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Posts clarifying the relationship of Christian scripture and teaching to the evolution of Human Nature.

The Peace of the Grave

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In The Soul Comes First, I include Death among the forms of selfishness that the angels release onto Earth for healing. I characterize it as “which destroys utterly”, but I have realized that is unfair. It is how it appears to the rest of us, but the elements of a soul cannot be destroyed, only repurposed. No, it only appears to us that Death destroys the ones that we lose.

Death cuts a soul off from the dance of life. It enters in as a shroud around our spirit, and chokes off the links that tie us to others. We can no longer share ourselves. How is that selfish? Well, Death does not give up its victims willingly. It collects spirits, like insects in amber.

So how is Death redeemed by Love? Jesus’s resurrection proved that Love pierces the veil of death. That control allows lovers respite from the burdens of the world. They can withdraw and process the pain that they receive when healing broken hearts.

Through love, we can control the veil of death, and find peace for ourselves when we need. In love, we find ourselves always yearning to return to the dance of life with others, and so do not remain isolated.

Unless, of course, we don’t build links of love to others, and then death is a terrible and permanent isolation – which is why selfish people fear it so much.

I am astonished by parallels with the process of birth. A spirit separates from the chorus of heaven and enters into the mother’s womb to be bound to a body. The end of that process is a violent forcing out that can break the spirits of either or both participants. The spiritual cycle is almost manifested in the act of birth itself, and I believe that among a woman’s spiritual challenges is the essential intimacy of life with death.

What did this mean for the Magdalene? She was confronted with a glorious man who was committed to a confrontation with death! But his glory is a manifestation of the beauty of the spirits that choose to surround him, and what woman would not want the joy of bringing such spirits into the world? I see her almost swept away by this passion for the life of him, so he cautions her in the cemetery:

Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

He had not yet purged himself of the pain that had been forced upon him, and in clinging to him she was binding herself to that pain.

Among the Biblical commentators are those that see Mary Magdalene as the bride of Christ, but I hear in his words a caution to a woman swept up by events beyond her comprehension.

But there is another among Humanity’s pantheons who might understand, because her experience parallels that of Jesus. The Greeks tell of a goddess, Persephone, daughter of Demeter, who was given up as a bride to Hades to prevent his melancholy from consuming the world. The rest of the world found life in the sacrifice of the jewel of womanhood, foremost among Death’s treasures, whose grace fascinated his attentions. In Spring, she was released from Hades for a day, and life returned with her. If there are any among Death’s captives who deserve liberation, foremost among them is she!

Oh, Christ, bring her forth, and let her inspire us to protect nature, rather than destroying it so that we might profit! Bring us peace, not through death, but a lasting peace built upon the wisdom gained in our long struggle to master the Knowledge of Good and Evil!

Healing Dissension

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In the weary journey that has been this life, I have come to accept that we cannot end sin by trying to destroy the impulses that trigger it. That simply justifies their behavior. So Jesus counsels us [NIV Matt. 5:9]:

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

So I have sought to join the vices to love. That strategy was held out in All the Vice of Jesus. I was pretty satisfied with my progress, and had turned my thoughts from the matter until I realized that Dissension was still at work in my life.

She kept me up all last night, from 12:30 until I rose at 6:45. Competition and fear at work, the cry of “Anti-Semitism” against the reasons for Jesus’s demotion of the Law of Moses, old family history and recent family struggle: they rolled through my mind, one after another, sometimes mixing into toxic stew, and I found myself simply reiterating: “I have so much else to be concerned with! What right do you have to burden me with these trivial complaints that are your responsibilities?”

So I lost that round. I allowed dissension to separate me from those that I seek to love and inspire.

I think of dissension as “she” because I have learned that Mystery, the woman on the red beast in Rev. 17:5, uses it as a favorite tool. Whether in debasing my relationships with younger women by imposing sex or in undermining collaboration with other men, Mystery (I could name the women, but that would be counter-productive) has inserted dissension again as an obstacle to my goals.

When things got really bad at work, I found this piece of wisdom about dealing with conflict, the goal of all dissension:

Find a mutually beneficial solution.
Adapt to surroundings.
Don’t share all your secrets.
Stand up for your dreams.
Sometimes you need to move on.

It’s that last that has come to disturb me: surrender. I have found it to be an effective solution, but a consequence has been that I haven’t been able to build upon the foundations I establish at work and home. Domineering people walk off with them.

There’s another method: dissension justifies the projection of our egos. If we don’t participate, and accept that projection without responding to its harmful intent, people become enmeshed in our love. Eventually they may realize that we can do more together than we can as individuals.

