I love the Old Book. It has great poetry, eternal wisdom, important history and a grand illustration of how God loves and forgives His people.
And it has nothing to do with Christian practice today.
Jesus surplanted the Old Book. He replaced "Be fruitful and multiply" with "go make disciples." The Sermon on the Mount became His standard, not the 10 Commandments. His disciples repudiated the Levitical dietary laws. Other Levitical rules were suspended. Most prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus, and what wasn't has only confounded and divided the Church for 2000 years (more later). Stoning was changed to forgiveness. Jews and Gentiles were reconciled. Men and women were made equal. There were blessings other than the material, in fact riches were now a burden that needed to be handled with care.
Since the first century, concentration on the Old Book has been disastrous. Cults, zealotry, a heightened concern about eschatology and legalism are all fruit of applying Old Book teaching today.
I have read a proverb and psalm daily for 25 years and studied carefully the Old Book. It has riches galore.
But don't apply it to today's problems. It's Jesus' teaching that are in play there, and they are found in the New Book.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
It's all about the Book
I think Jesus, as He looks in the mind's eye of our culture, is an attractive figure. Most of what I hear from people looking at the Book is that Jesus is great, but the other characters writing stuff about and for Him change and distort His ideas.
The real problem is that we've reached a point in Western Civilization where the idea of absolute truth has been repudiated, and Christians not only affirm Absolute Truth, but they affirm that it is contained in a 2000 year old written document. How old are the oldest manuscripts? How many errors have been included through bad transcription? Why aren't all the books written about Jesus in the canon? Has anything reliable been written about Him at all? What about the other holy writings? Buddhism? The Hindus? Tao? Islam? What about the verbal traditions of animist groups?
I did not have to grapple with post modernism's commitment to the conclusion that truth was relative in 1971. Some absolutes were supported by those in Western Culture then, and the paradox of saying that it was absolutely true that there was no truth was the foundation on which Christian philosophers embarrassed modernists.
I read the Old and New Books (Testament) through the thirty hours after a bolt of Jesus lightning seared my insides. I came out of that time convinced of the authority of the New Book and the supremacy of that book over the other sacred writings I had read (all of them).
I left the Jesus House (called the Lord's House) 11 days later, wanting to follow Jesus and the things in the New Book. The 10 commandments were out; the Sermon on the Mount in. I was broke, busted, mistrusted and disowned, but the psychedelic maze was gone. I was on a different path, but I felt optimistic for the first time in a while.
The real problem is that we've reached a point in Western Civilization where the idea of absolute truth has been repudiated, and Christians not only affirm Absolute Truth, but they affirm that it is contained in a 2000 year old written document. How old are the oldest manuscripts? How many errors have been included through bad transcription? Why aren't all the books written about Jesus in the canon? Has anything reliable been written about Him at all? What about the other holy writings? Buddhism? The Hindus? Tao? Islam? What about the verbal traditions of animist groups?
I did not have to grapple with post modernism's commitment to the conclusion that truth was relative in 1971. Some absolutes were supported by those in Western Culture then, and the paradox of saying that it was absolutely true that there was no truth was the foundation on which Christian philosophers embarrassed modernists.
I read the Old and New Books (Testament) through the thirty hours after a bolt of Jesus lightning seared my insides. I came out of that time convinced of the authority of the New Book and the supremacy of that book over the other sacred writings I had read (all of them).
I left the Jesus House (called the Lord's House) 11 days later, wanting to follow Jesus and the things in the New Book. The 10 commandments were out; the Sermon on the Mount in. I was broke, busted, mistrusted and disowned, but the psychedelic maze was gone. I was on a different path, but I felt optimistic for the first time in a while.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Disingenuous
I was a card carrying freak (hippie) from 1968 to 1971. I believed in the counter-culture (in fact the concept still looks good today) and worked hard to live an open and shared life. I took drugs like Tim Leary, wandered like Jack Kerouac, had the morals of Grace Slick; spent time in jail for possession like dozens of my friends. The saddest days of my life were spent mourning the counter-culture when it nose dived after the illusion called Woodstock. I guess part of me knew it was over when I saw the first Peter Max psychedelic 7-UP ad on ABC-TV. I had held on for 2 years (I felt like a dog, as long as these years were).
