Home » Religion (Page 24)

Category Archives: Religion

In God’s Hands

Posted on by | 2 Comments

My book signing on Saturday started off slowly. The venue is a wonderful place to browse, though. (If you live in the Thousand Oaks area, please stop by and check out The Open Book in the Oaks Mall.) So, to avoid filling the air up with anxiety, I tried to find the second part of The Tales of Genji (alas – they had sold the collection of vintage books that I had pulled it from), and ended up perusing a collection of 19th century horror stories.

Being clever people, the staff had set my table up in front of the New Age and religious inspiration section. I had a few chances to say “hello” to those that stopped to browse the blog posts I had reprinted or look at the book covers. The reactions weren’t always encouraging: one man simply scowled and went around to the New Age section. Another woman engaged me with a hostile tone of voice, asserting “Love works because people make it work.”

This was beginning to feel like my first book signing, when I spent most of the day dealing with the baggage brought by people who had found reasons to stop believing. Feeling a little food coma along with the disappointment, I stepped out to buy myself a coffee. When I came back up from the lower floor, I found the scowler with a new book, sitting in an armchair across from the store. I smiled and remarked “Well, you found something!”

A little uncertainly, he said that his brother had survived a near-death experience, and while he wasn’t quite sure about the whole business, he wanted to investigate. As we discussed religion and spirituality, I learned that he had been raised Christian, but was an atheist. Without prompting on my part, he explained that he suffered from a form of spinal arthritis. For most of his life, he had prayed to God for relief, and never received an answer. Then he had found a doctor who took interest in his case, and received treatment that made life bearable.

I couldn’t preach in the face of this testimony. There is nothing more difficult to bear than suffering that has been laid in the hands of God. But I did offer that God works through people, and that I was glad that his doctor had shown the compassion to take interest in his case. Then, hoping that somehow he’d find his way back to the source of Divine Love, I encouraged him to continue to study spirituality.

We parted amicably, and I went back into the store. When I reached the table, all of his loss and pain came pouring down on me. All I can do in those situations is try to breath, and let it settle through me into the floor. It passed in two great waves, and then I looked back into the doorway. He was staring at me, and I lowered my gaze to the floor. When I looked back up, he was gone.

For those in similar situations: don’t keep your eyes turned up to heaven. Yes, leave your suffering in God’s hands, but understand that, as Paul experienced in Damascus, his response is often to allow a compassionate person the opportunity to receive your gratitude. That is the great gift that the meek offer to those that bring them respite. Don’t deny it to the world!

How Christ Tranforms Evil

Posted on by | Leave a comment

In “Christ is Risen”, Matt Maher encapsulates the message offered by so many celebrants at Easter:

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling over death by death!
Come awake! Come awake!
Come and rise up from the grave!

Oh, death, where is your sting?
Oh, Hell, where is your victory?

It is a message of conquest.

But those that have survived a near-death experience tell us that as they drifted into the light, they saw all their loved ones reaching out to call them forward, and behind them shone the loving embrace of Christ.

Jesus did not conquer death: he entered into our greatest fear and transformed it into a conduit through which love is brought to us.

Understanding that conflict justifies evil, I have been negotiating with sin for the last fifteen years, offering the exhortation that love will not destroy it, but bring it into greatness. In that process, I have been assaulted psychologically, night and day, by people that exercise sin to gain power over others. The struggle has been exhausting.

This morning, I find myself in a different place. I turned the problem around: rather than resisting them, I envisioned the light of Christ shining through me, then through them and onto those that they oppress. The closer they press against me, the closer they come to the light, and the more brightly it shines from them.

Maher begins his song with this exhortation:

Let no one caught in sin remain
Inside the lie of inward shame.
We fix our eyes upon the cross
And run to him who showed great love.