But then comes Mystery again: the quiet lurker in the backwaters of our minds who gains power by picking up the gold that dissension scatters. As we learn to work together, she’s frozen out, and the volume and intensity of her projections goes up.

Is that what I’m dealing with? The last hurrah of Mystery?

That doesn’t seem satisfying. I’d like to redeem her.

So let’s consider: if dissension motivates us to assert our egos in destructive competition, perhaps with love it becomes celebration of our differences? Maybe the answer to a charge of ill intent is to insert, at the top of the list:

Celebrate your opponent’s virtues.

Church and State

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President Obama fanned the flames of controversy when, at breakfast with Muslim leaders, he remarked that Christianity had a history of injustice that should be cautionary when characterizing movements such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The specific examples he cited were the Crusades, the Inquisition and slavery in America.

How does each of these examples relate to the effort to create an Islamic State in the Middle East?

The Crusades

The Crusades were a complex political effort. The laws of inheritance in Europe meant that all the younger sons of the nobility were unlanded, and thus unable to provide for a noble wife. As a result, Europe was embroiled in internecine strife, to a degree that the Papacy at one point threatened to excommunicate the nobility if the bloodshed did not cease.

In this context, the Emperor of Constantinople, in whom leadership of both Church and State were gathered, was facing Muslim aggression. Again, the politics was complex: the Emperor was a tyrant, and faced internal dissent both from Christian “heretics” and Jews. The Emperor pled to the Rome for assistance, and Urban, seeing the possibility of reuniting the two halves of Christendom, agreed. Of course, this was also an outlet for the unlanded nobility to attain honors and wealth.

The first of the Crusades was a successful military effort, but revealed its misconceived origins. The Jews fought against the Crusaders, which led to pogroms against the “elder brothers” that Europe had accepted as representatives of their nation. The castles gained were impossible to support logistically from Europe, and ruled by the most aggressive of the European knights, men who insisted on attacking passing Muslim caravans. When the Caliph refused, on Islamic grounds, to retaliate except when the raiders were attacking, he was overthrown by Saladdin, a military slave, who began a concerted effort to conquer all of Christendom.

Back in Europe, the organizational strength of the Catholic Church led to a fascination with Christian ceremony and piety among the nobility. This reached its peak in France, where King Philip decided to mount a crusade as a proof of piety. The logistics were poorly conceived, and the mission ended in disaster. The last of the Crusades, in complete contradiction of Urban’s original intent, ended with the sack of Constantinople itself.

So the lesson I see here is: don’t mix religion and politics.

The Inquisition

The Inquisition is often spoken of as a single movement, but study reveals that the character of an “inquisition” depended upon the political context.

The worst excesses of inquisition occurred when political leaders began to challenge the organizational power of the Church. Again, this was a complex problem: the Church had benefited from the instability of the European nobility, and so had acquired huge amounts of land and wealth. They used religious authority to protect those lands. As the nobility began to establish independent systems of law and institutions of learning, the more aggressive among them focused on the practical opportunity of the weak Church military. The hypocrisy of many religious leaders also led them to question the authenticity of their claim to the lands held for Christ.

The most horrific inquisitions occurred in Spain and France. Following the Muslim invasion, the crown of Spain holed up in the Pyrenees. When the Islamic world rejected scientific thinking, advances in military technology eventually gave the king the upper hand in the struggle. Sweeping out of the mountains with the fire of religious purity, the king set out to purge Spanish civilization of Muslim collaborators. As in the Middle East, this included many Jewish nobles, who had benefited by Muslim occupation. The king forced them to Christianize their names and convert. Those that did not were stripped of their titles.

The mechanisms of this inquisition were horrific, and that was recognized by the Pope. A papal decree was issued warning the king to cease the program. The king responded with a threat to reform the church in Spain with himself as its head. Rome, for reasons among which should be considered to provide relief to those under indictment, choose to retract its decree and remain active in Spain. The king pushed his advantage by posting Borgia to Rome. The methods used by Borgia to obtain the papacy reflect more the guidance of Machiavelli than Christ.

The prior situation in France was similarly complicated. The French king was in a struggle against the independent southern nobility. The region was also distinguished by its Catharism, a schismatic sect that upheld feminine spirituality and the renunciation of worldly concerns. Rome was an active collaborator in the purge of the region, but was goaded by the murder of its legate by a rebellious noble, Raymond of Toulouse. I do remark that about this time the king invaded Rome and transferred the papacy to Avignon. Obviously, the balance of power in Europe was shifting. Most Cathars chose to convert to Catholicism: those that did not were hanged or burned at the stake.

