Bumps in the Road of Faith, Part 5 – Theobabble

The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation has always been a difficult doctrine to explain. It says that Jesus was fully God and fully human. Right off the bat we can see that this is some kind of new math. It took over three hundred years for a definition of Incarnation to be worked out by Church Councils, the definitive one coming from the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E.

But when you stop and think about it, those ecclesiastical formulations are so foreign to what we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Jesus never claimed to be God. He actually never said that he himself was divine. Jesus did speak of having a close relationship with God. He called God “Abba,” which is equivalent to “Daddy.” In the more mystical gospel—the Gospel of John—he said “the Father and I are one” (not, “the Father and I are the same”). By speaking of such deep unity with God he was not speaking of identity with God. He prayed to God; one does not pray to oneself.

It is clear in the gospels that Jesus was a man who was seized by the Spirit of God, which is not the same as being God. Of course there is the Prologue to John’s Gospel which asserts that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh.” These are not purported to be words of Jesus himself; rather, they are the gospel writer’s theological reflection about Jesus. And still, even here, we do not read, “Jesus was God.”

The concept of The Word (the Logos) had both Jewish and Greek meanings. The term ‘Logos’ carries the freight of the Wisdom tradition in Jewish thought and a broader Greek philosophical category of rationality. Logos can equate with Wisdom and Reason and Rational Mind and Meaning and Universal Order. To say that the Logos was God and that the Logos became flesh can certainly be understood metaphorically.

It was back in the late 1970s that John Hick wrote the book The Myth of God Incarnate. After reading that book I came away with the suspicion that he was right—that any talk of Jesus as the incarnation of God had to be metaphorical. The fact is that much religious language is metaphorical.

The Bible is full of figures of speech—similes, poetic language, parables, symbolism, visual images (similar to cartoons), and so on. Literal language has no moral advantage over non-literal language. In fact, metaphorical language actually has a spiritual advantage over non-metaphorical because it is metaphor that is able to draw on deeper, more profound and mysterious meanings.

To say that the incarnation of Jesus is a metaphor makes much more sense to me than to assert that it is a literal fact. All of the theobabble over how Jesus could be 100% God and 100% human at the same time is nice attempt to define the mysterious, but me thinks it suffereth from an illogical logos.

Jesus was a man. A human being. An inspired person. A prophet. A Spirited man. But not God. “The Logos became flesh and lived among us” can certainly mean that the very Purpose of God was lived out through a human being. It can simply be saying that the love of God was embodied in the life of Jesus. That makes sense, with no need for theobabble.

The very fact that Jesus never claimed to God should count for something in our theological portrayal of Jesus. It’s like looking for a needle in the hay stack of New Testament verses to find any hint from Paul or any other writer that Jesus was actually God in the flesh.

Perhaps Jesus understood himself as the Messiah (Christ, Chosen One), but never as God Himself. To be ‘God’s Son’ was not to be God, but to be God’s representative on earth. To be the ‘Son of Man’—a term Jesus did use—was not to be God, but to be a heavenly messenger from God (or the ‘Human One’). None of the titles associated with Jesus mean ‘God.’

John’s Gospel is different. It is more mystical or metaphorical. In that gospel Jesus identified himself with the great ‘I Am’—that is, Yahweh. But again, he never said, “I am the I Am.” And the assertion of his pre-existence is part of the metaphorical embodiment of the Logos.

I like the theology of Incarnation. It affirms all that is flesh and earthy and material and sexual. If God became a human being, then humanness has been affirmed and sanctified. Thus speaks Incarnational theology. But without a literal Incarnation we still have Genesis one: everything that God made was ‘good.’ That’s enough for me. Incarnational theology might be seen as a metaphorical affirmation of Genesis one.

The argument that God had to become what we are in order to save us begs the question. Who says? It’s an interesting thought, but not necessarily true. If God can create by the speaking of a word, then God can redeem by the speaking of a word; there is no need to literally enflesh the word.

Well, I’ve been speaking the ‘insider’ language here. Let me step outside the ecclesial walls. Here is how I would describe the situation… There was a Jewish man named Jesus. People experienced in him a liberating power and insight into the spiritual dimension of life. The religious structure felt threatened by his liberal views and his large following. They plotted with local officials to do away with him. The Roman government also saw a brewing potential for revolution and finally executed him.