Those that rely upon sin for power run in the other direction, of course, and build their castles to wall out the light of Christ. Death is their final tool – the means by which they weed out those that insist upon loving. Every Christian that keeps his eyes upon the cross defeats that strategy: they make death the means by which Christ enters into the darkness, bypassing all the walls of the citadel.

How does Christ protect his faithful? Because even thinking about bringing harm to a true servant of Christ calls him closer. Those that would sin against the faithful must flee their ramparts into the wilderness.

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus offered this counsel:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 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.
[NIV Matt. 5:38-39]

And for those strong enough, even more:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of heaven.
[NIV Matt. 5:43-45]

What I see now is: it is the miracle of the cross that guarantees the efficacy of this conduct! Death was not vanquished, it is the very tool by which we redeem one another!

Speak Your Truth in Love

Posted on by | 3 Comments

But remember – it is your truth, not God’s.

And remember that, as love creates peace and joy, speaking from love is always without anger and fear, and creates neither anger nor fear in the listener.

Rather, as love heals the wounds of sin, always speak words of hope, and have faith that the hearer, in loving themselves and you, will reveal their truth in turn.

And if their truth is that a different love guides them to a deeper hope, have faith that God makes a home great enough for all of our truths.

Robbing Peter to Play Paul

Posted on by | 4 Comments

In an era in which the Law of Moses had been corrupted as political tyranny and religious hypocrisy, Jesus would not have been expected to write a Gospel. Scripture is offered to us as a method to open ourselves to the love of God, but words change meaning over the course of time, and eventually the weight of our cultural prejudice stands as a barrier against the Divine Presence. As Jesus experienced, even worse can occur when the meanings are manipulated intentionally.

It was in recognition of this outcome that God proclaimed through Jeremiah [NIV 33:34]:

I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.

Jesus was the implementation of this promise. The proof was not in his words, which are always ambiguous, but in his actions.

In The Soul Comes First, I explain Jesus’s promise that his generation will see the fulfillment of his prophesy: On the cross, Jesus was unbound from time, and worked his way through the future until his will for Humanity is manifested. Then he returned in the glory of his realm to return to the Father. In that process, Jesus had no need for words – it was through his flesh itself that the work was done.

But, for those stuck in the flow of mortal time, how were those moments to be bridged? That requires propagation of the message of salvation. The original Apostles, fishermen and tax collectors, simple men of Galilee, had limited reach for this purpose – but they had direct experience of Christ, and had been humbled by their lack of faith. This is reflected in the kindly advice of Peter, in his second letter [NIV 2 Peter 1:5-9]:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is a message of personal redemption through direct relation with Christ.

How was such a message to spread in the face of a culture of tyranny and hypocrisy? Long and slow it would have been. So this is where Saul of Tarsus comes in. Roman citizen and temple persecutor of the Christians, like Moses, Saul understood the mindset of the ruling classes, and the processes that would avail to bring him into direct dialog with them. As a Temple priest, he also understood institutional practices. Reborn into faith as Paul, this apostle was a traveling consultant to Christian communities in formation. As a philosopher, Paul also provided the early Christians with a framework for understanding the events that had transpired in the Holy Land, including clear statements regarding the implications with respect to past teachings.

Obviously, these are incredibly powerful works, and a source of rich guidance for pastors trying to manage diverse congregations and reconcile Old and New Testaments. In many non-denominational congregations, I find that Paul’s writings are preached more often than the parables of Jesus. Paul is clear and direct, while the parables of Jesus often leave me wondering “WTF?” (until I work out that Jesus wove in three meanings for three different audiences).

But is the voice of Paul the voice of Christ?

I would argue “only mostly.” Paul has a terribly serious defect: his religious roots rest in a framework dominated by sin, and his personal redemption occurred as a result of his sin against Christianity as a whole. Paul carries a guilty past around with him, and so his theology is dominated by a concern for forgiveness, and the miracle of redemption.

