How about some "un" reform?

It has, of course, been a bit of time since I last made a post. Home, work and other occupations have made life VERY busy for a while, but although I have not made a post, I have been far from negligent in my “religious studies.” Since the last post, I have found myself oddly attracted to, of all things, the Bible and also the pseudepigraphic and apocryphal texts that are its “peripheral” contemporaries. It has been, actually, rather refreshing to read/look again with the “new eyes” of perhaps a bit greater objectivity than I employed when I was a “practicing theist.”
One of the more fascinating stories that I have been exploring is that of the late pre-exilic kingdom of Judah and the “reforms” of Hezekiah and Josiah. Although the writers of the Deuteronomistic history paint them as “good” kings, neither was successful politically (compare them to the “bad” Omrides for example), and both, today, would probably be classed as religious extremists or conservative fundamentalists. One thing that seems likely from rereading this history is that pre-exilic Israelite and Judahite religion was quite diverse. It would probably give Hinduism or the Greek pantheon a “run for the money” in the various divine figures that were honored or worshipped in very diverse ways. Yes, there was Yahweh/El, but there was also “his Asherah” the “Ba'als,” Molech, Chemosh Tammuz, the Sun/Moon/Stars, the “heavenly host” and probably others, and surprisingly, perhaps, most/all of them worshipped in the center of “Judaism” of Jerusalem and possibly even the temple itself. There were male temple prostitutes, women “weeping for Tammuz” in ritual grief and all manner of diverse religious activities associated with the Jerusalem temple and its near environs including the royal palace.

Witness this quote from II Kings about Josiah’s “purification” after the “finding” of the book of the law:

“And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Beth-el. 5 And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to offer in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that offered unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. 6 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the common people. 7 And he broke down the houses of the sodomites, that were in the house of the LORD, where the women wove coverings for the Asherah. 8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beer-sheba; and he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand as he entered the gate of the city.” (II Kings 23:4-20, JPS)

and for good measure, from Ezekiel:

“...the door of the gate of the LORD'S house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz.” (Ezekiel 8:14, JPS)

Clearly, as well, the “world of the New Testament” was one that was quite religiously pluralistic / syncretistic as well. We have recently begun to appreciate more and more that early Christianity was far from an “orthodoxy of the Apostles” that was corrupted by “heresy." It was, certainly, an extremely diverse religious movement from its very earliest days after the death of Jesus.

As I consider again how difficult monotheism has become for many thoughtful individuals as well as the worldwide problems of religious fundamentalism and chauvenism, I wonder if some of the “old diversity” would not do us good. Perhaps we need to have a reverse of the Hezekiah and Josiah “reforms” and let the Ba’als and Asheras back in, sing a good mourning song for Tammuz and remember sacred sex. If nothing else, the diversity might prove refreshing and could sweep out some of the cobwebs of antiquated “orthodoxies.”


Jeffrey Shy
Mesa, Arizona
( thinking Yahweh might have been a bit less difficult if his wife Asherah had kept him in better control)

But God was not in the wind....

In my last post, I related that I had been reading and considering Western, primarily Christian, religion from the point of "the philosophers." I reviewed the classical "proofs" for the existence of God, the problem with thinking of a God who "exists" the question of "grace and freedom" and, most importantly in the case against theism, the "problem of evil." I also re-read the biblical book of Ecclesiastes and portions of the biblical book of Job. Although I cannot say that I "found the answer," in these readings, I was perhaps able to shape the questions in my mind a bit better, and I suppose that I can say that I am "better off" in an intellectual sense by this re-introduction to the philosophy of religion.

What seems most likely to me, however, is that a quest to find a "God of the Philosophers" looks to be one that will not conclusively satisfy. In greater and lesser forms, the philosophical discussion of religion has been going on now for some thousands of years, and yet, the "grand unified theory" has eluded us. In the general text that I read as the centerpiece of my recent study, the possibility of a "soft rationalist" approach that looked at the "whole case of evidence" was offered as a "reasonable" approach to the problem of religious philosophy. This "case" would be formed of many strands or types of evidence. It could include logical argument, consideration of history and historical precedent, scientific research, divine revelation and, perhaps most importantly for my thoughts today, the contribution of "religious experience."

To my present state, it seems that the "non-experiential" portions of the case for religion create only the possibility for "god" and "religion." They do not, however, in themselves constitute a conclusive case, but allow, perhaps, a cautious curiosity. The problem, to my mind, however, is that without some sort of "experience" that "illuminates" religious practice and adherence, it remains rather abstract in the sense that I would have to make a quasi-catechetical response such as "but what does this mean for me?" Furthermore, it would seem that the "arguments" that might be advanced from religious experience would be either a "cumulative" case based on the experiences of others that we know both historically and in the present or a "conclusive" experience that I myself have that is convincing/transformational, or perhaps some lesser amalgam of both.

While staring at my bookshelves, I noted that I still had a largely-unfinished copy of Thomas Merton's biography, The Seven Story Mountain. (I know, I should have finished it years ago.) As I succumbed to the "tolle lege" that this seemed to suggest to me and began to read, however, I immediately encountered some of the less-attractive aspects of Merton, such as his "anti-protestant" bias and his immediate recourse to such conceptions as the mystery of the "non-bloody sacrifice of the mass" as the pre-eminent exemplum of divine love. Clearly, having read some of the rest of Merton, I understand that his religious experience was intense and transformational. But does an experience that leads to so many "traditional" conclusions (that I cannot accept) really inform the search for me? How am I to judge a religious experience that occurs in a context of a "traditional" concept of Christianity, when it would seem that, if the traditional concept is untenable, how is it that the "experience" is so "consistent" with it? Somehow, it would seem that my "search" for evidence in the historical experience of others is going to continue to be problematic.

As I consider, however, the other possibility, the experience that I, myself, have, I wonder what sort of experience I would find "convincing" at this stage? If I have discounted the possibility of a theistic god who could perform miracles that would "invade" the world of "natural law" and create a "special exception" for some purpose, then even "if I saw someone rise from the dead," I would have to consider questioning it. Should such a thing truly happen, then would that force me to concede and return to the theistic camp? What would be my experience of religion, then? It would be perhaps, I would suppose, one of pragmatism. Something like, "Well, heck, all that Christian dogma and doctrine really is true. Doesn't it suck that God (I would have to re-capitalize) allows such human suffering? But he holds all the cards and makes the rules, so I had better just shut up and walk the walk like a good boy." If then, miracles are "out" for the time being, then what "experience" would really "convince" me? I have dealt enough with deluded and sick minds to understand the power of want that can create internal experiences and convictions that, from my external point of view, seem clearly erroneous or delusional, that I would mistrust the argument from "feeling" the presence of "god" in "my heart" or some such conception. Again, how could I know that it was not the product of just some wishful thinking on my part?

It would seem, at this point, that the "experience" would have to be something rather un-expected. Since I know the biblical story of the "but God was not in the wind/storm/etc" and the "still small voice," it does rather suggest that at least some people got their "experience" in a form that neither they nor others might have expected. It is hard, however, to "live today" in the "hope" that some such transformational or "convincing" experience may come my way. Should I be like the "wise virgins" who "keep their lamps trimmed" waiting for the bridegroom's appearance? What would be the consequences of a life oriented to "waiting" for this sort of experience? How does one behave in the meantime? Does one simply keep "dipping one's finger in the holy water" and hope that one will "end up believing?" Does is make more sense to adopt a thoroughly secular orientation and leave religion as a "possibly provable" theory that we simply at this point do not have enough evidence at this point to affirm or refute?

Such problems!

Jeffrey Shy
("winded" in Arizona)
Mesa, Arizona

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost-Reflection on the Pericopes

After a lovely week of vacation and then a very not-so-lovely week of family illness and then one more somewhat unpleasant week of "catching up" from both, I find that it has been more than a month since I last made a post. It has not, however, been a month without reflection. For the last several weeks, I have taken up an interest again in the philosophy of religion. I was fortunate enough to have kept the textbook from my college course and used that as a starting point. I wish that I could say that I was ready to make a profound post that was a great breakthrough, but I have found that philosophical reflection has its own rewards, and some posts will likely follow shortly.

For today, I am sitting here on Monday morning with some thoughts in my head after attending church yesterday morning. The first biblical reading was from the first and second chapters of the book of Wisdom. It was striking to me first that the portion selected has a significant lacune in the middle that "robsbed" the "godless" of their full argument. The argument, of course, stated in rather striking poetry was of the evanscence of life. "In time, our name will be forgotten, nobody will remember what we have done; our life will pass away like wisps of cloud, dissolving like the mist that the sun's rays drive away and that its heat dispels. For our days are the passing of a shadow, our end is without return, the seal is affixed and nobody comes back." Then comes the conclusion of, therefore, "... let us enjoy the good things of today." This is contrasted against the god-fearing righteous man who makes his purpose the keeping of god's commandments. The difference, "of course," is that he "knows the secret" in that he contends that there is a life after death and his reward comes then. It is also one of the few times in the bible that we read, prior to the new testament, about a concern for an "afterlife." It also moves the blame for death out of the hands of god and blames the devil as the author of evil: "For God created human beings to be immortal, he made them as an image of his own nature; Death came into the world only through the Devil's envy, as those who belong to him find to their cost."

The further fallacy in the argument is that enjoying the "good things of today" comes at the cost of contempt and intentional disregard for the needs of others. This may be a practical consequence of the employment of the "live for today" mentality of some, but it is not an inevitable or necessary one.