The Summer of 1970, I broke every vow I had made and ripped off some items from friends' houses to pawn for cash. This was Prime Directive stuff when you're talking shared life, communal living. I staggered to a Zen Commune in Baltimore and got better. By New Year's 1971, out of the commune, I was bad shape again, lost, with no idea where I was going. The counter-culture was splitting into 50 different pieces, and I was roaming the slums of Baltimore.
I got found in a Jesus House in the heart of the deadest part of that city. Over a number of days, I found and received the Christian message and its power. I became a believer in Christ 2 years to the day after I first took LSD. They were both earth shaking experiences. I don't know if one could have happened without the other.
So, knowing this, am I disingenuous to call this blog "Almost a Christian?"
Over the past 8 years, I have come to see some things differently that I did before. My attitude about the role of women in society, abortion, homosexuality and gay marriage are different than positions taken by most believers in Jesus and the Bible. I certainly would be expelled from thousands of churches because of my views, branded a heretic by some.
After Jerry Falwell died, I asked several of my friends if they thought he was a Christian, knowing the disgrace he had brought to the name of Christ by his comments about Katrina and homosexuality. The first "Jesus hates Fags" sign I saw was at a Moral Majority rally (I was not there). You'd think Jerry could have stopped that if he had spoken to its impropriety.
Questioning Falwell's faith certainly re-inforced my heresy to many. If I am thought a heretic, why not accept that? I guess that makes me "almost a Christian" indeed. Thankfully, Jesus knows what I am.
Nothing disingenuous here
The Summer of 1970, I broke every vow I had made and ripped off some items from friends' houses to pawn for cash. This was Prime Directive stuff when you're talking shared life, communal living. I staggered to a Zen Commune in Baltimore and got better. By New Year's 1971, out of the commune, I was bad shape again, lost, with no idea where I was going. The counter-culture was splitting into 50 different pieces, and I was roaming the slums of Baltimore.
I got found in a Jesus House in the heart of the deadest part of that city. Over a number of days, I found and received the Christian message and its power. I became a believer in Christ 2 years to the day after I first took LSD. They were both earth shaking experiences. I don't know if one could have happened without the other.
So, knowing this, am I disingenuous to call this blog "Almost a Christian?"
Over the past 8 years, I have come to see some things differently that I did before. My attitude about the role of women in society, abortion, homosexuality and gay marriage are different than positions taken by most believers in Jesus and the Bible. I certainly would be expelled from thousands of churches because of my views, branded a heretic by some.
After Jerry Falwell died, I asked several of my friends if they thought he was a Christian, knowing the disgrace he had brought to the name of Christ by his comments about Katrina and homosexuality. The first "Jesus hates Fags" sign I saw was at a Moral Majority rally (I was not there). You'd think Jerry could have stopped that if he had spoken to its impropriety.
Questioning Falwell's faith certainly re-inforced my heresy to many. If I am thought a heretic, why not accept that? I guess that makes me "almost a Christian" indeed. Thankfully, Jesus knows what I am.
Nothing disingenuous here
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Epiphany
I believe in epiphanies, visions, prophetic utterances and every other reasonably sane expression of the Divine. I don't know how you can live a life of faith if faith hasn't been indelibly etched in you.I have found the Western World to be more pragmatic than principled.
I stopped being an Agnostic on January 12, 1969, when I took LSD for the first time. I saw and sensed God that night. I know about the chemical qualities of LSD and am aware of the way it impacts the brain. There is still no quieter place than the center of an LSD experience, when the world is no longer moving and everything is clear. The light that enveloped me that night was from another place and time, and I have believed in a loving, generous God since then.
A month later, I encountered the opposite, and spent weeks trying to shake off a dark, destructive spirit I ran into tripping on "purple slabs." So the imagery was set up for me - good God, Bad spirit - out there. But how do I spend time with the good one? I reached my stress toleration point after scores of LSD trips, so I couldn't do it that way.