He was a good man; a spiritual man; he planted the seeds of revolution. He stirred up hope in peoples’ hearts. After his death they kept meeting together to keep his movement going. They symbolized his ongoing presence in spirit by eating the Passover/Liberation bread in his memory. They spread the ‘good news’ of the Spiritual Presence and the revolutionary purposes of God throughout the Roman empire. It caught on. It crystallized. The organic became the organized. It lost something, but also kept something of the essence. It continues today.

All because of a man named Jesus, who was part of the Jewish religion, a religion that held seeds of insight into the spiritual nature of our world. The Jewish tradition called for justice; it taught individual responsibility and collective accountability. It had a sense of the dignity of all human beings, the goodness of all creation, and the absoluteness of freedom. Jesus became the prism through which the richness of the Jewish tradition shined with splendor.

The fact that Jesus was not God does not take away from either Jesus or God. It does not diminish the power or love of God. It does not thwart the salvific reality of grace.

Perhaps we could say that Jesus was the Metaphor of God. The statement, “The Word became flesh” is a poetic way of saying that the human being named Jesus embodied the dream of God for the world.

In a pluralistic world where we see goodness and grace in people of all religions and in folk with no religion we no longer have to defend our religion as superior to others. The point is not whose religion is the true one or the best. Nor is the point to defend ‘truth’ against error. The point is to follow Jesus and be as welcoming as he was, allowing all people a place at the table. It’s about our common humanity and God’s common gift to all. Using my tradition’s symbolism I would say that when Jesus stretched out his arms on the cross, he hugged the whole world and took in everyone, not as ‘Christians,’ but as children of God. Jesus wasn’t a Christian. He was a Jew; a man; a person; and perhaps a unique Metaphor.

In the beginning was the Mind of God. The Mind of God was with God; and the Mind of God was God. That same attitude/mind we saw in a person—Jesus. He was not only a figure of history; he was a figure of speech—the Word of God in history. Yet, the still, small voice is everywhere.

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I Found My Temper

The other day I lost my temper.
I yelled at some people.
My frustration level had risen
to the boiling point.

I'm usually I pretty calm person.
I don't get mad easily.
But I'm human,
and humans get angry.

The last time I actually yelled
at people
out of anger
was several years ago
when I told off a church committee.
I was also depressed when that happened.

I know better.
I understand that in virtually
every case,
we create our own anger;
we can't blame it on
someone else,
or on circumstances.

As I reflect back on my experience
a few days ago,
I see that I had allowed my self-talk
to become irrational.

I was saying to myself, "Those people
must not act that way... This ought
not to happen... Those children
should not be acting like that."

I was 'shoulding' on myself.
I was 'musterbating.'
I was 'oughting' myself to death.

But I wasn't aware.
So, my irrational thoughts
led to the creation of anger.
And I expressed my anger
in an excessive manner.

It was the lack of awareness
on my part
that allowed my self-talk
to argue the case
for becoming angry.

Awareness takes practice.
I was distracted by TV,
by listening to too much
angry political stuff,
by putting on blinders,
and by selfishness.

By the middles of the next day
I had found the temper
that I lost the day before.
Temper/ance is a good virtue.
The Stoics preached a tempering
attitude toward life.
St. Paul called temperance
a characteristic a person has
when living in the Spirit.
It comes easier for some people
than others.

I'm glad I found what was lost.
It was lost, but now it is found.
I was blinded by irrational beliefs,
but now I see what happened.
Now I am aware.

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Bumps in the Road of Faith, Part 4 – Wings

  
 

Let me remind the reader that I am describing my own journey of faith. This is how it has happened for me. I am not asking anyone else to accept my conclusions of viewpoint. If this doesn’t work for you, ignore it. This is my testimony.

The resurrection of Jesus is at the core of the Christian faith. Paul makes it clear in the letter to the Corinthians: “If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is futile.”

Over the years I have been indoctrinated to accept the literal, physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus. I have studied a zillion scholarly articles and read numerous books showing the overwhelming historical and textual evidence for the resurrection as a literal, historical event. But the further along I got on my faith journey the more I had nagging questions in my mind about the nature of the resurrection. I knew there was some kind of ‘resurrection’ that took place because the Church exists. There is a theological axiom: The Church did not create the resurrection; the resurrection created the Church. I still believe that. The question for me became: But what kind of resurrection?

