Archive for the ‘Faith’ Category

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It’s Hard To Focus On the Distant Future

June 2, 2014

Much Christian preaching involves the idea of “repent and someday you’ll inherit eternal life.” One of the study groups I attend has been working its way through the book of Revelation for the past eight months. They are trying to come to grips with the “someday the world will end” interpretation of the writing.

Daniel Goleman brings a wealth of science research into his writing and makes it both informative and approachable. “Emotional Intelligence” is my guidebook to emotionally healthy growth, right along with “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” by John Climacus, and early Desert Father of the church. Goleman’s latest book, “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence”, includes a chapter discussing climate change and the trouble people have trying to be concerned about something where the results are far in the future.

It seems that our brains are wired to help us survive–but only from immediate danger. That would be the “fight or flight” response you’ve heard about. This is the most likely reason why public discussion about the climate has degenerated into polarized opinions rather than rational looks into the data.

I think some of the same brain physiology is at work in the “repent or someday you’ll go to Hell” evangelizing. That’s a someday thing that does not relate to our immediate survival.

It’s also a misreading of John, the apostle and writer. John is clear in his Gospel that eternal life comes to you the moment you believe. That moment is when we begin living in eternal life. Eternal life is not someday, it’s now.

We just acknowledge, “I was living like that, then I became aware that that life was not fruitful, so I decided to live in a different way as a follower of Jesus.”

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Is Belief Bad

May 13, 2014

Poor John Lennon. His songs are on background music at restaurants now. Last night I heard “Imagine.” Imagine there are no countries. Imagine no religions.

It was an honest emotion that Lennon acknowledged. He was in a time of wars, racial strife, hatred, religions fighting religions. Forty plus years down the road, things have not changed much.

The question is, can we really have a world where we just sit around and love each other? No other real purpose in life?

I guess many of us have moments when we wish problems would just go away and we can live quietly in peace.

The true triumph is when we can live at peace with ourselves in the midst of chaos. It is belief that holds us anchored during those times.

Few religions, if you probe deeply into the foundations, teach hatred, strife and conflict. Definitely I never was taught those values in any Christian education I’ve endured–er, experienced.

Truth is that there is evil in the world. Childlike wishing will not make it go away.

“Religion” (as I wrote yesterday) can be good or bad. But living in the Spirit and practicing “religion” in the Spirit is our foundation. That’s belief. And belief is necessary for a life that matters.

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Nothing False Here

April 18, 2014

My wife put the dish of strawberries on the table for dinner. It’s a good six weeks early for strawberries. But these looked perfect. The small firm ones that are sweet and juicy. Not the overly large ones that growers cynically think women buy because they are big not caring that there is no taste and they are hollow.

I see them all through dinner. Time for dessert. Yummm. But no! These are not those sweet, juicy ripe strawberries. I don’t know what gas they bathed these babies in to make them to appear prematurely ripe. These were not ripe. The consistency was terrible.

We are in such a rush to get what we want when we want it that we ignore the consequences of trying to outwit nature.

Jesus (OK, I’m expanding the metaphor here) kept telling his closest followers about the fullness of time and about his time being not now, or his time being now.

They didn’t understand. They thought they knew what they wanted and when they wanted it. But, they were wrong.

There cannot be anything false or misleading about the Jesus we celebrate at Easter. There are people who say even until today that the whole resurrection thing was just a huge marketing ploy. But how long does misleading marketing last? Not long. No 2,000 years.

It really was his time. His first followers would not have changed the world if were just a cynical marketing trick. He so changed their lives that they gave up theirs to spread his message.

Jesus didn’t say “Change your life so that you can follow me.” Jesus said, “Follow me and then your life will be changed.”

It worked 2,000 years ago and it works today.

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Meditations on Meditating

March 14, 2014

We are in the Christian season of Lent. As I’ve said previously, I grew up in a tradition where we did not really recognize Lent. As a kid, I knew that the Lutherans and Catholics chose something from which to abstain during Lent. I don’t even remember going to any special Ash Wednesday services.

I wonder if we practiced Advent mostly because of the commercial hype around gift giving. We had Advent calendars that marked off the days until Christmas. We had Christmas programs at church. We had Christmas programs at school (when approximately 100% of the school’s population is Christian, you could do that).

I’m meditating on Lent this year. Maybe because there is another movie out that, like the one by Mel Gibson several years ago, seems to focus on the death of Jesus. In some traditions, the “way of the Cross” is commemorated bringing to the front of mind the steps of Jesus from Pilate’s residence to the place of crucifixation.

We know the point of Christmas. It is that Jesus came into the world. For Lent, as it leads up to Good Friday and Easter there are two events. Death and resurrection. Tradition has us concentrating for 40 days (plus Sundays) on the death. We have one quick day celebrated by pastel colors and candy to remember the resurrection. And then it’s over.

Read Acts again. Read Paul’s letters. The first followers of Jesus did so because of the resurrection. That was the single most important event in our religious heritage.