That has proved to be my 40 year long challenge.
I stopped being an Agnostic on January 12, 1969, when I took LSD for the first time. I saw and sensed God that night. I know about the chemical qualities of LSD and am aware of the way it impacts the brain. There is still no quieter place than the center of an LSD experience, when the world is no longer moving and everything is clear. The light that enveloped me that night was from another place and time, and I have believed in a loving, generous God since then.
A month later, I encountered the opposite, and spent weeks trying to shake off a dark, destructive spirit I ran into tripping on "purple slabs." So the imagery was set up for me - good God, Bad spirit - out there. But how do I spend time with the good one? I reached my stress toleration point after scores of LSD trips, so I couldn't do it that way.
That has proved to be my 40 year long challenge.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
where have all the agnostics gone?
Come on. Sing along. (to the tune of "Where have all the flowers gone?")
Where have all the agnostics gone, long time passing,
Where have all the agnostics gone, they were here 40 years ago
Where have all the agnostics gone, become spiritual deists every one
When will they ever see, it's all about personal Deity.
Once more.
No. No. No.
We talked about God a lot when I was a teenager. I had two close friends I normally hung out with, and none of us every darkened a church door, except on Friday nights, when local churches had dances to give their teens controlled recreation. Those dances were jammed with church kids looking to experiment with anything and everything, and I often performed sexual experiments in the back seat of my car. Casual intercourse was out in 1966; everything else was in play.
I don't think Chris, Walt and I felt guilty about our lifestyle. I know I felt no guilt about Friday nights. Our ongoing discussions about the existence of God weren't fearful conversations about His ability to destroy us because of our sin, but a debate about whether God was really out there and, if He was, the extent God controlled the Universe. The God we visualized was spirit. There was no sense of personality or any possibility of a direct relationship with the God we imagined. He was more pantheistic than anything. We mocked organized religion for how it duped people, and we especially mocked the Christian faith for its fantastic claims about floods and the Red Sea, about miracles and the Virgin birth. We especially mocked the Resurrection.
We had these ideas within the shadow of our doubt. We fluctuated in our views. The days we didn't talk were days when our interest in these things was low. Our agnosticism rose out of our developing realization that we could never figure out God, if He was there at all. Our agnosticism was a surrender to our inability to prove anything about God empirically. We hoped there was a God, but were uncertain of His existence.
No one is uncertain about God today. He is chi and spirit; lightness and goodness; the prime mover and universe binder. There are fewer atheists in the United States today than in 1960. Spiritual people have a positive relationship with God, and Hallelujah, they have it on their own terms. The uncertainty we grappled with 40 years ago is much more certain now. If it's not traditional, it's metaphysical: Shamans and the Mayan gods; Atlantis and aboriginal dream time; points of convergence and the apocalyptic 2012; karma and reincarnation. Some grokked through psychedelics, other in eastern discipline, more people have experienced God than during my youth, and encounters with God are indelible and not open to evaluation by non-believers.
There is less doubt and more passion today. There is much more certainty, about all forms of spiritual activity. There's even more involvement in religion.
But I miss those days with Walt and Chris, when we talked late at night about eternity and philosophy and about whether God existed. I miss wondering and considering in every fiber of my being. It was wonderful when peoples' hearts and minds were open, and we hadn't gotten so sure about everything.
Long time ago.
Where have all the agnostics gone, long time passing,
Where have all the agnostics gone, they were here 40 years ago
Where have all the agnostics gone, become spiritual deists every one
When will they ever see, it's all about personal Deity.
Once more.
No. No. No.
We talked about God a lot when I was a teenager. I had two close friends I normally hung out with, and none of us every darkened a church door, except on Friday nights, when local churches had dances to give their teens controlled recreation. Those dances were jammed with church kids looking to experiment with anything and everything, and I often performed sexual experiments in the back seat of my car. Casual intercourse was out in 1966; everything else was in play.
