, nothing made sense.
"God is forgiving, but He cannot coexist with sin." That's because, in His perfection, He can't stand imperfection. Sounds like matter and anti-matter to me. They can't exist in the same place. Well, I was nothing but misery and anger and, yes, sin that night when I met Him, and He had His chance to let me have it. He let me have it, all right; He let me have my life back, cleaned and fresh and new. Doesn't seem judgmental or vindictive to me.
"Even an innocent mistake is still sin." Whatever happened to the matter of your intention? We all make innocent mistakes. We all make wrong choices even if we think we're making good ones. You make the best choice you can with the understanding available to you, and sometimes it blows up on you. But your intention was right, and God knows that.
"Sin has to be paid for." You get out of the payment by believing that Jesus died in your place. That is a condition. We don't get forgiveness unless we do something. Where is grace? Where is the unconditional love I met one night?
So let's take another look at this. I have started to reread another Marcus Borg book. This one is Jesus: A New Vision. Hear what Borg says on page 103: "To say that God is gracious means that the relationship with God is not dependent upon performance . . . The relationship is prior to that." In other words, God already loves us! Love is God's nature, and God loves us from the beginning. All God actually wants from us is to love Him back, to be in relationship with Him. That way we are open to His leading and He can heal us.
That sounds much more effective than the other way.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
What Is Salvation Anyway?
In The God We Never Knew, Marcus Borg asks an interesting question about salvation: Is it about the next life or about this life?
He goes into Biblical images of salvation such as bondage and liberation, estrangement and reconciliation, or salvation as enlightenment or forgiveness or experiencing the love of God.
The basic beliefs about salvation that we hear of today are that we get to go to Heaven when we die, if we believe that Jesus died on the cross to give us forgiveness for our sins. That adds a condition; we aren't forgiven for our sins unless we meet a requirement. (So much for grace!) What Borg points out is that we think of salvation as being connected to the idea of an afterlife. Why, after all, should we bother to do good here on earth if there is no reward for it in the afterlife?
If there is really anything to grace, God loves us in spite of our sins and screwups. Knowing God's unconditional love and acceptance is surely salvation, because it is healing and liberating. (I know; I've been there.)
So if you experience this unconditional love, and you are healed and liberated, you will literally be reborn. (I was, anyway.) If resurrection is taken as a dying to the old life and being born into a new one, then we see that in the cross and its aftermath.
And notice that this refers to knowing God. Not knowing about God. Actual experience, an encounter with the Divine, is how you get to know God. Nothing else changes you.
Borg has a lot more to say about salvation. I am branching off at this point.
For a long time, I have believed that salvation was simply knowing that God loves you. And I have been convinced for 27 years that the important thing is to have a relationship with God, not to believe this or that doctrine. I am saved. I have this relationship. I am already in the Kingdom. The afterlife, whatever it is going to be, will only continue what has begun in this life.
He goes into Biblical images of salvation such as bondage and liberation, estrangement and reconciliation, or salvation as enlightenment or forgiveness or experiencing the love of God.
The basic beliefs about salvation that we hear of today are that we get to go to Heaven when we die, if we believe that Jesus died on the cross to give us forgiveness for our sins. That adds a condition; we aren't forgiven for our sins unless we meet a requirement. (So much for grace!) What Borg points out is that we think of salvation as being connected to the idea of an afterlife. Why, after all, should we bother to do good here on earth if there is no reward for it in the afterlife?
If there is really anything to grace, God loves us in spite of our sins and screwups. Knowing God's unconditional love and acceptance is surely salvation, because it is healing and liberating. (I know; I've been there.)
So if you experience this unconditional love, and you are healed and liberated, you will literally be reborn. (I was, anyway.) If resurrection is taken as a dying to the old life and being born into a new one, then we see that in the cross and its aftermath.
And notice that this refers to knowing God. Not knowing about God. Actual experience, an encounter with the Divine, is how you get to know God. Nothing else changes you.
Borg has a lot more to say about salvation. I am branching off at this point.