Jesus said that he pointed the way to eternal life. John always uses the term in the present tense. Eternal life begins when you choose it. It also carries on to life with-God after we die–physically.

Those of us who meditate deeply understand the distinction of body and soul. We’ve experienced it.

We need a celebration to remember the resurrection all the time beginning with Easter and leading to Advent. It is our life now and our hope for the future.

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Living In The Spirit

March 11, 2014

John’s Gospel makes it very clear that what Jesus was talking about always pointed to living with the Spirit of God. When you interpret what Jesus said, you should always put your thoughts in the context of Spirit.

Philosophers and thinkers in the late 18th and the 19th Centuries discovered the lineage of spiritual writings. Much of it was from India and was Hindu and Buddhist. There are other sources, too, that pointed to meditation and the reality of the Spirit.

A German philosopher in I guess what we would call “typically German” wrote a few very long and in-depth books on how the Spirit moved through history and created history. His name was Hegel.

Another German came along at about the same time. He also wrote a huge book–Das Kapital. Marx’s thesis was that Hegel had it all wrong. It wasn’t the spirit that moved through and formed history. It was economics–money, material wealth. He said that he turned Hegel upside down.

Sometimes when we observe people, don’t we conclude that economics is indeed what drives people? We discuss politics and conclude that it’s all about the money. They’re chasing money. In business, we have people who chase money to the neglect of relationships and the spirit.

I even have run across Christians who are suspicious of people who may exhibit too much of the Spirit.

I’m reading the discourse in John where Jesus talks about eating his body and drinking his blood. Sounds pretty gross, doesn’t it. But Jesus said, in the same discourse, that it is the Spirit that gives life and that the words he spoke were in spirit and life.

We aren’t cannibals. We are participating with God in the spirit. The Spirit overcomes economics. The Spirit leads us, strengthens us and gives us life–in the present time.

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Simply Follow Jesus

March 7, 2014

It should be so simple.

Jesus just said to people, “Follow me.” He didn’t give them a test before the invitation. He didn’t ask them to be perfect–and the record shows that none were perfect.

Then he told us to go out and ask other people to follow. And, like him, teach them how to live.

Then we developed organizations. Few of the organizations started out to be large organizations. They just grew. Then they developed bureaucracies. Then people began to argue over what the organization’s rules would be. They might make a reference back to something Jesus said. They might not. But some thought one thing and others another. And they argued.

There is a church I know about that voted to disassociate from its denomination and join another. Serious issues about governance and theology.

A magazine came to my mailbox due to my position in my local church. It is from a group of people within my denomination who are arguing with other people in my denomination. They are so worked up and passionate about their cause, that they have a movement and a magazine.

My heart is tormented by all that. All the wasted passion. All the arguing. All the little games like kids in kindergarten about who’s right and who’s wrong and one trying to provoke the other. All in the name of the one who only said to follow him and invite others to follow him.

Do you realize that Jesus never invited someone who already believed in him? A couple of years into the ministry accompanied by his closest friends, he did something and “they believed.” What? How could that be? Yet, during the weekend of death and resurrection, still none understood and “believed.”

Following comes first. And we should be concerned that first we are followers and second that we help others to be followers. Why waste our time on frivolous nonsense that detracts from the goal?

“Follow me.” OK.

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Living within Relationship

March 5, 2014

“They wanted to kill him all the more because he called himself Son of God, therefore making himself equal to God.”

John uses the story of the healing to lead into an argument about who Jesus is. The religious leaders didn’t like Jesus’ attitude toward the Sabbath. This struck right at the heart of their religious system. It struck at the very existence of their profession.

John often uses a “spiral” argument where he makes a statement and then restates drawing in an example, then restates drawing another example. I doubt that Jesus had this public discourse at that time in the Temple. Most likely John took Jesus’ statements and wove them into an argument in order to convince his readers who Jesus was.

Jesus was confounding the system and the people who perpetrate it. Instead of the idea of a remote God who could only be pleased if the worshipper follows all the rules and the rules about rules, Jesus brought the concept of relationship.

I am the Son of God, says Jesus. God is my Father. Remember in other places in the Gospels, it is recorded that Jesus calls us all into the relationship. He tells us to pray to the Father. He promises that we can be sons of God. This is competely revolutionary.

What is our experience with relationships? I think that I must have been borderline autistic (if there is such a thing) as a kid. Maybe not, but maybe just that I didn’t have any example of good relationships growing up. So I still have some difficulty that way. I can get withdrawn.

But then I experienced the relationship Jesus talks about. It changed everything. When Jesus talked about eternal life, it was in the present tense. It didn’t mean someday when you die and go to heaven. He almost never talked about that. Eternal life–life in relationship with God–begins when we enter into it. This preceeds understanding. It happens, then we begin to understand.

Forget about the rules. Jesus (and Paul quite forcefully) recognized that first comes relationship. Then in living in the relationship, we just naturally do the things that God wants us to do. Maybe not perfectly, but we grow into it.