I don't think Chris, Walt and I felt guilty about our lifestyle. I know I felt no guilt about Friday nights. Our ongoing discussions about the existence of God weren't fearful conversations about His ability to destroy us because of our sin, but a debate about whether God was really out there and, if He was, the extent God controlled the Universe. The God we visualized was spirit. There was no sense of personality or any possibility of a direct relationship with the God we imagined. He was more pantheistic than anything. We mocked organized religion for how it duped people, and we especially mocked the Christian faith for its fantastic claims about floods and the Red Sea, about miracles and the Virgin birth. We especially mocked the Resurrection.
We had these ideas within the shadow of our doubt. We fluctuated in our views. The days we didn't talk were days when our interest in these things was low. Our agnosticism rose out of our developing realization that we could never figure out God, if He was there at all. Our agnosticism was a surrender to our inability to prove anything about God empirically. We hoped there was a God, but were uncertain of His existence.
No one is uncertain about God today. He is chi and spirit; lightness and goodness; the prime mover and universe binder. There are fewer atheists in the United States today than in 1960. Spiritual people have a positive relationship with God, and Hallelujah, they have it on their own terms. The uncertainty we grappled with 40 years ago is much more certain now. If it's not traditional, it's metaphysical: Shamans and the Mayan gods; Atlantis and aboriginal dream time; points of convergence and the apocalyptic 2012; karma and reincarnation. Some grokked through psychedelics, other in eastern discipline, more people have experienced God than during my youth, and encounters with God are indelible and not open to evaluation by non-believers.
There is less doubt and more passion today. There is much more certainty, about all forms of spiritual activity. There's even more involvement in religion.
But I miss those days with Walt and Chris, when we talked late at night about eternity and philosophy and about whether God existed. I miss wondering and considering in every fiber of my being. It was wonderful when peoples' hearts and minds were open, and we hadn't gotten so sure about everything.
Long time ago.
Monday, July 21, 2008
rarely religious
It can be dangerous to put away your religion. Things slip away when you drown the fish and look towards something beyond the symbols of the transcendent. It's just easier wrapping your hand around the cross on your neck when things get tough. Worthless church time, however numbing and vacant of life changing power, has religious value. How people judge you without knowing you is powerful stuff. Being spiritual without having to pay that price is intoxicating. We all want "instant karma," whatever form that takes.
It's the affirmation of the Western World: "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." What's ironic is that what seems to be a spiritual activity in our culture is the most basic religious activity in another. Prayers to Allah? I like the bowing and the wailing mullah, but I have a feeling that it's rigid religion for many of those folks bending towards Mecca. It must be a hassle taking care of your hair if you're a Buddhist, and how do you keep the outfits so Orange? I especially like that ash marking on the foreheads of Hindu believers. These all seem spiritual to me, but they are probably less so for believers raised in those faiths. Even meditation and mantras can be boring and repetition, I imagine.
Which isn't to say that you can't hold these exercises in a spiritual way, focusing on divine power. Calling something spiritual cuts through all religions and religious belief systems. We find the spiritual in the shadow of the religious, hopefully somehow connected to it.
Christianity is an especially unspiritual religion, prone to religious exercise more than most. It's probably because the Apostle Paul hijacked the faith on the road to Damascus and opened the doors for the Gentiles. We Gentiles really screwed up Christianity. In came Greek thinking and Roman pragmatism and out went all contact with the Old Testament. All that by the end of the First Century. Messianic Jews were in abundance for fifty years, with their emphasis on action, immediate thinking, and a strong sense of how God had worked in the past.
But then, as Pope Benedict the umteenth noted recently, Western Civilization saw a fundamental world changing union -the marriage of Greek philosophy and Christianity. How can that marriage be good for Spirituality? You can't get transcendent with Plato or meditate on the words of Aristotle. The purity of Christianity spirituality was soiled by Greek thinking: by hyper rationalism, passivity, a need for balanced thinking and the impossibility of putting together the dynamic tension of Jesus and the New Testament. The miracles that are at the heart of the New Testament are disparaged by Greek thinking. It took a Danish theologian to begin the freeing of Christianity from Greek thinking, and existentialism has broken down much of our need to operate in strict philosophical and intellectual confines.