Peter, on the other hand, offers this promise [NIV 2 Peter 3:8-9]:

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

I much prefer the simplicity and directness of this promise. It is echoed in Paul’s writings, but as Peter says [NIV 2 Peter 3:16]:

His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Sometimes less is more. I’d lay aside the rules offered in Paul’s letters, and focus on the progression defined by Peter. Leaving much to be discovered, it is harder work, but comes from one who learned most painfully from a more immediate experience of Christ.

You-Say-I-Am

Posted on by | Leave a comment

In the last week of his life on Earth, Jesus brought his verbal sparring match to Jerusalem, where was gathered the authorities of his age. Welcomed enthusiastically by crowds expecting him to transform their political and religious reality, Jesus instead proclaims the kingdom of heaven and his impending destruction.

Sensing weakness, the temple priests swoop in for the kill. Perhaps advised by spies that Jesus had been proclaimed the Son of God, and certainly with the evidence of his tirade in the temple, they summon him to pose the question directly: Is he the Messiah, the “King of the Jews?” However, if they thought that Jesus was on the ropes intellectually, they were mistaken. For in answer to their questions, and the questions of Pilate and Herod, he simply answers “You say I am.”

The Gospels give us no punctuation for this statement, and so it is generally read passively, without emotion. But we cannot imagine Jesus without emotion in this moment, not given the throes of passion just evidenced in the Garden of Gethsemane. There must have been something there, besides simple resignation.

So what would the emotion have been? That of the man pleading “Father, take this cup away from me!” – a petulant “You say I am.” That is to observe “Would you face the consequences of that admission? Then why do you expect me to say it?”

No, Jesus was a man of greater heart than that. Perhaps, then, it was “You say I am!” The proof of the statement was in their actions, this desperate attempt to preempt the rallying of the people to him after his non-violent provocations against their authority. If they did nothing, he would indeed become king, a king brought to authority by God, rather than by human methods.

Or was it a prophetic proclamation? As David had proclaimed his suffering twenty generations before, was Jesus merely observing to Pilate, “You say I am!” The ultimate authority of Rome, the Emperor himself, will one day proclaim Christ the Lord!

But there is another thread, the thread that starts with Israel being told “I am that I am”, and continuing with the challenge to Peter “Who do you say I am?” It is the prompting of God through the ages that beseeches us to trust our hearts – to hear the still, quiet voice that Samuel counseled the Israelites to rely upon over the institutions of men. It is a voice of hope, still hoping against hope that the pain and suffering could be avoided. Not just the endurance of the cross, but all the religious wars, the starving children, the women demonized and abused for sexual gratification, and the wasted words of political dispute when only compassion can light the road to justice.

It is the hope of rejoining human institutions to the divine purpose.

It is to encourage:

You! Say I am!

Are we prepared to do that now? Not just if he came down in glory – but if he came as he did before, a man with all the frailties of flesh. Would he be recognized? And if not, why would he return?

Only to die again?

Gatekeepers and Prophets

Posted on by | Leave a comment

When I was in my twenties, I was a steadfast contributor to H.A.L.T. (Help Abolish Legal Tyranny). The organizers recognized that the legal industry was positioning itself as a funnel through which all ethical questions had to be resolved, and that a predatory core was using client-attorney privilege to hide criminal activity taken on the behalf of their patrons. The most disgusting examples occurred at the turn of the millennium, where CEOs (involved in financial scandals) and presidents (Bush and the absurd doctrine of the “Unitary Executive”) alike stated that “Well, I did what I did because my attorney advised me that it was legal”, and the attorneys protected their briefs behind “client-attorney privilege.”

The scales were always unbalanced in H.A.L.T.’s struggle, and as it wore on, the founder became more and more strident in his diatribes. I eventually sent him a letter advising that he take care of himself, and plan to pass the baton to the next generation.

I see something similar happening to Mikey Weinstein at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. There is a core cabal in the military that attempts to force Christian practices and declarations upon their subordinates. They have also sent death threats to Weinstein’s home.

