Bible Exploration

Well, it has been a couple of weeks since I finished my fundamentals framework. Since that time, I've been thinking about what I should tackle next. I've wavered between a few options, but I think I'm going to try to address the Bible in more depth.

I touched on the Bible in my Bible Beliefs entry, and I noted the pivotal importance that your perspective on the Bible (i.e. as either a divine product [God's very words] or as a human product reflecting the experiences and responses of two communities to God and Jesus) has on your approach to Christianity and theology. I also noted the impact that a couple of books had on my understanding of the Bible: Misquoting Jesus (by Bart Ehrman) and Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (by Marcus Borg). I am part way through two other books which continue to shed light on the Bible for me: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (by John Shelby Spong) and The Last Week (by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan). Before I finish this series of blog entries, I anticipate delving into History of the End of the World (by Jonathan Kirsch).

So I'm going to try to provide a synopsis of what I've learned in these books. Here is my outline for this endeavour:

• How the Bible became a book
• A new way of reading/seeing the Bible
• Revisiting the Creation stories
• Plowing through the Pentateuch
• New perspectives on the Prophets
• Gaining wisdom from the Wisdom books
• The evolving stories of the Gospels
• A primer on Paul's writings
• Revelations from Revelation

I must admit that this is a daunting exercise for me. I know for certain that it will take me a long time to complete this effort, and, as I start, I'm not even sure I will be able to finish. But as I felt when I started my fundamentals framework, I feel like this is the right topic to dive into next so that I can adequately explain and support my current Christian thinking.

Before I start, let me clarify that I anticipate taking very little credit for the thinking that will lie beneath the blog entries in this series - I am not a Biblical scholar by trade. I fully anticipate leaning heavily on the books I mentioned earlier, and I will attempt to give credit where I can.

I hope this series will be useful to all who encounter it. I will repeat the same three goals (1) I noted when I began my fundamentals framework, since they are equally relevant for this Bible Exploration series:

• That the blog entries will be "interesting and refreshing" to Christians and non-Christians and will help both to "grapple with points of view they might otherwise have dismissed without serious thought";
• That the blog entries' content might help "shift logjammed debates into more fruitful possibilities"; and,
• Somewhat selfishly, that the process of writing the blog entries will help me to "grow in [my] understanding of the subject matter, and enable others to do so as well".

Here we go again...

Notes:
(1) Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 1999).

Pay Dirt: Religion in the Funnies

Pay Dirt: Religion in the Funnies

Transformation: What It's All About

With this blog entry, I have reached the conclusion of my Fundamentals Framework. So in this entry, I'd like to share a few summary thoughts on what I think the core of "being a Christian" is all about and why I have chosen Christianity as my pathway to God.

(1) Christianity for me is, first and foremost, about a personal transformation - a transformation to a life that is centered in God and that is intentional about having a deepening relationship with the Sacred. The result of that personal transformation is growth in love and compassion and life that can be lived more fully.

(2) Christianity for me is also about a social transformation that should lead to experiencing the "Kingdom of God" today...that is, the way life on earth (yes on earth, not heaven) would be today if God was ruler. The result of this social transformation is a focus on justice for the poor and marginalized, an indictment of the religious and political elites and a resistence to oppressive cultural systems of unfairness and dominance.

Why have I chosen Christianity as my pathway to God? Well, for me it is what I have always known...and I am comfortable with it. It works for me in that it affirms the Sacred and experiencing the Sacred, and it shows a path of transformation along with practices and traditions that can assist with that transformation and serve as sacraments to the Sacred. For me, the way I currently see and understand Christianity makes sense to me as a path to God.

Thus far in this blog, I have tried to capture my beliefs about Christianity and, in so doing, clarify my own Christian fundamentals (for a summary see My Fundamental Beliefs - Summary). Through undertaking this endeavour, I feel more comfortable that I can avoid answering "yes" to the questions posed in Mark 8:17-18: "Do you still not perceive or understand?...Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?". Hopefully, in some small way, my ramblings have also helped others avoid answering "yes" to these questions.