The French and Spanish Inquisitions bracketed the Medieval Inquisition. Again, this was a complicated situation. Prosecution of heresy was performed under civil as well as Church law, and Rome often found that the proceedings were manipulated to benefit the civil authorities. In an attempt to prevent executions and to ensure that heretics received correct Christian teaching, the papacy attempted to take control of prosecution of heresy. Some assert that the mission saved thousands of lives.

So the lesson I see here is: don’t mix politics and religion.

Slavery in America


Obama made the claim that Christianity was used to “justify” slavery. While not having studied the matter deeply, I have never heard anyone claim that the slave masters looked into the Bible and found a command to subjugate the peoples of Africa to slavery. Yes, slavery was mentioned as a common practice in the Bible, but it also came with injunctions against mistreatment. Sympathy and counsel to the slave is given in a charming fashion in the story of Naaman [2 Kings 5], whose humble servants convinced their violence-prone master to accept the guidance of Elisha, and thus to receive healing.

This sense of slaves as part of the owner’s family is contradicted by the zeal and determination shown by God in freeing his people from Egypt. Though jilted by Joseph and his family, who became prominent political figures in Pharaoh’s circle, God heeds the cries of the Israelites under the foreman’s lash. Obviously, God acted in a way consistent with justice.

My sense, then, is that the Bible was used to rationalize the corrupt system of slavery in the American South by those that profited by it. They were eventually beaten down, just as Pharaoh was beaten down. Of course, racism is still strong among all the survivors of that system, but Obama did not mention racism – he spoke of slavery.

So the lesson that I see here is: don’t mix economics and religion.

The Lessons of Christ


The Republican Party likes to draw upon the authority of religion in its legislative program. This has led to some interesting policy contradictions in a party committed both the Christian action and laissez-faire economics. Indiana recently passed a law allowing the state to contract with organizations that require adherence from their employees. You would think that they would prefer those institutions to demonstrate the alignment of those precepts by succeeding against all comers in the open market, and so to be uninterested in government contracts.

To the discerning reader, the Bible gives clear testimony regarding the effects of the mixing of politics and religion. Samuel counsels against the anointing of a king, but relents in a “law of natural consequences” demonstration. While the wisdom and grace of God had guided the nation through trouble unscathed, with the creation of a monarchy, the nation was riven by internecine strife, forsook its covenant, and was eventually destroyed by the Assyrians.

With the return to Canaan, the process is repeated. Jesus finally comes along to counsel “render unto Caesar” and to demolish the authority of the law that had been perverted to make wealth a substitute for actual piety. Dashing the hopes of his Apostles, he renounces an earthly kingdom and submits to destruction at the hands of the authorities of his day. His resurrection was proof that the paternity of God promises greatness that no king can equal.

Christians should understand political systems as a temporary mechanism used to protect against exploitation. Such claims always have an aura of subjectivity: the rich man confident of his contributions to the general well-being may consider taxation to be a form of “exploitation.” Conflicting claims can only be resolved face-to-face, as happened to John McNamara in India. However, when the era of Christ’s reign occurs, the openness of Christ’s heart will make resolution of these claims immediate and obvious to those involved. That era will manifest only when we stop heeding the political philosophies of men, and trust the “still, quiet voice” that talks directly into our hearts.

So the lesson of Christ is that in the face of personal weakness, attempting to legislate justice is a fool’s errand. The Christian path is to expose corruption, and then to heal the victims, thereby disempowering those that use fear to exploit the weak.

So the lesson of Christ is: don’t mix politics and religion.

The Lessons of Islam


Following the death of Mohammed (pbuh), the Islamic Ummah went through a period of upheaval as it assumed the responsibilities of state management. Corruption was rampant. The Eleven Followers of Mohammed (pbuh) tried to restore the integrity of the Ummah, but were systematically destroyed. This is the essence of the Shia-Sunni split, with the Shias coming out on the losing end of the argument. It was the Sunni Muslims in Baghdad that mounted the era of Muslim conquest, although ultimately Islam proved to be a fig-leaf for a sequence of conquerors of diverse nationalities, including Ughurs and Turks.

In the service of celebrating the martial accomplishments of the conquerors, the state-supported Imams glorified and justified their atrocities (as can also be seen in the Bible, with the Babylonian Chronicles a re-write of the disparaging Kings). These nationalist paeans are now held by some as a higher authority than the Qur’an itself, in which Mohammed (pbuh) inveighs against violence unless under immediate attack.

In the modern era, we can see the disastrous consequences of mixing politics and religion in the extremism generated by Saudi Wahabbism and militancy throughout the world when Islamic practices are enforced by the state (as by the Taliban in Afghanistan).

So the lesson of Islam is: don’t mix politics and religion.