In a further interesting "jolt," the Wisdom text is paired with the "receive a little child" story from the gospels. As the text was interpreted in our sermon, the idea was not that children were wonderful and innocent, but that they were regarded at the time as somewhat less than other human beings. The message was that we needed to concentrate each day on taking care of the "least of these," and that the "least of these" were the poor, homeless, etc. Certainly, I cannot argue with that, but the final argument advanced bothered me a great deal more. There was a reference made to the "current disagreement" in the Anglican communion. For a person "not in the know" this is quite simply dealing finally and clearly with the issue of justice for gay and lesbian persons in the church. It has been finally "forced" on the conservatives through the American church's ordination of an openly gay bishop (as opposed to closeted ones of which there have been many). It also involves a rather extraordinary turn of events that it has provoked a "crisis of Anglican unity." Simply put, those who disagree in the American church are forming splinter churches and dioceses, and those who disagree in the larger Anglican community are trying to force the American church to repent or depart. (This problem has been building, not just with regard to gay/lesbian issues, for more than 20 years) This has, very unfairly, foisted the onus of the "disruption of Anglican union" onto the backs of gay and lesbian persons in the church. "You really don't want to destroy the Anglican communion do you? Of course we (liberals) agree with you, but is 'having it all our way' worth disrupting the Anglican communion over?" We might have just as well have asked the sourthern slaves of 19th century America the same question: "You don't really want to have the United States erupt into war over this do you? Wouldn't it be better to....."

Where I was getting with this, however, was the rather additional extraordinary argument that if we got down to the "real business" of taking care of "the least of these," these other troublesome issues would take care of themselves. This was brought up at the General Convention under the protest that all the "gay and lesbian stuff" was "distracting" everyone from the "real" work of the church--in that setting this meant attention primaril to the UN millennium Development Goals to eliminate extreme poverty. While these are clearly worthy goals, I fail to see how the denial of fundamental human rights of justice and equality to 10% of the world's population is not a "real" issue for the church. There are plenty of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists who would easily vote to criminalize and imprison gay and lesbian sinners who are perfectly happy feeding and clothing the poor and the hungry. I cannot see, therefore, that attention to the "least of these" inevitably will solve the issue of justice for gay and lesbian persons. Justice will at times be painful, especially as we consider that in cases at law, there are sometimes winners and losers. I will note, as well, that the "liberal" dioceses are not the ones threatening to leave after the weak response of the general convention and the 11th hour compromise, nor have they threatened to "leave" over the noncompliance of conservative dioceses for years over questions regarding the ordination of women. It was the conservative ones that immediately began to act out their blackmailing threats.

Am I angry still? I guess that I am. Yes, I want to feed/clothe the poor. No, I do not want to "wait" for justice at some future nebulous time.

Jeffrey Shy
Mesa, Arizona
(I suppose I would be "mad as hell" perhaps if I believed in the existence of such a place.)

We're still not there yet

As I sit down this Monday morning after the morning "chores," I feel that I should put some more words to paper. I know that literally no one (or only perhaps) one person has ever visited this blog, but that really is not the point of the blog. I did not set this up to be a campaign site to convince persons of the virtue of abandoning theism. I set up the blog to help me make sense of life and the world in the absence of the theistic god. Although I chose the term "atheistepiscopal" as the address of the blog, I have to admit that I regret it a bit. I wanted to be confrontational, perhaps, in the name and not shirk from what I had "done" in saying that I had rejected theism, but having read some more sites that are specifically "atheist," I cannot say that I find them universally thoughtful. There seems to be too much emphasis on "cutting down" and "ridiculing" people who follow theism or any religion at all. Furthermore, there seems to be little effort that goes into coming up with some alternative schema that will replace religious theism. It seems rather like tearing down a house and leaving the lot empty. Perhaps there is nothing that can replace a lost theism that will serve the same functions as theistic religion, but it seems too fatalist at the moment not to even try. There is a feeling, as well, of a certain "wickedness" in what seems to be taking pleasure in attacking and ridiculing religion and a cynical superficiality as well. I certainly "get the point" when these persons take the bible and "literally" read it and point up all manner of morally offensive and self-contradictory content, but they "miss the point" just as much as those who espouse so-called biblical literalism in the sense of literal innerancy. I may be an atheist in the sense of saying that I do not believe that I can any longer accept theism, but I am not an atheist in the sense that so many other people seem to be.

In the last week, I have continued reading some of Karen Armstrong's Book, The Battle for God, about the historical development of fundamentalism, but I must admit that I can only "stand" to read it in short bursts. There is a certain fatal despair that I feel whenever I pick it up. It is rather like watching one of those movies that begins with the ending, in this case a tragic one, and then doing the whole rest of the film as a "flashback" to see how the end comes about. We are living the reality of fundamentalism today, and it is not pretty. When we look back at the history, I can certainly see how it came about, and of course, can think of how, possibly, it could have been avoided, but that is "water under the bridge." Somehow, I feel that it is important that I really understand fundamentalism and the slightly-less-extreme versions such as the Christian "evangelical" movement. Certainly we all need to understand Islamic fundamentalism as well. It is just, unfortunately, that at times it is too distressing to look at for too long. It is escapist, I suppose, but I feel that I need some resting spots along the trip, or I will never finish it without suffering emotional exhaustion.

In between the fundamentalism book readings, I have also been reading Mortimer Adler's book, Six Great Ideas. The six "great ideas" are truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality and justice. I watched some pieces, years ago, of the public television show by the same name, and bought the book many years ago, but never got through much of it. (I am not even sure how long I have had it as it was published in 1981). I have been thinking about the definition of "good" that he derives. In short (and less convincing, I suppose, without the proof), those things are good that satisfy or answer human needs. Needs are defined as those things that humans must have to live a good life. They include biological needs such as food and shelter but also include other needs such as health, wealth, companionship, pleasure and beauty. Real goods are the things or means by which we satisfy these needs inherent to human nature. Apparent goods are those that satisfy wants in an innocuous way (meaning that they do not prevent/impair us from having what we ought nor in a secondary sense, produce deprivation in others). So far so good, I am still "on board" in a sense that what he "proves" seems reasonably true. The "trick" however, in determining what is "good" lies, however, in our interpretation of "human nature." What do humans really need. It occurred to me to ask if humans need religion, and then to ask the corollary question of "just what is religion" anyways? My computer version of the Oxford American Dictionary gives four definitions: (1) the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power; (2) details of belief as taught or discussed; (3) a particular system of faith and worship; (4) a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Clearly, the first "definition" is simply theism. The second and third are nearly tautologies, religion is a word that describes what people do when they engage in religious practice or discourse. The fourth, however, is more interesting. Religion is "a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance." This comes very close to Tillich's view of god as "that about which we are ultimately concerned."

If I accept this definition as a "working" proposition, then the question is this - what is that to which I can ascribe "supreme importance?" Furthermore, if religion is conceived of as a "need" of humans (realizing that I have not proved that human nature requires religion, of course), and religion is that with which we are ultimately or supremely concerned, then the "good" that is religion is a "supreme" good. Perhaps religion is the summum bonum of philosophy, the single highest good. The question goes back, then to the supposition that religion is a human need. Do humans need religion or do some of us simply want religion? I find it hard to come up with a firm argument that we really need religion, but perhaps we might speculate a bit. First, it does seem that humans spend a good amount of time and activity "doing" religion. If religion did not at all satisfy some sort of human need, then why do we spend so much time on it? ( I know this is dangerous. We spend a lot of time on war as well, but do we need war? ) One might speculate that we spend nearly as much time/effort at religion as we do to satisfy even our most basic "biological" needs such as food, drink, shelter, etc. Sometimes, we will even forgo access to these "basic" needs to "do" religion. Witness the gospel story of the "widow's mite." Where the poor widow placed her entire living into the temple treasury. She gave all that she had to live on for a religious reason. Secondly, if I expand "religion" to be the pursuit of the answer of the "great questions" such as illuminate a search for "meaning" of life/existence, then it would seem that a life of meaning would be preferable to a life "without meaning." We desire/want that our lives/existence should have meaning, do we not? Simply being a "being" that is self-aware, suggests that we must necessarily examine or come to terms with our most essential quality, that we "are" and that we know that we "are."

To the extent, then, that persons interpret "a-theism" to be "a-religion," then we can suggest that they are unlikely to succeed in living a "good life" inasmuch as they deny a fundamental "need" of humans. We must, however, be careful to avoid equating religion with theism, as the first dictionary definition did when it defined religion as the "belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power." Religion in the sense of a "human need" is the pursuit or acquisition of that with which we are "ultimately or supremely concerned", or the "meaning" that we find in life/existence. I think, then, I can accept, for the moment, the proposition that religion as a need and therefore a "good" as reasonably true if not self-evidently or "beyond a shadow of a doubt" true. This "broad sense" definition has somewhat of the character of an "open ended" conclusion, and perhaps an unattainable one. In theism, the "chief end of man" is to "glorify God and enjoy him forever." It has a certain point/finality to it as if the "work" is really all done. The search for meaning in existence, however, without the "end point" of a theistic God, has more about it the nature of a process. Is there a "conclusion" to this search? I do not know.

Jeffrey Shy
(Searching)
Mesa, Arizona

Building Houses on the Sand

In the last week, I have been reading in Karen Armstrong's book, The Battle for God, in which she traces the emergence of fundamentalist religion as an outgrowth of a reaction against modernity. For Armstrong's fundamentalists, there is a sense of fear and doom from the experience of modern world and rational thought (logos) when separated from the mythos of a religious experience. in this schema, fundamentalism is a, perhaps regrettable, but certainly understandable reaction to this alienation that comes of the experience of the modern world without as sense of meaning. While I am not sure that I agree that the traditional "mythos" of western Christianity can sustain us as it did in the past, I agree that we seem to need a sense of "meaning" if we are to live fully and happily in the world.