POSTSCRIPT: NOT SURE WHERE TO START WITH THIS ONE 3 YEARS LATER. I AM MUCH LESS FOCUSED ON CHRISTIANITY THESE DAYS...SO IT IS STILL THE RELIGION I UNDERSTAND THE MOST, BUT NOT THE FRAME OF REFERENCE I RELATE TO ON A REGULAR BASIS AT ALL. I DON'T BELIEVE IN "RELATIONSHIP" WITH THE SACRED LIKE I MIGHT HAVE 3 YEARS AGO AND UNFORTUNATELY, THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IS SO SKEWED AT THIS POINT FROM A MAINSTREAM CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE, THAT THE IDEA OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION THROUGH THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION DOESN'T SEEM LIKELY TO ME. FOR ME, LIFE IS ABOUT LIVING IT TO THE FULLEST AND LOVING THOSE AROUND YOU TO THE HIGHEST EXTENT POSSIBLE. HOPEFULLY THAT IS THE TRANSFORMATION I WILL EVENTUALLY ACHIEVE IN MY OWN LIFE.

Routines and Thin Places

Christianity is often defined by its routines like worship, prayer, Bible reading and study, attending church, listening to sermons, baptism, and communion. What is their purpose? How do they fit into Christianity? Are they required?

To answer those questions, I'll start with a concept called "thin places". This is a concept from Celtic Christianity (a form of Christianity that flourished in Ireland and parts of Scotland, Wales and northern England beginning in the fifth century). "Thin places" are places where the visible world of our ordinary experience meets or intersects with God, the sacred, Spirit. Occasionally, we do experience God through everything else...those are "thin places".

(1) I think the core purpose of Christian routines is to help us encounter "thin places" where our hearts are opened to experience God and grow in compassion and justice.

In that context:

• Worship can be a thin place. It can create a sense of the sacred...it can move us to focus on and experience God.
• Prayer and daily disciplines/devotions can be a thin place...see my What About Prayer? blog entry for some input on this.
• Bible reading and Bible studies can be thin places...it can be sacramental (i.e. a bridge to the Sacred)...see my Bible Beliefs blog entry for further thoughts on this.
• Being part of a church/Christian community and having Christian friendships can be thin places...if they nurture and nourish you while also stretching you at the same time.
• Sermons can be thin places (in this case, I emphasize "can" be). Often they aren't, but sometimes they can be a thin place which opens our hearts to God matters.
• Baptism and communion can be thin places as we focus on God by participating in these practices.

When I say these "thin places" help us experience God, what do I mean? I guess I'd say that through these types of Christian routines, we pay attention to God, we focus on topics like compassion and justice, we can deepen our Christian identity, we can be nourished. All these are ways to experience God. It doesn't mean that you have visions or hear voices or get specific direction or a sense of a direction even. But with a view that God is "isness without limits", I think we can "experience" God through these routines, even if only as "centering" activities that allow us to focus on or think through particular issues (sometimes I think this is all they are...but other times, I think you can "sense" God through these routines). I should note that these routines are often seen as chores or requirements for a Christian. I don't see them that way any more...I see them as potential practices that can help deepen our experience of God and lead us to a life of more compassion and justice.

(2) I don't think that Christian routines are requirements, nor do I think that they are always effective - but they can help us encounter "thin places".

In his book The Heart of Christianity, I like what Marcus Borg says about Christian practices: "Christian practice is about walking with God, becoming kind and doing justice. It is not about believing in God and being a good person; it is about how one becomes a good person through the practice of loving God." (1)

POSTSCRIPT: WELL, 3 YEARS LATER, I CAN SORT OF GET MY HEAD AROUND THIS...BUT SIMILAR TO MY VIEWS ON PRAYER, I THINK THESE TYPES OF ROUTINES ARE MORE ABOUT US THEN THEY ARE ABOUT "THIN PLACES" WHERE WE WOULD "EXPERIENCE" GOD - EVEN WITH THE BROADEST DEFINITION OF "EXPERIENCE" AS I EXPRESSED ABOVE.

Notes:
(1) Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003).

What About Prayer?

“Not as in the old days I pray,
God. My life is not what it was…
Once I would have asked for healing
I go now to be doctored,
I would have knelt long, wrestling with you.
Wearing you down. Hear my prayer, Lord hear
my prayer. As though you were deaf, myriads
of mortals have kept up their shrill
cry, explaining your stillness by
their unfitness.

It begins to appear this is not what prayer is about.
It is the annihilation of differences,
the consciousness of myself in you,
of you in me; the emerging
from the adolescence of nature
into the adult geometry
of the mind…
Circular as our way
is, it leads not back to that snake haunted
garden, but onward to the tall city
of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.”