Wisdom from the Bully Pulpit?


I obviously find Obama’s comments to lack nuance. Religious history shows that religious states always yield to corruption. Worse, ISIS doesn’t appear to have ever been a manifestation of Mohammed’s (pbuh) moral principles. However, I would agree that nations that profess to be Christian have also failed to practice the moral principles of Christ.

As a moral imperative, I’d like the President to exhort Islamic leaders to renounce state-enforced religion. And I’d like him to remind Christians that legislation of morality has an ugly history in the Bible, not excluding the crucifixion of the man we hold as our Savior.

God granted us free will. In the exercise of that will, we will make mistakes, hurting ourselves and others. This is the path of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that we choose in Eden. The greatness of our God comes in patient forgiveness and healing.

For Christians hoping for the reign of Christ, this is not an idle matter. Jesus died for our sins, but his compassion does not stop there. A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in our eternal souls. When Jesus returns, it will be for the healing. So long as we continue to attempt to prevent sin through the coercive power of the state, his power can only be manifested against the institutions of the state.

Yes, competent administration of the state is essential, but should not be linked to manifestation of his ultimate aims, for his spirit will unite all peoples, and wash away fear with healing. Provide private support for your church and its charitable efforts among the less fortunate, and let the spread of the Holy Spirit make the state irrelevant.

Taking Up the Cross

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While Christianity is filled with joy in the certainty of Jesus’s promises, those promises are balanced with assurances that we will face suffering. In fact, suffering seems to be tendered as a condition of our Christianity, for Jesus says [NIV Matt. 16:24]

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

It’s hard to avoid the impression that if we don’t find a cross to carry, we can’t call ourselves a disciple of Christ.

Now the obvious thing about the cross is the pain involved. But if the experience of pain was a condition of grace, Jesus would have come into the world a cripple, and shown us how to overcome that deficit. And to be healed would be contrary to grace, rather than an act to be celebrated – as Jesus so joyfully did – as a demonstration of great faith.

So we should be cautious against ascribing a long illness as a cross to bear, nor a difficult relationship or financial challenges. Jesus presented us another tool to use in overcoming those difficulties: an openness to the unconditional love tendered from the divine source, and a sharing of its riches with those around us. It was a message of truth that both revealed our nature, and the grace of the relationship that God seeks to share with us.

It is this observation that leads us into an understanding of the metaphor as Jesus offered it. The cross was not just the place of suffering – it was a tool wielded by the rulers of the age to prevent Jesus from sharing his message. Those authorities achieved their position largely through fear. In the case of the Romans and Herod, it was fear through threat of violence. In the case of the Temple priests, it was fear gained through the threat of spiritual corruption.

To take up the cross, then, is to offer the world the experience of our love, and to be harmed by those who use fear to control those to whom we offer hope. It is to speak truth to power, to do it joyfully, and to make courage born of faith a demonstration of the weakness of our persecutors.

There is no place in which it is more important to do this than in our churches. Consider: the only direct assault Jesus mounted against the rulers of his age was against the money changers in the Temple – the intermediaries that profited by standing between the faithful and the healing love of God.

So do not make too much, fellow Christians, of finding that we have pain in our lives. That is not what qualifies us in the eyes of Jesus. We find certain grace as Christians only when our pain serves to overcome the institutions that stand against love: either the perfect love of God, or the love that we offer each other.

The Standard of Truth

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I first read F. Scott Peck, the psychologist and Christian philosopher, back in college. (Ouch! Was that really 1984?) The Road Less Traveled crystalized the wisdom he gained in trying to balance the scientific practices of one-on-one therapy with the creation of networks of support that enabled healing to become a practical way of living for the patient.

One of the greatest causes of psychological distress, as well as the greatest impediment to healing, was the simple confusion that “love” was something that the giver felt. Peck completely rejected this in the case of the confusing loss of ego boundaries that we know as romantic love, applying to this particular form of madness the technical term “cathecting.” That’s close enough to “catheter” that I find it almost repulsive.

Peck’s writing sent me off down a path of rational loving that is just terribly confusing to most people. I don’t expect to feel good when loving somebody until my love actually manifests itself in a way that means something to them. I know that I’ve succeeded in that process when they come and say “Thank-you for loving me.” Ultimately, that’s the only meaningful evidence of my love. I do still offer “I love you” to my intimates, because it’s a comforting token, but I know full well that it doesn’t give me any claim on them until they give me “thank-you” back.