As I have been trying to explore my own sense of "meaning" in a world in which God has ceased to exist, I feel as if I stand on a knife edge between chaos on the one side and order on the other. Like apparently so many others before me, I have been exploring the idea of an "evolutionary" view of cosmic history. This has been, of course, a modernist view that looked at the history of the cosmos and also biological evolution on earth and found in it something akin to "progress" as we know it in our knowledge-based and increasing technological society. In this view, we imagine a sort of "stream of consciousness" that moved from the first awareness of self to a sense of "family" to a sense of tribe, nation, globalism and finally, I would suppose, to a sense of a "cosmic" identity and awareness. Along with this, the progress of thought and knowledge has, with some fits and starts, been one generally of growth. This is a growth from ignorance to knowledge, from superstition and myth to theory and fact, from the "red in tooth" perservation of self to an increasing sense of the need for and rightness of "charity," from simplicity to complexity (although this latter has been argued), from no thought to thought, from inanimate, to aware to self aware to globally aware.

I thought of a parable or allegory in which we are, in this view, rather like a great company of people building houses or castles in the sand. Each of us builds for a time, either a little or a lot, but inevitably death/entropy washes away these castles that are our lives. But we do not build in isolation. We build in company with those who build as our companions on the beach. We learn from them, and we copy them and they us. We also learn, in an unbroken stream into the past, from those who built before us, so that our unique contributions create castles that are of increasing complexity and "perfection." Some of us, perhaps, build well and advance the progress of self and others. Some of us build poorly, perhaps, or even give up building and dedicate ourselves to destruction. Nevertheless, the general direction, with sometimes great leaps forward, periods of stagnation and even tremendous steps backward, has so far been that of "progress." Looking at this "big picture," it seems that there is a general trend, a "direction," if you will, in what we see and are.

It is this apparent "direction," perhaps, that might give us a sense of "hope" and "purpose." Even if our presence as self-aware biomatter is one that came about by merest chance, our self-awareness gives us a unique opportunity. We each have, as it were, our "day in the sun" in which we are the builders. We can build well or poorly, according to our ability and knowledge, but whether we will or not, we will build something that influences the future and touches back to the past. We are, in our small selves, part of a larger "self" of humanity and perhaps the cosmos that reaches forwards and upwards and outwards, seeking to expand who and what we are and looking to what we may become. And who knows what it is that we might become? It is this "great becoming" that, perhaps, gives us some sense of inspiration. We are part of a great cosmic evolution that began at the time of the big bang and moves into the future to--what? We do not, of course, know the "ultimate" answer. We can, at most, use the short ruler of our experience so far to draw a theoretical "future line," but the "ultimate answer" is unknown. We dream of "perfection" but what form that or whatever future is to come is unknown with any certainty. Our meaning, however, is not that we know or can surely predict what we will become, but that we are part of this becoming and that we are know that we are a part of the life and existence of the universe. Through a great and un-numbered sequence of occurrences, we have been given a chance to be a little bit of the process by which the cosmos is able to know itself. Even the tiniest glimpse of this "great becoming" is the greatest of gifts. It is one that we receive as a most precious gift from our ancestors in humanity and farther back up our "family tree" to the beginnings of the universe of which we are direct lineal descendants. It is our awareness of being on this journey or part of this process of becoming that is our "spirituality." It is this "gift" of knowing that we will pass to the future, should we not care for it so poorly that there is no future.

It may be, perhaps, that our desire that this journey should continue would be a moral imperative that would shape our behavior. Since we know that we journey together (i.e with the help of our contemporaries as well as the "boost up" of our ancestors) , our moral behavior should be that which fosters our "togetherness." It should, therefore, be one that values the other as well as the self, leading us to restate in a new way the "golden rule" of antiquity. We do not love simply because we can, but we love because we must, for our survival and continuance depends on it. We do not learn to adapt because we can but because we must. We do not learn to be careful of our environment and the earth as a whole because we can but because we must.

But our "view" or "vision" is conditional. This "vision" may sustain and guide us today, but it may not be an adequate vision for the people or creatures of tomorrow who must evolve their own vision and find their own sense of meaning. This is, I suppose, akin to "theory" in science, which we accept not because it is necessarily "true" but because it "works" and "explains" and "interprets" reality and "predicts" it in some way. We do not necessarily discard an older view because it was "wrong" but because it no longer "works" for us in our world today. I might even be able to come to terms with Tillich's "ground of being" - that "larger being" of which I am a part and which is, in its totality, all of the cosmos or simply "the all" or "everything."

Finally, I might even imagine a sort of "dialog" with theists who "see" from a different perspective. If we can, for just a moment, admit that "religious" or philosophical language is not always "literal," I can see a point of company with the proponents of "intelligent design." Where I see a "becoming" that has, at least in a short sense, a "direction," they see the finger of God. For the theist, "God" is the creator and "prime mover" of all that is. The "progress" of the world is the creating hand of God. He is the "alpha" point of all that is. For me, while I cannot necessarily see the "alpha" point "God," I can perhaps admit that the "direction" of the universe points to something more than I/ we am/are at this point in time. This "direction" that we perceive could tend towards an "omega point" in which a sort of "perfection" might be achieved that would be, perhaps, akin to what the theist calls "God." We might be, perhaps, rather like the old story of the blind men describing the elephant. We are simply at opposite ends of the creature, and it is only in seeming that our views are so different or opposed.

Once again, this is only a "proposition," something for future contemplation and discussion and not a "final word." It would remain to see how we would function in such a view or how much "meaning" I/we could derive from it. Could it be the basis of a "meaningful" life? Could it provide some measure of "positive" and inform and inspire and shape my/our existence? Perhaps....

Jeffrey Shy
(And the foolish man built his house upon the sand....)
Mesa, Arizona

The "Love Connection"

It has been about 11 days since I had my last posting. Although I have not recently posted, partly due to a number of visits from relatives, I have continued to "think and reflect." It has been growing in my mind that there is a definite "attitude adjustment" that would come with the "universal love" religious world view. As I have been reviewing the "sayings" of Jesus and some readings in the Mohist cannon, it appears clear that there is a certain dual effect of this practice. First, we have the "internal" effects of the attitude adjustment. I truly think that it may be reasonably correct that practicing this attitude does improve feelings of well-being and, well, happiness. The external effects would seem to be significant as well. Generally, for the most part, persons who are treated well and with love have a greater tendency to respond in kind. I speculate, though, that there may be a more "spiritual" effect perhaps. It seems that there is a certain resonance that the more positive internal orientation creates in other persons. To the extent that my internal state of being is "positive," it seems to create a higher likelihood of others experiencing the same thing. Whether this is through subliminal clues, body language, pheromones or what, I do not know. It is rather like setting a tuning fork vibrating and then noting that it induces a vibration at a similar frequency in an adjacent string or tuning fork. Perhaps this is what is meant when someone is described as having an emotion that is "infectious." Although perhaps excessively "utopian," one could see that, if there were enough people "vibrating" on this frequency, the whole world could eventually fall in tune with it. Conceivably, the opposite effect could occur as well. To the extent that we are internally self-focused, angry, hateful, prejudiced, etc, we will induce negative "resonances" in others that can be "infectious" as well.

There seem to be intimations of this in some of the "sayings" of Jesus when he tells stories about the "Kingdom of Heaven." Yeast makes the whole loaf rise. The light on the lampstand lights up the whole world. You are the salt of the earth. The smallest of seeds grows up into the largest of trees. It might also give some meaning to some of the "backwards" or darker versions such as the "Beware of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees," where the "negative" leaven can also get into the loaf and have significant ill effects.

The place where Christianity is a bit lacking, perhaps, is in concrete suggestions or a specific program to create this internal change. It is hinted at in imagery such as being "born again," but this is too tied up with the theistic god, redemption, original sin schema to hold much appeal for me. I have had, for weeks now, a phrase going repeatedly through my head, rather like a mantra. "Cultivate an attitude of calmness and compassion." This would seem to encapsulate both the "Take no thought for the morrow," with regard to personally centered anxieties as well as the "Golden rule" principle. Although it may not be enough for the longterm, I have found it helpful to "pray" this phrase repeatedly. When I find myself, for example, getting irritable, angry or upset---in short when the calmness and compassion start to fade--- then this is a time for reflection. Why did I change, do this, think this, feel this? How can I respond differently? Am I being truly compassionate? Am I practicing the "Golden Rule?" Finally, make a conscious effort to "Cultivate an attitude of calmness and compassion." Strangely, far from being an attitude that leads to apathy, it allows me to accomplish a great deal more. I begin to doubt the "power of negative emotion" such as the so-called "righteous anger." I wonder if, no matter what the outcome, the anger behind the intent somehow adversely taints the results. Yes, the concrete desired "result" may occur, but at what personal cost? I may "get the job done," but I wonder if I have not somehow damaged myself (and others) in the process? I seem to recall from reading some years ago in writings of Mahatma Gandhi where he implied that negative means inevitably produce negative ends. It is, perhaps, a failure to really believe this that makes us imagine that war can produce peace. We might, possibly, force a regime change. We might, for a time, reduce the number of "opponents" or their capacity to do violence, but ultimately, the anger/hatred/ill-feeling that war produces will have its effect, and that will of necessity be a negative one.

In a more personal sense, a "calm and compassionate attitude" truly appears to help one accomplish the daily "grind." I was reminded, on a Disneyland trip over the weekend, of the Mary Poppins "Spoonful of Sugar" song. "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. Find, the fun, and the job's a game." If we cultivate the "attitude of calmness and compassion" the "happiness" aura that surrounds it certainly lessens the "medicine" of accomplishing many "jobs that must be done." Here I've been looking for help in centuries-old religious texts, and all I had to do was listen to Julie Andrews!

