Tag Archives: heresy

BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR MY BROTHER ROY

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Note to my readers:  I self-identity as a Judeo-Christian heretic. I make no apologies to anyone, trusting that God, our Tutor, has faith in each of us. (I did graduate study briefly at an “ivy” divinity school, but not for the ministry; I dropped out, welcome to return.) I’ve been elected by congregations to conduct weekly worship, doing so for several years, but no longer sit in pews – instead, studying The Text(s) daily at home, but always approachable by anyone with spiritual curiosity, hunger, thirst. (I peddle no brand, aside from Universal Divine Love.)   ‘Nuff said.

 

Dear Roy,

“The Lord is my [our] shepherd . . .”  (see Psalm 23)

The Lord is also our Patient Tutor, inviting us into daily dialog. Rabbi Jesus was a speaker of truth, but not a writer. Showing up for breakfast with Jesus is stimulating!    He speaks to us between the lines of our Textbook, the Bible.  We speak with him in prayer and listening, in quiet meditation — “My sheep know my voice . . . (see John 10).
     I don’t sit in pews anymore, except to pay respects to late friends, young couples, or new arrivals. Church is/and can be enjoyed anywhere; ad hoc, spontaneously. St Paul terms church “the body of Christ; ekklesia”(118 times in Luke-Acts).  It’s not a building, or a brand; it’s a relationship, a delight regarding our community, our context, recognizing Christ in each other, and in our neighbors.

             The Welcoming Committee / “Prepare to meet thy God.” ~ Amos 4:12    [photo by MeridaGOround]

     I’m about 15 years your senior. And for about 15 years, while still up north, I learned much from a small weekly Saturday-morning Bible study at a nearby farmhouse attended by Catholics, Baptists, Mennonites, non-affiliateds, after which a few of us would adjourn to a local prison to continue in a nondenominational Bible study with a group of about a dozen inmates, reading the Text aloud around the circle, for discussion. Being a fellow student in both of those studies was often a high point of my week. We were there to learn, too, along with those prisoners, some of whom were very astute.

     The portions of the Textbook detailing the career and after-effects of the life of Jesus — the “good news”/gospels and “the letters”/epistles — were written by witnesses, or reported to their listeners, at least 30+ years after the crucifixion, but we have none of those original documents, which were later tampered with by well-meaning (but biased and meddlesome) scribes/”copyists”, as is clearly evidenced in the many hand-copied scrolls and codices of those early times, by comparing them, which reveals variations between them.   (Could anybody write accurately of what they heard that long before? — but the point is moot, as we don”t have the originals.) So, if we want to listen for our Tutor’s voice, it’s an asset to have flexibility for reading between the lines of the Text in it’s many translations; and to think with intense curiosity about the words and meanings.

The word logos in Greek means reasoned, principled; we see it in our English word logical — something very different than emotional : moving (Fr. a public disturbance). In John’s gospel, Logos is capitalized as Word in chapter one to represent the Messiah, the Christ, “the Annointed”. Rationality (logos) is a two-edged sword, affirming and denying. It defends truth and cuts down lies. Ancient Greeks wrestled to fathom truth, eventually describing it as “that which is not a lie”.  Such a slashing definition!  Faith requires logic and appetite — hunger and thirst for right thinking and principled living — to maintain justice and balance in our communities.

     In spite of our distractions, rebellions, class-skipping, chasing after our own desires, God has patience with us, and faith in us.  Faith comes from God. We can’t generate it on our own! Trust, yes we can do that, gradually. But the faith is God’s, in us and through us. God believes in the human family!  The best way to sharpen our appetite is to dine with God daily, our morning meal of communion.  Bread and fish and many a dish are served, freshly prepared and deliciously seasoned, washed down with the fruit of the vine (see John 15; and John 6).   Relocating hunger from our bellies to our hearts is wise. The “SERMON ON THE MOUNT” (Matthew 5-7) is a good place to start. I hope you will visit this great gift often. (You can pick your preferred translation from dozens.) THE GIFT: I’ve queued up a fresh modern version for you.   Got appetite?
     Religion and politics are very separate topics, which the Founders of our nation treated wisely in the First Amendment. But we’ve forgotten much, and are ignoring those guardrails.  (America is not a “Christian nation”; we allow all religions.) The Founders built a wall of separation between church and state – a global first – to protect the church from the state, and the state from the church.  See  CURING CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM by Congressman James  Talarico (TX) a short video (19 minutes) – a powerful Christian rebuke! (NOTE: his sermon starts with funny beer-jokes.)
     Roy, if you insist on voting for someone who is unkind, unChristian, undemocratic, unreasonable, I will honor your right to do so; that’s your privilege in America. (We both defended that right.) But just remember: I still love you, and my vote cancels yours <wink/grin>
     ~God is the Giver!  “Thank God for this gift, too wonderful for words.” (2Cor9:15 ~NLT)
      Note: I’ve attempted my own translation from the Greek, consolidating many of the ethics teachings of “The Sermon” from the gospels into a single document, for anybody who knows how deeply hungry they are.

THE INTERNAL GOD : A Book Mention

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BEWARE YE WHO ENTER HERE.  I may be a heretic.  (The original Greek sense of this word implies one who is free to choose.)  But the evolved  meaning is one who holds an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.  Thus, Jesus of Nazareth was a heretic who was guilty of choosing freely to oppose the mainstream religious practices at the Jerusalem Temple ;  and of loving too much, getting himself crucified by those with whom he differed about how to worship — those who thought they owned the practice of worshipping “correctly.”  