The most awe-inspiring part of this process is the depth to which people reveal themselves, and the tenderness of the engagement. The experience is very much like the “cathecting” that Peck described: it’s a deep surrender of ego. It’s different, however, because I’m not projecting myself into them. I’m actually acting as a doorway of sorts, and on the other side of the doorway is God. In looking into them, I’m simply showing them how I accept God, and letting them use that as an example for their own acceptance.

This is the source of the confusion, particularly to women of child-bearing age. They think that they’re falling in love with me, when in fact what they’re falling in love with is the source of perfect, infinite, unconditional love that reaches out to them through me.

That divine love is the love that forgave Cain, the first son, for the murder of Abel, the second son. It is a love that knows no rules, no boundaries. It is the love that manifested itself on the cross in the ultimate act of forgiveness.

Are rules imposed upon us in this relationship? Only one: to humbly accept that our love can never be so perfect, and thus to surrender ourselves as the conduit through which that love flows to others.

Is that hard? Yes, it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. The reason is that, after we’ve all broken down our egos and learned to offer our hearts up in service to one another, we still have to figure out how to stay alive in this world long enough to make some progress in healing it. That means deciding what we’re going to do, and often it really doesn’t make a difference, in the big picture, whether we eat Chinese or Mexican take-out tonight. But if we all say “you choose”, then nothing ever happens. And if we always insist on making ourselves happy, then our partners will eventually get tired of never having their preferences honored.

The example might seem silly, but when you’ve got a two-career family, and job offers in two states, the decisions become more difficult and painful to resolve.

And so we look for rules – something hard and fast from God that will help us prioritize. In Judaism, those rules were pretty much designed for men (which I interpret as reflecting our weakness). Rules provide structure, and can be a useful spiritual tool. We simply stop investing our egos in practical matters, and move on to spiritual ones.

But the New Testament is about creating people that live outside of the rules, and Acts demonstrates Jesus’s success in that endeavor. After the healing of a cripple, the Sanhedrin throw Peter and John in jail, but eventually are forced to relent, because, as the Scripture says [NIV Acts 4:13-14]:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.

And so this brings me to the point of this message: the standard of truth, as Jesus always said, is the faith that gives you the courage to give and receive healing. Remember, Jesus never, ever said “I have healed you” – he always said “Your faith has healed you.” Divine love can reach out through us, but unless the target of that love accepts it, no benefit will come.

So believe in what heals you. Allow others to take comfort in the healing that their faith brings to them. And open your heart to each other so that the truth of your healing can be seen to all. For that is the testament that Christ begs for the world to see: not a labored adherence to rules and conditions, but a joyous revival of truth, hope and life in those that once suffered with lies, fear and death.

And you ministers: if you can’t offer the kind of healing described in Acts, please humble your egos to the ultimate authority when your congregants tell you that the rules don’t work for them. Just agree that they need to find a spiritual home elsewhere, and part without prejudicial words on either side.

And for those ministers with the courage to recognize that you have guided your congregation through experiences that have moved them beyond the need for rules: Well: “God Bless You!” and “Welcome to the Journey!”

The Indications of Atheism

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In explaining the dangers of spiritual agency to young children, I used the example of an electrical bus bar. The power of love flows through us, and if we resist it, we can get hurt. But if we let it flow through us to those that need it most, the limit to what we can transmit is the capacity of others to receive from us.

Here’s a picture of somebody struggling with that problem:

The yearning to love is not commonly understood as the desire to be filled with God. The emptiness itself is recognized by Chris Rice in “Big Enough”:

When I imagine the size of the universe
And I wonder what’s out past the edges
Then I discover inside me a space as big
And believe that I’m meant to be
Filled up with more than just questions

But he believes the answer is in direct awareness of God’s presence in our lives, rather than in surrender of ourselves as a tool through which God enters the lives of others.

Mother Theresa, the great servant of the poor, struggled with this paradox in middle age. She felt God’s presence within her for many years, but entered into spiritual aridity at the end of her life.

Why is that? It’s because as that “space as big” is filled with love, we stretch. We feel a glowing inside of us, and a tingling as that love attaches to the people that we serve. Through that connection, we are aware of the beautiful healing that divine love brings to them. There’s an incredible rightness to it.

But when that love is firmly established in us, and flowing through us at the limit of our capacity, we become habituated to its presence. We become a fount from which others drink, and are filled again so rapidly that we may not even be aware that our pool was disturbed.

A Catholic priest shared with me that he decided to take orders after a visit with a nun. When he returned years later to tell her that he had found peace in her presence, she said that she was not even aware of the interaction. Similarly, though perhaps scandalously, a young donor to Mother Theresa’s work came away from a meeting to say that she “was the sexiest woman alive.” I am certain that she had no such intention in interacting with him: he was just overwhelmed by her energy, and channeled it into the most familiar form of self-love that he knew.