Obviously, this as contrary to Christian principles. But Mikey’s recent tirades against Air Force sentries offering “Have a blessed day” give me concern that a simple expression of personal good will is being attacked as though it was a tool of repression. Weinstein is trying to control personal behavior, and beginning to come across as not too different than the people he opposes.

While I wish that I could do more to help you, I see the problem this way, Mr. Weinstein:

Love does not force things to comply. It helps them to manifest their greatness. That was the experience of the Apostles under the tutelage of Christ.

Yes, Jesus would not force anyone to pray – he would confront them with a problem too big for them to solve, and then give them the strength to solve it.

And for the base commanders:

Asking “What Would Jesus Do” is one thing – acting as though you are Jesus when you don’t have the powers of Christ is quite another. Force is something used by people that imagine Jesus with their own limitations. It is simple hubris to suppose “Well, if Jesus had my limitations, what would he do?”, and then to force other people to live accordingly.

No, Jesus would not force anyone to pray – he would confront them with a problem too big for them to solve, and then give them the strength to solve it.

Healing is a Messy Process

Posted on by | Leave a comment

I was heading to San Francisco Airport to catch a flight out to Washington D.C., and was glad that I had left early. Traffic down the 580 to the 238 was an absolute disaster. I could feel the tension and frustration in the air as traffic crawled forward. I put out the thought that we should try to give that energy to the emergency crew working to clear the accident. When I finally reached the scene, they were just loading the victim – a motorcyclist who had gone under a car at high speed – into the ambulance. I could feel his spirit swirling in the air, terrified of the prospect of re-entering the broken body. Firmly, I projected, “It’s time to put yourself back together.”

“Why,” we might ask ourselves, “why does God let things like this happen?” All the wasted time, the pain and frustration: can’t he do any better than that?

I can’t give a answer that is going to bring consolation. The only answer I have is of the “that’s just the way that things are” kind. Unconditional Love, which is the foundation of God, does not judge. Why? Because if it judged, it would justify the use of force, which would give authority to destructive spirits.

So what can Unconditional Love do? It can echo the “yes” of things that feel joy. It can enter into productive and healing relationships and support them with its presence. Jesus put it this way [NIV Matt. 18:20]:

For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Not with one alone, but in even the smallest group.

Simply, Unconditional Love supports things that work for us together, but it’s up to us to find those things. It doesn’t prescribe for us – it doesn’t want us to kneel and pray if that doesn’t work for us. It doesn’t want us to bear lashes if that doesn’t satisfy our sense of justice. But neither will it deny the martyr the grace of surrendering life to prove to the tormentors that love is stronger than fear, and thus to infect them with love.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Really, because their light is needed in the darkness. Yes, it’s painful, but if in those moments more of us took the attitude

Dear God, help me to shine brightly so that the captives can see freedom, and those that persecute me can see that their abuse only serves to liberate my spirit into knowledge of you.

Well, things might go a little bit faster. No, we won’t avoid pain, but we will have the security of knowing that our suffering has a purpose, just as did the suffering of Jesus. No, not every tormentor will chose healing, but when the light becomes bright enough, they will be forced to flee.

Forgiveness of WHAT?

Posted on by | Leave a comment

With the exception of Jesus’s ministry, the Bible really doesn’t quote God very much. It’s pretty obvious from Jesus’s example, however, that God doesn’t ask us to do anything that He wouldn’t do himself.

So what are we to infer from Jesus’s exhortation [Matt. 5:43-45]:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

There’s a lot of really angry preaching against Satan in church, and after making this connection, I began to suggest that maybe we should think about Satan as the patient, not the enemy. People were pretty upset with me.

But Jesus came for the forgiveness of sin, didn’t he? We tend to think of that as our sin, but that follows a long progression. Think on what God tells Cain after his sacrifice is rejected [Gen. 4:7]:

If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.