For a long time, I have believed that salvation was simply knowing that God loves you. And I have been convinced for 27 years that the important thing is to have a relationship with God, not to believe this or that doctrine. I am saved. I have this relationship. I am already in the Kingdom. The afterlife, whatever it is going to be, will only continue what has begun in this life.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Insult, Cultural Goof, or Nonsense?
I have come to this conclusion about the incident of the British teacher in the Sudan: The whole thing could not have been about an insult to Muhammad. No way.
The teacher in question had a class of, I think, seven-year-old kids. There was some project the class was doing with a stuffed bear and they wanted to name the bear. The class voted on three names, and Muhammad was the name they voted for.
The kids, I presume, were Muslims. They certainly didn't know they were offending their own religion. The teacher was a Brit and had been in the country only a few weeks; she wouldn't have known any differently.
But someone complained, and we had this ridiculous international brouhaha. The original charges she was indicted on (if the Sudan has indictment as we know it) would have given her a punishment of lashes (yes, in the 21st century!), prison, and a fine. They wound up reducing the charge, gave her 15 days in the pokey, and announced that she would be deported. Then they pardoned her and let her leave the country.
It smelled to me right then. Smelled fishy. Powerfully fishy.
In the first place, she hadn't done anything. Her class made the decision. In the second place, if the insult was so horrendous, why were the charges reduced so promptly and easily? (I'm not even asking why British embassy officials and one of her major attorneys had trouble getting into the courtroom.) Despite all the arguments, the record of the kids' votes, the lack of ability to prove any intention to insult, she was convicted. And then why the pardon?
The whole thing was a farce.
It was not about the stuffed bear, or its name, or the teacher. It couldn't have been. It was illogical from start to finish.
Maybe they wanted to make trouble for a Westerner just because they could. Maybe they just wanted to kick Great Britain. We'll never know.
I inferred from something I read that the demonstration demanding her execution, while not put on by the government, could not have taken place without government sanction. That made it not just smell, but reek of fishiness. Was the original complaint real? Or did someone put those parents up to it?
It just looks like a trumped-up charge, a play where everyone on the Sudanese side went through the motions for their own reasons, and after they had what they wanted they let the teacher go. I am sorry that she had to get pulled into it; it seems clear to me that she was innocent but was deliberately made an example of. I am also sorry for her students, for they have lost a fine teacher.
I guess one thing it shows is that, if you want to be insulted, you can choose to be, and make an issue of it, no matter what.
The teacher in question had a class of, I think, seven-year-old kids. There was some project the class was doing with a stuffed bear and they wanted to name the bear. The class voted on three names, and Muhammad was the name they voted for.
The kids, I presume, were Muslims. They certainly didn't know they were offending their own religion. The teacher was a Brit and had been in the country only a few weeks; she wouldn't have known any differently.
But someone complained, and we had this ridiculous international brouhaha. The original charges she was indicted on (if the Sudan has indictment as we know it) would have given her a punishment of lashes (yes, in the 21st century!), prison, and a fine. They wound up reducing the charge, gave her 15 days in the pokey, and announced that she would be deported. Then they pardoned her and let her leave the country.
It smelled to me right then. Smelled fishy. Powerfully fishy.
In the first place, she hadn't done anything. Her class made the decision. In the second place, if the insult was so horrendous, why were the charges reduced so promptly and easily? (I'm not even asking why British embassy officials and one of her major attorneys had trouble getting into the courtroom.) Despite all the arguments, the record of the kids' votes, the lack of ability to prove any intention to insult, she was convicted. And then why the pardon?
The whole thing was a farce.
It was not about the stuffed bear, or its name, or the teacher. It couldn't have been. It was illogical from start to finish.
Maybe they wanted to make trouble for a Westerner just because they could. Maybe they just wanted to kick Great Britain. We'll never know.
I inferred from something I read that the demonstration demanding her execution, while not put on by the government, could not have taken place without government sanction. That made it not just smell, but reek of fishiness. Was the original complaint real? Or did someone put those parents up to it?
It just looks like a trumped-up charge, a play where everyone on the Sudanese side went through the motions for their own reasons, and after they had what they wanted they let the teacher go. I am sorry that she had to get pulled into it; it seems clear to me that she was innocent but was deliberately made an example of. I am also sorry for her students, for they have lost a fine teacher.