Unfortunately, the tipping point of Christianity is towards religion. If you want to be a spiritual Christian in the West, with an intimate, ever present relationship with a personal, living God, you have to work at it. An extraordinary Church can help; much time in prayer, meditation and spiritual writings is essential; a small group of like minded people makes a different.
But, in the end, most Western Christians end up religious, dulled by the rhythm of life. It's just what happens.
It's what I struggle with each day.
It's the affirmation of the Western World: "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." What's ironic is that what seems to be a spiritual activity in our culture is the most basic religious activity in another. Prayers to Allah? I like the bowing and the wailing mullah, but I have a feeling that it's rigid religion for many of those folks bending towards Mecca. It must be a hassle taking care of your hair if you're a Buddhist, and how do you keep the outfits so Orange? I especially like that ash marking on the foreheads of Hindu believers. These all seem spiritual to me, but they are probably less so for believers raised in those faiths. Even meditation and mantras can be boring and repetition, I imagine.
Which isn't to say that you can't hold these exercises in a spiritual way, focusing on divine power. Calling something spiritual cuts through all religions and religious belief systems. We find the spiritual in the shadow of the religious, hopefully somehow connected to it.
Christianity is an especially unspiritual religion, prone to religious exercise more than most. It's probably because the Apostle Paul hijacked the faith on the road to Damascus and opened the doors for the Gentiles. We Gentiles really screwed up Christianity. In came Greek thinking and Roman pragmatism and out went all contact with the Old Testament. All that by the end of the First Century. Messianic Jews were in abundance for fifty years, with their emphasis on action, immediate thinking, and a strong sense of how God had worked in the past.
But then, as Pope Benedict the umteenth noted recently, Western Civilization saw a fundamental world changing union -the marriage of Greek philosophy and Christianity. How can that marriage be good for Spirituality? You can't get transcendent with Plato or meditate on the words of Aristotle. The purity of Christianity spirituality was soiled by Greek thinking: by hyper rationalism, passivity, a need for balanced thinking and the impossibility of putting together the dynamic tension of Jesus and the New Testament. The miracles that are at the heart of the New Testament are disparaged by Greek thinking. It took a Danish theologian to begin the freeing of Christianity from Greek thinking, and existentialism has broken down much of our need to operate in strict philosophical and intellectual confines.
Unfortunately, the tipping point of Christianity is towards religion. If you want to be a spiritual Christian in the West, with an intimate, ever present relationship with a personal, living God, you have to work at it. An extraordinary Church can help; much time in prayer, meditation and spiritual writings is essential; a small group of like minded people makes a different.
But, in the end, most Western Christians end up religious, dulled by the rhythm of life. It's just what happens.
It's what I struggle with each day.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
drown the fish
I remember when I first considered putting a Christian symbol of my car, announcing to the world that I had come to believe that Jesus was the way, truth and life. I had never been a "bumper sticker" guy, and my only rationale to consider attaching a fish insignia was to give testimony in godless Connecticut that at least one born-again Christian lived there. Plus it was unique, looked sharp and the kids I was working with thought it was cool.
But I never put it on. I think it was during one of my "bat out of hell" rides to the Church where I was working in Stamford, CT that I realized that I either had to change my driving or be an unidentified Christian behind the wheel of a car careening wildly around town "doing God's business." I opted for careening.
I visited the Mecca of "christianized" bric-brac a couple years later, at Maranatha Village in Costa Mesa, California. Southern California was "ground zero" for the "Jesus Movement," and there were artisans who came out of the movement who wanted to incorporate their gifts with a heartfelt affection for God.
But really, most of the stuff at Maranatha Village was junk in Jesus's name. It was more about profiting from people's need for items that identified and clarified their conversion than about who and what God was. Unfortunately, fish and cute sayings and doves and even crosses are more often props to encourage faith than statements regarding its presence.