Jeffrey Shy
(Having a "spoonful of sugar")
Mesa, Arizona

Building a raft

In the last couple of days, I was able to get in a bit more reading in Karen Armstrong's, The Great Transformation. I have to admit that I had been "looking forward" to her discussion of Buddhism, and I was not disappointed. Of the "great religions" as they exist today, Buddhism, of all the non-Christian religions, honestly has the greatest attraction to me. Although I cannot be strongly interested in a "cosmology" of "rebirth," the "here and now" orientation and the strong emphasis on compassion just makes so much sense. It just seems so right. Although I have been writing to help myself work out a "new" Christianity, it would seem foolish to try to "do it all myself" and limit myself to "only Christian" resources.

Where we stand today is clearly "on the shoulders" of our human past. This is not to say that we are dwarfs on the shoulders of titans, but simply that, as I have opined before, each human has a cultural and societal heritage and does not need to start purely from scratch. Frankly, I would doubt that anyone would do much at all if we each had to rediscover language, writing, religious thought, philosophy, mathematics, et cetera. If our search for meaning is to have the highest chance of fulfillment, then it would be profoundly foolish to ignore any source, no matter from which religious tradition, that gets us further along the way.

I do think that it is possible that Chritianity has some meaningful things to say, and I have begun, for example, to look again at the "sayings" of Jesus outside of the gospel narratives along with the "best" of the Pauline corpus as a reasonable place to start. What makes Christianity more problematic, however, is our long devotion to theism. It is hard to find any source that is not "contaminated" by this, and I find that as I sift these sources for meaning, I end up leaving a lot of "theistic ellipses." At times this is so bad I wonder if just taking a "paper punch" to the text would be less drastic. Sensibly, we may very reasonably draw on other nontheistic sources that speak to our needs. Getting too caught up on the "authority" or "validity" of any source is simply misguided.

In this sense, a new Christianity is going to have to be more than we usually mean when we talk about being ecumenical. In the biggest and most generous conception admitted by most so far, "ecumenism" seems to boil down to "We've got a really great tradition that works for us. You've got one too. Isn't that nice?" What I believe that the "new" Christianity has to admit is that the tradition is not working for us, and that we need help. If I can find that help in "Christian" sources, then great, but that should not be the limits of our search. One does not have to go very far, for example to find in Mo-ist thought a very reasonable statement of the "love" as the center of behavior view and a conception of how that works out at a personal, local and even international/global level. If, for example, one state, filled with people who always are compassionate towards one another conceives as another state as similarly filled with people equally deserving of our highest level of compassion, then could we ever conceive of starting a war? If we all could form this compassionate attitude, then war and conflict would evaporate. Isn't the best solution for us to work hard at cultivating a spirit of compassion and encouraging others to do the same? This is, of course, just a simplistic example, but it is a clearer statement in terms of "politics" at least than the Christian version the Golden rule.

I think we need a page from Buddhism about not getting too tied up on "how we get there" but concentrating on the journey and its goals. Karen Armstrong re-tells a Buddhist parable that talks about the man who wishes to cross a river, but there is no bridge or boat or other means already available. He cobbles together a raft from whatever he can find and floats across the river to the other side. Once he gets there, what does he do? Does he pick up the raft that helped him across and carry it forever on his back because it helped him across the river, or does he leave it moored on the bank and carry on the journey ahead? I think that the lesson is clear, we need to cobble together our raft from whatever resources we can assemble, and we should not be as obsessed with turning it into some object of devotion or setting it up as an idol to worship.

To conclude, then, a new Christianity, to me, will acknowledge a heritage of religious thought from the ancient middle east and its descendants through the "Christian West (including eastern Christianity of course)," but it needs to do more than an "I'm OK and You're OK" with the sea of non-Christian religious thought. If it is to be "true" in the broadest sense, it must be inclusive in the broadest terms possible. Does it sound like I'm turning into a "Universalist?" I suppose that was inevitable.

Jeffrey Shy
(How do you use a raft in the desert?)
Mesa, Arizona

But what about REALLY bad sh_t?

Since I'm not sure that there are not rules here about "foul" language, I decided to "bleep" the title, but it's pretty clear what I mean here. Although a "positive" sort of tone seems to be emerging as I am trying to work out my ideas and feelings and as I am trying to find a new center and purpose for my life, it's pretty clear that I am "doing well" at this point in a number of ways. I wonder, however, how sustaining these ideas will be for me when really bad stuff happens?

It was just a little thing this morning that started this line of thought. My new morning "ritual" begins with getting up at about 5:30 AM. After that, I feed the "inside" (five at present) and the "outside" (two feral males at present) cats. Once the cats are fed, I do a bit of watering in the yard. We have "drip" irrigation that we are using twice daily, but even this is not enough for new plants and for some that are more delicate. With our mid-summer day temperatures in the 110 to 115 degree range, this is a pretty brutal time for all outside plants and animals. One plant I had rescued had been something that we had for a time largely abandoned. We had a small orchid plant that we brought back from one of our Hawai'i trips. It had languished in the bathroom in the shower stall for a while as the inside cats cannot resist chewing on a green plant. When we gave up the master suite recently for a visitor, my partner moved the orchid outside. For a time, we simply forgot it and it came close to death. I moved it under a tree outside and made it part of my daily watering campaign. Under the shade but with tropical heat and the local humidity of the soil that was watered and the daily dousings, it began to recover. First one, then two, then three, then four and a hint of five leaves. I was very pleased that I had "rescued" the little plant from dying. This morning, however, I went out to do my daily rounds and found somewhat of a mess. The paper bowls that I use for the outside cats were scattered and had clearly been chewed up by a larger animal. I noted that the orchid pot was tipped over, but it was a couple of minutes before I realized that the orchid inside was gone. I searched around and finally found what was left of it-some roots, my "five leaves" pretty much chewed away but a few stubs left.

I suppose that many would laugh that I could be upset at such a "little" thing. After all, I eat plants all the time. For that matter, I eat animals too (which of course I do not kill myself and buy at the grocers so that they look very little like any living creature that I might imagine). I understand, as well, that I was probably visited by coyotes or raccoons that are living at the edge of starvation. What was most difficult was that it was unexpected, violent and random. Human violence may anger me, but the impersonal violence leaves one without anyone or anything to blame. This one instance, I suppose, can be "explained" by a hungry creature or creatures that came into my yard drawn by the possibility of food and water. Although it upset my plans, it is, I suppose, understandable. It gets harder, however, when there is no one or nothing that seems to gain from the destruction. Who "gained" from the great Asian tsunammi? I can look "from a distance" like the deist God and see it as merely a ripple in the great fabric, but up close, it looked bad. Really up close is hard to imagine.

Is there an "answer" to this kind of thing? Is it really just all "vanity, vanity" after all? Perhaps what is getting in the way of "understanding," I wonder, is some element of "Pride?" When I imagine that humanity is unique in this world because we have "awakened to self-consciousness" and that we can "build the Kingdom of Heaven," is this really just prideful boasting that disguises a sort of "whistling in the dark" to keep the real world from intruding into the picture too much?

Today, I am not so full of answers, and I am not sure that there is a "logical" answer. I know that natural processes that are unthinking and impersonal are behind these "natural" disasters that we sometimes mockingly call "acts of God." Can we really, however, treat them as "impersonal" or "neutral" when they make such a difference to us "persons?" I really don't know.

Jeffrey Shy
(A little bit more dead today)
Mesa, Arizona

Growing up not falling down

During the last week, I have continued to do some reading in Karen Armstrong's book, The Great Transformation but I have also continued some readings from Dr. Spong's books as well. As he follows the ramifications of the abandonment of theism, it is, of course, inevitable that Jesus "takes a tumble" as well as I have noted in previous posts. If we reject the formulation of the incarnation of God as a human without original sin who is sacrificed to "take away the sins of the world" and we also reject the creation of the world ex nihilo by the sky god, then we have to also jettison our whole concept of "sin" and "original sin." This means, of course, that humanity "never fell," and this, of course, makes a great more sense than some utopian past to which we hope to return. This is the illusion that draws so much of conservatism. We need to get back to the "good old days." Of course, the "good old days" when studied carefully, are of course no such thing. This does not mean that everything in the past was "always and everywhere" bad, but neither was it the fantastical utopia to which we would want to return.

As an alternative, Dr. Spong embraces a new approach of a humanity that is evolving and "growing up." This is, of course, in tune with evolutionary theory, the evidence from the natural sciences and the survey of the broad look at human history. Without rehearsing too many specifics, I believe that all manner of evidence confirms that we have progressed/improved in the last 20 to 30 thousand years of human history. What is more unique about our development so far, is that we are now conscious of our existence, aware of the possibilities for improvement and able to consciously act to do something about it. Rather than the long wait for a random mutation that proves to be advantageous or the selection of a pre-existing one by circumstance or climatic change, we can now do something about it. Dr. Spong goes on to consider, then, the question of evil. He is able, for the most part, to attribute evil to the evolutionary dross of the competitive nature of the evolutionary process. We succeed because we do "better" than others in our society. This works pretty well, of course, if the whole point is to merely disseminate our genetic patterns, but it works less well when we are doing something more. We must, of course, stand on the shoulders of those who went before us, and we are greatly dependent on our contemporaries as well. Each new human does not have to invent language, writing, baby wipes, food canning, etc. We can depend on a shared cultural, historical and scientific heritage that is communicated through our societal structures. Our cooperative needs, then, begin to outweigh our competitive ones. "Evil" then may be traced in large part to this evolutionarily embedded "selfishness" in which one acts on one's own behalf without regard for others. He has problems making this work when he considers some aspects for example of mental illness such as alcoholism, but I cannot really see putting them in the "evil" category. These are illnesses that, although they affect the way that we think and behave, are not necessarily completely of our own making or choosing. They live more in the "shit happens" category than in the "evil" category.