I have described the progression of the traditions of Abraham as the development of discipline through the practice of law, which flowers into spiritual intermediation between God and our community. In Jesus’s time, the pool of candidates for that graduation were limited. But in the intervening centuries, a large number of people were allowed the opportunity to devote their lives to religious orders, and the contemplation of the mysteries and magic of living a life in Christ. Two of the most beautiful lives so recorded are Mother Theresa’s predecessors: St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Terese of Lisieux.

The Apostle John was an earlier exemplar of this way of living. In the Book of Revelation, he describes the progression from the other side of the process: the change in the relationship between God and the angels that Jesus claimed to be working to transform. It begins in a throne room, with God in the central seat surrounded by angels [Rev. 4:2-4]:

[T]here before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders.

As I describe in The Soul Comes First, twelve of the elders are the masculine angels that guide the tribes of Israel, and the other twelve are feminine personalities that accompany the Holy Mother when she descends to earth. When the work of Christ is done, John describes the “New Jerusalem”, with angels at twelve gates, and a tree of life bearing twelve crops of fruit. He then explains [Rev. 21:22-23]:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

And [Rev. 22:1] the tree is fed by

[T]he river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb…

Where once the presence of Unconditional Love is separated from the angels as a king on a throne, in the end it is woven into every aspect of our shared existence.

So what does the experience of the saints foretell about our experience when we surrender ourselves fully to love? Well, at some point we no longer know where we end and love starts. The reincarnated nun might say “I feel guided by compassion from within, that has no source that I can discern.” Or the reincarnated monk might react to fear and hatred in those that profess faith by saying “Yours is not a god that I would choose.”

The best thing that a person of faith can do to bring such a person to awareness of the ultimate source of love is not to upbraid them for reflecting the standards of Christ back upon us. Rather, it would be to engage them in solving the biggest problems that humanity has to solve, and then to let them rediscover (in this life) the magic of Christ’s presence when those problems begin to overwhelm them.

You see, a profession of faith is only to say “I have God within me.” What Christ wants, however, is for us to seed the entire world with him.

Is this a model for all atheists? No, there are those atheists that seek only to destroy Christ and his works. But there are a good number of them – in my experience a majority – that seem honestly to feel that Christians aren’t upholding the ideals expounded by Jesus of Nazareth. We should not take their witness as an attack, but as an exhortation to do better.

What is Important About Church?

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I have been in a lot of churches, and many pastors raise the alarm that they work in communities that are turning away from God. Often this is accompanied by a call to evangelism: the members of the congregation must go out into the world to bring those outside in.

An element that distinguishes churches are the strategies they pursue as they turn outwards. Some do charitable works, some trumpet the knowledge of the Bible, some run Halloween and snow parties. The problem is that where the church was the only charitable institution in the ancient world, today the precepts of brotherly love are so firmly established that modern governments have institutionalized the provision of charity. During the Middle Ages, the Church ran all the educational institutions: today public schools provide a wealth of knowledge to our children, and knowledge that is more immediately useful in creating value in the material world. And for those who want to have fun, modern expectations for entertainment make Church-run events appear a little tame.

In this age, then, I would assert that the unique role of Church is to provide spiritual support to its members. This process is not entirely familiar to every minister. During a sermon on patience, one local pastor reported that God was “messing with him.” He had become trapped in traffic during a dragnet for a police shooter. The traffic seemed to just go around in circles with no escape, and his anxiety grew higher and higher. What I offered to him was that, under such circumstances, when people were all enmeshed in a common wavelength of fear, anger and/or frustration, I found that injecting the Christian experience of love, compassion and patience to be enormously effective.

In that practice, the concern for the lone individual is becoming trapped in the psychology of the immoral man, with their greed, lust and fear. Many churches have a “private club” of spiritually sophisticated individuals that work very hard to keep dirt out of their presence.

The problem throughout is that unless people are presented with the knowledge of Christian peace, they don’t know what they are missing. It’s really that peace that is important in the modern world, with the constant barrage of e-mails to read, decisions to make, people to see. It is only in that peace that the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit can be heard. Answers to many of life’s problems are easy to discover in that great gift to humanity: the Holy Spirit, repository of the knowledge of practical problem-solving through love.

I believe that it takes a community of caring to foster the experience of Christian peace. That’s not “peace” in the sense of “protection from trouble”, but the peace of Jesus on the cross: assailed by hatred from without, but above it all. In a Christian community, that strength and peace is shared among us in our time of greatest need. The connection to that peace becomes a reliable support for us as we navigate an unsympathetic world, and I have found it to be the thing that people find most remarkable about my Christianity.