I have changed my mind about the nature of the resurrection of Jesus. Three questions came to my mind which have ended up changing my understanding.

THE FIRST QUESTION WAS: Why didn’t Jesus appear to any non-believers? If you read the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the four gospels you will notice that Jesus appears only to disciples. Even Paul’s statements at the beginning of 1^st Corinthians 15 about multiple appearances mention only believers. In other words, the Biblical writers did not assert that the resurrected Jesus appeared to anyone except the believing community. That is an explicit ‘inside-the-group’ assertion, which leads me to believe that such an assertion isn’t making an objective, historical statement. If Jesus appeared after his death to many people who did not believe, we would have some record of it. That would give us an objective, historical testimony. But the only testimony we have is from those who write the advertisements for the believing community. I concluded that the Church did not want to assert a public, historical happening; but something more like a subjective or in-house assertion.

THE SECOND QUESTION WAS: Why did Jesus disappear? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the resurrected Lord to stay on earth and show himself all over the planet if God really wanted everyone to believe?

The gospel stories of Jesus dying, rising, appearing, then ascending to heaven to ‘sit on the right hand of God’ (which is why God can’t do much about wars, hurricanes, etc – Jesus is sitting on his hand! [  ): ]) is a neat, convenient plot. Someone rightly asks the Church, “So, where is this resurrected Jesus?” And the Church says, “Oh, he went away for awhile; but he’ll be back some day.” Really? How convenient. (The wizard is behind the curtain.) It all sounds a little too neat.

Since becoming a grandfather I have read a lot of children’s stories; and I have enjoyed hearing my granddaughter use her vivid imagination to make up stories. And I have been reminded of how easy it is to make a story come out any way you want it to. When I step back from the whole ecclesial structure and look at the resurrection story objective as I can, it seems like a ‘convenient truth.’ Where is the evidence—where is the body? Where is Christ today? Oh, he’s gone away for awhile. How convenient. I concluded that the so-called ‘bodily resurrection’ begs the question is there is no body.

THE THIRD QUESTION WAS: Where are the angels? I was rereading Matthew Fox’s book, The Cosmic Christ where the author makes the point that the gospel story is set within a cosmic mythological framework. I was already well aware of various cosmological symbols used frequently in Scripture, such as clouds, darkness, deep waters, fire, stars, etc. But in regard to the resurrection an important clue was right in front of my nose all this time: angels.

The appearance of angels in a Biblical story is a mythopoeic prop. That is, angels are part of the cosmic and mythology of ancient tales. Where angels appear, you know that a story is being set within a mythological framework.

In all four gospels angels show up on Easter morning at the tomb. This tells us how these stories should be read; namely, as mythic visions of hope. The appearance of angels indicates that the author is writing in a genre not meant to be taken literally.

Popular culture thrives on stories about angels. It feels good to think you and I each have our guardian angel looking over our shoulders. But I’ve never seen an angel. No one I know has. When angels appear we are in fantasy land.

So, I concluded: The nature of the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus has to be put in the category of non-literal religious literature. That doesn’t mean that it has no meaning! Let’s be clear on this point. Poetry, parable and myth function to tell the truth just as much as historical reporting. In fact, myth, parable and poetry can tell us more about reality that straight historical reportage can.

CONCLUSION

The gospel stories of the resurrection of Jesus and other New Testament statements about that ‘event’ are statements about something real, but not historical. There was something about the man Jesus—what he taught and what he embodied—that cannot die. It was validated through the spiritual experiences of his followers. They were willing to die for this life-giving truth. When they wrote about the truth of Jesus they packaged their stories and writings in an acceptable first-century genre.

The New Testament scholar Marcus Borg has written that we should understand the resurrection stories as parables. After all, Jesus loved parables. He used that genre all the time as a way of teaching truth. Let me repeat: Jesus used non-historical, non-literal literary forms to teach truth. Would not his followers do the same? It would be a very Christ-like thing to do.

There is salvific power in the resurrection stories about Jesus. Those stories tell us something about the universe and the power behind the universe; they tell us something important about life and the world we live in. They attest to the Sacred, with its power of renewal and liberation. Love is stronger than hate; life is stronger than death; hope reigns.

I believe that there is a power in the world that gives hope and meaning to our lives. Call it ‘God’ if you wish. Call it the Divine; call it the Sacred; call it Life; call it the Spirit; call it the Light; call it Love. Whatever you call it, I believe in it.