Relationship comes first; then living according to the law. Not following all the rules first and then hoping that God will like you. The Pharisees had it backwards. So do today’s Pharisees.

I’ve spent many years now learning to live in relationship. How are you doing? Think about it.

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Is Fear Ruling Your Life?

January 30, 2014

I’m on a business trip to Austin, Texas. When I checked in, the agent said that there were two rooms open. A king bed on the first floor or doubles on the second.

I said, “I don’t care. Let’s check with my friend and see what he prefers.” He said that he preferred the higher floor. So, I took the first floor. The agent said that few people want the ground floor and that almost no woman traveling alone will take the ground floor.

Either I am clueless; or, I just don’t have fear on my mind. I am neither violent nor particularly physically strong. I just “decided” a long time ago not to live in fear.

Last week I was talking with a friend at lunch at a McDonalds. He nodded over to a guy sitting down to lunch with (I presume) his wife and young daughter. He neither was in uniform or looked like a policeman. He had a large handgun in a holster on his belt. I said, “I bet he feels secure, sort of, but I’d prefer not to get caught between two people living in fear and armed.”

There is so much fear drummed into our heads through incessant media coverage of all manner of things, when the reality is that things almost never happen–especially where I live. Most of the violence we read about is drug-related. If we stay out of that culture….

Scanning the magazine rack at the local Kroger in Sidney, I counted 21 gun magazines. I used to know of about 2. Even six months ago there were not so many. (I’m in the magazine business. I stop and check out titles and covers periodically.)

Matthew and Luke both tell of the time Jesus said, “Don’t fear those who can kill the body but not the soul. Instead fear him who can cast your soul into hell.”

My trust is in The Lord.

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Spirit or Religion

January 29, 2014

The other day a thought popped into my brain–I don’t think about religion. I think about living a life in the spirit. I don’t think about religion. Ever. I like to read books by (not about) spiritual seekers of all paths. I don’t really know much about religions since my early reading. I’ve seen Hindu paintings and Buddhist art. In the West, we’re filled with Renaissance art that still fuels the popular mind with pictures of what Jesus looked like, or what Hell looks like.

Last Sunday John Ortberg and the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (California, of course) took a chance that would never fly in rural Sidney, Ohio. The message was a panel discussion conducted with respect and honor that included representatives of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, humanism and Christianity.

It was interesting. You can navigate here and find it or go to iTunes.

As a Jesus-follower, I live the words “I am the vine and you are the branches” and “I am the way.” But I’ve known so many spiritual seekers who know nothing, or very little, about Jesus, yet their spiritual quest seems little different from mine. Well, forget the humanist who denies a spiritual realm. Sorry about his luck.

Most of the people I grew up with or relate with today would say that all these people are going to hell. Heck, I grew up taught that Catholics were going to hell! I am not prepared to be that judge. To me, that’s a God thing.

It was interesting to learn that in both the Judaic and the Islamic traditions, the Scripture is more of a living document. Most Christians seem to think that revelation from God ended somewhere around 100 AD or CE. When I’m interpreting Scripture, I tend to go back to the 4th or 5th Centuries and before. But there are many people who lived in the ensuing 15 centuries with tremendous Spiritual insight whose writings are worth studying.

Anyway, blessings on the MPPC and the ability to listen to others. Listening surely beats wishing bad things on them or even trying to kill them.

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Debating Society or Living in Love

January 24, 2014

A teacher recently explained something of the difference between the Reformed view of Scripture and the Dispensationalist view. I found it interesting to learn that I was closer to the Reformed view than I’d have expected.

The Reformed strain begins with Luther, then Calvin and others of the 16th and 17th Century. The Dispensationalists (precursors of much of today’s “fundamentalists”) originated in the 19th Century.

By the way, these are Protestant strains of thought. There are other theologies alive in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I say that lest we think that we’ve discovered the one true way through some philosopher.

I’ve always found it instructive to read the earliest sources and tend to find writings that seek to explain the “secrets” of the Bible to be less than instructive.

To me, the Bible exists to show us how to live our lives in relationship with God. What would our lives look like if we did so.

I thought about this in relationship to theology and organized religion. I realized that over the course of the past 35 years or so, I’ve spent very little time thinking about religion. I used to subscribe to theology journals, but found the playing of mind games merely entertaining–not instructive.

There was a song that appeared in the mid-late 60s I think co-written by Paul Stookey of the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary (and I’ve forgotten the title), that starts “Sunday morning very bright, I read your book by colored light that came in through the pretty window picture.” It’s about a person who shows up in church at times but finds it not nourishing. In one verse, he says they passed a plate and I just had time to write note that said “I believe in You.”

Jesus said we’d know his followers by their love. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve forgotten that simple description in our quest for theological purity (of a philosophy developed 1600 or 1900 years after Jesus) or doctrinal argument or unlocking the “secrets” of the Bible.

What have we done to show love today? It’s just that simple. And that hard.

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