- R. S. Thomas, Twentieth-century Welsh poet

I noted in My ‘More Than’ God blog entry that I think we can interact with and experience God, but that I don’t see God as an interventionalist God – otherwise, there are too many unexplainable non-interventions for a God of love, justice and compassion that I believe God to be. Having said that, I also noted that I don’t deny that there are some paranormal and supernatural happenings which can’t be explained. I don’t know if there is some link between these events and God, but I’m content not to be able to take a position on this one way or another at this point in time.

With that as context, what about prayer? I still think prayer makes sense...although maybe not in the way I used to. I’ve come to think about prayer more as us paying attention to God. There are 3 main types of prayer: verbal, meditation and contemplation.

Verbal prayer often involves petitions and intercessions. Given that I don’t think of God as an interventionalist God, one would think that these types of prayer don’t make sense to me. On the contrary, they do. Why? I can only say that they feel ‘right’ to me. It gives me some comfort, it makes me feel like I am, in a sense, caring for (or thinking of) others. Do I think these types of prayers make any difference? Well, paranormal things do happen. I don’t understand why or how, but, given our lack of knowledge of the supernatural, I’m not certain enough to state unequivocally that prayer never has any impact. But I'm not expecting that these prayers will change the mind or will of an 'out there' God so that he intervenes in the normal course of the universe. And, more importantly, regardless of their effectiveness, I think these types of prayer still have the impact of us paying attention to God or to the concepts surrounding God.

The second type of prayer is meditation, which involves reflecting on an image or phrase or text or idea…dwelling on it. The third type of prayer is contemplation, which is the practice of internal silence…sitting silently in the presence of “isness without limits”. It often involves the silent repetition of a single word or short phrase to give the mind a focus so that the ‘self’ can sink into silence. These are sometimes referred to as 'centering prayers'. These quiet times can be powerful mechanisms to enable a person to solve problems, work through issues and fears and step across barriers. Both of these forms of prayer are more common to eastern religions but seem to be in the process of being re-discovered in western religions.

So, in summary, my thoughts on prayer are as follows:

(1) Verbal (petitionary/intercessory) prayer feels ‘right’ to me – it is part of my process of thinking of and caring for others...but I don’t have an expectation that through these prayers I will change the mind or will of an ‘out there’ God so that He intervenes in the normal course of the universe.

(2) Meditative and contemplative prayers can be powerful ‘centering’ mechanisms that allow us to ‘pay attention’ to God and focus on ‘experiencing God’. I believe these types of prayer can impact and change the pray-er, which can then help the pray-er impact and help others .

POSTSCRIPT: WOW...3 YEARS LATER, I MUST SAY MY VIEWS ON THIS HAVE CHANGED COMPLETELY. NO LONGER DOES VERBAL PRAYER FEEL "RIGHT" TO ME...THE ONLY TIME IT EVEN OCCURS TO ME NOW IS IN THE MOST AWFUL OF SITUATIONS WHEN "OLD HABITS" KICK IN. AND I DON'T THINK THE MEDITATIVE/CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYERS HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH "EXPERIENCING" GOD...THEY MAY BE USEFUL TOOLS TO CALM AND CENTRE OUR MINDS, ETC., BUT I THINK THEY ARE ALL ABOUT US, NOT ABOUT AN EXPERIENCE WITH GOD.

Pay Dirt: A Heretic's Guide to Eternity

From the Foreward to A Heretic's Guide to Eternity:

"Someone recently sent me one of those clever top-ten lists that you always see floating around the Internet. It was entitled, "Top Ten Reasons Beer is Better than Religion." My favorite five out of the top ten are:

1. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.
2. Beer has never caused a major war.
3. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged or tortured over his brand of Beer.
4. You don't have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.
5. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.

Now I'm not advertising beer, but I am advertising that we who have a sincere faith in God realize that there are a number of downsides to religion...some of which are implied by the humorous beer list. There's a grim historical track record of religious inebriation that, like drunk driving, has taken or ruined too many lives already."

Pay Dirt: Interview with Sam Harris

Courtesy of CBC.ca:

Sam Harris has been called a heretic – and a very brave man. Harris, author of The End of Faith, believes that religious tolerance is a disaster in the making – but that political correctness and fear of racism make any discussion of his idea utterly impossible. Sam Harris is ecumenical in his fear: the Christian who welcomes Armageddon as the harbinger of Jesus is just as terrifying as the Muslim who yearns for a martyr’s death to guarantee his place in paradise. Both, Harris believes, are driving a muzzled, timid society “to the abyss.” Sam Harris' latest book is Letter to a Christian Nation. It's published by Random House.