Although I have a slight wave of revulsion at summarizing this way of looking at who we are and may be come as "Be all that you can be," if I make the "you" a plural, it loses some of the military association. We are, then, in this sense, part of a "great becoming." We are moving in a general direction that, if most of us would acknowledge it, we have wanted to move in for as long as consciouness has existed. We look forward to a world without poverty, disease or suffering where all are at peace. We do not look backwards to a "Paradise Lost" but forward to a possible "Paradise to Gain." This could be the "Kingdom of Heaven" of the language of Jesus. In this sense, "God" who is in us and is us "becomes" right along with us. Our "divinity" grows as we individually and even more collectively move to a more "humane" and less selfish/self-centered world. As we as present individuals try to live today this "life in the Kingdom," we can participate in a "dim" way, perhaps, in what it would be like if it were universal. At the same time, our adoption of the "Kingdom-oriented" way of living helps to bring its universality ever closer. Our new mythology will not be the star of Satan falling from heaven, but the image of "Jacob's Ladder" on which we are climbing "higher, higher." Here, perhaps, we can escape a bit of the angst that comes when we contemplate the "futility" of human existence. We would not be where we are today if it were not for the efforts of those past humans who lived for more than just self. Those who live tomorrow will not be any better than today if we do not assume the burden for our times. Our immortality, perhaps, then is a collective one. We are, possibly, becoming a corporate being as we learn to try to move beyond just "self" to a consciouness of "more than self." Our first "great leap" was to awaken to self-consciouness. Our next "great leap" is to awaken to a sort of group "human consciouness" and perhaps, eventually to a "universal consciousness." My only "regret" then is that I will not live to see it fully consumated, but that is a "self thought" isn't it? : )

Jeffrey Shy
(What will I be when I grow up?)
Mesa, Arizona

Dump the Apocalypse Stuff

In the last few days, I have been devoting my "blog time" to more reading of Karen Armstrong's new book, The Great Transformation as she traces the history of the pre-axial and axial age developments in religion and philosophy in China, India, the Middle East and Greece. As such, I can see that it has been now 5 days since my last post, so I feel that I need to keep up with another post today to "keep the discipline going" as it were.

As a sidelight to the Armstrong reading, I decided to read again yesterday the Gospel of Mark. This is relevant on two levels. First, it is agreed that it is probably the earliest of our "Canonical" gospels, and secondly, it is the "Gospel of the Year" in our current lectionary cycle. I tried, as much as possible, to read it without trying to superimpose back a pre-conceived theology about Jesus and also a pre-conceived idea as to the teachings of Jesus. I also read it in the somewhat less familiar translation of the Scholars Version which was the work of the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar. They did a number of interesting things in their translation, the most fascinating of which was their desire to not "improve" the grammar of Mark nor to make all of his tenses agree with our modern English sensibilities. What struck me most was the use of the present tense as well as their creative way of conveying the "immediately" or "right then" or "right away" usages that are throughout the Gospel of Mark. More than before, this seemed to match up with the view of the "Apocalyptic" character of the first Christian message. God's Imperial Rule (to use the Jesus seminar term) was perceived as not a growing and gentle awareness of the "Kingdom within you" but rather the immanent sense that something is going to happen "really soon."

It rather makes me wonder if the early growth of the Church in the post-Jesus years was not due to an apocalyptic fervor? There have, of course, since that time been any number of apocalyptic movements, particularly among "evangelicals" in the US. One has only to think of the Oneida community dressed up and sitting in the trees for the parousia to get an idea of the extremes to which apocalypticism can drive people to to get an idea that a similar thing may have happened in the early church as well. They had, at least in the Jewish Middle East, some pretty good "signs" of it noting the destruction of the Temple in the ca CE 70 defeat of the Jewish revolt. We can see these events projected backwards onto the Jesus narratives of the Gospel where Jesus speaks "prophetically" of the destruction of the temple, and when he tells the women to "weep for themselves and for their children." It is significant, I think, that so much of the oldest NT book, the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, is dedicated to explaning what will happen at "the Lord's coming" regarding "we who are alive" as well as those who had died with a sense that "we who are alive" are going to see this miraculous event occur.

But, the Lord did not come quickly back. One wonders what were the thoughts of these "transitional" Christians as they realized that this return of the Lord in glory was not happening as they had expected. I suppose that there was more emphasis placed by some on the "keep ready" for "no one knows the day nor the hour" "not even the Son (of God)." Although a specific date was never predicted (as had been the case for so many of the more recent "events" that we knew of), it would still have required a "recalcluation" of the original mental chronology. I would suspect that this has already been done, but I would guess that, if we follow the writings of the NT and the post-NT period chronologically, we could find a progressive de-emphasis of the apocalyptic character of the message of the early Christians.

What then do we do with the early Christian message? What can we look back to and at least touch as a source of our own inspiration that allows us to give meaning to our existence today? It came to me yesterday that we might look even more closely back at the "greatest commandment" quotation as a central meaning for us. This story exists in the Gospel of Mark and is an "early" one, therefore and perhaps "authentic" as "close to" the message of Jesus. In it, of course, Jesus is asked a question by "one of the scholars" as the SV describes him as to which is the most important commandment. Jesus replies that the most important commandment is the "Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you are to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and with all your energy." He goes on to give the second part of it which is, "You are to love your neigbor as yourself." The questioner complements Jesus on his answer and appears to be sincere to Jesus who replies "You are not far from God's domain." The passage ends with a certain sense of finality when Mark writes that "From then on, no one dared to question him."

It occured to me that the "great commandment" could be perceived as a somewhat koan-like statement. First, one must "love the Lord" with the totality of one's being with all one's intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources. How then, do we "love our neighbor" or "love our selves" if all is given over to the love of God? Perhaps this would suggest that we find God in our neighbor and ourselves and our "God" is this total experience of love. This would mesh, perhaps, with a philosophical view that we are "all one," suggesting that, in the deepest and most meaningful way, there is no essential distinction or separation between ourselves and others. That loving others is like loving ourselves because others, in essence, are the same as ourselves. This essential commonality has a transcendent quality that might earn it the name of "God" perhaps when it is fully and completely realized. The "task" then for us is a dual one. First, it is an internal search for the "ground of being" or "spirit" or "essence" or "self" that is in each of us the same "self" that is in all of this. The "experience" of this self would then be the "point" of contemplation, meditation and prayer. Secondly, a growing awareness of this reality would be a source for acting charitably to others as we would be acting charitably to ourselves by doing so and thereby experiencing in a practical way the transendence that we achieve by our growing awareness of this unity of all people and individuals. We could find a commonality with other faith traditions as well such as the perception of the self or Atman as identical with Brahman or the enlightenment experience of Buddhist tradition where the "illusions" of separation and the small self drop away, and the birth of compassion for all living beings emerges.

The "God is Love" conception is not one that could necessarily be condemned even by traditional Christians as heretical. Furthermore, some of Paul's most excellent writings relate well to this. Witness his famous discourse in the Corinthian letter of the "I may speak with the tongues of men and angels, but if I have not Love..." speech. We also may find an answer to "moral" dilemmas as well by using the "Love is the fulfilling of the Law" principle with the corollary that "Love does no harm to a neighbor." This "Love" principle would, if carried to the fullest, be a way to lose all of the "dross" of prejudice and superstition that fills up the "moral codes" that appear throughout the Jewish and Christian scriptures. It would allow us to, from a first principle, apply a test to any question: "Does this do harm to a neighbor?....no....then it is either a loving or a morally neutral act."

Finally, this brings God both down to a human level as the "spirit of Love" within each of us as well as making the experience of that same "spirit of Love" a transcendent one. It is much more satisfying morally and intellectually than the "big guy in the sky" way of thinking. It also could form a nidus for even bringing back the "Kingdom of Heaven" concept. This time, it is not a cataclysmic event of a supernatural being who invades our reality but something that grows out of our own ability to be aware of the "oneness" of all people and our experience/practice of the "love your neighbor" ideal. Clearly, we can at least imagine a utopian sort of finality to this if it could be applied universally.

Well, I suppose that, like any other "way of thinking" this might be pulled apart in many ways, and it makes some assumptions that are hard to justify empirically such as the "essential oneness" of all persons, but even this might rationally and reasonably be done, and it is certainly not out of keeping with the kind of things that are said by those who have, over the ages, devoted themselves to prayer, meditation, etc.

This might be at least, a concept that would form a pretty firm foundation for a post-theistic Christianity.

Until next time....

Jeffrey Shy
(Nope, all I see up there is a cloud)
Mesa, Arizona

I forgot to take my weapon

In spite of my last post, I have to admit that I have been trying to" find Jesus on the road" again. This was started, at least in part, by an observation of Sunday's preacher who was discussing the story of Jesus raising of Jairus daughter. Although we "skirted" fairly delicately the issue as to whether she had really died, it was a side-light on the story that caught my attention. Simply, if Jesus was a 20-something wandering Rabbi, his disciples would probably have been rather young, very possibly even just teenagers. Furthermore, it was mentioned that, rather than having his chief disciples come to him, Jesus is portrayed in some Gospel accounts as seeking them out. This led me to consider just whom Jesus picked, and a rather unlikely bunch of students they were. It occured to me that Jesus was probably able to read (witness his picking up the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue, reading it, and then sitting down to teach---not the likely actions of the "humble carpenter's son" and one suggesting some level of education, perhaps) and possibly to write (if one accepts that there may be some hint of the historical Jesus in the story of the Woman caught in adultery, for example, where Jesus "writes something" in the dirt). If then, Jesus was literate and educated, then his likely illiterate and uneducated pupils were rather a novelty. Following this line of thought, one might speculate that Jesus was not so shocking for what he taught (much of it not very original) but whom he taught. I intend the emphasis on both the "whom" and the "taught" because it is likely that such persons would have been felt to be uneducable. I do not believe that our egalitarian ideas today would have made sense to many at that time. Women, laborers, other country Yokels would not perhaps have been seen by most as economically disadvantaged and therefore uneducated, but as possibly "unteachable" or at least (in the case of social outcasts---sex workers and tax collectors) unworthy of being taught. This could create, as it were, a picture of Jesus as the "great educator" who tried to bring the teachings of the time that were important to him to the masses, perhaps like the first writer of "Judaism for Dummies."