I guess one thing it shows is that, if you want to be insulted, you can choose to be, and make an issue of it, no matter what.
Basic Spiritual Disciplines?
Recently we had a sermon in church about your work ethic. That didn't mean your work ethic at work. It meant your work ethic in the church. Whether you contribute time and effort to the work of the church. Whether you work at being an asset rather than a liability. Using your gifts for the good of the congregation. You express your Christianity by doing all that stuff.
Fine.
But then we hit a snag. Basic spiritual disciplines for the individual member were described as: attending worship weekly, Bible study daily, and tithing the full 10% of your income.
After the service I asked the pastor, "Where is prayer in that?" I know that he personally believes in prayer, but while he agreed that prayer is important, he didn't try to explain why he hadn't included it in his list of basic spiritual disciplines. Maybe the congregation has given him reason to think they don't care about it. I don't know.
Let me put it this way. I have begun to reread The God We Never Knew by Marcus Borg, and so far he has written about two basic ways we can look at God. Either God is a King (remote male authority figure who dominates us so that we have to obey) or God is a Spirit (right-here compassionate figure who desires to have a loving relationship with each of us). Borg and I both prefer the idea of God as Spirit, remembering of course that there is no actual word or concept that can begin to describe God with any accuracy.
Borg concludes one chapter with this summary: God is real, the Christian life is about entering into a relationship with God as we see God in Jesus, and this relationship can and will change your life. (This is page 51 in my copy.)
What I get out of it is this. The first statement is right on. The relationship is with God as shown by Jesus; it is not a relationship with Jesus himself. And I can testify about how it changes lives. So can many others.
How do we get this relationship? Again, here is Borg: "Prayer is attending to our relationship with God." (This is page 123.)
Worship, tithing, and Bible study are all good. I either do them now or have done them in the past. When I get my new life straightened out I may be doing all of them at once. Who knows? But they don't provide what prayer provides. The way to establish and nurture an intimate relationship with God is prayer. And to me anyway, that is the essential thing. There is no life worth living without such a relationship.
And so we need to pray.
That's all there is to it.
Fine.
But then we hit a snag. Basic spiritual disciplines for the individual member were described as: attending worship weekly, Bible study daily, and tithing the full 10% of your income.
After the service I asked the pastor, "Where is prayer in that?" I know that he personally believes in prayer, but while he agreed that prayer is important, he didn't try to explain why he hadn't included it in his list of basic spiritual disciplines. Maybe the congregation has given him reason to think they don't care about it. I don't know.
Let me put it this way. I have begun to reread The God We Never Knew by Marcus Borg, and so far he has written about two basic ways we can look at God. Either God is a King (remote male authority figure who dominates us so that we have to obey) or God is a Spirit (right-here compassionate figure who desires to have a loving relationship with each of us). Borg and I both prefer the idea of God as Spirit, remembering of course that there is no actual word or concept that can begin to describe God with any accuracy.
Borg concludes one chapter with this summary: God is real, the Christian life is about entering into a relationship with God as we see God in Jesus, and this relationship can and will change your life. (This is page 51 in my copy.)
What I get out of it is this. The first statement is right on. The relationship is with God as shown by Jesus; it is not a relationship with Jesus himself. And I can testify about how it changes lives. So can many others.
How do we get this relationship? Again, here is Borg: "Prayer is attending to our relationship with God." (This is page 123.)
There are many types of prayer, and many books about prayer, enough to fill a library. In all of them we can open to a relationship with God. But nothing does it like contemplative or silent prayer. Centering prayer. Prayer of examen. Lectio divina done in combination with centering prayer. That last one is also an in-depth way to do some Bible study as well. Those are the applications of contemplative prayer that I am familiar with. I'm sure there are many others as well.
Worship, tithing, and Bible study are all good. I either do them now or have done them in the past. When I get my new life straightened out I may be doing all of them at once. Who knows? But they don't provide what prayer provides. The way to establish and nurture an intimate relationship with God is prayer. And to me anyway, that is the essential thing. There is no life worth living without such a relationship.
And so we need to pray.
That's all there is to it.
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