The spiritual experience of the apostles and disciples was real. They used a literary form available to them to spin stories and catechize. The life-giving power of Being is part of our experience. It is beyond scientific proof. It is part of who and what we are. Our eyes cannot see our own eyes—only reflections or images. There is something so fundamental to life that we can’t see it. But we experience it. The resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth is a parable about this reality.

There was a man named Jesus. He was a Jewish rabbi. He got into trouble with the authorities. They executed him. But his spirit lives on. It is a transforming spirit. The Jesus Movement gathered around his truth and his life. They carried it forward. And inevitably, they institutionalized it. The institutional church stills carries the spark of that truth, but so often it gets smothered in hierarchy and self-righteousness.

That spark—the living spirit of Jesus—is not held captive by the Church. It can be discovered in other world religions, in philosophical traditions, and in humanistic movements. The spirit of Jesus is the spirit of peace, the spirit of justice, the spirit of compassion. The meaning of the Easter stories in the Bible is not found in some creedal statement or ecclesiastical pronouncement. It is found in our experiences of liberation and joy.

I believe there is something that is eternal. My reinterpretation of the gospels sees in Jesus of Nazareth a window into the infinite love that empowers the universe. When the man Jesus died, that infinite power of love did not. For me, that is the meaning of Easter. The stories of resurrection and ascension are parables that expose the truth about the eternal, spiritual nature of our existence. And at the center of it all is love.

I no longer believe in Santa Claus as I once did when I was a child. But I still believe in the spirit of giving and the magic of anticipation. I do not believe that there really are angels. But I do believe in the angelic songs of Christmas that announce peace in the world if we really want it.

At Easter the Church shouts, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!” Yes, indeed he is.

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Bumps in the Road of Faith, Part 3 -- Naked

Remember Hans Christian Andersen's story called "The Emperor's New Clothes"? If you are like me you might have forgotten the plot. Here is a very brief synopsis:


The story is about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"


I grew up in the evangelical tradition of the church. Southern Baptist, to be precise. Our church believed that you had to be 'born again' in order to be saved. I was taught that the world is divided into the Saved and the Lost. Those who were saved had been transformed by their new birth and lived differently than those who were unsaved.


As I grew older I began to question this doctrinal position. As I met and got to know people from other traditions, especially non-Christian traditions, and even those who had no religious belief, I found myself questioning more strongly the whole evangelical theory. You could certainly read the Bible and come away with the evangelical theology of salvation. But it didn't seem to be true to life. 


Somewhere along the way of my faith journey I knew in my heart that the Emperor had no clothes on. The naked truth could not be dismissed. The so-called saved and lost were basically indistinguishable. In fact, many of the 'unsaved' people I knew were more like Christ than many of the 'saved' were. 


Unfortunately the evangelical branch of the Church has trivialized the words of Jesus about being 'born again' (literally, being born 'from above'). There is such a thing as a spiritual birth. There are new beginnings. There are experiences of awakening to the world in brand new way, as if coming into the world for the first time. There is the expansion of one's consciousness that brings an awareness that we are not simply born into a small family or group, but into the family of humanity: we belong to the global household; or even broader--we are part of the whole organic universe; we are related to flowers and trees and bees and bats.


The 'us' and 'them' mentality that all fundamentalist religions preach is a narrow understanding of religion in general, and of the Biblical message in particular. No doubt you can find many passages in the Bible that assert a narrow viewpoint; the Bible is a diverse book. But you also find the broader, more inclusive viewpoint there too. And in the end the inclusive vision wins out.


Jesus sat down at table with 'bad' people, and the religious leaders criticized him. They were stuck in a separatist religious mode. What got Rabbi Jesus in trouble was his transcendence of the us-them paradigm. He understood his tradition that said, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One." Jesus lived in the Oneness of God and the oneness of all people. He spit on the split and healed the brokenness. In doing so, he ended up as the broken bread offered to all.


There are no Saved and Lost. There are only the Loved. That's what true spirituality is all about: giving and receiving love. Jesus is my guru. He guides me in my journey of faith. He leads me to also learn from Buddha and the Tao and Socrates and Nietzsche. 