One of the unfortunate things I've learned in 38 years is that Christianity in the Western World is a surface experience producing surface results. The fish symbol, so casually displayed on every sort of household item, is an ancient Christian greeting: one person would casually draw an oblong circle in the sand; another would fill in a mirror image, creating the sign of a fish. This let each person know they had found a brother. These people were on the run, hiding out, persecuted, mocked, killed. Finding a brother was no small thing.
With that understanding of what the image of the fish has meant to historic Christianity, we might start housecleaning inappropriate uses of it by dismantling "Christian" Yellow Pages. The idea that I should do business with people on the basis of having a fish in their ad is laughable. I don't want a plumber with a fish image in his ad, that's for certain. I won't be looking for a fish in the list of brain surgeons I might need to use. In fact, if someone is selling their services on the basis of their Christianity, they are selling the wrong thing. I'm looking for a contractor. I want the best in town. If he arrives with a fish on his truck, maybe we'll have additional things to talk about, but I'll choose him on the basis of how good he is.
What I knew in Connecticut and saw at Maranatha Village and understood seeing Christian advertising efforts, is that the "real stuff" is usually not the obvious stuff. It was the religious leaders of Jesus' day who dressed and acted like men of faith. They said their prayers out loud and were all about the external signs of religious life.
Wouldn't it be good to lay all the pretense and illusions down, to drown the fish and talk honestly about Christianity and the nature of a relationship between God and man? The fish was a symbol in the sand in a more difficult time. It's battling Darwin on the back of dueling Hondas today, and that is the kind of activity that keeps a great, historic, spiritual faith unnatractive to those considering it.
But I never put it on. I think it was during one of my "bat out of hell" rides to the Church where I was working in Stamford, CT that I realized that I either had to change my driving or be an unidentified Christian behind the wheel of a car careening wildly around town "doing God's business." I opted for careening.
I visited the Mecca of "christianized" bric-brac a couple years later, at Maranatha Village in Costa Mesa, California. Southern California was "ground zero" for the "Jesus Movement," and there were artisans who came out of the movement who wanted to incorporate their gifts with a heartfelt affection for God.
But really, most of the stuff at Maranatha Village was junk in Jesus's name. It was more about profiting from people's need for items that identified and clarified their conversion than about who and what God was. Unfortunately, fish and cute sayings and doves and even crosses are more often props to encourage faith than statements regarding its presence.
One of the unfortunate things I've learned in 38 years is that Christianity in the Western World is a surface experience producing surface results. The fish symbol, so casually displayed on every sort of household item, is an ancient Christian greeting: one person would casually draw an oblong circle in the sand; another would fill in a mirror image, creating the sign of a fish. This let each person know they had found a brother. These people were on the run, hiding out, persecuted, mocked, killed. Finding a brother was no small thing.
With that understanding of what the image of the fish has meant to historic Christianity, we might start housecleaning inappropriate uses of it by dismantling "Christian" Yellow Pages. The idea that I should do business with people on the basis of having a fish in their ad is laughable. I don't want a plumber with a fish image in his ad, that's for certain. I won't be looking for a fish in the list of brain surgeons I might need to use. In fact, if someone is selling their services on the basis of their Christianity, they are selling the wrong thing. I'm looking for a contractor. I want the best in town. If he arrives with a fish on his truck, maybe we'll have additional things to talk about, but I'll choose him on the basis of how good he is.
What I knew in Connecticut and saw at Maranatha Village and understood seeing Christian advertising efforts, is that the "real stuff" is usually not the obvious stuff. It was the religious leaders of Jesus' day who dressed and acted like men of faith. They said their prayers out loud and were all about the external signs of religious life.
Wouldn't it be good to lay all the pretense and illusions down, to drown the fish and talk honestly about Christianity and the nature of a relationship between God and man? The fish was a symbol in the sand in a more difficult time. It's battling Darwin on the back of dueling Hondas today, and that is the kind of activity that keeps a great, historic, spiritual faith unnatractive to those considering it.
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