Well, just like all "portraits" of Jesus, it is subject to criticism. What about all the "healing stories" and all the "miracle stories?" What about all this "Kingdom of Heaven" stuff? The latter is particularly bothersome, since it seems fairly likely that, at least the Pauline Christians were waiting for the eschaton---the return of "the Lord" in power on the clouds of heaven to usher in the messianic rule. Whether Jesus thought himself the messiah or not will never be known, but there is certainly, whether original or projected back, a content of the "last days" sort of thinking in the Gospel accounts of Jesus. Even if the Qumran scrolls represented even a minority opinion of the day, then this way of thinking existed outside the Jesus community, and would not have been so terribly unusual perhaps at the time (witness John the Baptizer and others mentioned in other historical accounts such as, I believe, Josephus).

If, indeed, Jesus was preaching an apocalyptic message, then clearly this is not a message that holds much resonance for me today. I do not expect to see "one come with the clouds of heaven" to usher in the new age. The "teacher of the poor" is better, I suppose, and at least could allow for some "imitation" as it were, but in the end it too is speculative.

I cannot help but be fascinated and admire the scholarship of those who study the Christian New Testament seriously and have looked for the "real" or "original" or "authentic" Jesus, but I have to admit that such studies, to me, seem likely to become only "sidelights" as it were, in the future development of the religion that came be called Christianity. We can "look for" the historical Jesus, but every time we "find him," I think that we end up a bit disappointed.

Jeffrey Shy
(Honey, get the gun!)
Mesa, Arizona

My Photo

The "J----" word

A search of this Blog (admittedly not a thick tome) since I started it finds that I have used the word "Jesus" only 5 times in its postings so far. A search of "Google" for Jesus came up with "about" 230,000,000 occurences. Clearly, any new Christianity has to include Jesus, but the question is how/where/in what way? Dr. Spong writes of the "domino effect" that occurs when we knock down any central religious idea. Clearly the rain of falling dominoes does not have to go very far before the traditional Jesus and millions of derivatives join in.

It is pretty clear that, from the first, the people who came to call themselves Christians struggled with the just who and what Jesus was/is. Episcopalians are pretty familiar with the creeds. Every Sunday's liturgy of the Eucharist includes a recitation of the Nicene Creed as a mandatory inclusion. (It is not a "may" sort of rubric). The so-called Apostle's creed makes its appearance in the daily office and Baptismal liturgies. The "Historical Documents" section of the American prayerbook includes the Chalcedonian formulation as well as the Athanasian Creed. In essence, the composers of the credal statements had a central purpose. Yes, they wanted to make a statement about who is/was Jesus, but more importantly, they wanted to make it clear who/what Jesus is not. Prior to these creeds, there were may different answers to these questions, but the church authorities felt it essential to get this worked out. It was generally accepted that the Chalcedonian formulation was a sort of ecclesiastical "last word" on the subject. All the orthodox could breathe a collective sigh of relief on having settled this sticky issue and get on to being good little Christians from that point on. The "Credo" was no longer a statement about committment, but an intellectual assent to some core "facts" about Christianity. Assent to the facts was required to be an authentic or true Christian. Denial of any of these branded one as a heretic.

Unfortunately, in the minds of the rigidly orthodox, we moderns have been chipping away at the credal definitions for some time now. Once we could stop accepting the words of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament as literally true and inerrant, we began to see there was far from unanimity with regard to how the early church thought of Jesus. Mark, the earliest of the gospels, mentions nothing about the miraculous birth narrative of Jesus. Paul is hard to piece together, but he seems to have a sort of "adoptionist" view of Jesus, perhaps. Clearly, if those who were temporally closest to Jesus could not "get it together," it is rather foolish to think of the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations as the "last word" on the subject.

The "Quest for the historical Jesus" in modern biblical scholarship has given us some fascinating insights, perhaps, into the "original" Jesus, but ultimately comes down at the end to a lot of speculation. We have very few "hard facts" about Jesus other than a general assent to the existence of an historical individual by that name who lived in the early years of what we now call the "common era" and who seemed to be a sort of religious teacher, perhaps, had disciples, fell out somehow with the political and/or religious authorities and was executed while still a relatively young man. He left no authentic writings. None of the writings about him are strictly contemporary. The first "Gospels" that tell the story of his life and teachings were written a number of years after he was dead. There is great debate about which, if any, of the words attributed to him in these Gospels he may have actually spoken. It does not take too long living in the "Historical Jesus Club" to get a certain sense of futility about the whole thing – simply that it will likely never be possible to really "know" the historical Jesus.

What then am I to do with Jesus?

First, we must admit that the adoption of a non-theistic view knocks "Jesus" down a number of rungs on the ladder of religious exaltation. I cannot afirm the conception of the God who homo factus est. The bodily resurrection "on the third day" or "after three days" seems a piece of religious fantasy as does the cosmological ascension into the divine sphere over the dome of the sky, the ability to suspend the laws of physics in making nature miracles, the predicted return on the "clouds of heaven," and I could go on for a long time. I think that I can safely agree that Jesus was a human person. Whatever he may really have said, the "experience" of Jesus continued after his physical death as a "spiritual reality" for people who have done extraordinary things. It has been a reality that has led many to accept self-destruction rather than deny their allegiance to a dead individual. The religion about him has been the dominant religion of the post-classical western world and is a central mover of our entire post-classical history. He is a figure at the center of great art and music. Countless volumes have been written about him. Even today, people remain fascinated with him in both intellectual and experiental ways.

Clearly, this is "one important dude" that we need to get to terms with, even if we are not trying to claim, in some sense, to be "Christian" in a religious outlook. I can no more dismiss Jesus from a religious perspective than I can ignore Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, Lao Zi, and others. I must admit, though, that I have a hard time deciding where Jesus goes in the Christian non-theist camp. If I want to accept him as a great teacher, then naturally I would want to study his teachings. Uh-oh, just what were his teachings? If I am to revere him as "Master" then for what reason am I to adopt this posture of submission?

In a non-theistic Christianity, I would suspect that we could have some common ground with Buddhism. Buddhists too have spent quite a bit of time on a similar who/what and was/is the Buddha question. The basic story/facts of his existence seem to be reasonably well-known, but is is pretty clear that nothing close to the amount of words attributed to him could he have actually spoken. Just as in the many branches of Christianity, there are different formulations of his central "message" and how to practice that message in our own lives. I cannot, of course, forget Lin Chi's famous instructions, however, to his monk who reported seeing the Buddha in a vision while walking on the road. "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him!" The second, less-quoted part is, "And burn all the sutras." This would suggest that perhaps the "finding the real Buddha" is a misdirected endeavor. Maybe we can find a kinship in our "search for the real Jesus." For the moment, it might be best that we should engage a little suspension in the search for a definition. We need a little of the "Credo" in the older sense of commitment rather than assent to a formulation. It may be that we should adapt Lin Chi and say, "If you meet Jesus on the road, kill him!"

Jeffrey Shy
(Is Jesus a four-letter word?)
Mesa, Arizona

Are we there yet?

I had intended this morning to re-read as much as possible of the chapter in Karen Armstrong's book, A History of God, on the "God of the Philosophers," but rather absentmindedly, I left it on my desk in my work office, so that it was unaccesible to me. I picked up, instead, Paul Tillich's book, The Eternal Now. It is, perhaps, a testament to laziness that the price on the cover of my trade paperback version is $2.95, and I have never completely read the whole book. I suspect that, at the time I bought it, I got it because some older (and probably wiser) individual had spoken of his/her admiration for Tillich, and I was just imitating. I also suspect that, at the time, I was rather still immersed, as it were, in the theistic God, and Tillich's gentle despair and quiet hope did not quite so much appeal to me at the time.

As I struggle with the philosophical discussion of "God" and religion and Christianity, I am always holding in the opposite hand the "practical" side of things. By this, I do not necessarily mean a "faith and works" dichotomy such that this opposite hand is that of "ethical action" like some sort of divinely inspired social work. That certainly is included, but it is more than that. Once again, it is the direct "experience" of "God." "the spirit," "the numinous," "the holy,"---call it what you will. Furthermore, it is the fundamental question of "Is there a religious experience, or it is all just delusional?" There is, of course, a deep paradox at the very center of this. How can I experience something that "is not?" If "God" or "the numinous" does not exist, then how can I experience it?

But before I fall into the silence that seems to descend every time we encounter one of these "Christian Koans," maybe I should go back to Tillich for a second. It was in thinking about "experiential" religion, that I was drawn to read his sermon "Spiritual Presence." First, his definition:

For Spirit is first of all power, the power that drives the human spirit above itself towards what it cannot attain by itself, the love that is greater than all other gifts, the truth in which the depth of being opens itself to us, the holy that is the manifestation of the presence of the ultimate.

Tillich then introduces a discussant who objects to his "definition" of Spirit:

...What I hear from you sounds like ecstasy; and I want to stay sober. It sounds like mystery, and I try to illuminate what is dark. It sounds like self-sacrifice and I want to fulfill my human possibilities.