There are many good, loving Christian people who identify themselves as 'born again.' But the vision they sit under is detrimental to all living things. We have to repent and give up the restricting doctrine of a divided humanity. Jesus and the Biblical message still make sense when read through the lens of inclusiveness. In fact, it makes more sense. The word 'evangelical' means having good news. But I've got the best news. Jesus saves by revealing our oneness with the God who is One. Hallelujah!

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Bumps in the Road of Faith, Part 2 -- Herman

Everyone who goes to seminary is taught the discipline of hermeneutics--the art of interpretation. The way people interpret the Bible has always fascinated me. Why does one person understand a passage one way, and another person comes out with a totally different understanding? 

Over the years I've studied hermeneutics quite a bit. The Reformed Tradition that I have been part of has laid down specific principles of interpreting Scripture. But Presbyterians can't agree on the interpretation of certain texts in the Bible. All Baptists don't agree. All Methodists have disagreements. Not to mention Protestants and Catholics, etc.

Of course almost every pastor says that he/she is asking the Holy Spirit to guide their understanding of the Bible. So, here is pastor A asking the Spirit to show him the meaning of a particular passage. And here is pastor B asking the same Spirit to guide her in her study of the same passage. And they come out with different interpretations. If I assume that both pastors are genuinely honest about wanting the truth and are sincerely asking the Holy Spirit for illumination, how am I to explain the different results?

One day many years ago a heretical thought dawned on me. Either the Holy Spirit is a trickster, or the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with it. 

I came to the conclusion that our Christian claims of being directly illuminated by God cannot be literally true. Assuming our sincerity and our openness to God, the only other conclusion would have to be that the Holy Spirit is not reliable.

It feels good to believe that God is actually giving us inside information. But it ain't so. No one has a direct line to God. We are simply fallible and biased human beings trying our darnedest to make sense out of the texts that we have received from our tradition. There is no inerrant Bible; and there is no inerrant interpretation of the Bible. We claim too much if we continue to believe in a magical illumination of Scripture. 

There certainly are important hermeneutical principles to follow when studying the Bible, such as: allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture; looking at the immediate and wider context of a passage; using the collective wisdom of a particular tradition and the broader Christian tradition; being aware of our own biases; situating a passage within its historical and cultural context; recognizing literary forms and genres; etc. But after all is said and done, we can only give it our best shot, then admit that we are bound to get it wrong some of the time. 

My advice is this: always mistrust a preacher or teacher of the Bible who seems absolutely sure that he/she is right. John Calvin said that there are three important characteristics of a good theologian: humility, humility, and humility. Unfortunately, old John didn't follow his own advice.

There is one thing I am fairly certain of: a person of faith cannot be too certain.

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Bumps in the Road of Faith, Part 1 -- The Weather

My journey of faith took a turn when I began to ponder the weather. I thought about people in certain parts of the world where there was famine--not enough rain to grow food. Then I saw on the weather map that downpours had flooded other parts of the world. 

I wondered...If God is truly up there and watching everything, and if he is really concerned about people, especially those who are starving because of lack of rain, why doesn't he shift some of the moisture over to their part of the world where they need it? The whole notion of God's Providence (that he provides for our needs) is a central doctrine of Christian Theism. But it began to look less and less credible to me. Obviously the weather patterns were not directly distributed by God in a merciful way. Something didn't add up. 

The weather man (or woman) could show me what was actually happening. The preacher could only theorize about the providential God behind everything. In my mind, the weather person won out.

My faith journey took a turn. I could no longer believe in the traditional doctrine of God's Providence. I had to begin to think about God is a different way.

Christmas Memo

All the uproar about the 'war on Christmas' has missed the historical reality. The Puritans outlawed Christmas Day celebrations! Our American ancestors didn't celebrate Christmas as we do.

It wasn't until the early 1800s that Christmas became accepted as a day to take off work and celebrate. In fact, Alabama was the first State to make it a legal holiday, and that was in 1836. It was Ulysses S. Grant who, as President, declared Christmas a federal holiday in 1870 (the same year that the Catholic Church at Vatican I declared the Pope to be infallible).

The folks on Fox News said that Americans have always celebrated Christmas and made public displays of it. Not so. Unhistorical. Hysterical. It is consumerism that drives Christmas these days. 

I'm beginning to think that people who call themselves Christians should stop celebrating Christmas in December and choose another time of the year to celebrate the birth of Rabbi Jesus in order to remain unentangled by the merchandizing frenzy.

It's enough to make Jesus puke.