So how do we share this experience with the world around us? By walking in it with our hearts open. Those that need peace most, when looking within us, cannot help but see Jesus there reaching out to them.

Any Road Will Do

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My sons’ mother is an Eastern European émigré. As she described her society prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain, the hypocrisy of communist ideology was a hidden injustice. It was not obvious as a child: the promises of the ideology are fairly concrete for children in state-paid schools and summer camp. The trouble began in college, when the theory of the ideology was transmitted. Successful students learned to regurgitate the rhetoric without being troubled with internal logic or consistency with state policy.

How, then, did the ideology serve to organize the state? Simply as a “semiotic system” used to evoke behavior. Dealing with oppositional or inconvenient people was a simple matter of threatening them with the right labels. Whether the labels were applied logically or even consistently was not a matter of great concern. In fact, everybody violated the ideology. What was critical was to avoid the ostracism or incarceration that came with the labelling.

Did Marx and Engels understand the rhetoric they invented? Almost certainly, but not as the communist leaders ultimately did. Remember that Marx laughed when asked whether Russia itself could lead the transition to communist society. He understood that the political sophistication of the Russian workers was insufficient to support communist practices. If brought back to analyze the political scene today, he would almost certainly identify Germany – the most profitable economy in the world – as the nearest to his ideals.

The inconsistency between Eastern European politics and ideology reflected, to a great degree, the impoverished practical context and political skills of the societies forced to try to implement the ideology. They had no way of visualizing the reality that Marx was trying to evoke, and so corrupted the rhetoric to serve purposes that made sense to them.

This is also evident in the rhetoric of the Christian fanatics. As a means of fueling my output here, I subscribe to a conservative Christian magazine. The editor recently sent out an e-blast linking Planned Parenthood to sex trafficking. The assertion was that traffickers brought girls in for abortions when they became pregnant, thus preserving their sexual availability. The stupidity of such a situation appeared to escape him: there are so many means of preventing conception, some of which are desirable in the sex trade to prevent the spread of STDs. Even if these are not used and pregnancy does result, bringing kidnapped girls into a center focused on reproductive health runs a terrible risk of exposure: the procedure requires a physical exam, which would be likely to reveal signs of abuse that, in the case of under-age girls, must be reported by law. And if the trafficker really cares so little about the health of their victims, legal abortions aren’t the only means of ending an unwanted pregnancy.

But the writer wasn’t concerned with logic or plausibility. The bald assertion at the beginning of his diatribe justified his rant: life begins at conception. I have previously refuted this statement, making it clear that only a mother knows the moment when a spirit enters her womb. But once made, the assertion justifies the labelling of Planned Parenthood for the purposes of its destruction. Because Planned Parenthood brings an essential social good – providing for the reproductive health of women – those that oppose it have been able to demand enormous resources from those that subscribe to their attempts to destroy it.

All this because, as in Eastern Europe, the process of bringing life into the world is not understood.

In the New Testament itself, we see the Apostles struggling with this gap between ideology and rhetoric. Sometimes this appears in the disjointed nature of the exposition. Consider this apparent non sequitor:

The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the household has been called Beelzebul, now much more the members of his household!

Taken on the face, this appears to be a rather dour assessment of the human condition, suggesting the prospect of an irreversible decline into depravity begun with the expulsion from Eden. Collecting such statements out of context, the atheist builds a powerful case for rejecting Christian practice. That people such as the editor above align their theology with the axiom is a great assistance to the atheist.

Why does the statement appear so disjointed in the original telling? Because the Apostles did not know where they were heading. Matthew records the statement in the chronology of events, but it is only in the demonstrations reported in Acts that the statement makes sense:

  • First, Jesus was sending the Apostles out into the world to assume his role as a healer and teacher. They were frightened, and his statement is an admonishment that unless they liberate themselves from the mindset of the student and slave, they will never accomplish the work that love required of them.
  • Secondly, the statement is an indictment of the authority of human religious leaders. The require dependency in their followers. The Apostles were conditioned by their culture to believe that they needed teachers and masters to survive. Those relationships must be set aside if the followers were to grow into the strength Jesus was offering them.
  • Finally, Jesus was identifying a contrast with other gods from the relationship his parables declared that the Father sought: not a relationship of dependency, but a relationship that flowered, as in Jesus, to full equality when children became adults.

In this light, the statement becomes a source of deep wisdom. That wisdom is revealed only in the context of the purpose that Jesus pursued in the world.

So let’s reassert the quest documented by the Bible: it describes the process of guiding humanity into the embrace of unconditional love. The goal is to demonstrate the felicity and power of a surrender to love.