Listen to CBC's Tapestry interview with Harris here.

Pay Dirt: United Church Ad Campaign

TORONTO, Nov 7 (Reuters Life!) - The United Church of Canada hopes an ad featuring a can of whipped cream and the question, "How much fun can sex be before it's a sin?" will fill its pews as Christmas nears.

The country's biggest Protestant denomination launched an advertising campaign on Tuesday meant to provoke debate on the "deep and persistent attitudes and images of organized religion."

"In order to get past those stereotypes, we thought we needed an ad campaign that was different, had a head-snap to it, that people would have a second look," Keith Howard, executive director of the campaign, said in an interview.

The C$10.5 million ($9.3 million) campaign targets 30- to 45-year-olds and rotates six images though December issues of Canadian magazines and newspapers as well as Web sites.
One asks, "Does anyone object?" to an image of two plastic toy grooms on a wedding cake. Another features a child sitting on Jesus's knee in the traditional Santa's village of a shopping mall, and asks, "Would you still take your kids?"

"We've had a long tradition of engaging the issues and concerns of the society that we are a part of," Howard said.

The United Church of Canada has a declining active membership of about 573,000, although almost 3 million people have some sort of affiliation with the church. Between 1994 and 2004, membership dropped about 20 percent, according to church statistics.

Last month, the church issued a statement defending federal legislation that allows same-sex marriage.

Revisiting Sin, Salvation and the Afterlife

It’s interesting to me that this blog entry has been so challenging to get my head around; but when you think about it, maybe more than anything else, the concepts of sin, salvation and the afterlife are the most emphasized in fundamental Christianity. Certainly in my Christian upbringing, these concepts were central to everything. I said in one of my first blog entries that if someone had said to me in my early Christian life, that there was proof that there was no afterlife, I would have had no idea why I should be a Christian – getting saved and not sinning SO THAT you could have eternal life was what it was all about.

And a big part of what I grew up with was a guilt factor around sin and a scare factor about salvation and the afterlife. You’d go to church and the congregation would be "preached" at from the pulpit about what awful people we were (i.e. man's fallen nature); we would be asked to think about how we had sinned that past week, month, year, etc.; and we would be challenged about whether we were really saved. And if not, repent…lest you spend eternity in hell. So for me, even though my thinking has changed on a lot of topics (as evidenced in my previous blog entries), I still find it difficult to get out from under the guilt of sin and the scare factor surrounding salvation and the afterlife. So all that to say, this blog entry has been challenging to write.

Let’s start with sin. What is it? Well, most would think of it as disobedience – against God’s commandments and laws. Others would describe sin as being focused on pride or self-centeredness. Others would focus on estrangement or separation from God. Others would say it relates primarily to unfaithfulness (i.e. not loving God with all your heart, mind, etc.). Others would say that sin is not about evil and moral depravity…it is more the actions that result from the survival nature within the human life and is just a part of the reality of humanity’s wholeness (as opposed to resulting from humanity’s fallen nature).

For salvation, most would describe it as “going to heaven” because you’ve believed or done (or not done) what is necessary. As an aside, it’s interesting to me that with such an emphasis in Christianity on faith (i.e. “believe and you will be saved”) and grace (i.e. not works), that everything still seems to come down to WHAT you do (i.e. did you sin and did you get saved). Many would say this isn't the case, but, in my view, the overriding preoccupation in fundamental Christianity is on exactly this topic.

So where am I at on the three concepts of sin, salvation and afterlife topic? Well, let me start with a fourth concept - repentance. From what I’ve read, the Hebrew biblical concept of repentance is more about resolve than contrition. It is about returning “from exile”, reconnecting to God. And in the New Testament, the focus of repentance is on following “the way” of Jesus - that is, the path of transformation (see my blog entry The Way). “The Greek roots of the word combine to mean ‘go beyond the mind you have’…go beyond the mind you have been given or acquired…go beyond the mind shaped by culture to the mind that you can have in/with God. " (1)