Tillich goes on to admit that "Spiritual power" does all of these things (i.e. provoke ecstasy, invoke mystery, inspire self-sacrifice), but it does a great deal more as well. In a long series of examples, he goes on to credit this "spiritual" power as the motivator/mover/ground of all sorts of ways in which humans exceed their lowest or most base or self-serving motives. (Dare I suggest the term "transcendence" for this?) I'll give a few examples (with lots of omissions):

The Spirit can work in you with a soft but insistent voice, telling you that your life is empty and meaningless, but that there are chances of a new life waiting before the door of your inner self....The Spirit can work in you, awakening the desire to strive towards the sublime against the profanity of the average day. The Spirit can reveal to you that you have hurt somebody deeply, but it also can give you the right word that reunites him with you...The Spirit can make you love...someone you profoundly dislike or in whom you have no interest..

For Tillich, this Spiritual power or presence is always there, in, around, under, through all that is. "Mostly it is moving air, always present, not always noticed." It is a good experiential "argument" of rather the "movement" requires a "mover" and inasmuch as these "movements" are not always particularly the "low road" then a "higher mover" than ourselves may be reasponsible for them. It is that "something" that makes us try to be "more" than selfish, and it is that "something" that makes us feel badly when we ignore it and act in a self-serving way to the harm of others.

After this, however, his sermon takes a fascinating turn. It is the "Spiritual Presence" that is the reason for our experience of the "absent God." Tillich again:

It is the work of the Spirit that removes God from our sight, not only for some men, but sometimes for many in a particular period. We live in an era in which the God we know is the absent God. But in knowing God as the absent God, we know of Him; we feel His absence as the empty space that is left by something or someone that once belonged to us and has now vanished from our view....when our awareness of Him has become shallow, habitual--not warm and not cold--when He has become too familiar to be exciting....then He becomes the absent God. The Spirit has not ceased to be present. The Spiritual Presence can never end. But the Spirit of God hides God from our sight. ..the Spirit shows us nothing except the absent God, and the empty space...

I must give him credit for what is a pretty good argument against religious authority that seeks to defend "the deposit of faith" like it was some sort of celestial financial grant that has to be invested very cautiously always making sure that the "principal" is not put at risk. Here Tillich makes the "Spirit of God" that which is responsible for the "absence of God." Put again, it is God himself who snuffs out God. If God is the "ultimate authority" (for those who think like that), then it is hard to argue with him when his Spirit says that he does not exist. (Oh no, another "Christian Koan.")

Tillich concludes his sermon with a cautionary note, as it were, about the "works of the spirit." In trying to answer what this spirtual life is like, he first proposes and then rejects many "traditional" answers. We could say, traditionally for example, that the works of the Spirit are "Faith" or "Hope" or "Love."

But if I used such words, the shadow of the absent God would appear and make you and me aware that we cannot speak like this today. If we did, freedom would be distorted into willfulness, faith into belief in the absurd, hope into unreal expectations, and love--the word I would most like to use for the creation of the Spirit--into sentimental feeling. The Spirit must give us new words, or revitalize old words to express true life. We must wait for them; we must pray for them; we cannot force them.

Impatience makes me want these words now. It is rather like the old car trip joke where the kids keep asking, "Are we there yet?" And, make no mistake (did I just use President Bush's favorite phrase?---gads), I want, perhaps desire to get there. In the meantime, however, I must be careful not to forget to enjoy the view on the way.

Jeffrey Shy
"I'm not there yet"
Mesa, Arizona

Shall we turn out the light?

I pulled out a book this morning that I had read (and have re-read) many times, A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. In the short time every day I have for my blogging, I clearly cannot make it through the whole of her 400 plus page volume (minus notes, suggested reading, index, etc.) I decided to page back to the final chapter, "Does God have a future?" which honestly might be a good title for this blog. In that final chapter, she takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of many contemporary theologies of the last century. Read quickly, it sets one's head spinning very fast.
I decided to go instead to the index and do a little browsing after looking up references to the via negativa school of theology and philosophy. Without making any presuppositions about the nature of "God," the via negativa tries to put into words something of a more-than and at the same time, less-than, approach to the numinous than traditional theism. It does not, of course, take very long to see that non-theism is not really a novelty, even in the Christian West, which has tended to emphasize a more concrete/rational approach to religion than many others. I found it captivating to read her summary of the theological method of Erigena. Her discussion is so good, that I hope that I am not doing wrong by inserting an extended quote:

Erigena used the dialectical method...in his own discussion of God, who could only be explained by a paradox that reminded us of the limitations of our human understanding. Both the positive and the negative approaches to God were valid. God is incomprehensible: even the angels do not know or understand his essential nature, but is is acceptable to make a positive statement, such as "God is wise," because when we refer it to God, we know that we are not using the word "wise" in the usual way. We remind ourselves of this by going on to make a negative statement, saying "God is not wise." The paradox forces us to move on to Denys's (Denys the Areopagite sometimes referred to as pseudo-Denys) third way of talking about God, when we conclude: "God is more than wise." This was what the Greeks called an apophatic statement, because we do not understand what "more than wise" can possibly mean. Again, this was not simply a verbal trick but a discipline (emphasis added) that by juxtaposing two mutally exclusive statements helps us to cultivate a sense of the mystery that our word "God" represents, since it can never be confined to a merely human concept.

She goes on to illustrate how Erigena used this same "discipline" in the examination of the statement "God exists." You can work it out yourself, of course. This leads to "God does not exist" and then "God is more than existence." Finally, this is, of course, incomprehensible since we cannot really understand something that is "more than existence." This means that God is not a being. In fact, God is "nothing."

The employment of the "via negativa" or the paradox is not unique to Christianity. Any of us who have encountered the "Koan" for example of Zen can understand that the use of paradox is, if you will, a "discipline" that allows us to perhaps escape in a limited sense our use of language in talking about the numinous. This is, of course, a paradox again in that if we admit that we cannot use language to talk about God, we have just done that. It is the logical partner of "This statement is false."

I think that, as we introduce ideas for "consideration" to help us live an answer to the "Does God have a future?" question, we should always have in our minds this essential paradox. To the extent that we do not negate each/every positive statement about "what God is" we are simply bringing back a "God-being" in a new disguise. For every "light" that we turn on, we must acknowledge the shadows that we are to create.

Perhaps again, a little silence to be the "negative answer" to speech?

Don't worry, I'll turn out the light.

Jeffrey Shy
(sittin' in the dark)
Mesa, Arizona

Now let's not get emotional!

As I wander through the logical mazes of a non-theistic theology, I keep running into those pesky "emotions." As in previous postings, I know that emotions are powerful things. They are a lot of the unreasoned "reason" behind what we do, think and say. It is, perhaps, an emotional state that got us into the "theistic mess" in the first place--our anxiety over the "big" questions of life/death/existence was a powerful motivator for creating the theistic God who could help relieve some of that anxiety. It makes me, therefore, a bit nervous to allow emotions back into the picture.

What I am skirting, and I suppose I should just "out with it," is the problem of the "religious experience." The question is this, simply put: Can there be an "experience" of/with a non-theistic God? Can I experience a "God" who is not? In my "religous practice," meaning things such as "prayer" "meditation" "worship" "service," there always seemed to be a "something" that I "got out" of these experiences. During a very difficult time in my life when I was alone in Washington, DC and coming to terms with my hasty decision to join the Army to pay for my medical eduction and realizing that I was going to have to "pay the price" of my indentured servitude, it was literally my daily prayer/meditation with my Book of Common Prayer that kept me emotionally together. Even in a less distressing setting, I would often drag myself to church on Sunday mornings drained and tired and wanting to rest/relax/escape and then find myself re-inspired and refreshed after participating in the Sunday liturgy. So I ask the question, was this just patching up my anxieties with the "everlasting arms" delusion? Was it just an "endorphin rush" that left me with a sort of "post coital" calm and high? Or was there some other quality to this experience that I simply cannot put into words. Is it possible that, even though I was mistaken in conceptualizing it as a theistic God entity, there was some "reality," a "more" or a "numinous" or an "other" that I could "touch" so to speak?

As I have read more of John Shelby Spong's books, I note that he seems to return repeatedly to the fact that so many persons have shared with him their "faith stories" or "journeys" and that this has been an important part of his growth and his development away from the theistic God. Perhaps what we really need is for more of those of us who are or are becoming "non-theists" to come out of the closet and share not only our ideas, but our experiences and stories - perhaps a kind of "Kinsey Report" for religion, I suppose. We are really lacking in any strong tradition that we can consult of others who have "experienced" a non-theistic Christianity, although there are, I think, some writings of Christian mystics that might be useful. I speculate that this will really be one of the most difficult parts about being on the edge of a new way of thinking or believing. We have no idea how this will all "come out" in the end (or on the way for that matter) for us.

As Dennis concluded in his comments on my last post---What to do, what to do, what to do? (Add some emphasis on the "do" part, I think.)

Jeffrey Shy
(Do be Do be Do be Do)
Mesa, Arizona

What's in a Name?

Dennis (in a recent comment on this blog) said...
"I'm not sure that there is an answer out there that we may now name God..."

Like many profound thoughts, it often takes a little bit of reflection to see just how profound they are, and I thank Dennis for his contribution. In debate or discussion or any form of communication, there is only meaningful exchange if we agree on the meaning of the words/terms that we use. At the outset, we must first "define our terms" so to speak, before we can talk about something. To give a somewhat frivolous example, say we want to have a discussion about "cheesecakes." Discussant A understands cheescakes to be a confection that is rather "pie-like" usually created using a form of soft white cheese with other ingredients and baked in an oven. Discussant B, however, understands a cheesecake to be piece or "brick" of a cheddar-like dairy product - a "cake" of "cheese." Clearly, if A and B start to discuss "cheesecake" without first agreeing to a mutual definition, they are going to run into a great deal of trouble. They will be talking about two entirely different things, and ultimately, unless they realize the error they have made to define terms, they are going to wind up in a state of either puzzled confusion or massive disagreement.

