The fire that warms May 4, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Faith, Spirituality, Truth.4 comments
Bob Abernethy and the other folks behind PBS’s Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly have produced a book, The Life of Meaning, reflecting some of the great interviews they have done. In a story on the R&EWN web site, Abernethy writes about creating the book and talks about Desmond Tutu.In 1998, Abernethy interviewed the retired South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Abernethy said Tutu “described his wordless prayer at the beginning of every day, his sense of being in the presence of God, and he likened that to sitting near a warm stove on a cold morning.”
Tutu: “I don’t have to do anything. … The fire warms me. I just have to be there, quiet.”
Abernethy: “His simple description moved all of us in the room.”
I found myself moved, as well, by the archbishop’s description.
Abernethy said to the people interviewed over the years: “Whatever their fields and age, and whether they are formally religious or more independently spiritual, the contributors turned out to have in common a powerful underlying conviction. Many of them expressed it as the ‘Something More,’ their bedrock intuition that beyond or beside or as part of everything that is material, everything that can be sensed and measured, there is another realm of being called by many names but central to their understanding of life and the universe. Many referred to this as God or, for Muslims, Allah. Some spoke of ‘Ultimate Reality’ or ‘the Really Real.’”
I have said similar things on this blog before, but this is said so well that I wanted to share it.
Something’s not right March 12, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Church, Faith, Jesus, Religion, Spirituality, Truth.4 comments
My friend at the a-muse-ing blog has again gotten me to thinking. She responded with the following to some of us writing on a previous post:
“Thanks to all of you. I needed to hear this today. I grow and learn from my online community, but how I wish I had people like you to spend time with in person. I have become so weary of people adding so much of their crap to this beautiful message of love that Christ has given us, that I have no desire to go to church anymore. I love Jesus, but have become hurt too often from christians.”
I wonder if God is as fed up with the church as is my friend.
N.T. Wright says the following about Jesus and the kingdom of God:
Jesus “was announcing the kingdom of God for which Israel had longed, but it was an announcment that warned of immient judgment rather than imminent rescue.” (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 67)
The people of God in Jesus’ time were waiting for the Messiah to deliver and exalt them, but they rejected Him because they didn’t recognize Him and thus sealed their own doom. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans about 30 years after Christ’s death.
Christians today are waiting for the return of Christ and His deliverance from this perverse age. I wonder if Christians, who see themselves as the “people of God” today, are failing to recognize God at work in their midst and are thus doomed to have their “church” destroyed.
Make no mistakes, the real church, the people of God, will survive and thrive; but the outward edifices of inner faith seem prone to at first help the people, then distract the people, and then stand in need of distruction by the God of the people.
If God decides to destroy the outward “church” — not buildings necessarily but the organized facade — then He will do it, I think, in order to release His real people, His real followers to something new and better, just as Jesus did 2,000 years ago.
Jesus “believed that the time had come for God’s kingdom to dawn and that with it a new agenda had emerged diametrically opposed to the agenda that had taken over the symbols of national identity and was hiding all manner of injustices behind them. Jesus … declared solemnly in deed and word that the divine judgment was now inevitable.” (Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, p. 67)
If God shifted gears at least once in history (from temple to church) might He be desiring to shift gears again (from church to what)?
Day after the tomb’s opening March 5, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Faith, Jesus, Truth.Tags: Resurrection
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I waited about 24 hours after watching “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”. I waited to make sure the theoretical walls of Christendom did not crumble under the weight of television “journalism”. So far, they still seem intact.
I’m already reading and hearing some interesting responses, but I have not seen the follow-up show yet because my beddy-bye time precluded it Sunday night.
As a mental exercise I want to explore some options. What if it turns out that filmmaker James Cameron and crew are right? What if Jesus did not physically rise from the dead? What are my options of response? Here’s a go at it:
1) Ignore the truth and go on believing and teaching what I’ve always believed and taught.
2) Ascribe to only a spiritual ressurection and still affirm that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.
3) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah but affirm him as a great teacher and continue to build a God-faith around his teachings.
4) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah but affirm him as a great teacher and begin to build a God-faith around the teachings of all great teachers.
5) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah but affirm his as a great teacher and begin to build a godless life philosophy around the teachings of all great teachers.
6) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah or a great teacher and disregard all vestiges of his teaching and look for truth elsewhere.
7) Stop looking for truth.
I’ve always been one who likes to look at options, so this little exercise helped me. Did I miss any in general terms?
Please do NOT think I’ve drunk the James Cameron Kool-aid and bought this story line. I surely haven’t. But I’m willing to look at it. As this blog’s subtitle says, I’m listening for truth in an amazing world.
By the way, I still prayed this morning and felt the presence of a loving God in my spirit just like I had the day before seeing the show. While godless options are intellectually possible, I simply cannot imagine living with one.
For the “least of these” March 1, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Faith, Movies.Tags: Amazing Grace
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God still amazes me. I wrote yesterday that after seeing the movie “Amazing Grace” I prayed with my two youngest children and asked God to help us be like William Wilberforce, to help us see people in our world today who need our help, who need our protection, who need our action.
Yesterday, in a meeting, the group was dealing with a senstive issue and I thought of Wilberforce. After a pretty tricky discussion, I said something like, “You may shout me down for suggesting this, but I feel I need to put this on the table.” I made the proposal, and it carried the day. The organization I work for appears to be ready to go to a higher level in helping some people who have victimized in a particular way.
Forgive me for the vagueness of this post, but I must. My main point is not about the issue, it’s about how God stands ready to help us stand for the “least of these” among us.
“Being like William” may become my personal rallying cry; and, of course, that means “being like Jesus.”
Driving in the fog February 22, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Emerging church, Faith, Postmodern, Religion.Tags: Planning, Strategic planning
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Driving in the fog is dangerous. Living in a fog can be dangerous, too. But is it all that bad?
Yesterday, the fog was pretty heavy when I started for work. It was not terrible fog, but it was not drive-as-fast-as-normal fog either.
I took my time. I focused. No radio. No distractions. Concentrating in the moment. There’s something a bit intense about driving in the fog. You don’t get sleepy. You’re alert.
So what about living in a fog? I’m not talking about a mental fog; I’m talking about moving forward without being able to see clearly what is ahead of you. It’s a pretty good way to live. You take your time. You focus. You live in the moment.
We seem to be a culture caught up in planning, and the ultimate expression of planning the “road” ahead is this corporate nonsense about developing mission and vision statements and all such consultant-contrived devices. I say corporate nonsense because that’s where it had its genesis, but it has taken over churches and religious institutions and even individual lives.
In churches and institutions, my experience has shown that more energy is put into “strategic” statements than in actually getting anything done. We’ve swallowed the planning Kool-aid; and when you swallow the Kool-aid, you end up buying the farm. (Check Jonestown reference to Kool-aid somewhere.)
Astrophysicist Alar Toomre may have a helpful word for us. He tries to make headway in his research by focusing on the little issues, not the big ones.
Denise Shekerjian, in her book Uncommon Genius, paraphrases Toomre’s approach this way: “What is important is to focus your interests on one or two discrete, localized, particularized questions pulled out from a universe of one’s interests. Work on the small matters utterly, he explains, and the large necessities can be left to take care of themselves and of those who trusted accordingly.” (p. 10)
That sounds like good old fashion work. Maybe we need a little more work and a little less strategic planning in our individual lives, our church lives and our institutional lives. Because, it sure seems to me, that we’re not getting much done.
Let’s drive in the fog a little and live in the moment.