In that context, the fear used by the editor is revealed as an incredible perversion. And the logic of the atheist is refuted.

Why elaborate this truth? Because if we don’t know where we’re going as Christians, any road will do. Evangelism can succeed only when it supports the purposes that Christ established: to join our souls to the Father’s. When it does not, it becomes incomprehensible, subject to corruption from within, and risible from without.

Worship

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The ancient Romans insisted that the rites of the gods be honored, on pain of death. The concern was rooted in practical experience of the consequences of pissing them off. Why would failure to practice the rites make so much difference to the pantheon?

A clue is found in the Greek spiritual practice that has been revived as Hellenismos. The Greeks believed that the mystical progression began with simple human heroism. It continued after the hero’s death when grateful people gathered at shrines to celebrate his (or her) accomplishments. If the personality of the hero inspired further heroic achievements, justifiably the celebrations would increase. The accumulated psychic energy would eventually make the hero a daimon. Adherents might then invoke to power of the daimon in times of need. If the daimon responded effectively, the continued outpouring of gratitude might eventually elevate the personality to Olympian stature.

So worship is important to the gods because, as suggested in The Matrix trilogy, human beings are psychic batteries of a sort. Our attention is part of a political partnership.

As cultures evolved from local to regional to continental extent, this process became politicized. The Roman emperors spoke of becoming gods in their own right. King Louis XIII of France had himself crowned “The Sun King.” The Capital dome in Washington D.C. is decorated with a mural celebrating “The Apotheosis of Washington”. And the sanctification of Ronald Reagan is evidenced by the evolution of the exhibits at his Presidential Library. Given hundreds of millions of adherents, power similar to a Hercules might be accumulated within a decade or so, where before it might have taken generations.

Cynicism about the process is evident in certain religious controversies. Despite the similarities shared by Christian and Buddhist sages, some Christian theologians complain that the avatars of compassion and loving kindness celebrated in Tantra are actually “demons”. I have some challenged in attempting to reconcile that accusation with Christian celebration of saints and angels. The characteristics of the Tantric and Saintly personalities are almost identical.

Despite all of this commonality, I am going to assert that the worship Jesus offered to the Apostles is fundamentally different. I believe that our own selfish aspirations to saintliness blind us to this understanding: we have a vested interest in subscribing to practices that increase our personal power.

For Jesus did not command us to worship. He admonished us:

You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.

If worship is to prop something up to make is stronger, then loving is not worship, for the goal of love is to bring something closer. In a kind of virtuous circle, our loving calls to us the perfect love of God. We can attempt to corrupt this love, but in doing so only succeed in driving it away. It stands just aside from us, until we relent in our harshness, and allow it to come again into service to us.

Why is love so efficacious? Because it holds power in readiness for others. It does not spray out in gaudy shows, but preserves its energies until it finds spirits calling out in genuine need.

Amy Grant renders this so beautifully in Better than a Hallelujah:

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah

The desire of Unconditional Love is not to be served, but rather to be of service.

What about the other gods? Well, in seeking after worship they are in fact seeking after love from their adherents. If that love is given conditionally, the deity is at risk of losing their elevated status. Of course, the only way to secure unconditional love is to love reciprocally, because if the deity loves conditionally, the adherent will eventually realize that they’re getting the raw end of the deal. So the most powerful gods, in their relationship with their adherents, are eventually suffused with love, and ultimately are subsumed by it.

This is the truth articulated by Paul in Colossians 1:17:

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

And should we want it any other way?

Christian Healing

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One of the consequences of guilt is the resistance that it brings to the process of healing. When we internalize the wound of guilt, we create with our minds a bastion that cannot be reached by forgiveness.

The presumption that Humanity brought sin into the world in Eden is a universal guilt – a guilt that says Humanity is unworthy of the trust that the Divine has invested in us.

And so I must quibble with the Christian teaching that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in the soul. As Jesus loved us, so his goal must have been to heal us.

As creatures given choice, however, that is only possible if we open ourselves fully to the power of that healing. “Forgiveness of sins” is only a waypoint on that journey. It is a gift that says we do not have to be worthy of healing.

We have struggled with that lesson now for 2000 years. That guilt blocks us from healing justifies the half-truths of the Pharisees – past and present. Because guilt prevents Humanity from receiving healing, the only way to manage spiritual wounds is to make rules that prevent them from happening. Rules can only be enforced by punishment, and that eventually perverts the whole purpose of the exercise, as we wound the souls of those that do not have the strength to resist their selfish impulses.

This is the truth: he comes again when we give up control over others, and invest ourselves with the faith that the Divine power of Love can heal all. He comes for the healing.