In terms of the concept of sin, it seems to me that it is more about mankind’s separation from God (or estrangement from God or lack of centering in God) than it is about disobeying a set of “divine rules”. From the time we are infants, we naturally begin to take on a more self-centered perspective and, by doing so, become less and less centered in God and God’s character (e.g. love, compassion, justice, etc.). If we think of that condition as being in exile from God (or having a life that isn’t centered in God’s character), that is how I would describe the condition of sin. Now, I’m not implying that we should go about doing whatever we like and ignore the implicit moral code that was present in many of the traditional perspectives or teachings on the classic sins. The result of that type of lifestyle would be to continue to hamper one’s ability to be centered in God and God’s character. What I am implying though, is that sin is not about disobeying a set of “divine rules” and suffering the consequences (e.g. eternal damnation).

In terms of salvation, for me it is about a personal transformation that results in a life that is centered in God and God’s character. It is about becoming conscious of our relationship with and connection to God. It is about becoming intentional about deepening our connection with God by experiencing God and trying to center our identity in “the sacred”. “Spirituality is the midwifery process of salvation – it midwifes the process of birthing the new self.” (1) The result of salvation (or the process of salvation, or the process of being “born again”) is a life marked by freedom, joy, peace, love and compassion (or as John Shelby Spong would say a life that fully loves and is fully lived). It is about a life centered in the presence of God.

Finally, the afterlife. I believe there is something after this life. There are enough snippets of thought on the afterlife, as well as experiences and reports of near-death experiences that make me think there is something beyond this life. What will it be like? I have no idea. There are so many versions of what people think it will be like that I don’t see how one can even start to try to decipher which is right. All I know is that we will die. And my hope is that when we do, we die into God’s presence…and if that’s the case, that can’t be a bad thing, now can it?

Will everyone experience an afterlife? Again, I have no idea. But my gut feel is that the answer may be no…I sometimes wonder if the degree to which we “experience God” and achieve a connection to God in this life is preparing some part of our spirit (or soul?) to experience God in the afterlife. I don’t know…just a thought. And if I’m right and some don’t connect with God in the afterlife, I don’t think there is an alternate afterlife experience (e.g. “hell”)…I think there is just eternal separation from God…nothingness...which is how some define hell (although most of the time, there are a set of flames to go with this description).

As an aside, the thing that is really interesting to me is that the concept of the afterlife doesn’t seem to hold the same importance it once did to me within my Christian beliefs. I think that is because I’m no longer scared of “going to hell” if I don’t believe, say and do the exact right things. It’s all up-side...there is a chance I can connect with God both in this life and in the afterlife! Is that just wishful thinking? Again, I don’t know, but I guess that’s part of working out these types of things with “fear and trembling” (or not “fear and trembling” in this case!).

So in summary, where am I at on sin, salvation and the afterlife? If I had to summarize at this point, I think:

(1) The concept of sin relates mainly to mankind’s natural separation from and lack of centering in God and God’s character. It is not about disobeying a set of “divine rules” and suffering the consequences (e.g. eternal damnation).

(2) Repentence is not about contrition and guilt, but about resolving to reconnect to and center oneself in God and God’s character.

(3) Salvation is about a personal transformation that results from a conscious and intentional centering of one’s life and identify in God and God’s character. The result is a life that fully loves and is fully lived; a life that is characterized by love, freedom, peace, compassion and justice.

(4) The afterlife is a great unknown, but I believe there is something after this life, and I’m hoping it is us dying into God’s presence – which would be the ultimate experience of and connection with God.

POSTSCRIPT: 3 YEARS LATER, I PUT MUCH LESS THOUGHT AND EMPHASIS ON ANY OF THESE CONCEPTS. I THINK THEY ARE PRETTY MUCH IRRELEVANT AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH LIVING A FULL LIFE...WHICH IS WHAT I THINK IT IS ALL ABOUT. I HOPE THAT THERE IS AN AFTERLIFE, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT WOULD BE LIKE...THAT'S IT...NO IDEA. AND REGARDLESS, I AM LIVING MY LIFE NOW ASSUMING THERE ISN'T AN AFTERLIFE...SO THE GOAL IS TO LIVE FULLY NOW. AGAIN, THAT DOESN'T MEAN IGNORING BASIC HUMAN MORALS AND DECENCY...BUT I DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT THE CONCEPTS OF SIN, REPENTANCE AND SALVATION WHEN DECIDING WHAT I WILL DO OR NOT DO.

Notes:
(1) Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003).