I hope I model myself after such contrarians as Moses, Socrates, Buddha, Jesus.  But I may be very wide of the mark.  It’s above my paygrade to know ; and above ours to judge.  “Judge not, lest ye be judged” said Jesus. Yet so much of religion is based on the silly question of who’s in and who’s out? Who knows?  Certainly not me.  If you think you know, beware, for there are those who feel sent to kill the heretic.  You might be drawn in to joining a murderous crowd. 

Ok, about the title of my essay, The Internal God.  The more common expression is eternal, forever-lasting.  But most of our observations tell us that almost nothing is eternal — as even the Sun will eventually run out of energy, explode, or vanish into a black hole, whatever that is.  Ah, but ideas can be both internal and eternal. — Just imagine going to the tool crib for a seven and being told they are all presently being used by other borrowers – sorry, wait your turn.  “Seven” is eternally available to everyone.  Your ability to grasp the concept of number, or beauty, or justice, entitles you to use it.  But be careful — powerful tools often cut in two directions.  For example, those who want justice when they’ve been wronged also want forgiveness when they have transgressed.  

So where is this internal God?  Let’s be clear — I am not God!  But perhaps consciousness, the awareness of the presence of an ideal — the I AM — is God in us.  This is an elusive concept.  It can’t be possessed. But it can be beheld. Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:20,21 see various renderings via pulldown menu).  ¿ So, can you see God in me? (Probably not, if I choose not to see God in you!)  Yep, words are slippery, and it’s our task to squeeze’em to get all the juice.  

There’s a new book which speaks to such a broadened approach, titled THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation.  It is likely to draw fire from those who prefer “that old time religion” which crucified Jesus and his fellow heretics.  An excerpt can be read here.

 

¿¿ Who Crucified MOTHER EARTH ??

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In the Moonlight, by Albert von Keller. 1894. Oil on canvas: 150 x 100,5 cm,   (Wikimedia commons.)

Nearly 2000 years ago a devout Jewish heretic was hanging on a cross, put there for the crime of loving too much.  Some accounts say the Romans nailed him up there ;  others, that the rulers of the Jewish Temple had arranged it.  

Even tho’ I didn’t yet reside on this planet, I know it was me, a Christian heretic, who required it — due to my reluctance to deny myself the false pleasure of being my own god.  (Clearly, I’ve failed, but as I’ve matured somewhat, I’ve come to think of pleasure as a counterfeit of joy.)

It’s GOOD FRIDAY again, and humanity is asleep in its dreams of technology-as-savior.  Many of my Christian friends are in utter denial that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly, and have elected someone who has ordered  removal of the few safeguards America had cobbled together to delay us from snuffing ourselves.  Yes, friends, global warming is very real, as you can assess with you own eyes, by watching this one-minute satellite animation of 25 years of arctic ice declining in a blink of geological time.  (Heed the evidence of your eyeballs instead of Limbaugh’s lies!)  Remember :  the industrial revolution is only ~200 years old — so 25 years is a long portion of that! Prior to our harnessing of carbon energy, the CO2 levels had remained mostly steady for 10,000 years.  200 years ago they were about 280 ppm ;  today they are over 400 — preparing to cook us like planet Venus, accord to astrophysicist Adam Frank.

We are crucifying our Mother.  Some of you, who will accuse me of deifying Nature, have deified a man who would be shocked to find himself to have been designated as God-in-the-flesh — by Emperor Constantine, (“the Great Decider”) who wasn’t even a Christian until decades later on his deathbed, when he accepted Christ.  Yet the divinity of Jesus has been “settled doctrine” since the year 325AD.  Kids, he was a man who accepted the dangerous assignment of teaching us of our divinity, but not to invite us to worship him, or into our current thinking that we have a right to ruin Creation thru wasteful living, by claiming to be our own God-in-the-flesh. He was a man who came to teach us we are all divine, when and as we discover that obedience is freedom.  “Oh, but I couldn’t possibly be like Jesus — please excuse me from your heresy, sir.” Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me, said he.  We must each do our own thinking, rather than letting church bullies decide such momentous things for us.

So, how to change course?  (Is it even possible?)  Twelve-step programs tell us we must admit our addiction.  Yes, my name is ____ and I’m addicted to carbon, soot, darkness.  But rather than distracting ourselves by attempting to minimize our addiction with a smaller carbon footprint, we need to step up to calling for policy changes that bring us a radical recovery thru energy conversion.  Light, instead of carbon.  The apostle John summarized his experience of Jesus in a single, short sentence :  God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.  But that sounds so naive!  Could it be true?  What about the holocaust, and birth defects?  

Look, no matter how thin you slice the baloney, it always has two sides.  And the problem of evil is no different.  So, what’s the flip side of that?  (Glad you asked.)  ¿How about the problem of the ideal?   And what is the ideal of sustainable living on the planet we’ve been given?  I will not hasten to answer, but I suspect it has something to do with light — seeing it, being it, loving it.  Yes, Jesus did say I am the light of the world.  But he also said you are the light of the world.  Yeah, you!  And me, too. All of us together, no outsiders, not even Judas!  He stretched out his arms and welcomed us all into the Father’s creation, our walled garden.  Love her. Protect her.  Rescue her.  We’ve been blessed with a gift of dominion.  Let us not trample, but walk here gently.