Now the Hebrews eventually developed a lot of legal machinery to aid them in keeping sin away, but by Jesus’s time, it was pretty clear how that works out: the law was suborned by the monarchs and priests, and used to destroy him.

Maybe the only way to defeat sin is to declare unilateral peace, to forgive its transgression until its force has been spent against the power of the love that shines through us from God?

Into the Garden

Posted on by | Leave a comment

On the weekend of my 45th birthday, I woke at 2 AM and drove from Livermore to Yosemite. The summer sight-seers were still in their beds when I parked at the Swinging Bridge. As I neared the far bank of the Merced River, I spied a circle of sunlight among the redwoods. A feeling of joy came to me, like unto an encounter with a long-lost friend. I stepped into the circle and raised my arms to the sky, and felt the whole valley singing with happiness.

I don’t know if I can ever convey what it is like to enter fully into Christ. In the official biography of Pope John Paul II, there’s a picture of him sitting on the stage in Manila, alone amidst a throng of tens of thousands. His forehead is pressed into his palm. When I saw the picture, I felt the weight of their sorrows pressing against him in that moment.

To be in Christ is to feel all the anguish of a world that suffers from our inattention. It is to shoulder the burdens shirked by those that have the power to make a difference. As Jesus says [NIV Matt. 11:28-30]:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

This is the paradox: those that seek power seek this same freedom – freedom from fear, freedom from weariness, freedom for sorrow. And yet they seek it in material things, when only Christ can grant them that freedom, and even then only when they accept the burdens that love lays upon them. So they are forced to choose between their desire for freedom and the love of Christ, and most choose freedom.

Fundamentally, it was this contradiction that brought Jesus to the cross.

When I thought on this last night, lying awake in the dark after Mystery had once again tried to corrupt me, I remembered that moment in Yosemite, and I thought of Gethsemane, were Jesus testified [NIV Mark 14:34]:

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

Where did that sorrow come from? Well, from the Garden itself, acknowledging the man that brought words of peace and healing into its midst, celebrating the hope that maybe finally mankind would stop warring against Nature, and grieving the knowledge that the impending response was his destruction.

God, how I miss the gardens of the world – the trees and scrub, the birds, foxes and deer. I have walked the hills here in Southern California as they dry up and burn, and my heart can hardly bear it any longer. Please, God, send me someplace where the garden and I can delight again in one another.

Sinning Through Love’s Eyes

Posted on by | Leave a comment

As Easter approaches, celebrants all around the world will extol the virtues of God’s sacrifice on the cross. While I accept the praise, I tend to cringe at the rationale.

The rationale is also offensive to critics of Christian theology. What kind of logic is to be found in the proposition of an all-loving God that creates fallible creatures that are punished eternally for their weakness? That is cruel and arbitrary to the core.

I’d like to offer another analogy: think of evil as a cell in the body. If we performed surgery to remove that cell, how many other cells would be destroyed in the process? Is it fair that those cells should suffer and die so that the single cell can be removed?

That is the problem facing God. Yes, s/he could do the surgery and destroy evil. But in the process innocent creatures would be harmed.

In human medicine, the alternative to surgery is to condition the immune system to locate and remove the malignant cell. That can take some time, but has the advantage that it establishes a memory in the immune system. Future malignancies are dealt with far more efficiently.

Humanity is the immune system. Unfortunately, we have an auto-immune disorder. It’s not something that happened in Eden, because the serpent existed before we did. No, it’s something that precedes even the creation of this reality.

So why did Jesus choose to die on the cross?

Because experience of the disease is required for diagnosis and treatment.

Because God failed to protect us from evil, and so bears responsibility for our suffering.

Because while there is no sufficient form of atonement for our suffering, to share it, at least, might inspire us to grasp the power that is tendered for our healing.

That is the beauty of the resurrection. Not even death is beyond that power, should we chose to have faith in the love that is offered to us.