The problem, perhaps, with even using the word "God" is that, for English-speaking Western Christians, "God" is not just a religious "term", but has come to be used as a name.This is particularly present in the phenomenon of vocal prayer where, although we may preface God with an honorific "O," we use it as a term of address. "O God, we call to you today...." is rather like "Dear Steven, I am writing to you today...." "God" is, therefore, rather the name that we give to the nameless God. We do not phrase the invocation as "In the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" but as "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." In spite of inheriting the story of the God whose "name" was unpronounceable, we could not live without a name.

We are, of course, all about giving names to things and particularly to persons. To not refer to or relate to a person by her/his name is tantamount to an insult in our culture. Witness the response that you get to "Hey, you!" Or how you can color a discussion about someone by referring to him or her as "that man" or "that woman." Our desire to "name" the numinous as "God" probably derives at least in part from our natural tendency to describe reality in terms of our human selves. We are self-conscious individuals with names---would it not be natural to conceive of the numinous in similar terms? We really should turn the first Genesis creation language on its head (pardon the gender-laden language, it's in the original):

In the beginning, man created God. In the image of man (woman), he created him (her). Male and female (at least before the feminine divinity was "deleted") they created God.

This is, of course, the essence of theism. It is so essential that even "theism" is probably a bad word for it. Although the term is already taken, "humanism" might have been a better one. It is a belief that so many people find indispensible that it passes hardly without notice. There are plenty of people who state as a prime principle of their faith that they believe in a personal God. In another context for the "born again" crowd, "I accept Jesus as my personal savior." In the deep human longings for something "other" than the surrounding reality of day-to-day life, there is, perhaps, a longing for a relationship. For humans, relationships are primarily those with "people." Even our relationships with non-human animals are conducted in similar terms where we relate to them as "people" (primarily as children for companion animals). It is natural, therefore, that we should think of "God" as a "person." It is a concept born of emotion, of longing, of loneliness, of a desire to love and be loved, to care for and be taken care of.

For this reason, discussions about "God" in impersonal, abstract, non-concrete terms often are perceived as "cold" "rationalistic" and, yes, "impersonal." These abstractions do not often speak strongly to a needy emotional self. They are, therefore, unappealing for most and do not inspire passionate response.

We must admit, however, that emotions, although they can lead persons to do extraordinarily good things, can also lead to extraordinarily terrible consequences as well. When emotions guide our actions, they can lead to ends that are incredibly constructive or incredibly destructive. For the neurologist, emotions are conceived of as coming from the most primitive parts of our brain in an evolutionary sense. They come from the "reptile" brain, we say. Indeed, there is a certain mystery to the origins of our emotions. They do not often come as a part of logical thought, but they arise unbidden from the depths often without clear reason. Witness the phenomenon of romantic "falling in love" that some have experienced as "love at first sight." It cannot come from any logical or considered conclusion about compatibility, but comes unbidden and unasked for. In a religious context, it is, probably, an error to let emotions rule the discussion, because ultimately, emotions can only be experienced, not discussed or argued in or out of existence. We need to both acknowledge our emotional selves and the value of emotion as well as to avoid letting emotion alone control us.

So what do we do with the word/name "God" then? Honestly, I am not sure. We could, I suppose, create an entirely new word with no pre-existent antecedents, "marneld" or "xtrilin" or some other "alien" sounding word. It is, however, a linguistic rarity for an entirely new word to be consciously invented and to gain general acceptance. Perhaps we need to use other "non-personal" terms that have been at the periphery of religious life such as "the numinous" or "enlightenment" or "buddha nature" or "the ground of being" or whatever. Whether one of these "alternate" terms comes to be central in non-theistic Christianity remains to be seen, but it helps, I think, to pepper them through consideration and discussion just the same. Perhaps we should use "God" only when talking in negatives (the so-called "Via Negativa") as in "God does not exist." or "God is not." Inasmuch as a "new" religious synthesis is going to have to come to terms with other faith/cultural traditions in a global world, perhaps we should simply use as many terms as possible and insist that our discussions always "begin" with an exploration of our words, their origins and their meanings. For those who have come to distrust language at all in a religious context, perhaps we should just not say anything at all....

At least for now, being out of time, I'll end with a bit of that reflective silence.

Jeffrey Shy
(Yep, that's my name, don't wear it out.)
Mesa, Arizona

And don't ask too many questions!

I was pretty brave today, and I decided to attend church this morning. It was, in the main, a pretty positive experience. I was able to greet someone who is probably the only reader of this blog other than myself. The music (if not all the paired texts) was pretty good for a summer morning without choir. I was also able to "rekindle" a few friendships that had fallen by the way. These are all pretty good in themselves, and I have been trying to promise myself to not be too critical. If there is anything that might come in a positive way from the Windsor report, then a committment to listening certainly might be the big one. I went determined to listen to any alternative viewpoints that might come my way. Even if I ultimately disagree, a viewpoint that makes me think is not all a bad thing, I suppose.

Today's lessons were for the Third Sunday after Pentecost. The first reading was one of, I believe, the rare appearances of a passage from the book of Job in the church's Sunday readings cycle. It was the "divine answer" of God speaking from the whirlwind to miserable and abused Job. It includes some dramatic imagery on the creation of the ocean and, when you read it literally, some very primitive understandings about the origins of the earth and the oceans. To sum up the substance, it is rather a "Hey, where were you when I set all this stuff up? Did you make the world? No? I didn't think so. When you make your own world, hey, then maybe we'll talk. In the mean time, shut the F--- up." As others have commented many times before, this, "answer" to Job's existential questions is far from satisfying.

On to the Psalm. This was sections of Psalm 107 that, I suspect, were mostly chosen because of some sea/ocean imagery that could tie it to the Job lesson and also the Gospel (see below). The key passage being that it describes some people who "went down to the sea in ships" "He spoke, and a stormy wind arose which tossed high the waves of the sea..." "Then they cried to the Lord..." "He stilled the storm to a whisper."

The reading from the second Epistle to the Corinthians is not precisely on topic, of course. It is the "if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation" passage.

Finally, there was the Gospel reading from Mark in which Jesus performs a nature miracle and calms the windstorm when he and his disciples are caught out on a boat in bad weather. It ends with the disciples saying, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" This is, of course, a pretty good story to tell if you want to make some claims about a superhuman Jesus.

Since the writer of the sermon is not online here to defend himself, and I did not take notes or have his text to refer to, I think it best that the place and person remain nameless. If, somehow, my reflections are a misrepresentation of today's message, then I can at least say that what I believed I heard was something that I have "heard before," and it will not hurt anyone to reflect a bit more on what I perceived as the central points. As I understood it, the essential message was what I think I might call the "superbig" theism argument. While still sticking with a theistic conception of God, the caveat added on is the, "but God is really incomprehensible, so you really can never understand him." This is followed by the immediate corollary of "so you shouldn't even try." Another authority was quoted with a comment from Anselm of Canterbury that I probably paraphrase, "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand."

I think that I can honestly say that I find the "superbig" theism argument rather unconvincing. In spite of claiming that "God" is much more than any theistic concept can make "him," the persons who espouse this conception continue, however, to speak and relate otherwise to a very much smaller and inadequate theistic entity. The God in heaven of the everlasting arms is still right there to step back in after a brief appearance of the incomprehensible immensity of the supertheistic God who bows out quickly before the discussion gets to be too difficult. In the end, it is, I think, just a way to squash any meaningful discussion. It is a fallacial argument.

If, however, we go back to Anselm, I have a little less trouble inasmuch as saying that "belief" or "faith" might be an important tool in a nontheistic approach to "God." (Again, I must use quotes so that we do not assume that by "God" I mean some superbeing in the eternal above and hearafter.) To return to Tillich for a moment from yesterday, and to continue the quote for a bit longer:

God is the answer to the question implied in man's finitude; he is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him.

He goes on to say:

Faith (insert here, perhaps Anselm's "belief" in place of "faith"), is the state of being ultimately concerned.

Although this view of God is not a "comforting" one like theism can offer, it is a more interesting and more compelling one. In this setting, "faith" and "God" are inseparable as one inevitably calls the other into existence. Here, there is not a God outside me asking me to accept his existence based on some pretty lousy evidence, but "God" becomes that which is created, as it were, by the act of faith or ultimate concern.

Here the BIG question then is "What is this ultimate concern?" or "What is there about which I am ultimately concerned?" For Tillich, we have to go back to the first proposition of "the question implied in man's finitude" or as he himself also calls it the "shock of non-being" or again, Freud's "trauma of self-consciousness." In this paradigm, "God" becomes a conditional that, probably, has to be "lived out" rather than answered and defined empirically. "God" becomes our "answer" to a life that we live in full knowledge and awareness of our own mortality. It is, for us, the "point" of what we do from the time between our births and our deaths. This is not a God that one can ask for help in difficult times. This "God" is the answer that we give by our thoughts and actions to the circumstances with which we are presented and the reality in which we live. If our responses, for example, are loving and selfless, then "God" is the essence of love and selflessness. If our responses are mean/cruel/hurtful, then "God" is the essence of meaness, cruelty and harm. To take this further, "God" in a post-theistic Christian sense, might be that unifying principle by which the faith community lives out its ideals of love, mercy, benevolence, selflessness, etc. Here "God" is not a being that calls people together and creates a community of believers, but a community of "believers" who creates a "God" that is their meaningful and considered response to the world in which they live.

Hmm, a bit circular, perhaps, but not bad. I'll have to let this "sink in" for a bit. As a conditional answer, it is a heck of a lot better, however, than the "just shut the heck up" from the big fellow in the sky.

Jeffrey Shy
"Sorry, I can't check my brain at the door, it's attached."
Mesa, Arizona